Around our mini farm.....




I haven't done much in the way of a garden round up for ages.

There's been lots going on.

We've been cutting out the shrubs that haven't survived the long dry summer.  Many of them are being cut up into workable sized sticks for a project we have in mind.

We've been out and measured our whole block.  We drew a plan of all the permanent structures and are using it to plan the upcoming changes.  A fence here, goat pen there, a new tank and a milking shelter.  How many more fruit trees can we put in?  And where will we plant next years tomatoes?  We're continuing to work on changing what was a fairly blank 1/4 acre block when we moved here into a real food forest that will be both fun and productive. 

 

Our young hens have started to lay eggs of various shapes, sizes and colour.  One of the new layers we had thought was a rooster and was destined for other things - she started laying just in time :)  Oh, and that teeny tiny brown egg down there, believe it or not had two yolks in it!

 

 

 

A friend gifted us four young pure bred barneveldor roosters.  She had hatched them and only wanted hens.  The roosters were destined for the rubbish, so we'll put them to better use.  Three are still in our rooster pen to be fattened.  One lucky rooster became our keeper.

 

Anna, Rose, Lacey and Leah  (chicks hatched by us this year) have now joined our laying flock to make up ten hens.  They were then joined by Barney, the friendliest barneveldor rooster ever!  Plenty of eggs for us next year and more chicks too.

 

 

I've begun growing my own animal feed, working on a wheat sprouting fodder system.  It took a while to get it going, but now, for the cost of 9 kitty litter trays, I am able to sprout my wheat for some of our poultry, doubling the food quantity and halving my feed costs.  (I'll write more on this soon).

 

Summer crops have been removed from half of our vegie gardens and seeds have been sown for winter veg - some direct, others in punnets.  They're now beginning to show their heads above the soil.  The other beds will be done in the weeks following Easter.

 

We have finally had rain.  Not really enough to make the soil moist or to fill the tanks, but to relieve some of that pressure.  We can now shower for normal lengths of time (ie. 2-3minutes instead of 30 seconds!) and the vegies look much happier.

 

We decided that we couldn't eat the hens that grew from our chicken project and we had too many to keep them all, so we struck a deal with my mum.  She wanted more hens and will give us some of her unwanted roosters.  We took four hens over last week and came home, not with roosters, but with these two lovely baby muscovy ducks.  Daisy (the white and grey) and Peach (the dark one) will be the snail patrol this year - just as soon as we've fenced their area better.  In the meantime, I am hunting snails and delivering them - they love them!  Hooray!

We've also started work on Hurley's garden and have planted out a new mandarin tree, a second fejoia and a second olive tree.  All of our apples were blown off the tree last week and we've been loving munching our delicious pink ladies and I've also been using them for baking and have dried a few jars for our muesli.

We're all loving the journey that we're on in our garden.  We toy with the word permaculture, but I'm not knowledgable enough in it yet to feel confident using the word.  In the meantime, we call it our mini farm, and that makes me smile.

Apple hot cross buns

Whatever Easter means to you, I think we all like to indulge in some chocolate and or hot cross bun goodness.

I love hot cross buns at Easter (and I'm rather fond of cross-less buns through the rest of the year!). We used to buy our hot cross buns from a certain supermarket that makes delicious hot cross buns, but it has been brought to our attention (and most other Aussies through the joy of Facebook) that they contain palm oil - not good. So to enjoy your buns guilt free, either buy them from a palm oil free bakery, or make your own!

In the Southern Hemisphere, Easter falls at prime apple season, so to me, it makes sense to combine the two. I decided to do this for the kitchen garden program I ran at school a few weeks ago and found this recipe at gourmet traveller. Great recipe, but it includes quite a few ingredients that are obscure (expensive) and two provings - not great for kids and school time constraints. So I adapted the recipe and the results were delicious!! (Though my piping bag broke while I made this batch, so they're not the prettiest hot cross buns ever - but they are homemade and very yummy)

By all means add in a second proving to this recipe, but it works well without if you don't have time (or patience).

