Cleo's Cottage

We moved to this place 9 years ago. A fairly basic old house on a very basic block of land. It had a lavender hedge, a dead gum tree and a few young trees - pittosporum, a cyprus hedge (!!), a fig, a leptospermum and a silver birch.

We came here with two babies, a cavalier king charles spanial named Kimba and a hope that this would be home. Despite putting a fence all around the yard, one morning, a couple of months after moving in, our dog was hit on the road and died. Heartbroken, exhausted from unsleeping twins, feeling isolated and  defeated, our house went back on the market. 

But during the contract with the estate agent, things changed. I met new friends at the local playgroup, our kids started sleeping a little bit more, I started to fall in love with our little patch and a big ginger cat marched into our lives like she belonged here. She was an adult cat and clearly very comfortable here. We think she may have been left by previous owners and not come out until Kimba was gone. But whatever her story, she came to us, found a little place in our hearts and our home. We named her Cleo after the ginger cat in the children's story 'Cleo the cat', which we happened to have out from the library that day and who did much the same thing as our Cleo (ie. marched in, had a bowl of milk and made herself at home). 

Over the years we got chickens, then a new puppy and then some guinea pigs.  Another puppy a couple of years later and then more chickens.  Kittens for the boys a couple of years back and then goats and bees last year. The house has changed and changed again. Not a single one of the original plants remain, but a thick bushy garden and a food forest have grown around us. And all through it, Cleo, who was never really a house cat, was there. She tended to stay in the front garden, never keen on venturing indoors, but very happy for a cuddle and a pat in the evening sun shining on our verandah, and a pretty, fluffy welcoming party near our front door. 

We don't know how old she was when she came to us - we never took her to the vets (though we wormed her and treated her for fleas regularly). A couple of years after her arrival she seemed to become an old lady though - still able to fight of the odd stray cat, but happy to just sleep and dribble on anyone willing to cuddle her. 

This year, we noticed something wrong with her eyes. The pupils stopped dilating and were huge black pools at all times of the day. She went blind and restricted her movements to the verandah. The boys made sure she had a warm blanket in a bed, a bowl of food always present nearby and we tried to keep stuff out of her way. But she seemed happy still. Greeting everyone with a miaow and a smooch, purring like a little engine if you'd sit with her for a while. 

Then yesterday, she wasn't there. Just gone, the way she just came. We think her time had come and in her lovely, independent lady way, she went away to die. We'll miss her fluffy, chatty presence on our verandah. 

I think that maybe Cleo was sent to us to make this place our home. A little feline guardian angel to bring warmth and sometimes humour to our family and what was then a relatively unloveable garden. And now, here we are, having nearly sold it again this year, but realised that it is always going to be home and special to us, maybe her task was done. 

And I think, as a final tribute and thanks to her, we've finally, after the last three years of trying to, decided on a name for our home, and therefore put that last stamp of 'ours' on this place. From now on "Cleo's Cottage" is where we belong. 

September homeschooling mornings

The sun is creeping over the horizon earlier and earlier as we leave true winter behind us. The boys are obviously feeling the warmer, brighter mornings and are getting up, getting dressed and going outside to play long, elaborate games before breakfast. Last month, we couldn't drag them out of bed till the fire had warmed the house. 

This is one of the things I love about homeschooling - the mornings. They're so much more peaceful and free. Stay in your warm cozy bed and read half a novel in winter; head outside, feed the animals and use your imagination to create a game full of extraordinary characters and twisted, complex story lines in spring. I wonder what mornings will bring in summer and autumn?

Back when the boys were at school, mornings were regimented - get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, pack lunch, pack your backs. Then the boys would beg for a half hour of 'screen time' before the had to go to school. Don't get me wrong, I love a good routine and I think that in our society, sometimes they are the best things, but routines that feel unhappy aren't good.  

Mornings were one of the first things that made me think about homeschooling the kids. Mornings where they just didn't want to go to school.  I know we all have those mornings, but the boys weren't being lazy, or hating the schoolwork. They weren't being bullied or struggling to get through the day. They just wanted to stay at home in a place that felt warm and comfortable. They wanted to be with their animals and hang with me. And I wanted to continue the brilliant discussions we were having (those of you who have ever had a discussion with our kids will get that!), I wanted to teach them about our world and see what their clever little brains were capable of. 

Six months into our homeschooling journey, we've had plenty of all of that. Playing with, or just being with, each other and our animals. Detailed discussions about politics, religion, history and science. Days spent working in the garden and days spent learning maths concepts and getting super excited about solving crazy equations. 

We've made posters, read lots of books, done boring worksheets, walked/roller bladed/scooted for miles, dissected organs and built things. We've done so much in this six months and yet haven't even scraped the surface, and I'm starting to understand that those little brains, inside the gorgeous heads of my kids, really are quite brilliant and capable of amazing things. 

