Category Archives: Self Reliance

The Box of Waste

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Our kids are in childcare, it is a great place with the kids standing at our front door waiting to go there most Monday morning having had enough of their parents no doubt.

There is a lot of debate about the effects and or benefits of childcare and all I wills say is that apart from it costing us more than our mortgage to have them in there we have found it to be a very positive experience for both children.

On the way in and out of the crèche is the box below. It is the lost property box and to me it strikes me as an odd thing. Almost every month it full to over flowing that is over a cubic meter of children’s clothes. That is a lot of clothes for little people…Can’t be cheap can it? I will advise that to the best of my knowledge none of it is our children’s (I hope 🙂 )

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It perhaps epitomizes what many people claim about the crowd going to childcare. Overall I will comment that they are generally good but busy people just trying to make their way in a world that gets more difficult, and much less secure than it perhaps has been in some ways.

Every day I see people charging here and there looking partly broken, working for what? I see them charge in drop of their kids and charge out almost taking each other out in the car park in their rush off to work.

I see the box as a symptom. It costs the people rushing around money, which means that they have to rush around a bit more to get that bit more to end up not having time to cook meals which wastes money which means they have to rush around some more, get a higher paying job further away to pay for it all and then a new car to travel there which means they have to rush around more to …

Well you get the picture…

a box of waste-2000

On another front most people I know want a better world for their kids. The waste of 12 cubic meters of clothes in a year for one center must have an environmental impact especially if this as I would guess is not uncommon.

I accept it is hard work to keep track of everything, to make meals and take the excess to work, to repair rather than simply buy a new item, to drive in a 25 year old car with no heater, aircon or even a radio, follow the farmers markets and shun the supermarkets, wash my plastic containers at work for the next meal but to me it is necessary. While I accept that the kids are doing well I don’t send them to crèche so that we can get further behind. We do it out of necessity and we work hard to make their future world a little better and our own future a little easier.

I do rush around too much and my greatest joy is the time spent with my children so the last thing I am going to do is loose that and be so busy and ill focused that I also loose the reason that they are at crèche. So while it seems a simple thing saving $50 a week in lost children’s clothes which adds up to $2500 in a year. Almost enough for an entry level solar system. Which saves more money on electricity, which allows you to get a productive garden growing which saves more money which allows you find a less well-paying job closer to home, ride a bike to work rather than a second car which allows you work less and spend more time with your family.

Well you get the picture…

After all much of the philosophies I have will hopefully lead me to that end.

Making Olla

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Making the Olla

I have commented on the olla bed in a previous post. The bed has worked well providing us with most of our salad greens over the last year and as I have just replanted it again this time with a different mix including some tomatoes.

With the prospect of a hotter dryer summer this year I will be adding in some more in other beds and thought this might be a good time to go over the process I used to make up the olla and beds.

The olla that form the core of the unit are simply an unglazed earthen ware container to hold water. The water will pass through the pores of the clay by the process of osmoses, being drawn into the soil and the plants roots will take up the moisture from the soil. It allows you to avoid watering every day and wastes a lot less water as the water is applied directly to the roots of the plants avoiding evaporation. I have also noted that while the planted seedlings did well weeds could not get going as there water is kept below the surface this reduced the weeding. The down side of this was that without extra watering vegetable seeds will not germinate effectively so you are best to used seedlings that you have grown in a hot house or warm bed.

I was lucky that I a friend of A.s mother had some old terracotta pipe pieces she was selling for $3 each and I had some old pot saucers I had got with some pots from Bunnings a few years ago.

The first step was to sand back the glaze from the pots inside and out. What these pipes where origonaly meant for which is to keeping water in is not what I am after. I am after a porous effect and sanding back the glaze helps this osmoses effect.

I then used some silicon to attach the bases and filled them with water to make sure that they (A). did not leak and (B) to see if over time the water started to move through the walls of the pipes as intended.

Two of them worked straight away and in an hour water could be seen beading on the outside of the pipes walls.

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A quick extra sand and the last one filled and rechecked and all three were up and running.

All up they probably cost me about $5 each. In third world countries they cost around 25 cents each made locally and while this might sound cheap if you do the math’s 25 cents for person on a couple of dollars a day adds up to around $40 each if I purchased them here in Australia.

