We've recently planted three sweet potato plants. We have the golden one but there are also white and purple types. Sweet potatoes are a very good crop to grow if you're in a warm climate. They won't grow in the cold. You can easily grow sweet potato from a store bought tuber. You should buy an organic tuber not only because often the others have been sprayed to prevent them from sprouting, but also because it will be a healthier living tuber. Pick a healthy looking sweet potato that is unmarked and firm. When you get it home, place it in a warm and sunny spot and wait for it to produce shoots. This could take anywhere between a couple of days to a month, depending on how warm the weather is. When you see the shoots, you'll know that the weather is warm enough to plant.

Two weeks before you plant, choose a sunny spot with good drainage and enrich the soil with compost and aged manure that is dug in, watered and allowed to sit. When you're ready to plant, cut the sweet potato into pieces depending on how many shoots are growing. If you only have one growing point, don't cut, but if you have two, cut in two, if three, divide it in three. Try to give all the growing points enough tuber from which to grow.


Make a hollow in the soil about 8 or 9 cm/3 inches deep and place your tubers in, with the shoots to the top. You'll need about 30 cm/12 inches between each cutting. Pack the soil in around the tuber, leaving the shoots exposed. Water in with seaweed tea and cover with a straw mulch. Sweet potatoes like to be watered in well, but after that they don't need a lot of water. If it rains, don't water, but water once a week if you have no rain. Repeat the seaweed tea every month to keep the plants healthy and growing well.


The biggest problem you're likely to have with sweet potatoes is that the vines will take over the garden. We are going to grow ours over the top of the chook house to help protect it from the summer heat. If you find the vines are taking over, cut them back a bit. Don't cut them off completely, but you could easily take of a third of the growth.

Sweet potatoes are a fairly easy crop to grow and they're a good staple food to add to your diet. You can use them in any recipe to replace potatoes - to top a Shepherd's Pie , as chips or mash, or baked, golden and delicious in the oven. Classified as one of the super vegetables, they are a significant antioxidant and contain vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, copper, manganese, vitamin E, vitamin B6 and beta carotene. They are a good food for diabetics and for people with arthritis and other inflammatory disease.

When you harvest your sweet potatoes, be very careful not to bruise or cut the skin. Any damaged tubers should be the first eaten. Cure the remaining perfect tubers by drying them in a cool dry place, not the fridge. They are cured properly when you can't rub the skin off with your finger. Long term storage should be in the coolest room in your house, pack the tubers in baskets lined with newspaper and cover the basket with a towel. This allows the tubers to breath without sweating. Home grown sweet potatoes won't rot as quickly as the store bought ones.

If you live in a warm climate and are just coming into the end of spring, you can plant your sweet potatoes now. They should be ready to harvest in about 16 weeks time - early March.

Cauliflower and Sweet Potato Curry

Thanksgiving Sweet Potato recipes

It getting towards that time of year when things start getting very busy. I spent some time on the weekend working on my Christmas gifts but I'm not sure my ambitious plans will result in me finishing everything on time. Despite the extra work, I love this time of year, especially now that my boys are happily settled with their girls and our expanding family gives us more reasons to celebrate.

We had a visit from Shane and Sarndra yesterday, Kerry and Sunny will drop in today. Sarndra is a real family girl. She is happily connected to her own family and is making a real effort to get to know all of us now. She looked gorgeous yesterday in her blue summery dress - she usually wears dresses or skirts (just like me). She is an absolute joy to me. Sunny is a shy girl with us and not confident with her English but she really is a good fit with our family. She is a beautiful girl, an excellent cook and is very close to her mother. That's a good sign! I am truly blessed to have these two girls in my life now.

Sarndra is teaching herself to sew and knit. It's quite the thing now apparently. No longer seen as the domain of us oldies, sewing and knitting are cool again. Thankfully these things go in cycles and each time they come around new techniques, as well as the traditional methods, are discovered by new eyes. And what a wonderful world it opens up - being able to make beautiful and unique items for yourself, your home and to give to friends. You can always pick the home of a crafter - you'll find things there that you won't find anywhere else. These homes stand out as warm and inviting because they are decorated with the simple finery of a creative mind.

