This part of the system is installed in our garage and on here we can see how much electricity is being generated.

There are a few things you can do to help save with the panels. It's mainly the usual things like turning off appliances at the wall,  cutting down on the hot water if you have an electrical hot water system and being careful with heating now that winter is here. In our contract with the electricity company, we buy electricity for 19 cents per kilowatt hour and we sell the excess from our panels for 44 cents per kilowatt hour. So we try to use power-hungry appliances, like the washing machine and vacuum cleaner, at night so they run on the energy we buy from the grid for 19 cents per kilowatt hour. That leaves us clear to sell the electricity the panels generate when the sun is shining for 44 cents per kilowatt hour. Our clothes washing is the main thing we modified - instead of doing a wash in the morning as I used to do, we now put on a wash at night, and hang it on the line in the morning. It's not much of a change but it helps us save.

I was talking to a woman the other day and she mentioned that she didn't have solar panels installed when they were heavily subsidised by the government because she could only afford a small unit and she didn't think it would make any difference. It has been our experience that even the smallest unit will make a difference and if you manage it well, you might not have to pay to electricity again. Hot water generally uses about 30 percent of the average household electricity. If you have the option to buy a solar hot water system that has a government subsidy, take it, because that will reduce your electricity bill by about 30 percent. After that, if you have the opportunity to buy the panels, and there is a subsidy, go for it. We paid our panels off on an interest-free loan and that worked really well for us. The details of that are in the post linked above.

Here is some information about electricity costs in Australia - these are Victorian costs but the other states would be similar.
This is information about solar hot water system government rebates.

USING EGGS

Now our chooks are laying again, we have an over-abundance of eggs, including Fiona's beautiful pale blue eggs. A great way of using eggs is to make custard. This one is a baked egg custard and it uses four eggs, but you could easily double it.

The dark brown egg above is a Barnevelder egg and the blue eggs are from our Araucana, Fiona.

BAKED EGG CUSTARD

Pour into an oven-proof dish, sprinkle with nutmeg. Place the oven-proof dish in a water bath/bain marie so the boiling water comes up to cover the bottom half of the over-proof dish, and bake at 170C/340F for about 30 minutes. Make sure the water is boiling. You need this gentle method of heating, not straight oven baking, for this recipe. The custard will be done when it's still slightly wobbly in the centre. This is delicious served warm or cold with stewed or fresh fruit. It is also a great filling for a sweet pie - either with a fruit base and topped with the custard or all custard and served with fruit on the side.

This is a very easy recipe, even for first time cooks. The only thing you have to be careful of is to not over cook it. If you don't eat all of it when it's freshly made,  it will keep in the fridge for two days.

We had a lovely visit with Kerry, Sunny and Jamie recently, just before Sunny and Jamie left for a trip to Korea to visit family. We talked, marvelled at how fast Jamie is growing, watched him crawl around, stand up and giggle, picked vegetables in the rain and generally spent time enjoying being together. I had an interesting conversation with Sunny about disipline - I am dead against smacking (Sunny is too), and I told Sunny how we raised Kerry and Shane with a strategy of firm boundaries, encouragement and teaching them our values and how to live in our family. Children need to be taught almost everything - and living in their family is one of the most important parts. I tread a fine line being the mother-in-law and I'm well aware that my way might not suit, but I think my role as joint head of the family brings the responsibility of gentle adviser. So I talk about how I parented but don't expect that what I say will be acted on because I know that all children are different and all families have their own ways.

But that started me thinking about spoilt children I've known and that we are at the ideal time right now to start thinking about this because children aren't born with an entitled attitude, it's modelled for them and learned along the way. What is my role as grandmother in helping our two beautiful boys, Jamie and Alex, be happy and content without them developing that sense of entitlement?

Some of the things I can teach them is:

The value of money. The most obvious money difference between us and children is that we know how hard it is to earn money and that there is usually a limit to how much we have.

Teach them how to choose wisely, show them there are boundaries. There are always boundaries in life. It's good to know that early so you can build confidence and learn how to live with them.

The value of work. I want to see my grandsons happy to work along side us when they visit and stay with us. I have no doubt Shane and Sarndra and Kerry and Sunny will expect their boys to do certain jobs around the house, I will continue that while they're here too and from a young age, expect them to set the table, offer hospitality to visitors and their parents while they're here and to be a real part of a real family. And that means they do their little jobs as they become capable of doing them and they contribute to the family in a meaningful way. I can hardly wait for the time when we can teach them how to sow seeds and read stories to them about gardens and the wildlife here. Self-esteem is developed by knowing how to carry out tasks and that they are being relied on to look after certain things. That is not a burden for children; it builds character, confidence and courage; and they are strong foundations on which to build a life.