I don't know how long our homeschooling journey will be or what the outcomes will be. But for now, I'm looking forward to lots and lots more happy, relaxed mornings and plenty of awesome living, loving and learning in our home. 

With a little help from our friends

When we started out on this sustainable living journey (which later became turning our backyard into a mini farm!) a few years back, we felt like we were on our own. But the more we did and the more we talked about our plans and projects, the more our existing friends put up their hands with offers of help, offers of materials and support and interest. And then, gradually, we found that we were making new friends - likeminded new friends who were on similar journeys and who were keen to learn from us as well as teach us, share with us and help us out too. So this post is just a little thank you to all of the people who have helped us out along the way, with things like..... 

-Lifting water tanks over 5 foot high fences

-Scavenging fencing materials (buckets, barrels, pallets, carpet, tyres and other things!) from rubbish piles because you knew we needed them. 

-Foraging with us for blackberries, apples, mushrooms, fish, weeds and cool things from opshops. 

-Offloading your excess cucumbers, pears, tomatoes, peaches, meats and roosters into our fridge (ok, the roosters didn't go straight in the fridge, we turned them into meat first!)

-Letting us utilise your buck for the purpose of getting our goat in kid (even if it failed dismally!)

-Giving us wool for our latest crafty efforts of spinning and felting (and then trying to gjve us even more wool - we've now been offered enough wool that we could've re-insulated our house with it!)

-Cooking and preserving with me and sharing your recipes. 

-Pointing us in the direction of a supply of firewood just waiting to be cut and collected. 

-Offering places for our goats to be tethered (even though our cantankerous goats hate going across the road from home, let alone to a paddock down the street, so we haven't been able to take you up on the offer!) 

-Delivering hay bales from your stack and bags of manure from your horses. 

-Sharpening our chainsaw blade. 

-Listening, offering advice and even coming to look at properties with us when we were trying to decide whether to move or not. 

-Sharing your knowledge about everything from making salami to growing fruit trees and hatching chickens. 

-Learning to be beekeepers with us. 

-Supporting our journey and our choices by buying us books and magazines with great ideas, pointing out websites and not being freaked out by using our waterless toilet. 

-Giving us your excess veggie seeds. 

-Helping out with ideas, materials and lessons for our now homeschooling kidlets. 

-Making awesome pizza peels and oven trays for us.

-Supplying us with your empty beer bottles for our home brew and jars for jams. 

-Caring for our ever growing menagerie when we go away. 

-And so much more. 

I hope that as the years go by, we manage to repay all the favours and gifts   and/or pay it forward to others. Thank you so very very much to our beautiful friends and supportive families - we couldn't have gotten this far without you.

We love you guys!

Haircut, pancetta, shimmies and lamb chops

Saturday

6.45am: woken by the goats who think that exactly sunrise is breakfast time. Argue with Stu about which one of us is getting out of our warm bed to feed them. Decide we both need to get up anyway. 

7am: Stu is out feeding animals and waking up the mini farm. I'm inside starting kitchen chores and looking for my hairdressing scissors. 

7.30am: my hair now about half the length it was (selfie hair cut - big success) I'm feeling better and we're all munching on muesli or fruit muffins for breaky. 

9am:  off to a friends house for a 'Pig Day Out'. Arrive to find the pig (one that us and our goats had been acquainted with earlier in the year) already dead, bled and ready for the next stage. Kids ran off the play and Stu and I mucked in assisting with some 'dead pig beauty therapy' - a hot bath, a removal of body hair and a quick detox (aka a removal of organs). This pig, like the ones our friends have done in previous years, had been raised very well on scraps, rolled around in the mud of a large paddock and been treated very kindly for 11months and was now destined to become all sorts of cured porky goodness - salami, pancetta, sausages and much more. 

2pm: a delicious lunch, which Kylie had been working on all morning - fresh sourdough, garden salad, sausage rolls and pies and the freshest pork spare ribs ever - yum!  Then the men headed back to work - fat preparation time and listening to the footy on the radio. Kylie and I went to visit their chooks, grabbed a  barrel for my seaweed fertiliser to be made in and talked gardening. 

4.45pm:  left them to it with the pig, they'll have many more hours of pig things to do over the weekend. We had to get home, take the goats for a walk in the beautiful evening sunshine, make a big bowl of pasta for tea and then it was time for me to metamorphose into a belly dancer. 

8pm:  show time. Another one of our regular Greek night performances at a local restaurant. My troupe of 3 dancers performed for half an hour to a great audience. So much fun!

9pm:  a quick post-gig chat and giggle with my dance sisters before I headed home. 

10.30pm: full of warmth from a day of friendship, laughter, sunshine, work and lots of good, real living, Stu and I headed to bed. 

Sunday

6.30am: up to make some bread for the day. I've been too busy to organise sourdough (which is what we've been eating recently), but a quick batch of rolls, a white loaf and a batch of muffins will do. 

