closing the gap

Wheat is also referred to as the 'staff of life'.

Its believed that man's ability to cultivate grains is the reason we evolved from a hunter gatherer society to an agricultural society. Grains are a highly nutritious living food (the are the seed after all and if you plant them will grow).

Modern processing of wheat into flour basically has turned a wholesome and living food into a unwholesome and dead food. The nutrition of wheat is lost within about 3 days of when the flour was milled. And many components of the wheat are actually removed from the flour as byproducts that can be sold for an extra profit (eg wheatgerm and bran).

We recently purchased a home grain mill (just a small bench top variety) to grind our own fresh flour as we need it. Partly for the health reasons - to actually get really nutritious bread and other baked 'stuff', and partly to bring us one step closer to closing the gap on the cycle - one step left to grow the grain, and thats what we will work on next.


As I only bake sourdough bread, good flour is really important. Bleached ordinary flour will kill the sensitive cultures of my sourdough leaven, as will chlorinated water. Freshly milled flour is like a whole food for the leaven, as it is for us.

What has been amazing, besides more flavour (the flour I used to buy was a very good one - so the difference is probably more subtle, than if we had been used to ordinary white flour), is the colour. I always bought unbleached flour, but the freshly milled flour is more honey coloured, so even unbleached must recieve some form of lightening process...

The mill was not cheap - I lashed out and bought a pretty good one and an electric model (no guilt here as we are totally solar powered!!). It mills about 1kg of flour in about 4-5 minutes, its only downside is its pretty noisy on the fine setting. There are cheaper models and hand operated models available too, but since we go through about 3-4kg of flour a week, it seemed sensible to get the best we could. And it runs perfectly on our solar power system, doesn't even make a dint on the battery charge!

So, another step towards self sufficiency has been achieved, minor as it is. I look forward to the day I can bake our bread using our own home grown wheat. First we need to buy the pigs, who will be our rotary hoes and prepare the soil for grain growing.... Before that I need Brad to build a pig shelter!!!! One day!

Oh, we still have the goats - Dorka and her baby - they didn't abandon us, and we are getting milk each day (although less than we first thought we would get - so no cheese as yet...)

In memory of Brandy xoxoxo

One year ago today, I had to say goodbye to my best friend. She was part of my life for nearly 18 years, from when I was only 12 years old. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do, and I think about it all the time. I miss her so much.


When Brandy came into my life she had been an unwanted, passed around pony. She kicked, she wasn't particularly good to ride (stubborn and strong willed), most likely she had had a rough time too. In the early days I recieved my fair share of kicks, and she threw me off more times than I can even count. But I made a promise to her from the day I got her that she would always have a home with me, and I would never give her up. I knew that a small pony with her nature, would probably end up in a bad place - like so many horses do... So despite the odds I faught to keep her with me. It wasn't always easy, especially when I had to keep her on agistment, and the agistment wasn't good.

Brandy was an amazing animal. She was strong, determined, tough as anything, and an ispiration to me. In her last months of life, she showed me that despite what life throws at you, you can still be positive and enjoy each day as it comes. She may not have been a great riding horse as such (strong willed, intelligent animals usually aren't), but she was a great friend, and she will never be replaced.

I will never forget you my girl xoxoxo

New girls on the block

Meet the 2 newest members of our little farm, Dorka and her baby girl Gypsy. Dorka is our milking goat, and will supply us with all our milk requirements - between 1 and 3 Litres a day. Her baby is only about 3 weeks old, and just so cute!!! They are supposed to be British Alpine, but I suspect that Dorka isn't - British Alpine goats should be black - like her baby.

Their arrival to our farm was 'interesting'!!! Dorka, athough reasonably tame at her old home, rediscovered her 'wild side', when she came here, and a stupid error on my part (ie. letting her go in the paddock), resulted in much running around, and some serious worrying.... We got them back, had another 'minor incident' which left us with Dorka stuck in the swamp.... Now she is chained up in her shed, till she becomes friendly enough with us that she wont run away!!!! That said, she is quite happy to be milked (we have milked her twice now, and she doesn't kick or make a fuss about it), as long as she is confined!!!

We are quite surprised at her temperment, so different to our previous goat experiences, our old goats where TOO friendly!!!! So now begins a new era of our adventure, milk (and hopefully some cheese) self sufficiency. Despite Dorka's wild nature, it still beats going to the shops to buy it. And in case you are curious, her milk is no different to cow's milk, well I couldn't tell the difference... Very different to what you buy in the supermarket as goats milk!

Rain

We have been blessed with some really good rain the last few days, almost non stop, and not too heavy not too light, if you know what I mean. The water tanks are full, garden nice and wet, and plants seem happy. The chooks, horses and alpacas on the other hand look like drowned rats...

