I was delighted to see Michelle Obama on the news yesterday planning an organic vegetable garden for the White House. I really like how the Obamas learn valuable lessons from people who stood in their stead well before them, notably Abraham Lincoln and the Roosevelts, and even when they could easily afford to buy organic produce in the White House, they choose to grow it themselves. It is a wonderful and valuable example they're setting for their children and their nation.

Many of you know we grow food in our backyard all year long, but we wind down at the end of summer, which we've just passed through, and rejuvenate the beds before planting out for the new season. March is our main planting time. What we plant now will do us through until about November and as we eat our way through it, we'll plant patches of fill in plants to help us with our aim of self reliance.


Our days are busy with planning and planting so today I thought I'd post about how to get a garden started. This is a very long subject so I think it will probably spill over into another post. There are a couple of things you need to think about before you start - like how much time do you have to spend in the garden? and what will you grow? Know this - a garden will cost money to start, and time and effort to keep going. If you can't, or won't, put the time into it, you'd be better off looking for a source of cheap organic vegetables close to your home.

But let's say you want to try your hand at gardening, how do you start?

Check the soil
The first thing is to check the soil where your garden will be located. If it's an old cow pasture you probably have the best site possible, but if you want to grow vegetables in soil that's never grown anything before, and it's clay, sand or rocky, you'll have a lot of work to do before you start planting. To see what kind of soil you have, wet some soil, scoop it out into your hand and roll it into a sausage shape. If the sausage stays firm and doesn't fall apart, you've probably got clay. If the sausage won't hold its shape, you probably have sandy soil. If it holds its shape but as you roll it in the palm of your hand, it breaks apart slightly, it's probably good loam, the best of all soils. The solution to problem soils is to add compost. It helps clay soil and sandy soil. If you have rocks, you'll have to dig them out. Let me be very clear here. If you have poor soil, you'll have to enrich it. You will waste your time and the money you spend on seeds or seedlings if you plant into poor soil.

My how to make compost post is here.

Organic vegetables
To grow organic vegetables, you need to grow your plants naturally, using no artificial fertilisers, wetting agents or chemicals. If your garden beds have timber edges, it must be non-treated timber. Your soil will also need to be full of organic matter - this retains the moisture, encourages worms and will give the soil a much better structure. You add organic matter to the soil with compost - the decomposed remains of your lawn clippings mixed with your kitchen scraps, paper and garden waste. A useful side benefit of gardening is that it will help you recycle a lot of that waste you used to put in the rubbish bin.

Seasons and climate
While we see vegetable gardening as a very natural pastime, you would never see the assortment of vegetables that are commonly grown in a backyard growing naturally side by side in nature. To do that, you have to give them good conditions and continue to look after them. So after you plant your seeds and seedlings, you will have to give them some time during the week to look after them and water them. And please consider your seasons and the time of season you grow. No matter how much you want it to grow, planting a pineapple into ground that has been snowed on, will not give you a fresh pineapple. I would dearly love to grow apricots here but I know the limitations of my climate, and I leave them to those gardeners who are in a colder climate. Also, planting corn late in the season will give you a corn plant, but no corn because it won't have enough time to grow the plant and the cobs. So be guided by the times on the seed packets or on the seedling pack.

Tools
Apart from good soil, seeds, seedlings, compost and natural fertilisers, you'll also need tools. If you intend to dig, you'll need a spade and maybe a fork, you'll also need a rake and a trowel. None of these tools needs to be new. You can buy perfectly good tools from the secondhand store or at markets and often the older tools are very good quality, they just need a clean up.


If you want to grow climbing vegetables like beans, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers etc, you'll need stakes and climbing frames. Again, you can probably pick these up from your dump shop or secondhand store.

Location
Check out your garden in the morning and evening and see where the sun rises and sets. Your vegetables will need between six to eight hours of full sun per day, except if you're in the tropics, then you'll probably be looking for a bit of afternoon shade or a shade tunnel. Don't plant your garden over the roots of large trees - the tree will rob you of the moisture and you won't have the success you deserve. If possible your garden should be fairly close to the house, close to a tap and if you have dogs or chooks, you'll need to fence it off.

Dig or no dig?
We dig. We've tried no dig gardens in the past but they never produce the quality of food we get when we dig. We use slight raised beds that we dig and add compost and manure to year round, particularly just before our big plant out in March and when we plant anything new.