7am: feed goats (yep, sun came up!)

8am: breaky with the family and time to do a few quick jobs around the house before it is time to head out for the day. 

9am: Stu is off to be a soccer dad with one of the boys and I'm off to another friends house to help her out butchering a couple of sheep that she'd had hanging over night. 

11.30am: sheep cut up into lots of chops, roasts, ribs etc. we bagged them all up, filled their freezer and our esky full of enough meat to last our family a really long time. 

12pm:  Stu (who was done with soccer), Jacki and I headed off with our combined herd of kids over their private path to the beach. Paddling, a little winter dip for a few kids, rock pooling, sand boarding and seaweed gathering kept us all entertained for an hour or so before our tummies suggested we should head back over the dunes and taste some of our hard work. 

2pm: a freshly picked garden salad, my fresh bread and some barbecued lamb chops filled happy bellies - yum. 

3.30pm:  on the way home, called back into the 'pig friends'' house to check on progress (nearly done, cool room full of salamis, pancetta and rolled cured meats that look amazing!), drop of some of our wool for them to try felting and to pick up a microscope that we're going to use to look at some organs we retrieved for dissecting and other cool biology lessons. 

5pm: home again. Time to load the freezer up and pop my seaweed into my new barrel. A spot of work in the garden and time to admire the last of a beautiful final day of winter. 

6pm: basic dinner - French toast and some preserved fruit. Four exhausted people ready to chill for the rest of the evening. 

That's what I call a crazy, busy, slow living weekend! ;)

Sunshine through the leaves

Baking delicious sourdough creations and converting recipes for thermomixing. 

Digging, carrying, sifting and creating wicking beds ready for a summer full of veg that have not suffered dehydration before they had a chance to grow. 

Building a new herb garden from recycled tyres and filling them with lots of lovely herbs, but also a grapevine to give our kitchen window summer shade and winter sun, a kiwiberry and a gooseberry - just for fun and maybe some yummy food. 

Creating costumes and sets for a fabulous play that the kids wrote last week and then watching proudly as they rehearsed and then performed it fabulously. 

Waiting hand and hoof on my demanding little goat who is hopefully delivering us a new kid or two or three in early November. 

Enjoying spinning on our spinning wheel (a fabulous garage sale find), in front of warm fires on chilly evenings. 

Celebrating academic achievement with my kids and stretching our brains over challenging  maths and science problems one day, and then spending the next digging in the garden with them and doing no book work at all. That's what we love about homeschool. 

Working up a sweat at a new dance class - not belly dance and not me as the teacher. A challenge that I'm loving. 

Feeling proud of my achievements at a recent weekend of dance appraisal. Sometimes it really does seem that I've managed to fall into the perfect life for me. 

Odd social dilemmas - help one family friend butcher a pig or help another to butcher a sheep.... Decisions!

Contemplating Christmas (its only 4 months away!) and writing lists of gifts that I need to make for giving. 

Considering returning to writing my blog and trying to work out a way to do it that makes me happy and doesn't make me feel like I'm wasting time. 

Enjoying lovely late winter days where the sun shines through the leaves, our bees buzz busily around blossoming fruit trees and our chooks scratch and peck and lay lots of eggs. 

That's what I've been up to lately. 

Winter ready

The winter solstice is just around the corner and I'm finally feeling like our family is ready for winter.

Our warm winter clothes, coats, beanies and gumboots are within reach for keeping warm and dry when we step outside. 

We have hot water bottles on the ends of our beds ready to be filled and slid between chilly sheets (flannelette of course) before bed. 

Our pantry is stocked with the goodness of summer and autumn all bottled up as jams, chutneys, passatta and pickles. And alongside them, supplies of dried legumes for soups, stews and curries and plenty of wheat and flour to be turned into sourdough breads. 

Throw rugs adorn the back of the couch for pulling onto knees for cozy evenings of crafting, reading or relaxing in front of the telly. 

We've gathered firewood, chopped and stacked it in our "new" woodshed (thanks to the local gun club for donating the shed and letting us forage for wood!). 

The garden is planted out with cabbages, caulis, broccoli, kale, Asian greens, snow peas and broad beans and is growing well (despite the slugs which have chewed great holes in everything!). 

And today, after months of waiting, we finally have the centrepiece to our winter - our wood heater/cooker has been installed. The house is feeling warm and toasty for the first time in a while. A loaf our sourdough just went in the oven and a pot of veggie soup is bubbling away on the top. 

Bring on the next few months of winter's cold and drizzly weather - the Wright family are ready!

Fruity muffins on winter mornings

It's cold here. Winter has hit and come with a chill and we still don't have our heater installed.

Delay after delay from the place we've bought it from means that despite being promised that it would be installed in early May, we still have it sitting in boxes on the verandah. We've been told it will be installed first thing Monday morning. Fingers crossed. 

