Everybody would want to live this way

 

Tom, Sarah, and their daughter Neesa live in a 20sqm off-grid tiny house on a property on the Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand. Instead of paying rent, they share the work of looking after the land with the owners, and both families share in the farm’s abundant produce. We were inspired by how much happier they’ve found themselves by living with less.

Tom is a medical doctor and Sarah is an illustrator but both have chosen to reduce their work to almost nothing in order to have more time to focus on living well – a lifestyle choice that is more possible for many of us than we might think. This little 6-minute film has been one of our most popular to date – perhaps because it describes a lifestyle so many of us would love to be living.

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Vocabulary chunks to learn from video :

Living Simply
This is my wife Sarah
The house is 20 square meters
This L shaped space
A bit of a deck at the back
Mobile broadband
Hot water is from a gas cylinder
Keeping an eye on her
We need to radically rethink how to live
A healthy step for us
Be okay with the downsizing
Look out to trees and green
I don’t know the term for it
Working in the vegetable garden
Building, digging so that’s most of my work
Part-time I work as a GP (General Practitioner)
Our costs are fractional to what they were in town
I don’t have any stress about money
Which is a huge benefit
Emotionally I’m healthier
I’m much more in touch with sense of well-being
Maybe there is another way of being secure
Working in exchange for rent
Sharing and gifting of what we have
A more affluent lifestyle
Listen to what their hearts tell them will make them happy
Having the courage to act on it
For me this turns out to be what I love
Everybody would want to live this way

 

 

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Open your eyes back to nature

[The Great Big Story]

Culinary Artist, James Gop, has dedicated his life to embracing local foods, open fires and the vast beauty of the Berkshire Mountains. Mother Nature, to Gop, is a giant grocery store full of endless possibility. To celebrate the chef’s refreshing take on what it means to be an artist/explorer/chef in today’s world, Coors Light is enabling James’ next masterpiece: a sumptuous feast that showcases his top dishes, using hand-picked ingredients from the surrounding flora and fauna.

Follow James on   HERE

Vocabulary chunks to learn after watching the video

• Walk around in the woods
• Curious nature
• Culinary artist
• More often than not
• Later this week
• Building a menu
• Native species
• The growing seasons are short
• He never stops
• It’s very inspiring
• Continue to be better
• My artistic expression
• A seventeen-hour day
• Sauté them in a lot of butter and a lot of salt
• Little red berries
• To forever change your lives today
• Being here, present
• Weeds and grasses
• An edible grocery store
• Exposing them to something they’ve never seen
• Foraged pine bark
• Whole-wheat flour
• Making time
• Be part of this experience
• Open your eyes back to nature
• Giving us the opportunity to tell our story

Alone in Paradise

[Great Big Story]

Vocabulary chunks to learn after watching the video :

• The landscape is vast
• The wilderness is almost unlimited
• On foot
• It’s a  challenge in itself
• We are at the mercy of the weather
• Our day-to-day life
• It covers over 12.000 square  km
• We have solar panels for power lighting
• Satellite communications
• We have the freezer which keeps our food and our produce cold
• We rely on rainwater for drinking water
• We live off the land
• Harvest a deal or catch a fish
• Capture the menu
• Go sea fishing
• Go up the river for a kayak
• The harshness of the environment
• People have like-minded passion for the environment
• Snow-capped mountains
• Glacier shaped bays
• Pristine rivers and clear water
• Nature as it should be

 

I can’t imagine living any other way

[The Great Big Story]

Vocabulary chunks to learn after watching the video

• This is not a normal way of living
• This is my husband Wayne
• We live in a secluded cove
• No road accesses
• The water is our highway
• Everything is floating
• We are tied to shore with lines
• We are not anchored
• The dance floor
• The light house building
• 4 Greenhouses
• It’s about 500 tons, a million pounds
• Do you ever get seasick?
• No, when I go to town I get land sick
• On the West Coast of Vancouver island
• The richest biomass on earth
• Get into my canoe and paddle out
• Catch a fish
• Subsistence living
• Move away from the city
• 24 Years later we are still doing it
• I can’t imagine living any other way

 

 

 

Farm from a box

Farm from a box

Vocabulary chunks to learn after watching the video :

• A fully integrated farming unit
• Sustainable crops for food security
• Income generation
• Shipping container
• 2 acre plot of land
• Feed 150 people
• A complete diet every year
• The technology will unfold
• Best practices and technology
• A customized unit
• Renewable energy systems
• Provide power
• Labor saving technologies
• It is engineered to optimize available water resources
• Conserve water
• Boost crop production
• Extend the local growing season
• The community’s living standards will be improved
• Dependent on food aid
• Overcome challenges with self-sufficiency and empowerment

Community Farming Reinvented

Farm from a Box provides communities with the tools required to grow their own food and earn an income. Built from a modified shipping container, each unit contains a complete ecosystem of smart farm technologies to enhance agricultural productivity; from renewable power and micro-drip irrigation, to Information and Communications Technology. Read more HERE