We have not bought soft drink/soda or many years but during summer I like having a cold soft drink on hand to serve the family and for anyone who drops buy. We've had many glasses of lemon, orange and passionfruit cordial here, as well as homemade ginger beer, now I've added elder cordial to the list of cool drinks I can serve. We planted our elder bush last year and although it was in flower almost all year, it produced only a few heads of berries. I didn't make anything with them, there were too few, but I hope that as the bush grows, so will our chances of harvesting a bucket of dark elderberries.

We've just had the first full flush of elder flowers since we cut the bush back a few months ago. In a couple of his books, John Seymour recommends picking the flowers early in the day and choosing those on top of the bush that have had the full benefit of the sun. So armed with my trusty Fiskars clippers, I removed about three quarters of the flowers and set to work. The elder flowers must be used straight away.  The cordial recipe is simple, and similar to the one I use for lemon cordial, with the exception of added citric acid and the flowers have to be covered with boiling syrup and then steeped for 24 hours. I used Sophie Grigson's recipe here but added a cup of lemon juice as I had some in the fridge I wanted to use. There is a very small amount of cyanide-like compound in the stems of elders, so make sure you pick the flowers off the stems. You don't have to be obsessed with removing every stem, and don't be scared of it, just make sure you leave most of them out of your cordial.

The cordial is delicious served with iced water, ice and a mint leaf or with cold sparkling mineral water. I will also use it  to make ice cream and sorbet over summer, and to give as Christmas gifts. This made about about 3.5 litres/quarts of cordial. I also half filled a plastic bottle to freeze. This is the first time I've made elder flower cordial and I want to make sure it's as freezable as my other cordials. Overall, this is a simple recipe and a welcomed addition to my summer drinks repertoire. It's a keeper.

I've been meaning to share some blogs with you and here is my chance. I hope you take the time to slow down and read while you take a breather.

First there is the Lund kids blog The Lund family is a family of 11, living on a homestead in rural USA. I think it might have been Andrew who came up with the ingenious idea of using a washing machine to press apples for juice but you can read all about it yourself, and much more, on the blog.

There is a new baby at Plain and Joyful Living. 

Want some new recipes with mouth watering photos? Go no further than Cityhippyfarmgirl.  An Australian writer, a great cook and an interesting blog.

Trying to save and pay off debt? Read Frugal and Thriving - a great Australian blog with many ideas for all of us frugalistas.

I only came across Small Things last week but I've been won over by the charm of it. And those brown and green baby pants! I'll have to make some for my babies.

I'm not sure how I found MADE, but I'm glad I did. There are some excellent sewing tutorials here, and the blog itself is interesting and exciting.

My Zero Waste is a UK blog about reducing waste. Definitely worth a read.

Anther great UK blog - My Tiny Plot has a wealth of information about growing goodies in the backyard.

See you all again on Monday!

LATE ADDITION: I just read Amanda's gift for a boy post - it's wonderful, so add this to your list.

This is our local Sunday market.

We had a very busy week here. Sunday we drove to the Gold Coast to visit our family, stopping in at our local market on the way to buy fresh fruit and seedlings. Monday was Hanno's birthday, it was a quiet celebration this year, he had a doctor's appointment and we spent some time in the garden. On Tuesday, I went to the Centre for my craft group - Crafternoon. That is developing into a wonderful group of women who meet to talk and work on whatever craft project they have going at the time. One of the ladies, Bev, brought along some books with ideas for school fetes and suggested we do up some small projects like little dolls and mice, dishcloths and odds and ends to sell at our local kiosk to raise funds for the Centre. This is a great idea and something we'll start doing next week. Any chance of extra money coming in helps us keep going. We get no government funding and rely on donations and grants to continue opening the doors every day. I love meeting people, and there are some in every group, who are generous and supportive. Our Centre gives a lot to our community but without some form of local financial support, we can't pay the bills.