Enjoy and have a lovely Easter!

Apple Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients for apples

200g of sugar
300ml water
2 apples, unpeeled, cored and cut into small dices
½ tsp of cinnamon

Ingredients for buns

Apples (from above)
700g of plain flour
200g of sultanas
2 tsp cinnamon
2 sachets of yeast
300ml of milk
100g butter, coarsely chopped
1 egg
Extra flour for kneading

Ingredients for crosses

70ml of water
Enough plain flour to make a paste

Method Part 1

1.    To prepare the apples, place the sugar, water, chopped apples and cinnamon into a saucepan.  Heat on the stove over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves.
2.    Bring up to a simmer, then reduce temperature to low and simmer until the apples are transparent (about 5-10 minutes)
3.    Drain, reserving syrup AND apples.

Method Part 2

4.    While apples cool, measure and mix together the dry ingredients for the buns.
5.    Measure the milk into a glass measuring jug and add the butter.  Heat in microwave for 3 minutes (until butter is melting.
6.    Add milk mix, apples and egg to the dry ingredients
7.    Mix the mixture well, first using a spoon and then using your hands.
8.    Knead the dough for 5-10minutes
9.    Divide the dough into 24 pieces.
10. Roll each piece of dough into a ball and place the balls of dough on trays with 1cm gap between them.  Cover with a clean tea towel and leave to rise for at least 30 minutes.

Method Part 3

11. Meanwhile, prepare the paste for the crosses. Preheat the oven to 220⁰C
12. After rising, using a piping bag (or a spoon) to drizzle the cross paste onto the buns in the shape of a cross.
13. Place buns into the oven to cook for 8-10 minutes until risen and golden.
14. Remove from the oven and brush with reserved apple syrup.  Cool; on wire racks.

Home remedies - ear infections

Remember how I said that the boys cold had left me alone? I think I jinxed myself, and in typical me fashion, have ended up with an ear infection and have been feeling pretty lousy.

I have always had dodgy ears. I suffered badly with ear infections as a child and spent a lot of time taking antibiotics and other things to clear them up. I ended up having my tonsils and adenoids removed, having a surgical nasal scrape and having grommets put in my ears. The surgery helped and I was able to get through my teens without another ear infection (just dreaded cold sores which are my other personal problem and I'll tackle in a later post).

But in my 20s, my ears starting to play up again and by my 30s, I was having at least one ear infection a year, every cold was heralded by sore ears and I even had the joy of a ruptured ear drum a few years back.

The trouble is, the last two years, I've been to the doctors with shocking earaches (pain killers don't touch them) and the GPs have told me 'you've got too much fluid and wax buildup, I can't see anything in there' and prescribed 'waxol' (ear drops that supposedly dissolve the ear wax). So, knowing that my ears were actually infected, I would simply live through it, allowing my body to fix itself which was slow and painful. BTW, the waxol did absolutely nothing - it was uncomfortable and didn't clear my ears at all.

After the third unsuccessful visit to a doctor about this, I decided to stop and to take a more natural, home remedy approach.

Just an aside here, as I'm sure some of you are saying 'see a naturopath' (or similar). I grew up only seeing doctors, and never saw alternative therapists. I've since seen a chiro twice, but have never tried anything else. I might one day, but honestly I hate seeing anyone, and other than my biennial 'girl' health check and this ear infection business, I don't even see doctors.

So I've done a lot of research and the number of home remedies for ear infections is huge! People use all sorts of things - coconut oil, garlic infused oil, onion wedges, basil oil and their own urine to name but a few. I could try any of them (maybe not the urine), but found one that sat well with me and decided to stick with it for this infection and see how it goes. This is what I do:

Lovely lavender... {image}

Warm a teaspoon of olive oil and add to it three drops of tea tree oil and two drops of lavender oil. I soak this up on a cotton bud and place it into my outer ear. I've been doing this for an hour at a time, three (of more) times a day.

