Enchanting Tiny House & Gardens On Generational Family Farm

as humans it's so natural for us to have a deep connection to the land where we were born and today we're about to meet a remarkable young woman who has built herself a beautiful home by building a tiny house on her generational family farm [Music] hey ruby how are you hey good how are you i'm great thank you it's good to meet you yeah you too it's a bit of a mission coming out here eh it's definitely an adventure but it's so worth it this place is incredible yeah coming through a couple rivers it's a bit interesting but it's amazing when you get out here and it's like paradise so it's like every time i come home from work i feel like i'm on holiday it's the best feeling ever this is such a magical spot and this land is very special and has a lot of history for you doesn't it it does yeah definitely so i'm a bethel descendant so my great great grandfather was actually power bethel so he was one of the first european settlers out here back in the late 1800s i think it was wow so yeah i've got deep roots that are connected to this land and the farm and then my grandparents they actually bought this farm which was originally 700 acres they owned the lake and the sand dunes as well but they had to sell part of the land unfortunately because i just couldn't keep it but now we have 350 acres of farmland and swampland and waterfalls and all that so it's like paradise beautiful so you grew up here yeah i've been here my whole life so 28 years probably not going to leave either it means a lot definitely having the family connection to the land because that's like my whakapapa and my ancestors and my roots are all all here that's where i come from so it's definitely part of me and that's kind of why i've got the tattoo of beethoven's on my foot so wherever i go i always have pithels at my feet so it's definitely yeah part of me and who i am and what a spot you've created for yourself here as well this is beautiful yeah it is a beautiful spot i've got my garden here and we go motorbike riding in the weekends and forward driving with the jeeps and go surfing and there's a lake not far so go swimming and there's plenty to do all that adventure right on your doorstep yeah it's pretty good and you've built this tiny house here for yourself can you talk to me a little bit about how this all came about yeah so it started about probably four years ago now my dad works in the film industry and he gets vehicles for different films and stuff so he was on the hunt to get a good trailer so he went down to this place in tikkawata and saw this company that made trailers and he saw that there was a few offices on top of the trailers and i was like this is cool we could do something like this and designed it all myself and then dad towed this up from ticker water through the rivers and everything it was a bit of a mission to get up here and then yeah parked it with his bulldozer in the spot right here and yeah then just finished the inside and exterior and everything and then built bathroom and composting toilets separately onto there what a great idea so you bought this originally as a shell and then have done all of the interior fit out on your right yeah yeah try to do it as cheap as possible and use pretty much all secondhand stuff like trade me and going to the tip and asking friends like if they've got any you know extra things that i could use and iran's always happy to help so yeah and what size is the tiny house so it's 10 metres long by 3.5 metres wide so it's quite good having 3.5 because it doesn't feel too claustrophobic being in a small space yeah and the views from the spot are really quite something i can see that you're even capitalizing on it with the outdoor tub down there yeah i've got my outdoor bathtub down there and yeah it's nice to look out when you're sitting in there above the swamp and the gardens that you've created here really are so beautiful and of course that makes sense because you are a professional gardener aren't you yeah i am a gardener so yeah when i come home from work i spend time up in my video gardens there and i've got fruit trees scattered around so you know eventually i do want to live off the land completely and be self-sufficient and grow as much as i can that is quite tricky though because where i am at the moment this is all black sand which is hydrophobic soil so you know you can water all you like and it just doesn't really want to go into it but um yeah i'm lucky that there's actually waterfall around the farm which i can tap into it's 700 meters of pipe going up to the top of the waterfall 20 metres higher than the spot that we're on right now so don't need a pump or anything or power to get water here so i can have my sprinkler going you know all day and it doesn't affect the waterfall at all so yeah it's good to have that wow so you ran 700 meters of pipe to this spot yeah it was um me and a few friends and my dad we all went to the top of the waterfall and they were all in 100 meter rolls they were 50 mil wide so quite heavy had to unroll them and then drag them through the bush through the swamp and then up here so it was a it was a real mission to do it all and it's actually bolted to the top of the waterfall and like a rock pool and then yeah when we got the water flowing up here it was just like the best day of i was so happy about that so you're definitely sorted for the water what about power here so i'm connected up to my dad's power just up top and then for hot water and stuff i have gas bottles so it's kind of good if i ever did decide to move the house which i'm definitely not going to i mean i could plug into power wherever i went yeah well your home here looks absolutely beautiful i love all the work that you've put into the gardens the view is just to die for and i'm so excited to see inside the home can we check it out yeah come have a look cool thank you oh this is absolutely beautiful thank you there is a tremendous amount of character that you've built into this place yeah there's lots of interesting like little