Long gone are the days when we frequently replace bought items that we use at home. Hanno is on a pension and I do paid work infrequently, so the money is not there any more. Now we look after what we own. We buy the best quality we can afford then we look after it knowing that the time and effort we put in will extend the life of the product. We see this as an important part of our lives now, it certainly saves us money, but it also lightens our footprint on the earth.

This philosophy applies both inside and outside the home. We have regular times throughout the year when we check and maintain. I wrote about this recently in the spring cleaning posts. Since then one of our water tanks ran dry so it was the perfect time to tip it over, look inside and made sure everything was as it should be.

We bought this tank when we first came to live here 12 years ago. It's a 5,000 litre corrugated iron, lined tank, made locally by a small business that is no longer operating. The workmanship on the tank is excellent. All these years later, after sitting in the sun and surviving cold winters, it is still just like it was on the day we installed it.

Cleaning out a tank is a simple procedure. When it is completely empty, disconnect it from the downpipes, the pump and hose and then find someone to help you tip it onto its side. If you need to look inside, and Hanno always NEEDS to do this, rest it on the ground with some bricks against the side to stop it rolling. You may need your hose in hand while you do this, depending on how much gunk is in there. Have a good look, check for light coming in which will indicate a hole, or at the very least, a split in the tank.

When you've done your inspection, you can give it a good hosing and clean it out thoroughly.

The amount of gunk in there will depend on where the tank is located. If you have a lot of trees near your home, some leaves will be in the tank. Depending on the efficiency of your filter where the tank is connected to the downpipe, you'll have whatever has been on your roof since you last cleaned the tank. This might still look like leaves or bird feathers or insects or may have decomposed and settled as black silt at the bottom of the tank. I drink our tank water sometimes. I didn't like the look of that silt pouring out of the tank. But I'm still here to tell the tale so I'm either as healthy as a horse or the silt looks a lot worse than it is.

When the water starts running clear, let it drain out completely. While that is happening, check the base of the tank as well as the ground it is sitting on. Many people place their tanks on a cement base. We've always used compacted crusher dust, held in by a circle of bricks. That has done the job perfectly for us.

Then raise the tank back to its position and reconnect it to the roof and to the hose outlet and pump, if you use one. Then you just have to be patient and wait for rain to fill it up again. For me, that's the most difficult part. I like things to happen NOW.

And finally, a photo of the ice cream we ate last night. Hanno said he'd been waiting for it all day after reading the blog yesterday morning. Unlike me, Hanno waits for things. :- )

I made vanilla bean ice cream on the weekend. It's probably the best ice cream I've made so far and it's also the most simple - no eggs, no custard, just items from the fridge and pantry. Trouble is, I've been so busy, we haven't eaten it yet. Oh, we test tasted along the way but a sit down dessert will have to wait until tonight. BUT! I'm in a hurry again this morning so I can't waffle on. When we eat our ice cream tonight, I'll take a photo of the finished product.


VANILLA ICE CREAM

• 2 cups milk - this can be any milk you have in the house, skin, no fat, soy, powdered, full cream
• 1 cup cream
• one vanilla bean or two teaspoons vanilla extract. Please don't use vanilla essence in this, it is fake vanilla and will not do it justice.
• 1 can condensed milk - I made my own, it's simple. The recipe is below.

1. Add the milk and cream to a saucepan and heat.
2. Scrape out the vanilla bean and add the seeds or add your extract.
3. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer for a few minutes.
4. Remove the vanilla bean.
5. Add the condensed milk and stir.
6. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
7. When the mixture is cool, place it in a container and put it in the freezer.

If you have an ice cream machine ...
Wait until the mix is forming ice crystals, then add it to the machine and start processing.

If you don't have an ice cream machine (or if you have one and thought the bowl was in the freezer but it wasn't) ;- ) ...
After the mix has formed ice crystals, remove it from the freezer every 45 minutes and give it a good stir until it's almost frozen.
When it reaches that state, put it in a freezer container with a lid for storage.

