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

Eating from the garden in late winter

Colour in the winter garden - beetroot, calendula and brocoletti flowers

Two years ago, if someone had told me that I would be able to eat veggies from my garden all through winter, I wouldn't have believed them. In the past, the only thing harvested in my winter garden was the silverbeet that had grown into a massive plant. I still have a long way to go in my winter gardening (no lovely heads of purple broccoli or cauliflower for us still), but now I can see the possibilities!

Snow peas in hanging baskets - snail and duck proof!

This winter promised lots of lovely silverbeet and peas, but my ducks put a stop to that. Instead, we've eaten great heaps of wombok cabbages, enough lettuce and rocket for salads and burgers, good supply of carrots, baby beets, some lovely stalks of brocoletti, the odd bak choi and masses of crisp and delicious celery. It's all been topped with the herbs that have kept going, and served with some of my summer preserved and frozen veg. It's not enough veg for us - I've still had to buy the odd pumpkin, frozen peas and bags of potatoes - but every day we eat something from our garden, and that feels very good indeed. 

Broad beans in flower promising more fresh veg soon.

Last night was a good gardeners meal. I made rosti with potatoes and a selection of fresh turnips, carrot, celery and herbs from the garden. They were served with new season eggs from our chooks (thanks girls!), sourdough toast, tomato chutney and the first few snow peas from my hanging baskets (ie. duck proof pea gardens!). It's a simple meal, but it tastes so good to eat all of those home grown and homemade items, knowing exactly what went into everything on the plate. 

Delicious!

With a bit of luck (and my planning paying off) and we'll continue to eat from the garden all through spring to make it a whole 12 months of garden consumption - yay!

Pretty purple and white turnip tops.

 

When springtime came calling

The days are getting slowly longer here. No longer do we get up in the dark, and it is still light when Stu comes home from work. Jonquils are popping their heads up everywhere and my baby almond tree is the first to blossom in our garden this year. My chooks finally noticed the days lengthening and started laying again. Yes, it's still winter, but we hear springtime just around the corner.

This weekend, spring paid an early visit, the sun shone, the skies were blue and we wanted to be outside. 

Outside was a good place to be here as we welcomed new animal friends this weekend. 

On Friday, my mum's lamb came here. He came to be a friend for our goat. He stayed two nights and had to go home. Our goat didn't really like him and he was fretting for the calf he had been reared with. 

On Saturday, our goat, Jorgie, came home. Having bashed up the lamb, told the dog whose boss and decided that we're all her family now, she settled in. 

She is extremely affectionate and prefers us to be nearby. This was easy on the weekend when the kids wanted to play outside, Stu wanted to catch some of the suns warmth and I made the most of the springtime visit to pot up some seedlings and scratch around in the garden. Today it's harder. 

Today winter has come back with a vengeance. Swirly, gusty, cold winds. Rain and hail. It's not nice here today. And I can here Jorgie calling to me. Or maybe she's calling spring back. 

It won't be long now Jorgie girl. Springtime will be here very soon and with it, hopefully, will come a kid or two for you.

 

Weeds for tea

{or My ducks ate the veggies}

Since my two gorgeous ducks moved in, I haven't had any of my vegetables eaten by snails or slugs. The ducks relish any tiny gastropods they find!  I was beginning to feel like a successful permaculturalist, having taken very literally that statement I read months ago - "your problem isn't too many snails, it's not enough ducks".  And then my lettuce disappeared into the ducks' bellies.

So I re-thought things. If ducks like lettuce, I'll grow lettuce in pots in the courtyard!  Problem solved. Then they ate my pea plants. Hmmmm....

I protected the area the peas were in. They ate the sugar snap peas..... Not happy!  Then they ate the silverbeet and the leaves of the brocoletti that were overhanging the somewhat raised beds. Gah!  They eat more than the snails ever did!  

But I love them, and I love the no snails and no snail pellets garden, so we have to make it work. 

I watched them waddling around the garden. I watched them not being able to get into their pond (a children's paddle pool that is about 20cm high) without using the step I put there for them. I noticed that they can't really get up onto anything more than the height of their chests without a big flapping effort and that generally they didn't bother. They prefer to move around like one of those weird robot vacuum cleaners, bumping off of walls and obstacles that they meet. 

