down to earth

I harvested our small garlic crop in the middle of a torrential downpour last week. It had been raining for over a week and when I walked past the garden to let the chickens out, I realised just how much water was in the garden. I knew if I didn't take them out they would rot in the ground. When I walked back to the verandah, they were in my hand. They were planted from local garlic bought from Green Harvest back in July. It's not really the right climate for garlic here, but we still grow it knowing the bulbs will be small. The alternative is Chinese garlic and that's not an option for us. The result might be small but they're juicy and delicious.

Garlic is one of our important solo crops. If it grows well, it gives us enough garlic to see us through six months. What I call a solo crop is one that we grow once or twice a year and the harvest from those crops gives us enough of that vegetable for six months to a year. We also grow pumpkins and luffahs like that.

The trick to these types of crops is to know you can store them safely and that they'll last in good order for a long time. The luffahs are never a problem. They dry on the vine or shortly after harvesting, you peel off the crackly skin and you have loofahs to use all year. I soak our luffahs in a weak solution of bleach and water before drying them again and putting them in the cupboard with the towels. Whenever a new one is needed, they're waiting. Pumpkins must be harvested with a long piece of vine still attached to the top, then carefully taken to a drying area in the sun to dry out for a week or so. You have to watch out for rain and bring the pumpkins to shelter if it does rain. After they dry out, you can store them in a cool, dry, dark place that is rodent-free. Care needs to be taken as you move the pumpkins because you don't want to damage the skin. If you want the pumpkins to last six months, they must be unbruised and have the skin perfectly in tact.

The bulbs above will be broken apart and replanted.

The tied up garlic will be stored, those in the middle used right away and those on the right, replanted.

These are now hanging on the outside bedroom door. I doubt we'll have any vampires visiting us. ; - )

And the garlic? Well, they have to be washed to remove any dirt, and left to dry for a few days. Then I sort them into those suitable for drying and storing, those to be used straight away - these are the small bulbs or any that are damaged, and I have a group of bulbs for replanting. The garlic to be stored is tied in bunches with natural string/twine and hung them to dry out even more. Eventually they'll be brought in the house and stored in a cool dark cupboard.

So that's our garlic sorted for the next six months. Hanno will plant the new garlic in the next week or two and they'll be ready in winter.

Well, here it is, the first full non-holiday week of 2011 and I'm pleased to be back. ADDITION: I've just been told it's a public holiday today. I guess that is a true indication of how far we're removed from the commercial world. :- 0

I've had many emails asking about the floods. Hanno and I are fine. We live about one hour north of Brisbane in the huge state of Queensland. The floods are about another ten hour drive north of here. We have had a lot of rain, our creek is up and down like a yo-yo, but apart from cranky chooks and wet feet, all is fine here. Thank you all for your concern. Thank you also for all the good wishes you sent for Shane and Sarndra. They read my blog and it means a lot to them to know so many people want good things for them.

I am really pleased we've finally arrived in 2011. I'm looking forward to this year very much. There is so much that's new ahead. I can hardly wait to hold those two babies who will come into our lives this year. But aside from the big events, I'm thankful that Hanno and I still have the enthusiasm and desire to continue to live our quiet, slow and simple life. I look forward to many more ordinary days when it's just me in the kitchen, baking and cooking, just doing what enriches me. I'm hoping that this year will bring new opportunities, new things to learn about and more new friendships made along the way.

We didn't plant summer crops at the end of last year. The vegetable garden still produced lettuces, potatoes, corn and garlic but now with all the rain, the chick weed has grown everywhere, the usually ordered and green vegetable patches are empty or covered with weeds and under it all, the soil is resting for a couple of months. In a few weeks it will be time again to rip out those weeds and load up the garden beds with compost and manure and start planting for the year.

But now the first of the papayas are forming fruit, grapes and passionfruit are growing and I can walk outside any time and pick mint, thyme, sage and parsley. Just last night I quickly popped out to pick fresh mint for a homemade mint sauce for our roast leg of lamb. The rain has been really good for the oranges and it looks like we'll have plenty of them in winter this year. The same goes for the lemons - there is another good crop ripening now and if I juice those and freeze the juice, we'll have enough to keep us going till the next crop in June. I'm hoping the bananas come on soon. Fresh fruit and vegetable prices will be very expensive again this year due to the floods, so whatever we can produce here will stand us in good stead.

