12 months of Greening - Organic October + No Heating!

I didn't do a 12 months of Greening post last month, oops!  But I posted a bit about it on my Slow Living post.

This month we've dubbed Organic October.  We're trying to buy (or at least consider buying) organic products where possible, and also trying to use more organic practises in the garden.  The word trying is important here and I'll explain why down lower.

We've spent quite a bit of time removing chemicals from our bathroom and our laundry this year, and have been cooking from scratch a lot more so that we are removing much of the chemicals from what we eat.  This month, we're delving a little deeper and removing those unseen chemicals from the fruits, vegetables and grains we eat by choosing (where feasible) organic options.  I'm no expert on organics, but my take on it is that the chemicals that are added during the growing of non-organic products are used to make them grow faster, remove pests and weeds etc.  These chemicals come through to us, the consumer in small amounts, but they also damage the ecosystem around the land in which the product was grown, and this environment impact is the most important factor for us.

I don't have easy access to an organic green grocer, so I am choosing organic labelled products where I can, and otherwise, using mostly our own food crops, or choosing in season foods.  I figure that many of the chemicals that are used on our foods are to either grow them out of season or to store them for selling out of season.  Buying in season foods is also cheaper and they taste better, a win-win.  The only challenge in buying only foods in season is that they are not always the foods my kids like to eat.  For example, I try to get the kids to eat fruit each day, but they have never been big citrus fans, so winter through to now is a tough time to find in season fruits.  But as they get older and their understanding of this grows, they're more willing to try, and this week we have finally won the "you will try and you will like mandarins" battle - woohoo!

We're also trying some other things such as organic baking products and cereals.  Unfortunately, some of these are more than 4 times the price of the non-organic variety.  I understand why, and truly want to support organic producers so that these prices can come down, but this isn't always easy on the budget, so I do what I can, and sometimes the weekly shop just won't allow the added expense.  Some items however we now only buy organic - like tea and coffee.  This feels like a good change.

In the garden, I'm also trying to go organic.  I have always used chemicals sparingly, but this year they are only used as a last resort.  Sadly, I've had to cave on this already with the use of some snail bait.  As I've mentioned, I am trying to grow as many of my veg from seed as possible.  I have started transplanting out into the garden, and despite all of my organic efforts (beer traps + egg shells + coffee spray + coffee grinds + morning snail and slug massacres), I have still heartbreakingly found whole seedlings chomped through overnight.  I decided that it was expecting too much to tackle both fronts (seeds and completely organics), so have used a small amount of snail and slug pellets (the kind that say they won't hurt other animals) just to protect the seedlings.  All other chemicals have been banned from the garden though.

BONUS CHALLENGE

In addition to our regular monthly challenges, we decided earlier in the year to make our mid-autumn and mid-spring months no heating and cooling months.  October is therefore one of them.  So in addition to our organic challenges, this month we have turned off our heater at the meter box and banned all other heaters and fans.  This would be fine if the weather was always Spring like, but the last few days have given us f-f-f-freeeeezing evenings!  We've toughed it out though, snuggling up in blankets, slippers and enjoying our hot water bottles and warm drinks.  Why would we do this?  partly because we like the challenge, partly to save power and therefore greenhouse emissions (and a few dollars) and partly to remind us that heating and cooling are a luxury that we can (at times) live without.  Living in southern Victoria means we get quite cold Winters, and I think it would be unhealthy to live without heating all the time, and there are a couple of days a year when the air-conditioner being used for just a little while means we can continue to function.  But a lot of the time, it is possible to be heater and cooler free.

Perhaps you'd like to join us on one or more of our challenges this month?  Let me know if you do and how you go.

Tuesday garden journal

First of all, I want to say thank you for the replies on the blog and by email to my post yesterday.  It is lovely to hear peoples words of support and stories of others in the same situation.  I think it is wonderful to be able to choose live our lives this way, and hope that others understand that their choices are theirs and ours are ours.

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Onto today's post.  Linking up again with Squiggly Rainbow for a garden journal!

I've decided not to tell you about all of the work happening in the vegie gardens or on the pizza oven this week, and instead to share with you some little things that make me smile out in the garden at the moment.

I love the borage that is growing wild in my herb garden area. Stu hates its wildness. I love its wildness, its pretty blue flowers and the bees that it attracts. When its wildness gets too much, I rip it out and add it to the compost where it helps to speed up composting.

