For the last few weeks we have been working back on the horse ranch, where we spent a lovely autumn last year. It was glorious weather once again! Working outside in t-shirts and shorts in October is really a treat. In fact, getting to be and work outside such a lot is a huge perk of our #vanlife and something we don’t take for granted. The projects were definitely tough, physical work, a little more challenging than last year but, if we do say so ourselves, we smashed them!
It was also a bit more challenging this year because we had a few things to take care of during the month, which meant we had to keep leaving the ranch for a few days at a time. One of those was a wedding – OUR WEDDING! We had decided that we would very much like to be married to each other at the start of the year. Well, this was the first time we spoke it out loud anyway. So we thought that we would like to make that happen before the end of the year. After spending quite some time getting all the necessary paperwork in order, we got ourselves the last available appointment at a registry office in Vienna and tied the knot at the end of October.
While we very much wanted to be married, we weren’t so fussed on the actual wedding part of the whole affair, so kept it all as small as we could. Conversations with the registry office to book it in went something like the following…
“Do you have rings to exchange?” – “we’re already wearing them, no need to do that”
“The guests can go in first, and you two make your entrance when everyone is seated…” – “nah, we’re not gonna do that, let’s just all go in together and ok, we’ll sit out there in the front if we have to”
“What music would you like to walk in t…” – “no music, thanks”
“Should we make time for speeches during the cerem-…” – “no speeches necessary”
So, all in all, the ceremony took about 7 minutes, and all we had to say was “Yes”. Which was super easy! And pretty much just what we wanted. We followed it up with coffee and cake in a cafe around the corner with our immediate family. It was an awesome day. And now we are husband and wife! I just had to write that, because it still sounds weird and incredible to me. Life just keeps on getting better.
We’re not the type to splurge social media with a bunch of photos, so here’s a few pictures of the day for you lucky people that still follow our blog.
We’ve got one more small work project in Austria before we leave this lovely country and enjoy a road trip up to the UK once again. Perhaps our next update here will be when we celebrate our 2nd van life anniversary! Obviously, we’ll put the odd picture on Instagram in between, so make sure you follow us there.
Fixing up our rusty old machine meant that we were a bit later arriving to our next job than we intended. We have been living in der schönen grünen Steiermark on a horse ranch, parked up less than a metre from the nearest horse. They make for really awesome neighbours, but we discovered that some do snore pretty loudly. 
We were kept busy with plenty of work on the ranch. We built up sheds, repaired and relaced rotten foundations, built up feeding areas for the horses, fixed enclosures, repaired walls, built gates, cleaned out gutters, mended nets, sledge-hammered in more than 100 huge wooden posts and put up countless metres of electric fencing. One of us also managed to squeeze in their first ever horse riding lesson on the slowest, laziest horse that the ranch had. 
So, we have bought ourselves a little upgrade… solar panels! Through these, we will be able to keep our second spare car battery charged, and from that run power to use interior lights in the van. The lights came with the van, but connected to the main battery, so we’ve never wanted to use them for fear of sucking too much power and then not being able to start the van in the morning. Our new electrics will pose no threat to our start-up power, and as long as there’s day light we should be charging! It’s all a work in progress at the moment, so keep an eye on 