And I can model that behaviour for them in what I do in here and in the gifts I choose to give them. I am really saddened when I see young children out at events with mobile phones, iPads, iPods and computers. I don't think there is anything wrong with a child using the family computer, iPad and iPod. I expect children to be given the family mobile phone sometimes. But to be given those things as gifts at a young age is unnecessary and using them in a social situation is rude and disrespectful. I still remember going out with Tricia at Blackheath last year and having dinner at the local pub. There I watched a couple of families, obviously making the time to dine out with family and friends, but allowing their children to sit at the table with iPads and phones. The parents were all talking to each other and enjoying the outing. Their children were tied up in computer games and talking to their friends on the phone and didn't have a clue what was going on right in front of them. If children aren't expected to listen and speak at such a gathering, when do they learn how to do that?

This is a new area for all of us. Our rules for acceptable behaviour have developed over the years and  the capacity to take a phone or computer out in public to a family gathering has only been with us for a few short years. Maybe there hasn't been enough social comment on it yet, maybe families haven't yet decided on their own values and how they want their children interacting with technology.

Or am I being a fuddy-duddy? Are my hopes for grandchildren who speak at the dinner table and who leave their technology at home, not only when they're five but also when they're 25, completely opposite to how most people see it? Am I crazy to expect Jamie and Alex to grow up satisfied with what they have? I would love to hear your views on this. How are you raising your children to live simply in a techno-obsessed world? How are you, or did you, raise children who are happy without having everything their friends have?

Helping boys develop into caring, responsible men and girls into thoughtful, intelligent women starts when those children learn to walk. Games, play, books, make believe, dressing up and simple tasks that grow with the child, work side by side in developing well rounded people who know the value of work. It is difficult when you're listening to your five year old refuse to do what you ask and even more difficult when your teenager walks away when you're talking to them. But it is less likely to happen if you teach them, from a young age, that as well as being an individual, they're also an important and loved member of a family and in that family, everyone cares for the others and everyone helps. I have been through the five year old refusals and the difficult teen years and have two sons who are the finest men you could ever meet. Now they're both good family men, they have fine work ethics and they learned the foundations of those values many years ago when I first started asking them to help and showing them how to live in our family.

It was a public holiday for Show Day here last Friday, so all day Friday I thought it was Saturday and on Saturday I thought it was Sunday. It was good to have another day up my sleeve.  Hanno's back is starting to return to normal now so gentle work has resumed in the garden, and seedlings and seeds are in our thoughts again. The weekends are usually the days we work together more. I wander out into the garden to sit on the bench and watch, Hanno returns the favour and wanders into the kitchen while I'm cooking, to talk. It's a good partnership.

On Friday, our friends, Ernie and Jenny, came to visit. I told you a little while ago I'm working towards something exciting, well, I'm going into business with Ernie! Jenny and Hanno will be our helpers. We're doing a number of things, starting off with blogging for beginners workshops on the Sunshine Coast. Our first will be in Maleny in July, then we'll do a few more down along the coast. There will be two types of workshops - one will be the basics of blogging, with time to answer your questions. The other will be limited in numbers with hands-on instructions on how to set up a blog from scratch. When you leave, you'll have a functioning blog. I'll have more details closer to the date.

Here we are having morning tea and talking about our joint ventures last Friday.

There are other workshops in the pipeline too, some on practical things like soap making, baking, jams, preserving, gardening etc, that will be conducted here at our place. Ernie and I will also be starting an online magazine focusing on sustainability and sustainable communities. The four of us see this as a great way forward, a sound way of sharing with others and a way to build our community. There are a few other projects in there but I'll give you more information when we're closer to the launch time.

These two beauties just need a good clean up and they'll be ready for their second lives, brewing hundred of cups of tea.  Oh, and if you're wondering what we've done to that door in the background, Hanno is sanding it back and revarnishing.

Over the weekend I picked up two tea pots at the wonderful Beerwah Recycle Facility. Trish is the manager there and she is a firm supporter of the Neighbourhood Centre. I had asked her to look out for a large teapot for me because I am trying to steer the Centre away from using tea bags. I prefer instead to make a pot of tea using tea leaves. When we have a large gathering, we use almost a box of tea bags. With a tea pot we'll be much more prudent with the tea. Trish found us a lovely old style teapot that I guess would serve about 8 - 10 cups. She also had a smaller glass pot - an old coffee pot, that we can use for our herbal tea drinkers. Thanks for the donations, Trish!