In the meantime, while we continue to snuggle inside in our winter woollies and dream of crackling logs, bread baked by their heat and a constantly hot kettle on our wood stove, I've been enjoying playing with our sourdough. 

For about 9 months, our starter lived in the fridge and was pulled our once a week, fed, used to make tortillas and then put back in the fridge.  But I've had a few successes with bread so I'm using it as my go to loaf a few times a week and also making these delicious sourdough English muffins with dried fruit each week. I make a double batch and freeze the leftovers - they are so lovely toasted with honey, butter or jam for breaky on a cool morning. 

Sourdough fruity English muffins

This is the double batch, feel free to halve and make only 8. 

The night before you want them, put a few handfuls of dried fruit into a bowl. Add two tablespoons of delicious local honey and a cup of hot water from the kettle. Mix and allow to sit a little while. 

Then add 2/3 cup more water (you can use milk or whey if you like) and 4 cups of flour and a cup of active sourdough starter. Mix well and put in a 'not too freezing'/warm place overnight. 

Next morning. Turn an electric frypan onto medium low her. Put on the lid and let if warm. 

To your dough, add 1 1/2 tsp salt and 2 tsp bicarb. Mix and knead well adding extra flour as needed. Cut the dough into 16 even pieces and roll into balls. 

Flatten and shape each ball into a rough muffin shape (roundish, about 8cm diameter and about 1-2cm thick). Place muffins into your pan and replace the lid. I fit 8 in at a time. 

Cook for 5-10min until golden on the bottom. Turn and replace the lid and cook for a further 5-10min. Remove to a cooling rack. 

Cook remaining muffins. 

To eat, split muffins with a knife, toast and spread lavishly with your topping of choice. Yum!

Reflecting...

It's been feeling like time for a blogpost for a while, a good reflective blogpost that talks about where we are right now. This weeks' post at the owlet blog finally gave me the 'go' needed.....

Making: in the lead up to belly dance camp my crochet hooks flew, using up leftovers to make a mandala which I turned into a cushion for a dear friend (Neika, if you're reading this, can you send me a photo?  I forgot to take one)

Cooking: sourdough English muffins have made a welcome, wintertime addition to our breakfast menu. 

Drinking: many many pots of rooibos tea. 

Reading: the last three books of a long teen vampyre saga and loving the easy escapism. 

Wanting: my goat to be pregnant. 

Looking: for caterpillars, slugs and snails on my cabbages each day (where do they all come from?)

Playing: 'with friends' tournaments with my family and being amazed by my kids' brain power (again!)

Deciding: that right here is where our family belongs. 

Wishing: that people that I love wouldn't talk about leaving - even though I know their life needs to take them away, I just want to hold onto them here. 

Enjoying: teaching and learning with my kids. 

Waiting: for our wood heater to be installed. 

Liking: autumn sunshine coming through my kitchen window right now. 

Pondering: how I'm developing as a dance teacher but still have no idea how I'm going to teach the choreography that is in my head to the students in my classes. 

Considering: the new electric SUV car that is on the market that Stu really thinks we should buy. 

Watching: the new season of Offspring - love that show!

Hoping: for a quieter month in June. 

Marvelling: at the fact that my baby brother is turning 18 this week but it seems like only a minute ago that I watched him make his entry into the world. 

Needing: more sleep!  It's been a crazy week. 

Wearing:  right now, pjs, but I've been loving wearing my new hooded tunic dress to parties and concerts this week. 

Noticing: that our homeschooling style is actually really relaxed and it suits us. 

Knowing: that I'm good at all of my jobs (except housekeeping!) and that feels good. 

Thinking: that I should really work on being better at the housekeeping part of my job. 

Feeling: lots of love for my family and the collections of beautiful friends we have. 

Admiring: my husband for managing to get on with his day to day work while being a passenger on the roller coaster ride that is our family life. 

Sorting: nothing.... But knowing that we really need to sort out all of our craft materials (again!)

Buying: in bulk. Homeschooled kids who hate the supermarket are a great excuse for monthly shopping to happen. 

Getting: used to the new routine of taking the kids to their different sporting activities.

Bookmarking: homeschooling ideas, recipes and homemade gift ideas. 

Disliking: the government's decisions on just about everything. 

Opening: my new edition of earth garden magazine. 

Giggling: till very late with Sharon at our third very successful belly dance camp (yay!)

Snacking: on the last of the Easter eggs. 

Coveting: the wood heaters in other people's homes (one more week till we have one too!)

Wishing: there were more hours in the week to fill with awesomeness. 

Helping: my kids to find joy in learning and relax into homeschooling (though they don't need much help - they're feast at this!)

Hearing: The Waifs on my iPod (and memories of their concert in my head) and my kids singing musical style as they play invented games. 