The best thing about this treatment is that all the ingredients are simple things that I trust and are always in my cupboards anyway. There is also very little chance of doing any harm with this treatment, so if it doesn't work, I'm no worse off and I still have the option of seeking medical help.

So how's it working? Well, firstly, the warmth of the olive oil soothes the ear ache immediately and makes me feel heaps better for the hour it is in. After that, the discomfort is dulled for a few hours (I can tell its time to do it again and the pain starts to flair). After one day, my ear was feeling loads better, after two, the pain was almost non-existent.   I plan to keep this up for a couple more days to ensure all the baddies are gone. It feels like its going to work (I promise a follow up post if it doesn't!).

Once my ears are back to normal, I plan to do more regular ear candling (we started that last year, but not often enough). I'm hoping that through maintenance and home remedies for acute situations, I can care for my ears naturally, without antibiotics and without doctors.

I'm fairly new to this home remedy stuff, but am learning quickly. We're trying a few other things and I'll post on them as we go. Would love to hear your thoughts on this, and any experiences you've had with DIY-ing ear infection treatment.

Sew a mini tissue pack

Head Cold season has hit here. People all around me are full of sniffles, sneezes and coughing. It's gross, but inevitable. I'm still OK, a touch of a sore throat, but fine otherwise. The boys have full on colds though and so the stack of homemade fabric tissues I made last year are getting a workout! I love that using hankies gives no waste, and a massive stack of them means they can go in the wash after each use, therefore taking out the thing that gives hankies a bad name - lugging around a dirty hanky for repeated uses and therefore building up a pocket full of cold germs....ew!

Now I'm no germaphobe, but the snotty hanky in the pocket thing is really yucky, so I don't send hankies to school with my kids, and I don't carry them with me either, so when out and about, we use paper tissues. But being light paper, they're prone to tearing up of you just shove a handful in your pocket. That's why those clever marketing folks creating the mini packets of tissues. Great idea! But they're expensive and wrapped in plastic .... that is nearly as "ew" as the snotty hankies!

I needed a solution, and so this morning, while listening to early morning coughing and nose blowing, I decided to whip up these little mini tissue pouches and managed to make two in about 30minutes AND remembered to take photos* so I could show you how I did it! All before a cup of tea -are you impressed? ;)

 

*my camera has started playing up, so for the time being all photos are being taken on my iPod - apologies for the poor quality.

OK, so here is a quickly put together tutorial on how to make them. They're pretty straight forward, but yell out if anything needs clarifying.

You will need:

• Some fabric scraps cut into the following shapes (I used pinking shears so they wouldn't fray)
• One 13 x 9cm rectangle and Two 13 x 6cm rectangles
• A zip (longer than about 15cm)
• A sewing machine with a zipper foot, matching thread and the basic sewing gear (scissors, pins, iron etc)

1. Once you've cut out your pieces, take the two smaller pieces and iron over just under 1cm on one of the long sides of each.

2. Pin the folded over edges onto your zip. You want the fold close to the teeth and both pieces of fabric lined up. Make sure the right side of your fabric is facing up. Pin them in the middle of your zip - we'll be cutting off the long ends soon.

3. Use your sewing machine to stitch the zip to the fabric. You will need to move the zipper tag along the way - do this by making sure that the needle is down, then lift the foot and slide the tag along, then lower the foot and keep sewing. Sew both sides so you now have a rectangle with a zip down the middle.

4. Slide the zipper tag down so that it is open about 3/4 of the way down your fabric. Then with right sides together, pin your larger piece of fabric to the back. Make sure your open zip ends are pinned close to one another so the zip will close when it's all sewn up. Note that your zippered section might be a bit bigger than your backing piece. If that's the case, just trim them to the same size.

5. Now simply sew all the way around your little rectangle, making nice neat corners and sewing straight over the ends of the zip.

6. Trim the zipper ends and corners of the rectangle, then turn it all right side out through the zipper.

7. Iron flat and your done!

If your tissue pouch is for school, you might consider ironing on a name tag so it is less likely to get lost (update - Lachie came home tonight "I've lost my tissue case!"  I was furious!  But then a kid knocked on the door, he'd found it and returned it - the name touch was worth it). To fill the pouch, fold tissues in half and then in three, stack together. You should be able to fit in 6 tissues, just stuff in the folded pile. The other nice thing about these pouches is that they can be thrown in the wash occasionally.