I did the usual cooking and baking on the weekend: date scones and bread were baked and I made a big pot of pea and lentil soup. It will probably feed us for a few days. I also needed to use up some eggs, so I made a baked custand. This is the same as a Creme Brulee - without the caramel. I'll give you the recipe later in the week. Clothes and bedding were washed and hung to dry, the bed made, floor swept and the cat and chooks fed. We thought we'd lost our little bantam, Mary, the one who was always broody. She was no where to be found for three days. We thought a python had swallowed her, but then Hanno lifted up a piece of iron cladding and there she was. She had made a nest for herself and was sitting quietly on 15 eggs! One of our Barnevelders is not growing as she should. Her sister has just started laying but she hasn't even developed her comb yet. My fear is that she will fade away. We can't find anything wrong with her. She is eating fairly well but she doesn't mix with the other chooks and prefers to wander around alone.

Over the rest of the weekend, I was knitting, reading, writing, sending emails and speaking to various members of my family on the phone. It was just the right mix of work and rest. The weather is cool here and it's been raining, so while I went about my work I felt cosy because I was inside most of the time and knew there was soup to warm up for dinner. It was a lovely weekend. I hope yours was too. I'm now looking forward to a full and busy week.

For all the young mums - Carlos Gonzalez, the doctor who wants parents to break the rules.

Twenty predictions for the next 25 years.

How to fold a T shirt. You Tube

Wool soaker long pants pattern

Starting a sourdough starter.

More bread!

FROM OUR MOB - links to people who comment here.

Over at Enchanted Moments, I found what I think is a typical old-fashioned backyard, full of character. I can see an outdoor sink, chooks, a rabbit, the vegie patch, a rake and lots of corrugated iron. I love it! I could easily sit on that bench with a cuppa and spend an hour or so chatting with Mrs Enchanted Moments.

There is a lot to look at and discover at Vintage Rose - there is a lovely party, lots of pure breed chooks and a journey back in time. This is a lovely blog and well worth a visit.

I hope you enjoy the weekend. I'm looking forward to a rest and the work over the next couple of days. I'll see you again next week!

I want to show you what Hanno and I were doing last night. We were invited to be guests at the Rotary and University of the Sunshine Coast Community Fund dinner. The function was to present three PhD students: Jennifer Castell, Cathryn Morriss and Corinna Burgin-Maunder, with a Rotary Scholarship. I had the honour and privilege of being the guest speaker.

So at 64, when I expected to be slowing down and becoming invisible, people I don’t know write to me from all over the world and locals say hello on the street. People want to know my opinion. Amazing things can happen when you focus on your goals and work towards them. Even here, in our corner of the world, writing in my little room in Landsborough, with only Hanno at my side, I have reached out and touched the world. And if I can do that, anything is possible. 

And to Jennifer, Cathryn and Corrina… 

Almost all my successes came because I stood on a firm foundation of sound education. I was not afraid of hard work and even when I was sitting alone in my work room, tapping away on my computer, I believed in myself. Success is not out there. It’s in here. (Point to head) 

The seeds for success are sown in childhood and are cultivated by reading books, by observation, by ambition, by hard work, by identifying the pathways to excellence and by having opportunities to succeed. We are the lucky ones. We have been mentored by our lecturers and nurtured by our Universities. It is up to all of us who have had that good fortune, to expand on it and make the investment in us pay off, not only for ourselves, but for our country as well. Despite what we hear constantly, it is intelligence and learning that will take us forward, but there needs to be a good dose of flexibility in there as well. 

Not much is stable in our world, even what appears stable has its own instabilities. By incorporating flexibility into your plan, you’ll give yourself the best chance of success. You can never know what you’ll discover or learn along the way but flexibility will help you adjust your plans and ideas to incorporate the unexpected. 

Never disregard surprises. They are often full of potential. 

For it is when the best ideas meet observation and team up with something unexpected and astonishing, that the extraordinary is realised...

After my speech, heading back to sit with Hanno again.

As I was sitting there last night, looking around the room full of local and not-so-local people, I was reminded, yet again, that the work of communities is carried out when each of us make the decision to step outside our homes and connect with others. Here it was our local Rotary Clubs banding together to raise much needed funds for the University, but it could have been any number of wonderful community organisations or individuals doing their best in their community. Important things happen in our communities, they support us and we must give back.