These olla can also be a great way to use up old terracotta pots joined together when they get old as the qualities that you need which is the breakdown of the glaze on the pots over time is why they are less useful now as pots and make great olla.

Shortly I will post on how I used them in a bathtub garden bed along with an integrated worm farm.

A Sunday

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Our Sundays can be a but a hectic but they have fallen into a bit of a routine.

As our youngest decides that 5:30am is a good time to wake up and demand some food typically one of us is up even on the weekends at that time.

Chickens and ducks get fed, any plants needing it  watered (depending on rain), cats fed and then a homemade breakfast.

I then head off to the community garden or my garden and do some work, Catch up together for swimming classes a few hours later, home for lunch, a nap for one of us while the other heads out with the older child to get anything that we need for the week ahead(I also do a fair bit of urban foraging for pallets at the is time in the industrial area’s near home)

Back home for stuff around the house (today was getting the ropes off the shade sail and replacing it with real hardware). Kids bathed, dinners cooked maybe one of neighbors over for dinner (we do this a lot), clothes ironed for the corporate week, house cleaned up as much as we can before we collapse in exhaustion.

Sounds normal and probably is. I will draw yourself to a few details. Homemade breakfast and lunches. Today we had sourdough hot cross buns and coffee for breakfast, and great lunch post kids swimming lessons of artisan bacon, home free range eggs, sourdough, tomatoes and mushrooms  with a good red rind soft cheese and baked beans. Again with coffee.

A Sunday 010

A Sunday 011

So all of this set us back maybe $20 at the max for both meals. In the day A. and I would go to a café and the meal for one of use would be this much on one meal. We see a lot of the people in our swim class head to café at the swimming center and they probably spend twice that for a meal for them. And that is fine. We just choose to save our money and know where our food comes from.

The garden and the community garden help to keep us sane and in good fruit and veg. It is easier to just buy it but not better.

The shade sail cost us probably $1000 in total (probably a bit less) and we had neighbors who put in a similar one by a professional company that set them back $15,000. Now there’s took two weeks to get put in, mine took about a year to get ready. It does the same great job and keeps the back of the house 5 to 10 degrees cooler on a really hot day. Kids sleep better we sleep better. Again skills in house, be it cooking, concreting or managing the tension on the sail it is all skills to have and use.

Our evening meals on Sunday are typically a roast, stew or curry. And we would more than 50% of our time have a neighbor around for the meal. We enjoy their company they bring some booze we chat we eat it is all good. One thing we always try to do over the weekend is to get some extra meals ready and that also means a big curry or stew so we have enough for lunches. A meal at work canteen will set you back a minimum of $10 for a meal that is $50 per week $2500 per year… Yes I would prefer that in the bank or off my mortgage thank you very much.

Tonight I managed to get 10 meals together for the week (1 meal a day, 2 people, 5 days) and juice 4 cups of lemons (got a big bag from my parents) while chatting to my neighbor and cooking a meal. We are set and I can still be social even while doing things (hey I can drink beer and cook curry)

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A Sunday 012

Even the setback of finding my work pants in need of repair was handled by A. who just pulled out the sewing machine and just repaired them. Again a set of skills used.

A Sunday 013

The reason for this long winded post is to show that while busy, we spend a lot of our time with each other and the kids, we get a nap often and save some money. I think this is how is should be. Yes we are buggered some times. Yes some days we order pizza and I end with a meal of two minute noodles and a can of tuna for lunch on Mondays but all in all we like this. We like the extra money in the bank it keeps us sane in this crazy world and our kids like to watch us do stuff not just stare at the TV screen. It allows us to control our consumerism and keep it under control.  The skills are critical. I keep harping on about this the more skills you can build the better off you will be.

Learn absorbe, do!

Well this Sunday has come to an end and my last task before collapsing is to get this post out. Have a great week of work and remember if you a wishing it was Friday you are wishing away 5 days of your life.

Taking Stock

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So Today was our famers market day. We go to the farmers market at Bundoora stock up on good meat, small goods, cheeses and a week or two of any fresh vegies that we don’t grow or swap that are on offer.

Today before I headed off I did a fridge and freezer clean out and stock take to check what I needed and to ensure that I did not waste anything, or buy things I already have.

