This Week.....

.... we have enjoyed an early family Christmas celebration...

All very busy opening presents.

.... we have celebrated Eden's fifth birthday...

Please forgive me for the paper plates and cups - at least we could compost them afterwards!

Birthday Girl.

Enjoying the very talented face painting by a clever kindy mum.

Eden's tiara birthday cake.

.... we have done some Christmas crafting, by ourselves and with some local friends...

The spice angels we made with our friends.

Christmas cards the kids made with their Grandma.

.... we have coped with the current heatwave by going swimming and relaxing...

.... we have had Grandma over for a stay...

.... we have enjoyed cricket and homemade beer...

Even Brannen has taken his place on the couch to watch the 'kiyet' (cricket)

.... we have done some Christmas cooking...

Gingerbread Christmas tree decorations.

.... we have made some Christmas gifts...

Lined tote bags for the girls to carry their swimming gear to swimming lessons.

My first attempt at a reversible tote with box corners - happy!

 ....receiving my university results. One distinction, and two high distinctions. I am very happy with that. I am changing my course slightly for 2014 onwards, to a double major in Sustainable Development and Community Development. I am slowly hatching ideas and plans for my future 'career' (or not) direction and am very excited about what the next few years may bring.

.... the lead up to Christmas is so exciting! What have you and yours been up to?

Chicken Business

Our first batch of little chicks grew up..... into five roosters and one hen. We couldn't keep all the roosters so they were destined for the freezer. Their father, our main rooster, also needed dispatching, as he is now directly related to most of the hens in our brood. We also have received roosters for eating from a couple of local friends, so Nath has spent the last few evenings killing, plucking, and processing chicken meat. Tonight will be a big night - Nath and a friend have the last of them to get through, nine roosters and a drake (which will end up on the Christmas table). We'll have enough chicken meat to see us through a few months I would say.

Killing our roosters left us with a role to fill. We selected one of the roosters we had received from friends to fit the bill of our new head rooster. He is currently terrified of us, and wary of the chickens, but he has been working his way up the pecking order, one by one, so I am sure he will settle in at the boss spot soon. He's quite a pretty little thing, too, so different from the Plymouth/Australorp roosters we have been used to. Eventually I will get another big meat breed rooster, and maybe run two pens of chooks, but for now this new fellow will do. He is a Rhode Island Red/Isa Brown cross. Hopefully he throws more girls than the last boy did!

A Garden Post

Our little garden pixie, Eden.

It has been a while since I posted on our garden, but as we in in the full swing of Spring, and loving spending these tentatively sunny days ticking things off The Great Gardening To-Do List (which is less like a list than a carousel on full speed) I thought it might be time to share some pics.

We were late planting our winter seeds, and equally as late getting our spring seeds planted, so we are a little behind schedule. That hasn't mattered this year, though, as the temperatures are still quite low and we have had fairly steady rain for all of spring so far. The onions, garlics, leeks, beetroots, silverbeets and beans are all going strong.

We have planted all the citrus trees (a Lemonade, a Meyer lemon, a Kaffir lime, a Tahitian lime, a grapefruit, an orange and a Feijoa - yes, I know, not a citrus!) with an understorey of nasturtiums, chillis and artichokes.

The little kaffir lime tree with an understorey of nasturtium and artichoke.

Beautiful citrus-y blossoms.

The greenhouse is full - little tubes and toilet rolls containing (many, many) tomatoes, chilli, rosella, rockmelon and sunflower seeds.

We have been harvesting our green manure crop of oaten grass before it went to seed and drying it on the fence to become mulch for summer. We have also been trimming down the wattle trees to use their foliage as mulch (as well as feeding some to the goats).

Wattle foliage as garden mulch.

Oat grass drying on the fence.

The apricot trees have flowered and are now in full foliage and beginning to set fruit, so the next task is to net them to avoid losing nearly our whole apricot harvest to the local 28s (like last year).

Chickens fertilising the apricot trees. Behind, you can see the large goat pen.

We are putting in a grape vine near the kitchen window to stop the summer late afternoon sun streaming in. It won't help this year but next year it should be established enough to make a difference. The beauty of a living screen is that, as it is deciduous, it loses its leaves in winter to let all the available sun in.

I counted the other day and we now have 20 fruit trees! That's not bad at all for a half acre block! We should be getting our bees within the next month to help with all that pollinating.