So what's ahead for us this year? Hanno will be working in the garden again soon and he continues to keep our home in good order with his maintenance program. He's currently working on the roof, but I'll have more about that another day. Like all of us, he's looking forward to the babies and being a grandpa for the first time. He'll probably travel down to visit my sister when she moves to her new home soon. No doubt she will have a couple of jobs she will need a hand with. And for me, it's more work on the book and more contact later in the year with the good people at Penguin, particularly my editor, Jo. I'll be sewing and knitting for tiny folk I'm yet to meet, I'll continue to find confirmation of my purpose in my home and I hope to continue learning all I can. 'Homemaker' is a term that encompasses so much and I know that if I step up and take control of the work needed here, and pepper that with what I want to do, it will continue to be a joy to wake up every day. So there are no new year's resolutions here, just the quiet hope that life continues to amaze and delight me. I hope it does the same for you. What are your plans for the year?

A feeling of renewal always comes calling at this time of year. The new year is looming, an old year almost gone and life is telling me to look around, take it all in, reassess, look toward the coming months and make sure that what we're doing will continue to make us happy and satisfied. I have been doing that reassessment over these past few days away from the blog. I've spent time with my family, talked on the phone with friends, thought about life during the small hours of the morning, and relaxed while looking out the window at the rain. It's been raining for a week, it's still falling now. I picked our garlic crop in the rain at 5.30 this morning. What a crazy and wonderful way to really experience this season and all its wild weather.

In a sense I'm living my dream life right now but if I were to believe many of those women's magazines, I should be yearning for my long gone youth, dying my hair, thinking about botox and clearing out last year's fashions to make way for newer versions. There is much more depth to my life. I am surrounded by a loving family, I have a major creative project to concentrate on, and the freedom to do whatever I feel like doing when each new day dawns. And even though I have that freedom, I choose to remain here, working in my home. From the outside it's just Hanno and Rhonda, two golden oldies, living a very ordinary life in semi-rural Australia; but our lives deceive, we live large. We have the freedom to choose how we spend our time - there is no boss expecting us to turn up for work, no watches telling us we have to be somewhere soon and no other controlling factors we need to be aware of. We have no debt and live frugally so we know that if we remain productive and live within our means, we'll continue along this path and feel the satisfaction and contentment it brings for a long time.

My main occupation at the moment, and for the coming months, is writing the book. After breakfast I come into this little room, close the door behind me, turn on the computer and start reading, editing and writing. Every so often, I check out the forum or emails, or I go out and wash up, make bread, prepare a meal, make the bed, knit or mend and those small actions, while giving me a break, make me feel I'm still contributing to my home. In reality though, Hanno is doing more that he used to and although he's not been gardening due to the season and the rain, he has been doing the washing and the floors, which frees me up to work on the book. Marriages that work well are fine things.

And what of happiness? Yes, it's here daily, bubbling away in the background, like a tea kettle on a wood stove, always ready and always enough to be shared. I don't know what it is I did to deserve this charmed life but I'm sure many of you feel the same way about your own lives. You are touchstones, in a sense, a way for me to know, really know, that even though we live outside the mainstream of our culture, there are others who walk along with us. And now as I look towards tomorrow and next year, I know that I will continue to work towards my goals with enthusiasm, optimism and gratitude and if I can take you all along with me for the ride, it will be even better. I'm looking forward to it.

I received an email during the week from a young woman in Tasmania. With her permission I'm replying to her here because I know more good advice will come via your comments. She wrote:

For the past few years I've been working part-time which has given me the time I needed to grow our vegies and herbs, make most of our gifts by hand, and learn to sew and be organised. However now we're in Tasmania where work is hard to get and I find myself in a job market where 5 days a week is the minimum requirement, sometimes 6 days a week. I've looked hard for part-time work but it's either not available, or pays so poorly I could never support my husband at uni and our new mortage.