I was at the Centre again yesterday, this time for a work shop on green cleaning and making laundry liquid. I call these workshops "Kitchen Table Talks" because women used to sit together at kitchen tables and drink tea while they shared their recipes and talked about how they work. There were six of us there yesterday, sitting around a table covered with a table cloth, sharing tea and chocolate biscuits, and discussing various ways of cleaning without using harsh chemicals. It is always very reaffirming to connect with women who "get it", who understand that change will only happen if we change ourselves first. One of those ladies, Moira (affussa), came because she's been reading this blog for a long time, so it was good to meet her face to face.

When I came home, baby Jamie was just going back to sleep while Opa gave him a bottle of breast milk. Sunny and Kerry had arrived earlier in the afternoon and took the chance to have some time together while Opa took charge of the baby. Hanno is so good with him. Apparently Jamie had been asleep but the phone rang and he woke, Hanno had settled him down again, but then I came home and he woke up again and screamed. Nothing settled him until Hanno took him outside and walked around the garden with him, talking quietly in his ear about the chooks. After about 30 minutes he was tired again, so Opa fed him again, he went back to sleep and had just woken up when Sunny and Kerry came home. Then he was a very happy boy.

On the way home from the Centre, I picked up a parcel at the post office, which had come all the way from New Mexico. It was from Sharon who has sent some beautiful gifts for Jamie and Alexander. I gave it all to Sunny and she dressed Jamie in a few of the little jackets.  Here is a photo. Thank you Sharon and Claude!

I have a few things to do today, but I'm looking forward to breakfast with the family before they head back to the Gold Coast again. Hanno has another doctor's appointment, so late in the morning, when everyone's gone, I'll get through my work and hopefully I can relax and recover from this busy week. I used to be full of energy and could work long hours, now I  am worn out after a few hectic days. It's one of the very few drawbacks of ageing. So I'm looking forward to some slow days ahead when I'll do my housework and take a lot of time with knitting, gardening and relaxing. I hope you have a chance to rest and recharge too. What are you doing today?

When Hanno removed the fence from the front of our kitchen garden it created space for a seat looking into the garden. Yesterday I showed you the seat we placed there, a recreated wonder of wood and steel, now sitting under the elder tree, overlooking the greenery and the chicken coop beyond. What a grand spot to sit and think about the harvests to come and future gardens, or to just rest awhile. Every garden needs such a place, every one of us deserve one.

Corn at both ends. Some almost ready to harvest, some just planted. There are also Daikon radish, heirloom tomatoes and lettuce - again, some ready, some just planted.

Gardening is not only about the work involved, it's about reconnecting with the earth and touching things that are natural and honest. It's about renewal and recovery.  Ask any gardener how they feel after they spend time in their garden and although many will tell you they're tired, many more will say they feel relaxed and energised.  You can discover your creative self in a garden, and given half a chance, gardens have the power to heal jagged nerves and soothe troubled minds. What better place to breathe deeply and let go of your stresses - it's all fresh air, sunshine, seasonal smells, migrating birds or visiting local ones, bees buzzing, the sounds of your neighbourhood, and you.

Here we have Daikon that is flowering much too early, before the radishes are long enough. We won't collect this seed.

Never go into a garden and expect perfection. It's probably there at various times but you'll more likely encounter spent leaves, weeds, empty spaces and overgrowth. But keep looking because you'll also find seeds germinating, flowers half open, bees collecting pollen, wasps looking for water, vegetables growing to plump maturity and vines twirling and snaking along a fence. Take some time to sit and look around. In our garden there is a distinct feeling of abundance and growth, and when you stop and take time to really look, even when nothing is happening, everything is.

When something is harvested, we used that space again, straight away, with followup seedings.

Our garden is a productive kitchen patch, not a show garden. There are plants ready for harvest and those just planted, follow up seedings go in whenever plants are past their prime, it changes constantly, it keeps delivering its promise over and over again. There are weeds - chickweed grows wild here, and will do until we mulch properly. That's fine with us. We don't mind the weeds. They'll be removed when we have the time, now there is other work to do - work that will help boost production and keep the vegetables growing. The weeds will wait till we have time for them.



