We've started luring Jamie into our gardening ways. He had his first trip to the markets with Hanno and his mum on Sunday to buy seedlings for planting in this season's new garden. Sunny is keen to try her hand at growing a few things in her backyard as well. She's never been a gardener before but she's starting with some favourites, daikon radish and shallots. I have a ginger shoot I planted up last week to give her. I think later she'll venture into the various Asian greens. She's an excellent professional chef and home cook so having fresh greens just outside the kitchen door will be a real bonus in her new home.

Sunny and Jamie helping to water in the new seedlings. 

Most of you know that one of Hanno's tasks is to produce food for our table. We live in a subtropical climate with good rainfall so vegetable gardening is a way we can get extra value from the land we live on. Summer is hot and humid here so we stop gardening over summer to give ourselves and the soil a break in the heat. We stop planting in November, continue harvesting over December, then start planting again in March. This year we've decided to start early so the first of our seedlings have already gone in.

Welsh onions, sage, basil, shallots, calendula, daikon and parsley.

Even though one of our chickens, Lucy, has been flying over the fence to peck through the garden, the curly kale survived the summer, along with a few leeks. We'll keep all this going with extra water and a good feed.

The comfrey has shot up again after it looked dead during the drought. That's the beauty of those fleshy root plants, they can survive harsh conditions. We'll be transplanting some root cuttings of comfrey over to the edge of the compost heap.

I was listening to the radio the other day and tuned in just in time to hear a young woman talk about how bored she was staying at home with her twin girls after being in an exciting job in fashion. I thought I'd like to move in with that family for a while and show them how exciting it can be to take control of a home and to introduce the family to sustainability via housekeeping. I'd like to show them the remarkable possibilities and how those possibilities open up life rather than make it boring. Nowadays, many homes are run on the notion that you buy as much as you can to help you save time so you have the time and energy to earn money to pay for all of it. I know that because I used to do it. It was only when I became worn out and sad that I realised what a sorry way it was to live. It wasn't life as I wanted it to be, it was just survival.

In my mind's eye I had this ever-evolving idea of being a successful and happy woman working in her home on a number of projects. While I was still working, I didn't fully understand the complexity of my home's potential but now I do, I wish I'd made my change much sooner. Being at home gives you so many choices, so much power in your hands to have the home that is right for you and your family. Something that fits you like a glove, not a one size fits all. You are aiming for Unique. Remarkable. Joyful. Satisfying. Forget all those stories you read in magazines about boredom, you can reinvent your home life, take the bull by the horns and make your day to day work whatever you want it to be. And it is the homemaker who makes those changes - female or male, married or unmarried, straight or gay, working in the home full time or part time. It's possible for all of us in a variety of ways.

When I came home for good, I threw out all those old fashioned ideas about being stuck at home, buying everything we needed, having a different chemical for each job and food cooked by some unseen person or machine.  I wanted to simplify my life as much as I could by making my home productive and when I got into it, I was shocked and ashamed at how much of my independence I'd given away for the sake of convenience. I wanted to create a new, for me, way of being a homemaker  - one that embraced work at home rather than resent it. I saw it as an opportunity to turn housework on its head and to make my day an exercise in sustainable living that was filled with interest, learning and contentment. As the months rolled by, I could see that I was making myself much more self reliant and our home resilient and strong and capable of nurturing us during the good times and the bad. Our family life improved, and we became healthier and happier.

This is one thing I'm sure of - you make these significant changes to your life by doing one thing, by deciding to change yourself. You start with one thing and as that unfolds, it brings in new possibilities, which lead to something else and eventually the joy of it unfolds before your eyes. It is a small steps proposition where you work at it every day in tiny ways that add up and make life worthwhile and enriching. And you can't buy that anywhere. There is no product that will give you the feeling of satisfaction you get when you create this kind of life for your family. When you finally "get it" and work on making it better every day, that's exactly what happens - life gets better.  So, don't tell me that life at home is boring. It will be what you make it. There are possibilities there that are open to all of us - we'll all choose our own unique mix of what works for us. All we have to do is decide to change, then step up to the work.


In the past few months there were a few people, women and men, who were leaving work to start life as homemakers. If you're still here please let us all know how you're going. What is difficult and what is easy? And, is it what you thought it would be?

