Refocusing, reassessing, re-energizing...

So here I am, cruising along, doing what I do, living my life in the moment, day by day. Occasionally getting bogged down with the doom and gloom but mostly feeling the amazement and wonder at the simple pleasures in my life.

But for whatever reason, I get a jolt, a reality check - it'll throw me, it'll stop me in my tracks, it'll immobilise me.

Then I move into the analytical stage - I think, I wonder, I rationalise, I reassess.

Then I begin to take action again - I research, I re-energize and find motivational articles or quotes, I move on and look onwards and upwards. I once again know I am on the right track for our family and fully embrace it.

Being one who has tended to make alternative choices in so many parts of life (in particular since I've become a parent), I'm used to going against the current, sometimes defending my choices and other times putting my head down to avoid the attention.

I recently came across an old post of mine right back from my early days of blogging entitled Voluntary Simplicity. It's an interesting and such a diverse topic that means so many different things to everyone. I also wonder about how I get to make that privileged choice when so many in the world don't.

I wanted to re-post an excerpt from the book called The Lilypad: 7 steps to the simple life I linked to in the post as it summed up what Simple Living means to me. But I've just noticed that it's no longer available. From what I recall though - the author's idea of living simply is not driven from a place of fear, nor all about penny-pinching but from finding enjoyment and satisfaction in being free from consumerism, treading lightly on the earth, enjoying the moment and making your home and environment your sanctuary.

I still also really like and identify with The Worsted Witch's post and the definition she writes about.

So, a post made up of random ponderings, but I find it quite empowering to go through this sort of process periodically and come out the other side stronger.

Challenge update #6

Crikey, with all the rain that's happening lately, it's a wonder I've been motivated to do anything. So, on with the food independence challenge.

Let's see, this week we...

Learnt a new skill and made butter.

I cooked a new meal tonight using some minced sheep I had in the freezer (a family friend culled some wild-organic sheep roaming the back of his property about 6mths ago and we had two sheep in our freezer. However, I couldn't stomach the mince the first time I tried it, but tonight decided to have another go). So made a meatloaf using rice, grated carrot, diced onion, mince, herbs, soya sauce, tomato sauce and an egg. It was tasty and the kids liked it. I will try it again but will add an extra egg since it didn't bind together. A nice easy and cheap meal though. Other meals included homemade vegetarian pizza,

Have put my request in for a 2nd lot of meat for the freezer (I can't call them lamb since they're not, but they are only a bit older than that so not mutton either). We still stick with 2 meat meals a week though.

I've been using my woodburner cooktop to boil pots of veges/rice and water for cups of tea since a cold snap's coming through and meaning the fire's been on more than usual during the day.

I've cut back to 4 cups of tea a day pretty much permanently now - still working on taking it back further though - just sooooo hard with this cold weather when I desire the comfort that my familiar cup of tea brings!

Adding another skill to the list

So, maybe not a life-saving skill, but it's something I've wanted to try out and it was a fun thing to do with the kids today. We finished reading Heidi last week, and since then, Nathan had planned out a little lunch as Heidi would have eaten and was described many times over in the book. So we made bread, bought some goat's milk and we decided to make our own butter as well. It was amazing to see it suddenly change and the buttermilk literally pouring out from the solids.

Brrrrr....

It was a bit chilly today along with the all-day rain.

So there I was wandering off about 11am to layer up further to resist lighting the fire. To my trousers I added some thermal leggings, to the woollen skivvy I added a polar fleece jacket, to the wool socks I added woollen slippers. I was cold.

(certainly not out to win any fashion award though lol)

But, there really was no point in lighting the fire when I had a child like this in the house...

He did actually have a polar fleece top on. But TOOK.IT.OFF.

Challenge update #5

I bought some seeds from ecoseeds last night in hopes of being able to start seed-saving (need to do some reading up on that - I'm sure I have a book or two (or 3 or 4) that has instructions for doing this.