Now make one for all your kids in personalised fabrics and a pretty one for your handbag too :). Have fun!

Old-fashioned nut loaf

I went op-shopping yesterday. I found a few good things - a top to wear to my friends deb ball on Friday, a brand new shirt for Stu, a funny book for the kids and more dinner knives for the kitchen. I was pleased will all the finds, then I found these....

A pair of vintage nut loaf tins! Are you excited? I was. They're in great condition - used, but clean, complete and with no rust of dents and only $6 for the pair (I looked them up on ebay to confirm, and that is a bargain)! They bring back memories of my Nanna's nut loaves, served as thick slices, slathered with butter. Yum.

Today, I found a recipe and baked. They're delicious! Afternoon tea anyone?

Date and nut loaves

(Recipe adapted from this one)

1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice
100g walnuts roughly chopped
150g dates roughly chopped
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup water
100g butter
1 egg

• Preheat oven to 180c and grease 2 nut loaf tins (you could also use a single loaf pan or several unlined tin cans)
• Mix dry ingredients and nuts in a mixing bowl
• Mix sugar, dates, water and butter in a saucepan over medium heat until sugar is dissolved and butter melted, cool slightly
• Add wet mix to dry ingredients and add egg. Mix well
• Spoon into prepared tins (put on the lids if using the nut loaf tins)
• Bake for 40-45min
• Remove from pans by running a knife around the edge and inverting. Cool on a cake rack
• Serve sliced with a little butter and a cup of tea :)

Cooked in the tins

Just after turning out.

A spread for your bread

Two main environmental concerns have led to nearly all of the changes we've made over the last year or so.

1. The amount of power used in our household (and its source)
2. The amount of rubbish produced by our house.

The second one has led to some of the most obscure changes. Each time I put something in the bin, I wonder - could we change our habits so we don't produce this waste or produce less waste when using this thing. Is there a way I can reuse/recycle of reduce the overall impact of this bit of waste. And frequently, can I make the processed product myself so that it has less impact in terms of materials used in the production and packaging, and is made using more simple ingredients.

One of the things we've changed is our consumption of margarine. I grew up using margarine and not thinking anything of it. We used it for spreading on bread, baking etc and the only time butter ever really came to our house was at Christmas when mum would use butter for the baking. I used to find it frustrating when we would go to a butter using household and I couldn't spread the hard stuff on my bread! Stu also grew up using margarine, so when we started shopping for ourselves, we didn't think twice about becoming another margarine household. Over the years, we started watching our weight and changed to reduced fat margarine, and I used it for everything.

Then last year, I noticed the margarine containers in the recycle bin. And, I started reading labels. That's not a good thing for the case of margarine. It occurred to me that a spread that was made in a lab wasn't the right thing to be putting on our now fully homemade and simple bread. So we switched to butter.

Switching to butter isn't easy. It's great for baking, there is less waste, but you have the tough choice of either popping it in the fridge to prolong its life and ending up with a brick that is useless for spreading, or keeping it at room temp (perhaps in a butter keeper) which shortens its shelf life, but is otherwise great until the temp rises and you end up with a yellow puddle.

Image

So I did some research and experimenting and over the next few months came up with a solution. A homemade spreadable butter. This isn't new of course. You can buy spreadable butter (though it is pricey and comes in plastic tubs) and lots of others have made it too - that's where I was researching. But this is what I do...

In the bowl of a food processor or mixer, put in about 250g of chopped room temperature butter (I use salted and then don't add salt). Add to that about 125ml of warm (not hot) water. Beat. The water being warm helps the water and butter combine. Once your butter and water are really well mixed (it'll take a few minutes, feel free to wander off and multitask), slowly drizzle in about 125ml of olive oil. Keep beating. When the mix is homogenous (that means "all the same", but using big science-ey words brings out the ex-scientist in me and makes me feel like I'm back in a lab!), you're done! Put it into a container and refrigerate.