Hanno and Kerry drove to Toowoomba at 2am this morning so Kerry could board the plane to take him out west to work. Sunny needs the car during Kerry's two weeks away and she's still a bit apprehensive about driving, so Hanno was happy to step in. He got up at 1am and after that I just tossed and turned. I woke up tired and wandered around the house like a ghost for a few hours. I couldn't concentrate enough to write my blog and ended up knitting. Then I had to talk to myself to tell me to stop being lazy and to get on with it. Millions of people have it much harder than I do, I just had to step up, shut up and start work. 

So I got my vegetable seeds out and started the annual garden plan. After breakfast I finished off making the butter I started yesterday. I now have enough good butter in the freezer to last us two to three months. All this butter is made using the cream of Guernsey cows living on pastures in the hills behind our home. I picked up four litres of cream from Maleny Dairies on Monday and with it I made cultured butter and plain, slightly salted butter.

All the buttermilk must be drained off because if there is too much liquid left in the butter it will go off quickly.

 These two little bottles of buttermilk will be used in the coming days in my baking.

 When I had all the butter portioned out, I wrapped the portions in two layers of greaseproof paper.

All that butter making got me back to normal. It always does. I'm no saint when it comes to house work and I have bad days just like everyone else. But making butter or cheese, baking, mending or gardening usually gets me back on track and when I'm am, I can't imagine being anywhere else. So of course I had to do a late blog. I guess it's better late than not at all.

ADDITIONAL READING

Weston A Price Foundation -Why butter is better

You start thinking about making changes to your life, you decide that now is the time, you get all fired up to do something new, like recycling, composting, growing vegetables, baking bread, saving, paying off debt, or whatever. It's fine while that spark continues, but when it dies down a bit, how do you make yourself continue?

When you start new things, set your new systems up so that it's as easy as possible to do it, do it well and continue doing it. Here are a few of the things I do.

Composting/worm farming: keep a covered container on the bench top for vegetable and fruit scraps. Citrus and onion peels need to go in a separate container because worms don't like them.

Feeding kitchen scraps to the chickens: after dinner in the evening, get a bowl and put all the table scraps in it. You can also add stale bread. Leave it in the fridge overnight, take it out in the morning, add leftover cereal and porridge and then take it out to the girls who will love you for it. You can add stale bread to the worm farm food as well.

Growing vegetables: if you've never done this before, start of with a few herbs or tomatoes in containers. That will get you used to looking after plants and watering them, before you're faced with a garden full of vegetables.

Making your own laundry products: write down the ingredients to make what you want and buy them when you do your shopping. If you have it on hand, you're more likely to make it. This does work well, it's easy to make, it will save you a lot of money and reduce the number of chemicals in your home.

Keeping the bathroom and shower clean: do a thorough clean. There is no way out of this, if you want a clean bathroom, you have to start with a clean room. So clean it up, either using Lauren's Karcher methods :- ) or by conventional scrubbing. When it's clean, keep a spray bottle of citrus or lavender vinegar in the shower and give the shower a quick spray and wipe after your shower every day. When you get up in the morning, use the same spray to do a quick spray and wipe of the bathroom sink and bench.

Keeping the toilet clean: like the bathroom, you have to start with a clean toilet. you can clean your toilet in an environmentally sound way, even if it is stained, by flushing the toilet and pouring in half a cup of citric acid. This is natural acid found in lemons, in powder form. You can buy it at the supermarket near the baking goods or buy it in bulk from some bulk food distributors. Do this last thing at night so it will sit undisturbed in the toilet for quite a few hours. The next morning, give the toilet a good scrub. I use a toilet brush with a good edge on it so I can get into all the angles, not a round brush which are usually hopeless. I get my cleaning brushes, including the one above, from my sponsor Biome. When the toilet is clean, you can easily keep it clean by spraying that vinegar spray over the toilet every day if you feel inclined, or a couple of times a week if you don't. Every time you spray and wipe with the vinegar, pour a small amount in the toilet bowl and give it a good scrub with your brush as well.

Saving: find a jar with a lid and start putting your change in it. A change jar will add up to quite a good amount after six months or so and you don't really notice the change going out of your purse or pocket. If you do save a good amount, make an extra mortgage payment or put it aside for birthday gifts.

