A week filled with.....

I'm halfway through writing a lengthy 'save-the-world' post.  Somehow I haven't been able to find that elusive hour or so to sit uninterrupted and complete it.

So! Rather than complete silence from me, let me show you what we've been up to.  Our week has been filled with....

...tomatoes (not mine, boxes bought from the orchard)

...train trips to Melbourne rallies

...coming home to a busted solar hot water system

and nine little baby chickens!

After more than ten years of keeping chooks, I still get excited when chickens hatch.

My muddle

On my good, productive days, I feel gooey!  I'm living the life I've always wanted to live.  What could be better?

However if I'm honest there are lots of bad days too.  Trying to live as sustainably as possible does create extra tasks.  There are the days on which I wake feeling tired before I've begun.  There are days on which I wake to a terrible mess in the morning.

I'm not a night person and will fall into bed at the end of the day without a thought of the dishes waiting by the sink.  But then I wake up to...........

In our home, more often than not, I don't just pop that empty jar into the recycling.  Oh no, not me!  I leave it next to the sink to be washed up ready to use for some gastronomic delight I am yet to make. I can't waste a perfectly good jar!

There's the garden to water, seeds I should have sowed already, animals to care for, milking to be done, chaff to be bought, children to be taught, a house to clean, cooking to be done, clothes to be washed, appointments to be kept.....

I still need to make time for the children to enjoy the things children should.

 

I can't throw out that piece of ribbon!  I might use it one day to pretty up a gift.  So I pop it on the stairs to take up next time I walk past...... and the pile on the stairs grows.

The stale bread can't go in the chook bucket this time.  I'll crumble it and pop it in the freezer when I get a chance so that I have breadcrumbs on hand.  Ooops!  Forgot.  I've now found a green loaf in the pantry.  Similarly the plums need attention.  I've used most of the plums for preserving, jams and sauces.  But there's one bag remaining.  These plums are going soft so I'll turn them into more sauce.  Ooops!  Forgot.  They've created their own version of a sauce by turning into slop as they waited for my attention.

Last night I was pickling as Belle and Hubby bottled cider.  No time for dishes or a tidy up.

Life's not always like this.  Sometimes I turn my attention to the house, tidy it up and swear I'll never get behind again.  But then I notice the garden is suffering so I'll turn my attention to outside......

How I long for some consistency!  Or more hours in the day.

Repurposed fruit

We seemed to squeeze so much into the day today without it feeling frantic.  Some days just work better than others!

The children completed some learning, most of which was online.  We use Skwirk and Reading Eggs a lot.  Then it was time to do something the children have been wanting to do for ages.  We brought the bag of doll's clothes outside and set up a laundry complete with tub, washing powder, pegs and a handmade clothes line.  They had a ball!

Buddy and Pumpkin made up some fruit chews made from juice and gelatine.  That's it.  The only ingredients!

Later I found the three children on the couch horse drawn carriage.   We had a driver, princess and a maid.  I love their creative play.  It's interesting to see them all join in the same game, given their different ages and stages.

Then my favourite part of the day......... I found yet another use for preserved fruit that didn't work.  A couple of weeks ago when I finished my preserves I noticed that a couple of jars hadn't sealed.  I'm very new to this preserving business and have a lot to learn.  I think the second hand lids I used weren't up to the job any more.  I emptied the jars of peaches and apricots into a pot, added some plums and stewed it all well.  That night we had a crumble with the mixed fruit.  It was not just ok, it was divine!!

I popped the leftover juice from the stewing pot into a container in the freezer.  Today I blended some of the frozen mix with just a little of our milk and was delighted with the result.  It was like ice cream.  The children were very happy!

Then it was off to the pool for a quick dip and home to make pizza for tea.  I can be quite lazy with food sometimes, encouraging the kids to eat fruit, make sandwiches etc. but I'm sometimes a little bit amazed by the concoctions I come up with when I am in the mood.  Those ruined preserves weren't ruined at all.  They were fruit crumbles and ice cream waiting to be invented!

