Introducing Jamie

Part two of my posts introducing my kids. Today I'm talking about our second born twin, Jamie. The youngest, but always just a smidge bigger and usually the first to do things.



Here's Jamie!

Jamie's favourite colour is blue.

Jamie loves bats and has a collection if cuddly bats on his bed.

Jamie is a mini mathematician and an avid reader. His favourite books are the Rangers Apprentice series, the Beast Quest series, Zac Power books, Deltora Quest and other books by Emily Rodda, and "Father Christmas- the naked truth". He also enjoys reading Dmag magazine and instruction manuals for Wii games!

Even as tiny tackers Jamie (and Lachie) loved to read.  That's Jamie on the right.

Jamie loves building Hero Factory and often plays 'Hero Factory pretend' with his brother. In fact, he loves lots if 'pretend games' using his favourite characters. And he is a bit of a fanatic about games on the wii and DS.

Jamie tells me he used to like wheat bix and corn flakes for breakfast, but now that we have rubbish free breakfasts, he enjoys toast with butter or plum jam. And when asked what I should cook for snacks, Jamie's favourite request is ANZAC slice.

Jamie strawberry picking.

Jamie is quite competitive and enjoys beating us all at games like chess, monopoly, cluedo and cards.

When he grows up, Jamie wants to own a shop in a 3-4 storey building with lots of shops in it selling all sorts if stuff. He plans to live fairly close to home, and says he'll always have somewhere for his brother to stay when he comes home from his travels.

Jamie (in my sunnies) on the train home from Melbourne last Christmas.

About our green and self sufficient journey, Jamie says "I think that being green has totally improved my life - I love how we live and I love what I get as homemade gifts (especially the bookmark Lachie gave me).".

"I love all our animals. I think my mum is the greatest and my dad is even with her. I don't know how much I love my brother because I think my family is the best." {his words - I promise!}

You can read more of Jamie's thought on his blog 'The best bat in the world'.

Introducing Lachie

My kids have started writing their own blogs at school, and have been on and on at me to link to them here. So I thought I'd write some things about each of them in turn and share their blogs too.

My boys are identical twins, Lachlan is the older of the two by 12 minutes, so we'll start with him.

Lachie on a recent visit to the skate park.

Lachlan likes to be called Lachie, he's not too fond of his middle name, Thomas.

Lachie is the slowest eater in the house - it drives me crazy!  But he is also the clown.  The first to make a joke, laugh at something or do something crazy.

Lachie loves cats. He used to tell us he was a cat and frequently speak 'cat language'. He invented his own superhero 'Catbat' who he used to pretend to be often. He still has a lot of cat soft toys, and his own real cat called Pouncy.

Even as a toddler, Lachie loved cats!

Lachie's favourite colour is yellow.


Lachie with his own cat, Pouncy.

Lachie's favourite lunchbox food is a plain homemade roll (not even a cut), a cut up apple and chocolate or vanilla cake. His favourite dinner is lasagne but he says he can't choose a favourite dessert because I spoil them with lots of yummy desserts.

Lachie loves to read. He is very proud if being an independent reader, and would read ALL day if we let him! His favourite books are the Beast Quest series, and his non- fiction books, Animal Life and Endangered Earth. He also loves reading KZone magazine, which he has a subscription to.

Lachie climbing up the inside of door frames in our house!
Why?  cos he thought he might try being Donkey Kong.

Lachie loves climbing the big banksia tree in our backyard and is excited that we've moved the trampoline so he can jump out of the tree onto it and then climb into the cubby house we built with and for the kids' four years ago.

When he grows up, Lachie wants to save endangered animals, particularly tigers and all kinds of big cats.

About our families journey to a greener, more self sufficient life, Lachie says "it is a hard way to live because it is hard to get to the goal, but the hardness stops and it is good. {I think I know what he means} If we're more green, it gives nature more of a chance to survive from habitat loss. Our homemade things make really good gifts, and people really enjoy getting them and think they're really different"

Lachie helping to make a garden for growing some food.