Whirring in the wee hours

I've been waking in the early hours of the morning a lot this year. 3am has become a time that I've started seeing about as regularly as I did in my late teens. Back then it was as the last hours of a big night out. Now it is me waking up ridiculously early, my brain begins whirring around and sleep doesn't look like ever coming back. 

This morning, I've been laying in bed for over an hour, whirring. Thoughts of things that I need to do become worries when the hour is less than 6am. Tasks that I was 'getting to' in no particular hurry, suddenly seen urgent.  I begin to stress a little - why haven't I done that yet?  Why can't I get up and do it now!?! In the morning, I can always see the answers clearly - I haven't done it yet because it really wasn't the right time or I'd simply forgotten; and I can't get up and do jobs in the dark, quiet and freezing old hours of the morning, it just isn't feasible. 

Eventually, after worrying over my mental list for ages, I'll get up and write it down. Whirring thoughts are much better when dealt with in the morning. Sometimes just writing my thoughts down is enough to allow me to go back to sleep, other times, I need to read, or listen to an audiobook to switch off my mind. Mostly, I manage to go back to sleep by 6.30, only to be woken by the daytime noises and chores a mere half hour later. The day stretches before me, fit for filling with my nighttime list of urgent chores, only I'm too tired to do them all. 

This morning I'm wondering how many others are awake, wishing they could sleep, laying there, brain whirring. I wonder if other people are thinking that they need to get on with converting their veg beds to wicking beds, planting out cauliflower seedlings, taking their goat for a servicing visit, sewing gifts for birthdays, finishing the building of the hearth for the fire, finalising the plans for an event that they're organising that is creeping up at a crazy fast speed now and/or ringing the doctors to get test results. And is anyone else wondering whether they will try to fit homeschooling book work in around all that, or use that as the learning for the week?

Perhaps I have too many things going on in my life right now. Perhaps my brain doesn't have time to deal with it all during the hubbub of daily life, so it takes the opportunity when all is quiet and I can't run around 'doing stuff' to think it all over. Well, to that I say, good plan brain, except you failed to remember that my body needs enough sleep to be able to do all the jobs on the list!

Sigh..... 

Homeschool Dairy Farm Excursion

We've been homeschooling now for a few weeks, and the general consensus is that we're loving it!  Every day is something different and we're loving the freedom to learn what, when and where we want.  I'll fill you in on some of the things we've been doing soon, but today's post is all about this morning's excursion.  It was our first opportunity to meet up with our local homeschooling group, and we joined them on an excursion to a dairy farm.....

Lachie: We woke up early in the morning to get out of bed, get dressed and get in the car.  We were already running a bit late.  For breakfast, we had muesli bars that we had made yesterday - yum!

Tracey:  It was the coldest morning so far this year!  The car was frozen when we went to leave, but the views on the drive were spectacular of a terrific sunrise over misty country.

Jamie:  The drive was 45 minutes.  We eventually drove past where we were supposed to go, eventually we got there,  thanks to mum's terrible navigating! (T: AHEM!!!)  When we got out of the car, a couple of people were already there, so we walked up to the dairy for the first bit of the excursion.

Lachie:  We went and saw the calves, one was bigger than our goat and only two days old!  Then we went to the dairy, the cows got milked and then when they were done, they would kick the milking machine off because it was sucking too hard.  Me and Jamie had a go at washing the cow poo off the yard with a hose and then we went to see what the milk did next.

Tracey: Travis (the farmer) did a terrific job of showing us how he milks his cows.  It was great to visit a small (320 head) herringbone style dairy - they all seem to be huge rotary dairies around here these days!

Jamie: Washing the yards was my favourite part.  The hose was really strong, you felt like you were going to be pushed back.  The poo went down a drain and into a pond.  Then we went down to see how the milk was processed next and got to look inside the vat at all the fresh milk.

Lachie: Next, we went and fed the calves.  One had been taken off its mum a bit early and took a bit of time to get there and there was another one who thought it was a bit special and stole the bottle off it!

Tracey:  The kids helped feed hay to the calves too and spread out rice hulls for them to sleep on.  Then they loaded up for the highlight of the day......

Jamie: All of the kids got into the trailer and we went off on a trailer ride to see where the cows go.  We went under the road in a passage that they made a year ago.  The cows used to cross the road, but people got sick of waiting for the cows to cross and since it was a tourist road it was pretty busy.

Lachie:  The trailer ride was my favourite bit.  We followed the cows all the way down, went under the road, then turned around.  We saw the hay bales being turned onto the ground.  It was cool.  Then we went back to the house to turn some of the milk into butter to have with some date loaf that we had brought - yum!

Jamie:  Just before we left, we were playing on the trampoline with the kids that we had met that were closest to our age.  We had a good day.

