Faking Goat

This is the face of a faker! This goat had us waiting on tender hooks for the big arrival of.. well nothing as it turns out! For 150 days we looked forward to a wee one and milk, she even got fat!
We now know that goats had phantom pregnancies, they get fat as she did and after their due date all back to normal!

Not happy Geraldine!
It's a good thing you have the most lovely personality!

Knitted Jumper

I have knitted and actually completed my first jumper! This is a wool and alpaca blend for master 2. It is to fit this coming winter and I made it a bit longer to keep his dear little bottom warm.
The hat is hilarious and he loves wearing it!

Homeschooling resources

I found a great looking book for the wee ones. 501 Science Experiments.
Monique, here's a peep. Picked it up at Angus and Robertson for $19.95

Food Storage

As well as a nook (a girl's shed) I have somewhere to store my food. We created a room that passively cools. There is a hole in the floor that is piped to the south. The ceiling has a hole and a whirly bird to draw that cooler south air up into the room.
Hubs got some shelves and voila!
Storing food has meant huge savings for us. I buy on sale or just in bulk, buy the tray etc, especially from Aldi. This reduces the numbers of trips to the shops. No spontaneous spending, if fire or flood cut us off from town we have stores, we eat at yesterdays prices and a surprising benefit, less illness. Keeping out of the shops has reduced our exposure to lurgies so we reduced doctors visits and medication.
This coupled with a productive garden means we are set for months!

A girl's shed

A girl should have a space all to herself, a man has his shed, a woman needs a nook. A place where if you put things down they stay put, a place where she can think and be creative, recharge her batteries and be refreshed to handle day to day life with a busy family.
Here's my girl's shed :0)

Meadow muffins for the garden

We had a nice pile of cow poo and decided to run over them with the lawn mower. The result has been brilliant. Our exhaust on the mower is out the side so no worries about fume contamination.
Here it is ready to be mixed into the soil.

A garden to feed us!

Picking white mulberries. Pretty good fast food for a little person!

Wicked Garden bed development

Finally some further development on our wicked garden beds, the left hand pic is the sand base some what overgrown with grass (see how long it has been!) in the guard rail structure. Next a trench is pressed into the sand and plastic laid over the top. Then really old carpet and ag pipe is laid down. The ag pipe allows the water to seep into the bed to feed the plants!













Bottom left shows rocks over the ag pipe, you can see the end pipes which the water will get poured into. Then soil and next step is to add poo and compost!

Blacksmithing

One of our sons is into blacksmithing. He has set up his workshop and been busy at TAFE. These are this weeks tools... The hammer is for making Armour.

This is an aluminum splash leftover from casting... it reminds me of Spike Milligans radio play the 'Goon Show', where they are trying to find the criminal by trying the splash on the suspects.. LOL

Thinking Bee Thinking Bee

After a disastrous winter of losing two bee hives, we are starting two new hives.
We had to buy a new queen and her workers, this picture is how they arrive. It's a tiny box with a cork in one end and a plug of icing sugar and irradiated honey at the other end. Eventually they eat their way through this 'lolly' to join the hive.
Eldest son took this picture for me. He took so long that I asked what he was doing. He said he was waiting for the queen to make an appearance! She obliged and she is the bee with the longest body, far left at the top.


We had to make up new foundation frames and get a new hive ready. We added two frames of brood and two frames of honey from our one surviving hive.
They got relocated over 5kms away, so the old bees wouldn't go back to their old home. It will take a few days for the bees to all smell the same, for the queen and workers to nibble out and the hive to nibble in. Theoretically they will be one big happy family and in 4 weeks we can add a 'super' or new box on top then 4 -8 weeks later get honey!!

That picture to the left shows the little box that the new queen arrived in, wedged in the new hive.

It appears the hive was not keen on the drive as they all clung to the lid. That's them in the picture to the right all over the lid.

The pic here is the hive ready to be left to its own devices. Fingers crossed all goes well and roll on honey!!

We had a trip to Mogo Zoo, NSW. It was great, so close to the animals. Master 4 loved the Pythons, white Lions and baby monkeys (the tiny ones). Master 2 loved a letter box. He put his fingers in the slot! You've got to love kiddos don't you :0)

The cats had kittens, up in the old shed on a shelf, is that the only place she felt safe? Oh well, life with toddlers I suppose!

So sweet, 3 little dear things!

Making the most of everything

Making apple chips and apple jelly.

























Peel the apples. I'm using an apple slinky. Turn and peel. Drop knife through and spread on dehydrator tray.

























Gather cores and peel and boil up with sugar in saucepan. Bottle in sterilized jars. Add a squeeze of lemon to help it set. If it is runny, use as apple sauce on pancakes etc. How thrifty is that. Our grandmothers would have done this automatically, sad it's so exciting and new to me! Never mind, one skill at a time...

Spring forward Fall back
Daylight savings has started and thanks to Tara I got the clock right without straining my brain!

I'm in the garden, whoohoo!

I'm setting up a wicked garden. It is a raised bed with a liner and an ag pipe running through the centre. The ag pipe joins pvc pipe that sticks up at the ends of the bed so we can pour our rescued shower/bath water down once a week.
I'm using guard rail as it is cheap, good recycling and easy to use. It is so thick it takes forever to rust.

Here's the spot it is going in, with a piece a guard rail ready and waiting.

Our journey to share healthy living with others has started! The stainless steel bottles are in! We have been using our bottles for a few months and LOVE them! The water tastes so pure. No dioxins or Bishphenol-A - a potent hormone disruptor found to leach from hard, plastic (particularly #7 polycarbonate plastic). The lids are from Polycarbonate #5, for safety reasons, you want to use #2 or #5, they are believed to be non toxic as the were not created using chlorine and do no contain the fore mentioned nasties.

As skills develop I hope to share my thoughts and goings on in regard to life the universe and everything...
So long and thanks for all the fish.