My carrots have come up! Growing carrots is 'my personal challenge', I have never managed to grow a sucessful crop. This year I did it all 'by the book'. Got the soil nice and fine, made rows with my rake handle, mixed the seed with sand, and kept the seed wet till they germinated. Which they have (finally!) after about 3 weeks. Now, as long as I can thin them without disturbing the plants too much, and keep the wildlife from munching them, we will have a crop - I have planted about 2-3sqm, so if all goes well there will be plenty (I over compensated with seed as I had low expectations). I will post some photos of the little carrots, once they are big enough to actually photograph!!!

I had to bring in my seedlings today as it was only 5C outside, and there was even talk of snow today.... Tomatoe seedlings probably don't like that too much!! A good day to have a rest and catch up on my knitting!!

Spring equinox

Today light and day are of equal length, but from now on the light will prevail, until the summer solstice that is.

It is a time to celebrate life and growth - eggs, flowers, and getting stuck into the food garden.


The chooks are laying ok, my flock is mixed, with some old girls that have been with us for a while, some in their 'prime' that I bought at the start of the year and some new ones (Barnevelders) that I got about a month a go. The new ones are yet to start laying, which I am looking forward to! I hope to be able to breed a few replacement chooks this year, as well as adding to the flock from local poultry breeders. I am aiming for about 12 layers.

Our solar power system is going great, not a problem. We were worried about how it would handle our biggest regular power user - the washing machine, and to our complete surprise it only took 1-2% of our battery capacity!!! So much for people saying you can't run a washing machine on an off grid solar power system!!! So far we have tested the 'bamix', drop saw and vacum cleaner, and all work fine - the vacum cleaner used the most power. It also runs our internet server and charges laptops and batteries for the drill etc. These things barely have any impact on the battery charge at all!!!

So now our 'problem' is trying to USE power, as the batteries are pretty much always 100% full!!! Winter will be different of course!

Here is a quick photo of the kids, all dressed up, and reasonably clean - just before we headed off for a long drive to visit our niece for her 3rd birthday party. Had a great time, although the drive was not so enjoyable!!!

Not much else to say, busy as always, starting to preapre for the fire season ahead...

We have the power!!

Finally, the batteries for our off grid solar power system are connected up to the solar panels! Its been 3 months of waiting (mostly because we were waiting to hear back from the government about our grant application - which they say they never got...). Its also a real 'dream come true', for me anyway, its been 15 years or so of dreaming to have my own power system and be self sufficient in our power! So its a pretty special day for us!

Which brings me to something so incredibly important - what we can do to reduce our carbon footprint, and basically 'save the world'. The time is here, we have to act NOW - global warming is happening at such a rate - scientists never predicted it to be so soon. I was reading that in the next few years the north pole will no longer have ice!!! That is within the next 10 years - not like they were saying years ago - where my generation would probably not see the impacts - but only those that follow.... these guys...



Anyway, I guess I am not trying to alarm my dear readers, but at the same time I AM! To actually 'win' this battle, EVERYONE has to do their bit. We all need to reduce our footprint - by a considrable amount too - I think I read that for us westerners its in the order of 80% or so.... That is more than just changing lightbulbs!!! I means actually making sacrifices, and working hard, to do what needs to be done. And there is no choice, if we don't we will all suffer, much more.....

Anyway, for those that are interested, 350.org is a organization organizing a global day of action on the 24th October. Check out their website (there is a logo etc on the banner on the right side of this blog). There are events all over the place - try and attend and show those that have the most power of all that this is important and that the population does care (I am hoping that people truly do care, but sometimes I have to wonder....)

Anyway, sorry to be a 'bit over the top' but this is something that keep me up at night, and truly frightens me.... I don't want to see the polar bears become extinct, and I really don't want to have to face the fires that will get worse and worse each summer in this part of the world - or the incredibly awful heat waves - 48C is the hottest I want to experience thank you very much...

I will leave you with some pictures of the farm - spring sure is here, the grass is growing (so we have had to dust off the trusty scythe!!), and the garden is starting to look great. Wishing you all a great growing season!

Panels up!

Yesterday Brad and his brother Grant put up the solar panels. Thank you Grant, you saved me having to pass them up by myself, and also made the job so much quicker. I am scared of heights so I am useless for jobs such as this - plus someone needs to be on ground level when 2 little kids are around.

We haven't got the battery bank yet, hopefully that will arrive this week. Then we can make use of our sunshine, for interesting things like running the washing machine and the fridge (we are getting a new super efficient fridge, that will run easily off our fairly small solar power system). At this point we have no fridge, and run the generator to do the washing. So I will look forward to not hearing the generator anymore!


This power system we have funded ourselves. We did put in an application for a government grant, but after not hearing from them, we rang, only to be told that they never got it.... hmmm, we didn't send it registered mail (silly), but we have heard that others have had a similar response, only to add that they did register the forms, and then suddely their application was found... (but we wont get into that -as perhaps we are being a little too sceptical of our nice government agencies ???) Anyway, turns out we got a pretty good deal and we have paid, less than what we had budgeted for with the government grant. So it's all ended well so far!