So, later this week, I'll be building low barriers around my vegetables. I plan to leave some things unprotected (I can share!) and will intentially grow greens for them, but others will need to be barricaded from busy Muscovy beaks!

Hopefully that will solve the problem. In the meantime, my vegetable stocks are somewhat depleted. And being stubborn about these things, I still want to cook from our garden, so I'm exploring the weedy option (at this point I'm seriously wondering at how it came to be that the people who live here eat weeds while the animals eat beautifully cultivated veg, but I'm trying not to dwell on it).  

Last night, I cooked schnitzels for tea, and strangely (but surprisingly deliciously)  coupled them with a curried rice dish and wild greens.

The rice was cooked in a light stock with the addition of garam masala, turmeric, ginger, a little salt and some dried mung beans. I brought it to the boil, the let it sit in the covered saucepan to absorb, before stirring in some chopped parsley. The result was a bit like mash or porridge, ugly, but very tasty. 

I sautéed some sliced carrots (the ducks nibbled the tops, but left the roots) in olive oil, added a chopped clove of garlic and a big bowlful of mixed greens and cooked until it was all wilted. The greens I had foraged from the garden (weeds and plants I have planted but that now grow like weeds) and included dandelions, mallow, borage, nasturtium leaves and beetroot tops. 

I served the rice in a pile beside the schnitzel, and put the sautéed veg on top of the rice. I then finished it all off with some fresh coriander and a few flowers. from the borage and nasturtiums. 

The results?  Stu said it looked like I'd served him a garden and then dug in and devoured the lot (like a duck in a lettuce patch). The kids ate theirs without a second glance and I thoroughly enjoyed mine!  So we will happily serve weeds in this house again, but I'll also be barricading those garden beds and planting veggies in duck (chook and goat) free areas of the garden too -just in case!

All in a weekend

It's one of those Monday mornings when we feel like going back to the office/school/daily chores is the restful part of the week.

It began Thursday night with a boy complaining of earache. I instantly began treating it in the same way that I treated my last ear infection, and he felt some relief. We continued with the treatment through Friday while he stayed with me and slept through a lot of the day. 

Stu was our other patient. He woke to find that his nearly two week old wasp sting had become a hand sized area that was red, raised and hot. I was concerned it was infected, and not knowing how to treat it, sent him to the doctors (antibiotics for him). 

Debutante Sarah and Birthday boy Cody

 

Friday was my little brothers 17th birthday and my little sisters deb ball. Our house is in the middle of my families', so we met here for deb preparations (I was employed as makeup artist!) and birthday celebrations before we left Stu, my other brother and the three kids here and went to the ball. Sarah looked beautiful and had a great time. It was nice to watch my teenage siblings interacting with their peers and I enjoyed catching up with one of my high school teachers who then became a colleague and who is now retired. 

My gorgeous sister-in-law, mum, little sister and me!

 

I was also lucky enough to have my two best dancing buddies at the deb (for another debutante and friend), so we spent time together and the girls drove me home. 

With my crazy dancing buddies

 

I arrived home to find the sick one still up. He needed more treatment and pain relief. I settled him to sleep and went to bed. Next morning, the need for his pain relief became obvious - his ear drum had ruptured. I had moments of questioning whether my home treatment was the best action, but decided that even if I'd taken him to the doctor, the result would have been the same. I adjusted to treatment to a warm, moist washer with a little tea tree oil, held over the ear. The warmth relieved the pain and the steam gently softened the discharge without putting anything in the ear. 

We abandoned screen free Saturday and curled the two kids on the couch for a pyjama day and Harry Potter movie marathon so that the sick one could rest. 

Meanwhile, we donned our working gear and headed outside. The weather was against us (I know I begged for rain, but really?), but we soldiered on and (without any fighting!!!) built a shed. It's our third flat pack shed and we were impressed both with how well built it was and also how much better at putting them together we are now!  We completed the build except for a few finishing touches and secured the shed in the very last light of the first official day of winter. 