Monthly nine -- January 2105

Hi there!  January is done and dusted and I'm late with the link-up again!  I have good reason.  Not only is the end of January back to studying time for the kids; it's also the time of year that everything fruity needs to be preserved for the cooler months! 

I'm setting aside some time right now to sit and recap January.  This is a great idea dreamed up by Christine at Slow Living Essentials.  We all get together and list our achievements for the previous month under nine different categories.  Please write your own recount of January and link up or just join in by visiting the other fabulous blogs taking part.

NOURISH: This month has seen us enjoying tomatoes.  I love the daily task of collecting them!  I made my first tomato soup for the season last week.  Delicious!  And oh so easy.

Tomato soup

Melt a generous dob of butter with a dash of olive oil.  Slice an onion or two and saute.  Add heaps of chopped up tomatoes fresh from the garden and simmer until very soft.  Add chicken stock in the right amount to give a nice, soupy but thickly tomatoey consistency together with a teaspoon of sugar, some salt, pepper and a couple of teaspoons of dried basil (or a couple of tablespoons of fresh chopped basil).  Squeeze in a little lemon juice and simmer for five minutes.  This soup is lovely with fresh sour dough bread.

PREPARE: Christmas before last Hubby gave me a preserving kit and I nervously began preserving a few jars. Never did I imagine back then that I would throw myself in preserving in the way I have done this year!  I have made trips to orchards, had preserving days with friends, made jam and taken up a kind offer of plums from a generous local lady.  She purchased a property this year that had HEAPS of different types of plums.  More than she could possibly use.  She put out an offer for people to come pick what they liked.  It was plum heaven!  I have preserved plums, made plum jam and dried some prunes.  In fact, I really should be in there cutting up more right now but there's only so much plum-ing one can do before they need a break.

It's a busy time of year because the fruit won't wait.  I've been juggling the preserving with my determination to start the year teaching my children with some sort of regularity.  Not an easy task but so far I'm feeling on top of things.

REDUCE: I recently had to put a call out for PET bottles for making ginger beer because we don't use purchased soft drink.  I now have heaps put aside for the task.  Sadly I didn't get around to making it in time so I'll need to make up a new plant soon.  Too many damn hats that I'm wearing.

 

I re-used some material to make chair bags for the kids.  I made one of them from a torn sheet and the other from op shopped material.  Only one child had a chair bag last year.  They are invaluable for keeping books close without creating a mess.  Last year we used plastic tubs and they were too bulky for our small home.

GREEN: I tried coconut oil in my hair this month.  I was whinging on a Face Book group about how dry and brittle my hair has become.  I don't wash my hair often and when I do, I use soap that I have made.  I often use cider vinegar as a rinse but it doesn't seem to help much.  Someone recommended trying coconut oil.  I've never used coconut oil before.  It has to travel from Queensland which is an awful long way so I usually find a substitute if a recipe has called for it.  Anyway, I decided to give it a try.  The result wasn't great.  I washed my hair, applied what I thought was a tiny amount and brushed my hair.  It was soooo oily!  I'll persist and see if I can apply even less this time.

GROW: My tomatoes have been great this year.  I prepared the soil really well and have (at great expense) managed to keep the water up to them.  We've been enjoying strawberries but only as a rare treat.  I never have enough at any given time to create desserts or anything else special.  Zucchini was a spectacular fail!  The plants were magnificent.  Best I've ever grown.  That was, sadly, no consolation for me as I eagerly awaited the appearance of zucchinis....  I think we picked about six for the whole month!

CREATE: Apart from the chair bags I have created nothing.  Unless all the things I've been working on in my mind count as the process of creation. ;-)

DISCOVER: I've been enjoying using The River Cottage Preserves Handbook to create new yumminess from all the fruits I've managed to get hold of.  I've made a variation of sloe gin with some damsons I picked.  It will take quite a while before I can report on the results.  It will take about ten week to bottling and the recipe suggests I store it for eighteen months before drinking!

