a labour of love

I finally finished my very first homegrown, hand shorn (by Brad, using the old fashioned hand shears), handspun and handknitted jumper. I get a real buzz from being a part of every step of the process, knowing exactly what was done to produce something. So much of what we buy these days undergoes much processing, and we don't know about it. Its just one jumper, but its another step towards self reliance and reducing 'clothing miles'.

Brad with Pedro the alpaca who 'donated' his fleece for this jumper.

Regardless, I am pretty proud of our joint effort!

You know when you are a little obsessive about making stuff, when your daughter asks first 'who made it?' rather than 'where did they buy it?', and she is always disappointed to hear when something was made 'in a factory in china'.

Real Eggs

Our hens are laying well at the moment - spring is definately in the air! We have been enjoying an abundance of fresh eggs, real eggs, laid by hens who actually spend their day roaming around our land, doing what they like (and laying eggs wherever they please too!).


Recently in America eggs have been recalled due to Salmonella contamination - likely due the crowded and unatural way most hens spend their short (18months) life to provide 'cheap' eggs to keep the consumer happy. I recently took notice of the price of cheap eggs at our local supermarket, and they were less than $2 per dozen. A shock to me, as when we have bought eggs in the past we have always bought from a farm we know is truly free range and have usually paid around $8 per dozen. What do these factory farmed hens get fed - to be able to make money off selling eggs so cheaply? I don't think my hens who are outside all day and get a hand full of grain each a day would produce eggs for us so cheaply!!!!! And I don't pay for farm hands, electricity, transport and sorting for our eggs..... I have always belived factory farmed eggs to be rubbish, and now its clear that the hens must be fed 'rubbish'!!!! Which reminds me of the old saying 'you are what you eat'....


Our eggs come in all shapes, colours and sizes. Its my 'thing' to try and breed a flock of hens that will lay eggs of all different colours, I particularly proud of one of my 'babies' who lays a very nice and shiny chocolate coloured egg. But all the eggs have one thing in common, the yolks are truly orange, a deep orange. The colour comes from the green feed in the diet - grass. True free range (its now getting the label 'pastured') egg yolks are nothing like some of the eggs sold as 'free range' in supermarkets, which is basically just hens in sheds but not in small cages. There is nothing 'free' about this. Its worth paying a little extra for the 'real deal' than to buy cheap eggs that encourage farmers to treat these lovely animals in such a disgraceful way.


I love my eggs!

Signs of spring

After some very cold and wintery weather over the last few weeks, spring seems to be upon us.


The wattles and daffodils are in bloom, the birds are active and starting to make nests, and we are getting lots of eggs.


The days are noticeably longer now, and we have been making more solar power again.

Its almost time to start propagating all the summer vegetables like tomatoes, and this week I should be finished digging a new bed to plant the 100 or so seed potatoes I bought.

These guys are growing too!

Goats

We have 2 goats at present, both strong personalities, and equally strong willed. I have read much about goats over the years on goat keeping, but I don't think anything prepares you for how unique they are. Goats are the supreme optimist, they don't let anything defeat them (eg. fences) and never ever give up! Good qualities in a person, but maybe not so helpful in our livestock! None the less they have many good points.

Its hard to not love the happy go lucky attitude to life, even when they do get into the garden and eat your broccoli plants.... The also love blackberries. A useful thing around here, as there is no shortage of blackberries (oddly - and maybe a little scary- the blackberries have not lost their leaves this year...). They relish the leaves and small stalks, and devour loads of them. Unfortunately they also love loganberries, raspberries and pretty much any cane fruit....

Dorka enjoying her blackberries.

Goats also seem to love people. Well ours do. And since there is not keeping them in their own paddock, this is not an uncommon sight around here!

How much is that goat-ee at the window???

I think they are the sort of animal you either love or hate. We enjoy having them around for a few reasons;

1. they give us milk!
2. they don't eat much - and enjoy a variety of food including weeds. And their feed to milk conversion rate is much better than cows.
3. they are small enough that they are easy to handle - for doing things like hoof trimming.
4. moving paddocks is easy as they are always following us - keeping them in their new paddock is harder though!

