saturday afternoon

 

Photos by Ruby

On Saturday afternoon Ruby documented picking up the new-to-us water tank and stand. 

She thought this would be a worthwhile contribution to family weekend tasks :-) 

So now we have a 1000 litre water tank planned for rainwater harvesting to be used to fill the washing machine. And yes, it has been pouring with rain all day and the tank lies stranded half way up the driveway - things go a step at a time here, especially our DIY water harvesting system.
We also have a tank stand which invites many, many possibilities. The dreaming and drawing has begun but right now it's looking more like the army has arrived in our little town and set up a checkpoint at our gate.
And then there's Ruby's documentation - 60-odd photos worth of documentation. Story line, before and afters, close-ups, quirky compositions and quirkier subject matter.
The girl knows how to have fun and although I can't remember her having penned a story yet, she certainly knows how to tell one.

bee rescue.

While the girls found some sun and decided to have a picnic for breakfast, I thought I would whiz through a few household tasks and check on the bees through the viewing window (as seen here).
The southern side of the roof of the hive was still in the shade and wet with the dew from the cool night time temperatures. There were 6 bees on their backs, arms folded, lifeless.
Or so I thought.
Expecting to see a bit of die-off in the hive as Winter approaches, I matter-of-factly picked each one up by the legs and placed them in a shell - the nearest thing to a vessel I could find close by. I have been inspired by my recent discovery of this blog and thought the girls and I could examine the bodies under a magnifying glass and microscope. Two of them had heavy sacs of pollen on their back legs and the long glossa (or tongue) was clearly visible.
It seemed the perfect opportunity to get to know our friends a little better.

But the moment I put their shell down on the sunny deck, their abdomens began to pulsate and their legs began to move - it was clear I had got myself involved in an unintentional bee rescue.

A mad dash into the house for a touch of honey and my camera, a drop of honey in the shell and the recovery was well underway. They drank the honey, spent a lot of time cleaning themselves, then cleaned each other a bit and slowly flew off back to the hive.

Watching the bees was a highlight of my day although a bit of a mixed blessing. By the looks of them the bees probably don't have much life left in them and my rescue may have just prolonged their suffering.

Argh. I hope not.

a bit of this and that

Today it is storming. After such a settled and warm Autumn, it feels like one of those days where the season really turns the corner.

We have been slowing down and turning more inward as Autumn has progressed, gently our own rhythms reflecting the season. I am reading and crafting more now that the nights are longer and there is just less to do in the garden.

Can I share some words from others I have been reading recently to help me re-engage here in this space?

I'm on my third reading I think of  Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto and as always have been appreciating his clarity and vision of the bigger picture.

These are an example of the words that I drink in and feel nourished by:

" ..if we regained a hold on a philosophy that locates meaning where meaning is genuinely to be found - in families, in friends, in the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy, in all the free and inexpensive things out of which reall friends, and real communities are built - then we would be so self-sufficient we would not even need the material self-sufficiency which our global experts are so insistent we be concerned about."

It seems I just never tire of his words.

our community garden lunch 

Earlier this week I  also read this article, "We have Everything We Need Already: Community Control of Education" by Shilpa Jain, a learning activist with Shikshantar in India, an organisation  I have followed over the past few years. 

I want to share her words with you here simply because they resonate. 

If you have read here for a while you will know we are passionate about our local Timebank. Timebanks are perfect examples of how communities can access a deep well of skills and knowledge right in their own community; they are excellent examples of "having everything we need right now."

Just this week Ruby has been tutored in German by a neighbour, we have stacked firewood for another neighbour and we are about to contact an elderly gentleman this afternoon keen to share his love of classical music with the girls. Learning and sharing freely, multi-generational connections and a wealth of undiscovered gems right in your own neighbourhood. 

 On stage recently (nothing to do with barefoot running).

And then last night Gunter and I watched The Garbage Warrior again for I think the fourth time. 

Watch it if you haven't.  Mike Reynolds uplifts us. 

What has remained with me from this viewing is Mike criticising a culture in which "we have lost our freedom to fail" and about the necessity of both experimentation and failure to get us (as in individuals aswell as in humanity) to new places.  This was on my mind today.  