I have been a vegetable gardener for more than 30 years and I am thankful that my life has moved in ways that allowed me to spend time in many productive vegetable gardens. Sometimes I wish I was a novice again - taking those first steps towards organic gardening, remembering plant names and the conditions they need. They were exciting days, when I realised that the work carried out each day sowing, planting, clipping, mulching and watering would result in harvests fit for a king's table. But there were also days when just being in the garden was enough. Gardening never gets old and boring, it gets better the more you know. If you're at that first step stage, I envy you. The wonderful world of microbes, insects, flowers, plants, seeds and the freshest of vegetables is at your finger tips.


When you look around a garden, even the most humble like ours here, you see the birds flying through, bees dipping into flower heads, clothes drying on the line, a cat asleep on the straw mulch and vegetables waiting to be picked, you feel that anything is possible. And maybe, here in the garden, it is.

Few of us have reached the point of buying nothing at all - complete self sufficiency. We will never be self-sufficient here and I'm not aiming for that, but I am very serious about self-reliance, reducing what we buy and reusing and recycling what we own. I have written about this subject many times but the message needs to be constantly reinforced - to myself as much as anyone else. This is where we can make a big contribution towards waste reduction, and therefore the flow-on affects of less air, water and land pollution and fewer rubbish dumps emitting invisible gasses in our own local communities. Some of us here believe global warming is a real concern, some don't, but most people would agree that sensible and correct waste disposal is everyone's responsibility.

Before we go anywhere near the subject of reusing and recycling, our first aim should be to reduce the number of products we buy and bring home, and the amount of packaging on those products. Almost all packaging goes straight to the rubbish bin. Reducing what we buy makes sense on so many levels - we save money, we have less to care for, we don't get caught up in fashion and fads and simply by not bringing more into our homes, we reduce pollution that will result from it. I know that I am responsible for everything I buy, but I always try to remember that I'm also responsible for the packaging that comes with it. It's easy enough to think that paper, plastic, cardboard and polystyrene - all common packaging materials - can be compressed and sent to the dump with our rubbish. However, just sending it there doesn't mean the materials magically disappear. They will go there and depending on what it is, if it is a natural material or a synthetic one, it will increase the size of your local landfill and add more gasses to your local area. Just sending it to the dump doesn't get rid of the problem, it just moves it from one location to another.

Don't start me off on jar recycling. I think it's the ultimate madness to package so many products in one-use glass jars. I recycle glass jam jars and use them for homemade jams, and Cornwell's vinegar bottles for my cordials and vinegars.

This is an old meat safe - made originally to store meat in, before the days of refrigeration. I found this one at a second hand shop and after a good scrubbing now use it to store my bread and scones. Here is a step-by-step guide to making a meat safe from wood and wire. Recycled wood, of course.

A reused old spice and herb rack serves us well now to store Hanno's pills, vitamins, emu oil and tea tree oil.
I wonder if you recognise this.  It's our old satellite dish, drilled to create drainage holes and planted with succulents. It's now sitting on top of that tree stump we created when the old camphor laurel was cut down.

In the backyard, we're using an old stone bird bath top as a water container for the chooks. It's on the ground, just near their favourite summer resting place, so they can stand in it if they get too hot in summer.

This is our chook house. Apart from the concrete floor and the roosts, the entire structure and nesting boxes were made with recycled materials. That includes the guttering on the roof and down-pipe that allows us to collect rainwater from the roof.

This plastic container was recycled from being a one-use strawberry punnet to being a seed box for some of my heirloom tomato seedlings. It already contained ample drainage holes and when I first planted the seeds, I used the top of the box to create a propagation-greenhouse box. Now the seedlings are up and growing, the top remains open.

Hanno made this garden seat, and it's brother which sits on the front verandah, after finding them in a decayed state sitting on the footpath, waiting to be picked up by the council dump truck. He stripped off the old timbers, sanded back the metal, primed and painted them, put on recycled boards and sealed the entire bench. Now it's sitting in front of the elder tree looking into the vegetable garden. It's the perfect place to sit in the early morning or late afternoon.

The garden is the place to find recycled steel reinforcement grids now used for climbing frames.

