Actually, more than a week. Ten days.
We're mostly packed, and half moved. I've been taking trailer-loads of boxes up the Hume, but big guns are required for the final move. Too many sideboards, tables and heavy stuff for us to carry down two flights of stairs. Professionals are driving three hours to be at our place at 8:30 am, load up and then drive three hours to deliver and unload.

I've been an occasional visitor to the farm over the last few months. But only a visitor. It's still not our place, and I am conscious of not overstepping the access Greg has given me.

A few weeks back I watched the olive harvest. It was a freezing morning, so cold some of the olives were frozen. The mechanical harvest approach leaves a lot behind on the tree, but I expect the remnants will have rotted by the time we take over.

And a few weeks before that I spent a glorious day with Greg finishing off a fence he had started. He's a fence fanatic, meticulous fences across the property, so it was a great crash course.

Because we're going to need crash-coursing through everything. Badly managing a domestic vegetable garden, not weeding a flower garden, isn't good training for managing a farm. There's sheep, cattle, geese and god help us, an Alpaca, to deal with.And of course, chickens to come. But at least we know how to look after chickens.

So goodbye to our beautiful house. The new owners are overseas developers who told us after the auction that they intended to bulldoze the place. I'm over it now, but it was a depressing outcome. I had hoped a new family would take it on, and enjoy it as much as we have for fourteen years.

So today the lawn was mowed one last time, and I started emptying out the kitchen. Not long now....!