This is what I was working on this weekend. It's a tea cosy knitted with organic cotton, topped with pure wool felt flowers. It's a very simple project that I started knitting last weekend and almost finished yesterday. Actually I thought I had finished but when I put the cosy on the teapot, I realised it need more flowers. So that will be completed later in the week, but you'll get the idea from these photos.

I didn't have a pattern, I just cast on enough stitches to cover half my tea pot. It was 40 stitches for each half. I just measure it as I knitted and half way up, I started knitting two together to reduce the size of the top. Then I cast off and sewed the two sides together with a wool needle and more of the organic cotton, making sure I left the appropriate holes for the spout and handle.

I see things differently now. Gone are the days when I wanted to live to be 110 and I thought illness was a weakness – not in others but in myself. All my life I’ve been lucky enough to be healthy, optimistic and forward thinking and now, while still retaining those characteristics, I see times when age has caught up with me and bending over the wrong way or carrying something too heavy for me will make me suffer.

I see the strong and capable man I married, who has always prided himself on providing well for his family and done more than enough for us, hobbling around with painful joints and being frustrated at his own inability to work as he would like. Oh, he still climbs trees, much to his doctor’s annoyance, still thinks he can take on the world but age has a way of letting us remember past glories and not current reality. He pays the price if he works hard all day, so do I, and often I don’t even try to do it any more.

But on the flip side, I love being my age. From the time when I was about 15 until about 55, I felt young, strong and invincible. Now I feel mellow and wise, and strong, but in a different way. Is it okay to call yourself wise? I’m not sure. I feel I know things now that I knew before, but now I see them differently. If that's not the accumulated wisdom of the decades I’ve lived, it’s close to it. People look at us oldies differently and if they don't, we're invisible. I refuse to be invisible and make myself heard as much as possible. Often older people are seen as weak or not knowing much. That shallow view belies what being an elder is. What some see as weakness is really acceptance. I understand a lot more now about what makes us tick and when I see others make the same mistakes I made when I was younger, I just shrug and accept it as being human. I still know all I knew when I was younger, and more, but it's not as important to me now to let everyone know it.

In addition to seeing my own and Hanno’s decline, I am also witnessing the illness of my close friend Bernadette. She's a fiery old bird and as tough as they come, but she’s been laid low with cancer and all the treatments and psychological drama that go with it. Hanno and I are walking this road with Bernadette, wherever it takes us, and whether it’s a good day or a bad one, we usually find something to have a laugh about. And out of the ashes of all that Bernadette has been through these past few months, comes hope and and belief in the future. She bought herself a puppy! Just before she was diagnosed, Bernadette’s old dog Iona died. So after a lot of thought, and a promise from Hanno and I to look after her puppy if anything happens to her, she picked up her cute little Shih Tzu a few days ago. That, my friends, is the wisdom that age brings.


Is there anything more optimistic and hopeful than a puppy? Introducing Flora McDonald.

I've come full circle. I started off my dish cleaning duties as a young girl when my sister and I had to dry when mum washed up. I grew up doing that and now I recall it fondly as a time of family conversations, pushing my sister (she reads my blog and she'll probably add more to that) and sometimes, only sometimes, pretending to be sick to get out of wiping up. It's a nice memory to have. So now I'm back at the sink, this time as the washer, with no dryers and no electric dishwasher. That is sitting outside the back door waiting to be sold. It feels good to have made the decision to get rid of it - yet another thing we've simplified.

When my mother did the washing up, although I remember a bar of yellow laundry soap being there over the years, she used detergent probably from the mid-1950s. So from then until now, I've usually used detergent. In the past couple of years, I've had periods when I used my homemade soap, but there was always a bottle of detergent around. We still have a couple of bottles of detergent in the cupboard and I will use them, but when they're gone, that's it - we are a detergent-free zone.