"My favourite animals at our house are Pouncy and Cleo. Cleo is our older cat that you probably haven't heard of yet. And I wanted to say Pouncy is a really fun cat to have because we have a bond together. When we sleep together on my bed, I know he will let me pat him and all he ever cares about is sleeping in my bed, playing, catching mice and FOOD!"

You can read Lachie's blog at "Cats eye".

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.

More homemade gifts

We're well into our second year of giving only homemade gifts at our place. Sometimes it feels hard to come up with ideas, but really if is no harder than choosing from the shops. I have a tough time churning out the same things over and over, so my list of things is quite extensive ;).  I'll add in links to patterns etc where possible.  In no particular order - here is the pile of pressies made over the last months (excluding Christmas).


A blackboard painted tin filled with chocolate balls for my step dad.

A crocheted Mario!  (this isn't my one, but the pattern was so good, mine turned out exactly like it)



Birthstone nest necklaces.  For a girlfriend, me and my mum.  The one for mum includes all of her kids birthstones in the nest, and the gradkids beside the nest.

oops - sideways photo!  These are stretchies in an upcycled bag.  Made for a girl's 7th birthday.  She loved these so much, they will be a staple for girls and some boys this year!

A cute heart box from a cereal container.......

Inside which was a crocheted cupcake pincushion with pin sprinkles :)

A retro-ruffled apron for my sister-in-law

A sweet heart as a thank you for having us gift.

More crocheted dishcloths as housewarming gifts.

The leg warmers for my teenage sister's birthday

oops!  forgot to take a photo of the inside gift!  It was a slouchy crocheted beanie with a giant flower and wrapped with a matching mini flower for a girlfriend.

A tangled happy crocheted wand for a 5th birthday.

 

A bath set for a 40th - a homemade soap, some tub tea bags (from homegrown herbs) and a jar of bath salts in a vintage doily decorated jar.

Typically, I failed to take photos of some of the gifts I made, so add to this list:

• A duct tape wallet for a 7 year old boy
• Fabric luggage tags for my father in law
• Felted wool slippers for a grandparents birthday
• A crocheted beanie each for my hubby and my brother

For more of my homemade gifts, check out this post and this one on Christmas presents.

Have you been making homemade gifts?  Would love you to share what you've been making - I'm sure I'll run out of inspiration and ideas eventually :)

The Good Life

It seems that we've crossed some cultural line. We've crossed over from being just a regular little family, to one who does all manner of strange things - chooks, a veggie patch and a solar hot water system was normal for a home, but a waterless toilet, a massive investment in solar panels, growing chickens to eat and getting a milking goat seems to have taken us over the line. People seem to enjoy watching the progress ( are they waiting for us to fail?), but there is a definite air of "better you than us" or "it's a phase" about them.

On several occasions, usually after asking us how much land we've got (a regular 1/4 acre block), people have asked us "Have you seen the show 'The Good Life'?" Stu and I have seen odds and ends of the show. Reruns on the ABC of course ( the show ran its full course before we were born), but we'd never sat down to watch it and since there is rarely anything good on tv these days, we decided it was worth the effort to track it down.

We started watching it last week with our kids. I was concerned that the out of date humour (the episode entitled "The weaker sex" for example) would make it not worth watching for the kids, but they LOVE it and we have to pause the show frequently and wait for them to get over their uncontrollable giggles so we can hear the dialogue!

Stu and I have found the pace in which the Goods change their lifestyle amusing. It is tv of course, but in 2 days, they went from a regular couple (he working, she at home) with nothing in their backyard, to them both being home, their entire yard turned over to veggie garden and the proud owners of 12 chickens and a goat! They get pigs in episode 4. If only change really happened that fast!

We can see why people keep asking us if we've seen the show, and that's ok with me. They Good's are a couple (albeit a tv couple) that I'm happy to be compared to. And in the meantime, I'm thoroughly enjoying some light and funny tv that comes with the bonus of gorgeous 70s styling ( is it odd that I long for Barbara Good's clothes?).