The dairy with plants just dumped in front - need to plant edible perennials there, any suggestions?

 

Sunday dawned, the sick one a little better, the shed still standing (woohoo!). Stu and the Jamie completed the shed build while I did some important chores like baking bread, washing and nursing. 

The shed was complete by morning tea time and we set to work up-cycling some materials for the beginnings of a milking stand and planning the layout that would turn our shed into our home dairy. 

Then we turned to fencing. 

The shed and fence! Ta-da!

 

The side of the shed/dairy forms one side of the goat pen, and our fence continues around from there. Stu had the brilliant idea of building the fence around the hills hoist washing line.  This gives the goat pen more area than I had originally envisaged and also gives a nice look to the garden (or it will when I've turned it into 'garden'). But it is harder to build a hexagonal fence than a straight one, and we ended up taking ages messing around with angles and things to get it right. But it's done!  I just need to finish attaching wire and then we have one more section and the gate to do. 

So it was a very tired family who gathered for a quick thrown together meal last night. 

I'm still on nursing duty today, but I'll take it a bit easier and deal with some of the smaller jobs. It does make you feel good though to get so much done over a couple of days and really begin to see a project come together. 

Did you tackle a big project this weekend?

A new water tank

It's cold and its wet and despite the fact that this means winter clothes, cold fingers and muddy puddles that traipse into the house on the bottom of gumboots, I'm happy.

I have been able to take the buckets out of the shower and from beneath our sinks. Those buckets will be back next summer, but for now, we can rely on the rain to water the garden and our tanks to supply the water when it doesn't.

The big downpour we had last week (which was still smaller than most of the state) recorded 21mm one day in my new rain gauge, on my new fence. Together with the decent rainfalls surrounding that big one, our garden is growing and greening up again, and our two house tanks were filled (one BIG concrete tank and a plastic one that is about 5000 litres). Through careful management, these tanks managed to keep us in water all summer - us and the garden.

But the garden did suffer as I was quite frugal with the water, so we decided to get another tank. And we installed it yesterday. This tank is about 2200 litres and isn't connected to the main plumbing system. It is filled through a hose connection that I put in at the top and will gravity feed to water the gardens and animals. Once empty, we can refill again. It's not a huge tank, but it will mean I can water the garden in summer without as much stress as this summer was.

The tank is sitting in top of a tank stand we built. The stand is clad (almost) in recycled corrugated iron and our old garage roller door. The cladding is of course not necessary for a tank stand, but it turns a tank stand into a goat shelter, therefore making more use of our available space.

The next job is to fence in the area that the tank/shelter are in to create our goat yard, and then to build the simple garden shed that will be our dairy and feed store.

Around the Garden right now

We're about to enter the third calendar month of autumn. You wouldn't guess it by looking at my tank levels or popping a spade into the ground - it's still way too dry, but the crisp mornings and the need to wear a jumper and socks tells me it really is.

It's dry, but we've had some rain. Weed seedlings are starting to show their heads in the 'lawn' areas and while my plants still look forward to a drink of carted grey water, they would survive without it.

This autumn I feel like I am living in and for the garden. I've spent countless hours preserving the fruit crops we grew or were gifted and have been enjoying celery, carrots, lettuce, herbs, tomatoes (yes still), silverbeet and herbs in our meals. I can see that there will be a small gap in harvest soon though, and will look into fixing that gap next year.

I'm growing seedlings of artichokes, pak choi, kale and purple sprouting broccoli, some more successfully than others, but I'm learning more each day, and getting better gradually at this growing from seed business.



Seedlings on the verandah.

Planted in the garden over the last month or so, I have broad beans, peas, sugar snap peas, snow peas, brocoletti, carrots, lettuce, wong bok cabbages, beetroot, garlic (two varieties), red onions, spring onions and carrots.



Seedlings doing well in the garden under a canopy of chicken wire to keep off cats and ducks

Around other parts of the garden, I've planted another olive tree, an almond tree, a mandarin and another feijoa. I've also added more herbs to my potted herb garden, helped 'self sow' silverbeet and calendula and sprinkled seeds of chamomile.



