Getting my mojo back

Its been a while since I have posted something 'homesteady', but life has been crazy crazy for far too long. I studied my Masters part time for 3.5 years (hence all the crazy other posts), I went back to work part time, my babies all started big school, and  most recently I have started a new part time job working more hours. Sometimes you just have to let things slide until you can get your head above water again. For your own sanity you have to focus on what is going to get you through - sleep, eat and surviving. But now I am starting to feel the need to rediscover the 'old' me, and get back into my interests, find that homesteading mojo I have been putting to the side for far too long, plus look into some new ideas that were always on the '....when I finish this bloody study I'm going to.....' list.

So to get back into the swing of things, I have ditched the traditional housework-on-my-day-off routine and made these instead

 - Laundry detergent (makes about 10L)
 - Almond meal (sounds fancy if I said I 'made it' but I really just ground up almonds)
 - Toothpaste - I use this recipe
 - and cake...just cause it smells good and I wanted cake (I added poppy seeds to this recipe)

So to keep this post short and to the point as I soon have to go pick up kids, my new 'thing' is trying to decrease our waste, and in particular our plastics. I got interested when I somehow stumbled across Zero Waste Home and through a bit more research an Australian version at Gippsland Unwrapped. Although we are SO FAR from a zero waste household, I am trying to do things gradually (all at once doesn't work in our house). My first goal is to decrease the amount of non-recyclables. I know that it does take quite a bit of energy resources to recycle, but we have to start somewhere. I'll get to recyclables in the process, hopefully. So here is a pick of a few things we have been doing to decrease our plastics and waste

Here, I have fruit and veggie bags and also some homemade beeswax wraps which I use in the kids' lunchboxes. I roughly followed this recipe and used our own beeswax.

We already compost, make a lot of food from scratch and give food scraps to our new puppy (he's a bitsa rescue pup, he's destructive but cute), but I think we can do more. I have also been planning meals which answers the dreaded question 'whats for dinner mum?'..every..single..day, and I don't have to 'think' during the week. I have a planned list on the fridge and the kids now know just to refer to the list. ON the plus, I try to get those things that we need for our meals on our fortnightly shop.

I also hope to attend a UHC event next weekend - garden porn (aka seed catalogues). Between work, study, and football on weekends I have not been able to attend events as I would like.

But I feel like I'm coming back. Slowly.

Getting back to some basics - breadmaking and laundry detergent

After helping out with some teaching at an Intro to Permaculture course on Saturday, it was hard not to get inspired and re-energised by being around like minded people. It was fantastic listening to everybody's ideas and personal takes on information and I came away with a renewed vigour to get 'my hands dirty' in some basic, from the roots, homesteading.

 

And what better homesteading past time is there than making bread.

 

Last weekend I attended a sourdough bread making workshop, and although I have dabbled in bread making, I have never made sourdough. The whole growing the starter-thingy scared me off a little, but for this past week, I have been keenly growing my starter and today, turned out my first loaf to proof overnight. Fingers crossed it actually turns out OK! The kids are very keen to taste test for me.

As it was cold outside, cloudy and threatening with rain I decided to make some raisin bread as well.

 

Here I am using the heat from the fire to get the loaves to rise. Where we live, the air is very dry and not ideal for making bread. The shower caps over the tins increase the humidity and helps the loaf to rise, as well as creating a 'steam oven' with a shallow tray with water in the bottom of the oven. After attending the course last weekend, I realised I had been over-proofing the bread, and hence why it had been sinking when I put it in the oven. Not today! Rose nicely in the oven.

I have also commenced making my own laundry detergent. With four little kids and one big kid in the house, I seem to be doing endless loads of washing. So given my choice to try and reduce our chemical intake further and also help out the hip pocket, I thought I would try it out. If it didn't work, well, not too much would be lost. This is the third batch I have made (each batch makes about 8-9 litres), and I am happy with it enough to continue using it and not go back to commercial laundry detergents. The ingredients are fairly simple - water, soap flakes, grated sard wonder soap, washing soda, lavender oil and a smidgen of blueo. I got the recipe from one of the girls from the Urban Homesteaders, Sally, and I think it works a treat. After I make it up and combine with a stick blender, I store it in reused juice plastic bottles.