We have two Virgilia trees in our front garden that we planted there about 6 years ago.  They grew rapidly and now give our home its beautiful leafy look and our front garden lots of privacy from the road.  Each Spring they change from leafy green to delicate pink as they flower profusely, though strangely, one at a time.  The first is pretty pink now.

Our beautiful hen Specks hatched her adopted eggs this week!  We have 6 adorable fluffy black and speckled chickens.  They are safely enclosed in a pen near the vegie gardens and we are all loving watching their antics.

Hoping your Spring garden is making you smile too.
xo

I already have a job, thankyou.

The boys went back to school this morning to begin their final term of their second school year.  They are getting so grown up. 

Stu didn't go to work though.  His company made him redundant on Friday and while they've given 10 weeks notice, they were told to take today off anyway.  His redundancy wasn't a surprise, we've been waiting most of this year for the company to set a date.  You see they made some new grand plans that involve cebtralised call centres and jobs in the city and no more rural and regional branches.  Stu has been with them for over 7 years and the only other remaining lady in his office has been with them for 36 years.  The office will close just before Christmas.


So how will this affect our family? We are fairly confident that Stu will get another job in the next couple of months.  If he does, things will go on as normal.  If he doesn't, then I will look for some sort of "stop gap" job to help out until he does.  But despite what some people seem to think I should do, I won't be looking for permanent employment.

Since the boys started school (and occasionally before that) I have frequently been asked if I've 'found a job yet' or when I'll be going back to work.  Thanks for your concern folks, but I already have a job, in fact I have several!

In terms of the employment that I put on my annual tax return, I teach belly dance and perform regularly.  This earns enough each week to cover basic weekly expenses such as fuel and food.  But more importantly, I love it, it keeps me fit, and it doesn't put out my family.  I am here each day when my boys go to, and return from school.  I am able to spend time with them and my husband, and cook dinner for and eat with them every night.  My paid work fits our family life.  If I returned to secondary school teaching (or office or lab work, all of which I've done in the past), I would need someone to care for my kids before and after school, I would need to do preparation and marking in the evenings and I wouldn't have the time or energy to be the homemaker, mother and wife that I want to be.

People wonder what I do all day.  Well it isn't lunching at cafes and shopping with friends.  If I'm lucky, I might have a cuppa (at home) or a long phone call with a friend once a week. I will either have lunch with Stu or browse the opshops with a friend about once a month.  The rest if the time I spend working.  Today I have made more household cleaning products and my herbal hair rinse.  I have washed and hung on the line all of the bed linen (and will soon be bringing it in to remake the beds), I worked in the garden, planting, weeding etc to make sure we are growing enough vegies for summer and I also checked on the laying chooks and our newly hatched chickens which will, in a few months either join the laying flock, or become meat for us to eat.

I've also been working on the pizza oven project with Stu (because he is home), and found time to begin making another homemade gift for the Christmas pile - of which, along with the birthday presents, will be nearly all made by me.  This week, I need to do lesson plans for my term of classes, sew some (recycled fabric) shorts for the boys and do some of the less regular chores, like window washing.  I will do the grocery shopping tomorrow, but also bake bread, make our butter spread and cook pasta from scratch.  I also hope to buy a cheesemaking kit this week so I can add to our list of homemades (which already includes most of what we eat).  I don't have time to socialize, watch tv or read all day, but I do find time to think while I work about new hairbrained schemes brilliant ideas to save us money and make us more sustainable as a family.  I have a job.  This job(s?) may not earn a paycheque, but what it saves us financially, and give us in terms of quality of life is priceless.

But how do we go financially? My husband's job earns a decent income (we think) though it is still below the Australian average.  We don't recieve any benefits from the government, though we do get some family tax benefit, and my bellydance pay too.  We own both of our cars, have no credit cards, are paying off more on our mortgage than we have to, and we are doing fine.  No-one in our family misses out on anything they need or really want.  We holiday each year and sometimes go out for tea or do other things like the pool or a movie.  We're doing just fine.

So to the people that ask about my job status, I just want to say, thanks for your concern, but I already have several jobs and a comfortable, happy and full life.  We don't need to change.

Slow living month - September

I know I'm 5 days late with this journal - its been hard to find the time and motivation to get here to blog this week.  We're on school holidays and the boys and I have been having a ball, and the weather has been great, so I've been in the garden a lot.  But I do love these journal type of entries, so here it is, Slow Living Month September.  Do pop over to Slow Living Essentials and see what others have been up to.... that's what I plan to do as soon as I'm done typing this :)

~Nourish~

We celebrated early spring one night by taking our dinner outside.  We cooked our tortillas on the BBQ plate and ate by candlelight.  We realised that early spring is really the only time you can eat outside by candlelight with kids - in summer it is too late by the time it is dark and in winter it is too cold.  It was a lovely, impromptu, weeknight dinner.  I love making our own tortillas, it is one of the few things that Stu and I cook cooperatively and I love it.  We are also now getting plenty of eggs, so there has been a resurgence of egg based meals and pancakes on weekends.