These steel star pickets have been reused for hundreds of tasks over the years. Now they're rammed into the earth at the corners of each garden bed to prevent the hose being dragged over the beds.

And here we have the ultimate in food recycling - the worm farm.

We're always working on reducing our waste, sometimes we're more successful at it than at other times but recycling and reusing are built into our lives now and are a part of what we do. Before anything is "thrown away" in the rubbish bin, we think if it can be reused for another purpose. Often the answer is yes.

I like seeing photos of the ways other people deal with their "rubbish" and seeing a photo often makes me remember it better than just reading about it. I particularly love seeing photos of ingenious ideas that make me think: "I wish I'd thought of that!" or "What a great idea!".  So I decided to start the ball rolling on this and show a few of the things we're doing here to reuse and recycle rather than send our rubbish to land fill. I hope you will add your own photos on your blog and link to here. If you add your link in your comment, I'm am absolutely sure that we can build a very useful and motivational trail of reusing and recycling ideas that have the power to change how people deal with their rubbish.

I hope you involve yourself with this. I know when I see great ideas being implemented in everyday homes, it makes me believe I can do it too. By sharing our photos and the idea of recycling and reusing, we recognise it as being important  enough to think about, talk about and do, not just today and tomorrow, but as a permanent part of our simple lives. These small steps are what make a difference.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts for us as we grieve for Alice. Last week was a very sad one for us and it helped  knowing  that Alice touched the hearts of so many. We spent a couple of quiet days here together, then drove down to the Gold Coast yesterday and had Sunday with our family. Seeing them all with the babies did us a lot of good and now we're ready to move forward and settle into life again, without a dog.

~*~*~

I've been asked to do another post on making yoghurt and last week, when I was working at the Neighbourhood Centre, I was talking it about with our student Julie. Hi Julie! She has never made yoghurt so I told her this would be here and to try it. It's so easy.

There are many ways to make yoghurt, this is how I do it. I don't buy appliances and equipment that I don't need so for this method you will probably already have everything you need in your kitchen. If you make it in the afternoon, it will be ready the next morning. Yoghurt is milk that is fermented with beneficial bacteria. Other fermented products include cheese, wine, beer, kimchee, sauerkraut and kefir. 

You should make your yoghurt in sterile conditions and store it in a sterile container. The aim is to eliminate all the pathogens by pasteurising the milk. Even it is already pasteurised, the milk might have bacteria in it and you want to make sure that only the bacteria you want in there are present. When the harmful bacteria are gone, you introduce the probiotic bacteria in the form of yoghurt or yoghurt starter. The beneficial bacteria produce lactic acid during the process of fermenation. The acid conditions in the milk help preserve it because harmful bacteria find it difficult to colonise in acidic conditions.

Make sure you whisk in the powered milk and the yoghurt properly.

I keep a few tablespoons of the yoghurt that I made in a container in the freezer to be used for the next batch. 

This is the finished cheese with the whey in a jar. Whey will store safely in the fridge for at least a month. You can use it in your baking as a substitute for milk and it will give you absolutely wonderful results.

Hanno loves yoghurt made into a sort of cream cheese/quark/labnah - yoghurt cheese. To make this all you have to do is to strain the yoghurt in a clean cotton cloth placed in a strainer, sitting over a jug. Cover it and put it in the fridge for at lease one day, preferably three. The whey will drip into the jar, the flavour of the yoghurt will develop and you'll get a nice thick cheese. We use this as a savoury cheese and add extra ingredients like chilli jam (or chilli flakes), chopped green onions, finely chopped cucumber or herbs, pepper and salt. 

I know many of you already make your own yoghurt but if you haven't, try this. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

This is the last photo I took of Alice on Tuesday. She is rugged up in her favourite blanket.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers, they have really helped us during this sad time. We are fine; we realise that death and sadness are a part of life and we just have to give it a bit of time. We're both grateful that we shared our lives with such devoted and dependable dogs, Alice and Rosie, and Murphy before them, another Airedale. 

In the end, the vet came to our home to care for Alice. She is now buried in the backyard, under the Banksia rose, next to Rosie. RIP Alice.