Plan your garden on paper
Draw your garden plan on a piece of paper, making sure that the taller plants like corn and tomatoes don't stop the sun reaching the shorter ones nearby. You'll need to walk around the area you plan to dig and make sure the plan you've drawn will work. Don't make your gardens too big because you don't want to be walking on them. You're better off making long, narrow gardens that can be accessed from both sides.

I hope I haven't scared you off but I do want you to know that vegetable gardening is not a walk in the park. It's wonderfully enriching, it's good exercise, will give you cheap, fresh, organic produce, it's madly entertaining and productive, it's will help you on your way towards independent and self reliant living, but some of it is hard work. Know, really know, that you'll be able to carry if off before you start. If you don't think you can construct garden beds and dig, ask someone in your family to help, or see if there is a teenage boy in the neighbourhood who will do the hard work for you for a few dollars.

Having the ability to grow some of your own food is empowering and it's a great skill to pass on to your children. If this is your first garden, start with a small crop and add a few more things each year until your garden gives you what you would usually buy. If you're unsure about how you will cope with a garden, and if you're young and fit, challenge yourself, and work slowly towards it. It is hard work, particularly starting the garden from scratch, but if you can do this, if you decide that a bit of hard work will be good for you, if you step up to the challenge and work through the season to its end, you will harvest more than vegetables. Your bounty will include satisfaction, knowledge, independence and the ability to produce food from a seed. And that, my friends, is a skill worth having.

Tomorrow I'll write about seeds and seedlings and how to plant them.

We've all wanted her to return. That icon of the fifties, the housewife in the Audrey Hepburn dress and frilly apron who had perfect lipstick and a hot meal waiting for her man. Well, it looks like she's back, but she's changed a lot. Now our homemaker is dressed in jeans and a T shirt, a long linen skirt, or pretty dress. The apron is still there, it might even be "vintage", purchased on eBay for a price we would have laughed at back then, but apart from the apron and the kids, our modern homemaker is nothing like her 1950s counterpart. In the 1950s, housewives were looking for convenience and Laminex, and were embracing plastic. Now we are getting back to basics, going green and reskilling ourselves. Convenience has been replaced by authenticity.

Today's homemaker lives with increasing prices in an international economic crisis. She lives in a world of sharp contrasts - on the one hand she has the internet to connect with others, learn her craft and reskill herself, but that same technology also brings danger into her home in the form of scammers, paedophiles and conmen. She lives with the convenience of mobile phones, but also their cost and proliferation into the lives of our young children. She lives in a world of man-made antibiotics, chemicals and preservatives that are added to our foods and drinks, but some of those antibiotics and chemicals have reduced common illnesses and virtually eliminated some diseases. She also lives in a world that gives little respect to the role of the homemaker, while courting her to spend her money in this store or that.

Nowadays, women are returning to their homes for a number of reasons. They may have decided to raise their family and not return to work, they may have lost their job and realised they can add to their family's health and well being by working in a more frugal home. There are also all those women who I include in this huge shift in thinking - working women who must go out to work but who know the true value of the home and dive into it head first in the evenings and on the weekends. Altogther, we are the women who will change the face of homemaking in the coming years.

I am proud of the work I do in my community, I am equally proud of the work I do here at home. Working side by side with Hanno, we have created a life that enriches us and allows us to live with independence and freedom. We are independent in that we know how to look after ourselves, to grow food and make a comfortable home, and we are free in that we owe no debt. And there are many people who look at us and say how much they admire what we do and wish to do the same, but if truth be told, we are just enacting the role of the homemaker where we make do, repair, cook, bake and clean, using what some might see as old-fashioned techniques, but within a modern context.

Big deal, we are doing what our grandmas used to do. There is nothing new in this. But maybe the pride in doing it is new. I want to encourage all of you, whether you are just starting on this path or have been on it longer than I have, to take pride in your work and to support other women who are homemakers. The work we do in our homes is significant and vital, not only for our selves and our families but for the nation.

I hope you all know how important you are in your own homes. Take back your power to look after yourself and your home. Use the power of your hard earned dollars to support your family and the local businesses you believe give you the best value for money. Complain when you don't get good service and prices and tell that store manager you will take your business elsewhere. They might pretend to ignore you, but a business who doesn't take their customers seriously doesn't last too long. If things don't change, shop somewhere else, then tell your friends. The power of the dollar is an incredible force and we homemakers do most of the buying for our homes, let's use the power we have. Now, more than ever, it is vital that we get value for our money. We need to help our families through this crisis by cutting back as much as we can. We have to learn new skills to do that and we have to learn how to shop for food in innovative ways that stretch our dollars. You are your family's role model right now, it is up to you to show your family that personal growth is possible at such a time and the days of buying whatever you want are behind you. Thrift is back.