The ice cream will be smoother if you have an ice cream machine but it's mighty fine made with muscle power. BTW, my ice cream maker bowl will remain in the freezer over summer. I'll be doing some gelato and sorbets soon. Stick around.

HOMEMADE CONDENSED MILK
I did a post on this a couple of years ago but here it is again:

• 1 cup powdered milk
• 1/3 cup water
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 3 tablespoons soft butter

Put all the ingredients in a small processor and whizz until the sugar is dissolved. This is much cheaper than a tin of condensed milk and it tastes the same.

Just to quickly answer some questions from yesterday.

Karen Sue, the lids on those preserves were sealed in a water bath. You'll need a better spot for your tomato seedlings. Growing leggy ones will only bring you grief.

Jody, I sometimes use Epsom salts when I sow seeds. It will help with germination. And we spray seaweed tea on leaves and pour it into the soil. It's a great plant tonic and will build up the health of your plants.

Ann, I can tell you and Peter live in a colder climate. Up here, most people would be horrified to have a window sill that gets sun.

Dora, we usually pull out our tomato plants when they have reached a certain height and stop producing flowers. Waiting for a second crop doesn't pay off here. We'd rather have fresh plants ready to follow on with.

Jessica, I have just started a new plant. I'll write a post on ginger beer when it's ready in week or so.

And now I'm off to send off my next Burke's Backyard article and to sort out some liquid soap I made yesterday. I had to go out before I finished. Have a lovely day, work hard and take care of yourself.

ADDITION: I posted at the co-op today. That post is here.

Tomatoes are the most popular plant in the vegetable garden. Everyone likes to grow them. They can be a difficult crop, because they suffer from a number of diseases and the wildlife love them, but if you can get it right, it's worth it. I wrote this post a year ago on growing tomatoes from seed but I want to add a few hints that might make it easier for you.

Select your seeds and plant the seed in a propagation tray full of seed raising mix. This is not potting mix, it's a special sandy open soil that will give your tomato seeds the best chance of germinating. You can make your own seed raising mix, or buy a bag. I'll do a post on potting mix and seed raising mix soon. Plant one see per cell, at the depth recommended on the packet, and label them with the type of tomato and the date. Then water them in with a plastic bottle sprayer. If you use the hose you risk moving the seeds around.

Place the tray in a sheltered area that gets sunlight for most of the day. If the area is too protected and the seedlings get too little sunlight, they'll grow tall and leggy and develop into weak plants that you'll have trouble growing.

Depending on your climate, about seven days later, the seed will germinate and start to grow. It will get to the stage where you have two smooth leaves on each side of the stem. Then, true leaves will form that will be crinkly, like tomatoes leaves. Never let your seedlings dry out, but don't over water them and make sure they have good drainage. If the tray is kept wet it may encourage fungal disease. One watering a day should be enough but if you're in a hot climate, you should check them in the afternoon as well and give them a little drink if the soil is dry.

When the tomatoes look like this, it's time to pot them on. You'll need small pots, those long tubes are ideal. Carefully transplant the seedling to it's own pot and bury the stem a little deeper than you normally would for other plants. Tomatoes can grow more roots from the stem and if you allow them to do this, you get a stronger pant with a bigger yield of tomatoes. The tomatoes below are the same as those above just two weeks later.

The tomato seedlings above are potato leaf potatoes - most potato leaf tomatoes are heirlooms. These are Brandywines.

These are regular leaf tomatoes - cherry tomatoes. These seedlings came up in a pot that I'd put some of our homemade compost in. The seeds germinated in the pot, so I transplanted them into their own pots and soon they'll be planted out in the garden. When the tomatoes are the size of the cherry tomatoes, or when they start glowing flowers, it's time to plant them in the garden.

Make sure your stakes are already in - putting them in later will damage the tomato roots. Plant the seedling deep into the soil, an inch or two lower than you normally would. Clip off the lower leaves to allow you to do this. Tomatoes like a rich soil but not much fertilising once they're in the ground. Giving them too much nitrogen will give you huge green lush bushes but you'll get few tomatoes. Put a tablespoon of sulphate of potash (it's organic) in the planting hole and water the plants in with a seaweed tea. Then stand back!