Garlic doing very well.

Our Muscovy ducks, Daisy (who may be Donald) and Peach, follow me everywhere in the front yard, chatting away and hoping I'll throw a snail or two their way. I've learnt that they love lettuce and beetroot leaves, and therefore, if I want to grow them for us to eat, they'll need to be planted beyond their reach.



I was sitting on the verandah writing this, so they joined me!

Also in the front, I'm working on a spot of pruning and taming the grass runners that are doing extremely well and reeking havoc around trees.

Out the back, Buddy is my constant companion as I peruse the works in progress. It looks messy now, but soon, our backyard area will be split by a fence. Inside that fence will be a water tank on a stand, the stand will become a shelter for our miniature goat, Jorgie, and her kid (which she should be getting pregnant with about now) when they come to live with us in September.


Behind Buddy, you can make out the holes for the tank stand and the pile of dirt we've dug out so far.

Next to the goat yard will be a new shed. The shed will be for feed storage with a section set up as my dairy. And all the way around the fence, I'll be planting goat friendly plants such as roses, lavender, silverbeet, wormwood, nasturtiums, chamomile and rosemary. These fragrant and pretty plants will look and smell lovely in the garden that will be below our washing line, and as they grow tendrils through the mesh wire of the goats fence, they'll be able to nibble away.

Introducing Jorgie, our miniature goat who will continue to live on the stud farm in Portland until she's had her kid.

The chooks are doing well too, they're laying a bit less now, but I still bring in eggs each day. They are enjoying scratching through weeds, devouring the sprouted wheat feed and picking at their garden which I planted back in march in an old guinea pig hutch so they can pick, but not destroy, the silverbeet, nasturtiums and calendula growing in there.



Standing on their very own garden.

So that's what's happening around here. On Friday, we'll take delivery of the tank and fencing materials so the next part of construction can happen. I'll keep you updated!

Unplanning the menu

I love the idea if menu planning. Occasionally, I go through a phase of menu planning, which for me, involves scribbling ideas  for the week ahead on the whiteboard or a scrap of paper.  Last year I had visions of one of those lovely homemade menu plan boards hanging in my kitchen, but I never got around to making one, and now I'm glad I didn't - I've unplanned the menu!

You see, the trouble with a menu plan is that, for us, it actually leads to more food waste than not planning the menu.  I find that if I menu plan, I tend to follow recipes more (from books or my own) and use the ingredients required only.  I also make a more set quantity, which isn't always great for our family.  The other thing I do when menu planning is plan a week around a couple of meat meals, a pasta, a rice etc, and end up with a nicely balanced diet, but leftovers that don't always go together (which I may or may not include to eat in the week anyway). 

As you know, we have a decent sized veggie garden, and over the summer (despite the heat and dry), we managed to grow nearly all the vegetables we ate.  As we moved through the season, I started to notice that I had a lot of one veg around at a time, and if I planned a menu, we might not eat all of it, and in fact start to need to buy vegetables that we would have in our garden another time.  It feels wrong to grow vegetables and then let them shrivel in the garden or feed them to the chooks while buying others from the shops.

An article I read recently talked about using all of your garden harvest. It said to harvest something everyday, and regardless of what it is, or how much of it there is, use it for that day. Now I don't think that I can always use all of my daily harvest the day it is picked, but I endeavour to base my meals around what I pick each day (or have put aside from a previous harvest), rather than trying to fit my harvest into my meal plan. We have much less waste this way and end up eating very well and definitely seasonally.  We don't always have 5 different veg on our plates, and some weeks we seem to eat an awful lot of a particular vegetable that is either our glut crop (hello zucchinis in January!) or our only decent crop (currently beetroot).

By unplanning the menu, I can also take advantage of good specials (AKA'chuck outs'). Therefore, if I come across something that will be useful to our family (eg. Free range meat or organic veg on special) I can buy them and fit them into the week ahead, rather than either leaving them (while I buy something full price so that it fits the menu plan) or buying them and then not using them.