And I must say a word about the University itself because I was very impressed. I was seated next to the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Greg Hill, a delightful man, who gave a presentation about the recent progress on campus. Among the highlights: tenders are now being sorted through for the $2 billion University Hospital, and USC was the only public university in Queensland to be awarded five stars for teaching quality in the 2012 Good Universities Guide. These are certainly fine achievements for any university but for such a young university, it is a testament to the leadership and commitment of the staff and to the students.

I need your help. A lovely couple I know, good friends of mine who live in Melbourne, are about to have their first baby. They wholeheartedly share our values and are preparing for the baby's arrival and life thereafter with a frugal and eco mindset. Can you help us with the following questions?

1. Where are the best places in Melbourne for new parents to shop for environmentally-friendly baby needs that suit a low budget?
2. What are the best online eco-friendly baby shops for things like cot sheets, towels and washers? They would love organic but price is a factor.
3. And these two from Jo herself: There’s so much people say you ‘must have’ for your baby, it’s overwhelming how much stuff I’ve already acquired (almost all of it second hand, thankfully). Surely it’s not all completely necessary? So I guess I’d like to know what people were told they needed but found they didn’t actually need.
4.  I’d also like advice on the best nappies, slings, and any other hot tips that your readers want to share.

I was very pleased to be told a couple of days ago that I'm on this bestsellers' list. It's quite a surprise but I suppose all the good work put into publicity by Dianne at Penguin is paying off, and there also seems to be a strong element of 'word of mouth' advertising happening.

According to the media, it seems that young families and pensioners are the two main groups feeling the most pressure due to the current financial circumstances. Personally, I think it has hit most of us. In a HeraldSun article recently, it stated:

A St Vincent de Paul analysis of cost pressures on families, to be released at an Australian Council of Social Service conference this week, shows cash-strapped pensioners and young families are suffering. Actual costs of electricity, health and food have not only increased above inflation, but cost pressures have compounded over time. Pensioners and young families spend a higher proportion of their income on health, utilities and food.

I'm sure many of you would agree, times are tough for many people, and not only in those two categories. When I work at the neighbourhood centre, I see people coming in for food parcels. These people often fall into these two categories, and others, and although we have workshops discussing how to decrease the cost of living, very few of them come along. I think that governments need to play an active part in the re-education of the electorate so that many of the frugal things most of us here do - making cleaning products, cooking from scratch, budgeting etc, become commonplace again.


It will help not only people on low incomes, it will help the average single or family person survive the tough times much better than they do now. When you read about the Great Depression, its inspiring and amazing to read what they did to get by. My grandparents and parents lived through the Great Depression and they did it using the life skills they had that were commonplace then. Many of those skills can still save a substantial amount of money and they still have the potential to help people who take the time to learn them. Many don't know anything except what they know, they don't know there is another way or where to get help in equipping themselves for a more frugal life.

I would like to see Life Skills taught in secondary schools so young people move into their own independent lives better equipped for today's reality. I think tuition in how to write a budget and handle credit cards, compound interest, simple contracts, consumer rights, how to complain effectively, renters' rights and responsibilities, cooking from scratch and using leftovers, sewing, mending, green cleaning, how to wash and iron clothes, how to grow fruit and vegetables in a backyard and general home economics would stand our students in good stead, particularly in their teenage years and leading into young adult life. Ideally, these skills would routinely be handed down from parents to their children, but often parents now don't have these skills themselves. It would help young people to understand the legalities of life before anyone takes advantage of them and it would show them that life is tough but can be made better, and even wonderful, with work hard.

We all have to do our fair share. No one gets a free ride.

Our governments should be leading us. They should be watching duopolies and making sure grocery prices are not destabilised and remain within the reach of families, working people, retired folk and pensioners. They should be proposing innovative ways of teaching our children, not playing it safe. I wonder if we could interest the CWA or Women's Institute in teaching home economics classes. It needs real people with real skills to do the teaching. We want our young people to know how to look after themselves, not how to open a can of soup or cook a packet of cake mix. We need to get our communities involved. Hopefully, this would put us back on track and in 20 years, when parents would be well equipped again to teach their own children, we'd be able to stop the classroom teaching of life skills.

What is your government doing? Are their any bright lights where you live that can shine the way for us over here?  What can we all do to help our young people learn what we know?