Tomatoes require a bit of housekeeping to keep them growing well. Gently tie the main stem to the stake and continue doing this as the bush grows bigger. Clip off the lower leaves, clip off all diseased leaves. Don't put the diseased leaves in the compost. Keep them well mulched. We use straw or hay as a mulch and we push it close to the stem. Sprinkle a little blood and bone into the mulch to encourage new roots to grow into the mulch. The tomato will send out new roots wherever the mulch is touching the stem.

Water the plants, depending on your climate, maybe two or three times a week. Top up with a tonic of seaweed or worm tea every two or three weeks.

You can pick tomatoes green without it affecting their taste. Tomatoes ripen due to the warm air, not sunlight, so harvesting your crop green and ripening in the warm air on the veranda or on the kitchen window sill will give you excellent tomatoes. We also harvest our tomatoes green because in our main growing season there are a lot of bugs and birds just waiting for a nice ripe tomato to feast on.

You won't get great crops in your first season or two, but if you stick with it, you'll perfect your technique for your climate. It's different for all of us, just learn as you go and don't give up. Overall, tomatoes will give you a lot of satisfaction when you harvest a good crop. They can be used in so many ways - both ripe and green - and having a slice of home grown tomato on a piece of your own freshly made bread is a treat only few of us will know. Good luck with your crops and happy gardening.

I didn't get around to my tomatoes yesterday, there were too many other things happening. One of them may be of interest to you - I processed four buckets full of lemons. Our lemon tree is a Eureka. It flowers almost all year but we harvest the main crop in late winter. The fruit is a true lemon flavour, not as mild as the Meyer lemon and not as tart as the bush lemon. All the fruit hold a good amount of juice.

The problem with harvesting four buckets of lemons is that some of them will go off before they're used, so I juice all the lemons in one big juicing session and freeze what I don't use straight away.

Being a late Winter harvest, it makes perfect sense to me to make lemon cordial with some of the juice. I love to offer home made drinks to our visitors. Lemon cordial is the quickest and easiest to make and during summer, I always have either home made lemon cordial or ginger beer in the fridge. Most people love being offer an old fashioned drink, icy cold from the fridge with ice cubes clinking.


Just a word on the storage bottles. If you're storing this in the freezer, use plastic bottles as the juice will expand a bit when it freezes. You can use glass bottles for the cordial itself because that is stored in the fridge.

CORDIAL can be made with any fruit juice, including lemon, orange, raspberry, strawberry, pineapple or passionfruit, or anything else that takes your fancy.

Make up a simple sugar syrup - this is generally half water mixed with half sugar. So if you want to make two cups of syrup, you'd mix one cup of water with one cup of sugar. You can make a lighter syrup by adding more water, say one and a half cups of water to one cup of sugar.

Heat the sugar and water on the stove to dissolve the sugar crystals, then cool.


To make the cordial, add equal parts syrup to juice. You do this by half filling a bottle with juice, then topping it up with syrup. That cordial is stored in the fridge.

To make a glass of cordial, pour in about three tablespoons of cordial (test taste, you might need more or less) into a glass and fill it up right to the top with iced water and some ice cubes. A sprig of mint or pineapple sage in the drink is a nice touch.


It took me about half an hour to juice all the lemons. I have a juicing attachment on my food processor so it doesn't take long at all. That half hour of work gave us 12 litres (3½ gallons) of pure lemon juice for the freezer and three bottles of lemon cordial for the fridge.

I took my first glass of new season lemon cordial out to the veranda to relax and enjoy the warm late Winter day. Half an hour of knitting out there and I was ready for the next task.