You need to use more liquid soap than you would with a concentrated detergent. I'm using about two tablespoons of soap in my washing up sink. I'm also equipped with two washing racks, a draining board on which one of them sits (generally we only have enough for one drainer), a handmade dishcloth, a cotton washing up mop and some steel wool. I usually use one of those steel wire scrubbers that lasts me at least three months, with disinfecting every so often. But Hanno bought steel wool recently, so I'm using that. I don't like it, although it does a good job.


The warm water starts off with a lather when the soap is added but the bubbles don't last as long as detergent bubbles do. We've been scammed into thinking - both with washing dishes and clothes - that we need bubbles. It's not so, bubbles do nothing. I'm very happy with the dishes washed with this liquid soap. They are as clean as when washed with detergent, the time I spend washing up is the same but I'm much happier because I'm not using petro-chemicals. I always had a niggling doubt that there was a residue on the plates and cups, even though I rinse them well.


This soap may also be used as a handwash - you can dilute it 20 percent soap to 80 percent water and store it in a dispenser. I've washed pure wool with it and was very happy with the result. I've washed my hair with it and it was shiny and soft and, just like with homemade hard soap, didn't need hair conditioner. You can use it as a shaving soap - it's mild and contains glycerin so it leaves the skin smooth. Rubbing a few drops of this soap into a stain and putting it in with the normal wash usually removes the stain. It makes an excellent natural horticultural soap that will help control aphids, mealybugs, whitefly, scale and red spider mites. It doesn't kill them as a poison would, it suffocates them.


I foresee a time when I will be washing up with my daughters-in-law drying for me, all of us talking about our lives while the menfolk are outside picking vegetables to be taken home. Maybe over the years, smaller drying hands will be added to this productive group. :- ) It's a fond and comfortable vision I have made just out of this one adjustment to our lives, but standing at the sink with my hands in warm water makes for those tender scenes in my head. It seems like such a good idea to me.

ADDITIONAL READING:
I have no problem using borax but I know there are some who doubt whether it is a good idea. When I was growing up it was quite common to use borax eye wash, and it is still a recommended homoeopathic treatment. Here is some extra information about it.
Borax information
Green Living
How borax works

Well ladies and gentlemen, I've made my own liquid soap, tested it for a few weeks, and now I'm happy to recommend it to you. I've tried several versions of homemade grated soap, I added glycerin to it, boiled it, and tried every which way but it was always horrible to use. Slimy, ugh. What I was after was a liquid soap that could be easily poured from a bottle, that I could use for washing up, as a shampoo, stain remover, handwash, for washing pure wool by hand, and as a horticultural soap. I have all those things, and more - Hanno used it to wash Quince, one of our chickens.

I used this recipe and tutorial and found it to be a very good reference. The only thing I changed was the sunflower oil - I used rice bran oil because I have a lot of it. This soap is made in a crockpot and you'll need a stick blender. My finished product turned out darker than I expected but I think I added too much borax and over processed it at the end. I won't repeat the tutorial here, I'll just add some of my photos and comment on what I did. Be guided by David's tutorial for the recipe and the method.

Making liquid soap is more difficult and takes more time than cold pressed soap. It uses a different form of lye - Potassium Hydroxide. You'll have to find a soapmaker near you who sells this because, at least in Australia, it cannot be sent through the post. You cannot buy this stuff at the supermarket or hardware.

When you have assembled all your ingredients, make sure you remember all your safety precautions for making soap - they apply here as well.

When you add water to the potassium hydroxide, it makes a noise. Like groaning! Don't be alarmed, it's normal.

When you have everything mixed together and you've stirred for what seems like hours, you cook the mixture in the crockpot. It turns the mix into a big batch of goo.

The entire process takes a long time so it's good to know that when the paste has been diluted (stage 6 of the tutorial), you can leave it and continue on the following day.