I had a lovely time meeting other homeschooling families (and other thermomix owners! - LOL).  Thanks so much to April for organising the great excursion and to Crystal and Travis for being such great hosts.

Fixin' stuff

The last few years have seen us doing some hefty renovations - the kitchen, pizza oven, shed, solar hot water and then solar power, goat yard, other fencing etc.  So this year, we decided to take a break from big changes and building projects and focus on maintenance and repairs. Of course, that was before someone suggested a property to look at, before we decided to homeschool our kids and before this years bunch of 'great ideas' popped into my head!

But we're still trying to keep a lid on major renovation type projects and repair and care for what we have.  This has meant washing the weatherboards (all that dirt and dust was masking our pretty white house), touching up the chipped architraves in the hallways, cleaning the parts of the house that don't get much of a cleaning look in usually, pruning trees and shrubs that have grown too big and more. Our maintenance list was quite extensive when we wrote it at the start of the year, and it is, sadly, not getting shorter even though we've been working on it every week. 

It seems our house heard that we were fixing stuff this year, and with a groan, decided to show us a few older fixtures that needed replacing or fixing. Our water pump isn't working properly, the skylight in the bathroom decided (in last week's rainstorm) to pour water onto  the bathroom floor and the little old (really really old) portable room heater that carried us through last winter when our central heating had died, tried to cause a fire - so we had to make a decision about a new heater. 

So it's been a busy time around here, and looks like it won't be letting up for a while. But we have made the decision to stay here and each one of these little problems reminds me that if we had moved house, we would have been finding so many more problems and household idiosyncrasies than what we are finding here - at least here, we know what we're dealing with.  

A brand new adventure starting in 3, 2, 1....

This year, the Victorian school holidays are finishing with Easter. So in three days from now, schools all over the place will be re-opening their doors and a huge part of our population, those aged 4-18 (or thereabouts) will return to the day in, day out life of school. But this term, my boys won't be joining in. Why?  Because we've decided to give homeschooling a go. 

We started making this huge decision back in the summer holidays. I was loving having the kids at home and learning alongside me as we went about our everyday life. I was sad when they had to go back to school and so were they. We'd had such a great 6weeks together that it seemed unfair to stop because another school term was beginning. We started thinking about homeschooling. 

Throughout the term, it stayed in the back of our minds, but as things happened with school that we didn't really agree with (they weren't really bad things, just not to our beliefs), the idea became more apparent and we started researching and talking about the possibility. 

When the whole school went on an excursion that we had chosen not to partake in, we spent a few days playing at homeschooling and we loved it. But the boys (one in particular) weren't convinced still. 

I don't know what changed their minds, but a couple of weeks later, they came home and told me that they'd announced to their teacher that they would be homeschooled as a trial in term 2. We were a little shell shocked, but quickly recovered and went about putting the plan into action. We registered with the appropriate people and informed the school. 

The boys finished the term and brought all their books home, packed away their uniforms and excitedly prepared for our new adventure. 

We've received very mixed responses. Many were quite 'off' about our choice - maybe they're jealous, don't understand, just think we've completely lost the plot or are turning our back on society - who knows!  I just have to keep repeating to myself that our decision has no impact on them and that they can just mind their own business. On the flipside though, the support and positive reactions have outweighed the bad ones and have come from lots of places I wouldn't have expected. 

We've toyed with a bit of our homeschooling over the holidays, but as it is easter, we're taking a few days off of our formal learning (of course, learning will be just happening, even if we don't truly 'hit the books'). We're all loving exploring and learning together, with the flexibility that our days have now. Maths in our pjs is now normal and writing letters to grandparents, checking out the moon and stars at night and visiting the library have all become welcome parts of our day. 

Some people want to know what style of homeschooling or what curriculum we're following. The answer is, we're following our style. If we love something, we'll go with it. So being maths geeks 😉 we choose to do a full on maths curriculum (a year ahead of what they were doing at school) and with two bookworms, reading and writing have become more leisure activities rather than true schooling. Everything else will fit in and we're just going to experiment and see how it all works - I don't want to be unschoolers, but I also don't feel that we need formal curriculum to fit in IT, PE, science and SOSE - it's all there, in our everyday life, jut waiting to be discovered, expanded on and, well, learnt. 

It feels right and exciting and I'm truly looking forward to embarking on this journey with the precious little people we brought into the world. And, if for some reason, it just doesn't work, then we'll go back to the way things were and we'll be no worse off for the adventure. 

1/4 acre - is it enough?

We bought our lovely little house on our 1/4 acre block almost 9 years ago. It hasn't always been wonderful, but now we love it. We have 12 fruit trees, chooks, ducks, veggies and herbs, goats (which we get some milk from, but not enough) and bees on our 1/4 acre. We also have a 2 bedroom (+home office) house which has solar panels to produce our power, a waterless loo and rainwater tanks. The house is decorated the way we like it and really quite comfortable, and also has the awesomeness of our pizza oven and pretty surrounding gardens. But....

