A couple of years ago, Queensland experienced severe flooding in many areas. I still remember the shock and sadness I felt when I watched TV coverage of the floodwaters rushing through Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley in 2011. Ordinary life was being lived in Toowoomba one minute, the next, a wall of water shot through the city centre, carrying with it everything in its path. That wall of water moved west across the ridges and then down into the Lockyer Valley. Many people died, houses and cars were washed away and entire townships devastated. My father's family were early settlers in the Lockyer Valley, he was born in Forest Hill and many of my ancestors are buried at the Laidley Cemetery. When I watched that flooding disaster unfold, I was heartbroken. I will always remember it.

Hanno and I visited the Lockyer Valley on the weekend. The small community group, Citizens of the Lockyer Valley, invited us to present a workshop in the beautiful old hall at Stockyard Creek. Inside, not only did we find members of this strong and resilient community, we found framed collections of flood photos - a solemn testament to what happened in the valley.

 In the kitchen getting ready to make laundry liquid.

Outside the Stockyard Creek hall.  Photos by Hanno.

The workshop began with a welcome and short speech by the local mayor. His council provided funding for the weekend and I was delighted to know there was strong support for the event. Soon after we got down to the business of sharing, discussion and demonstrations. We spoke about simple living, budgeting, growing vegetables, composting, heirloom seeds and chickens, dishcloths, preserving, freezing, green cleaners and grocery shopping. We made up 40 litres of laundry liquid and showed how to blanch vegetables. It was a busy workshop, interrupted only by country hospitality - the urn bubbled away, cakes, slices, scones and salad rolls were laid on the table. There were a number of people there who read this blog so I was delighted to meet them and put faces to what is sometimes "the great unknown" to me. We ended late yesterday afternoon with a community forum. That resulted in several suggestions for projects the group may take forward to help local people transition to a simpler life. It was such a positive way to end what had been a wonderful weekend.

Many of the people who came along thanked us for being there and for sharing our lives with them, but I felt thankful that we'd been invited. This little group is the first grass roots  group to ask me to present a workshop for them and from what I could they were are the perfect model for how small communities should be and what they can achieve. I loved every minute of it.

ADDITION 1: If you're attending the Simple Living workshops in Blackheath on June 1 and 2, and will be travelling in from the Bathurst area, can you email me please. Hopefully, if there are a few of you, we might be able to arrange a car pool.

ADDITION 2: Jill, a local from Laidley, emailed and told me my explanation of the flood waters was not quite right. Here is her explanation: The flood waters in Toowoomba in 2011 did not come into the Lockyer Valley. Rain fell along the range and some water fell in Toowoomba and went west and some fell down the scarp and went east to parts of the Lockyer Valley and probably hit Withcott, Helidon, Grantham and Murphy's Creek.
Mind you it rained and thundered all day on the day of the flood here in Laidley so the flooding here was locally manufactured. There is no gap in the range at this point to let the water through and all creeks in T'ba flow westwards.
I also need to point out that the flooding here in Laidley and also in Glenore Grove was far worse on Australia Day this year but we are small settlements and easily forgotten.
The flood in 2011 was 1 metre and in 2013 it was 1.5 metres and also much faster and more destructive, dragging away the topsoil from many farms (remember this is one of the few areas of good agricultural land in Australia) and digging holes of about 50 centimetres in all sorts of places around town. Some businesses have just re-opened and there is still a lot of repair work in individual shops and homes.  Thanks Jill.

I'm looking forward to conducting simple living workshops at Stockyard Creek in the Lockyer Valley this weekend. I love meeting people who are open to new ideas and change. I think I'll enjoy it a lot. I'll take photos so you can see what we got up to. I hope you enjoy your weekend too.

Thanks for your visits this week and for leaving comments that we all read. Commenting is another way of sharing and your comment may make a real difference to someone's life. 