There is a lot of satisfaction to be gained working on ordinary tasks in the home. Gone are the days when homemakers were at the bottom of the pile. Now we have taken control of our homes, we see one of our jobs as managing the home budget and saving as much money as we can, we have stepped up to recycling and repairing, we are living frugally and green and we are enriched by that. Our lives are happily home made. All over the world handmade is making a comeback, showing us that what we produce with our own hands generally satisfies us more than what we buy at the store. We are making unique homes to our own taste full of soft cottons and linens, cutting down on the world's waste and showing our children that both the beautiful and the practical can be make at home.

I read somewhere this past week, maybe it was at the forum, that some feel guilty when they work on their craft projects at home. The idea being that if they enjoy it and look forward to it - be it quilting, sewing, knitting, soap making or whatever, it is entertainment and joy rather than work. I have never felt that way and I have never considered my knitting, sewing and soapmaking as anything but part of my housework. I don't see these things as separate crafts. To me, they are part of my everyday work.

I grew up in a time when dresses, shirts, children's clothes, soft furnishings and knitwear were homemade. If you needed a new quilt or skirt, there was no huge store where you could buy something cheap from China - you made what you needed. Store bought clothes were bought for special occasions. Most homes had piles of fabric and balls of wool waiting to be made into what was needed in everyday life. There was no other option and homemakers did that work as part of their daily tasks.


So for me, I don't hope there will be time available for me to sit down and sew or knit. I plan those tasks in with my normal everyday chores. I usually do my hand work in the afternoon and the more strenuous work in the morning. Knitting for the family and for gifts is part of my housework, sewing a new tablecloth, napkins, aprons or curtains are as much a part of my work as washing up and sweeping the floor. It all goes into the good of my home and even if I love doing it and look forward to it, it's still a household task.


I hope that you get some enjoyment out of most of the things you do in your home. Of course there are some things you won't like doing as much, but if you enjoy sewing and knitting and making whatever it is you need for your home, that is your pay-off for the tasks you don't like so much. Joy is lurking in your home, it is one of your daily tasks to find it.

If you haven't thought about your work in this way, take some time soon to look at what you do and think about the nature of your work. Plan your craft type work in with your normal housework. Never ever feel guilty for doing what you love and as long as you plan your handwork in with your more strenuous housework, you'll have time and energy for all of it.

Steel Kitten is having a wonderful giveaway to celebrate her 300th post. But that is not the only reason to visit her. Her blog is full of interesting posts and great photos and you have to see the fingerless gloves she knitted! Click here to visit.

Also, we are having a competition at the Down to Earth Forum. To be eligible to win, simply write a post and tell us about your simple life - what is working, what isn't working, what you love, what you don't love and what you hope to be doing this time next year. The winner may have been living this way for years or have just started. We are looking for the most interesting and engaging post. Everyone may enter.

The winner will receive two 50 gram balls of beautiful Australian grown and spun, pure, machine washable wool - Cleckheatons Country Naturals, and a pattern for fingerless gloves and a man's wool hat. I will post internationally.

If you have not joined the forum yet, click here to register and you can go straight in.

Two girls fighting over one baby, an enemy is identified and killed on sight, a mutant lurking in the shadows! Am I on the set of a Hollywood movie? No, it's more exciting than that - it's my backyard where life and death meet on a daily basis and all the strangeness is real. Come with me, I'll show you ...

I've been spending some time in the garden in the early morning lately. Since Hanno had his knee operation, I've taken on his garden tasks. I like to do that early, before the sun gets too hot. So at about 5am I collect the eggs, let the girls out to free range for the day, start watering the plants and checking to see that all is as it should be. Wild geese honk as they fly over on their migratory path and realise that the pond they always relied on has been filled in by the person who lives over the back. Yet another natural place taken away by "development". It's quite, it seems like nothing much happens, but that belies the truth. It's a jungle out there!










My harvest basket, minus the tomatoes I picked and the eggs collected earlier. It made a fine meal for us that night.

A prawn salad - with local prawns from Caloundra, and everything on the plate, except the potatoes, white onion and the prawns, grown out the back, in that jungle out there.