I have some more garlic cloves to pop in the ground with it being winter solstice (well, yesterday actually, but we were out of the house from 10am-7pm so not a lot of time to do that!).

More rain has arrived today to water my garden - just as I was thinking yesterday that it was getting a bit dry down there again (and I don't have my roof water feeding into the water trough this time of year since it doesn't get used often enough and gets all gross and slimy).

Have attended another Transition Towns meeting - plenty of chit chat about food production - a shame I will miss the next workshop day in a few weeks which is really going to focus on food.

Have made a few more face-to-face connections with people I can talk about these issues with instead of only relying on the internet (as much as I appreciate my blog-mates where I gather energy , knowledge and a sense of belonging!)

A little more unease...

Random, but connected musings...

We don't buy any of the big newspapers in the this house and the TV isn't on during the day until after 8pm (aside from when the kids want to watch a DVD) so I don't see any news items.

A few months back though I changed my home page to a NZ news website just to keep in touch with what's going on in NZ and the world.

So aside from reading our little local paper a few times a week I really wasn't getting exposure to any 'bigger' issues out there unless I spotted a discussion on one of the 3-4 message boards I browse (which has actually kept me plenty in touch).

However, in the past few weeks our little local paper has become a source of the odd doom and gloom articles...local real estate companies merging or shutting shop, local builders no longer getting new house buiding business (but moving more into renovations), local petrol stations closing down, freighting companies not able to pass on the cost of the rises to their customers who were refusing to pay...

At my transition towns meeting the other night we were given a list of 3 questions to discuss with someone we didn't know. As we chatted, the guy I was talking to was telling me how the roads are getting quieter during his car commute into town as people take the trains, this coincided with spotting an article earlier that week in the local paper about train commuter numbers having increased dramatically where train carriages are stretched to maximum capapcity and now ticket prices are rising.

The news website I have been reading has many stories of shopping centres and large businesses up for sale and friends I was speaking to yesterday who own a car mechanical shop have been very quiet in the past 3wks (perhaps in line with the leap to petrol going over $2 a litre?)...

So what do I do??

I jump online and spend $100 on non-hybrid seeds.

Neighbourly relations...

Well, we've been in our home here for 5.5yrs. In that time we have not gotten to *really* know our neighbours on either side. I've had little chit chats with the woman on one side of us over the fence at various times and she became inspired to plant out a garden last spring.

Our neighbour on the other side unfortunately has been a rough ride and most recently ended in him verbally abusing my dog with language that really was not appropriate for my children's ears since we were doing some gardening at the time behind our hedge. I called him out on the language (much to his surprise I'm sure since he couldn't see me) and received a bit of mocking in exchange which I did not get drawn into - but felt really stink over the whole incident.

A few weeks later he approached Simon at his work and asked to purchase some of our old roofing iron off us - I took this as an olive branch.

Since that time I haven't seen him, so no chance to say hi or wave (previously I've been outright ignored).

BUT, tonight, as I was sitting here reading over Casaubon's Book 100 Things you Can do For Peak Oil list (slightly different to previously posted lists) I had the idea to raise some extra seedlings in Spring and take each of my neighbours a little pot of various plants. I'm not into baking or cooking, and I felt that this would be one way to achieve several objectives by getting their gardens started off for the new season - and a means of trying to mend any remaining rifts that might be there.

Challenge #4

1. Plant something. Today I repotted my first lot of seedlings (with Danielle's help) out of the propogator into potting mix and they are now sitting out on my covered over porch away from any frosts to grow bigger before popping into the garden.

2. Harvest something. Just more silverbeet, herbs and eggs!

3. Preserve something. Not preserving as such, but at playcentre last week someone had left a bay leaf tree branch for people to help themselves (is that even how it would be described?) - so I grabbed a small branch off with leaves to bring home and dry. I didn't even realise bay leaves came from a tree (not that I've ever had any to use, only picked them out of dishes that someone else has cooked!).

4. Prep something. Have moved the chickens over again, so I now have two sunny plots to put my seedlings when they're big enough.

