One was a broken rib and the other was a sprained hand. Both these injuries restricted what I was able to do outside, so I have been pottering along as best I could with some creative crafts.

One of the things I did was to take a class named “The Amazing Plait Bag”. The bag is a really good size and very sturdy, and the handles are done in a seven way plait that looks …well, quite amazing.

We plaited the handles on an old CD with slots cut out of it, and once I got the rhythm it was a simply but tedious job.

The main bag was pieced straight onto the pellon and then the seams were covered with embroidery stitches. The original pattern had the cell phone pocket in the front quite small, so I enlarged it just a little and instead of using a button and button hole stitched on some velcro dots and just put a button on the top.

Over all I was quite pleased with the finished result and I can see myself using this bag often.

First the unavoidable, the schoolwork. We managed to finish up all our themes from last year and so will be starting a new theme when we start up again later in January. We will be doing the Sea and Sky Theme, from WinterPromise. It will be on science and history of the sea and sky. We like these programs as they give us a lot of choices in how we learn and provide us with lots of good books and  fun activities. Although sadly this may be the last year we use them, depending on what new programs they bring out.

On the craft front, I probably spend way too much time in front of my sewing machine, but I did achieve several quilts, some gifts and started on the gift bags, that we want ot be using from now on.

We have enough chickens at the moment, so we are not planning anymore chicks this year. Maybe next year, but we will see. They have started to get out of the orchard so we will have to upgrade the fencing quite a bit to keep them all where they are suppose to be, before they start finding the garden.

And on the subject of gardening, now that I have put the sewing machine away for a while, I am finally starting to tidy up the weeds. Production is down, due to my own neglect, but it is also picking up as well. I really like the whole chicken dome idea, and it seems to be working quite well.

The kikuya is a bit more of an issue, as the chickens managed to kill it off, but did not dig the roots up at all, so that is something that I will have to work on for some time yet.

They left us with a lovely cleared, fertilised and mulched area that was all ready for planting.

These photos were taken at the beginning of spring and shows the gardens just starting out.

This was the first circle planted, and many of the plants are due for replacement. In saying that, it provided us with fresh peas and salad greens for christmas, and is now producing cherry tomatoes beetroot, and some very beautiful cabbages right now.  I have just added some more tomatoes and spring onions but will put more in over the next couple of weeks.

This was the next circle, we have had an almost endless supply of pumpkin plants out of it, which is not so bad since most of my seeds failed to germinate this year. The pumpkins have mostly been transplanted, and I have lots of tomato plants going crazy in there. We have a few green tomatoes on them, but mostly they are just starting to flower.

We have had several meals of broccoli, and there is celery hiding under the broccoli leaves. I seems to like it under there and is doing very well. We are already eating the outer stalks while the plant is continuing  to keep us supplied with celery. The lettuces again need replacing (will probably happen today) as they are all going to seed with the hot weather.

This poor circle has sat neglected for all this time. I didn’t even get around to putting the edging on it. Yesterday I planted some bean seeds, and I have some more started in trays to go in here. I also have some more broccoli plants and well as few other things that are waiting to go in. Good to start getting some production going in here.

On a more positive note, I did get around to planting corn on the other side of the house, and it is doing really well.

It is just starting to form its top flowers so I am looking forward to getting lots of corn of it this summer.

The sheep are still here, they were shorn again at the end of last year and are running in the orchard out of the way. I haven’t decided if I will do lambs this year or not, that will have to be decided closer to march when the ram goes out.

The cows have consumed the most time this year, and also have brought us lots of pleasure and some sadness.

Liquorice is still at the neighbours after being weaned at 10 months, he is looking very good and is very settled there for now. Poor old sweetie did not take kindly to Ollie, when she lost her own calf.

We milked her up until three days ago but now we are drying her off.

Little Ollie seems to only be loved by Murray, but is doing well sneeking feeds from Daisy while Murray is feeding.

He is still much smaller, but is certainly not hungry at all. We will continue to have Daisy feed both the calves for another few months before we wean them off. If she starts to lose too much weight we may take Ollie off sooner, but again to be decided later.

Daisy loves being a mum to her own baby, but will only tolerate Ollie. She has slimmed down quite a lot now that she is making milk, and sometimes I feel that she could do with a rest before she has another calf. We did not intend to have her feeding two calves, it just ended up working out that way.

Neither Daisy or Sweetie Pye are in calf at the moment. We could detect the heat cycles the whole time the AI techs were working, and of course the week after we could get them any more, the both came into heat on after the other. Very frustrating.

