Onwards with my 100 things list...

I was reflecting on the list again the other night and realised I have actually made more moves towards completing a few of the things - even though I haven't actively been doing that since my original audit. It seems because my awareness is heightened that I have been working on them anyway.

13. Take an introduction to permaculture class, or read up on permaculture. Toby Hemenway's book _Gaia's Garden:An Introduction to Home-Scale Permaculture_ is an excellent start. Begin replacing ornamental plants with edibles that are also beautiful. Ah yes, goodbye ornamentals in the front garden to make way for tomatoes and goodbye 2m diameter circle of grass for herb spiral...my Friday group will be hosting many speakers who are experienced in permaculture gardening and other useful skills.

21. Encourage useful plant volunteers, and learn to propagate more plants by cuttings, layering and grafting. Plant your extras, or share them with neighbors and friends. Sadly my two herb cuttings I took didn't take - could have been lack of attention though (ie water!). (Anoushka, how did your cutting take? Have Melanie's wise words proven true?)

54. Sometimes you get more by giving things away than by selling them. Do you have something you don't need? Extra produce? Spare time? Give extra tomatoes to a neighbor, offer spare items to friends, go over and help out someone who could use it. Good deeds mostly return to us. Well, kids clothes seem to be the only things we are in on at the moment - I have a friend I give Nathan's old clothes to, she in turn sometimes buys bulk clothes second hand which are the size for Nathan and she knows she will get it back one day (albeit in slightly more worn condition).

85. If you have to choose between being close to family and community and being close to work, choose work only if you believe your job is quite stable in the long term. Yay, Simon has now secured a job locally! Stability long term - well no worse than what he was doing before if not more stable.

OK, so not too many things achieved, but it was good rereading the list to refocus on a few easy things that can be knocked off while keeping in mind the bigger long term goals.

While out and about...

Ha! Well I wrote a big long waffley post about our history of creating community (or lack of rather) over the past 7yrs of living in this town - but hit the delete key.

Despite having a very busy social life full of "playdates" with friends of mine and Nathan's (Danielle's yet to have any of her own), it has never felt like I've created much of a community out of that for some reason (all good friends and I love having them as a part of our lives). However, while out today running a few errands (paying dog registration, going to the organic shop and in a shop exchanging an item) we bumped into someone we knew at each of those places. And it wasn't till later that I realised they were all new people in our lives from the past 3mths under completely different circumstances - and that felt really cool! One couple who we saw in the organic shop I just met last Friday at the meeting about the community garden, a friend who I met off the internet (a parenting message board)and recently moved to this town has just started working and we bumped into her while paying our dog registration, and in the shop I was exchanging an item was the mum of a boy we met at a recent birthday party who Nathan has played with and we are catching up again with. What was so cool is the fact that if this had been 3mths ago, this afternoon's trip out for 1hr would have been just *us 3* going about our errands in a faceless society, yet today, everywhere we walked we met friends.

Add this on to yesterday at playcentre (where we have been going for 2mths) I got speaking to a mum who I found we seemed to have a lot in common with - so I have now made my first playcentre friend and we have extended that out beyond that group.

Sorry for the dribbly post - just a little bit of *feel good* going on...

Check these out...

You can sooooo tell I'm new to all of this LOL! Here are my seedlings ready for pricking out and putting into little pots to continue growing before transplanting into the garden. A few still haven't germinated, so will leave them a few more days before deciding what to do. I have decided to use some old egg cartons for the next lot and see if that idea works OK as well since I have a massive lot to get going for my Spring planting (unless I decide to buy the supermarket seedlings and get a dozen plants for a few dollars...doesn't really follow my sustainable living dream, but hey, I'm working through the process at least).

I remembered reading in one book that toilet roll tubes could be used to put the seedlings into and planting the entire thing straight into the ground and letting them decompose in there while protecting the plants from shock. So, fortunately I'm a bit slack at putting the used rolls out into the recycling, and found a wee stash I could trial the idea on. Not sure if I filled the tubes up with enough soil, but hey, I'm sure they will be OK. I was kind of surprised to find the stems of the seedlings very fragile and accidentally put my finger nail through a couple as I picked them up (despite trying to grasp only the leaves).

Face-to-face community

Yippee! Remember this post? Well a friend called up after reading the same newspaper article as I did and emailed me info on what the group plan to achieve. They are running weekly planning and information evenings and so tonight we went along to meet some of the other members, watched the 2nd half of a documentary on peak oil called "What a way to go: Life at the end of Empire" and had a discussion afterwards. Although the group is primarily being set up to get a community garden running I will only attend the Friday night meeting to glean information and network with like minded people. It would be interesting to see the garden in action, but realistically it is too far away to put in the time (only 15mins in the car, but still, not ideal). I am very excited about the speakers that will be coming along to the meetings though and there are apparently a few people from around my area who pop along sometimes, so that will be good too.

A mixed bag...