Let us welcome the happy homemaker. The move is on to make our homes a haven from the stresses of the world, take control of your life, change how you look at housework and look to the future with knowledge that whatever effort and energy you put into your home will be returned to you, plus some. Sure, nothing is good all the time, you will have bad days, I know I do, but the good days should far out number the bad.

As modern homemakers we have the power of our shopping dollars, we have the power of our technology, and we can choose to see the work of our homes are challenging, satisfying and enriching. You can make your home a place of contentment and comfort. You can change the way you think of housework and see it as an investment in your family's well being. You will be very influential in seeing your entire family through this economic crisis. What you learn now and what you already know could very well mean make or break for your family.

There is a significant job of work to be done here in our homes. We need to plan what we're doing, learn the skills we need to get us through this and work for the good of our families. Let's put our aprons on and begin.

snuggling in, soft and warm, on a cold winter's evening, wrapped in a Shaker-style blanket made by my own hands. I am trying to stay focused on that wonderful thought but now, so early in the project, when I have only seven squares completed, it seems a far off dream. Starting something new, even though you want it very much, seems like too much sometimes.

But I press on.


I am enjoying the knitting, it's just I don't have a lot of time for it at the moment. I love that it's small and movable, I love that I can finished a square in a fairly short amount of time, and I love starting and finishing each square. Seeing each square completed and selecting the yarn for the next square gives me the motivation to keep knitting. How is everyone else going on this blanket?


The square I like the most so far is the mustard one with blue crosses. It is just alternating blocks of plain and purl - I think I did four rows of plain, then four rows of purl. It gives a nice textured look without having to remember what stitch I'm up to. I also like the stripe, so I'll do another of those. But the squares that are the easiest are those in plain stocking stitch. I also like them because I can embroider whatever I like onto them to add interest and I can do them without looking while I talk to someone. I'm guessing there will be quite a few of those.

If you're knitting along, here are some patterns you might like to try:

BASKET WEAVE
Rows 1 - 4: four plain followed by four purl, repeat to end.
Rows 5 - 8: four purl followed by four plain, repeat to end.
Repeat these two instructions until you reach the right length.

And Rose sent an email with more patterns. You might like to try some of these:

CROSSED KNITTING STITCH
Row 1: Knit into the back of the stitches.
Row 2: Purl into the back of the stitches.

BROKEN DOUBLE RIB
Row 1: K2 P2
Row 2: Purl

DOUBLE MOSS STITCH
Row 1: K1 P1
Row 2: K1 P1
Row 3: P1 K1
Row 4: P1 K1

MOSS STITCH LADDER
Find the 5 stitches in the centre of your square. Work a normal stocking stitch square but, in the middle:
Right side: P1, K1, P1, K1, P1
Wrong side: Purl
Continue throughout square.

FRAMED SQUARE
Row 1: Knit
Row 2: Knit
Row 3: Knit
Row 4: K2, purl to the last 2 stitches, K2
Repeat Rows 3 & 4 until the last 2 rows.
Knit 2 rows.

REVERSE FRAMED SQUARE
Row 1: Purl
Row 2: Purl
Row 3: P2, knit to last 2 stitches, P2
Row 4: Purl
Repeat Rows 3 & 4 until the last 2 rows.
Purl 2 rows.

Many thanks for those Rose. It's a big help.

I would like to have a photo sharing site where we could all load our photos to show our progress. I know this would be a big motivation for me and I think it would help many of our other knitters too. However, I have no clue about where or how. How does Flickr work or is there another site, can anyone help me? It needs to be something I can have a link to on my blog but where everyone who is knitting along can freely load their own photos.

Putting nutritious food on the kitchen table is one of the tasks a homemaker must repeat every day. I cringe when I think of the many times I asked my mum "What's for tea?". That's the Australian way of asking what we would be eating for dinner that night. Both my mother and father were very good cooks and it wasn't a problem for them to cook whatever we wanted. The difficult part was deciding what to cook, doing it every day of the year, and making it nutritious, tasty and cost effective.