I hope to take my tomato photos today so I'll write about that in my next post. Thank you for your comments this week. I love seeing all the new names in the comments, but I miss my old readers. Please say hello if you have the time. I know it's pointless commenting all the time, but I'd like to know you're still there. :- )

I'm feeling a bit tired today so this will be short. We had a big day yesterday going into Brisbane to collect my friend from hospital. We brought her home and waited until her family arrived then came back home again. That big city traffic really gets to me now. I need a while to recover. I'll spend a relaxing day at home today and I'll be in the garden to take photos for a post I'll do tomorrow on tomatoes.

But I have a couple of important bits of information for you today. Burt's Bees contacted me a while ago to ask for help with their survey in Australia. I've only used one of their products that was sent to me from the USA, and I loved it. Now they're selling in Australia so I'm happy to help. I forgot about the survey and remembered it yesterday, so better late then never, I'll share part of what they sent:

For the first time ever, the RSPCA Good Business Awards is open to the public through the People’s Choice Supermarket award which means that people can vote for the supermarket they think is doing the most for animal welfare.

Further information on the award and the achievements of each of the shortlisted supermarkets is available at here.

Take care, I'll see you tomorrow.

I haven't cooked chicken for years. I stopped eating meat for many years only to start again after reading Nourishing Traditions. So in my quest for frugal and tasty meals, I came back to roast chicken. This is one of the easiest meals you'll ever cook but it can be made fancy enough for a celebration dinner, or simple enough for a chicken and salad sandwich. Chicken is very versatile.

The main thing you have to be careful of is drying the chicken out while cooking it. So don't overcook it, take it from the oven as soon as it's done and let it rest wrapped in foil for 20 minutes before carving.

I like to stuff the cavity with a herb stuffing. The herb can be anything you have growing or have bought, I used:

• 3 slices of stale bread (any type of bread is fine)
• 1 medium onion
• a handful of parsley
• a few leaves of sage
• sprinkle of dried oregano - dried oregano has a different taste to the fresh and it goes well with chicken
• 2 small eggs or one large egg

Put all that in a processor and whiz it up or chop it very finely.

To stuff the chicken:
Clean your chicken well by removing the gizzards and running water through the bird. Wipe dry with a kitchen cloth or paper towel.


Using a spoon or your clean hands, load the stuffing into the cavity.


When the cavity is full, separate the skin from the breast and slip a spoonful of stuffing under the breast skin. That will help keep the chicken moist while it's roasting.

I forgot to do this - tuck the legs under the chicken so they cook close to the body. Otherwise the legs will overcook at the ends like they have here.


Place the chicken in a roasting dish with a little olive oil and brush the chicken with oil to keep it moist. While it is cooking, baste the chicken with the juices that have collected in the pan. This will also give you a moist chicken.

Cook on 190 - 200C (370 - 390F) until the chicken is golden brown and the juices run clear. You can test this by inserting a sharp knife in between the breast and the leg and watch the juices come out. If they're pink, cook another 10 minutes. If clear, remove the bird and cover with foil to rest.

I served this with roast potato, pumpkin, corn and onion and a from scratch gravy.


Chicken Gravy

• Remove the chicken from the roasting pan. You want the bottom of the pan just covered with juices and oil.
• Add two level tablespoons of plain (all purpose) flour to the juices, along with salt and pepper to taste and stir it together. It should look like a loose paste. If it's too dry, add a little more olive oil.
• Place the pan over a medium heat and allow the paste to turn brown while you stir it. Stand there and watch it because it will burn quickly if you don't.
• As soon as it's a nice brown colour, add about 2 cups of water OR chicken stock OR a splash of white wine and water and immediately stir the gravy to stop lumps forming.
• Stir until the gravy boils and thickens and then turn it down. Keep stirring until you have a nice brown sauce for your chicken. If it's too thin, allow it to sit on the heat to evaporate off some of the liquid.

Leftovers can easily be used. We had chicken salad the next day with this chicken and I made my sandwich for work using some of the chicken as well. But you could also make chicken stir fry, chicken curry, chicken pie or chicken casserole with dumplings. Don't forget to keep the carcass to make chicken stock or coup.

