2011 In Retrospect

It is this time every year that I review the goals that I set at the very beginning of the year.  It has been a very eventful year, and one that I have fond memories of.  I learnt more than I could have imagined, both academically and skills for the future.  Also, I worked less this year than any other year in my working life due to the need to take long service leave to recover from a surgical procedure.


So lets get to the 2011 goals that I set for the year and see if we achieved them;

More Vegetarian days per week

Make all our own pasta

Increase water storage

Add two more wicking beds into production

Build an Outdoor Oven

Use renewable energy to charge my portable electronic devices

Vegetarian days - We have been eating at least one veggie meal a week, sometimes two, but we still have a relationship with meat.  My favourite veggie meal is Goulash with chive dumplings and mashed potato.  It is a great winter warmer and we serve this at least once a month.  Stay tuned for more news on the veggie front in tomorrows post.

Home Made Pasta - Well it started out well, but kind of fizzled out.  I have made pasta about 5 times during the year, which has just the best taste, but convenience always wins out in the end and we go back to dried pasta for a while until we get the spare time to make some fresh.  Ravioli is my favourite, but you really need four sets of hands to make it with the machine I use.  

Increase water storage - It took a while to save up the cash, but I finally managed to install a gutter on the carport and install a 1800 Litre rainwater tank.  Then as fate would have it, my existing 2300 litre tanks strung a leak due to being laid on an uneven surface.  So, a fortuitous tax rebate assisted me in purchasing and installing another 2300 L tank.  Plus I also have three 210 litre water barrels that are full, and three 100 litre water barrels that need to be connected up to the irrigation system when time permits.  That will give me a total of 5030 litres (1,328.7 US Gall).  For an average suburban yard, that is a fair bit of water!

Two more wicking beds - Unfortunately, this goal was not met.  Due to the Clay Cob Oven build, I had to disassemble my existing wicking bed and build a new one in its place.  At least I still have one, which is working well.  The only problem I have is that the soil that I put into it is too acidic (pH 9.5) and I have been adding dolomite lime to it once a month to slowly bring the pH down to 7.   And besides that, I have kind of ran out of room to put in new beds.  I have to start growing upwards now.

Clay Cob Oven - After much procrastination, I finally bit the bullet and started the cob oven in July and we finished it in October.  It was a labour of love in the end, and each weekend we just knew that we had to work on it to get it finalised.  The project helped me learn some bricklaying skills and patience, and it was a steep learning curve trying to figure out how to cook in it.  Kim and I are very proud of our handy work, and the help from the Melton Sustainable Living Group.  Building the cob oven was rewarding.

Portable devices - What a dud!  The device I bought to recharge small electronic devices takes far too long to recharge in the sun, and does not fully recharge devices when at capacity anyway.  The only device it does fully charge is my very old school Nokia mobile phone (circa 2005), which just goes to show how energy hungry today's devices really are.  At least I tried to give it a go.

Now for the adhoc stuff that were not goals, but significant events in their own right.  I will just list them, because if you have been reading all year, you will know most of these.

• Started teaching Cheese Making Workshops 
• Started The Little Green Cheese
• Co-hosted The Be Prepared Challenge
• Nominated for an Earth Hour Award
• Owned a Pekin Bantam Rooster for 4 days
• Saved a West Highland Terrier (Teddy Ruckspin) from the pound
• Podcast the "Meet the Green Blogger" series of interviews
• Participated in the "Say Yes" Climate Change campaign
• Built Cluckingham Palace
• Made Limoncello for the first time
• Decided to Downshift to a 9 day fortnight and work 26 days less each year
• Wrote the "Suburban Resiliance" series
• Wrote three articles for Grass Roots Magazine
• Hosted "The Great Kilowatt Challenge"
• Decided to home school Ben next year

So, was 2011 a fulfilling and thoroughly enjoyable year with more ups than down?  Too right it was, and even with a hernia surgery thrown in as well!  We all had a ball, and kept on living and behaving larger than life on our journey towards a sustainable lifestyle.  Most importantly, we had fun and lots of it!

Stay tuned for my 2012 goals.  I think they will a modest few this year, but will reduce our environmental footprint dramatically.

