down to earth

Bread and butter cucumbers with red onion and mustard seeds.

I have only one jar of peach jam left! It's my favorite. I'm hoping to keep this jar going until the peaches are ready to be picked this year. My sister is visiting soon, when she arrives I doubt there will be much hope for the peach jam.

Tomato relish and ginger beer.

I make chutney, relish, sauces, jams, marmalade, butters and cordials during the year. My aim is to make and preserve as many of these things as I can so I'm not buying inferior products at the market. My preserving season will start soon. I'll fire up the old Fowlers water bath and start stacking my shelves with home grown and home preserved goodies.

Home made tomato sauce, made with Amish paste tomatoes.

The first step in this process is to collect a many jars as possible. I have quite a few Fowlers Vacola jars - my favourites are a set of 80 year old jars that are a greenish colour, but I also recycle the French jam jars with the gingham lids and Aldi have recently been selling some jam in nice jars. The thing you look for is a wide mouth on the jar for easy filling. The lids need to be in perfect condition with the rubbery seal inside the lid undamaged. You can buy new lids for these jars. Here is part of my collection of jars. As you can see I reuse a lot of varying sizes. If it's not good enough for preserving, it's generally good enough for storing dry goods in the cupboard.

Some of the jars I use for the various sauces and jams.

Preserving anything generally happens in two stages. Stage one is when you cook the jam, relish or sauce, stage two is transferring the product to a jar or bottle and boiling it long enough to kill bacteria. If you do that correctly, you can store your goods for a year in the cupboard. Sometimes, when I make a small amount of something that I know will be eaten within a couple of months, I don't boil the jars, and just store them in the fridge. Some things can be safely stored that way for a short amount of time.

Pickled onions and beetroot. The beetroot was home grown, the onions bought at the market.

It's coming up to preserving season here, or canning season for our North American friends. I always make peach jam, but this year I'll also make orange marmalade, lemon cordial, ginger beer, tomato sauce, tomato relish, chilli jam, bread and butter cucumbers, pickled onions, beetroot, lemon butter, strawberry jam and rosella jam. This year I'll be making rosella cordial too. There has been research at the Queensland University that indicates eating rosellas in jams and cordials helps reduce blood pressure. H suffers for high blood pressure so I'm hoping to make enough rosella cordial for the year and keep it in the cupboard. I'm sowing rosella seeds next week and when they're a good size, we'll plants about 20 bushes out in the front garden.

Lemon cordial, made from home grown lemons. It is really satisfying to be able to offer friends and family home made refreshing drinks on a hot day. This lemon cordial with crushed ice, cold water and some mint leaves is a wonderful drink during summer.

I'll write more about preserving when I'm actually doing it and if there is anyone here who'd like to learn, I'm happy to post a tutorial and share photos and ideas.

We love eating peaches fresh, but if we have an abundance, I always preserve some for eating later in the year when peaches are a pleasant memory.

Let's face it, homemakers are looked down on as a sort of female underclass. They're seen as old-fashioned, not quite with it and definitely passed their "best before" date. I have a big problem with that, not only because I proudly see myself as a homemaker but also because it just plain wrong ... and stupid.

There is a new type of homemaker emerging. She (sometimes he) is keen to raise happy and responsible children, is environmentally and financially aware and health conscious. There is nothing old-fashioned in that. The new homemaker sees her job as being a confident and capable role model for her children, she not only makes sure they attend school with an eagerness to learn, she also teaches manners and life skills at home. Many SAHMs homeschool their children, taking on the formal role of teacher. This is is certainly not something that some dullard with no ambition would choose to do.

Homemaking is a profession. It's made up of people who choose to develop their own family's life instead of working outside the home. Of course, there are many homemakers here who do work outside the home, but they also hold a strong emphasis on the importance of their home and their place in it. All new homemakers see their home as the heart of the family, a place where everyone relaxes and can be their true self, where important relationships are nurtured away from the influences of the outside world.

The new homemaker acknowledges the importance of a family working hard to reduce its impact on the environment. Where possible she uses green cleaners, shops locally, produces some of her family's food, conserves energy, fuel and water, cooks from scratch, reuses, recycles and repairs, makes do and uses her energy and her intelligence, instead of just her money, to provide for her family and care for her home.

New homemakers see their role as raising healthy children, creating a home where everyone feels at ease and comfortable, shopping responsibly, saving for the future and being environmentally sound. Instead of seeing housework as never-ending, they see each day having its own cycle with new possibilities every day. In the new homemaker's life, the most important place is home, and it is a home where children, family and friends will always find kindness, generosity and affirmation.

These new homemakers see money as not just a means of buying products, but as something that creates more options. They're frugal, often not because they have to be, but because they have changed their attitude to money and possessions. There is a depth of meaning in being frugal that most people don't quite get ... yet. They will catch up sometime in the future. Catch up with what new homemakers have known all along - that more possessions, the latest fashions and biggest car don't make people happy. Happiness is found in creating a meaningful life with those you love and care about. The new homemakers are working towards that contentment with innovation and a sense of purpose, and every new homemaker knows she is a pioneer in a new world.