So each night's meal is based on fresh veg from the garden, and then supported by any specials I've bought that week, my pantries, fridge and freezer which I keep stocked with simple foods.  As I work at home most days, I begin my day with a garden wander and a harvest - I pick what is ready and check the fridge for remaining veg from previous days.  Then, through the rest of the day, I creatively put together my ingredients with something from the stocks (below) and come up with a suitable meal. 

 

Our stored foods include:

• Freezer - frozen veg (preserved from the garden), homegrown chicken, the remains of the side of local, free range pork we bought, homemade stock, homemade breadcrumbs, pastry (yep, still buy that one), homemade icecream and some free range meat that I've bought on special.
• Fridge: milk, cheeses (homemade and bought), butter, homemade yoghurt, eggs from the chooks and a range of jams, chutneys and curry pastes. And also any excess veggies waiting to be used/ 
• The Kitchen Pantry: breakfast things and then lots if other cooking staples. Flour (for breads, sweet baking, pasta etc), sauces, spices, dried beans and pulses, dried fruits and nuts, baking odds and ends and a few cans (coconut milk, tomato paste and beans for when I run out of time).
• The Other Pantry: at this time of the year, is being filled with our produce - bottled and dried fruit, passata, chutneys and jams and marinating feta.

As you can see, I'm set up to cook pretty much anything I can dream up to use the produce I have.

I feel like, by ditching the idea of a menu plan, I've turned my back on one of the keystones of good homemaking, but this feels like a better fit, and as we become gradually more and more self sufficient, I think it is an important step in ensuring that we eat mostly our homegrowns.  People who know me may be laughing at this - you see I'm a planner by nature.  But this isn't completely throwing away a plan, but allowing my garden to plan for me each day or two and to allow me to get creative with what I have. I'll still be planning (yes, and writing lists, to ensure my kitchen is stocked well).  This is not just flying by the seat of my pants, this is intentional unplanning.


We've been doing this for a few weeks now, and the meals we've eaten have been mostly really goof, though some have felt like strange concoctions :).  We've eaten slices, curries, mexican inspired bean dishes, vegetarian roast dinners, lovely salads, pastas etc.  My shopping budget has been cut and I've only thrown a very small amount of leftovers and scrap veg to the chooks.

Bean and tomato salad, zucchini slice and naan bread - not the most regular
of combinations, but filling, delicious and it used what we had!

I read lots of blog posts about menu plans - some people plan for a whole season, others a fortnight or week. Some have fancy set ups, and I'm sure there are more intentional unplanners out there too. Where do you fit?

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.

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!

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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?

Sweetcorn and veggie garden plans

I harvested all of our sweetcorn this week.  The whole lot was picked for a few reasons:

1. Most of it was ready
2. I can't water all of my veg beds anymore - there just isn't enough water
3. I need to start preparing beds for the winter crops

I've grown sweetcorn a few times now.  The first time was beginners luck and, though I didn't plant much, I ended up with lots of perfectly formed cobs.  The second time was a complete failure, resulting in about four poorly formed cobs.  This year was somewhere in the middle. I had a few perfect cobs, lots of poorly pollinated cobs (despite my efforts to hand pollinate) and some that just didn't form at all.  So my resulting harvest needed a bit of sorting.

Sorting the harvest

I was able to serve us up a meal of perfect corn-on-the-cob.  It was the best we'd ever tasted!  So sweet and juicy - yum!

I was also able to serve us a stir fry with "baby corn" using the cobs that were immature and didn't form.  The boys were thrilled that I'd been able to grow one of their favourite veggies, but disappointed that "that was it" and that it was actually an accident!

And with all of the cobs that hadn't pollinated properly, I cut the kernels from the cobs, blanched them and froze them for use when I can't get cheap, fresh corn.

You know, we used to eat so much frozen corn and peas, I used to buy a bag of each weekly!  It was all the kids would eat in terms of veg, and it was so eeeeeeaaasy.  I would "cook" a bowlful to serve as a side dish, or chuck it into a pasta or rice dish.  These days, our veggie garden is so much more productive and the kids are much more experimental with veg (mostly because they don't have a choice!) that I barely buy frozen veggies.  I've also stopped buying any frozen veg that isn't Australian grown (mostly frozen peas, corn and potatoes are grown in New Zealand, which just seems sad to me), and so I have to buy a more expensive brand, and I'm less inclined to use it quickly.