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I loved the interesting comments that came through yesterday. Parents sharing their experiences in an open way always has the potential to help some parents confirm their choices and it gives others the opportunity to read a wide variety of opinions they may not be exposed to in real life. So thank you for taking part in that important discussion about what kids eat.

It seems to me that parts of the food industry, and supermarkets in general, want to kneecap us. They aren't interested in our well being, they want our money and food is something we budget for on a daily or weekly basis. There is no way they will stop promoting the products they sell, so we all have to step up, refuse to take notice and just keep doing what we're doing.

My main gripe is that this form of selling promotes convenience over everything else such as quality, location, scarcity and the environmental cost of production, packaging and delivery. Convenience wins every time. And the consequence is that slowly, we lose our life skills. Why make bread when it's available fresh every day? Why put the time into making good soap when soap is so cheap? Many people take the convenient option every time and don't know that products made at home, including bread and soap, are far superior to what you buy at the supermarket. I know that many people don't have the time to make such things but those who do have the time and the inclination for it aren't encouraged or supported in their choices.


The saddest part of this whole thing is that it drains confidence. I get so many emails from young women telling me they want to do this and that but don't think they can, or they failed once and they don't have the confidence to try again. If you knew how many times I made bread and soap before I was satisfied with it you'd probably think I was mad for persisting so long. Good works take time. Anyone can walk along an aisle, pick up products and put them in a trolley. It takes time, skills, commitment, passion and, yes, confidence, to home-make what can easily be bought. But the pay off is that you retain those skills, you produce goods that are superior and you know what's in them.

I'm not going to explain why it's a good thing to remain skilled and to be self reliant, I'm sure you know why as surely as I do. But I will encourage you to learn as much as you can and to be confident in your values and the way you live. I hope you'll encourage others to do the same. Because if we don't acknowledge that the marketing of convenience is turning us into a bunch of sooky-lalas, then we'll all go down the drain. I want to yell that out loud for the world to hear, but I guess my blog is the closest I get to doing that.


I gleaned a lot of hope out of yesterday's comments. Seeing women rejecting the convenience of baby food in a jar made me realise there are a lot of us who have chosen to swim against the tide. I don't know about you but when I know my values are mirrored in others, when I know we're not the only ones who don't choose the easy option, it makes me want to keep going, keep enjoying, keep sharing and keep learning. Thank you for helping me feel that so strongly yesterday.

Now that we're looking after Jamie occasionally, it's brought back a lot of memories about how things were when my own sons were babies. They both started eating porridge - the same one we enjoyed, then grew up with all of us sitting at the kitchen table for meals; there were no special foods. Our sons had completely different eating preferences. One would eat anything and everything, first time. The other was a fussy eater. He wanted to know what everything was, what was in it and if he hadn't seen it before, well, we had a struggle getting him to eat.

I come from a long line of very practical mothers and homekeepers. I clearly remember my mother advising me to give my sons chop bones to chew on, to simply puree or mash what we were eating and feed it to my boys and if they weren't going to eat, allow them to leave the table. I gave them the occasional chop bone to chew on, and they loved them. I think many of today's mothers might be shocked at the chop bones, but at that time, it was a fairly common practise. The boys happily sat there chewing away, tasting the flavour and getting a very small amount of nutrition. The purpose of the exercise was to get them used to seeing us eat and for them to eat the same food. It also helped them develop their taste buds and to be ready for meat when we introduced it later along with pureed vegetables.

One of my boys was allowed to leave the table when it became clear he wouldn't eat a particular meal. Once he left the table though, there was no coming back. Not even for dessert. Soon he learnt that lesson and then slowly developed his palate for a wider range of food. I sometimes remember the difficult days of refusing to eat and crying but they only lasted a short time. When new habits were established, that lasted forever. 

I read this very interesting article in The Guardian last week about children eating the same food as their parents. It reminded me that in Australia, almost all restaurants you go to will have a children's menu. That children's menu is usually made up of pizza, fish and chips, chicken nuggets and chips or burgers and chips. I have never understood why children couldn't just have smaller versions of the main items on the menu. Why don't they eat what their parents eat?