The shade structure I wrote about last week has been built, so I look forward to finding some fruit vines to put against it in spring.

5. Cook something new. Some old recipes here again this week! I am about to type up a list of our favourites for a friend though to share with her some new recipes.

6. Manage your reserves. Nothing new foodwise.

7. Work on local food systems. I did receive a link for building community though. It is a site where you can log any skills, knowledge, tools or land that you are happy to share with your community. It is a way of breaking away from needing to trade using money and getting to know the people around you. I was the first to join in my town, but since sending out an email, several more have joined (and they weren't people who I sent it to, but I know them).

Today we took our new bike trailer out on its first ride down to the shopping centre. It was a real conversation starter lol. People commented and struck up conversation along the way. We took a lovely bike route (actually all farmland with a decent path) which meant we only travelled a very small distance on the roads and it was a very busy thoroughfare full of walkers and cyclists. The kids enjoyed the ride, although Nathan is really too big for it (or maybe he felt squished because his sister fell asleep against his shoulder and he had to put his arm around her to stop her slumping around). Later on, Simon wanted to pop down to the local shops, so he towed Danielle and Nathan rode his bike. So I had 4 carless days this week!

Do we or don't we?

Argh! It's such a dilemma!

I've gotta work this through in my head.

~Nathan is 5 and can ride his bike on a 10km round trip.
~We live in a smallish town and have the ability to ride on a grassy bike track for the majority of the ride where there are only a couple road crossings (small town stuff lol).
~Trailer can take up to 45kg - my kids together currently weigh 35kg.
~Without kids in the trailer, it would carry two large grocery boxes for our fortnight's shopping
~Danielle won't realistically be riding a bike for the next 2yrs
~This would have life beyond children needing to ride in it
~For longer than 10km trips (like to nannie and grampies etc) it would give us further independence of the car since other bigger trips around here would be 15km round trips
~Dollars not really an issue considering the hike in petrol (12 cents per litre in the past week) - we would make it work (and Simon's work discount always helps ;))

Have I convinced myself yet?

A satisfying few days

I just wanted to share a few pics of how we've been spending our days.

A lot of enjoyment comes from getting outside and just hanging out. Seeing how the day progresses and observing what the kids make and do with the environment around them.

Recent simple pleasures include:

Building a teepee and eating morning tea in the chilly sun

Watching the chickens dust bathing for 1/2 an hour

Building, digging, balancing, climbing...





(this is our shade structure for growing fruit vines as blogged on challenge #3)

Deceptive

I was sitting here earlier on composing a blog post.

Let's set the scene as it was...

Here I am on this cold winter evening, kids snuggled up in bed, sitting in my warm lounge with the fire roaring, sipping a glass of red wine...

This is kind of what I see in my mind.

But in reality...this is what I see in front of me, one child is asleep, one child is giggling her heart out with her dad down in the bedroom, my fire (complete with ugly safety guard) has almost gone out and the room has cooled, the glass is empty...

But life is good!

Kumara Lasagne

As requested by Gypsy in my comments, here is a staple recipe we rely on in the cooler months. Especially when I have a heap of kumara arrive in my weekly vege box.

The history of this recipe...you will note that it is absent of pasta so the title is deceiving! I made this recipe up when we needed to cook gluten free, but I really liked lasagne! I'm sure I could have bought GF lasagne sheets, but I really dislike buying specially GF items. This was also after having a recipe for Moussaka which used kumara along with the eggplant. This recipe has been modified over the years to include a few extra veges along the way.

We had guests for dinner the other night, so I decided to cook this one up, and to make the meal go further I made a loaf of Corn bread.

So, it really was a mixed ethnicity meal - Kiwi, Italian and Mexican lol.

