unusual house guest

Strangely, the day we brought our chooks home (they were living with our neighbours), look who decided to move into our place!



A fox, for those of you who don't recognise it, under the desk! It was very scared, so it was hard to get it out as it was snapping at us, since it was cornered. But its out, and thankfully for our feathered girls we haven't seen it again.

winter - don't go yet...

Signs of spring are all around us. (Its too early though - go away and give us some more rain...)

The daffodils are popping up.

The wattles are flowering.

Buds are forming on decidious plants (those that still bother to drop their leaves.... anyone else notice that many don't bother dropping their leaves so much anymore.... scary)

I've seen birds with nesting materials, the lambs are all born (not ours- we don't have sheep... yet)

And we have heard of snake sightings - Brad even got to do his first snake capture - when picking up some old corrugated iron from a neighbour's place - under the last sheet was a sleepy tiger snake. The neighbours wanted to kill it with a shovel, but Brad managed to convince them to get it into a bag and relocate. Understandably the snake was pretty pleased with this!

Its been so windy - luckily for us we have this....

Its just an old generator, 200W, so not a real big one either, but it helps, for now, while we STILL wait to hear if we will get a government grant for our off grid power system.... By the time we get the power system we wont know what to use all that electricty on!!!

Lots of work to be done - we are trying to priorities jobs (many jobs need to be done before summer - lots of cleaning up before bushfire season..... ). Planning the spring garden, just recieved a big box full of seeds for the vegy garden, plus my seed potatoes - YAY!

Checked out my 'new' local town, and they have a great health food store that sells orgaic fruit and veg and has a decent range! So I am pretty pleased about that!

Don't rush

Meet Stanley. He is our slow combustion stove. Just a run of the mill Stanley Traditional, made in Ireland. You can still buy them new, just the same. We got Stanley second hand, in pieces, and had the interesting task of putting him back together. It was good as we now understand where the heat travels and can problem solve if things don't work right. But it wasn't fun, if you like your sanity intact!

So, Stanley is an amazing multitasking individual, with a perculiar sense of humour. He has replaced our kettle, toaster, hotplates, oven and microwave (we no longer have any of these in their conventional form), hot water service and he is also good at drying clothes and proving bread. I think that he replaces these better than the electric/gas versions, and we don't get bills!

The slow combustion stove is great for baking (there has been lots of scones, biscuits, bread and baked dinners around here) and slow cooking. You can leave things to cook all day without worrying about what the electricity/gas bill will be!

But there is one thing about Stanley that makes him challenging at times... You just can't rush the guy. He seems to know when you want to get the fire going quickly, say because the kids are up and whingeing that they are hungry and you need to go out in an hour. You try and put on some bigger wood too quickly, before he is ready, and its all over, you can start again! Then after you have had your lukewarm coffee and barely toasted bread you will have a roaring fire ready to go....

Slow combustion cooking is for a slower pace of life. Not really suitable if you work all day outside the home (unless you know how to keep it ticking over for 8 hours or so). But a slow pace of life is a good thing in my opinion. We are enjoying our new life here, its lovely to wake up to the chorous of birds, and go and give the horses an apple. Spending time in the garden, planning the spring crops and finding the time to do some of the things we never had time to do before. Its nice to not have a feeling of rushing, although there is a lot to do here, most of it can wait another day. When the weather is nice (which seems to be more often than not) its nice to go out and potter around. Our next project is to build a moveble pen for our chickens, so we can finally bring the girls home (and add a few more and even a rooster!).

Blue Tongue Lizard

Brad took this photo. Isn't it a great photo! Blue tongue lizards are pretty common around these parts, although its a little surprising to see one at this time of year, its almost winter (although the weather is still fairly nice.... fingers crossed we get a nice and wet winter though)!

Here is a recent family photo, with our little boy's blackwood tree - one year on after it was planted.

Our boy is one!

2 days ago our little man turned one. We are having a little party for him on sunday.



Sorry, I realise the photo is not that good, he is at that come over and try and grab the camera stage, so nice photos are hard to get. Usually its a close up of the eyes or something like that!!! He is a big boy, scooting around on his bottom. He is starting to stand up now, especially holding onto me. Hopefully he will walk soon, but he hasn't been in much of a hurry to do things yet. Content with what he has at the time.

We haven't taken his 'tree' photo yet. If you don't know, we planted a tree for both the kids when they were born, and have been taking a photo around their birthday each year. Hopefully we will do that soon (the weather was not great today - and I forgot the day before that...)

More time in the garden

Things have been very busy here. I have set up a pretty serious vegy garden, hopefully not more than I can handle - about 13m x 4m wide (but I will need to extend it still). I have been digging it all over and adding assorted manures, wood ash and whatever else. I have been reading up on the requirements of the individual plants I am planting and preparing the soil specifically. I know this probably all sounds like the normal and right way to do it, but its not how I have normally do it! I have normally just thrown a few seeds in, here and there, and watched what happened.

But that was in my reckless days!!! I am taking the feeding the family task more seriously now, and want to make sure there are enough of each plant, and that they grow well. Alas, my soil is probably not ready for that responsibility yet...

So I spend some of our building days out in the garden with the kids while Brad is using the generator and sawing up timber etc etc. Then I try and help him whenever I can. Its been hard, long days, and it seems like nothing much is being achieved.... Somewhat overwhelming, as the mountain of work never seems to get less, and yet the time is flying.... All going 'well', we will be homeless in a month.... probably living in a caravan!!! One and a half people can't build a home in a month, and work to earn a living to pay for the building materials, and look after 2 young children.

It will be interesting, to say the least!!! We wont have electricity (or limited electricity), and possibily no plumbed water (we do own buckets!). Please hope and pray that we will have the combustion stove operational.... Hmmm, I guess it will be character building!!! And COLD.

Lets just hope for some good productive days in our future!!!! Fingers crossed!!

Winter garden

I have been busy working on our vegy garden, with some high hopes of growing lots of good food. I find the autumn/winter garden much more rewarding than the summer garden. The heat and the dry is such a formidable force in this part of the world. Winter has its challenges - slugs and snails... They devour so much so quickly...

So, I have been preparing a fairly large garden, 4m X 12m, but it will need expanding, as I now realize there isn't enough room for all the potatoes... ooops. I have been propagating plants which are nearly ready to plant out. Cabbages, broccoli, kale, beetroot, silverbeet (chard) are all about to go in the ground. Also, the garlic (all 80 cloves or so... ) that arrived recently from the Digger's Club. I have been preparing the beds with gypsum, wood ash from the pizza oven, and as much horse, alpaca and chook poo as I can. The soil is ok, but its not as good as the garden beds that we are leaving behind... The soil will take time to become enriched, its a long term committment, to establish a garden and help build the soil.

After the winter solistice (June 21st) I will plant out the onions. I have planted over 200 seeds, but will do another seed pack soon. I have always loved growing onions, despite them being cheap to buy, they are easy to grow, and organic onions are hard to find around here... Here are my little babies, just popping their head up.

Cute, aren't they?

Something that I have decided to do as of now, is keep a garden diary. I think it will help to refine my skills and improve our crops over the years. This is my main focus now - apart from my household duties, and taking care of the kids - to grow a large proportion of our food.

So much is happening now in the world, that I feel the urgency of this more and more. The economic crisis is starting to have an effect on Australia, despite the government assuring us that we are safe.... So many people are either out of work, or losing work. No one is employing, or spending money. We have seen many affected already, and its still early days.... It will be interesting to see how it all goes, whether 'they' can stop it, or will it keep spiraling....