So, now I have an empty garden bed and it is time to start preparations for the next big round of plantings.  Until last year, I pretty much didn't bother with a planting for winter veg, and then last year, I left it too late.  So this year, I have a pad and pen and lots of planting charts and I'm planning well. 

I intend to grow beetroot, purple sprouting broccoli, carrots, lettuce, coriander, wong boks, silverbeet and snow peas as our basic veg for the cooler months.  I'll also be putting in garlic and onions.  Two of my big veg beds will get a green manure treatment - soybeans in one and broad beans in the other.  The beans will give the soil a good dose of nitrogen and I'll also be able to harvest the beans - some for us and some for the chooks.

After such an incredibly dry summer, all of my beds also need a boost of organic matter, so I'll be adding in compost, horse manure (its not the best manure as it often results in weed growth, but its easy for us to come by) and also things like the corn stalks which I will bury beneath the soil to break down on their own. 

Some of the summer crops still have a month or so to go, but that's OK, those that are done will be clearing the space for the first plantings, and the plants that need to be sewn in cooler weather will go in later.

I plan to try to grow most of my new plants from seed again, and have ordered more seed for those I'll be planting.  Some things will be planted directly in the garden, and those that need to be planted in seed trays will be planted in my cold frame (the window in top will be replaced with shade cloth to make it a shade house).

So much to do, but I'm really looking forward to continuing to produce 90% of our families vegetables through the winter months.

Sun dried nectarines

Stu and I picked half a box full of nectarines on the weekend. The tree is still laden - we just picked the ripest ones.

Beautiful, plump, sweet smelling white nectarines.

Monday morning, he asked what I was going to do with the picked fruit. I told him we would eat that lot fresh, I planned to bottle the next box as there weren't quite enough to warrant a bottling day in this lot. He looked from me to the box with raised eyebrows and then took some to work to share with his workmates.

I was beginning to think that maybe he was right - we wouldn't eat all of those nectarines before they started to mould, and there was to be another lot picked in only a few days. But I was right too - there weren't enough to bottle in that box,  what to do?

Then Lachie, who was chomping down a bowl of our homemade muesli for breakfast said "gee I love dried fruit mum, it's the best thing ever". Lightbulb moment! I would dry some nectarines for using in our breakfast muesli! Only one snag, I don't own a dehydrator. I considered popping a post on Facebook asking to borrow one from one of the friends I know who have them (perhaps I should even buy one of my own?). And then I remembered this post on drying tomatoes and realised that I do own a dehydrator - a big one affectionately known as Roary by our family - our car.

With the car parked out of the carport in the sun, even on a relatively mild summers day, it gets hot in there. So I chopped up my nectarines into 8 wedges each, dunked the wedges into a little citric acid in water to prevent them going too brown (lemon juice would have worked too, but my tree has no ripe lemons at the moment and the only lemons available to buy in summer are imported from the USA), arranged the wedges on trays and put them onto the cars dashboard.

Fully dried nectarines - free from the sun :)

I turned them every couple of hours* and by the end of the day they were well on their way, but still quite moist inside.  I've tried drying before and know that if you want things to last, they need to be really dry.  So I left them for another half day in the sunshine, after which they were deliciously leathery and well dried. 

Preparing for bottling

I used about 20 nectarines which filled three baking trays (the pieces spread out so they weren't touching).  This made about 2 cups worth of dried nectarines.  I've put some more in the car now, and will probably do another batch or more before the tree is empty as we go through a good amount of dried fruit in our house.  We'll still give some fruit to family and friends, eat plenty fresh, and today, I've used my "new" Vacola that I bought on Ebay to bottle a batch for out of season fruit snacks and desserts.  The birds will get some, but the beautiful bounty from that tree (that we grew from a tiny seedling in just 7 years) will not go to waste.

Our nectarine tree in the foreground.  It was planted as a 15cm seedling in late 2005.