This spread is a bit firmer that margarine, but after a few minutes at room temp is spreadable. It has no nasty chemicals like margarine and has less fat, and healthy oils too.  It also tastes good!  Enjoy!

Farewell Hurley....

Little Hurley (right) with his best mate and big brother Buddy.

Its been a sad couple of days at our place. On Friday morning, our little dog, Hurley, got out the front, went for a wander, and on his way home, got hit by a car. The car wasn't travelling fast, but a small dog doesn't stand much hope against a car, and despite the fact that I was there and able to put him straight in the car to race him to the vet, he died on the way. I'm writing this, not because we necessarily want you to read it, but as a way of remembering Hurley who was definately a part of our family.

Hurley (left) loved to curl up with his brother and kitten friends.

We bought Hurley, a pugalier (3/4 cavalier king charles, 1/4 pug) as a puppy in 2010 when the boys had started kinder. Our main reason for getting him was as a friend for our other dog, Buddy, as the boys and I wouldn't be around as often once they started school. We contacted the breeders whom we'd bought Buddy from and they had one puppy, a little boy (Buddy's half brother as it turns out) that they weren't going to sell because he had a hernia. We bought him anyway, and the hernia sorted itself out.

Hurley - such a beautiful puppy.

I remember sitting at the computer looking at a picture of the puppy before we picked him up, Lachie and I were trying to decide on a name. I decided he looked like a cool, surfer dog, and we came up with Hurley - Hurley Burley.

Hurley was Buddy's best mate as soon as we got him. They became inseparable and for the next three years could be seen out playing in the yard or sleeping on the couch together. Hurley preferred to sit on top of Buddy, rather than next to him, and at night, they could be found curled up together in one little dog bed, despite having one each.

But Hurley was different to Bud. Buddy hates water, but Hurley loved it! As a puppy, he was always trying to get in the bath with the kids. One day we granted his wish! From then on, we had to lock him out of the bathroom.

A puppy in the bath!  All three of them loved it!

Hurley was such a happy dog, always smiling, dancing or doing the 'paw thing'. You couldn't help smiling at Hurley, even when he was being naughty. Everyone who visited loved Hurls, even kids who didn't really like dogs, and our kittens would follow him around the garden to get him to play with them or curl up with him for a cuddle.

When the kittens came home they too loved Hurley.

Hurley loved food and was frequently referred to as 'the little pig' as he would steal any food he could get near and for quite a while would sneak into the laundry behind me and then hide, so I would end up locking him in there where he would devour the cats' biscuits!

Hurley was always ready with a kiss.

We buried Hurley in our backyard on Friday night. There were lots and lots of tears from us and Buddy was clearly upset too. We intend to build a new garden around where Hurley is buried, a place where we can go to remember the three years we had with our happy, dancing, smiling puppy.

We've run out of bread....

It's another stinking hot day today. It was predicted to get to 38C in our little part of the world. We have had a record number of days above 30C for March, and even those of us who love summer are just over it! Everything in the garden is dry, brown and crackly. In the last week we've noticed that even plants that were looking fine (like the giant flax) are beginning to wilt and brown off. We've had about 30 drops of rain I. The last 2 weeks and there isn't any coming for a while yet.


Fried plants - this is a "drought resistant" native....

"Please turn off the heaters!"

There is still water in the tanks, but only due to us being extremely water frugal, not because we've had enough precipitation. My animals are all still alive, but they are all panting, we're not getting many eggs and they all look at me as if pleading for me to turn down the heat.



Strawberry plants are just hanging on.

I've just come home from school where i was running our kitchen garden program. We had a great morning cooking with delicious tomatoes and apples from the school gardens. It was hot work though and I'm pleased to be home. Our house feels nice right now - I shut it all up in the mornings and it stays cool for hours, but it will be heating up again soon and the air conditioner (now back in use since we are making the power to run it!) and ceiling fans will be working to make it tolerably hot instead of sweltering! We'll then open it all up again once the heat is out of the day and allow a bit of air in to try to help us sleep through the sticky nights.