I've been really pleased to see Jamie eat a wide variety of foods ever since he started eating solids.  When he started snacking, Sunny and Kerry put different foods on a plate: fruits, vegetables, bread, crackers, cheese, chicken or meat, and let him choose what he wanted. Usually it was the entire plate. Now that he's eating with us, and sharing our morning tea and lunch, he eats what we eat. Last week that was pea and ham soup with toast fingers, the week before it was roast pork, red cabbage and roast vegetables. He also eats all the delicious Asian food Sunny cooks. During the day he will snack on fruit - we have organic oranges growing in the backyard at the moment, so he's eating those. He eats a small piece of whole orange cake or a homemade biscuit for morning tea. He drinks either water, milk or juice. I might ask Sunny if I can try him on warm milky tea when the days are a bit colder.

I think getting children to eat well is a problem in many homes. It can be really difficult at the start and if you're stressed after a day's work, sometimes you just want everyone fed so you have time to relax.  And there are so many different ways to get the same result. What happens in your home? Is, or was, it a battle every day or was it easy for you? When did you start solids and when did you stop giving milk as frequently?

Mother's Day is a day set aside to recognise the role of mothers and the importance mothers play in our lives and in the life of the nation. It's Mother's Day in Australia this Sunday. I am sickened by the advertising I'm seeing for diamond rings, trips and cars. Please don't get caught up in the commercialisation of this day. These kinds of gifts don't honour motherhood, they devalue it. The most genuine celebration is when a family comes together to honour the mother, maybe with a family meal that mum didn't cook. If you want to give something to your mother on Mother's Day, give yourself. That will touch her heart.

It's Wednesday morning, 10.03, the aroma of homemade biscuits is wafting through our house. Is there any better fragrance? I have a few minutes to wait before they come out of the oven. Hanno is outside in the garden, clipping, mulching and planting in the empty spaces. Soon I'll call him for morning tea. I have no doubt he can smell biscuits baking.

These biscuits are the cheap and easy biscuits written about by Paula on the forum. Here is her recipe:

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.

Morning tea has come and gone and still that aroma lingers. There are extras to be had from making up a batch of homemade biscuits. There is the aroma, the anticipation, and the feeling of pride in making what you need. Your biscuits will contain no preservatives or artificial flavours and that is certainly a bonus. I cooked up half the dough and have the other half wrapped in baking paper and in a plastic bag in the freezer. I'm going to visit my sister for a week soon. The day before I go I'll bake the second batch so Hanno has enough biscuits for visitors, but mostly for him and Jamie. ;- )

Are you a biscuit maker? I encourage you to make up a batch of these little beauties. You'll need an electric mixer or hand beater. They are just a plain butter biscuit but you can add nuts, chocolate chips, glaced fruit, nutmeg or cinnamon sugar or even jam - which is spooned into into the indent your thumb makes in the dough.

I know it can be intimidating when you want to bake your own bread or cakes and you don't have someone to teach you. These biscuits are a wonderful first step into baking and possibly the easiest way to start. They are simple to make and you'll have almost 100 biscuits. More than enough to fill your biscuit jar as still have a few to give to family and friends.

Just a few hints just in case you're a first time baker. Have your butter at room temperature but not too soft, cream the butter and sugar well before adding anything else and when you form the biscuits, don't make them too thin. If you make them in balls for the first batch, you can get a bit fancier with cookie cutters next time around. The balls are easy because you put them on the tray and they just melt to form a nice round biscuit. Don't place the dough too close on the tray or they'll join up.

Other than that, it's an easy and cheap recipe that will give you first rate biscuits, with no hidden nasties. Serving these with your morning tea or for an after school snack, beats opening a packet of commercial biscuits hands down. I hope you try them.