A couple of weeks ago, someone told me about a church for sale. A church on 1.5 acres that was a good cheap price. We checked it out and could picture what it could become and then suddenly, we wanted more. More space for more goats, the orchard and gardens set up better so that watering etc became easier and the chooks could live under the fruit trees. And other people put it into our heads that we would then have more room for our growing kids, who may not always want to share a room. It seemed ideal... We thought we could buy it, do it up a bit and then sell our home. But the bank said "no" because a church isn't a house and they don't like lending money for that sort of thing without us having to jump through a thousand hoops :(

But the idea of bigger was already in our heads, so we looked around. Our budget isn't huge, but we found somewhere that we thought would work perfectly (3 acres, gorgeous house that needed some work, fruit trees, shedding etc). Turned out, they'd advertised it wrong (grrrr!) and  though the price on the Internet was within our grasp, the actual price of the property wasn't.  Again, finances said no. 

Because of our budget, location, wants and needs, we're now out of options. So we're here trying to decide if we should put our home, that we really do love, on the market to pursue the dream of 'more' or if we should be content with what we have and try to make it work. 

We have a list of things we 'want' and our house fits many of them, but not ;

-three bedrooms

-wood heating (and preferably the space to grow some wood)

-room for a bigger, proper dairy goat (as well as our beloved minis)

It all boils down to space, and its hard to create space when its not there ;)

So we're thinking, thinking and dreaming, dealing with the aforementioned disappointments, trying to be satisfied with what we have and then coming back around to dreaming again.... *sigh*. I want to leave it all alone and go back to last month when this was enough. 