BREAKFAST


I slightly over estimated the cost of my ingredients and it comes out to $9.15. So on that day, from morning to night, it cost $18.30 to feed both Hanno and I. This is the most expensive time of the year for us with our food because we have very few vegetables ready for the table. As the year progresses, the cost of feeding us goes down, due to what we grow in the backyard.

This is a major challenge for us homemakers. Not only do we have to feed our families healthy meals they'll actually eat, but it also needs to be done within the confines of our budgets. And sometimes that's a hard task. I tend to make traditional home cooked meals and although I used to add interesting new recipes to my rotation in the past, I'm over that and now cook our favourite meals. We have enough of them to provide a variety of tastes and keep it interesting.

If you're trying to cut back on your home costs, food is a great place to start. But you have to develop a good range of wholesome cheap meals your family will eat - that, my friends, is the challenge. Putting those meals on the table that you know they love, but with a cost that won't break your budget is a task we all need to work on, but when you get it right, it makes a real difference. It's easy to barbecue a steak or roast some beef, add a side dish and you know they'll eat it. It's more difficult when you need to concentrate on cheaper cuts of meat or fish - or no meat at all. The recipes are out there, and there are many cheap recipes here on my blog, it's up to you to find those recipes your family might enjoy, test them at meal times, then, if they're a success, add them to your meal rotation. I'd be happy for any of you to share a particular family favourite in the comments. We might find some new favourites from something that is shared here.

I'll be back soon to answer the questions from the previous two days. Thank you for the sweet and generous comments and welcome to the newcomers.

Here we have a patch in which parsnips seeds have been sown, then corn, bok choi and a lot of lettuce.

These bananas were picked just after I took this photo and quite a few of them are now in the kitchen.

And here below are the lattice loofas almost ready for harvest.

No doubt I'll do updates on the garden as it grows, but now it's at my favourite stage - full of promise, healthy and not one grasshopper in sight. I read somewhere recently there has been a huge increase in the sale of vegetable seeds this year. That tells me that a lot more people are taking responsibility for their own food and will try their hand at vegetable gardening. Which brings us all back closer to where we should be - eating fresh vegetables and fruit and looking after ourselves. So if you're a new gardener, I hope you enjoy your garden, learn more than you ever thought you would and reap a bountiful harvest. Happy gardening, everyone.

My friend Bernadette called in on Friday afternoon and while we sat, talking, on the front verandah something caught my eye. I looked to the road and a bunch of pink balloons was making it's way along the street. Our next door neighbour on one side, Angie, was taking the balloons to our next door neighbours on the other side, Rachel and Jude. Their baby had been born!

The next morning, I packaged up a simple little gift - two pure cotton washcloths and some soap, and Hanno and I visited next door. New parents often look a bit bleary-eyed, and Rachel and Jude were no exception. Rachel said hello, then disappeared, returning again with a tiny bundle of pinkness. "This is Jayda," she said, "would you like to hold her?" You all know the answer to that question. ; - )

We sat talking about Jayda's fast arrival (they got to the hospital with only 15 minutes to spare), and all the while I held that beautiful baby girl she slept, made funny faces and reminded me, once again, that new life always brings with it such potential. I wondered how the world would change in Jayda's lifetime and made a silent wish that she would live a long and happy life surrounded by family and friends. I will be over 80 when Jayda is old enough to leave home and if she is still living next door to us then I'm sure I'll remember the day I first held her.

It was my step-son Jens' birthday on Saturday. He and his wife Cathy live on the other side of our town, so early Saturday morning I made him a birthday cake. Cathy was at work so when we arrived Jens made us a cup of tea, sliced the cake and we had a lovely visit with him. Hanno asked me to make him the same cake, and I have to admit is was delicious, so I'll share the recipe with you. I wanted to use some of the walnuts Hanno cracked last week and as Jens loves apple cake, I combined the two.

APPLE AND WALNUT CAKE

Add these dry ingredients to your mixing bowl:
4 cups self raising flour OR 4 cups plain flour + 4 teaspoons of baking powder.
1 cup of brown sugar - the recipe called for a cup of brown sugar and a cup of white sugar but I thought that was too much. I only used the cup of brown. If you like very sweet cake, add the second cup.
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon

In a smaller bowl add your wet ingredients:
3 eggs
1 cup of olive oil
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract OR 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
½ cup of milk OR buttermilk OR whey

Mix the wet ingredients together and add them to the dry ingredients. Turn on the mixer and start mixing. You will probably need to add more milk, but mix the batter first before you add it. The amount of milk you need will depend on the weather and your flour. You want a well mixed batter, firmish but not too runny. Mix for about two minutes.

