Winter

Winter has been a weird one for us this year.

On one hand we have been hiding out, hibernating and keeping to ourselves and getting things done on the farm and that's been really enjoyable, making "US" the priority and we are finally starting to feel a sense of accomplishment but on the other hand although we are quite private people we have started to feel like we have been missing out on what everyone else has been doing in the meantime.

I guess most people with little properties or farms experience this feeling from time to time, because it really does take up a lot of time getting things going and working out how things best work ect.

 

You often hear people complaining about the winter vegetable garden and its lack of bounty but for us its the best the garden has been since we moved in! Having two sets of hands instead of one makes so much difference as does seeing progress, it just encourages you more to really get things happening.

 The introduction of some basic permaculture principles has been having a huge impact on productivity, the biggest change we made was planting on contour and using swales to catch and store moisture in the soil. That and using hay as a mulch we have seen big improvements and it will be interesting to see how the summer garden fairs this year now we have implemented these simple but effective water saving solutions. Nothing like lifting up a wad of mulch and finding fat juicy earth worms.

We had some challenges with our livestock and sadly some casualties too. We lost our beloved Grubby, the lamb we hand reared when her mother passed away after birth last year and also one of our ewe's who sadly was in lamb so death has had a strong presence on the farm this season. Lots of sleepless nights where had, tears shed and many a lesson has been learned. Thankfully the remaining ewe (also pregnant) and three lambs from last season are all on the mend and looking much brighter which has restored faith in myself as a farmer and the caregiver of these animals. Now armed with the knowledge I need hopefully we can avoid this in future but as they say "you've got livestock, you've got deadstock" sometimes it just happens and death is all part of it

 

Things on the chicken farming front had been going well until they decided it was a good idea to go to the neighbors property all day, every day and shit all in their sheds, in their carport and scratch up all the mulch in their gardens. Not only where they being a right PITA for my neighbor, their dog also thinks our chickens look like a tasty treat! Luckily the solution wasn't to hard, B managed to get some offcuts of bird net from the huge fish pens at work and we made a big poultry enclosure to keep them safe and also be able to have more control of when and where they free range. After keeping them in the enclosure for a few weeks we are now able to let them out again for a good portion of the day to free range without them going to the neighbours. Be nice if they would pretty please start laying eggs again though now we are past the solstice.

 

 

Its also been a time of reflection and personal growth for me and Ive been getting a lot of joy out of what we have managed to achieve on the farm even though the funds are tight when we have needed materials they have presented themselves to us for free or for little cost. I realised that pretty much all we ask for ends up happening for us in one way or another and if you need something done you don't have to let lack of money hold you back. I feel very grateful at the moment to the universe for everything she provides. Grateful to live in such a beautiful place, grateful to be able to be living out our dreams (even if we have a long way to go). Grateful for my lovely home,  for having B back home with us and for the time he gets to spend here on the farm instead of at work, grateful for the fertile soil we have on our land, for the sourdough bread we make with the starter we created, for warm sunshine on cold wintery days and most of all for our courage and passion. Because if not for our courage and passion to do things differently for our family and make leaps of faith and follow our intuition none of the above would be happening right now.

 

Whats next? Well we think come summer we should be able to completely feed ourselves from our own land!! Sure we will still want things like dairy and some meat but what we don't raise ourselves we source locally and in bulk, so ideally I want to be producing enough food on our land that we wouldn't have to shop if we didn't want to or couldn't because things where tight that week. Its pretty ambitious but I cant see why we cannot achieve this. The biggest problem for us is possums so we have more netting from work ready to go to cover the main veg patch and the new smaller patch we fenced with old roofing iron we think we might run a hot wire around the top. Spring we want to get our citrus guild happening, we will plant where some other existing shrubs are that have no real value to us and once the citrus trees take off we will cut down the existing useless shrubs which can be then utilized in hugelkulture beds and for mulch.

 

Lots of things to look forward too, but today Im just stoked my sheep have started eating healthy goodies from buckets so I can get some well needed love into them.

 

 

J

 

 

 



The Summer That Never Really Was, Possum Challenges and Small achievements.

Summer was a big let down for us this year, with Big Daddy home a lot more now we had been having a lot of success around the farm with more hands to share the load and we were eager and excited to see what summer would bring.

 

 

We were organised with our spring planting and everything was set up for success but then summer never came, there was glimpses of it but really we got shafted this year. All of us kept thinking surely Summer would be here soon but before we knew it Autumn had already arrived and for some people in the area they have already had the first frost!!