We also learnt about a little bird that came to visit.  We've been calling Belle our butterfly whisperer but I may need to extend it to wild birds as well!  For two days it played around our dairy and Belle was determined to tame it.  We looked it up and Belle tells me it's a juvenile grey fantail. "That's why it's brown."

 

ENHANCE: Together with friends we've bought fruit, shared preserving gear, enjoyed company, initiated WWOOFers into the art of preserving and been the recipients of the generosity of a woman with plums, plums and more plums.  Thank you Jane!!

ENJOY: More than anything I enjoyed friendship in January.  That and the local swimming pool.  The kids and I have just about lived at the pool.  Most Januarys see us take a short break, do some sitting around and I also usually contemplate the coming year.  For some reason it wasn't like that this year and I'm trying to ignore the niggling feeling that I'm beginning the year feeling burnt out before I've begun. It has been all my interactions with friends that has saved me from falling in a heap.  A bit of laughter here, some connecting there, a huge dose of 'yes, I relate to what you're saying', a good measure of working alongside other women and plenty of feeling cared about!  Where would we be without friends?!!

Please join in for our January linking with other friendly bloggers.  Just link below.

Slow living in June (Monthly nine)

Brrrrr!  I hope you've found your beanies, scarves and thermal underwear.  It has been sooo chilly this past week!  I'm snuggled in front of the fire as I look back fondly on June before I rush headlong into July.  The winter solstice has passed so I'm savouring the cold weather while I can.  Before we know it, summer will be back.

I'm joining Christine at Slow Living Essentials as she hosts our bloggy records of our achievements in June.  Click on the button below to see what others have been doing.

Nourish - We ate cheese, cheese and more cheese as I experimented with flavourings for my newly learnt skill.   We celebrated two important birthdays in the last week of June.  Hubby turned fifty and Rosie turned twenty-one!  The focus of everything in my month was organising a celebration while still continuing with teaching my children and caring for the animals.  Our June nourishment revolved around preparing party food for others while I cooked enough to entertain large numbers.  My poor family didn't get much TLC in June.  Hubby and the kids had to get used to smelling the aromas of dishes wafting from the kitchen while being told not to touch!  I fed them on the quickest, most basic food I could throw together.  Oh, and cheese!

And how could I forget!  I had to perfect a mulled wine to serve our guests.  The temperature was only eleven degrees on the big day so the warm wine was a hit.  I ran a practice batch at home and loved the results.  The house smelled beautiful and it was deliciously warming!

Prepare - A generous family with an olive glut meant I finally had the opportunity to try my hand at olives.  Daily rinsing is still taking place.  The pot smells so good and olive-y as I tip off the rinse water each day!

Reduce -  With Plastic Free July firmly in my mind, I was very conscious of not producing too much plastic waste.  Plastic Free July starts today and I'm really looking forward to the challenge this year.  I encourage all of you to take part.  It is just a personal challenge but really gets you thinking.  By preparing party food in advance and by choosing a menu around ingredients that I already had on hand, I was able to feed many people without creating too much rubbish.  I did buy several packs of those disposable takeaway type of containers, a packet of paper straws, a packet of paper napkins (plastic wrapped of course) and three packets of pastry which created plastic waste.  I'm sure there was more rubbish that I've forgotten to mention but all in all I was very happy with our efforts.

I enlisted the children to help label home made drinks

Green - I made some soap with our goats milk.  It looks lovely and I'm looking forward to trying a few more recipes. 

I made labels for party glasses from old wine corks.  They looked quite effective on the kid's drinks.

terrible photo but just to give you the idea

Grow -  The garden did it's own thing this month.  I didn't really give it a look in.  It still served me well by providing rhubarb for my fizzy rhubarb drink and I managed to weed my way to some chives that I used for one of my cheeses.  I thought I'd lost them forever in the jungle but some persistent pulling out of grasses revealed a lovely healthy patch of yummy chives!

