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*Taps* Is this thing on?

Hi guys, I'm Paul and I'm an alcoholic, wait wrong introduction... I'm Paul and I'm soon to be an out of my depth smallholder.

My partner, Erin and I own 10 acres of land in southern Victoria, Australia and while we had planned on developing the land and renovating the house over the next 5-10 years the commute is killing us (it's a 2.5 hour drive from Melbourne where we rent at the moment) and every time we come back to the city we want to be here less and less. As a result Erin is planning on quitting her job on Monday and we will be moving in full time ASAP.

The property is in commercial dairy country and we have approximately 2 acres of 'house and gardens', an acre field we are starting to convert into an orchard with a further 7 acres of paddocks. All of the fence lines have established trees so we shouldn't want for firewood. The plan is to run small amounts of various animals and move towards being mostly self sufficient.

At the moment the biggest shock is how much things cost when bought on the scale needed for a farm and the number of things we *need*. Hopefully we are getting to a point where we can survive and only buy new tools and machinery when we can really afford them and not when our work grinds to a halt due to a lack of them.

Goals for this year are to get the fences all repaired, get the irrigation system working again, get a serious veggie patch happening and get the animal population happening.

TL;DR I have 10 acres in Australia, I'm scared but hopeful everything will work out....