This is Sneezy. She was one the calves we got in as week old, late born babies last year. She was always very friendly and seemed to want to be a house cow, by the way she kept coming to see us, for a scratch, and would lick me if I let her. As a last gasp effort, week after the AI techs officially stopped working, she came into heat, so I rang the tech, and he agreed to come an AI her.  At this stage it is looking like she has held, and so she could well be our house cow next year. She was just 15 months old when we had her inseminated, and although we would have liked to wait a bit longer, none of the other cows were coming to the party.

The weather is very dry here at the moment. We had a very wet winter, not much of a spring flush, and now we are going into drought conditions. This is not good for our grass situation, and we are hoping of a few days of rain soon. At least we sold two of our yearlings, so that has eases things slightly.

Overall we have had quite a good year. The biggest high was Daisys baby being born, the biggest low was Sweetie Pye slipping her calf. We are hoping for another good year and not too much excitment, just more chugging on and getting on with life.

It is a beautiful spring morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, all those spring things are happening.

Looking back, we have come along way in the preceeding three years. We love this lifestyle, something that many can’t cope with, but for us it is, now, the only way to live.

So to take stock. We did not do lambs this year, after such an awful year last year, don’t know about next year  yet. We have been getting our own milk for the last 10 months, and I would rather go out and milk the cow in the rain, than get our milk out of a bottle again. It is just that much better.

The side shoot of having a house cow of course is getting a calf to raise for the freezer. It doubles as a back up milker, ensures that the cow is properly stripped out several times a day, keeps the milk supply up, as well as feeding us in the end. Too many advantages not to do it.

This year we have some of the chickens in a chicken dome, so they are doubling as garden labour right now, as well as the eggs. This has to work out as a good thing since it saves us work. The chickens seem really happy and are due for there first move in the dome.

All in all a very good three years, and we look forward to many more to come.

We are still patiently awaiting the arrival of Daisy’s first calf. We are all prepared for it with the milking bay functional, and Daisy willing to go in and eat in there. We have calcium in case of milk fever, and a one calf feeder to aid in teaching Daisy to let down her milk for us. In the meantime she is getting her daily dose of magnesium sprinkled on her hay.

Bevan has managed to destroy yet another car, which once again leaves me with a less than reliable car to use. Even more so at the moment since it battery is stuffed and needs to be replaced.

Most of winter has been spent at the sewing machine. The decision was made to make christmas gifts for people this year, so quite alot of planning has been going into just what we want to do.

Firstly let me say that I want to avoid making food related gifts, so we have to lookk at other possibilites. Secondly, although Bevan came up with the idea of making a play garage for a little boy, in reality he will never get around to it, and I would not be very good at it.

So firstly I have been making quilted christmas stockings for all the children, some of them are even named so can double as the wrapping for the gift. The good thing about this is that after spending all the money to buy material and a whole book of patterns for Sammie last year, I can say that we have had our money’s worth now.

Then comes the problem of what to put into the stockings. But more on that later when I have finished a few more things for it. In the meantime, I have quite a few ideas of things I can make, as well as still being on the lookout for more.

Out of the same pattern book, I am also going to make a tree skirt this year. Something that every year I wished I had, but never got around to.

I have also almost finished painting the main bathroom, a job that was well overdue to be done. Now I have to listen to Sammie complaining about how plain it looks compared to the old fashioned flowery wall paper that we on there. Still she will get over it.

Now I have decided not to have any lambs this year. Last years lambing was not a great one for many people, and we were no exception. So I politely declined the use of a ram for this year, so that should lower the stress levels somewhat. It also means that Daisy’s calf will probably be the only baby born here this year, as we won’t be doing any chicks either I don’t think.

kThe chickens are slowly starting to lay again, and we managed to sell our first dozen surplus eggs of the season last week, with another ready for the coming week as well. The unexpected demise of the rooster, will give us a chance to take stock and decide if we still want to continue with the same breeds and everything.

Now as for the garden, well I am still waiting for the finishing of the garden boxes. In fact it is fair to say that they are no closer to being done, and it is time for a new plan since Bevan does not like doing the boxes. So for me it is a chance to encourage the making of a chicken dome instead, and then I can garden more in the style I wanted to before we moved here.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love that this place already had a chicken house, orchard and garden planning already done, it is just not all laid out in the way I wanted. So now is my big chance, and maybe the only one I will get, to finallydo something they way I wanted.

As we expected it turned out to be a bit of an expensive trip (especially with the stuffed toys and t-shirts that we purchased after the tour).  They have a great range of animals at the park and there’s some interesting insights available as well.  It’s probably not something you would want to do on a regular basis – it’s very much like the Zoo in that respect.

Here are a few pictures from the visit, including the keeper who was killed later in the year by the white lions he was feeding.

At one point, while we were standing by the main pride and the white lions were about to be fed, I was growled at by this little lady – I don’t think she appreciated having the camera on her so much.

As a new year is about to come upon us, it is time to take stock and see how close to our goals we have reached.