When you're happy with the batter, add 1 cup of crushed walnuts and 1 cup of pre-stewed OR canned apples and mix them in with your spoon or spatula. Then add the batter to a well greased and lined cake tin. Cook in a medium oven 175C (350F) until golden brown and a toothpick or skewer comes out clean.

While the cake is still hot, brush the top with a small amount of butter and sprinkle on a mixture of ½ teaspoon cinnamon and ½ teaspoon of white sugar.

When I make this cake for Hanno, I'm going to use butter instead of oil. I think it would also be great using bananas instead of apples.

The rest of our weekend was quiet, taken up with gentle chores, chasing chickens, knitting, writing, gardening and cups of tea on the front verandah. The vegetable garden is beginning to take shape and once again I can see the potential of it to feed us for another year. The soil is teaming with life, seedlings have been planted, natural fertilisers added and the plants are slowly taking on their own life. Thank you Hanno for all that work. I'll take some photos and do a post about it during the week.

I'm at work today and tomorrow and I look forward to all that will bring. I have a couple of meetings first up with some interesting people, a committee meeting later this afternoon and a meeting with politicians tomorrow (there's an election on). In between all that a million other things will happen. It makes me feel good to be part of such a vibrant and wonderful community. I hope you make your week all it can be.

It seems to be agreed now, we are headed for a few shaky years ahead. Some are saying it will be the same or worse than the Great Depression, but the truth is no one knows what will happen. Some people feel secure because they have superannuation/401k plans, or stocks, but another stock market crash might wipe a lot of the value from those investments. Our governments are trying to keep us calm by offering stimulus cheques. They want us to spend those stimulus cheques on TVs, cars and other products they believe will help boost the economy. I hope anyone who gets one of these payments uses it to build a grocery stockpile, buy vegetable seeds, fruit trees and chooks, or build an organic garden, because no matter what happens, we all know we have to keep food on the table.

I'm not sure if our economic conditions now are the same as they were during the Great Depression (GD); my parents lived through it, I didn't, but I do know that almost everything else is different. During the GD almost all women knew how to cook from scratch, make do, substitute ingredients, sew, knit, mend and live without electricity. Now very few do. During the GD, most men could do the repairs in the home, repair a bicycle, hunt, barter, kill and pluck a chicken or skin a rabbit, and would walk miles for a day of paid work. Now very few do. Most families then didn't have cars, no one had credit cards, there were no TVs or computers. The debt ordinary people carried in the GD were mortgages, other kinds of debt were uncommon.

During the Great Depression people were equipped to look after themselves using the life skills most people had then, now those skills are lost to many. They used to support each other, their extended family and the neighbourhood. If the economic conditions are the same now as in the GD, everything else is different.

If I were a young wife now, with children to raise, I would be learning everything I could about how to do the work in my home without modern appliances. I would learn to make bread by hand - good bread not just a get-by loaf; I would work out easy ways to do the family laundry - in case a time came when I didn't want to use electricity - once I worked it out, I'd go back to my washing machine; I would create a stockpile of groceries, and if I had a backyard I would learn to garden and raise chickens. I would teach myself to sew and knit. I would start mending clothes, I'd recycle and reuse everything I could. I'd start cooking from scratch with the intention of learning how to produce the most delicious and nutritious meals for the lowest cost.

If I were a young wife and mother now, I would take it upon myself to save every penny I could to pay off our debt. I would encourage my husband and children to economise, make do and learn to go without. My focus would be on the long-term health and prosperity of my family and I would hope to teach myself enough to give us the best chance in this tough economic climate.


It is often thought that the person who goes out to work has the important job in the family and will be the deciding factor in how well the family lives. And while that bread winner role is still vitally important, the stay at home partner is equally important. It is the person in the home who will feed the family, manage the money and pinch every penny until it hurts. It is an exciting time for homemakers. Our jobs have always been significant, more so than we were ever given credit for, but now we have the added responsibility of stretching our dollars to get the maximum value from them and helping our family get through the next few years while who knows what will happen. And if we come out of this quickly and unscathed, well, we'll have those skills to help us in the future. It's a win/win situation.

