Planning the Move – While Working Off-Farm
We can’t wait for our flock to arrive. It’s been the hardest part of the relocation so far, being away from daily contact. Don’t worry, they’re in excellent hands with wonderful caretakers. Still, the distance hums in the background of everything.
Soon, there will be yarn to offer! That alone feels like a small miracle.
We have been busy hand-preparing fleeces for processing off-island and inching closer to the long-held dream of opening our mill. Each step forward, even knowing the mill is likely still 18 months away, feels quietly thrilling. Progress is progress.
People often imagine farm planning as slow, picturesque days outside. Notebooks full of watercolour sketches. Cups of tea on verandas overlooking established gardens. Animals wandering past like a rural calendar shoot. That’s… not my life.
Planning the move of Riverdance Farm Tasmania to an unestablished farm - while working full-time off-farm is messy, slow, and fuelled by equal parts hope and stubbornness. And repetition. Lots of repetition and a daily dose of multivitamins LOL.
There are weeks where I barely touch the land. Weeks where my “farm time” is a voice note at 10pm reminding myself about fencing styles, irrigation location or research about soil tests. Endless lists living in my phone. Notes on notes on notes.
And yet, somehow, the vision keeps growing. My so-called weekly rhythm (I snorted writing that, rhythm is generous) is a blend of practicality and dreaming. Work during the week. Plans squeezed into margins. Weekends split between catching up on life and catching up on the land.
Some days I’m in meetings in the city. Twelve hours later I’m in gumboots, wondering where the post-hole digger disappeared to. It’s not balanced. It’s not neat. But it’s real.
Right now, our livestock are two hours away. And I’ll admit, that sits heavy. Someone else sees my animals daily. I feel the loss of not having my hands on them, of not knowing their rhythms firsthand. Will they forget me? Do they still want my company the way I crave theirs? I can’t wait until we’re all together on one piece of land again.
Behind the scenes, planning looks less romantic and more like puzzle-building. I’m using The List (thank you, Tasmanian Government) alongside laminated maps to sketch paddocks, roads, and irrigation. Listing infrastructure. Checking budgets. Working out what the land needs now versus what the mill will need later.
It’s spreadsheets, aerial imagery, YouTube University, and scribbles on the backs of envelopes. Occasionally a breakthrough. Often a setback. Always learning. Overthinking is an expert past time of mine.
Planning the mill. Ordering the mill. Asking very practical questions like: what is the delivery time on a fibre mill? How big does the shed need to be? Did I double-check those measurements, or just convince myself I did? Who would work at Ouse, making contracts big enough to make the travel to work worthwhile.
Managing limited time has become an art form. I don’t have full days to wander and see what unfolds. Everything is intentional.
What matters this month? What actually moves us forward? What buys back time later? What sets the foundation for alpacas arriving in six months, and a mill arriving eighteen months after that? Long-term vision matters more than anything. On the tired days, and there are many, the vision carries me.
Knowing why I’m doing this. Knowing what this land will become. Knowing that one day a mill will stand here, turning raw fleece into beautiful yarn. Knowing growers and makers will arrive, virtually or in person, because there will be something here worth being part of.
This stage isn’t very visible. It’s the scaffolding phase. The part no one celebrates but everything depends on. If you’re in a season like this too, building something slowly, quietly, between the rest of your life, you’re not behind. You’re laying foundations.
One day, it will show.
Today, just a week or so after Christmas, my thoughts look like this:
It never looks like what you think it will.
Small steps still move big pictures.
Do we need a chicken tractor? Probably. We do eat a lot of eggs.
Failure isn’t an option. But moving forward is.