Food Waste

If you are like me, you hate to waste food.  Whether you grow it yourself or buy it from the farmers market or at a pinch the supermarket, so much energy and water goes into growing our food that it is almost a crime to waste it.  All those food miles consumed just so we can throw it away into landfill to generate methane, which is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.  Talk about a double whammy!

On the off chance that we have any food that happens to go off, then we dispose of it in this order:

1. Dogs, if they don't eat it then,
2. Chickens, if they don't eat it then,
3. Worm farm, then
4. Compost

No food scraps enter our landfill bin at all.  There is always some animal willing to consume it, whether it be beast or insect!

So on that note, here is a great video that shows just how much food is wasted during production and consumption in Australia.  It featured on the Hungry Beast show on ABC.




It certainly was an eye opener for me.  Half the mango crop thrown away?  What an atrocity!

More on food in a post very soon....  I have a surprise for everyone!

Christmas Wrap Up 2011

It was an exciting and eventful day on many fronts.  It was our most sustainable Christmas to date as we took a minimalist approach.

Up early at about 7 am and did all the chores (chooks, watering, compost) before Megan and Jake arrived at 8.30am.

Firstly, before any gift giving, we made and ate breakfast.  Our tradition is to make up croissants with ham and Swiss cheese then popped in the microwave for 25 seconds each to heat them through.  Served with a glass of Bucks Fizz (champagne and orange juice).

Ben on his second croissant!

I am very excited!  After all that was scoffed down, it was time for presents.  Ben had been waiting very patiently.

Ben trying to be cool!

Our tree was very minimalist this year.  It is a old fallen branch of one of the trees out the back, painted black and decorated in purple LED lights and baubles.  Beats cutting down a tree, or buying a plastic one.  All very friendly for the environment.

Anyway the rules this year were simple.  Kim and I didn't need anything and we requested that the kids did not buy us anything either, as I just got a new rainwater tank, and I bought her a new laptop earlier on in the month.  However Megan broke with tradition and bought us a set of 3 bamboo chopping boards.  Santa brought Amy, Thomas (Amy's boyfriend), Megan, Jake (Megan's boyfriend) and Ben a few small, practical gifts each.  Ben received some PC games and books, Amy got a spade, two pruning saws and some gardening gloves for her new garden.  Megan received a cookbook, and Jake got some Cherry Jam which I think he really appreciated.  Any wrapping paper was recycled or put away for reuse later on.

Even the dogs got a gift each which they both opened by themselves (clever dogs).

Teddy's first Christmas with us, and he knew exactly how to open it!

Holly followed Teddy's lead.

This was the best present of all.  A cheeky kiss from my gorgeous wife Kim.  What else would a man ask for.

Once the gifts were exchanged Megan set the table for the six of us.  It was beautiful and very purple!

It was getting a bit hot for Kim (32C) so she and the kids went for a swim in the pool, whilst I prepared Christmas Dinner.  I glazed a free range leg of ham with cherry jam and cloves and popped that in the oven.  Then I prepared some bio-dynamically raised chicken breasts by stuffing them with a mixture of Kim's herb bread (breadcrumbs), fresh sage leaves and pine nuts, and wrapped them in prosciutto then baked in the oven.  We had local roasted potatoes, steamed carrots, cabbage and broccoli and Kim made some Yorkshire puddings and a red wine gravy.  It was all washed down with some local Rose wine.  For dessert Kim made a Pavlova with fresh cream and berries.

During dinner Kim read out a letter written by Adam, who is living in Cologne, Germany with his girlfriend Sina.  The letter was very witty and made us all cry and laugh at the same time.  We had each written a letter to him and sent it over a few weeks ago, which he read to Sina whilst holidaying with her family in the Black Forrest.  Adam sent through a few photos of him and Sina with the letter, which were very nice.

After dinner the kids helped clean up and played some board games then left at about 4.30 pm.