Many of the long term readers would know we have an old Airedale Terrier. Alice has been getting weaker this year, she's deaf and almost blind, and as she is drinking a lot of water now, I think she may have diabetes.  Yesterday, while I was at the Neighbourhood Centre, Alice deteriorated more; last night, Hanno had to carry her outside to do a wee.

Today we'll take Alice to the vet for the final time. This is not going to be easy. It's time to say goodbye. 

How do you blog? What makes your blog so popular? What's your blogging secret? These are three questions I'm often asked. The simple answer to the second two questions is: I'm not sure. And because I think the first question is about the practicalities of blogging, the ins and outs of it and why I do what I do, I'm going to write about that today.

I started this blog on 14 May, 2007 with a post about Brandywine tomatoes. Since then I've written 1624 posts, 44,333 comments have been published, there are 3672 followers and there have been over 4 million visitors. When I started, I thought I would write about our everyday life and that would make a fine record for us about when we planted and what we harvested, and as one of our sons was living in Canada then, he could see that everything was fine and dandy at home. I had also started writing a book that I couldn't get published and I had a lot of material that I thought was worth sharing, so I logged into Blogger one day, and here I am. I never set out with the idea of creating a popular blog. If you care too much about being popular you concentrate on the wrong things, and it comes across as desperation. My aim was to connect to like-minded people and to share what I know - it is my responsibility as an older woman to do that. It surprised me when so many people connected with me here, and stayed. When I first started collecting statistics for my blog, I thought the counter was wrong because it kept telling me there were always a lot of visitors.  

In the beginning I wrote every day as I was firmly convinced, and still am, that to create a relationship with any readers who wandered my way, I had to give them something original and interesting to read when they arrived, and the promise of something new tomorrow. Writing every day gave my early readers a little unspoken promise that if they came back, there would be something waiting. It also revealed a little bit of Hanno and me, and the life we were living, and I hoped that visitors would take the time to give a little bit back too. That happened, we made the connection I wanted to make and over the years I've developed friendships with some of the readers here and built up an idea in my own mind about what many of you are like in real life. Each comment adds to that.

I used write my blog when I got up every morning - 4am. If I did that, I had enough time to give it the attention it needed while still having time for the work I did later in the day. One thing is for sure, you can't write about a life you don't really live. I put my camera in my apron pocket in the morning and if I do something I think I might write about, I grab the camera and take the photo. Now I find it's better if I start writing the blog the afternoon before, then I edit it, or add to it, the next morning. I usually have it published some time between 4am and 6 am. 

My subject matter often comes from what I do during the day but it also includes occasionally responding to emails, step-by-step guides, recipes and thoughts I have about this and that. I am not self-conscious at all about writing my thoughts on death and ageing and I hope the posts I write on those subjects, as well as the unrealistic desire for perfection, help bring those topics into general discussion more. At the moment, not many people talk about those things and they are as important as happiness, health and slowing down.

I have no formula - I don't write a certain number of words, I just stop when I feel I've conveyed what I hoped to. If you read about what makes a successful blog, many writers say you should be mindful of keywords and to create headlines that reflect popular keywords. I don't. I think the way to get readers is to write well, almost every day, and to comment on other blogs similar to your own and join forums about your subject. And you have to give it time - time to write well, time to develop your own voice and style, and time for readers to find you.

I have never set myself up as an expert. I just want to share what I know and what works for us here. I think there are many ways to live a simple life, ours is just one way. I hope that what I write helps people believe they can make the changes they want to make. Over the years I made sure I was not swayed by advertisers and people wanting space on my blog - I get emails almost every day asking for that. I have done some bartering deals and lived true to my values, and despite being offered some incredible incentives, I only blog about and promote products I use here. I couldn't honestly recommend anything I haven't used myself and, more importantly, would continue to use.