 

The only thing I would have liked to have accomplished today was to get out into the garden and get some seeds planted. Tomorrow, I am going to leave the mess of the house behind and head outdoors. Definitely tomorrow.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - Paper Bricks

Hubby, somehow, stumbled upon a second hand paper brick maker while he was checking out eBay. We both thought we could re-use all the newspaper and maybe some cardboard from recycling and make them into 'firewood' to use in either the pizza oven or the wood fire when we get one (which could be sooner than later!).

Having never done this before we did what any self respecting DIYer does - we googled it! So first we made a lovely paper mache type mix. There are many and varied recipes, but we thought we would go plain and simple to begin with - water and newspaper. Hubby is using a paint mixer attached to his drill to mulch it up a bit more. I think it was just an excuse to use a power tool of some description!

Next we placed the mulched up paper in the press. We had lots of helpers for this.

Once this is full, then the squeezing begins! We didn't realise until we went to use the press that it is actually broken, hence the need for the clamps. Buyer beware i guess :( It stills works though, but you tend have have less skin on your knuckles than what you stated with.

After squeezing a couple of times to make sure as much of the water is out as possible - voila! - one paper brick!

The bricks then need to be left to dry out. One suggestion we found was to put them in a greenhouse on a top shelf so that is what we did.

The ones piled on the left are the first batch we did a couple of months ago and the most recent at the right and bottom.

We have yet to use them as it is now 'fire season' and no fires without a permit, but hopefully come autumn I can report back on whether it is worth the time and effort!

Parties and 'To-do' lists

Phew! What a weekend!

First, my eldest daughter turned 7! (that went by crazily fast! Hubby pointed out she is almost halfway to getting her licence! Crap!). We had a Star Wars party and thankfully the rain held off (we had 3 inches in the previous 48hrs leading up to the party). I always like to make the kids' birthday cakes and although this one was a compromise (she wanted a light sabre but I just wasn't creative enough for that one) I think it still turned out OK. My hands are still stained black from the icing though.

So with the party out of the way and a couple of hours of sunshine we were able to mow the forest of weeds that we affectionately call 'the lawn' and didn't get the mower bogged in the process - double yay!

Sunday, after a leisurely breakfast of fresh homegrown scrambled eggs (yum!), we were out to cross some jobs off our 'to-do' list. First was to net the fruit trees as the birds had already gobbled up all the cherries  (grrrrrr). We we were too slow getting around to those ones. So netted at the moment are the three apple trees, plum, nectarine and almond. HOPEFULLY we will win against the birds this year :)

Next I finally planted out the beans I have been meaning to do for weeks, and am trying to grow red kidney beans for the first time.  I also planted the tomatillo plant that a friend gave me, along with a great salsa recipe for the fruit. It looks much happier now it is in the ground and out of the greenhouse.

Next we finally strung up the onion and garlic harvest that had previously been sitting on the shed floor. The onions were substantially heavier than what we thought, so hubby came up with this idea to use the trailer frame to hang them off. Works pretty good I think! Just as long we don't need the trailer frame in the next little while I guess!

Then we made some more paper bricks but I'll do a more detailed blog about that later.

Kids were still happy playing outside at this stage so we thought we would finally start planting out our mountain of dirt left over from the pool excavations. I picked up some native tube stock a while ago for a couple of dollars each but they have been sitting in the bottom of the greenhouse waiting to be planted. Poor plants must feel neglected in there! Anyhoo still have a long way to go - like some edging and mulch would be good!- but its a start. We planted grevilleas, bottlebrushes, banksias and some westringias that I had left over from the hedge around the pool.

I know I blogged previously that we were going to plant the pumpkins on the hill this year but I didn't feel that the soil had been prepared right so we decided to plant then on the front bank and let them grow down towards the tank. This year I have planted QLD Blue, Kent, Butternut and a vegetable spaghetti. I planted the watermelon and rockmelon seedlings here as well but they are sort of behind me in this pic.

(OK pic is not the best, and we need to mulch here again too, but you can just make out the bamboo stakes!)

After that we had a BBQ dinner with salad from the garden - and the kidlets got to have the first cherry tomatoes of the season.

Hubby and I were both exhausted but happy we were able to cross some things off our very long 'to-do' list.