This poem has apparently been around for a while but when I read it for the first time this week it hit me right in the heart. I wanted to share it with those of you who haven't seen it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. What lessons it teaches.

......

Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal

Naomi Shihab Nye

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,

I heard the announcement:

If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,

Please come to the gate immediately.

Well — one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,

Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.

Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her

Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she

Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.

Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,

Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew — however poorly used -

She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.

She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the

Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.

We called her son and I spoke with him in English.

I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and

Would ride next to her — southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and

Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian

Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering

Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies — little powdered

Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts — out of her bag —

And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a

Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,

The lovely woman from Laredo — we were all covered with the same

Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers —

Non-alcoholic — and the two little girls for our flight, one African

American, one Mexican American — ran around serving us all apple juice

And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands —

Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always

Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,

This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate — once the crying of confusion stopped

— has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.

This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

............

Naomi Shihab Nye's page at The Poetry Foundation

I'm sure most of you who knit, sew or create with your hands will identify with this. I'm trying to organise my work room so I have enough room to write, which is my main occupation, and still have bits and pieces in full view so I'm inspired and comforted by them. I am more creative in controlled chaos. In the past it didn't really matter what my room looked like, I could be disorganised in there and only I would see it. But now Jamie comes into my room frequently and although he doesn't touch anything, I want to move all the pins, needles and scissors to safer places. I want and need my room to work as a creative space as well as having it tidy and organised (within reason). It's difficult for me because I am, by nature, quietly chaotic.

There is a beautiful view from my window, looking out onto our green and lush front garden. It's a bit overgrown at the moment but there is order there too if you look. That's what I'm aiming for in my work room - ordered, but not rigidly so.

I'm moving into a very busy work period that will last until at least September so if I can infuse a little order into my work space now, I know I'll benefit from it. I guess one of my problems is that although I could put away a lot of the things on my desk, I like looking at them. I wonder if you feel like that too in your work space.

I'm going to clean out and tidy up a couple of shelves, boxes, and my desk and see how I feel about it.  I'll do the shelves first because if I do the desk first, I'll probably think I deserve a medal after that and stop. I often use the 15 minute limit tactic but it's not working with this task. Not doing it is not an option and I know when it's all done I'll be glad I put the effort into it, but it's the starting that's the sticking point. Secretly I like it the way it is but I know I'll be more productive and the grandkids will be safer if I ignore my preference and just do it.

What tactics do you use when you have to do something in the house that you know needs to be done but you haven't really got the will to do it?  

Google "home-based economy' and you get a lot of links about setting up a business at home, earning money from home and a lot of flim-flammery about earning big bucks working one hour a day at home. My idea about home-based economy is as far removed from those concepts as is possible. To me, home-based economy is exactly that - the domestic economy that revolves around the work done in the home by the people who live there. A domestic economy is a multi-faceted resource that involves prudence, thrift, sound judgement, home production, hard work and common sense homemaking.

We set up our home economy here about ten years ago. I had just closed down my business and Hanno was still working in our shop, having previously retired from the mines. I was absolutely sure that at our stage of life, having already paid off our mortgage and with no other debt, we'd be able to cut back, earn less but still be able to live within our means.  We did that in a number of ways, the main ones being:

Live with less
One of the first things we did when we decided to cut back was to get rid of pay TV and our second car. We then went on to drastically reduce what we bought. It felt good but we were out of touch with the rest of the Australian population. Since 2003, people here have increased what they spend on internet fees by six fold and they're paying a third more for pay TV. At the same time the number of electrical appliances in Australia increased by 45 percent.

We decluttered, and found that's an ongoing activity. We do small areas and then stop until we decide to do it again. I also realised the challenge isn't just about getting rid of what we already had but also not buying as much as we used to. Changes to shopping habits reaped big rewards and I also started to make quite a few of the things I used to buy.