*the first batch I put with their cut side down on the trays, so turning was essential, as the fruit stuck to the trays as it cooked in the sun.  I've since put in another batch, this time skin side down on the trays.  They don't need to be turned and may dry quicker as more of the flesh is exposed for dehydration.

An exciting purchase.

I have just bought something that I'm very excited about.  It was a pretty expensive purchase, and will come by courier, so I don't even get to 'play' with it yet.  I'm going to tell you what it is, and later (after it arrives and is set up), I'll also review it.  But first, I'm going to tell you the background of my purchase and why it is so exciting.

We live in a tiny 'town' in rural Victoria.  We have a regular sized block of land and neighbours, but we have to walk to a shop to pick up mail, drive a fair way to buy things and enjoy watching farm vehicles go by, hearing lots of birds, cows and chooks (ours included) in the mornings.  We have no mains gas, so are totally electric for the running of our home.  We have no mains water or sewage system, but instead rely on our own tank water, bore water and a septic tank.  Townies find this to be a scary sort of setup, but if you've lived in the country at all, you know that this is just a way of life, and, with a bit of luck, your setup is so good that you don't even have to think too much about it.

image

When we bought this place, we were lucky enough that it already had great water tanks that collect ample water from our (surprisingly) large roof.   We also had our garden taps connected to the bore pump of the school next door, so we were able to water our gardens and our animals, and even flush our loo with bore water instead of rainwater, and so we have always had the luxury of ample water to do as we need.  On top of this, we live in the one part of Victoria that was never put on water restrictions because we have been the lucky ones and received a decent annual rainfall each year.  Having said all of that, I'd like to point out that we've never been ridiculous with our water use.  We know that excessive use of bore water isn't ecologically great, and so we've always watered our garden enough, but let the lawns die over summer and only watered parts of the garden when it was essential.

So for the last 7 years, we've been blessed with a water input that meets our needs, but our output has been full our problems!  It turns out we have a very dodgy septic tank.  I dread to think how many dollars we've spent on repairs and maintenance - we've had it pumped out a couple of times, we've had a plumber do some unknown thing to it, and another plumber replaced the pump that no-one even knew should be in there!  It is also a strange setup.  Apparently septic tanks should have a grease trap between the water entry and the main storage tank.  We have a grease trap, but it is not in the right place and is actually an old Telecom pit which isn't at all right to be a grease trap.  I don't really understand septic tanks (sewage treatment plants I do - I used to take guided tours of one!), but what I do understand is that ours has problems that do not seem to be fixed by any amount of repairs. 

We've considered replacing the system with a more environmentally sensible system, but the financial outlay and the major disruption to the property are seriously off-putting.  And since our septic tank seems to work fine when much less water is being put into it, we were leaning towards making changes in our home to reduce the input to the tank, and had started researching how to do that.

Then we lost our bore water supply. 

We were cut off by the school by accident, and it seems that since the house is no longer owned by the department of education, we're not to be reconnected.  So now, with a full vegie garden and a yard full of fruit trees and animals that all need water, we had to come up with a plan that would enable us to keep up the water to everything that needs it using only our rainwater supply.  And this new problem, together with our septic tank problem, have led to some watery changes (and my purchase - getting to it!).

First, we started to collect greywater - the old fashioned way.  I have a large water container with a tap on it that I collect my washing machine water in and then deliver the water to each of my fruit trees in turn.  Thus saving about 20L from going into the septic a day, and also giving my fruit trees a boost.  We've also added a bucket to the shower.  This collects more than 10L of water a day which gets watered around the place.  We eventually also hope to add a grey water diversion from the bathroom to water some of my ornamental garden using a hose system.  So all up, we've already started reducing the water needed for the garden and the water going into the septic tank.

And today, I bought a waterless toilet.  I can't believe how excited I am about a toilet!  But a toilet that will not only save an estimated 80-100L of water a day, but will also take the pressure off of our septic tank.  The toilet system we've bought is a urine diverting system that collects solid matter and toilet paper in a bucket in the toilet that is then emptied into a separate composting system where it is left for 12 months (or more) before being able to be used as fertiliser around the garden.  You can collect the urine to use as a nitrogen rich fertiliser too, though we're opting to divert ours straight into the septic tank since we have the system there.  The toilet uses no water, though it does use a small amount of electricity to run a fan to ensure no smells or moisture build up inside. 