It's three assignments on the agenda for me this week so I daresay I won't be seeing much of the garden until next weekend!

The New Kids On Our Block

We have some new family members. After we brought Elsie home, we had no idea how pregnant she was or when she would kid, and it seemed like she was pining the company of other goats. She was very timid with us, too, so clearly we were inadequate company! I stumbled upon a young Saanen x British Alpine doe kid who had been hand reared and bottle fed. She was only five weeks old when we bought her and it really was the best thing we could have done. Elsie perked up immediately and relished being the 'herd queen', and it wasn't long before she was much more comfortable with us handling her, even coming up to demand cuddles and scratches first as is her right as the herd leader! The young doe kid, Bella, will be an excellent milker when she is older, as well.

This is Bella. She is awfully hard to photograph, as she keeps trying to eat the camera!

Then, on Tuesday night, after Miya's 6th birthday party, I noticed that Elsie was showing some early signs of labour. I kept an eye on her during the dinner/bath/bed routine and as soon as the (human) kids were in bed it was evident that this baby goat was arriving - and soon! I called a couple of friends of mine who have goats and have had experience with goats birthing and we settled in with a torch and waited. This was Elsie's first birth and she wasn't sure what was going on, and it was obvious that the kid was a large one. We let her push for half an hour or so then once the front hooves and nose were out, my friend held then and on the next contraction gave a gentle pull and helped the kid out. Elsie's instincts took over completely and she set about cleaning the kid's face, then her body, and it wasn't long before the kid was trying to stand and looking for her first drink. We woke the girls up to come and meet the baby and moved mama and baby into the shed, stopping to check the kid's gender (a girl!) and watched to make sure the kid would suckle. We had nothing to worry about, Elsie is a wonderful first time mother, doing everything completely right. Miya named the kid Rosie.

Rosie is a three quarter Boer goat, and already shows signs of being a lovely stocky goat. Nath is salivating already, as it is likely that Rosie will end up in our pot! We can't keep three goats, and as Elsie is a proven mother, we will use her to breed, hopefully with a milking breed buck. Bella will also be a milker. The (human) kids aren't too happy about eating Rosie, but we are breeding goats for our own dairy and meat requirements, to avoid the awful meat and dairy industry and guarantee that the animals we eat have led a healthy and humane life. It's a hard lesson, but a necessary one, I feel.

For now, Rosie will remain suckling on Elsie for a few weeks, then we will separate them at night so that we can milk Elsie in the morning. We have been needing to milk Elsie in the afternoons a bit anyway, as she is producing ore milk than Rosie can drink and was looking like she may have been developing mastitis. Her milk is incredibly creamy, and raw, cold, fresh goats milk is beautiful!

We are all absolutely loving being goat owners! It has long been a dream of mine and I can't begin to explain how lovely it is to watch my three children playing with the goats, learning about animal husbandry and developing an understanding of what it means to be a mindful consumer of meat in this age where animals are merely commodities, bred for the greed of humans without much concern for their welfare.

Things I Have Been Learning About Lately.

My head is so full of new information this week! I really should be enjoying this last couple of weeks before Uni starts, not filling my mind with all kinds of topics, but it gets a little addictive. My internet tabs bar is very busy, and I thought I would share some of the things I have been researching.

Registering our property for livestock ownership: The WA Department Agriculture and Food requires anyone who owns livestock to register their property. This is to make tracing and isolating disease easier, and applies whether you own one tiny, little miniature goat, or 20,000 head of cattle. I have the forms here now and am excited at how close we are getting!

Adding non-nano zinc oxide powder to homemade body butter to turn it into a homemade, natural, safe sunscreen. Safe, commercial sunscreens cost about $20 for a rather small tube, so I decided to look into whether it was possible to make my own. Turns out, it is! I found a recipe here at My Healthy Green Family and discovered I could buy the zinc oxide powder on Etsy. Summer is a way off yet, but when it hits, I will be ready!

Making my own vanilla bean paste (saving me a bucket load of money!): This may be extravagant of me, but I just can't do without buying vanilla bean paste. I use it in so much of my cooking, but it is one of the most expensive items on my shopping list, at over $20 for a very small jar. I can buy vanilla beans much cheaper, though, and this recipe I found at Tick Of Yum makes quite a lot of paste. Much cheaper! It is a Thermomix recipe (I do love my Thermomix!) but could probably be recreated on the stovetop.