knick-knacks that i've got in here and lots of second-hand things and yeah i wanted to save money so i tried to do as much as i could as myself yeah and taking on a project like this as a diy-er had you ever done anything like this before no not at all but um my ex-boyfriend he used to be a builder so he was very handy at coming up with all sorts of ideas and stuff so yeah we did a lot together so it was good i love the table you've got here as well all of this beautiful timber yeah so each plank of wood is actually a different type of tree from the farm so it was actually my grandparents table so they had six kids so there was eight of them sitting around this table having dinner and now i've got it in my place which is pretty awesome so you can see all the different types of grain some pure cara and coldy and yeah all sorts what a treasure i absolutely love it and talking about the timber the countertop in your kitchen that is stunning yeah so they were just some old planks of hutukawa that had been milled out just sitting in a wool shed so we thought be good to use that and turn it into something beautiful so yeah i used a lot of resin and a lot of sanding and planing and it worked out well and the copper splashback to match look at that yeah so that was kind of a random idea that my ex-boyfriend had just had this old hot water cylinder that was sitting and he thought he could just turn that into a splashback and it was quite good because it's quite pliable so it's actually quite easy to put it along the back there yeah and it's a great sized kitchen i see you've got lots of storage and lots of prep area there yeah so i actually used to be a baker i went to chef school and i wanted a decent sized kitchen because it's really important to me yeah i spend a lot of time making food i don't like to go out for takeaways or anything so i'm always trying to make things from scratch and of course you've got your veggie gardens right there to pick from as well yeah so i can just walk up there and just you know pick fresh produce like got plenty of cucumbers and courgettes and tomatoes at the moment so living off that been making a lot of pasta out of courgettes which is like the best thing ever there's nothing quite like living off your own bitter land is there yeah it's a good feeling that's for sure and of course right next to the kitchen here we've got this beautiful very cozy looking fireplace and the shift stone behind it is just really a great feature isn't it yeah thank you that was kind of my project over winter i was just desperate to have a good fireplace and so yeah i was on the hunt for chest and my uncle actually noticed that there was some in someone's paddock and he was like i'll just go you know ask tony down the road and so i went along and asked if i could have someone just and he was more than happy that was going to be used so just modded it down i borrowed my neighbor's grinder and cut the backs off a lot of the stone because they were too big so that's why it's like a bit wonky and crazy but it's kind of interesting i love it it looks really natural which is perfect yeah and then over here we've got your lounge and what a wonderful and comfortable looking space this is yeah it's quite a nice sized couch and it's long enough that you can actually lie down here and sleep on it i've had lots of people stay the night so it's very handy beautiful coffee table too yeah so bo and i made that there was just some old bits of coldy under my parents house so put that together and also use the same wood for my bed so i made the bed out of coldy as well and then some chopping boards as well what a treasure to have all of these remarkable timbers just lying about the property here yeah i mean it's good too and lots of manuka around so it's good for the bees as well getting manuka honey and then for firewood use a lot of tea tree for firewood yeah or my pizza for this fireplace here so you actually keep some bees here as well do you yeah i have beans just down below yeah i actually got them from a friend so my friend has her own company um she rescues bee swamps so it's a rescued swarm that i got from her yeah which is down there that's fantastic so you've adopted a colony yeah adopted a colony yeah lovely and that photo there looks like it's got a bit of a story behind it yeah it does so it's bethel's back in the 1970s where there's actually no houses in the subdivision there and i saw these old photos at my friend's place they were kind of all curled up and they looked like they were just going to be falling apart and so i wanted to preserve that piece of history so it's kind of nice looking back on what bethel's was with no houses beautiful what a treasure and then through there is that your bedroom yeah that's my bedroom through there cool can we take a look yeah sure oh what a dreamy space especially with the mosquito net above the bed it looks quite idyllic doesn't it yeah i definitely need that with having a swamp right below get lots of mosquitoes at night so it's important to have i've also made a mosquito net door for here so i can have the door open at night again lots of storage in here as well so you've got your wardrobe there and a good sized chest of drawers yeah that chest of drawers was actually from trademe so it was a pretty good score yeah what a great find yeah but yeah plenty of storage the wardrobe is quite decent it's not actually full yet got plenty of space in there and you've got these shell handles on the door that is so unique yeah it's kind of funky yeah so my friend from california actually bring them over for me because i wanted some shell drawer handles and what i did was just resined in a screw and then just screwed them together so it looks kind of funky it sure does very clever yeah and then out here we've got your bathroom and composting toilet yeah should we go over that let's take a look i love how you've done this first of all there really is a lot to be said for actually separating the bathroom from the main living area and your tiny house isn't there yeah it makes it quite good i mean