We have some changes coming to our house as we retro fit it for conserving energy and the power will be off for a few days to a week so one of the plans is to clean out the freezer. It will also not hurt to process what I have in there, either by cooking it or it processing it for alternate storage such as bottling/canning drying etc. I like most people can rely a bit too much on the freezer  and while a very useful tool for improving self-sufficiency we should remember that at the end of the day it costs us to run whereas bottled fruit or a pack of dried mushrooms can sit there for a couple of years and not cost me a penny.

It is also going to help our budget as well. The retro fit is not going to be cheap but by my calculations we are pretty much setup for the bulk of meals for the next couple of months.

So it might be a good chance for everyone to see what they have in their larder, fridge or freezer and ensure that all nothing is going to go to waste.

Once done I have cleaned out my freezer I will be putting in a good chunk of a whole pig I am buying in the freezer in May to see how I go with it as my primary source of animal protein for the winter. But I will also be processing some into smoked bacon, salami and prosciutto as I have said I want to reduce that reliance on the freezer and keep it as simple as I can  which will help my budget and hopefully the world at large.

To this end tomorrow I will start to plant my bed in the community garden with winter veg. After all if you can grow and harvest it as you go then you are even better off than storing it in the end.

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A Year of Blogging as NOTANURBANHIPPIE

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So a year ago today I started this blog. In that time I have put through 91 blog posts or roughly one every 4 days but that is not entirely accurate as I have had a lot on and have not blogged much in the last couple of months. I have noticed that a lot of the blogs I follow have been a bit quiet of late not just this one. I am not sure if it is cyclical being high summer here and winter in the northern hemisphere and people have other things to do in high summer and less in winter or if people have just got on with their own lives or something entirely differently. Either way I have missed the tales of many of these people’s journeys and look forward to them continuing their tales in the future and hearing what they have to say.

What I have noticed is that despite not blogging I am often thinking of a blog. Doing this blog has and does impact the way I look at the world and not in a bad way.

 I have not really changed my views of the world or of the fact that if I am not blogging about it, I am getting out there and living the dream. And my desire is to still live that sustainable dream I have and teach my children to enjoy life as they go.

I am still tracking along on the sustainable path and still interested in everything I can learn but like all parents with children I find the path gets a bit bogged down with life J The back yard is both a mess and yet more productive than a year ago so that cannot be a bad thing.

I have already booked a course in April on sustainable building with the folks at Milkwood Permaculture  , I am a part of a community garden, Andrea is working on here bees and the kids love to get out in the back yard and enjoy life. Sabrina even has a bee suite and joins her mother in bee keeping. Yes life is good.

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As I have said I do enjoy the blogging as such I will continue and it is with this in mind that I have decided to try to replicate the first month of blogging and put up a blog up each day for March.

Just to get myself moving along as much as anything else.

Look forward to any comments and hope you all enjoy.

Much to do …

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I have the day off from my day time job and a list of things to do.

Sheds to clean up, wicking beds to build, shelves to make.

And yet I suffer from the dilemma that we all often feel of the flatness. I could blame the weather it has been all over the place and is currently quite cold. I could blame having travelled and competed in a martial arts seminar for 4 days or the running around we did yesterday with my family to make up for the 4 days. But at the end of the day there is little point in blaming anything. I am making some sourdough cheese toasties and making another coffee, writing this and then I will start.

 

sourdough toastie

I remember reading an article in which they had a quote from one of the rural class who moved to the greater cities in England in the early part of the industrial age. He discussed that the standard of his life had improved in a material sense. Material things he could never have afforded before, greater food security and education for his children. But one of the negatives that he mentioned struck a chord with me. He discussed the grinding shifts day and night, how on the land he could sit back and relax for 4 days and then for the last 3 work long hours to get everything done. The natural rhythm of his life of all of our lives. But in his industrial job he started by the clock and finished by the clock day in day out. Good days bad days productive days less so it was all driven by the machines he worked with. He found it tiring and draining.

So today I will eat my toasty drink my coffee and get what I can get done while I remind myself I am a man not a machine.

But it doesn’t look the same as the bought one…

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Today I went looking for a meal to make. We will be getting the back area shelled in March and I need to clean out the freezer in preparation for this and my pig in the box experiment for next winter. I still had a frozen rooster I had killed dressed a while ago when my father had given me a few more than planned.

fowl

hile I cooked up a Spanish stew of chicken and chorizo (recipe below) and number one son watched me cook as mum and sis where at a party the look of the home butchered chicken caught my eye. Here was no plump rounded chicken of perfect proportions skin snow white and ready to roast. No here was lean rangy bird frozen out of perfect proportions but I knew that this less perfect frozen thing would have a taste that the perfect chicken could never surpass.