Reducing what you pay for groceries: If you need to cut $50 off your grocery budget to help pay the mortgage, car loan or school fees, or if you want to pay extra an extra mortgage payment every month or two, don't just take the fifty dollars out. It will be a big shock and you'll end up feeling deprived and resentful.  Cut back on your budget by $10 a week, then $20, then $30 till you reach your target. It will take you just over a month to reach your required cut back but you won't notice it as much. Once you've gone through a few weeks increasing the money taken out, you'll be better prepared to deal with a $50 reduction each week.

Recycling: save suitable jars and bottles to be refilled later and used for ginger beer, cordial and jams. If you have the containers ready to use, it's easy to make something from your excess and store it in the cupboard.

Mending: look at your clothes and household lines as they go into the washing machine and see what needs to be mended, have a button sewn back on or a hem re-stitched. When they're clean and dry again, put everything that has to be mended, in a special basket with a sewing kit, near where you sit at night. It will remind you to mend while you sit.

Cutting down on the ironing: when you hang out the washing, make sure you shake everything before you hang it on the line then smooth out hems and edges when they're hanging. That will get rid of many creases. Don't leave the washing in the basket too long before you hang it out and fold carefully as soon as you take the washing of the line.

I'm sure you have several ways of making your household tasks easier. Please share your favourite tip. It could be just the thing that makes a real difference to someone.

My sister Tricia recommended an Australian book to me recently - Coming Home by Cathy Armstrong. I was pleased to see it was published by my publisher - Lantern, an imprint of Penguin. It's described on the front cover as 'recipes for comfort food and cosy kitchen crafts'. Anyone my age and a little older and younger will recognise many of the crafts as being common in our childhood; those younger than us will love them for their 'vintage' appeal. I guess we're vintage ourselves now.  :- )

There are chapters on wonderful breakfasts, drinks, desserts, sandwiches, main meals, cooking for visitors and fetes/fairs. The design is fabulous and Cathy has dotted the book with a page here and there about her upbringing. It's interesting, warmly nostalgic, an easy read, and Cathy's recipes are wholesome and from scratch.

I tried her Ginger Fizz and I think it tastes very much like my ginger beer, but without the probiotics. Still, I loved the first batch, and while it won't replace my ginger beer, it's an excellent standby when you have guests coming and you haven't had the seven days it takes to make the fermented ginger beer.

GINGER FIZZ

• 50g/2 oz fresh ginger, grated
• 1 cup sugar
• ½ cup lime juice

Sparkling plain mineral water (or soda water) to serve, with ice.

Place all the ingredients in a saucepan with ½ cup water. Bring to the boil then turn down the heat and simmer for 5 - 7 minutes. Strain the liquid into a sterilised container and store in the fridge. You can use the ginger again for a second batch. The recommendation is to store for up to two weeks but I'm sure, with the sugar and lime juice, it would store for 6 weeks with no problems.

Serve your drink with enough ginger syrup for your taste and fill the glass with sparkling water and ice.

It can also be used as a soothing tea: add to hot water with a squeeze of lemon juice.


And speaking of books, I still haven't publish my dairy book yet. It's finished but I have yet to publish it. Like everything else, I learn about these things as I go, so sometimes it's a slow process. Also, my brain isn't as nimble as it once was so the learning takes more time. I hope it will be out sometime in February.

And speaking of dairy, I picked up four litres of Guernsey cream from the dairy yesterday so today I'm making butter. I'll have a look through my stored cultures in the freezer later to see if I have the right culture for making cultured butter. If I do have it, that will be on our bread here for a while.

I hope you have a lovely day.

For the past two days the Down to Earth forum has been experiencing problems. Some people can get in, some can't, some can post, some can't. I am getting help to fix it this morning and hope to have it back working properly soon. Please be patient. I'm learning as I go with the forum and this is the first major problem we've had. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.


I take every opportunity to walk away from the computer to move into real life and embrace it. I do a lot of writing on the computer and I have my blog, forum and forum maintenance as well as trying to keep up with all the emails that come my way. I enjoy my work but after spending the past 25 years earning a living staring into a computer screen, the breaks away from it are becoming more precious to me. I enjoy living life rather than just writing about it.