it meant that i could actually have a bigger house because i've got these extra buildings here so i didn't mean that everything was all crammed into one and you know it didn't take long to build this all the windows and doors i actually got from trademe they were painted white so i just sanded them back and just looked so much better and then the wood on the outside is actually from some pine trees that we used to have down below so they got milled up when i was probably like 18 or something and i said to dad i was like make sure you keep me some of those because i'm going to build my house one day and yeah he did so i actually had to pay for them to get treated when i was like 18. that i was like save me some that's planning in advance yeah yeah 10 years ago now yeah yeah so i was always thinking about it always i was always like i'm gonna you know be mortgage-free before 30 and that was always my goal and yeah can we peek inside yeah come have a look thank you ah now this is very luxurious for an outdoor bathroom isn't it yeah it wasn't i didn't really plan on it being luxurious i mean i thought it was just going to be like a tin shack but it ended up being actually quite nice so these tiles were actually getting thrown out from a building site and held some point so me and my ex-boyfriend we hadn't ever done tiling before but gave it a crack and it worked out all right it looks great good job and the stone floor in here is really something yeah so um bo's dad's a stone mason and he had all this leftover stones so yeah we did that together and saved a lot of money by doing that and shelves again on the door here yeah so these are some flex nail shelves that i found on my hike that i did around caprena picked up these and also along my way i found some coral on cape maria van damme beach and hiked it with me for three days beautiful i'm guessing not the most practical thing to be hiking with but well worth taking it definitely worth it yeah it's a cool feature it sure is and what's hiding behind these doors here um so behind here i've got my washing machine and then some shelves and my spare gun and broom on the back of the store just hanging up and you've chosen to put the composting toilet in another separate building yeah so the composting toilet that we actually got has a big tank underneath it which is good because you only need to empty it every couple years so it's handy but um needed a site to access underneath so it just made sense putting it out there rather than having it inside i mean you can actually put them inside you just need a place where you can access the bottom so how long have you been living here now about four years now so started all this in the start of 2017. so it's all happened like it's gone really fast you know it's just flowing by like that and how are you finding tiny living yeah i have no problems with it at all my friends come they think it's a bit crazy having an outdoor bathroom and toilet but i actually quite enjoy it because you know i come out here and at night i can appreciate the stars and the moon and what that's all doing and you know if you're living in town you wouldn't see that at all and you said before that a major life goal of yours was to be debt free before you were 30. can you talk to me a little bit about the budget that was involved in creating this place yeah sure so in total it costs about 60 000 which isn't a lot at all compared to you know what all my friends are paying for houses at the moment so like the main cost was actually the trailer that's actually dug into the sand here which is kind of good you can't actually see it and the shelf so that was fifty five thousand dollars to get that all done but then you know finishing it all and building all this that was probably an extra five thousand dollars wow so everything else was five thousand yeah because we just did it all ourselves and just use secondhand material so didn't have to buy anything brand new i didn't want a huge mortgage because i just didn't want to be tied down to the bank i feel like it's kind of like such an imprisoning kind of feeling you know like it's like having a life sentence pretty much to the bank because you're going to spend the rest of your life paying it off and i didn't want to have debt i wanted to have freedom don't want to work too much as well you know i want to look back on my life and think that i didn't work in a way you know i just enjoyed every moment so yeah it feels pretty nice having my own space and here it literally feels like i'm on holiday so it's just such a refreshing feeling i'm definitely living the dream that i've always wanted you know growing staff and working my way to be completely self-sufficient is what i've always wanted so yeah it's nice to have that happen so what does the future hold for you now hopefully just being self-sufficient eventually that is my my plan in life and i also would love to have like a community garden out at bethel's and do that full-time and just grow stuff for people and yeah give my time back to everyone else that would be my dream that really is such an incredible vision and i cannot wait to watch you turn that into a reality but for right now what an absolutely magical place you've created for yourself here ruby thank you so much for sharing it with us thanks for coming out it's been awesome having you here it's our pleasure what ruby has created here is just beautiful she has such an entrenched family connection to this land the fact that so many generations of her family have sat around this very table is just remarkable and now with this home ruby has got to create her own very special mark on this very special place [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Living Big In A Tiny House

Views: 1,348,861

Rating: 4.9444828 out of 5

Keywords: living big in a tiny house, tiny house, small house, alternative living, tiny house tour, tiny home, amazing gardens, sustainable living, eco home, architecture, home design

Id: A8yyWeAdK3I

Length: 17min 44sec (1064 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021