(graphic from allposters)

The end of winter is never the best time to see a beautiful vegetable garden as the harshness of winter does take its toll, but there is still beauty to be seen in a functional garden and even though plants are wilted and yellow, to me that's just part of the cycle of life. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

It's the first day of Spring today so I'm celebrating the end of a beautifully cold winter and the start of warmer days. H cleaned out the chicken coup yesterday and today I hope he'll make a shade structure for them. We want them to have a little area of protection from the sun and rain. We'll use recycled timber and iron sheeting we already have so no money will be spent and waste products will be given a new life.

This is Cocobelle, my favourite chook.

Bare spaces here where we harvested all the turnips and some cabbages. We'll be planting potatoes in this bed.

I cleaned up the aquaponics gardens yesterday. I removed some celery that's been growing there for the past five months and planted beefsteak and Amish paste tomato seedlings. I still have one pink brandywine tomato growing there. It's just a side shoot from one of the large bushes we had growing but it's full of flowers and since the other tomato bushes were removed, it's really taken off.

This is the aquaponics system. The fish are in the 3000 litre tank at the bottom and we grow all sorts of organic vegetables in the two grow beds at the top. The water in the fish tank is pumped up to the vegetables, it trickles down through the gravel and this process and the action of beneficial bacteria growing on the gravel, purifies the water which then falls back into the fish tank.

So far we have planted in the aquaponics beds: tomatoes, capsicums (peppers), parsley, asparagus and ruby chard. We'll probably finish off the rest of the celery in the next couple of weeks, so I'll plant some celery seeds (tall Utah) today to be planted when they're about 4 inches tall. I love gardening with aquaponics, it's so easy. You just plant and that's it! No watering, fertilising or weeding. It's all taken care of within the system. And the bonus? Fish!

Here you can see one of the two grow beds attached to the aquaponics system. In the centre and just to the left are the just planted tomato seedlings. Joel over at backyardaquaponics harvested 31 kilos of tomatoes from one bush last year. I'm aiming for half of that.

The fish are growing quite well. We have three large silver perch about 6 or 7 inches long. They're quite fat now and have developed blurry stripes. We expect them to start growing faster as the temperature increases. We took all the plants out of the tank when we had the problem with the fish dying and now that's been rectified, I'd like to put some plants back in. I'm sure the fish like the plants and hiding in them makes them feel more secure. They're very timid creatures until it's feeding time and then they turn into a pack of sharks in a feeding frenzy. It's a good thing to watch as the fish swim right up to the surface and down again, hoping to get every bit of food they can. As soon as they've had their fill, they're quiet again and hang around the plumbers pipes we put in the water for them to hide in.

This large fish is one of the originals along with lots of the newer ones.

The soil vegetable garden is changing quite quickly as we've been harvesting cabbages, cauliflowers, green beans and peas, and planting seeds and seedlings. Our aim is to provide as much of our own food as we can grow and often it's a balancing act to keep the food coming every day. We often have gaps when we have to buy potatoes or pumpkins, with most of the other vegetables we make do with what's in the garden - if we have no chard, we eat cabbage or spinach, if we have no carrots, we eat turnips, no lettuce, we have rocket, there is usually something to keep us going. From my experience, creating a continuous supply is the most difficult thing to manage in the vegetable garden.

Over the past week or two we've planted bok choy, carrots, radishes and silver beet in this bed.

This is our vegetable and fruit growing list at the moment. In the ground producing, or as seeds or seedlings, we have: cabbages, cauliflower, bok choy, potatoes, English spinach, silverbeet and ruby chard, garlic, green and red welsh onions, amaranth, thyme, comfrey, oregano, marjoram, bay, rocket, lettuce, snow peas, green lake beans, kale, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, pigeon peas, chokos, asparagus, parsley, capsicum, celery, zucchini, pumpkin, bananas, pink grapefruit, lemons, oranges, blueberries, raspberries, pineapples, passionfruit, peaches, nectarines, mandarin, grapes, red paw paw and avocados.

This is one of our newer Washington navel oranges. It's two years old now. I'll remove a lot of these flowers as the tree is still not strong enough to hold them all. Removing some of the oranges allows those remaining to grow bigger and removes the risk of the branches ripping away from the trunk while it's still young.

And now that it's the first day of spring, we hope it will all start growing like Topsy. We'll spend the day making and applying fertiliser, harvesting, pulling out and planting, sowing, reorganising, changing, tying up and pruning and hope that our work helps produce some delicious organic food over the months to come.

My home made 100% cotton napkins. The ones in the fan are small, the larger ones are at the front.