Create -  Sorry, not much to report here.  Just many ongoing projects.

Enhance -  I was on the receiving end of this category as many friends pitched in to make our celebration a success.  Friends and family cooked dishes, set up a kids play area, helped on the night and one even brewed some beer!  Thank you everyone!

Discover - The children have been learning about Australian history and I have become very interested myself along the way.  I've been borrowing books from the library about family life in the early 1900's.  I've also been delving more deeply into Pat Coleby's Natural Goat Care because one of the goats has developed foot rot.  I thought I had been doing such a good job of caring for them but it's a huge learning curve!  I've also begun a new Coursera course about... (you guessed it) changing the world.  I do enjoy a small challenge!! Lol

Enjoy - I've enjoyed family, friendship, rain and bitter weather which served to emphasise the cosiness and comfort of our home! 

I hope your June was lovely too!

Making

Autumn and winter weather is just wonderful for getting projects done.  In looking for excuses to stay near the fire but still be productive, I've been busy trying new projects as well as making old favourites.

I made quince paste recently (which I have made before) but I took it off the heat way too early.  The next day I put it back in a pot and heated it again.  It took another two or three hours of constant stirring but it worked!

This last month I've started experimenting with my goats milk too.  The first couple of months that I had the does, I was so busy learning about milking and adjusting to the new routine that I couldn't ever imagine getting around to being creative with the milk.  However I've finally reached the stage that I have snippets of time to play with it. 

I love our milk.  It's so pretty, frothy and white as I carry it in from the 'milking shed'.  (Really it's a hodge podge affair of some temporary, but comfortable, pens and a milking stand that Hubby made.)  I've tried my hand at a proper cheese after making one by separating the curds and whey with lemon juice.  Now I have a couple of cultures and some rennet.  The first cheese I tried was a very simple Fromage Blanc which comes out as separate, little crumbly bits.  It's very yummy and great for cooking with!  I've used it on pizza, in soufflé and even in a cheesecake.

Now I'm trying to master a more solid cheese.  A fellow blogger sent me a recipe for a cheese she often makes and I've read and re-read it.   Thank you Cath for giving me the encouragement to try!  Cath sets it in round moulds which really appeals to me but it uses a different culture which I have yet to buy.  So I began experimenting with a Bondon cheese which I press between two boards.  The first one turned out well so I am making it again.  This time I will add herbs to the cheese rather than just salting it.  I'm determined to make a good cheese to use on a platter. 

I also ventured into the goats milk soap territory recently.  I couldn't find a suitable recipe but I shouted out on Facebook and someone found one I could use.  I didn't want to use coconut oil or other fancy oils.  I just wanted a very simple soap.  This one used a bit of glycerin and has oats in it.  I can't wait for it to set so I can try it.  It looks great at this stage.

A friend rang last week to ask if I wanted some excess olives from their tree (um... YES!) so I now have a big pot of olives soaking on the dining table.  In such a small house there was nowhere else for it to go.

We have an event coming up so I've been making fizzy rhubarb, ginger beer and lemon cordial as well.  Hubby's been brewing up beer and trying his hand at cider (from a kit).  It's been a very productive household - we can hardly move for brews and concoctions but it feels good!

Have you been 'making' too?

Slow Living Diary - May

Well I can't believe it but a month has just passed without me writing a single post!!  That hasn't happened since I began this blog.  I actually did write a post but had such issues uploading photos due to limited data allowance that I just gave up.  Then, when it was all sorted, I found I'd lost my mojo. 

Luckily it's time for me to recap my month.  That should get me back on track. I'm joining in with many other bloggers to take part in Christine's Monthly Nine over at Slow Living Essentials.  I have heaps to tell you as I haven't been keeping my regular blog record.  The goats have become a bit all-consuming because I'm now milking morning and night so we've been productive!

*Takes a deep breath.....* here goes!

Nourish - The porridge has moved off the stovetop and onto the fire.  I love the cosiness of wintery weather.