We all had a great day and then things changed weather wise.  From a hot 32C it dropped 10 degrees in 10 minutes.  Massive thunderstorms started to develop, and then the heavens opened up and down came the hail.  It was not too big, about the size of a 5 cent piece, but large enough to knock most of the peaches off of our tree and to damage the greenhouse.  Across the north west of Melbourne there were reports of golf ball sized hail and smashed house roofs, cars dented, and flash flooding.

One of the greenhouse panels.  Lots of little holes, but as luck would have it, only to the outer layer.  They did not go all the way through so the greenhouse survived.

The vegetables all survived except for a few leaves chopped off here and there.

This beautiful leek flower came through unscathed.

The loganberries keep on growing larger and larger.

But best of all the solar panels are fine.  After a quick inspection they are nice and clean after the 24 mm (1") of rain that fell on Christmas Day!  No hail damage at all.  All we have to show for the four thunderstorms is a very soggy Cluckingham Palace, and two overflowing rainwater tanks, which all in all is a blessing compared to some of the news reports around our area.  Apparently there was even a tornado touchdown in the bush about 20 km away from us!  Mother nature showing her wrath no doubt.  Enough said and we all know the reason for this crazy weather, don't we?

I am taking a bloggy break until New Years, so it is fair the well from me for a few days as I relax with family.

How was your Christmas/Holiday?  Leave a link if you have a post/photos.  I would love to read them.

Peace and Joy

To all my friends and readers on this day of festive days.

Thank you all very much for reading during the year.  It has had its ups and downs, but best of all through it all, it was fun and exciting with many more stories and adventures to come.

Peace and Joy to all.

Gavin, Kim and Family xox

Summer Solstice

As Christmas approaches, this event is often missed by many people.  Today is the Summer Solstice.  According to the Museum of Victoria, and in our part of the world.....;

On the day of Summer Solstice, the Earth’s south pole is tilted towards the Sun. The Sun rises south of east, sets south of west and reaches 75 1/2° above the horizon at noon. This is, usually, the longest day of the year.

Artist: Frey Micklethwait. Source: Museum Victoria

 It occurs just once a year in late December.  Here in the south eastern part of Australia the day reaches its maximum of 14h 47m 21s.  The actual solstice itself occurs at 1630 which is about the same time this post was published.  This mean the inverse in the Northern Hemisphere who are celebrating their Winter Solstice and their shortest day of the year!

What does the Summer Solstice mean to me?  Well it means that summer has really started in earnest, and it is about the latest time in the season that I can plant any vegetables.  Any later and they usually do not make it to maturity unless we have a really warm autumn.  It means less rainfall (usually) and that I have to start to use my water reserves in the rain water tanks to keep everything alive around the garden.

It also means that the evenings have more light due to the long days and daylight savings.  Time that I can spend in the garden, pottering around and enjoying our bounty and time to talk to the chickens.  We have been harvesting self seeded beetroot leaves and rainbow chard for salads, and are just about to get stuck into the garlic and onions that are now dry and ready to use.  We have also been enjoying peaches for about two weeks now and the nectarines and apricots should be ready in the next week or two, if we can keep the birds off of them.  Our first tomato for the season should not be very far away!

I feel the most grounded at this time of year as well.  We have a simple lunch on Christmas Day, so there is not much to prepare for.  I have lots of home made beverages ready to enjoy by the pool whilst I am on holidays over the next two weeks, and we are just going to wind down until we get itchy bums and need to start a new project.  All external commitments are on hold until February 2012.

I get time to make cheese, read (in fact I just read 7 books in 21 days), relax, and enjoy time with my family.

Happy days!

What does the solstice mean to you?

The Great Kilowatt Challenge - Final Confession

I took my final reading tonight.  It worked out that my daily average for week 4 was 16.8 kWh, which was similar to my baseline reading.  Now that the weather is heating up, the airconditioning is being used sparingly, but still it uses so much of our daily consumption.  I estimate that on hot days, our demand goes up by at least 40%.  You can tell just by a quick glance at the graph below which 4 days were the ones over 30 degrees C!  They stick out like a sore thumb.

Here are a few statistics from my end of the challenge.