After two hectic days of work at the Centre, I'm working at home today. Gone are the days when I would have looked forward to relaxing, shopping and going out to visit friends. Now, settling back into the routine of washing up, sweeping, making beds and baking brings me back to myself and reminds me that my home is the place where I am put right again.

I work in the welfare sector and it's a very tough job sometimes. I don't counsel anyone, I manage the Centre I work at, and I guess I act as a surrogate mother and dish out kindness with cups of tea and encouragement along with advice about getting a job or looking after the family.

I had never worked in welfare before - had never even been in a neighbourhood centre until I wandered in there to ask if they needed any help, but working here in my home prepared me for working there. I teach my The Frugal Home workshop and stretch the slim budget there until I hear those pennies scream, but my preparation for that job is more than those obvious practical things. Since I have have taken control of my home and made it the place I want it to be, I feel empowered to take on many more things.


If someone were to see me working here at home they might believe that I am "just a housewife". How many times have we all used that phrase to describe ourselves? Well I am "just a housewife" who has taken back control of my own life. No longer am I a slave to fashion and advertising, I am not just filling in time by doing my daily tasks. What I do here now is a part of me, it makes me who I am and enables me to do the things I do.

Never undersell yourself or your role of homemaker. Running a home is similar to running a business. You need to work to a budget, manage people, make hard decisions, work to a schedule, delegate tasks, work long hours and make sure those you work with are productive and content. In fact, while all those elements describe the running of both a home and a business, at home you have extras - your work never stops and you raise children. Raising the next generation is not only an important part of family life, it's important for the nation too.


Taking control of the home, while sounding harsh, is, I think, the key to success. You need to take charge, delegate, have routines, get family members working for the good of the family and while that is happening, model the bahaviour you want to see in your children. A tough call, I know, but it pays off if you get it right. I know that we homemakers are looked down upon by many people but don't you ever believe they are right. What we do is the most important job; what we do makes the nation strong.

If you have to describe what you do, proudly name yourself "homemaker", or if you work outside the home as well - "homemaker/teacher", "homemaker/retail assistant" or whatever it is you do. Don't fall in with the rest of them and try to make us invisible. Let everyone know what we do, that we are an important part of our society and that we are proud of the work we do. I am an ordinary woman, there is nothing special about me, but because I have the attitude I have, people listen to me. I got the confidence to be the me I am now from my home - by taking control here and making it productive and alive.

You can do the same thing.

For those of you around Geelong, today I'll be interviewed on your local radio station at around 9.30am. Tomorrow I'll be on a few stations in northern Tasmania at 7.40am. Those are Queensland times, not local time, so you'll have to add an hour.

The headlines will read: Homemaker speaks, the nation listens. ; - )

I'm sure you all know by now that I love knitting - dishcloths being a favourite subject of my affection. Well, I was reading a knitting book last week and came across a new (to me) pattern that I thought would make up a very nice dishcloth. I worked it over the weekend and have just taken a photo for you.

I bake all our biscuits, cakes and bread, so I am always on the lookout for recipes which are quick and easy. I thought I would share one of my favourite biscuit (cookie) recipes. It is easy, quick, cheap and it makes 7 or 8 dozen biscuits, which keep well. The dough and cooked biscuits keep well in the freezer. I use butter and wholemeal flour, but white flour and margarine can be substituted. I have only ever used tinned sweetened condensed milk in this recipe, but i imagine that Rhonda Jean's homemade condensed milk would work just as well.

makes 7-8 dozen, cook 10 min at 180C

500 grams butter (approx 1.1 lb)
1 can condensed milk (390-400 gram)
1 cup sugar
5 cups wholemeal self raising flour (or plain flour and baking powder)
toppings like choc chips, smarties, jam, cinnamon and sugar

cream butter and sugar, add condensed milk. stir in flour. roll into balls and flatten. top with choc chips etc, or thumbprint and add jam for jam drops.

bake at 180C for approx 10 min until golden brown. cool on racks

I love finding a recipe that I know I'll use in the years to come. I found such a recipe a couple of weeks ago and was delighted with the results. It came from the Down to Earth forum, submitted by Paula Hewitt and she calls them Easy and Cheap Biscuits (cookies).