The second most asked question I get here is: "how do I start living like you do?". It comes a close second to: "why do you have all those pots on sticks in your garden?" Well friends, today I'll answer one of those questions, and it will have nothing to do with pots on sticks.

When I first made my change I'd already been doing a lot of the things that became important in our quest for a simple life - I'd baked bread on and off for many years, we'd kept chooks for 25 years, when we lived in the bush we stockpiled groceries. I guess one big step was to understand that there were others living how I wanted to live and that really inspired me like nothing else. Just having a name for it made a difference to me but knowing there were others I could learn from made me realise that we were not alone and that what I hoped for was possible. BTW, the kids were still living at home when all this started.

So what did I hope for? Well, after many years of working as a writer I wanted to work alone in my own home. I wanted to develop myself as a person and as a homemaker. I wanted to collect eggs and honey, I wanted to harvest vegetables every day, I wanted to preserve food. There was a part of me that wanted to create so I knew knitting, sewing and writing would be part of my future. I wanted to give up work and be free to build a little homestead in my backyard where the sun ripened fruit and vegetables, rain collected from our roof filled rain tanks and where chickens and bees reminded me everyday that I was part of a natural world, not a corporate one.

Surprisingly, that romantic dream actually became a reality but it was a bumpy road that lead me to where I am now. If you're at the beginning of this journey, never expect to arrive at a destination because there is none. But one of the important things you will notice, if you trust yourself enough, is that once started, this journey will take you quietly by the hand and lead you to from one step, to the next, and the next.


To illustrate that point, let me tell you what happened here. Once the decision was made to close my business and live on what Hanno was earning in our little local shop, I knew that my first job was to find ways to save. The money I was bringing in stopped, so we had to reduce costs. I looked for different ways to shop for groceries - because we spent money on that every week. I looked around for the best consistent prices (Aldi), did most of my shopping there and shopped at my local IGA for the rest. I found a bulk food store where I bought flour, nuts, spices, beans, chick peas etc. I found our local dairy, with the best milk in the state, sold cheaper diary products right at their door. So did our local cheese maker. They sold cheese and yoghurt at their door, with yoghurt at half price. It was just a matter of seeing what was in my local area. There was much more than I ever thought there was. When I had the shopping sorted, I started stockpiling - that saved me time and money. Our once a week shop became a monthly one, saving time, money and fuel.

We looked around the home to save more money. We got rid of our pay TV and the second car, stopped buying magazines and most books (I still get books from my Amazon associates account when I build up enough points), we stopped buying clothes and shoes on a regular basis. Still now, all these years later, we have enough clothes in our wardrobes to do us, and will have for a few years to come. Oh, we look daggy at home wearing out everything until it goes into the worm bin, but that's okay, we are far beyond judging each other by what we look like and the clothes we wear. It feels good to get the full value from what we own. Fashion is well and truly in the past for us. Now we're comfortable in our own skin.


In the past I had hated housework and did everything I could think of to avoid it. But while I was living this slower life, it occurred to me that if I wanted to live in a home that nurtured and comforted, I would be the one to make that home. So at this point my next step was to learn how to make my own cleaners, how to do my house work well, how to use my time wisely, and how to look after myself while I was looking after my family. Morning tea on the front verandah came into being then, and it still survives, strong as ever today. I did a lot of thinking during this period and changed how I thought about a few things. In the end, when I felt comfortable with the changes I had made in our home, I felt that I had remade myself as well. I had gone from being a corporate worker who wanted to change her life, to a homemaker, happy to work at a slower pace, happy to wear daggy clothes while I worked in the garden, happy to live on less, happy to stop shopping. Just happy!


When we got the vegetable garden producing and the hens laying, I realised I had to teach myself how to store food more effectively. I already knew how to preserve in a water bath, I knew how to make jams and relish, but I'd never done it in a purposeful and productive way before. All my previous efforts were a bit of a gimmick really, to see if I could do what my grandmother did. Well, it worked, I started putting up our excesses in jars and then we decided to buy a freezer. We started freezing vegetables in packs, just one or two bags as they were ready for picking, with larger sessions for end of season harvests. I tried drying, fermenting and sour doughs. All worked well and are still part of my food prep at various times of the year.