Highest electricity generated by Solar PV in one day: 19 kWh (5th December)
Highest electricity drawn from the grid in one day: 17.6 kWh (18th December)
Most exported to the grid in one day: 13.6 kWh (5th December)

Lowest electricity generated by Solar PV in one day: 2 kWh (26th November)
Lowest electricity drawn from the grid in one day: 6.4 kWh (6th December)
Least exported to the grid in one day: 0 kWh (26th November)

Highest daily total consumption in the home: 28.4 kWh (9th December)
Lowest daily total consumption in the home: 11.1 kWh (6th December)

Biggest cost in one day: $2.31
Biggest profit in one day: $7.46

Total profit: $64.16 for the month!

Our electricity consumption was variable, however we had more days under 15 kWh than we had above it, which is quite pleasing.

So what have I personally learnt.  My first point of action will be to replace a very old air-conditioner in the living area, which is the box type that fits into a hole in the wall.  I estimate that it uses about 3000 watts per hour, and has the biggest impact on our daily consumption.  Over the next few months I will be saving up for a replacement.  The old one is about 15 years old and on its last legs, so I will not feel guilty replacing it.  Once it is replaced with a more energy efficient one, we should be able to keep our consumption below 15 kWh, even on a hot day!

As we come to the end of the challenge, I would just like to thank everyone for participating.  I hope that everyone gained a bit more insight into their electricity usage, and what events and appliances are the culprits for high energy utilisation.  

From the initial response that I had via comment and on my Facebook page for the blog, there were about 30 to 40 people who gave the challenge a go.  I don't know how many made it to the end, but if you did, well done and please leave a comment with either your week 4 confession, or just a friendly note.  I would really appreciate it as well as any feedback you may have.

Cheers, Gav

TGKWC - Saving Electricity

Just a quick one to check in on The Great Kilowatt Challenge.  How is everyone going?  Still reading the meters and trying to reduce your electricity consumption?

We are still trying to reduce our daily load, and are closely watching what we are doing.  Speaking of watching, I was looking around YouTube for a few videos about saving electricity and stumbled upon these few gems.  I think the narrator is Dawn French, and believe that these info videos might have been shown on UK television.

Anyway, the message is a good one and I hope these help a little or a lot.  Humour is always a good tool for driving your point home.

This one is about leaving devices on standby.



This video is about energy efficient lighting.


And finally this one is about heating. 

What do you think? Are these sort of videos a good way of communicating the energy efficiency message to the masses?

Ben's Consumerism Essay

Our son Ben (12) is now officially being home schooled, and he loves it.  We have been studying consumerism this week, and I set Ben a task of watching the documentary "What Would Jesus Buy?" which I wrote about in this post many moons ago.

After he finished watching it, I set him an essay to write with the question, "What is the main reason for the rapid growth of the consumer culture?"

Ben wrote one of the best essays I have ever read for a lad his age, and I am not being biased at all ;-)  He said that I could share it all with you.  So here goes:

"On the 25th December Jesus was born and this day became known as Christmas.  Christmas was all about love and family time, but with the invention of advertising everything changed massively, which means people are no longer happy just being together.

The effect of advertising has overcome most of us and we are consuming too much and shops are being taken over by industries like Wal-Mart or Disney and hardly anything is being made local, it now comes from places like India and China. 

People are starting to think that Christmas is all about buying lots of expensive gifts for each other and confusing this with love, but this is not the point and people don’t understand.  Advertising is getting out of control; you can see advertisement basically anywhere like magazines or television or even bill boards, this is making people shopaholics!  People are wasting a lot of money and they should really try to spend their money wisely and get the most out of their money.  Another bad thing that people are doing is using credit cards to buy lots of things on them, but they are getting into debt and this causes other problems like having no money to pay for their normal household bills. 

I honestly think there are five points that make ads draw you in:

• Detailed words

• A picture showing a product

• Good value (because it’s imported)

• Adjectives: such as “You must have” “The new craze” “get it and it will change your life”

• And most of all, its purpose!