Kumara Lasagne

500-600gm minced beef
2 T oil
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
1 carrot sliced
3-4 leaves of silverbeet including their stalks or other leafy greens chopped
2 x 400gm tinned tomatoes
4-5 medium kumara sliced and boiled till soft but not falling to bits
2 T of available fresh herbs (or a few tsps of dried) eg oregano, thyme, marjoram, basil
Salt and pepper to taste (or a teaspoon of powdered beef stock)

Heat oil and cook onion and garlic, add mince and brown well. Add tomatoes and other veges and cook till the liquid is reduced (add a little flour to thicken if it needs it). Add flavourings to taste.

Make cheese sauce (my recipe is a microwave one)
Melt, 3 T butter
Add, 3 T rice flour (or wheat flour)
Cook for about 20-30secs till the mixture bubbles
Add 1.5 cups of milk and microwave for 2mins, stir and cook for further minute or until thick.
Add 1/2 cup grated cheese.

I don't do multiple layers in this dish, but just put the mince mixture on the bottom of the dish, layer the kumara over the top and pour the cheese sauce over, add more grated cheese and bake for 20mins until heated through.

Corn Bread

I really wanted to find a recipe that was a "real" one without wheat flour in it and here it is.

1 cup cornmeal
1/2 t salt
2 t baking powder
2 eggs
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup sour cream (I have also used plain yoghurt successfully)
1 cup corn kernels
1/2 cup capsicum (optional)
2 cups cheese

Heat oven to 190 degrees. Add dry ingredients in bowl and make a well in the middle. In another bowl beat eggs, oil and sour cream until smooth. Pour into dry ingredients with corn, capsicum and cheese. Bake for 30mins.

Challenge #3

Well, I knew this would be a bit of a challenge being winter, but I am still finding the odd thing to keep me going and motivated.

1. Plant something. Today I sowed some more seeds (broccoli, cauli, cabbage) in another propagator.

2. Harvest something. Just more silverbeet, herbs and eggs!

3. Preserve something. No preservation this week, but am about to crack open a new jar of plum jam from my December bottling.

4. Prep something. I have been eyeing my garden for the best place to put my seedlings when they are big enough. A lot of my garden has lost all sunlight since the shortest day is fast approaching. However, it will also mean that we will be over the hump and the days will be longer. So, I have one plot that gets good sunlight where I can put those seedlings, and there is another plot nearby that will do as a back up for any other plants before the sunlight starts to move back over some of the other plots.

I have also decided to make a shade structure (4th pic down) for the kids to hang out in during the warmer months. The cool thing with it, is I can put different fruiting vines over it - so might give choko's a go and passionfruit. A jasmine vine would be nice too for a lovely fragrance as well as an attractant for birds and insects. So this afternoon I pulled out some of my thicker bamboo rods from under the house, cut them to size and will work on that tomorrow. I plan on putting it on my front lawn where the herb garden is growing. It will fit in nicely there and I can't wait for all the herbs and vines to bush out and become fragrant and magical.

5. Cook something new. We've stuck with our regular meals this week (kumura lasagne and corn bread, borscht, silverbeet and potato soup, vegetable casserole - and I can't even recall our other meals!).

6. Manage your reserves. I checked and turned my pumpkins - after all the rain we've had over the past week one of them was a bit moist on the underside.

7. Work on local food systems. No new work except walking the talk.

The garlic are through!

I noticed the other day that about half of my garlics have sprouted through the surface of the soil.

I love spotting my vegetable plants breaking through the soil. Firstly because it means the process has been successful (well that far anyway lol). But mostly because, if it's the first time I've sown that sort of seed I have no idea what I am going to be finding. The new seedling stage is quite unique and the sight of the little strange shaped leaves or tightly wrapped leaves that gradually unfold are quite delightful. When I spotted my garlics coming up they reminded me of when my corns sprouted - a robust, tight little wrapping of leaves that then quite quickly grow longer and then unfold.

Equally fascinating were my broccoli's when they first came through last year to see the wee heart shaped leaves which only took a "true to shape" look when the second set came through.

Who would have thought a few years back I'd find all this so...thrilling! LOL.

Challenge update #2

Well, here we at the end of another week.