Shane, Sarndra and Alex arrived for a surprise visit on Thursday night. We had the pleasure of watching Alex run around, looking at the chooks, playing in the backyard and sitting at our table with Shane and Sarndra. It's the first time we've all been together for many months so we enjoyed catching up and just relaxing at home with them here. 

On Saturday, Kerry, Sunny and Jamie joined us for lunch. There were two highchairs at the table and after lunch the boys cooled off in the little wading pool Hanno set up next to the sandpit. It was hot, the umbrella provided shade and both Jamie and Alex did what most kids do, they mucked around in the water and had a lot of fun. After a great couple of days together, they left yesterday morning to go back to Gladstone and I guess it will be a while before we see them again. I hope we'll have a few sessions on Skype in the coming months to watch as Alex grows up and starts to talk.

Jamie and Alex aren't quite at the stage of playing together yet. They watch each other, smile and scowl and share toys but they're still pretty wary of each other. One of the things I'm looking forward to in the future is when they can both stay here for a while, give their parents a little alone time and get to know each other. We have a great backyard for children to play in. I know that my boys would have loved this backyard when they were eight or ten but we came to live here when they were teenagers. They were a bit beyond swinging on vines and camping out under the stars then. Still, I have high hopes that Jamie and Alex will see the potential for adventure here and embrace real life in our backyard.

And now we're back to normal again, being a two person house after three lots of visitors in two weeks. We get up when we want to, make noise early in the morning, eat when we're hungry and sleep when we're tired. It's amazing to me how different it is with just the two of us here. After 20 years of being the four of us, two seems so natural now. But we both love getting those phone calls that say: is it okay if we visit?

It's been a big week. Shane and Sarndra arrived here last night on a surprise visit. and soon I'll hear the pitter patter of little feet again when Alex wakes up. The weekend will be busy for me with family and work I need to get through before Monday. I hope you have time to relax and enjoy life.  See you next week.

I think homemakers could play a vital part in helping people survive a disaster. When disaster strikes, homemakers, mothers, fathers and carers come to the fore. We are not among those running to the supermarket to stock up when the conditions are dangerous and cash registers and ATMs are not working. We rely on our stockpiles or our well-stocked pantries instead. We've already cleared the toys and gardening tools from the backyard before the storm hits, and without being told to do it. Homemakers think, we're used to doing all these things, we know our homes inside out - we know how they work, we know the dangers lurking, and where the torches and candles are. We know it's vital to conserve energy and water, we have our refilled water bottles ready, a couple of different ways to prepare food as well as food that can be eaten cold or raw. We'll be able to keep everyone fed. When you know how to feed one family, you know what's needed to feed a neighbourhood. 

Our main jobs in disaster relief could be to help people prepare as much as they can and maybe even to help resettle the home when the disaster is over. The SES, police, the military, public servants, transport and electricity and water authorities, they can get on with it during the disaster, we would carry out the important task of getting homes set up to help everyone get through the crisis in their home, if emergency evacuations were not necessary.

We have to stop thinking about disasters as something that will never happen to us, and have emergency awareness and preparation as part of what we grow up learning about. If we continue to believe we'll never be involved in a catastrophe, when we are, we're not only unprepared, we're scared because we don't know what to do. If we plan for disasters and know how to respond, how to help not only ourselves and our families, but neighbours and the elderly too, we'll be ready for most things that could happen.


When you think about the skills most homemakers have, it seems to me that many of them would be ready for most emergencies. We are already set up for survival. We don't need anyone to hold our hand because the shops are closed, there is no power and the phones don't work. We have our homes set up for the production of food, bread, soap etc. Most of us could make an oil lamp or candles if they were needed. Most of us could stretch a meal for four to feed eight.  If we're prepared for all this and remain calm, it will increase everyone's changes of survival.

Our home management journals should contain a disaster survival plan. You can find Australian information here for a variety of emergency situations - before, during and after. No matter where you are in the world, Google information about your local procedures, it's different in every country and the information you need in your town may be different to that in the next town. Find out. Phone your local authorities and ask about disaster plans for floods, fires, earthquakes etc. Work out a safe evacuation route that will take you to a safe area or your local muster point. Print out the map, mark out a couple of different routes and discuss it with everyone in your family. Small children and the elderly may need to practise leaving the house and going directly to a designated area.