Solutions anyone? Or a time machine/mind eraser to take all of this back?

~~~PS I know I'm not here very often anymore - a time came when I realised that regular blogging wasn't what I wanted to do with my time, but I'm still around, reading your comments, blogs and thinking about you. I'm also still working away here and have decided that my blog can stay here for the times when I need to just get stuff out, like now~~~

Zucchini crumble recipe

This recipe is for all of my friends who are currently drowning in zucchini from their garden - especially those of you who accidentally grow GIANT marrow size zucchini! :-) its not my recipe, but I can't credit the original recipe as I've long since lost the source, but I do love it. 

Zucchini crumble/pie filling (a dessert)

Take a giant zucchini (or several small), peel, remove seeds (if necessary) and cut into 1cm cubes. You need about 4 cups. 

Put your diced zucchini into a saucepan and cover with water. Boil until tender. 

Drain and cover with cold water for 5minutes. Drain again (I like to leave mine in the colander for 10min to really drain and cool).

Stir in the following:

1 cup of sugar 

1 dessert spoon cream of tartar

1 tablespoon plain flour

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Pinch of salt

There - crumble/pie filling done!

The mixture tastes a lot like pie apple and makes a great dessert. Feed it to your guests - they'll think its apple (promise!). It will thicken on sitting. 

Use this to make your favourite crumble or pie and enjoy, knowing that a few more veg are ending up in your bellies, rather than in the chook bucket! ;-)

Enjoy!!

Weaning

It's weaning day today. 

 

The girls - together this morning before they were separated.

I'm listening to Jorgie call across the yard to her baby. It's a different cry to any I've heard from her before- loud, desperate and so, so, sad. She isn't herself this evening. Her favourite food remains unfinished. 

 

Tilly is in with the chooks. Her call sounds so much like 'muuuuuuum' that I wonder whether that's where people came up with the word. 

 

My mind wonders back to the first times I was separated from my babies. My heart breaks for my goats a little.  

 

Our little buckling was wethered and sold before Christmas. The girls were sad, but nothing like this. Storm had always been a bit different and separate to the girls. 

 



Jorgie and a tiny Tilly, even before Storm left, they were the dynamic duo.



Jorgie and Tilly are so alike and so close. I would love to keep them together always. And hopefully, in 6 weeks or so, Tilly will be weaned and they can be together again to grow old and each have babies and be companions to each other. 

 

But practicality rules today. We got the goats to be milked. Tilly is sucking out a lot of milk each day. Tilly is four and a half months old, fat and very healthy. There is no way they would wean if I left them together. 

 

It was time. 

 

I can be practical, but that doesn't make that any less sad. 



Photosynthesis shouldn't cost that much!!

So with photosynthesis on my mind, I called the bore man. He was a nice guy. Came and had a look at our place ("wow, you sure have a lot going on here", says he) and gave us a ballpark figure. We smiled, shook his hand and said we'd discuss it and get back to him. Then I came inside and started brainstorming alternatives!

With every one of our financial decisions, we weigh the pros and cons and decide if they are a worthy investment. The solar power for instance - it was expensive, but will pay for itself over the years and gives us green power so we don't have to support the coal fired power plants - it was a worthwhile investment. But between $7000 & $10,000 to water our plants?  I've done the sums every which way (spent some time cursing the day we lost access to the bore water we had) and I just can't justify the expenditure - even if I have to buy rainwater every year, I can't see it as a sensible investment. 

So we'll continue to be water frugal around here, and are looking at some alternative options for the garden. I'm planning to convert our four main veggie beds into wicking beds as the summer crops finish. Ornamental plants that need to be watered through the summer are going to be replaced with drought hardy plants. I'm going to invest in some good seeper hoses to gently water our fruit trees using the water in our tank that was installed for the purpose and grey water too. And we'll look into a more user friendly system for getting our grey water to the garden (there has to be easier ways than me carting it out in buckets!). 

Would love to hear from any readers with experience with wicking beds or grey water systems or other watering ideas that I might not have thought of (though I've thought of a lot!). And we'll just keep on working hard to keep the garden chugging in the meantime. 

It all comes back to Photosynthesis

A lifetime ago (or so it feels), I was a student of biology at uni.  I studied hard for four years, majoring in Botany and Zoology and finishing with first class honours in a Botany/Ecology area.  Later I studied to be a secondary school teacher.... a biology teacher.

I've always loved biology - since before I started school I loved to know how living things worked, and I remember being in prep and studying (and mostly understanding) the detailed human biology diagrams that we had hung on our toilet walls (my mum was studying nursing at the time).

I grew up wanting to be a nurse, and then a doctor.  But somewhere along the lines, I realised that plants and (non-human) animals appealed to me a lot more than human patients, and so that is where my study lead me. 

I often have people that have known me for years worry over the fact that I "don't use my education".  No, I don't work as a secondary school teacher or a scientist.  But I use my education every single day.

My teaching education is used every time I step in front of a belly dance class (or even an audience).  I know how to teach those people - I just teach a much different topic to what I originally set out to do.  I teach my children every day, and often the topics are biology related....  yesterday, we had an in depth conversation about Siamese twins (how they form, birth of twins, the genetics etc), the other day it was ecosystems in Thailand, and as a family, we are setting nutritional goals for ourselves with a good understanding of what the human body needs to function, how the parts work and why we need to eat (or shouldn't eat) certain foods.

And I use my study in my garden.  Being a zoologist doesn't make you a farmer and being a botanist doesn't make you a gardener.  But I understand all the biology and biochemistry behind my mini-farm. 

And because I have that background study I know that when my plants are droopy, they've lost turgidity in their leaves and need water flowing through their xylem to hold them up.  I know that when I put nutrients from animal manure etc into the soil that the plants are growing in, that they need water to dissolve those nutrients in order for them to be taken up into the plant and put to use.  And I know that plants absorb sunlight using chlorophyll (the green pigment in leaves) and convert it to energy through a little chemical reaction known as photosynthesis. 

The basic chemical equation for photosynthesis is:

source

The biproducts of this reaction is ATP and NADPH - compounds which store a lot of chemical energy that can then be accessed by the plant.

Photosynthesis is the process that gives us oxygen and reduces the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so as humans who produce copious quantities of carbon dioxide, we should love that little reaction.  As a gardener, and someone that would love to produce most of the food their family eats , I love that little reaction because it makes my plants grow and produce food.

But, and yes, there is a but, if you look at the equation, you'll notice that it requires water.  And water is something we don't have enough of here since we no longer have access to bore water, there is no town water supply here and we have limited rainwater in tanks. So our plants are having to survive on limited waterings and recycled grey water.  They're surviving, but not really thriving. 

So this week's big decision is to get ourselves a bore drilled.  It is expensive, potentially destructive and something we had hoped to do without.  But we have committed to our garden and living the way we do, and without enough water, we just can't do it.  We've discussed all the pros and cons, we've checked the finances and agreed that this decision won't make us richer, but then I think about it all again as I lug out buckets of water from the house to my precious plants, and I realise, sometimes, it all comes back to photosynthesis.

Making me smile right now

1. The vertical garden that my mum made me from recycled materials for Christmas.  Growing beautifully in the courtyard, filled with herbs and a few flowers.
2. My amazingly pretty garden clogs that Stu and the boys gave me for Christmas.  Comfy, practical and bright!
3. Our bee box, the cat who naps there and the beautiful buzzy creatures who quietly go about their work throughout the garden (and the thought of honey.....)
4. Huge sunflowers that sowed from chook food in my veggie garden that make great food sources for my bees.
5. They also make fabulous supports and provide some sun shelter for the climbing beans that are in the garden with them.
6. Goats who love to eat the sun damaged apples - even though they are way too big for her to chew!
7. These kids, who love their homemade knight gear and wooden swords so much.
8. Little kisses from Tilly who is now 4 months old.

Hoping our sunshiney, smiley things make you smile too xx