It reminded me of an article I had read on the waste of food in the world being as high as 50%. One of the items that caught my eye as a ‘reason’ for the waste was that the food was not perfect or umblemished. What is this word perfect? In a world where we waste 50% of our food on stuff like not perfect I think we need to take a nice big reality check here people. Sadly even those who have  claimed to have grasped the idea have looked at the less than perfect food the carrots not quite the right shape the marked fruit on the trees even the tomato not quite round and perfect and red or even this chicken and turned up their nose. Everyone wants to be good but be able to have their old ways and requirements at the same time. Doesn’t work that way I am afraid people.

But you can’t blame them. You see the celebrity chefs turning out perfect food with perfect ingredients that are same as those you can buy in the supermarket but are better, more organic more local more of everything but they look the same…

If we are going to be living more local then we are going to be eating a lot less perfect food but it will be a lot better for us and damn side better for the earth and the plants and beasts on it.

And the result is below. Tastes fantastic. Still not perfect to most people after all where else are you going to get the neck served up as part of your meal and boy if you have not eaten the neck cooked like this you have missed out.

plated

Chicken and Chorizo Casserole

  • One chicken cut up or the equivalent in pieces
  • 5 chorizo sliced into pennies
  • 4-5 finely diced onions
  • 5-10 garlic gloves sliced thinly
  • 4-5 carrots diced
  • 4-5 bay leaves
  • 2 table spoons of good smoky paprika
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • Chilli to taste
  • Can of tomato
  • 2 cups of white wine
  • 2 table spoons of plain flour in a cup of cold water.
  • Handfull of olives

Fry off chicken pieces in sunflower oil, put aside. Fry off the onions, add the diced carrots bay leaves, garlic and paprika fry until the onion just start to cover. Remove from the pot. Fry off the chorizo and when nicely browned add back in the chicken and onion mix. Add the other ingredients with the exception of the flour mix. Simmer for an hour or so then add the flour mix and simmer for another 10 minutes or so until the flour is cooked off and the sauce thickened. Serve with rice and few olives on top.

My what a busy year you have had.

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My what a busy year you have had.

Well it has been a very, very, very busy year.

As I am sitting here having eaten a nice meal home cooked with my family and knocking back a nice cold elderberry champagne I must admit I am pretty content.

Not complacent just content. I wandered around my back yard this evening thinking I need to do this. I need to do that but I reminded myself of the many things I have done.

In some ways the approach I am taking to lighten my step on the earth is working but it is still way too heavy. I am not the worst or the best and if the whole world lived like me we would be in trouble. Conversely if the whole of Australia lived like me we would perhaps be starting down a better road (just my opinion here).

So where to from here? Well for me I intend to keep going. I have a number of things I would like to do this year as listed below but one of things I will do is take more time to spend with my family.

While I was always interested in the world and the long term living of within means, my children bring home why I have to continue to change.  For anyone reading this it is a long term thing. Each day you look at the world a little differently and hopefully a little better.

Achievements this year.

  • Garden more productive than last year.
  • Passive solar changes for the house underway
  • Front yard full of idea’s (most would call it full of junk)
  • 87 posts on this blog (some of them readable)
  • Lots of good meals with friends and family
  • Some bartering for services.
  • Lots of plant swaps.
  • Most of my seedlings self grown (or bartered)
  • New skills such as salami making, meat curing and stone carving learnt
  • A lot of booze brewed (some of it even drinkable – cheers)
  • Foraging skills for plants, materials etc  increased.
  • Bees in the back yard
  • Started a few people on the road to growing their own gardens
  • A reconnection to local food through the garden, the ceres box, and the cheese and tofu coop.
  • And mostly two happy little kids who love the world.

It is short list but there is a good number of things to be happy for I think.

For next year

  • Shed move
  • Retaining walls.
  • Retro fit the house for energy saving
  • The new plot in the community garden
  • More garden beds
  • Cellar space
  • Harvest Honey
  • Hot house
  • More time with my family and of course…
  • two happy little kids who love the world 

This list is shorter as more things will creep in and the last two items will be a strong focus. Time spent smelling the roses and enjoying friends and family more.