This post is getting way too long so let me just finish off by saying that at every stage of our journey, we've just done the next thing that needed doing. There is always a next thing in a simple life. You're always fine tuning, changing or looking for a solution to a problem, so trust yourself to go with the next thing and your life will probably flow along nicely like ours does.

One thing is for sure, trusting yourself will lead you to your own unique life, one that is not influenced by any other. Sure we all support each other, even over all these vast distances between our homes, but trusting yourself to take your own next step, will guarantee your life will develop in a way that suits you perfectly. Starting with the first thing you want to do in your simple life will lead you to a question or the need to learn (or relearn) a new skill. Take each step as it comes, there is no hurry, this life is slow and relaxed, and when you master that skill, there will be another that pops its head up. Trust this process, trust yourself and take it slow. When you look back in a year or two you'll see a trail of questions that you found answers to and a period of rebuilding skills that took you along to the next step and the next. Along the way a life will be built and as I said, never expect to arrive at a destination. The journey itself is our prize.

Around here, spring cleaning doesn't only happen inside. Hanno has been busy cleaning screens, doors and windows. He borrowed Jens' high pressure cleaner and blasted the wire screens with plain water. They came up beautifully. He also checked the rollers on the sliding doors and found one was broken. The replacement cost a few dollars and was easily replaced, ensuring the door works well in the coming months.


It's also time to clean up the backyard and prepare for the bushfire and storm season or if you're in the northern hemisphere, for Winter. We haven't had any fires since we moved here but we're surrounded by pine forests so the threat of a summer fire is ever-present. You have to do most of the prep well before you ever hear of a fire near your home; by then, it's too late. So remove things like ladders or anything flammible that might be resting against the side of the house, rake up any rubbish, mulch or papers that might be laying around and put away everything that can be safely stored in the shed or garage.


Get up on the roof and clean out the gutters. If you have extras on your roof like we have, give them a clean too. Hanno cleaned all our skylights and solar panels while he was on the roof, and when he did that he checked the seals on the skylights and made sure there were no cracks or damage on them or the solar panels. Make sure you check your downpipes.


There is plenty to be done in the vegetable garden too. I removed diseased leaves from one tomato bushes and made sure all tomatoes and beans were secured to their supports. Make sure you never put diseased leaves or plant material in the compost. It will survive and spread in your later crops. These leaves were put in a plastic bag to solarise then they'll be thrown in the rubbish bin.


If you live in a temperate climate, now is the time to start fertilising your vegetables. We fertilise all year long here, but if you're putting in a new garden, Spring is the time to start your fertilising routine. If you're in a cold climate and are just moving into Autumn/Fall, you'll soon be putting your garden to sleep for the Winter. So go around and remove old mulch and plants or anything else that insects may use to overwinter in. The cleaner your garden is when you lay it to rest, the healthier it will be when you start it again next Spring. Do any of my northern hemisphere friends sow a green manure crop in late Summer or Fall? Please leave a link where I can read about how you do this. I'd like to know how to best keep fertility in a garden bed while it's under snow.


There are a few things to be done in the chicken coop too but I'll be writing a post about preparing the chickens for Summer soon, so I'll include everything in that.


You should check your lawn mower to make sure the blades are sharp and will serve you well over Summer. If they need replacing, do that now as part of your Spring cleaning. Check the spark plug, it may need cleaning and make sure the filter is clean. Finally, wipe the mower over with a clean cloth.


Otherwise, it's just a matter of walking around your house and checking that everything is in good order and clean. One day's work doing this will pay off later in the year. It's all part of the mindset of looking after what you own. If everything is kept well and in good order, it's less likely you'll have to replace what you own before you get the service you expect.

What's on your list for Spring cleaning outside? I love knowing how you're caring for your home. It inspires me to do my best here and it connects me to all you like-minded souls who live simply.