Hello from Kagoshima :)

[Vanilla]

Hi everybody!
Thank you for letting me join to this community ! I'm Martina, and I born in Italy. Now I live with my lovely japanese husband and our kid close to the volcanoes in Kagoshima Prefecture (1h and 30 min by car from the city). 2 years ago we bought an old farm house that we start to renovate (work is still in progress). In the meantime we started our small wagyu business (in March we are going to sell our first calf). I love animals and I dream to produce as much as possible from our Homestead, for provide healty food for our family ^_^ We have 1 dog, 1 cat, 4 goats (right now only one is in milk), 1 horse and 65 chickens. Next year we are going to start to sell farm fresh egg too, and I'm so excited about that!
Thank you so much, can't wait to share experiences and suggestions with all of you guys

PS. Please, forgive my english mistakes. I'm still Learning and I hope to improve my language skills staying on this forum

[Zasso Nouka]

Welcome to Japan Simple Life Vanilla,

Thank you so much for taking the time to join our little community. We really do appreciate you taking the time to sign up. Are you doing the restoration work on your house yourself ? That was our original plan but old farm houses here in Chiba are really expensive so we couldn't afford one.

PS. Please, forgive my english mistakes. I'm still Learning and I hope to improve my language skills staying on this forum

Honestly don't worry about that, your English is way way better than my Italian or Japanese. No one here is going to criticise your language use.

I love animals and I dream to produce as much as possible from our Homestead, for provide healty food for our family

Personally I think that is a really good thing to aim for, you know where your food came from and freshly harvested food tastes so so good. There is nothing better than eating freshly harvested vegetables.

Once again thank you for joining Japan Simple Life

[gonbechan]

So lovely to have more ladies on board.
We (well especially I) would love to see pictures and or videos of your restoration project.
I am always up for house porn in any form haha.

We look forward to hearing more from you Vanilla.

[Vanilla]

Thnak you for the warm welcome
The house was a mess and almost collapsed, so we needed ask to a carpenter and we decided to keep only the internal structure (in iron). We wanted a traditional japanese house, but unfortunately our budget was very low, so our house is nothing special: is a low-budget modern house
The work are still in progress because our budget gone, so we are doing what we can by ourself, without rush.
We should start to renovate the barn too, but now is a cost that we can't afford.
But the land size is great (around 20000m2) and perfect for our project

[Zasso Nouka]

We wanted a traditional japanese house, but unfortunately our budget was very low, so our house is nothing special: is a low-budget modern house

We wanted to do the same thing but traditional style houses here in Chiba are way too expensive so we couldn't afford one.

The work are still in progress because our budget gone, so we are doing what we can by ourself, without rush.
We should start to renovate the barn too, but now is a cost that we can't afford.

It's very satisfying to do the work yourself if you can and as your are going to be there for the long term there's no rush to get everything done quickly. Will be interesting to see how you get on if you have the time to post pictures occasionally.

But the land size is great (around 20000m2) and perfect for our project

That's a nice big plot of land, so many opportunities. What do you plan for the goats milk ? Will you try making cheese or is it for drinking ?

[Vanilla]

Here in Kagoshima prefecture there are a lot of opportunities for buy a traditional house (and usually not so expensive). When we were looking for a house, we found very nice old farm house, but with no enough land for our project. So we needed to make a choice. Even if we were dreaming a kominka, we decided to invest in land, and we don't regret

That's a nice big plot of land, so many opportunities. What do you plan for the goats milk ? Will you try making cheese or is it for drinking ?

With goat's milk I usually make cheese and yogurt (and of course we drink the milk too), but right now we have only one goat that produce milk (and not so much cause her first time giving birth) so I aim to increase the number of goats next year
But my "secret" dream is to buy a milk cow for produce more cheese, cream and butter. I don't know when and if we will buy, but I keep hoping and working for that.

[Zasso Nouka]

But my "secret" dream is to buy a milk cow for produce more cheese, cream and butter. I don't know when and if we will buy, but I keep hoping and working for that.

That would be really cool to make all of your own dairy products, best of luck

[Giovanni]

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E' bello vederti qui.
I am a big fan of your videos! Keep it that way!
I would like to suggest to all the members your YouTube videos, even if they are in italian, the scenery is very inspiring and charming!
Good luck for your future project!

[Vanilla]

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E' bello vederti qui.
I am a big fan of your videos! Keep it that way!
I would like to suggest to all the members your YouTube videos, even if they are in italian, the scenery is very inspiring and charming!
Good luck for your future project!

Ciao! Che sorpresa!
Have no idea that I could find someone who watched my video here on this forum! I'm soooo embarassed Anyway thank you so much Giovanni! I will do my best

[Zasso Nouka]

Your farm looks great in the videos, what an awesome lifestyle you guys have. That's a proper old style smallholding and great to see someone being so self sufficient as you. I've subscribed to your channel.

Was interesting to see how you keep your cows, do you cut and dry all your own hay for the cows ?

I've hidden part of @Giovanni's post and your reply from guests so that bit is only visible to signed in members of JSL, just to be on the safe side. It probably wasn't necessary to do as I don't think we have any stalkers but you never know with the internet.