~Grow~

September in the garden has been all about preparing for summer crops.  I continued to plant and nurture seedlings in the cold frame and started planting out.  Unfortunately, snails and slugs are a huge problem here, so I've been fighting them at every step along the way.  I've continued to harvest greens from the garden and the snow peas are finally producing a few crisp pods that never seem to make it to the dinner table.  My son has decided that they are a snacking vegetable, not a dinner vegetable - I tend to agree.  I've loved joining in on the garden journal with Squiggly Rainbow too (and will be back on that when the holidays are over!).

~Prepare~

The coriander that has filled our curries with its colour and flavour through winter has sensed the spring and is bolting to seed, so I have picked huge amounts of it to make frozen coriander ice blocks using this recipe.  They're lovely and will hopefully keep the deliciousness going for us a bit longer.
We also continued to bottle beer and our first batch of alcoholic ginger beer.  The alcohol level is relatively low, but the taste is gooooooood!

 

~Reduce~

Lots of lovely op shop finds this month - clothes and books for the kids, crafty things, clothes and a couple of homewares for me and something special for Stu.  An espresso machine! It's not a super fancy one, but it works really well and Stu is enjoying his morning coffee from it.  He is not enjoying so much the regular requests for 'cinos (strawberry, vanilla, caramel and chai) from the rest of us ;) 
I've also continued to reuse and repurpose a lot of 'junk' through the garden for various jobs.

~Green~

Our challenge for last month was to do 'random acts of greening'.  We built (from recycled materials) a new compost bin; switched to bamboo compostable toothbrushes and discovered new ways to be just a little bit greener.  The kids also took it upon themselves to pick up litter when they go for their walks to check the mail or exercise the dogs - proud of my little greenies.  Our bamboo toothbrushes needed a bit of decoration.  They are all exactly the same, so we decorated the handles of them with nailpolish so we know whose is whose.

~Create~

I'm still working on my jumper that I had hoped to have finished by spring, but keep getting interrupted in its creation to make costumes for dancing, birthday presents etc.  And I have had to write a plan for the next few months of Christmas present making as the sheer quantity on the to do list was overwhelming me.  

Here are a couple of little birthday presents I made this month and was able to gift to the little girls they were for yesterday. They loved them!

A Tangled Happy Wand for a 5 year old friend

A little "spare pocket" handbag with crocheted decals.

We also started on the pizza oven, and are discovering creative masonry :) We built the arch to the base - so proud!  (photos soon)


~Discover~

The library loads have been huge this month and I was also given some vintage pattern books which are gorgeous.  On the reading pile are: Living the Good Life, A Katie Fforde novel, numerous books on building woodfired ovens, a couple of copies of G magazine and a book called A slice of Organic. 

~Enhance~

We had our Spring Hafla at Belly Dance.  I love gathering with the community that we've built with our little belly dance group.  We always have a great atmosphere and fabulous fun.  I was so proud of my own kids and all of the other Belly Kids and adult students who graced the stage with the crazy collection of dances I've been teaching them this year.  It is always such a pleasure to watch a student take to the stage for the first time and to watch the buzz they get from such an achievement.  I had numerous people congratulate me on the diversity and family friendliness of the group, I work hard to make sure that all women and kids, regardless of their abilities or body shape, size age etc are not only welcome, but truly included.  I'm really glad this shows.  I also love that I get to share this with my hubby and kids - special!

Some crazy Shaabi style fun with my intermediate students.  This style is representative of modern 'nightclub' style dancing, hence the casual jeans costume.  All just for fun really :)

~Enjoy~

I've enjoyed the first rays of Spring sunshine.  The first week of holidays with my kids.  Hanging out on screen free Saturday nights with Stu.  Having my stepmum visiting and taking her to meet Clover (and in doing so getting to spend time with my awesome bro and sis-in-law again).  A photoshoot with my little spunky guys before their school disco.  A family day at my mum's place where I felt closer to her and my little brother and sister than I have in a long time.  Dinner and dancing fun with my dancing sisters, including some time where we banned belly dance talk and just connected as friends.  And much more. A good month.