I'm trying to do without as many "disposable" products as I can. These things have become so entrenched in the way we live our lives now that we see them as normal. They aren't. I looked up the meaning of the word "dispose" and it means: cast aside, chuck out, discard, fling, throw out, throw away, toss out" etc. The trouble with "disposables" is that when we cast them aside or chuck them out, most of the time that means they're in a landfill rubbish dump somewhere taking years to decompose. In the case of disposable nappies/diapers it is believed to take about 200 years. Of course, no one really knows as they haven't been around for 200 years for any to have decomposed completely. Maybe they don't decompose at all, maybe a future earth will be full of slowing rotting but ever present dirty nappies/diapers. Ugh!

There is a huge problem in Australia, and around the world, with marine life eating and being tangled in plastic ropes, bags and sheets. I have seen photos of turtles with plastic embedded in their shells and photos of dead dolphins, strangled with plastic. If you don't know there is a problem using plastic by now, you must be living in a world with no newspapers, TV or computers. Plastic kills.

Polystyrene is another catastrophe. "Each year in the United States (US), approximately “60 billion cups, 20 billion eating utensils and 25 billion plates”, all disposable, are used and sent to landfills and incinerators." Source

There is a big problem with the carbon emissions caused by the manufacture, transport and disposal of paper products. Products like tissues, paper towels and plates, toilet paper and napkins. These products tend to decompose fairly rapidly, if they aren't coated with plastic, but they are still a concern because of the carbon emissions they cause and the forests that are cut down to create them.

So here at my little homestead, I'm trying to get rid of as many "disposables" as I can. I've already given up plastic shopping bags and have my own shopping totes, I've made little net bags for small items, we've given up paper towels and use old terry cloths and newspaper instead and I always try to buy products with the least amount of packaging. A couple of years ago we gave up paper napkins, but over that time we started using the convenient box of tissues sitting in the kitchen to wipe our mouths while eating. Now that's stopped. I've made a few simple cotton napkins that are suitable for everyday use and that's what we're using instead of tissues. I would love to give up tissues completely, but I can't bear to wash handkerchiefs, but if we can reduce our usage of tissues significantly, I'll be happy enough. We used too many of them as napkins, so I'm pleased we've stopped doing that.

This little basket of homemade napkins now sits on my kitchen bench.

We take drinks with us when we go out so we never have to buy plastic bottles of drink or tea in a polystyrene cup. We've given up buying "disposable" dishcloths as we have our wonderful handmade dishcloths, and I'd love to be able to give up toilet paper but when I spoke with H about this, he gave me THE look. I might leave that one for a while. LOL Strangely I have less of a problem with what comes out of a bottom than with what comes put of a nose. But maybe that's TMI. : - O

If I had babies now I would never put them in disposable nappies/diapers, and if I wasn't post-menopausal, I'd be using a Diva cup or home made pads. I'd like to present some information about reusable nappies/diapers and homemade pads, and I am hoping to get a friend to write about these things so I can post some good info for you.

Have you conducted "disposables" audit in your home? Have you given up using "disposables"? I'd love to hear your stories in the comments box.

Further reading about disposing of rubbish

Further reading about the first sanitary pads

Getting started on cloth nappies/diapers

A good way of building an emergency fund, or to save for other things, is to have a change jar. “Change” can be coins or notes. I usually classify everything in the coin section of my purse as change, even if it’s folded notes. If I come home with change in my purse, it usually goes into my change jar.

When you keep a change jar, never take from it, don’t count it and keep it out of sight. Only count it when you are going to transfer the money into a bank account or to pay off debt. By not counting you give yourself a nice surprise when you do count it. It’s more of a moveable mystery if you don’t know how much you have. Life should have some secrets, let this be one of them.

You can also add to your jar by adding unexpected gifts or savings. For instance, if you have gift money given to you, add it, give up the coffee you buy on the way to work and add that extra $20 a week, give up smoking and add the money you would have spent on cigarettes. If cigarettes are around $14 and you smoke a packet a day, you'll save over $5000 in a year by giving up and saving that money.

Every time your change jar is full, sit down with a smile on your face and count the money. If you have lots of gold coins or notes, you might easily have $300. Whatever it is, take that money and add it to the bank account you use to pay your debts, be that your mortgage or your credit cards. If you are debt-free, add it to your savings account or use it for a holiday.

When H and I went on our holiday recently, the only spending money we took with us was the money from the change jar. It was just under $300 and we each had half. Both of us came home with $100. We did everything we wanted to do, we took Kathleen out to dinner and we enjoyed ourselves. We didn't buy junk, or anything we didn't need. That's the thing about saving, you have to have it firmly in your head that you are saving, and go for it.

For those of you earning a good weekly wage, you might think it's trivial to even talk about such small amounts. But living frugally, whether by choice or by need, is all about small steps. Most people can't save $1000 without starting with those first few dollars.

So think about starting a change jar. If you give up a few things and save all your change, you'll be able to pay off your mortgage faster or take the family on a holiday without it going on the credit card.