Making beeswax-coated cotton food wraps: It has been a long time since we have bought plastic cling-wrap, and the food-safe pouches I bought a couple of years ago are starting to be... er... not so food safe! Since I bought mine, they have become all the rage, though, so the prices are a lot higher than I remember! I wanted to recreate them in a much cheaper way, and today I found this tutorial at My Healthy Green Family that uses beeswax to coat the cotton. I have a big block of beeswax, and once we have honeybees, beeswax is something we will have more of. I'm going to give this a go.

Planning and creating a productive permaculture food garden: I have been watching a DVD I actually bought from a friend quite a while ago, and never got round to actually viewing. It's ABC Gardening Australia's Permaculture and Organic Gardening. It documents Josh Byrne (love him!) transforming a 1000sqm Perth yard into a beautiful permaculture dream. It has inspired me so much and given me lots to think about as we move forward with the planning of our own gardens. I highly recommend it if you are gardening-minded.

What to do with a broody hen: My little old silky hen is 'on the cluck' again but this time we actually have a rooster (hopefully) sterilising (obviously I should have written fertilising!!) the eggs that all our girls are laying, so I have decided to let her sit on a clutch of about seven or eight and see what happens. I've marked the eggs she can keep with a permanent marker so I know which ones have been there for a while. If all goes well, this will be our first batch of chicks that we have had hatch out here. The only problem is, she has developed a nasty little attitude and is scaring all the other hens off the nest, so I am going to have to move her to her very own brooding box. I plan on putting her in our chicken tractor, but was worried that if I moved her, she would abandon the nest. A quick google search informed me that if I move her at night time, my chances of success are much higher. Fingers crossed that in a few weeks we will have a little clutch of cheeping chicks running around here!

I do love learning, and i am so excited about starting my Sustainability degree in a couple of weeks' time! I have no idea where it will lead me, but I am going to enjoy the ride! What have you been learning about lately?

Fabulous Friends, Frugal Living, Fruit Trees and a Recipe for Foaming Hand Soap.

 As I type this glorious Winter's day, it is 23 degrees and the sun is shining. After two late nights in a row, all three kids are sleeping and Nath is in the backyard finishing up planting out leeks, onions, beetroot, silverbeet, spinach, cauliflower, garlic, carrots and beans. We have put two new rosemary bushes in the ground and transplanted a third one from where the goats will be to one of the new food-producing beds. Dispersed through the vegie beds are some Sweet Alice seedlings, which attract helpful predators and bees to the garden, helping with pollination and keeping pests in control. We have also planted some pyrethrum, which will repel garden pests, and I can dry the flower heads and steep them in alcohol to make a personal insect repellant. Very useful around here in Summer.

I enjoyed spending a birthday voucher at the garden shop!

My girls are such pretty gardeners!

The garden shed is getting an overhaul today as well, which is just as well because for the almost twelve months that we have been here, it has become a dumping ground for things we aren't really sure what to do with. Time to make some decisions! We will be building a potting bench and setting up the mini-greenhouse so that as soon as the frosts disappear, we can begin propagating seeds for spring planting. I'm collecting all of our toilet rolls in readiness - the seeds grow nicely in them with some potting mix and the toilet roll can be planted directly into the ground when the time comes.

The embarrassingly messy garden shed pre-clean.

We are nearly done, just the shelves to build.

Our growing array of deciduous fruit trees will be planted this week, and the front yard will begin to take shape as the orchard. We will be planting nasturtiums all around the base of the fruit trees to deter common pests and bring in beneficial insects (also, it just looks pretty!) We will plant all the citrus trees in Spring. I can't wait for the apple and pear trees to begin blossoming.

Nasturtium flowers.

 Yesterday, after spending the morning in the garden, I went to a lovely friend's house to help her prepare cupcakes for a kitchen tea while Nath helped her husband change his brake pads and discs. Afterwards, we shared a meal together. A few weekends ago, the same friends came and helped us for a whole day build our fence around the vegie beds and lay out some of the beds. I am loving building great friendships with people who have similar goals to live more simply and make do with what we have, sharing skills and resources and encouraging each other along the way. It doesn't matter if our reasons are to save money, improve our health, reduce chemical load or be gentler on the environment. It's a little like a train; if you are pulling one of those carriages, the others will come along, too. It's exciting to share ideas and learn from each other, no matter which of those values is our 'main motivator'.