I have done countless hours of research into the best system for us, and found that there are quite a few waterless (or very low water use) toilets available in Australia.  Our requirements were quite specific though as we needed a unit that didn't need underfloor access (we have a low ground clearance).  This meant our choices were limited to only a few brands, many of which looked like giant versions of the old chemical portable toilets.  I'm sure these suit some, but we wanted ours to still look nice and not frighten visitors away.  So we made our choice - the Seperett 9000, from "A better way to go" - and I've ordered it and I'm really looking forward to getting it and installing the system.

The toilet we are getting.

Ahhhh.... the things we get excited about!  I promise to report back when we have installed it and used it for a bit with a full review.

We built a pizza oven!

One of the things we've been very busy with at our house has been the pizza oven project.  Well it is finished!  Hooray! 

Pouncy thinks he makes a lovely addition to the oven.

It was a great project.  We learnt a lot of new skills and ended up with something that we love to look at and is functional too.  But we're certainly no experts, so I'm not giving a tutorial or anything like that.  But here is our pizza oven story.  Feel free to ask any questions.

Step one was to build the plinth or base for the oven.  We had an existing concrete slab, so we levelled that and built on top.  We used besser blocks for our base.  Can I just say - besser blocks are damn heavy!  And having never laid any bricks before, this was a steep learning curve for us.  But despite our lack of experience and the damn rain, it got done and we were even able to make a fancy arch at the front using recycled bricks and pieces of bluestone that were found on our block (they were from the original school building that used to be here).  It was so exciting when we pulled out the form work and the arch stayed in place.  A thing of true beauty that we just kept gazing at.  Oh, and we tested the safety of it by letting Hurley walk under it ;)

We then had to make a top for the plinth.  We used a piece of cement sheet, held up up with more besser blocks underneath.  We laid a surround of recycled bricks, held them together with some wood and trailer ties (true professionals I tell you!) and then poured a 5cm thick re-inforced concrete slab on top.  Onto this, we smashed a pile of bottles and lay the broken glass and then filled up with sand.  This is supposed to help with insulation.  Onto the sand we added a layer of clay pavers.  Then we tested the safety of this by standing our children on the top hehehe.

 

The next step was so exciting as we were actually building the oven, several weeks after starting!  We made a guide for building the dome, then I built another arch for the door.  The rain kept coming and the tarp was well used.  Finally, Stu built a great big sandcastle, I mean sand dome mold, and the kids played in the sand pile. 

 And then we built the oven.  We used about 60 recycled bricks that had been broken in half.  Just an aside here, the work involved in removing mortar from reclaimed bricks and then breaking them in half is back breaking and really rather unpleasant.  The bricks built up quite quickly, with this step and the next being completed in a day.  We put in our stainless steel flue at this point too, nestling the bricks tightly around it to hold it in place.

To finish off the oven, we used a layer of insulation batts and covered them with a mud mix that we'd put rather a lot of oxide into.  It looked rather too much like chocolate cake mix and I spent the whole time we were doing this bit singing the Crowded House song about chocolate cake (very annoying!).  We ended up using two barrow loads of this mud/concrete mix to get a good coverage.

 Finally, we were done!  We left it for a few days for the mortar to dry and then the only thing left was to pull out the sand.  The kids had a great time doing this and it was lovely to reveal the inside of the oven.  We christened it with a small fire and a curry cooked in it.  It was delicious!

And then, finally, we cooked pizzas in it for the boys birthday party.  Stu is master pizza oven man, and did a great job.  But we discovered we needed to burn a bigger, hotter fire, for longer before we try these again.  Probably also wasn't a great idea to try cooking pizzas for the first time with 22 hungry mouths to feed..... oops!  But it was fun anyway and we plied them with home brewed beer and ginger beer while they waited.

All up, it was a fabulously fun project and for about $500 and many, many hours of hard work, we have something pretty special in our garden.

PS. sorry the pics end up a bit tiny - there were just too many to make them big! :)