Funny how all my achievements here seem to happen on weekends! Simon works all week while I'm here planning our weekends to be full of action (haha) and for using his man-strength - come Saturday morning and Bam! - off outside he goes...

* More chopping of firewood for storage for next winter

* Chickens moved on to their next plot - it was neat to see that the area they've been on for the past 2 wks is stripped bare of greenery and scratched up. They were excited to be moved on to get some fresh weeds to hook into. I finally sorted myself for an automatic water feeder - they have been running through the tray I had out for them in their excitement when we go down to feed them. I am wondering if one is actually a *him* with the very loud squwarking I've been hearing (someone tell me this is normal!), so hopefully no early morning crowing...

* This morning I put the propogator on my bed in the sun and covered it with a blanket and it went from about 4 seeds popping through the surface to about 12 of them in about 4hrs.

* I bought some seed potatoes, so will set those out in a week or so

* This afternoon in between rain showers while Danielle slept, Nathan and I measured out a 2m diametre circle on the front lawn using a stake and string (see picture below where it will be, roughly to the right of the outdoor table and chairs). I managed to cut it around with the spade before the rain hit, this marks the outline for my herb garden. Just need to dig it out and mix in some compost. I plan on using some large pumice we collected from Lake Taupo a few years ago to edge it and make it decorative. Will maybe even get the kids to paint some of them and stick bits of paua or glass beads onto them.

* And last, but not least - Simon got to go out for a windsurf this afternoon...I really hope the wind holds up for him.

Right, the rain has cleared, so back outside for digging out that circle.

Sometimes it feels like a solo-journey

Climate change...
Oil depletion...
Sustainable living...
Vegetable gardens...

So I was pleasantly surprised this evening when I opened up the local rag to discover a short article about a group planning on setting up a community vege garden.

"The move was seen as a local response to the increasing cost and impending depletion of petroleum, and the impact of global warming and climate change, said the organisers".

Even though they are the next town up from us, it's nice to know we're in company. If it weren't for my various internet pals and communities I'd feel quite isolated on this path we're travelling. However, face-to-face (lol Rach) communities are *definitely* worth developing.

Exciting!

Well the time has come to plant my seeds! I want to grow fairly advanced seedlings before planting out, and being completely green at this thought I'd start to germinate a few seeds now and see how they go and will do more in a few weeks time as a comparison.

I ended up buying myself a propagator - I wasn't going to, but was finding myself in a stuck place with knowing what to do next. I was pleased to find one that was manufactured about 15mins north of us so it hadn't travelled far to get to our local shops.

So, I have 6 different vegetables on the go and the propagator is sitting in Nathan's bedroom up on his stand alone wardrobe LOL. His room gets all day sun, so gets a nice warmth in there without being too hot (likely chance at the moment anyway!).

A pity post

Nah, not really. But I've found muscles in my arms, palms and side of my ribs that I didn't know I had! Obviously I've not done any *digging* before! Hehe. Today I dug out (with Nathan's help, and a very committed worker he was too) a foot deep trench along the front garden bed full of sand (at least it was super easy and basically only needed scooping out, no hard core strength required) and filled it back in with layers of compost and sand. I will add a few other bits to it (it hasn't been filled up to the concrete yet) and mix them in over the next few weeks.

Nathan kept wondering if the garden *beds* were going to give the plants a nice comfy place to sleep at night (despite my best intentions to explain it)...although, he's not too far wrong really...

A fairly ho-hum day...

Simon went off today with a friend to go and collect some free-for-the-taking firewood from a forest of trees that need clearing to make way for native trees on a friends orchard - so he was gone for the day.

Myself and the kids had a pretty low-key day starting off making our way down to feed the chickens over the frost covered ground, then spent some time raking up leaves and twigs into mulch piles.

While Danielle napped, Nathan and I cleaned the outside windows (after the disaster from a few weeks back when the windows got completely mud splattered) - yes I've just sat here for 2wks peering out windows without seeing much! Nathan cleaned his playhouse...I think.

Then we moved on to clearing and digging up a garden which runs along the front of our house. It just had boring ground cover plants in it and I plan on putting our tomatoes and sunflowers in there in a few months, so wanted to get it all prepped. Next mission is to add a heap of compost and manure since it's basically all sand. Last years tomatoes that I put in there just didn't get the nutrients they needed compared to the ones in the square foot garden and it's special mix.

Tomorrow's list of outdoor chores is pretty long. I suggested to Simon that he might need to take a few leave days from work sometime soon and have a few long weekends to try and knock off some of the list. Guess he needs a windsurfing day soon!

More Library Books!

I'm on a roll...

I really needed to find a book on caring for chickens, yeah, I hear you say I should have already done this. Well I was not completely remiss, I have done a lot of online research, but decided it would be nice to get a more complete book of information. And I had a reserved book to pick up that I'd had them order a while back on traditional diet and food preparation.