There has never been a better time to know how to run a home efficiently. There has never been a more pressing need to know the skills of the homemaker. If you still need to learn a few things, you'd better get cracking, because what you learn soon and what you know now might mean make or break for your family. Don't be scared, be energised by this. There are many ways to learn what you need to know. You could start by reading some of my archives, or visit the co-op, and read through any of the archives of the writers who have links to their own blogs there, or find a blog you relate to and learn from it. Books you might find helpful are Encyclopedia of Country Living, Nourishing Traditions, or (for Australia/NZ) Easy Organic Gardening,

And, as always, I'm happy to answer your questions.

I'm looking forward to a restful weekend, full of knitting and a little writing. For all the knitters in the knit-along, I've just finished my fifth square. I'll take some photos and show them on Monday. I hope you enjoy your weekend and have the chance to relax and unwind. Welcome to the new readers who arrived this week. Please drop a comment and say hello. Thank you for all the kind and generous comments left during the week. Take care, everyone.

Caution is in the wind. We're being advised to save our resources, spend our money - for the good of the national economy, and keep our heads down. Keep working, keep spending and don't change anything. Times will get better, they say.

Of course, times will get better but now is the perfect time to change. Change can make your life better while the bad times continue around you. Simplifying your life can make a big difference to how you survive this economic crisis. I'm not saying you should pack up and move to the country, I'm saying that whatever you're doing in your home right now - the way you shop, the way you cook and clean, the way you furnish your home, how you feed your pets, how you think, how you travel to work or school can all be simplified in a way to save you money and eventually, time.

Living simply is a good way to live all the time, not just in hard times. I know many people are coming to it now because it provides an optimistic direction and a light in the window in these cold dark times, but even when the economy turns around again, it will provide that, and more. Simple living is not just about being prudent with money, it provides a gentler way of living that is kinder to the environment and to the people who live it than the way we have come to live our lives now.

Modern life encourages us to be dependent on others. We buy our food, often already cooked, from a shop, we buy our clothes already made, we have someone cut our hair and 'do' our nails, we go to the doctor to ask what is wrong with us, a mechanic fixes our car, a train takes us on our journeys, someone teaches our children, magazines and TV tell us what we should wear and who we should look like; advertising dictates, products dominate, others decide. Obviously we shouldn't give up the convenience of modern life, but we should get back our independence. We should make our own decisions on food, cleaning, clothing, health and how we live. Almost everything you make yourself will be superior to what you buy in a shop. You will take care that what you include in what you make is healthy and not there just to extend the shelf life or make it smell better. Preservatives and flavour enhancers are there to benefit the manufacturers, not us. We do better with fresh, or home made.

This post is not meant to teach you what you might need to know but rather to encourage you towards change. I have written many posts on ways of doing things, recipes, developing yourself and becoming independent. Some older posts on these ideas are here, here, here, here and here. And read 50 simple things, which is here.

I don't expect anyone to change their life overnight. It's a slow process, one thing at a time, day-to-day kind of change. But generally you will find that changing one thing will lead seamlessly to other changes and before you know it your life change is underway. And I don't want to point you in one direction either - this life is different for all of us. Those older and younger, with and without children, working outside the home and working at home will all have different priorities and needs. So the point of this post is to help you think about change, to tell you it's possible no matter what you hear from others, and to encourage you to start. You don't have to live your life the way "normal" life is portrayed on TV or in magazines. Your life will be different to your friends lives, so don't model yourself on them. You and your family are unique, so create a unique life and piece-by-piece, slowly but surely, new possibilities will open up before you. It won't be easy, you'll work harder at first, but the rewards will be there for the taking.

So wake up, dive in, be bold, find beauty, slow down, give more, expect less, breathe deeply, take pride, value yourself, respect your work, do good, learn, grow, develop, lead, teach and become your true self, whatever that may be. Unravel the mystery of what your life can become by starting on that journey today. That first step is the hardest, but it's also the most important.

With two incredibly busy days at work behind me, I'm happy to be home again. I love my work, love the people I work with, and the students at our Flexischool, but as we move closer to our new building, the days get more hectic with more work to cram into the days I'm there. I have to go back for a meeting tomorrow, but today I will appreciate the quiet and familiar here at home.