Home production of previously bought goods
I looked in books and online to find a variety of recipes that would enable me to make things that used to be made in the home. Our domestic production line still includes bread, soap, laundry liquid, jam, sauce, relish, cakes, biscuits, dishcloths, cleaning rags, all sorts of knitting, aprons, napkins, tablecloths, salves and creams. Doing this taught me what my grandmother and her grandmothers had known all along - that home production generally gives you better products at a cheaper price. Making as much as we can with our own hands is still one of the hallmarks of our home.

Remain debt-free

Living with no debt at our stage of life gives us a feeling of security and that we're in control. Paying money out for rent or mortgage repayments earlier in life is usually the norm for most of us and it's a great relief when that last mortgage payment is made. Adding more debt not only increases your footprint it also requires you to work to pay it off and often that brings a level of stress with it. Going hand-in-hand with debt-free living is developing the capacity to feel content with what you have. The ability to feel that contentment needs to be developed and nurtured along the way so that when you finally pay off your debts, the temptation to spend has been replaced by other more benign and rewarding activities.

Growing food in the backyard

Learning how to grow food in your own backyard, or in any space you have, will help you cut down on your grocery bill and give you fresh healthy food. If you want to eat fresh, local food, nothing will beat your own backyard produce. And not only will you reap what you sow, vegetable gardening gives you the opportunity to get your hands into the dirt and reconnect with what is outside your back door. Getting to know your land, learning about the birds and insects that visit your backyard will place you within your eco-system and help you understand more about your local climate and environment, and how what you do in your home affects it.

Community-based bartering and swapping

No matter how sharp and switched on you are, I doubt you'll be able to make and do everything you want to do in your home, particularly if you're working outside the home as well. We all have things we can't make and therefore have to buy or barter for. If you connect with your local community you may find there are some things that can be had, simply by producing more eggs, tomatoes, honey or dishcloths. Bartering is a great way of getting what you need without the need for money. See what you can find out and try to get yourself into a bartering arrangement with someone.  You'll still be getting local fresh produce but you'll also be helping your local area develop its own economy.

Cooking from scratch
Without a doubt, cooking from scratch will help you save money, eat healthier food and look at your household systems in a different way. Before I made my change I cooked from scratch about 90 percent of the time, but I did it out of habit rather than the radical action I see it as today. When I chose to cook from scratch everyday, it allowed me to shop in a different way, saving more while being more selective in my choice of product, point of origin and packaging. Grocery shopping became a political act as well as a domestic one. It also moved me towards stockpiling which saved me much more time than I ever expected and helped me get more value for the money I spent.

Green cleaning
Along with cooking from scratch, making your own cleaners will help you save money and become healthier.  Using simple products such as borax, washing soda, bicarb, olive oil, vinegar and soap, you can make every cleaning product you used to buy at a tiny fraction of the supermarket cost.  No matter what you hear on the TV ads, you do not have to buy a different product for every cleaning task in your home. As long as you match the cleaning ability of these simple products with what you're cleaning, it will do a very good job. The added bonus for you, as well as the dollars saved, will be that you bring far fewer chemicals into your home.

There will never be one thing that allows you to reduce your cost of living, it will be many things. What I've written about here allowed us to reduce what we needed to live on and it made us healthier, more self-reliant, stronger and happier. Developing your own home economy enables you to see beyond the commercialisation of the home and brings you back to a place where there are many alternatives and possibilities, not the single one - the supermarket - that is predominant today.

Have you developed your own home-based economy? Please share what you do in your own home.

Ten things you should never buy new

Christina Lowry - this is always a beautiful blog but just look at the blanket Christina is working on.

The Retro Housewife

Think Little by Wendell Berry

Frankie

From comments here during the week

Dianne at Russwood Cottage

Little Pen Pen

Wendy at Cambric Cotton, Pins and Needles

Another week has come and gone; they seem to be flying by this year. I hope you take some time to look after yourself this weekend. Let's all take an hour out to sit in the sun, or someplace warm, to enjoy the scenery or a book and recharge our batteries. See you next week. :- )