Given that Nath only has nine working days left (yay!), I have ramped up the money-saving activities around here. Yesterday I made a lavender foaming hand wash and put some citrus peels in to steep in white vinegar, which after two weeks will become a citrus spray-and-wipe-style cleaner. I was so pleased with how the hand cleaner turned out, I wanted to share the 'recipe' with you.

Using recycled jars - not as pretty but definitely cheap!

In a small saucepan half filled with water, I grated some Velvet soap. I used a leftover piece from making laundry liquid, it probably would have been about a quarter of a bar. I stirred it over medium heat until the soap was dissolved, then strained the mixture through a sieve into a bowl and left it to cool.

When it's cooled down, this liquid solidifies into a jelly-like substance. To this I added a splash of lavender oil (available in the cleaning aisle of the supermarket) and about a cup of water. I poured it all into a blender and 'jooshed' it for a minute or so, until all blended.

I poured mine into a foaming dispenser I have from a previous shop-bought hand soap, and had enough left over for three more refills. You could use any pump dispenser but the foaming ones use less than regular pump ones. All up, it would have cost me only a few cents and feels lovely on my hands.

I hope you are all having a lovely, productive weekend, and if you have any more frugal, DIY tips, I would love to hear them!

Backyards, Bees, Buttons and Having Husbo At Home!

This little creative space of mine has been so neglected lately. There is no very good reason for that, just the days slipping so quickly past us and a dodgy camera cord (blogging without photos seems a little boring!)

I guess the big news for us is that Nath finishes full time work on the 19th of this month, and then only has two weeks of part-time work until he is done for good! This is a hugely exciting change for us, as it will free up so much time for us to work together on our goals and family values, work in the garden, produce more of our food from home and enjoy our children growing up. Nath and I will both be studying - Nath will completing his Masters in Mental Health Science, and I will be commencing a new Bachelor course in Sustainability. We will be living on Austudy and Family Tax benefits and making do with what we have. It will be tough, but we have been doing a lot to prepare and we feel we are up to the challenge!

One of the biggest things we have been working on is transforming our backyard from an expanse of resource-thirsty lawn into a landscape capable of producing much of our own food. We have been dipping our toes into the principles of permaculture (and loving the learning around this!) and have created a series of raised, no dig garden beds around mulched garden paths. Most of the materials we used were 'found materials' - horse manure and used straw from a friend's farm, newspaper and cardboard from our local recycling skips, bricks for garden edging from Freecycle, and compost, leaf litter and chicken manure from our own garden. Nath and a good friend built a fence from recycled copper logs, chicken wire and old timber palings from the property's original boundary fence. This fence will (hopefully) keep our free-ranging chickens out of the food producing section of our garden, allowing them access to the orchard and most other parts of the yard.

Before we began, after killing most of the grass off over summer.

Starting the paths with free mulch from the local tip.

Two of the beds built up and waiting to compost down.

Two gorgeous garden helpers.

One side of the garden, done.

Mum watering in the mulch on the newest bed.

Backyard landscaping complete, ready for planting.

Our new fire pit.

Nath building the fence with some 'helpers'.

So cheap and so rustic!

 Speaking of chickens, our chooks are all co-residing happily in the big pen at the back now, free-ranging during the day, and the temporary pen has been dismantled in readiness for the arrival of our mama goat and her baby. We culled all of the roosters except one, and he has taken to his role of flock caretaker with relish. We are being rewarded for our love of these dear creatures with four to six eggs a day.

We are extending our 'livestock', as I have written about before. This week, I ordered our first swarm of bees and a beehive to house them in. We are all very excited about this, especially Eden, who is now a bee 'expert' after spending a term at kindy learning all about them. Hopefully our buzzy friends will be joining us in November. Our mama goat and her yet-to-be-born baby are due here in September.

In other news, I recently took part in a Button Swap that was held over at lovely Taz's blog Butter and Buntings. My swap partner is not a blogger, so I can't link to her, but she perhaps should be! She is a beautifully creative person, and the sister of a very beautiful friend of mine, and I would like to share with you some of the loveliness she put into my bundle of buttons. (I'm afraid my return parcel wasn't nearly as pretty or creative, so I won't share photos of that!)

So beautifully packaged.

So many buttons! All stitched onto vintage-inspired card.

I absolutely love these wooden buttons! So cute!

My button collection has never looked so pretty!

Thanks, Taz, for the fantastic swap, and thanks, Erin for my beautiful buttons!