The great thing abut this recipe is that it uses only four ingredients. Paula says the recipe makes 70 - 80 biscuits. I made up one lot of about 40, another batch of 25 a week later and I still have one batch frozen as a log in the freezer.

I turned some into jam drops.

I'm going to share this recipe with our fundraisers at work. I reckon a little tray of these biscuits would sell at our stall for about $4 which would make us just over $50 per batch. I estimate the cost of ingredient to be just under $10 if we buy condensed milk, and less if we make our own. Definitely a handy recipe for charity fundraising.

But here at home it's a good one to make up and have in the freezer for unexpected guests. You could defrost the dough and have them cooked in under an hour. I've written the recipe inside the cover of my Feast cookbook, I'm sure Nigella would approve. This is definitely a keeper.

You'll notice I've put up some Amazon ads for the USA, Canada and the UK. The UK Amazon is now offering free postage to UK buyers from now until January 1, 2010. There is no minimum purchase needed. I will use any money I make on these ads to finance the set up and ongoing costs of the forum.

The start of another week and I'm back to working Mondays and Tuesdays from today. Hasn't this year gone fast! I guess you're all working on your Christmas gifts. I have discovered a new favourite dishcloth pattern. I'll show it to you tomorrow. I hope you have a beautiful week.

I'm happy to report that it all went very well with Hanno's surgery yesterday. He went in at 1pm, I popped down to Spotlight to check out a sale then spent a couple of hours in the waiting room, knitting, and he hobbled out at 5.30pm. We got home around 6pm. He had no pain, didn't need crutches and he slept fairly well last night. Today and tomorrow will be the test, the doctor said he must allow the knee to heal but he also needs to exercise it. His idea of rest, and mine, are entirely different so we'll see what happens today. My guess is he'll sit on the couch and on the front verandah until he reads everything he wants to read, then he'll want to wander around. Thank you all for your kind thoughts and prayers.


I was going to write about biscuits today but that can wait for another time because I'm going to carry on from yesterday. My post on "perfection" seemed to hit a cord with a few of you so let's expand on that.

I was saddened to read some of yesterday's comments. I know it's difficult to overcome something you've live with in childhood but as adults we have the choice to live as we wish. Examine your fears, think about what you believe perfection to be and develop the strength to toss out old ideas and work on new ones. Oh, and examine your fears in the bright light of day, not at 3am lying silently in the darkness when everything seems hopeless. If trying to be perfect just isn't working for you then replace that need with doing your best.

When elite athletes train for the Olympics they don't try to beat world records, they try to beat their own personal best. And that is a helpful tactic here too. Just do your best on any given day, you can't ask for more than that. I know that as I go through my week, some days I feel I can take on the world, and some days I just want to write, drink tea and rest. NO ONE, has the capacity to work perfectly every day. Not every day will be perfect - in fact very few are.

If you're expecting perfection you're setting yourself up for disappointment. You're hoping for something that rarely happens. Don't do that to yourself. Instead, today, this very minute, say to yourself that you're replacing the expectation of perfection with doing your best. And in the days that follow this one, try your best in every thing you do. Slow down and concentrate on what it is you're doing - don't rush through your work trying to get it done - and do your best. Some days your best will be spectacular and some days it won't be but as long as you can go to bed each day thinking that you did the best you could do on that day, that will stand you in good stead. Hopefully over the course of a few months, you'll replace your mother's voice in your head, insisting on perfection, with: I'm proud that I did the best I could.

I have touched on this subject before here: The best

I hope today is a good one for you and that whatever you do, you'll do your best and be happy with it. And remember, happiness is not one huge reward you find one day. It's tiny fragments that are collected every day and added to your basket. Never stop looking for whatever happiness you can find. It maybe in the passage of a book, it may be lurking in your garden or on the faces of your children. Take note of every happy moment, add them to your basket and be enriched by the thought of them as you go through your day.