Backyard Poultry by Glenys O'Byrne
The New Zealand Gardening Calendar a month by month guide
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
Backyard Self Sufficiency by Jackie French

I'm still enjoying my The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency by John Seymour

Bloggers for Positive Global Change

Melanie over at Bean Sprouts nominated me for the Bloggers for Positive Global Change. Thanks Melanie!

The award is the brain child of Climate Of Our Future to commemorate blogger's efforts around the world to share their knowledge, thoughts and inspirations in making this a better, healthier, more sustainable world.

I am only going to nominate a few blogs, most of my other regular stop-offs are ones already mentioned and of course Melanie's place.

1. Anoushka at Sad Little Garden who is really our NZEcoWarrior - talks about a range of global issues.

2/ Sara at Walk Slowly, Live Wildly - Sara and her family are going to be travelling around America for a year in their converted RV which runs on straight vegetable oil on her Live Lightly: Spread the Love Tour.

Fellow Positive Global Change Award recipients, it’s easy to participate in this meme. At minimum, you can proudly display the BPGC badge( Click here for the image url )on your blog and bask in the glow of our collective good will. If you are sharing the kudos, however, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. The participation rules are simple:

1. When you get tagged, write a post with links to up to 5 blogs that you think are trying to change the world in a positive way
2. In your post, make sure you link back to this post to so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Leave a comment or message for the bloggers you’re tagging, so they know they’re now part of the meme.
4. Optional: Proudly display the “Bloggers For Positive Global Change” award badge with a link to the post that you write up.

Meet the girls!

Well we finally picked them up yesterday afternoon. They travelled home in a sack, but were quiet all the way and took a bit of coaxing out at the other end.

They seemed to settle in right away and pecked away at the abundant weeds, I threw in some extra chickweed growing nearby and gave them some water with added garlic, apple cider vinegar as per the sellers suggestions for worming. She also gave me some olive branches to boil up into a tea and give them some every day for a week since one of them had a bit of a croaky voice from a suspected cold.

They are all cross-breeds - but two of them have silky in them and the other I'm not sure. So we discussed on the way home what their names should be and decided on:

The black one is called Moon
The beige one is called Mouse (named by Nathan)
The white one is called Milly


Two of them found the sheltered area pretty quickly and jumped up onto the perches and then proceeded to jump on top of the laying box which didn't have a lid, so guess it was nice for them to cling onto and they snuggled down closely for the night since it was just getting dark. The other poor wee one (Milly) was wandering around outside getting a bit stressed out wondering where her buddies had gone and kept flying up the sides of the coop. So I had to go in and carry her over to the housed area. Unfortunately she decided to stay sitting on the cold grass underneath but was apparently fine and when I got up this morning they were already busy trotting around.

Simon needed to add a door to the coop since yesterday was a real rush job just to get all the wire on before we needed to go and pick them up. Then this evening he went and added a flared out piece of wire around the outside to deter any dogs/cats/rats/ferrets etc from trying to break in.

Here's just a shot looking from down the bottom of the garden where the chickens are up to the house. And one of Nathan climbing the pear tree looking pretty pleased with himself.

Bok, Bok!

Woohoo, I finally found myself some bantams! I have been waiting for a seller on Trade Me to relist more since they live local and I've not found any others advertised anywhere. I was just starting to think I was needing to get full size chickens and then be sneaky around the bylaw, but not anymore!

So, better get onto finishing off that chicken coop. Simon finished the framework yesterday, so now the wire and tarp just needs attaching, make the perch and laying box.

How very domestic of me...haha

After reading my new library book on food storage before bed last night, I suddenly (at about 3am!) remembered (dreamed?) that I had a bag of plums in my freezer for doing *something* with.

Recipe #1 - Spicy plum sauce

So, today I made my first real sauce/chutney for storage. For some reason, until now, the thought of gathering old jars, cleaning, sterilising etc etc has *really* put me off wanting to do something like this. But, after a bit of reading of recipes it really was not all that hard!

I found two recipes that seemed to be what I wanted, but I had barely any of the ingredients to make either one. So I ended up making a compromise between the two recipes and came up with my own. It was very tasty.

1-1.5 kg plums
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 large onion finely chopped
2 tsp chilli powder
4 cloves garlic
1 tsp fresh ginger
1 T garam masala
1 tsp salt
1.5 cups soft brown sugar

Wash and put whole plums into a large pot and cover with the vinegar. Heat on low while the rest of the ingredients are being prepared. Chop up onion and add to the plums along with the garam masala, chilli, garlic and ginger. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20-30mins until the plums disintegrate. Add the salt and brown sugar, bring back to the boil. Turn off and let sit for 15mins. Strain through a large seive. Boil up clean jars and their lids and set to drain. Fill the hot jars with the sauce right up to the top, immediately put lid on.

Recipe #2 - Chicken Stock

We had a roast chicken for dinner, so decided to make some chicken stock using the left over carcass. I popped the carcass, chopped onion, carrot, celery, parsley into the crockpot, covered with water and will leave it on high for 5hrs. Strain and put into containers for freezing.