We've had Shane and Sarndra staying with us for a couple of days. They were organising a few things for the wedding and wanted to make sure Princess (the cat) and their chooks settled in well. It's a slow process, but everything seems to be going well on that front. I helped Sarndra with the wedding invitations on Sunday while we had a nice conversation about her hopes for their special day and our wedding in Hamburg. They left to go to Brisbane on Monday to stay with Sarndra's mum and this morning they're flying to New Zealand. They'll return a couple of weeks before their wedding in late June. Bon Voyage S & S! One of the wonderful things about blogging for me is that my family can read that life is going on as normal here at home, even though they're far away. I have family members and close friends who read my blog most days so I'll take this opportunity to say hello to Kerry, Sunny, Tricia, Danny, Kathleen, Susan, Wendy, Bernadette, Suzie, Nick, Angie, Billie and Zoe.

So today Hanno and I will be here together with all sorts of possibilities on the horizon. We have bread in the freezer so I won't bake bread, but I'll be sweeping, washing, making the bed, and tidying up; all the gentle things that will bring my mind back home again, and I will make sure I talk to Hanno, smile, relax, sew and knit, enjoy myself and get enough sleep. :- )


We have walnuts! We were given a large bag of Tasmanian walnuts last week - 10 kilos (22 pounds) of them! Hanno and I have cracked a few open with the hammer but today I'll have to do something with the bulk of them. Have you frozen walnuts? I hope to freeze most of them in small bags but I wonder if it will affect the taste. At the moment they're really delicious and I don't want to spoil them. If you know of any other ways to store walnuts, please let me know. Which reminds me, I'll check the pecan tree today to see if any are ready to fall. When I last looked, a couple of weeks ago, they were still green.

And this afternoon, after I feel satisfied with the work I've done, I'll sit with my knitting for a while. I haven't knitted at all since last Friday and I've missed it. For those of you knitting along, I've only done three and a half squares so far. Hopefully I'll do another three before the weekend. The square I've almost completed is an easy one, giving a nice textured look.

BASKET WEAVE SQUARE
Cast on 28 stitches.
Rows 1, 2, 3: Knit to end
Row 2: K 5, P 3, K 3, P3, K3, P3, K3, P3, K2
Row 3: K2, P3, K3, P3, K3, P3, K3, P3, K5
And repeat rows 2 and 3 until the right length, making room to end off with three rows of Knit.

I brought home one of the knitting folders from work yesterday and want to look through it for ideas before I take it back again next week. If anyone has a favourite simple square pattern they'd like to share, let me know and I'll include it in a post later in the week.

Welcome to the new readers, including the knitters. It's lovely having you all here. A warm hello to those old friends who continue reading. I love receiving your comments, I read every one of them, and although I don't often have the time to respond to comments, I do appreciate your thoughts and good wishes. And now I'm off to answer a few questions in yesterday's post. Have a lovely day, everyone.

Worms are a mystery to many people but if you have a small bucket of compost worms, you can create a worm farm that will help you get rid of a lot of your kitchen waste and newspapers while giving you a really beneficial end product. Having a worm farm allows us to create very good fertiliser here at home. Used in conjunction with other organic fertilisers like homemade compost, animal and chook manures and herb teas, we can grow whatever we like here without buying commercial chemical fertilisers.

Using worm castings in your garden will improve the structure of your soil, will help it retain moisture and will add microbes which help make the nutrients already in the soil available to the vegetables you plant. You will get better growth, healthier roots and bigger harvests using worm castings.

I have written about setting up a worm farm here, today I want to write about fast worm farm maintenance. The end product of a worm farm, the reason you keep worms, is for the worm casts - this is called vermicompost or vermicasts, which is just another name for worm manure. Once you've had those worms chomping away on food, paper, manure and straw for a few months, you'll want to harvest the castings. My problem was Hanno needed the castings for the garden and I didn't have time to harvest them. I wanted to empty the bathtub, sift the gravel on the bottom, because I know a lot of worms are living in there, reset the filter cloth on top of the gravel and build up the bedding again. No time for that, so I did a bit of fast maintenance.

BTW, you should never hose out your worm farm. Over time, the farm will build up beneficial bacteria, just like yoghurt and sour dough starter does. The longer it stays undisturbed, the better it gets. So your normal maintenance is cleaning the outside, making sure you don't have too many spiders, or rats, and generally checking the worms are healthy, the filter cloth is doing it's job and nothing has made a nest in there. There is little cleaning as such.

I didn't feed the worms for a month, making sure they ate every bit of food and last weekend I divided the farm in two. I wanted to create a pile of worm castings, containing the worms, and a pile of food that will draw them away from the castings side and into the food side.