Luckily the frost skipped us so I'm still hopeful the pumpkins and tomato plants will be ok but its still very slow going.

We are having much success growing a "Dills Atlantic Giant" pumpkin and have a few smaller ones coming on as well but the zucchini plants have succumb to a mildew and the cucumbers had a good start and felt like they multiplying by the day but that only lasted about 2 weeks and now they have stopped producing flowers too.

 

 

Tomatoes? Well the vines are absolutely covered in the biggest, healthiest looking specimens I think I've ever grown but right now were lucky to be getting one ripe one a day but even if the weather really takes a turn we should be able to ripen what's on the plants already by hanging them up in the hot house or shed.

 

The unseasonally cold weather confused my chickens too who decided to stop laying and start moulting instead so there is deffinently an egg shortage in this house at the moment.

 

 

The disappointment doesn't stop there, this year before our fruit had even ripened the orchard was up against quite a few challenges the main one  being some huge, nasty  brushtail possums who started feasting on the leaves of pretty much all our fruit trees! Not only that the huge possums have snapped off a heap of branches on almost all of our trees and some of the younger ones will probably take a few years to get right again which is hugely disappointing.

 

 

And that's not all we also had a few heavy rains which caused some of the fruit that had survived the possums to split and also a lot of hail damage on our apples, apricots, plums and raspberries and now the possums have eaten all the pears which where no where near ready to harvest and started on the Golden Delicious apples which we have decided to harvest and cook up and bottle otherwise we wont get any at all once the possums have finished with them.
So far in our farming adventures the possum problems sure have been our biggest blow.

 

Its hasn't been all doom and gloom though, before they went to seed we had some amazing roquette and endive, some rainbow silverbeet too, chives, lettuce and for a short time some rather nice zucchini balls and mini Lebanese cucumbers too. Oh and Rhubarb and alpine strawberries too, cant forget those! We managed to salvage some green gages and neighbours and friends shared produce with us so we still had some lovely home grown organic produce to preserve into chutneys and jams and some whole fruits for pies in the winter.

 

 

Despite all the recent challenges and learning curves  we have achieved quite a lot these past few months even if its just being more organised with weeding and planting, and where I've seen the biggest difference since having Big daddy home a lot more is in the kitchen. Its so lovely to be baking sourdough bread together and making meals as a family. Finally it feels our dreams of being an unschooling, homesteading happy family are coming together.

 

 



Venturing into exciting new WEEDY territory.

Learning about weeds and which are edible and/or have nutritional benefits is something very new to me and I'm finding it pretty exciting already I am already looking out into the gardens with a different mindset so I thought I would share the foreword from the new book I've bought The Weed Forages Handbook by Adam Grubb & Annie Raser- Rowland.