Let’s talk about cheap labour now and to explain this lets begin with China for example poor people are working in sweat shop making toys or clothes. If people knew how much abuse and work it takes to make these things people might finally switch to buying local things!
Another thing about cheap labour is that they put so much work into something they then send it off to America or somewhere else and the shop charges more money for it, like $10 while the person in China only gets paid like 30 cents which is very sad.  Another sad thing is that people are getting killed by shopping because people are rushing into stores and pushing just so they can get limited edition or things that are nearly out of stock or on sale!

My summary of this story is to return Christmas the way it use to be, people need to stop spending money and maybe they should start making local things instead of buying Chinese toys/TVs/Clothing which breaks very easily and are often thrown away which then causes more pollution. 

And last thing DON’T FALL FOR ADVERTISING!"

Please leave a comment to let Ben what you think of his essay.  I bet he would love some feedback.

Tanks Again

As a follow up to the post titled "Tanks For The Memories", here is a story about installing my new rainwater tank.

Sunday was a nice day to install a rainwater tank.  The irony of it all was that all day Saturday it rained which in hindsight was good because the garden got a good soaking, and I had all of those cherries to process!

I had to duck town to the hardware store to buy a few joints for the plumbing, and got stuck into the job at about 10 am.  The builder put down the hardstand earlier on in the week, so it was nice and dry so that I could move the tank into place.

Firstly I drilled a hole in the bottom most thread with a 24mm spade bit so that I could screw the tap on later.

Then I had to figure out the most efficient way to plumb in the first flush diverter that already existed.  I found that the diverter had to be moved 7cm to the left of the tanks (what a pain), so I got stuck into it with a little bit of help from Ben.  Two crappy masonry bits later the first flush diverter was fixed in place.  After many expletives, I managed to fit the input pipe so that the water drained into the inlet at the top of the tank.  Kim thinks it looks like a hamster run and is a work of art.  Being an Aussie, I don't really know what a hamster run looks like (they are a prohibited import), so I will just have to take her word for it!

Then I started on the outlet.  It was easy enough, with two 45 degree angles, so that it reached the drain pipe, and so that the tap was unobstructed.  The tap was easy enough to fit, and with a bit of Teflon (plumbers tape) it was in place and connected back up to the irrigation system.

Here is the tank in all of its glory!  It took me about 4 hours in total probably because I was meticulous enough to use the least amount of PVC pipe.  All off-cuts were placed in the recycling bin.

The old tank is still standing in the carport waiting to be cut into garden beds.  And as for the vacant space, there are signs of movement there as well.  We now have a new back door, thanks to our builder.  I am just not that handing with major building work, nor have the patience.  I am more of an outdoor type construction bloke!

Anyway, all I now need is some rain and then I will have 4900 litres of rain water stored on the property.  It gives me that extra feeling of security now that we have a supply of our own and that we can water our veggie patches and fruit trees even in the hottest weather or drought.

TGKWC - Weekly Confession 3 and Lighting

Now that we are in the last week of the challenge, it is once again time to share your weekly average.

Due to hot weather both day and night for two days our average is just a bit higher than my baseline.  Air-conditioning really is a guzzler of energy .  We recorded average daily usage of 17.6 kWh which is 4% higher than my baseline of 16.6 kWh.  Sometimes you just can't win a trick!

Oh, I just remembered. The builder was using all of his power tools on Friday (the big spike in the graph), so that would have gone a long way to the large usage we experienced that day.  At least today is looking a lot better with only 13.7 kWh being used.  Our best day so far has been 11.1 kWh, when we were out of the house for most of the day.

Anyway, I hope you have all stuck with it, and tried to reduce where you can and saved a few bucks so far.

So to finish of this post here some information about energy efficient lighting.

Lighting:


Compact Fluorescent Lights

Compact fluorescent lighting now comes in a variety of colours, shapes, sizes and functions including:
• A ‘warm white’ colour, similar in appearance to an incandescent lightglobe suitable for use in living areas, kitchens and bedrooms
• A ‘cool’ white colour suitable for use in bathrooms, toilets and for outdoor use
• Globe, coil and spiral shapes, and now bulbs suitable for reading lamps and chandelier lights. Also available with a glass cover that give them a similar appearance to incandescent lightglobes
• 9 watt (24 watt equivalent) to 18–20 watt (100 watt equivalent)
• Downlight replacements (similar in shape to a halogen downlight).