The garden is starting to crank up for the summer harvest, and we even got our first crop of beans for the year. We eat alot of beans, so this is something that I not only grow for immediate eating, but also I freeze alot for the winter months. Last winter we ran out in the last month before the garden got going so this year the plan is to do a bit more.

I have some peas in the freezer for use over the hot summer months when they don’t grow, and my last row of them is just poding up now, it looks like I got the timing right that they will be finished before the heat kills them. I have today sown the pean beans that we used last year for homemade baked beans, so it will be good to get some more of them.

We have cucumbers and zucchinis in over abundance right now and the the tomotoes have started to ripen. The garlic has been harvested and is in the process of drying, seems to be bigger bulbs than last year, so that went well.

Potatoes, well  I could well be able to do two full crops so we will have plenty over the summer and still be growing them for the winter months. This year we have once again grown Chipawas for the wonderful chips they make, and also Sambagos for roasting. I have some moonlight seed potatoes but haven’t got them in the ground yet, as well as an unkown type that were here when we came and I have moved to the orchard to help the forest garden get going.

As for fruit, well we have had a surprising large number of raspberries off our one little plant, and I see that it is now sending up lots of shoots so as long as we have a cold enough winter we should get lots next year as well. The blueberries have done nothing with the berries just not ripening on the plants at all, but the strawberries have done well so that is all good.

We are looking like we will get plenty of apples and are already getting plums. One row of pear trees(winter cole) is doing very badly in the fruit department, but then it always has done next to nothing and we are still trying to work out what the problem is with them. The packham and nashi pears both have lots of developing fruit again so no worries there.

The necterine tree is doing really well on all the compost and manure it got last year, but the peach tree right next to is is fighting with us as to whether it will stay alive or not. This morning it had nine shoots on it, that is two more that two days ago and seven more than last month. Needless to say we will not have any peaches this year.

I think all the other trees are pretty much doing what they have always done, although there does seem to be alot of figs on the fig trees at the moment.

We are continuing to milk the cow, and we have been enjoying wonderful homemade ice cream, yogurt, butter, as well as milk. I have not made any cheese as yet, but nest year when daisy is in milk we will probably have to. Daisy is, I am pretty sure, now pregnant, but we have not been able to catch Sweetie Pye in standing heat to get the AI man into her, so not quite sure what we will do about that as yet. Her not so little calf Liquorice has been growing steadily for the last seven weeks and has will make a wonderful addition to our freezer in a couple of years.

We finally reached the point with the chickens were they are paying for themselves, and then my rooster died some mysterious death one day. On christmas eve we hatched the last lot of eggs we had from him, so now we will have to decide what to do about a replacement for him. I have been toying with the idea of just buying in fertile eggs rather than feeding a rooster all year around, but that decsion is still to come.

We have ended up with seven lambs of which only one is on the plan to keep, so lots of lamb chops in the future.

Having the pigs in winter stocked the freezer well, but they were not fun to care for in the rain with all the mud around. We had to repave around their gateway as they had created such a hole in it. Summer is definetly the only time we should do pigs, and certainly Orenoko and Tobermore that we have now are much more fun. Lesson learnt and we have an extra one on order for the end of next year to raise over the summer.

Over all I feel that I have reached my goal for the year. I wanted to be producing 70 -80% of our own food, I feel that with the addition of a housecow we have reached that point. We can certainly go through our fair share of packaged foods when we want to,but the whole point is that we only do so by choice and not because there is nothing else to eat. Even Bevan has been heard to comment on the poor quality and hugh number of additives in prepackaged goods, and that is a whole new way of thinking for him.

Now for my goal for next year. This is a hard one, as I really want to continue on the path we have started on. I think I need to have the gardens under better control as the weeds keep getting away from me at the moment, and I would also like to make some cheese in the future.

Certainly we will be wanting to achieve at least as high or higher percentage of home grown food.

In two weeks it will be spring.

Now is the time I have been looking at how we have been fairing especially over the winter. We have not done too badly for beginners at this really.

The animals have come through an especially wet winter without any losses. The horses have their daily feed of hard feed and hay, but have made a hugh mess of the paddocks, and there are puddles and mud everywhere.

The cows have been happily munching in the big boggy paddock down the back. Daisy was dehorned and seems to have got over that quite well. Curly Sue will be ready for the homekill guy as soon as the paddocks dry out enough to for him to get his truck in. We are still hoping to get a cow we can milk this year, but if not it will still be a year away before we have our own milk.

The pigs are up to there bellies in mud, and I will be going back to what I first thought. Never have pigs in winter. They have not been much fun and we have had problems with their rings. We went to the trouble to get the vet to ring them both, and they have both managed to pull them out. The paddock has that plowed look and we have to wade through ankle deep mud just to feed them

We chose to lamb late this year, and I am not unhappy with that choice. The lambs should be arriving at about the time the grass flushes. It has been so wet this year that the grass might even be slower in coming.