Foreword:
We will fight them in the fields, we will fight them in the gardens, we will fight them in the footpaths. We will fight them why? Because someone told us to. Because someone taught us to react to a word, to a definition. Our immediate conscious action when someone mentions the word weed is a reaction. And this reaction additional vocabulary with the word weed, such an invasive, thus building the siege mentally to the point that weeds have become a war. Weeds have become a win-at-all costs battle that has stepped beyond the boundaries of the rules of war. There is no Geneva Convention when people enter the mindset on the world war on weeds. It's An anything goes barrage. There is no 'below the belt' when it comes to this rumble.
Weeds have been a part of my growing life. Growing up with a Greek heritage, gardening was a given at every residence I ever visited, be they aunts, uncles, great distant relatives, third cousins or just random Greeks for that matter. Growing way a God-given blessing and everyone grew productive or beneficial plants in whatever they could get soil into. And weeds were a day-to-day part of the plant vocabulary, the best being that they were not seen as weeds. I always remember bus trips and picnics, and the coach or car would pull up on the side of the Hume, the Pacific Highway or by the local park and there would be all the old aunts and yiayias (grandmothers) walking along the side of the freeway 'emu Bob' style, pivoted at the hips and collecting every kind of so-called weed you could not imagine.
When the bus stopped at the end of the trip, people lined up to pick up their bags of horta or weeds, call them what you like. These would then be turned into the most incredibly tasty and nutritious hortopita or weed pies (like spinach pie but a weed pie) . Imagine the fresh wild greens, picked only an hour or two earlier being turned into that nights dinner for the family. It sings the song of reduced footprint, resilience and wild diversity in one broad bush example.
Every footpath, park, or highway was not seen as some sort of grass maintenance nightmare. No no. It was seen as one big wild free salad bowl. And this is a good way of looking at this book. It is a crazy big bowl of information on plants you would otherwise be encouraged not to consider edible, or beneficial medicinally or nutritionally. I am so pleased that more and more people are seeking out the knowledge and truths of the village and taking guided weed walks through their local area. This information and experience of the ages is getting the recognition that it duly deserves.
The book looks at the very nuts and bolts of weeds. It is a wonderful combination of scientific description, seasonally applicable take home information, clear photographs and drawings and equally important cultural story telling. It reflects on weeds as coloniser. They are the mongrel street fighters that come along and re-establish life where there is only death and desolation. The capacity of weeds to set up shop and then in essence creat the conditions for the next round of settlers or succession is quite remarkable. They are true pioneers of soil building, bringing life and tolerating the torment that our technology and development inflicts. They adapt to disturbance readily, and given that we humans are such a disturbance, then it stands to reason that we go together with weeds much like a bum goes together with a pair of underpants (kolo kai vraki as we say in Greek).
So cast aside those weed goggles and open up your eyes and your mind to the wonderful world of weeds. As famed organic farmer Joel Salatin would put it, allow the amaranth to express its amaranth-ness. Let all weeds express their specific and unique weed-ness. Allow observation and information to open up a whole new vocabulary of wonder in the world of weeds. Don't react, rather respond to the end the endless possibilities that plants (formerly know as weeds) can offer you. From weekend gardener, school gardener, community and verge builders, foragers and scrumpers, urban guerrilla planters or humble rooftop and balcony farmers, this book is a must for all growers of our future food and health security. In other words if you eat then this book is your essential companion.
-Costa Georgiadis

Weed Tea Success

Well I blogged when I initially started my brew and I had planned to post the progress of it all but didn't cause ya know I was busy growing a baby ect and didn't have time for blogging but here is the follow up finally and I must say I'm very happy with the results, more so than I expected actually.

 



So I had started the brew and pretty much forgot about it for the last 3 months until I received a phone call from Uncle Bob reminding me, and told me I needed to get it on those new little babies in the recently dug up veg patch.

 

I hadn't even checked it at all so had no idea what it would be like or if it was even any good but I opened the lid and to my surprise what had been a bunch of green nettle was now dark black liquid with a bit of a stagnant water type smell but nothing too offensive like I was expecting.

So you need to dilute it like you would other liquid fertilizers and each batch you make can vary in strength so just be careful when using your brew for the first time.

I'm not really the type to measure properly I use my sight more when it comes to this sort of thing but at a guess Id say I added 500mls too a standard 9lt watering can of water and filled her up.

 

Now at first I though I was crazy but I swore the next day when I came out after 24hrs there had been noticeable growth, I hadn't applied it to all the plants just encase it was going to kill everything or something horrible but all looked well, great in fact so I applied it to the rest of the crops and took more note of the size of my babies so next day I could reassess to see if indeed there had been growth in such a quick time and low and behold I was right

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The plants had really sprung up and everything is looking so green, lush and healthy. Especially after todays rains. Honestly I don't think I've ever had such obvious and almost instant results from any store bought, natural liquid plant feed so I'm really quite chuffed I got such brilliant results from something totally organic I can make myself for free from weeds, nettles, borage, comfrey, manure ect.
This batch was just purely nettles and its beaut stuff so why don't you get your own batch going, its so simple there really is no reason to have to buy liquid plant food.

Unschooling - what led us here and what it means for us

...well we prefer to call it Natural Learning but Unschooling in the title will grab more attention huh.

 

We didn't always plan to homeschool let alone unschool, GASP!

 I didn't even give it a second though I mean of course my kids would go to school that's the proper thing to do right, the "normal" thing ? It wasn't until I had made a few homeschooling friends through the natural parenting community it even entered my head as a real education option and heck I even thought it sounded quite alright but was it something I thought I could or would do?

 

Nah and you know why? Well amongst the usual ones like "I don't think I'm smart enough" and "not sure I could have the patience or time" the main factor I didn't think it could be our reality was that its not readily accepted socially. I knew family especially and possibly some friends wouldn't approve let alone understand why and it was scary. I mean I have always been one to push the boundaries of what our families think is the norm or acceptable but this I mean this is up there on the controversial scale with being a non vaxer in my families world(imagine if they knew that too ha!).