Living in a cloud

Its certainly winter here at the moment, mind you we have had some extremely beautiful days too. Plenty of rain, the sort of rain we USED to get (the local rain figures are up around the 150mm mark for most months of autumn and winter, compared to less than 100mm for the same months in the last few years).


Up here in the hills, we often end up being in a cloud, a thick mist that sticks around for days on end. Its quite surreal and very hard to capture with the camera (although I do try).


I love the mists, although I must say days of it really mess with your mind and give me a headache, as my eyes try to focus.

The wheel is turning again, signs of early spring are all around.... More hens are laying, wattle flowers are starting to appear (although the landscape is yet to turn it glorious yellow), and the daffodils are popping out of the soil... Oh, an the spring/summer seeds have arrived in the mail. I am going to ignore the signs, and hang onto winter for quite some time, I have yet to spend a cold and miserable day indoors spinning by the fire, enjoying hot soup like I had dreamed of doing - I suppose I am too much of a workaholic to do that!

the joys of cooking on the woodstove

Over the last year we have had the pleasure of learning to cook on the woodstove. Our stove is an old Stanley traditional. We got it second hand, and it had had a rough life. It also came to us in pieces!

Woodstove cooking is not as quick as using gas or electric stoves, and you do need to get the wood, chop it up and put it in, rather than simply turn a knob and paying bills. Sometimes it can take an hour to get it going nicely (usually when I am rushing because I didn't light the stove early enough and its almost tea time).

BUT

On the small amount of wood it uses, it cooks (the equivalent of about 4-5 hot plates plus the oven at the same time), heats the room and our hot water, dries the clothes, keeps the bread warm while it rises and boils the kettle. I don't think there are many appliances that can do all that with the one input of 'fuel'. And the fuel can be grown on our land!!!!

It also lends itself to slow cooking, you can cook chutneys for hours, cook dried beans the day before you need them while the fire dies off for the night, stews can cook all day on the 'cold' side of the stove (Woostoves usually have a 'hot' section directly above the fire box, and then cooler areas moving away from it - so rather than turning the stove down to simmer, you just move your pot).

It bakes bread nicely, and we have cooked all sorts of cakes and biscuits in it. I keep my sourdough starter on top of the stove on the plate warmer rack (which gets used for lots of things but never for warming plates - there is always something on it!!!)

We love our slow combustion wood stove, and have used it through the summer (we found running it every 2-3 days to bake the bread was enough to keep the hot water hot). Summer use is just a matter of keeping the flue open to let out the heat rather than retaining it in the stove.
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To me the woodstove is a 'symbol' of the slow, simple, back to basics lifestyle, that we are passionate about.

Happy (late) winter solstice

The winter solstice (shortest day) just passed a few days ago. We had planned to celebrate it with a 'grand' feast, but time got away from us. We have been blessed with some lovely weather, although also the usual winter rain, fog and cold winds. Who knows, we may even get snow this winter!

For those living off the mains grid, this time of year is the most challenging. More so for us, due to the not so good location of our solar panels (its only a temporary spot though - and we were aware of the limitations of the site at the time - but we traded the time to build an approprite frame elsewhere, and the loads of extra cabling for the lack of winter light). The sun sits very low in the sky here and sadly doesn't barely hit the panels at the moment. Combined with the foggy days, it means not much power is made.... That said, in the location that they will go to when the house is built we will have no trouble at all as we have full solar access.

So we have had to put in measures for power saving for the last 2 or so months, turning almost everything off, and not turning on power hungry appliances like the TV or even the radio. Also turning off the inverter that gives us our 240V power unless we are using saves us power. We only run 12V lighting, and that comes directly from our batteries.

We will survive, and next winter will be easier, as we are in the process of moving the panels to a new spot where we get a little more 'sun' time. We will also expand the system as money permits. For now we will have to cope with running the generator a couple of times to charge up the batteries again, and soon the sun will peek out from above the trees again.