So, the weather is causing us all sorts of discomforts and problems. Most problems are obvious and expected, but today's issue isn't one I've really had before. My problem is that we're out of bread. We're big bread eaters (toast, rolls and sandwiches feature regularly on the breakfast and lunch menus) and for 12 months now I've made all the bread we eat. But I just can't justify turning on the oven and heating up the house even more (not to mention standing and kneading dough with sweat dripping). I could get Stu to buy bread before he comes home from work, but we no longer enjoy shop bought bread and it just feels wrong somehow. So now I'm wracking my brains for suitably easy to pack and eat lunches and yummy breakfasts that don't require an oven to make. I'm thinking pancakes, tortillas, fritters or maybe having another go at crumpets. All still need a pan and effort, but no oven. One of these days, it'll be cold again and I'll relish turning on the oven to cook bread and warm the kitchen, but right now, that feels a long way away.

Have you discovered strange problems caused by of made worse by the heat? Any oven-free food suggestions? :)





Winnings and gifted things...

The little one is back at school today.  All is feeling much more "as it should be".  Thank you to those of you who sent kind, understanding comments and emails - you made me smile. 

Now, back to some of those posts I started writing last week!

~~~

I won a competition last week! I'm so excited. I've won a few things over the years:

• A selection of dolls clothes (that my mum had made and donated to the raffle) that I had longed for and loved
• A hamper of handmade produce from a raffle at our (now) primary school fete the day after we moved to our lovely community.
• A huge hamper of groceries won in a raffle that I didn't even know I had a ticket in!

There have been a few more, these are my favourites.

But this week's win is exciting because it wasn't random, it was chosen. I entered this photo in a Facebook competition for Back Yard Farmer magazine, and was selected as the lucky winner of 10 issues (the entire back catalogue) of the magazine.

I can't wait to receive them and get all that new information and inspiration in my hot little hands. They arrived early this week and I've loved having them around to browse through.  They're a terrific collection of real stories written by other people, and I'm gleaning lots of little titbits of information and inspiration from them. And that beautiful nectarine tree, which I already love, is now even more special to me :)

I have also been lucky enough to be gifted some wonderful, useful things this week. Continuing with the bartering in exchange for tutoring her daughter, I was given this pressure cooker and some mason jars by one friend. I'm a little scared to use it, but will do lots and lots of reading and it will then be useful for preserving some things that shouldn't be water bathed.

I was also given 54 Vacola jars of varying sizes! Yes, 54! These belonged to a lady who I believe has just moved from her farm to a town home and no longer used them. She offered them to one of my other friends' mum, who didn't want them, but thought of me. I love the wide mouths of the jars, and all the different sizes, and they will work brilliantly with my funky, retro Fowlers Vacola preserver. Not sure I'll get them all filled this year (though I'm trying - pears, apples and dried apples in them so far), but there's always next year! Very grateful to the kind stranger who sent them my way.

Have you won or been gifted anything wonderful lately?

Hanging with a sick one

I've started writing some great happy posts, but they need photos, and my house isn't fit for photos.

I'm flat chat trying to keep on top of being a mum, being a wife, being a friend, being a sister, being a tutor, being a belly dancer and being a cooking from scratch homemaker with a garden and animals to care for. And then, thrown into the mix, we got a sick kid.

Apparently he has a virus, and he really hasn't been well. The virus however disguised itself as sore muscles following the sports day. He hobbled around all weekend, whinging, crying and keeping us up at night. I wasn't exactly the most sympathetic mum. I was crabby and tired of hearing about his sore legs (I don't complain that much after a week of hard work!). But last night he spiked a temp and a doctors visit today said he has a nasty virus. So, now I'm still juggling all of the above with a sick kid and a good dose of mummy guilt.

Will be back with my cheery posts later in the week, when I don't feel quite so bad for my sick kid.