Now that I've been writing for so long, I think, but I'm not sure, that if there is a secret, it's regular interesting content. And you have to write from the heart, you have write well, you have to be believable. I hope I have done all that. There are still many things I have to learn, there are always changes being made here so I guess while we keep evolving, I'll keep writing. To tell you the truth, this blog has become a friend to me and I would miss it if I stopped. In the silent early morning hours, with a cup of hot tea steaming beside the keyboard, I've shared many thoughts and words here but I am still amazed that from this silent spot, as soon as I hit "publish" these words travel out in to the wide world, to you. Don't you think that's incredible?

Back when I was a young bride, living in what was then West Germany, I was taught to cook two basic meals by Hanno's mum - Kartoffel Puffer or potato pancakes and Fleish Rouladen - stuffed beef rolls. Over the years I've probably made hundreds of Kartoffel Puffers, they're a regular in our house and everyone I serve them to loves them. We went off meat for a long time and ate only vegetarian meals for about eight years but now we're back eating meat and I've re-discovered Beef Rouladen. I think Frau Anni Hetzel would be very pleased. I know her son is.

This is a relatively cheap meal and although it's easy to make and thought to be quite unsophisticated as a main meal, I am standing up to say it's a favourite here and for that reason, I'd like to share it with you. When we get our bulk meat order, I always ask the butcher to thinly slice the round steak for me which I package as two slices per bag. I used two bags for this, four slices, so we could eat it one night and serve it again the next night.

You'll need one slice per person of thinly sliced beef steak. It can be one of the tougher cuts because it will be slowed cooked and will become tender during that process. So if you have blade or topside, or round, they're ideal. If the slice is not so thin, cover it with freezer wrap and thin it out with a meat mallet, making sure you don't belt the living daylights out of it and make holes in the beef. You'll need toothpicks or kitchen string to tie up the rolls and a frying pan with a lid that can go into the oven. If you don't have one, you'll need a frying pan, then an oven proof dish with a lid.

INGREDIENTS

Beef

Large onion, chopped

Mushrooms, any kind, sliced

2 rashes/slices bacon

Salt and pepper

Mustard - optional

Plain/all purpose flour
Water
Sour cream - optional

METHOD

• Cut the bacon into small pieces and fry in a pan until cooked. Take off the heat and drain. Keep the pan on the stove as you'll cook the meat in it soon.
• Place your beef on a board and cut off any fat. Thin the slice out with a meat mallet if it needs it. 
• If you're using the mustard, spread about a teaspoon of it over the meat slice.
• Place some bacon, onion and mushrooms on the beef slice, add salt and pepper and roll it up tightly. Secure with string or a toothpick.

• When all the rolls are prepared, place them in the pan you browned the bacon in. If you have any onion or mushrooms left over, put them in the pan too; they'll add more flavour to the sauce.

Beef Roulladen is traditionally eaten with red cabbage and potatoes so out to the backyard I went and picked some. We had a few small red cabbages that won't grow much now that the warmer weather is here so I picked them all.

Check the beef rolls after they've been cooking for ¾ hour. They'll be ready when they're tender and the sauce is brown and nicely thickened. Take them out of the oven and on to the stove top. If the sauce is not as thick as you would like, with the lid off, put it on the heat on the stove top, and let the sauce reduce for a few minutes. Just before serving, I added some sour cream to the sauce but this is optional.

If you're after some sweet inspiration go no further than the inner pickle blog. I'm not sure how Fiona does it with three small children but her baking and cooking from scratch always looks superb. Go over and look at the passionfruit slice photos and recipe, and the biscuits, and blueberry muffins, oh, and the easy orange cake, flat bread, the ice cream, sour cream and butter (somebody stop me, please). :- )  While you're there, check out the wonderful photos of the kids and ducks; it's such a delightful family and blog. Inner Pickle is realistic and beautiful and I'm sure you'll love it as much as I do.

Many of you will know that one of my long term sponsors has been Modern Little Munchkins. Modern Little Munchkins has grown up.  No longer stocking only products for munchkins, the new look business now caters for grown-ups as well as the home.  The move away from a specialist role as children’s eco products provider means that the name is no longer suitable.  The business was rebranded and on August 19 and relaunched as An Eco Dream (www.ecodreamonline.com.au).