My job during a disaster (I created this job for myself) would be to find all the people driving and walking through swollen creeks and rivers, along with those who swim, surf and jet ski (or light fires) just for the fun of it and frogmarch them into an area where they'd get a clip in the ear and told to smarten themselves up. Then they'd be dispatched to work with the SES for the duration of the disaster. I'd be good at that.

The above is only slightly tongue in cheek.

I would love to see short disaster preparation courses set up in our communities - Preparing your family and home for a disaster. They could be run by any homemaker worthy of the title, in conjunction with the emergency authorities. They could co-incide with community classes on life skills, cooking from scratch, preserving, mending, sewing, baking, fermenting etc. I would like our governments to realise that as catastrophic climate events become more common, and that is the prediction, we need to develop the mindset to survive them, and for that to become part of our common knowledge. The disaster preparation alone only addresses part of the problem. The other problem, cutting down on our greenhouse emissions, will begin to be addressed, in part, when many more people bring production of common household goods back to their homes again - the life skills classes. We need to know more than how to shop for what we need.

What's happening in your neighbourhood? Are you as prepared as you'd like to be?

We finally got our phone and internet back this morning. What an incredible couple of days. Kerry, Sunny and Jamie arrived, not mid-afternoon as they expected, but at 9pm. I was starting to get worried. The roast chicken and vegies I had cooked for them was transferred to the fridge early in the evening and I sat in the lounge room knitting, listening to the wind and rain. They couldn't call me because the phones and internet were down but when I saw that first flash of light when the truck drove down the driveway, everything was fine again. I was so relieved to see them.

Hanno had driven up with them and they were all exhausted. Even though they had a couple of friends to help pack the truck, it was up and down two stories with no lift, so they didn't finish until the evening. Then they had a 200km trip north in the rain. Poor little Jamie was asleep and Kerry carried him in, took off his shorts and let him sleep under a gently moving fan. They got their frozen foods into our freezer, packed their cold food in the Esky, had drinks and showers and everyone was in bed. We all were up at 5am the next morning because the truck had to be unpacked over at the new house and back at the depot at 9am. Hanno went with Sunny and Kerry to help unpack, Jamie was still asleep so it was just him and me. :- ) When he woke up, he came out to the kitchen, smiled when he saw me, put his arms out to be picked up, then decided to run through the house looking for Sunny and Kerry. When he didn't find them, he wanted to see the chooks, so we got some bread and went outside to feed them. He had a quick play outside with the sun shining, then we went inside for breakfast - blueberries, a piece of toast with Vegemite and a cup of milk. 

After breakfast, I changed and dressed him, and we read some books. He has a favourite book about cats and this time, he realised the ball of wool the cats are playing with in the book is the same wool that I use. So after saying "wool" about 20 times, we went on to the next book. It's wonderful to be with him at this stage of his life when he's learning so much. His dad came to pick him up after he returned the truck, Jamie gave me a big kiss and cuddle when he left and off he went to his new home. Kerry had some good news too. His work called to ask if he could come back to work early. He was supposed to go back tomorrow. He apologised and said he couldn't, that he'd just moved his family from the Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast and they hadn't organised the house yet. The woman then asked if he needed extra time at home to do that and offered him an extra week off to help get his family settled. Sunny was very pleased. It will be such a help to have him there for an extra week and for him to have the time to show Sunny the shops, beaches, libraries and church.

Thank you all for your comments and messages of love and support for us. We all appreciate it - every one of us. It's like living in a kind and caring neighbourhood were neighbours look out for each other. I wish all our real neighbourhoods where more like this but hopefully we can help change that in the future. I'll be back tomorrow to write about the importance of homemakers during disasters.

Hello everyone

I'm At Kerry and Sunny's tapping this out on an iPhone because we've lost all phone and Internet access at our place. This is the second day it's been off. We've still got power but with Telstra and bigpond down here there is no way to do the blog till it's back up.

Kerry, Sunny and Jamie are here I'm at their home now. They are all fine.  Shane, Sarndra and Alex missed most of the rain because they were in New Zealand for a family reunion. They're back now and have no damage at their place.

I wanted to let you all know we're all safe and sound here. Thank you all so much for your wonderful comments. I miss you and will be back ASAP

 Love

Rhonda and Hanno xxx