Compact fluorescent light bulbs are generally available wherever conventional light bulbs are sold, with most hardware stores and major supermarkets stocking a good range. They are usually designed to fit into conventional bayonet or screw fitting light sockets. Specialist lighting stores will stock less conventional bulbs for use in downlights and heritage light fixtures, such as chandeliers.  LED replacements are also becoming more readily available and are getting cheaper all the time.

What about halogen lighting?

Halogen lights are also a type of incandescent light. These are mainly used as downlights in homes. Halogens are also known a “low voltage” lights as they have transformers fitted to convert from the standard household 240 volts to 12 volts, but this does not mean that they are also low energy use.
Halogens are considered an energy intensive lighting option because several halogen lights are often needed in the place of one incandescent or fluorescent light bulb to achieve even lighting levels in a room. (Most low voltage halogen globes used as downlights consume 50 watts each and an additional 15 watts for the transformer).
A 50W halogen downlight used 3 hours a day will cost around $10 a year to run. If you had a room with 8 halogens and ran them for 8 hours each day, it would cost you over $200 every year!
As most halogen lights have a narrow light beam, many more are need to effectively light a room than when using other forms of lighting.  As with incandescent lightglobes, a large proportion of the energy consumed by halogen lighting is actually lost in the form of heat.

Options for Halogen replacements

• In a new home or renovation you can get the look of downlights by installing mini CFL down light fittings. This will cost a bit more, but you will make a big difference to your energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions.
• If you have 50 watt halogen lights downsize them to 20 watt or 35 watt halogen lights to save energy and lighting bills.
• Install a dimmer switch.
• Instead of halogen light consider alternatives such as floor and bench lamps fitted with CFLs.
• If replacing low voltage halogen lights, an electrician will be needed to convert the lights.
• Another technology is LED downlights (LED downlights retail between $30 and $100 each but last up to 50,000 hours). They are currently available from specialist environment stores, online retailers and larger hardware stores. While they are currently quite expensive and the light output and quality may be less than halogen downlights, performance and price is improving all the time.

Energy Efficient Lighting tips

• Natural light is free and the most energy efficient lighting source
• Turn lights off when you don’t need them.
• Replace standard incandescent globes with energy-saving compact fluorescent globes, particularly in high-use areas, and make sure you use the lowest wattage light needed.
• Use programmable timers, daylight sensors or movement sensors to control outdoor and security lighting.
• For outdoor garden lighting, try solar-powered lights.

 I hope that you can use this information and tips to reduce your electricity bill even further.

Cherry Time!

Friday night we received a delivery of two 15kg buckets of cherries that were orchard seconds.  Our friends Jan and Michelle know a cherry grower and take the rejects and distribute them among friends and family.

Feeling quite tired from the working week, we decided to make a start on them early on Saturday morning.

Kim and I took a bucket each and sorted them in three ways into three bowls/pots.  Cherries that were good enough to eat, cherries that were good enough to make into jam, and rejects for the compost bin.  Any that dropped on the kitchen floor were fair game for the two dogs.

This is my setup at the kitchen sink.  I preferred to stand when I work.  My rejects went into the big bucket on the floor.

One bucket filled up the entire sink.  To stop bruising, I partially filled the sink with water.

Once sorted, I started to pit the cherries with my trusty cherry/olive pitter.  You can just make it out on the edge of the sink.  We ended up with about 20kg of cherries, and the rest went into the compost bin, and a few went to the chooks.

I decided to only make two batches of cherry jam, so that left so many cherries that had to be processed.  Out of the two batches I made about 6kg (12 small/medium jars) of jam to be kept and given away as gifts.

So many cherries.  In Australia we have a local company called Fowlers-Vacola who make preserving equipment.  A few years back I bought a kit off of ebay which came with the pot and lots of jars.  My sister also sent some jars down to me using my Dad as a courier (thanks Sis).