The chickens have been laying again and we are now back to the point where we have an abundence of eggs.

Most of the pruning has been done in the orchard although there is still some waiting, but the weather has been detrimental to pruning so it has to be just slotted around the rain.

We have not done too badly with our winter garden this year, although things are starting to look sad now. We still have celery growing well and are down to our last row of carrots, some of which are still quite small. The broccoli has pretty much finished and we only have one cauliflower left coming on. The cabbages have been extremely slow and we have only had one so far. They are starting to head up now, but I will have to get them in earlier next year. The lettuces have finally gone to seed and the spinach and silverbeet has slowed right down too.

Things to change. Well we need to grow more potatoes next year without a doubt. We have also had word that the seed potatoes of the types we like will no longer be available in the future so we need to grow some especially for seed too. I would have liked a few more pumpkins as well and need to get peas into the freezer. The beans held out well but have come to an end now. The tomatoes that I bottled ran out way to early and we only have one jar of apple left. In saying that, we did not try to stretch them out, but just had them when we felt like it. We still have plum sauce and jam as well as the mint jelly. So although it is slim pickings at the moment, we have eaten well over the winter anyway.

So what is to come. Well I have already started some of our potatoes and will continue to plant them for a while yet. My tomato in my fish tank is growing well and although it will probably go out later when it is warm enough, it gives me hope that we maybe able to grow a few things in there next winter. I have already planted some more lettuce and carrots and since my poor little choko drowned i the rain, I am hoping to get some more of them started. The first sowing of peas is up, with a second smaller one just planted this week. I will make a big sowing of peas in the next couple of weeks so that we can have them harvested before the hot weather wilts them.

I put an order into King seeds on Sunday, and by Wednesday the seeds where here. Pretty good service really. I am looking forward to getting the plants in having some changes to the vegetables again. It is fun to plan what we will eat in the coming year, but hard to wait for the ground to dry out an warm up. Still it will come soon enough and in the meantime, we have had a good winter of schoolwork and sewing while it was so wet and cold outside.

A recent conversation we had reminded me of this event that happened a couple of months after moving here. We were very new lifestylers and were still trying to get our heads around a totally new way of living. Bevan was still trying to work out what it was that was on the otherside of the walls that he had spent his whole life within. Of course he now knows(I hope) that it is just outside.

Anyway, that weekend I had asked Bevan if he could have a look one of the water tanks because I thought we had a little leak in it, and we needed to decide what to do about it. So off he went to find the water tanks.

He had been gone for quite a while and I had forgotten all about it when he came in and asked if we had any chewing gum.

“In the pantry,” I said “what do you want it for?”

“I’m going to fix the water tank” was the reply

Now you can imagine all the thoughts that were going through my head at that comment, and with a certain amount of disbelief I decided that he must have been joking and that even he wasn’t that stupid.

A short time later I heard a shout for help and rushed to see what the problem was.

Well there was Bevan out at the water tank, frantically trying to plug the hole and stop the water from gushing out.

It seems that he was infact that stupid, and when he had tried to put the chewing gum in the tiny pinprick of a hole, he had managed to poke it right through, and so made the hole bigger.

“Help me” he says

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, trying not to laugh at him.

“Get those two empty containers there and put them under the leak to catch the water.”

Now I must have been short a few brain cells that day, because I did as he asked, and then had to ask him what he was planning to do with all those litres of water in the tank when the containers where full. At that point I think he realised the foolishness of trying to save the water, and I came in to find out the prices of new tanks.

Now we have all heard the story of the boy who put his finger in the dam, and we have all heard of chewing gum holding in all sorts of conditions. But I never once thought that any of those stories were real. But I guess some people will believe anything really.

Even the pigs hae taken cover in there house because it is just too wet and cold today.

Feeding the animals takes on a whole new meaning when you are wadding through mud in the freezing cold, while trying to dodge the raindrops.

I am so glad I moved the horses out of the mud yesterday, because we have had a hugh amount of rain since then. Ok so I know they will be standing in mud again before winter is out, but for the time being they are out of the mud.

It is casserole weather and it is very comforting to sit in front of the fire, smelling a wonderfull warming meal cooking, and knowing that it is made mostly with food we have put away for just such a time. Some of it is even growing now.

So we will have a wonderful Beef and Vegetable casserole today made with home grown beef from our boy Rusty. Carrots and Celery are harvested as we need them and are in the crockpot along with the garlic and oregano for flavouring as well as some of the bottled tomatoes. It will be served with lovely creamy mashed potatoes and some of the beans that we froze in the summer. Mmmm makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

I have to be honest though, I don’t like being cold or wet so I look forward to spring coming.