Besides leaving me extremely stressed out and tired I'm now really struggling to find the time to do those things to help us be more self sustaining that I was able to do before. I was hoping you might be able to tell me how you have coped with those crazily busy periods of your life in the past? At the moment I'm trying just to focus on the fact that we are at least paying our home off but I've got to try and keep up that focus for the next four years until my husband finishes uni - help!

I think there are two parts to this discussion - one is that you'll be the one who puts food on the table and pays the mortgage for the next four years, and the pressures associated with that; the other is having the time and the will power to remain focused on sustainability.

So, you've moved to a new state, your husband is settled in university and you have a mortgage. He will be working towards gaining qualifications to improve your future lives together, while you work to support you both now and start paying off your mortgage - your future asset. You'll both have to work hard - he must pass all this subjects first time so he not paying more HECS fees than he should, you'll be working possibly six days a week. You're both living in your home, you'll have to divide the chore up to suit you both, although let me suggest that you make up a chore list that keeps everything clean and tidy and you both fed, while not going overboard on housework. Don't add more stress to your lives by trying to be perfect at home. Maybe he does the weekly shopping and the cooking and you make the bed, wash up and do the laundry. Take it in turns to clean the bathroom and vacuum. I'm sure you can work out something. Don't expect to enjoy every moment of it, it will be a hard slog, but working together for your common goals should get you through it. I worked while I did my degree and I know your job will be tougher than his, although there will be times when he'll have enormous pressure on him. There will have to be plenty of give and take and you'll both have to be flexible, generous and supportive of each other to get through.

There are plenty of things you can do to remain on your simple pathway. Don't buy expensive chemical cleaners - make up your own using vinegar, bicarb and soap. Don't buy disposables. Cut up some old towels for dishcloths, use cloth napkins, stop buying paper towels. Use cloth shopping bags and hang washing on the line instead of using a dryer. Shop at thrift shops. See if your husband can buy second hand text books or get them from the library. Use the university library to borrow novels to read instead of buying books. Use public transport. It is up to you both to save as much money as you can. Don't think it's okay to reward yourselves all the time because life is tough now. Keep your long term goals in mind and keep working towards them.

I know I've been tough but this will be a difficult few years for both of you. But if you work together as a team, focused on long term goals and not instant gratification, you'll come out the other end of this stronger as a married couple. When I look back on my marriage I can see that working together through the tough times kept us together and made us more committed to each other and to our marriage. When you see your partner working hard for your common goals, it makes you work hard too. Put in the hard yards now and you'll reap rich rewards.

Now that I can see a long life of over 60 years behind me, I know with certainty that life is not an easy walk in the park. It's a long series of highs and lows with many periods of smooth sailing in between. This is one of your first periods outside the smooth zone but what you do now will prepare you more than you know for what you'll do later. The better you cope with this, the more you'll set yourself up for success later. So knuckle down and work hard, take time out for yourself when you need it, give support when it's needed, be kind to each other and make the most of that one day a week you have off. Have breakfast in bed, take a walk and enjoy being together. The pressure is on but it can either be stress or a gift, depending on how you look at it. I know which one I'd choose. Good luck. I hope the year ahead is a good one for both of you.

The collective wisdom of the readers here never ceases to pleasantly amaze me. If you have any advice to add to help our friend, please do.

The last weekend before Christmas - it was slowly busy and relaxed here. I worked on the book on Saturday and kept yesterday as a pottering around the house day. The rain poured down most of the day, but there was cricket on TV, I had recorded Dr Findlay (naturally), and with knitting in my hands I was happy and content. In the afternoon, I phoned the lovely Duck Herder and connected a voice to the blog. It's very reassuring to me to have my idea of a person confirmed by a voice to voice chat.

With the exception of growing food, there is nothing more basic and simple than knitting (or crochet). It has changed little over the years. It's still the gently, repetitive winding of yarn around two sticks that produces warm clothing or practical little items like tea cosies, dishcloths and baby wipes.

I am knitting for my Etsy shop. Those above will go towards making gift packs of soap and a cotton cloth. The green I'm working on now is a very soft organic cotton and I still have enough, in the green and natural colours, to make several cloths and tea cosies. I'm using vintage needles that are lovely to knit with. They were given to me by a friend's mother who can't knit anymore but wanted her needle collection to go to someone who would use them. I am definitely using them and often think of her learning to knit with these needles way back in the 1930s.