I managed to fill eight jars (No.28) with pitted cherries, and six jars (No.31) with whole cherries.  Processing is quite simple and is as easy as following a few instructions.  The jars need to be sterilized firstly.  I wash them and then turn them upside down on a baking tray and pop them in a 120C oven for 15 minutes.  Once the jars are cool put the rubber rings around the top, fill them with fruit allowing about half an inch headroom.  A quick way to make a preserving liquid is to add 1 tablespoon of sugar to the No.28 jars, and 2 tablespoons of sugar to the No.31 jars.  Then fill with cool water to the top of the fruit.  Pop on the lids and put the clips on.

Then you get out the preserving pot and put the jars in, then fill up with water about an 5cm below the thermometer hole so that it doesn't spill out the hole.

It takes about 45 minutes to get up to 92C, which you then leave at for another 45 minutes.  Try not to boil the water.  My old fowlers-vacola thermometer broke ages ago, so I now use one that I use for cheesemaking.  It works just as well.

Here is the pot with the next batch ready to go in.

Kim and I started sorting the cherries at 0830, and I finished the final batch of preserves at 1830.  What a long day but well worth all of the yummy cherries.  All we have to do now is label all the jars and then store them in the pantry for that rainy day in Autumn when cherries will be a distant memory.  We will be well stocked with cherries until next season.

I especially love the cherry jam.  It is to die for.

Well Grounded Now

So friends, after a week off from blogging and just about everything else except work, I feel much more grounded.  I am relaxed and my mind is a lot clearer now.  It is amazing what a little bit of nothingness can do for your mind!

The main thing that helped out was a big session of gardening last Sunday.  I worked hard to get everything done before sunset to fit everything in.

First I tackled the onion patch.

I pulled out all of the brown onions from this bed and the red onions from the leek bed and put them in my greenhouse to dry out.

I am leaving the doors and roof hatch open to make sure that they don't cook.

In this little basket are the onions that will be pickled as they are just a little too small.

So after much preparation by digging in dolomite lime, compost, rooster booster, and a few handfulls of blood and bone, I planted into the bed.

I put in green and yellow long capsicums.

Lebanese cucumbers.

Some burpless cucumbers (acid free).  Both kinds of cucumbers will be trained up the trellis.

Then I worked on the tomato and eggplant patch.  I made sure that all of the tomatoes that I transplanted the week before were tied up as they had grown quite a bit in a week.

I then planted some basil seedlings which will compliment the tomatoes

The Kale is growing massive.  We keep on pulling off the lower leaves and feeding them to the chooks.  They just love them.  I will keep them going until the cabbage moths start to decimate them.

Also in the kale bed are self sown tomatoes and tomatillos, which I have just staked up and kept moist.  Should be a big crop from this lot.

The leek bed is nearly ready to harvest.  I will do that tomorrow night so that Kim can cook up some Anglesey Eggs!

This is my rhubarb and loganberry patch.  All are growing well and we have eaten a few logan berries already.  Somewhere under that foliage are some strawberries!  Kim managed to find a few the other day that were very tasty!

And for those who love flowers, this is a loganberry.  Very pretty.

With 19mm of rain last night, the garden looks fantastic.

Before Pam left for Bangkok, she helped Kim pull out the garlic harvest, and they set it out to dry on a table for me.  The crop was not as large as last year, probably because of the warm spring we have had.

They are dry now, all I have to do is either plat them or cut the dry stalks off and store them in our pantry.  We have already started to use them in cooking and the flavour is so wonderful.

On Tuesday night I prepared the garden bed that the garlic had been living in.  More compost, rooster booster, and a bucket of pulverised sheep manure were dug in and watered in.  I will plant the three sisters in this bed, sweetcorn, pumpkins, and climbing beans (lazy housewife and scarlet runner).  The corn and pumpkin will go in first and once the corn is about a foot high, I will put the beans in around them.  The beans will use the corn as support, and the pumpkin acts as a living mulch to keep the soil from drying out, or so the theory goes.

To cap it off, Kim and I were eating home grown peaches today.  They are so yummy that the juice just runs down your hand as soon as you pick them.  These are the ANZAC variety.

Did I mention at the start of the post that I felt relaxed?  I suppose that one man's work is another man's pleasure!  I feel much, much better.