When we first decided to become home bodies and to make and mend as much as we could, I thought we'd be leading a quiet life and the longer we did it, the fewer opportunities we'd have to go out and connect with others. At the very beginning it seemed like a solitary life, just Hanno and I, working away on our various projects, with visits from family and friends to add interest on occasional days. But as the years have crawled along, that is not how it panned out. We now have more friends than we ever had, we are taken up with this and that, and we fully understand now, that most important of details - we are a part of our community.

I didn't get that part of simple life when I started on my journey. We all know that the products we choose to buy are not those that are commonly sought after and so we'll never see them advertised on TV or hear about them on the radio. No, the things we deal in, the natural products of the region, we find out about them from our community. Now I know that without my community I don't know where the heirloom chooks are being sold at auction, I have no idea where to buy heirloom seeds and seedlings, I don't have a clue where the raw milk and honey is and I have no community to fall back on when things aren't going as well as they might. Our community is the human element of the place we live; it's the knowledge bank for all things local, it's the connection to the history of here and it's part of way forward to the future.

Community is important, not only to find what we need in our homes and backyards but in the sense of belonging to a place. We're lucky here. We live in an area where people barter, there are co-ops and primary producers, and a feeling that the community exists for and because of its people, not just because a town happens to be there.

Of course, there are online communities, and I am proud to be part of our community here and at the Down to Earth Forum. My online friends are a constant reminder to me and Hanno and that we might be working here in our small patch but we're also connected to people doing a similar thing in cities and towns all over the world. Some of us are here because we haven't found a local community where we live, and there are towns that have not developed their own communities.

Communities are a bit like children, they need someone to take the lead. They need that person to step up, wave their hankie and shout: Woohoo, we're over here, we need you to be here with us!

There are some delicious looking recipes on Roostblog, start with this one for cinnamon donuts.

Likewise, on Running with Tweezers, there are many wonderful modern recipes, excellent food photos and this - The Soothing of Shelling - it's slowing down, shelling peas and a magnificent pea salad.

I love this blog - Wayward Spark and this post what what lured me into it. It's about The Grange and the importance of community.

Meet The West ladies at Homestead Blessings.

One of the good things about going out is that there is no phone to answer, no emails coming in. Switch off your smartphone picks up on that.

The UK recession may be worse than expected.

Are you getting enough sleep? Podcast (40 minutes).

FROM OUR MOB

Wendy lives in South Africa and writes a very interesting blog - Urban Homestead South Africa.

Everything is here on Evi's blog, Sister Sun - from snow on Cradle Mountain to feeding a little possum, mothering, knitting and all things in between.

I've loved reading your comments this week. I'm so proud of our little community here. We have a group of supportive and interested women and men who share knowledge and encourage others and that is something I love being a part of. I'm speaking at the Maroochydore Library today so if you're coming along it will be great to meet you. Otherwise I'll 'see' you back here next week.

I made a very simple button necklace recently. Just using bead thread and old buttons, the only other requirements were a safety pin and a needle. The buttons I used are nothing special. I think they were bought a few years ago as a bag of red, green, yellow and blue plain buttons. If you have special buttons that are just sitting in a tin, use them. Maybe you've inherited some buttons from your mother or grandmother. They would make up a very special necklace and have the added bonus of being useful again.

If you're only doing one colour, sort them out first. If you want differing sizes or a set sequence of colours,  work out your pattern on a flat surface first, then thread the buttons one at a time from the laid out pattern.

And here is the finished product. Please disregard the model who looks like a deer caught in the headlights. She is the only one I can afford. : - )

Today I'm commenting on Cat's recent comment. She asked me to talk about "green guilt". Add your thoughts on this as well. I'm sure she is not the only one feeling this way and pooling our thoughts on this will help some work their way through it. Here is Cat's comment:

I wonder if you might be able to talk about the whole idea of "green guilt".

I try very hard to live an environmentally friendly lifestyle. I garden and compost - I even compost the kitty litter, I don't use chemical fertilizers or pesticides, I drive less than 1000 miles per year, I don't use shampoo, only use TP for "number 2", keep the house cold in the winter and hot in the summer, pay extra to get all my electricity from wind power, use cloth dish towels, napkins and handkerchiefs, rarely buy things - and when I do I opt for used as much as reasonably possible, bring reusable bags to the store, run most errands on my bike or on foot, I don't travel by air (actually - I don't really travel at all), I make the vast majority of my food from scratch, and a whole host of other things.

But even with all that, there are plenty of ways that I know I could do so much more. And constantly feeling like I "should" be so much "better", sends me into a terrible cycle of guilt for not doing more, and anger at those who do nothing - neither of which is very productive.