Isn't that horrible that I felt so scared to consider it as an option for fear of the backlash, then we decided to move to wonderful Tassie, buy a bit of land and make a lovely, natural, peaceful life for ourselves doing what we desire away from criticism then I had a lightbulb moment and thought hey maybe we can commit to the unschooling business now.

 

That was it the decision was made...for me anyway I mean as peaceful/natural parents  I just saw it as a continuation of what we had been doing so why did that have to suddenly end at school age, Pappa B on the other hand took some convincing especially since it was something I had never even mentioned before and his reaction to the news wasn't pretty to be honest and I was upset and hurt. I get that a new idea someone has never been presented with before can be challenging to our own beliefs and experiences but how can someone make that call if they know nothing about the matter.

 

After the first announcement I let it rest with him for about a week then mentioned it again and this time he still didn't think it was a good idea but was open to sharing his fears about it and researching the information with me and slowly but surely over the next few weeks he came around and trusted that I was choosing what was best for our kids future.

Now he has gone from just supporting the decision to being a out and proud Natural Learning father and my goodness a man telling others confidently and proudly the in's and out's of why we homeschool and what it means for our family is mighty hot!!

So here we are now a Natural Learning Homeschooling family but what does that really mean? Well for us that means letting the kids take the lead and PB and I just follow and offer guidance, support and help if needed.

 

We prefer to learn through practical everyday experiences rather than "doing school" so its really quite simple to include kids in all the regular everyday activities and cover maths, science, language, history you name it!! For some this is a really odd concept to grasp that you don't need to spend hours sitting in a seat writing this and that down to learn.

 

Adopting this type of learning philosophy is so rewarding we find.  The kids amaze me on a weekly basis, when left to their own devices to learn in their own time and  pace when things click they really click for them because it hasn't been a forced learning experience.

 

 

We don't follow any curriculum we build up our own individual learning plans which are always flexible and easily changed.

We do like the Waldorf method and draw on that a bit. We have a daily rhythm, we all really have a deep connection with nature, celebrate and honor the seasons and the big emphasis on creativity and the arts.

 

 

 

Our weekly/daily rhythm which is a new thing we have brought into the house helps us slow things down and keeps peace which is just as important for me as it is the kids but being unschoolers of course its quite a flexible thing and there is more to our day than just what is on the calendar but having this helps us keep our  focus.

 

 

The most important part of the daily rhythm is our mornings and evenings I find, the meditation in the morning is such a lovely start to the day before we head outside. We light our meditation candle and if we feel like it some incense too. The kids lay on their backs in the lounge as I read them a guided meditation from our gorgeous kids meditation book and our story time at the end of the day is a nice relaxing way to wind down. So we start and finish our days peacefully.

 

 

(yes I totally got that gorgeous boys face in there on purpose)

 

I love the flexibility our natural learning/homeschooling/unschooling life gives us and now I cannot imagine it any other way and cant wait to see what adventures it and journeys it takes us on.

 

I need to give thanks to my fabulous supportive homeschooling/unschooling friends who have been there for me in those early days where I still doubted myself your support gave me the confidence to know I can do this.

 

 

UNSCHOOLING ROCKS!!

 

 

 

 

Operation Simple and Frugal living begins

I've had it with the FIFO lifestyle and Pappa B agrees.

He took the job as the best option out of a bunch of less that awesome options and initially it was ok, I mean hey it was better than going bankrupt but now we have got ourselves out of hot water it most definitely isn't worth it and we feel stuck.

 

He can't come home straight away but at least we can set out a plan to get him home asap.

12 months is a realistic goal we think, just need to pay our last bit of debt off and he could be free to get a regular job.

 

I'm not going to lie the last 6 months I've enjoyed buying this and that at my leisure after being in the red for so long but I don't feel good about it, its true money is a yucky thing and it distracted us from part of why we moved in the first place.

 

 

 

Slow, simple and happy living, that's what we need.

 

So its time to tighten up pay off that last debt and get PB home where he should be and I'm really excited.

 

So what's the plan? Well I had already decided that I'd had enough of consumerism and that I will buy as much as I possibly can second hand, tip shops and oppys will be my David Jones.

Recycling, upcycling and making old into new. Swapping this for that with other frugal friends and making do or doing without.

 

 

I've only just started and already I feel lighter, fresher.

Id love to hear tips from other frugal friends if you care to share.