Are you making ginger beer with me? Here is my jar. It's got tiny bubbles coming up in the mix and you can see them in the following photo around the outside of the mixture.

I added more ginger and sugar each day, stirred and covered it and left it to do its magic. I'm hoping to bottle mine on Wednesday afternoon so it will have a couple of days to ferment on the bench in the bottle before we cool them down for drinking on Christmas day. Take the cover off your jar and look at the mix. Can you see any bubbles? If so, your mix is fermenting and that's exactly what you want. It should smell either of ginger or slightly of alcohol. A bit of alcohol does develop in this and sometimes you can smell it at this stage. But don't worry, it's a tiny amount and it's safe for the children to drink. Make sure your spoon is scrupulously clean when you do your mixing, you only want the beneficial yeasts and bacteria in this.

I should have done this a month ago but I finally made our Christmas cake. It's the "deliciously moist fruit cake" recipe from the old Australian Women's Weekly Cake Cookbook. I've never made this one before but it's a real beauty. Traditional Australian fruitcake is derived from the Irish and UK fruit cakes of old. It's full of fruit and nuts and laced with brandy, sherry or whisky. I soaked our fruit in some of the delicious Asbach brandy Hanno brought back from Germany with him. When the cakes were out of the oven, I poured another quarter cup of brandy over the hot cakes to produce a moist delicious cake. Hanno and I test tasted the little cake last night and it's one of the best I've even made and although a fruit cake can be kept for three months, I know these will be gone by next week.

I hope this week will be a wonderful one for all of us. Please don't undo all the good work you've done during the year by going nuts on your Christmas shopping. I haven't been to the shops at all and we're making do with what we have here at home for our Christmas lunch. Our pantry, freezer and stockpile are all full so it will be delicious and simple without any worry or mad rush. What special things are you doing this week?

If you're making ginger beer with me, today you'll need to feed the beast, and you'll feed it every day for about a week, or for as long as it takes to bubble away beautifully. Make sure it's in a warm spot if you're in the middle of winter. The fermentation of ginger beer will depend on how warm it is in your home and the natural yeasts in the air in your kitchen. The yeasts will settle in the mix and start feeding on the sugar, but they like a warm environment. Our temperatures now are around 30C during the day which is ideal for making all sorts of fermented foods, like ginger beer and sour dough. I looked at my ginger mix yesterday afternoon and noticed very tiny bubbles just starting to come to the surface. That means it's started fermenting successfully. It should smell of ginger and if it develops a slightly alcoholic odour, that's fine, it will be well diluted when we mix our beer up.

My ginger beer plant on the bench yesterday with its cousin, sour dough starter.

I just want to make sure that you all used very clean jars. You want to make sure you're cultivating only the beneficial bacteria and yeasts. It's a good idea before you start to wash the jar thoroughly, then scald it with boiling water. I wish I'd thought to tell you that at the start but if you decide to do this again, make sure you start of that way.

Today, add two teaspoons of ginger and two teaspoons of sugar and stir it in. Then cover the jar and leave it on the bench again. You'll have to feed it that way every day now. I usually let mine go on for about a week by which time it's usually developed a good flavour. You'll make up about six litres/quarts of ginger beer with this mix, so look for some plastic bottles to hold the beer when you make it. Plastic bottles are better because ginger beer can explode. Now before you run off to pour your mix down the sink, it's highly unlikely that a bottle will explode, but you need to be aware that glass bottles have built up so much gas pressure, they've exploded and sprayed their contents all over the place. It's not happened to me but I have had ginger beer swoosh out when I opened the bottle. There are ways around those problems that we'll talk about when we bottle our drinks next week.

Now, two questions for you.

1. Hanno and I have been talking about starting an Etsy shop. I frequently have readers emailing asking if they can buy my bar soap and liquid soap but I'm also going to offer knitted cotton dishcloths, gift packs, seeds and maybe some aprons, tote bags, napkins and assorted odds and ends. It will bring in a little bit of extra money and we'd be able to produce all of the goods here at home. Hanno is keen to help with the packaging and posting, but just this week I taught him to make soap and he's happy to help make soap as well. So, my question to those of you with online store, is there any advise you can give me about setting up a store and selling online?