1. Plant something. No new plantings, but I've been keeping an eye on my seedlings. Moving them off my bedroom cabinet in the mornings and putting them on my bed in the sun. They're sprouting well. I'm still deciding whether to put them in tubs on my porch or to put them in my garden (which my chickens seem to be wiping out - cauliflower seems to be particularly tasty to them)

2. Harvest something. Mostly silverbeet and it gets added to all sorts of dishes for the "green" nutrients. I did harvest one small cauliflower as well and a few off shoots of brocolli that keep producing even though the main head has been taken.

3. Preserve something. I finished bottling up my ginger beer and gave half a dozen to my parents.

4. Prep something. I did a little bit more decluttering and taken them down to the hospice shop; I had an empty 3 litre juice bottle that we'd be given, so instead of recycling it as I usually would have I filled it with water and set it aside in the laundry as emergency water;

5. Cook something new. Tonight I will be making Gypsy's Pea soup. My parents came over during the weekend and I served them up some left over Borscht soup - so introduced them to a new recipe and my mum was so impressed she's now making plans for her own beetroots in her garden.

6. Manage your reserves. I checked my pumpkins that are sitting out on my sheltered porch. We have cut back on eating pumpkins (I've kind of had enough!), so is nice to know there is a good little reserve sitting there as well that should take us through to summer providing they last ok. If not I will make up some pumpkin soup and freeze it if I need to use them up. I went through my deep freeze and checked out meat supplies - I haven't needed to buy any from the supermarket for ages and what we have should last a good 2-3mths since we are only eating it a couple of times a week.

7. Work on local food systems. Well, I'm always talking about my garden and compost and hopefully inspiring people to work on their own (I don't realise it till I might get questioned a month or so later about "how" I do what I do). I also went along to a meeting yesterday with our local Transition Towns group. It was the first time I've been along despite the group starting up last November. The main focus for now from what I gather will be helping get people to have individual gardens.

Yay for the rain!

Finally.

It's been ages since we had any sort of rain here that was more than only good for settling the dust down. Unbelivable that we've made it through Autumn with hardly anything at all.

So today the ground is getting a good soaking. Not that there's a lot of garden that needs a water, but my herb garden was looking kinda dry (fortunately it has plants in there that like it that way, but since they are planted in the front of my house which is almost pure sand it gets a lot dryer with the full day sun, they were starting to call for some water). I actually had to water my vegetables in the lower garden during the week because my silverbeets and beetroots looked like they were wilting.

Maybe I just have no idea about rainfall at this time of the year, since I didn't HAVE a garden this time last year (was only in the planning and preparation stages) then I probably wasn't too concerned about rain and in fact probably preferred the no rain status!

Our water tank doesn't need the water since it's super full still as it only gets used to water the garden during summer and we don't draw off it for household use. This is something I am going to investigate though. Back before there was town supply which came in in the mid-80's this tank would have had a pump that supplied the house. So might be nice to investigate this option at some point.

Chicken health

I went down to let the girls out this morning and noticed that Mouse had a bit of a cough or sneeze. I recalled when we first picked the girls up from the breeder that she mentioned supplementing them with vinegar, garlic and olive leaf tea for health and snuffles. I have just been trying to google this but do you know how difficult it is to get a good hit without getting a recipe (even if I replace the word chicken with poultry)! LOL.

So, I'm none the wiser, but have gone ahead anyway and made up some olive leaf tea (we have a tree in our garden that I cursed ourselves for cutting down just prior to getting the chickens, but it's cut off truck has sprung back to life) by boiling up some chopped up leaves for 10mins, added a large splash of apple cider vinegar and a chopped up garlic clove. Well, those things are all good immune boosters in humans, so I'm hoping there are some benefits for the chickens too. I then added a generous amount of the liquid to their laying mash (which I had to buy since the supermarket was out of pellets) and filled their water feeder up with the rest. They chomped into it right away, so must be tasty if nothing else! So I will keep an eye on her and see how we go.

If anyone has any natural health links or knowledge to pass on to me I would be grateful.