I still had to work tonight and again tomorrow, a reminder of the bad old days for me in the corporate world but I am starting see that there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Happy to be working at the end of the day and working towards the rest of my goals

May you all have a great new years and safe break (if you are having one) see you all next year (yes that is tomorrow)

New Years Eve Dinner (yes it can be a food blog at times)

Chicken

  • 3 or 4 chicken thighs (you can use breast fillets but thigh are better flavour and will not dry out so much)
  • 2 table spoons fish sauce
  • 1 table spoon of soy sauce
  • Juice of 1 lime
  • Table spoon of water
  • 3 cloves of garlic crushed
  • Teaspoon of fresh chilli
  • Walnut sized piece of ginger grated
  • 4 or 5 spring onions sliced up.
  • 1 teaspoon of brown sugar (or coconut sugar)
  • 1 table spoon sesame oil

Put the chicken breasts in foil and pour over the rest of the ingredients you have mixed in a jug. Wrap up and seal the tin foil and cook in an oven at 170 degree Celsius for around 30 to 45 minutes (breast fillets 30 minutes, thighs longer)

Meat will fall off the bone and both children where getting right into it.

Salad

  • 1 cucumber sliced on grater slicer
  • 1 zucchini sliced on grater slicer
  • 1 carrot peeled and sliced with a peeler in long strips
  • 1 tablespoon of flaked almonds (I ran out tonight)

Mix vegetables together and season with macadamia/olive oil, vinegar salt and pepper  leave for a while then toss in the almonds prior to serving.

Works very well mixed together on a plate with chicken meat, and steamed rice.

Days of Sunshine

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This has been a good weekend spent with the family and doing small but import (well to me) things.

I have had a great time with A. and the kids we went to a community market, ate great food had friends over for dinner, some awsome urban salvaging and even had a short notice visit by my parents and grandmother.

With the weather being so good on the weekend and some serious manic drive we have got through a number of projects which I will cover off on posts this week.

The thing that struck me was these where days of sunshine for me. The kinds of days that I would love to see more of in my life. Time spent with kids and doing things in the back yard with A. and family. Simple food from the garden or locally produced and siesta’s.

Tomorrow I have to return to my job. And while I have previously posted that the job is not too bad and most people on this planet would swap their life for mine in a heartbeat (and I still believe this). I still do feel that the corporate life is not doing me any or most other people in it any good.

It perhaps reinforces in my mind those changes I need to make so the days of sunshine are the greater part of my days.

Have great week all and enjoy.

Of Mallow and Strawberries

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On Sunday I went and did the excellent Adam Grubb of Very Edible Gardens edible weed walk.

I am interested in foraging and already do some foraging eating nettles and wild fennel, converting sticky weed into bio fertilizer, getting into wild foraged elder and other trees. I have known about dock and dandelion and have eaten them before but wanted to improve my knowledge of the food options that we underestimate and are so widely available. Being self-sufficient is a part of what I am looking at and this is just one small part of the puzzle.

I won’t go into details as to individual plants in this post as this is an area that you are best to go and do a course with or/and get mentored and learn this important skill safely. I have done a courses with Ballarart Permaculture Guild and now with Adam and feel a level of comfort with what I know and don’t know (and have posted on things like nettles) but even then I use a field guide to check things out I am 100% sure of it.

Adam said at the start that you will look at the average plot of grass and weeds a bit differently after the course and yes this is certainly the case and last night I spotted about 5 different edible weeds in my back yard that there was good mallow plant up near the strawberries. So while the 3 year old got stuck into picking the strawberries I picked a handful of mallow buds or mallow cheese as they are known.

They have a nice crunchy texture and taste not unlike edame. So Sabrina and I brought in the strawberries to share and after seeing me eat the mallow she asked to to try it and low and behold she loved them eating them over the strawberries (she can be a strange child at times 🙂 )but she did then clean up the strawberries when the mallow was all done 🙂

Our rule is that you don’t have to eat a meal but you do have to try it and I am glad that this is now coming out in my daughter being willing to try anything.

So go out and learnt some new skills and learn to forage (and do it safely) and if like me you have a family then you might just manage to influence that next generation to something just a bit more sustainable.