Hanno's first batch of soap, and the result of his efforts below.

2. I'm currently writing the money chapter in my book. I want to write it for all ages, so what would you like to see in that chapter? I'm particularly interested in the ideas of younger single people, young couples, older people living alone and families with a mortgage.

Thanks to everyone who responds. It's times such as now I really rely on my readers to steer me in the right direction.

I had two emails recently from women who are new to all this and they're hesitating to dive in because one is not a good cook and the other lives in an apartment and doesn't have a backyard. Let me say this loud and clear (again). The way Hanno and I live suits us at our age, twenty years ago, even ten years ago, I would have structured my simple life in a different way. And because there are no rules, no ONE way of doing it, and because one of your aims should be to live a happy contended life, YOU alone decide what you'll include in your life. I don't expect any of you to live exactly as we do.

I want my life to provide me with:

a reason to get up every morning;
interesting and productive work;
contentment that occasionally explodes into happiness;
a framework in which to live simply;
the opportunity and continued ability to learn skills that facilitate our lifestyle;
a strong and generous family circle that supports every member of our family - when we experience the good times and especially when it's tougher;
opportunities to express generosity, kindness and empathy;
the strength to be a role model to the younger women in my family;
and the enthusiasm and perseverance to take charge of my home and make it a place of comfort, welcome and warmth.

I hope that everyone wishing to change how they live would make a list similar to mine so that values and goals are clearly evident. You'll get yourself all tangled if you decide on change and just expect it to happen. It won't. Write down what you want to happen, then put plans in place to make it happen. Nowhere on that list does it say anything about cooking or backyards, but those things are implied in several of the points, so you'll need to be perfectly clear in your own mind what you hope to achieve.

As soon as I closed my business and gave up paid work, I wanted not only to be fulfilled by my work at home, I wanted to enjoy it too. I wanted to work hard, which was lucky because I work harder and more consistently now than I ever have, and I wanted to produce as much as I could at home and use my intelligence to learn the skills I needed to do that. But even though I wanted to work hard, I didn't want to feel deprived and I wanted abundance, enrichment, happiness, satisfaction, pleasure and fulfilment to be part of every day. I got that, and more. If my goals had been different, for instance, if I had wanted to open a little Etsy shop to sell my sewing and knitting, I wouldn't have been bothered with the garden because I wouldn't have had time for it. I would have spent time looking for a good fresh food market instead of growing food and keeping chooks. If I was younger and had children I would have spent my days homeschooling them and teaching them the practical tasks of a home and garden. If I worked for a living and lived in a city apartment, I would have taught myself all I could about container gardening, found a fresh food market, paid off debt, started green cleaning, got rid of all the disposables I used to buy, taught myself a craft and been as good at my job as I could be.

The choices are yours to make, not mine. So take some time to think about what you want, write it all down, then do it with enthusiasm and passion. Do one thing at a time. You'll find that when you do one thing, it naturally unfolds into something else and that is exactly how I moved into this new life. For example, when I decided to cook only from scratch, I had to learn a few new recipes so I had enough meals in my repertoire to satisfy the family. That lead me to stockpiling - which I had to learn about, that lead me back to preserving and learning all about food storage. You'll find, just as I did, that one thing leads to the next and what first appeared to be a simple thing contains many aspects that you'll need to learn.

Above all else you have to work out for yourself what is enough. What is your level of enough? That is where the real simplifying comes into play and unless you can change your mindset to want less, to not want to be like everyone else, and to be satisfied with enough, you'll find the going very tough and you'll probably go back to your old ways. I encourage you to read all you can, visit here and other blogs, read books and take time to think about how you can fit into this life. But in the long run, it is you who decides what your life will look like, and you who will decide what you're capable of doing each day. Don't let anyone tell you that you're not doing it right. There is no one way of living simply, there are thousands.

The way Hanno and I live is enriching and beautiful, even though it might just look like a lot of hard work to others. We have enough and we're satisfied and thankful for it. I hope you will say the same of your lives in the near future.