I've also made cheese for the first time ever.  I'm in LOVE!!  A simple soft goats cheese that tastes yummy on biscuits and I have also used it to make a baked cheesecake and a goats cheese soufflé.  I will definitely be making the soufflé again!  Yuummmm!

Prepare - We are lucky enough to have heaps of Fowler's jars.  This is my first year of preserving so I've used a few, had a failure with one batch of tomatoes, but am enjoying just staring at my growing stash of food!  Preserved food is the homeliest decorative effect I've ever seen!  I still have plenty of jars left so next year I'd like to preserve even more now that I've tried my hand at it.

I was given some green tomatoes and I made my first ever green tomato pickles.  I also made quince paste.  Originally I took the mixture off the heat far too soon and it didn't set.  The next day I reheated it with success.  So now I know that you can successfully recook quince paste.

Reduce - I'm happy to say we have reduced our food packaging!  With our own milk, together with the preserving, we are using heaps less throw away containers.  A few years ago, we changed from regular milk to powdered in an attempt to reduce the rubbish our milk consumption was creating.  Well now, since February, we have been enjoying waste-free milk galore!  I did purchase some milk bottles because I have been sharing and swapping my milk on a regular basis.  I kept running out of containers.  I think the new bottles will be worth their weight in gold for keeping the milk storage organised.  I just need to count on people returning the bottles and I'm sure they will.  That will make my purchase justifiable.

Green - Same old, same old.  I try to keep all chemicals out of the house with a good amount of success.  I haven't made soap for ages though, so we have had to buy soap (oh the shame) and we bought a bar of abrasive soap so that gardeners' hands would be clean enough for milking time.  We have no commercial cleaning agents - soap powder, shampoo,  deodorant, dishwashing liquid, surface cleaner (except an old container of Gumption) anymore so all feels good!

I've been making hand soap recently too.

Grow - Garlic, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, silverbeet, rocket and mustard are all happily growing away in the garden.  I've been removing netting and adding manure and mulch to all the fruit trees.  I've planted a little garden in the orchard for the chooks.  They have rocket, mustard and nasturtiums that I transplanted from selfseeded plants in the veggie garden.  I've netted over the top in the hopes that the plants will grow undisturbed while the chooks nibble away at anything that grows through the netting.  I do wonder though, if I should change the bird netting for chicken wire.  I did it this way because it was easier but I might pay the price later.  I think that's a new job I must add to my long mental list that I carry with me everywhere!

Create -  I haven't got back to my quilting at all this month but I received lots of helpful advice from readers on how to stop it losing shape.  Thank you!  I must get back to this project.  I've picked up the knitting needles a couple of times but I'm not getting far!  I tend to knit while I'm watching the children at swimming lessons but half an hour a week is not getting the jumper done.

Discover - I've been learning new recipes as I try to find new ways to use my goats cheese.  I've learnt to make green tomato pickles.  Belle has also achieved heaps in this category.  She can now independently milk a goat at the age of eleven. 

Enhance - I spent a night in Melbourne to attend a workshop.  We were taught the best ways to support families digesting the news that their baby has Down syndrome.  I was glad to learn of all the support available and to feel that I actually am well placed to support others.  Nothing beats first hand experience!

While I know it's not what this category is about, my garden has been enhanced by nature!  It's rained a couple of times recently.  Really rained!  Now everything looks happy and healthy.

Enjoy - I enjoyed watching the freedom my children have now that we educate at home.  Their creative play is wonderful!  Belle read The Indian in the Cupboard to the younger children.  They then set about building a tee-pee which soon became an Indian settlement with three tee-pees.  Then one of my little Indians (Pumpkin) branched out to become an Australian aboriginal with her own camp nearby.

Buddy Boy plays football by himself on a daily basis and has created a couple of imaginary team mates called Snot and Booger!  Eeewww!  He is such a 'boy'!!

I am never lacking an amusing moment with my children around.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to start living June!  Stay happy!