If you haven't seen it, or haven't watched it for a long time, it's definitely worth tracking down. Our library had the DVDs.

This image was from the episode in which they were desperately trying to turn their goat milk into butter. They failed of course, my goaty research tells me that due to the natural homogenisation of goats milk, you can only make butter if you first separate the cream from the milk with a (expensive) cream separator. I tried to tell them (husband yelling at the umpires while watching footy on tv style), but 40 years and different continents (oh and the tv vs real life thing) didn't help.

Life here

It's occurred to me that I haven't posted anything in some time. It's not that I don't have anything to say, just finding the time is hard. So while my chai brews, the bread rises and the rain falls down, I'm taking time for an update.

Belly dance camp is finally nearly here. There has been a lot of work involved - room allocations, workshop allocations, last minute cancellations and bookings, tshirts to be printed, stalls to arrange, food to decide on and soon to be cooked, performances to organise and my own students readying themselves for performing. Not to mention preparing my family and home for a weekend without me. But I'm so excited and really looking forward to a weekend full of dancing, girly fun and all that goes with it. I'm feeling extremely proud of our little camp, which is not only great for me, but which is sold out and all of the other 49 women coming are also excited.

On the home front, the rains have finally come and I'm loving listening to water run into the tanks and watching my garden get a good drink. We started to put up the fence around what Stu calls 'Tracey's paddock' just before it really started, so I had a post to hang my rain gauge on. It's been fun to see it begin to fill up.

Mother's Day saw us back out there fencing. It's not a huge fence, but the idea is that it will keep stray critters (and passers by) out of my vegie garden/orchard and allow the ducks to free range in there without having them wondering out of our yard and onto my verandah where they get into the wheat and poop everwhere. Working out there on Mother's Day was wonderful. I was covered in mud and aching from the work, but my kids came out to help and prepared morning tea for us too. It was just the kind of Mother's Day I like.

Speaking of the kids, a couple of weeks ago, we decided we needed a family hobby. Something we could do together, all enjoy, that was a little bit healthy, not too expensive and that was away from home. We decided on bush walking. That first day we visited Tower Hill, a local state park. We walked for about 2 hours and loved it. This weekend, we visited Mt Eccles national park. We didn't walk as long or far as we had somewhere to be, but we all enjoyed exploring the forest and chatted happily about plans to go camping there sometime soon. We now have a list of places we want to visit and something we all get excited about for weekends.

At home again and our thoughts seem to be always drawn back to power. After much delay (and finally a very grumpy email sent to the power company by me) we are finally set up to be paid for the excess power our solar panels produce and put into the grid. We received a bill with our first (tiny as it had only been a week) credit for power produced! It's very exciting, even though its now winter and so we'll be using much more than we produce.

The other thing happening that makes us keep thinking of power is that our heater died. Our home came with ceiling ducted electric, reverse cycle heating. It's never been great, but this year it decided to simply blow out cold air. We could get it fixed, but since we're not happy with the system, it hardly seems worth it. So now we're trying to decide what heater/s to invest in, and in the meantime, using room heaters and only heating the room we're using. We're restricted to using only electric heaters, and don't have a lot of wall space, so the decision is challenging, and we don't want to rush in. Any advice? Other than use warm clothes and hot water bottles... We're already doing that!

We went out for a friends birthday on Saturday night. It was a fun night with beautiful food. It was the first time I'd seen her in a while, so we had a birthday present exchange. I gave her a necklace I'd made, and she gave me a terrific cookbook - one I'd borrowed from the library before and had thought would work well in my kitchen. I'm making the pea and ham soup recipe from it tonight and have used the handy book marks to mark some more recipes to try.

Well, my morning break is over and I have a list of jobs to do, so I'll apologise for this iPod written blog post (ie. no formatting) and get on with my day. Hope your day is a happy one.

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!