Gunter and I have been experimenting with barefoot running inspired by others in my community of bloggers. I might write about it sometime but anyway it is new and experimental and bringing unexpected discoveries. We went out in the rain today, slowly running in our barefeet. I thought about my freedom to experiment and fail as a woman passed us on the street. I felt my embarrassment as I imagined what she might be thinking and thought about how often it is that people don't try new things because of exactly this reason? As I let go and continued running in the rain along the muddy path in my barefeet, I embraced Mike's enthusiasm for experimentation, whatever the outcome. There is a feeling of freedom about it.

Thanks for allowing me to empty a bit of my brain out onto this page today. The house is finally warm and the girls have friends over - such a small house fills up fast. Gunter has begun preparing dinner and I'm off into the whirl of the pre-dinner clean up.

the bees

We have bees.

This is our first season and we got them fairly late in the season.

We wanted to catch a swarm in the Spring.

When I say that it sounds like we know what we are doing. We don't.

We had read about it and watched a bit of footage. We felt that if we were to keep bees, catching a swarm was the right place to start.

We put notices through our local networks and on local noticeboards.

No calls came except the day before we were leaving on a 3 week holiday in the Summer. We had to say no.

We were about to give up on the idea but then got a call from a friend who was splitting her hive.

She was willing to share her bees.

Bless her.

Gunter built a hive (plans here) for us last Winter.

He's a good man for getting on and building it because a year ago he wasn't at all convinced that keeping bees was a good idea.

It was really showing him this DVD that changed his mind - a step-by-step, how-to DVD on keeping bees in a topbar hive and an introduction to bee guardianship.

He was encouraged by the respectful and gentle approach of the beekeepers.

We liked the concept of natural beekeeping

I too am a total newbie but bees have been on my mind for a few years now. How can they not be? Anyone who works at all with plants have noticed their rapid decline. All I needed was a bit of encouragement and so I organised a weekend workshop at the our community garden.

If you need a taster, make sure to watch this film. If you need convincing watch this film.

Our hive sits right next to the deck in a warm and fairly sheltered spot.

We see them every day.

We still don't know much but we are learning step by step.

Like the first child, the next step unfolds before you and you step into that space.

We watch the hive entrance - it has become our favoured cuppa spot.

It is the place I go when things begin to unravel just on dinner time.

Just for a moment I sit with the bees.

Their gentleness astounds.

I leave calm and quiet.

stuff

The owner of our house is returning soon so we are packing again....

a chance to go through our stuff and check whether it all comes with us.

This is certainly one of the benefits in moving a lot; paring down and traveling lighter.

This time around I'm letting go of quite a few of my books. Two boxes full in fact. People who know me know I'm good at moving things on for others to benefit from, but there have been just some books; books I have heaved around this country.

It is time to share them with others.

So as I have been filling boxes, I have been thinking about our

stuff.

......

We generally don't buy it.

We don't have TV, we don't get junk mail, we don't do malls and so we remain free of the constant monologue from advertisers (actually that's relatively "free" since the menace seems to be pretty much everywhere).

We want people; ourselves, our family and our community to bring up our children. We figured a long time ago that we don't want to be competing with massive corperations on a daily basis nor are we any match to their billion dollar budgets and so we choose to keep them out of our lives as much as possible.

The freedom is sweet.

What we buy is usually well thought through, based on need and a resource that others may have an interest in sharing. Better still it's multi-functional. Op shops is where we buy the odd thing just because it's pretty.

We pool resources where we can so as not to carry more than is necessary.

We went without a vaccum for a year when we lived across the road from friends who periodically lent us theirs (we have a wonderful carpet sweeper handed down from my mum for the daily sweep) and we haven't owned a lawnmower for years but borrow one when needed and maintain it while we are at it.

Both these are done through our local timebank which I have written about before here.

This kind of sharing of resources feels good for all involved.

We also try to resist the "just incase" thinking.

This is our most challenging catergory.

Wanting to be open to creative projects, crafty quests and general spontaneous learning, there are always "resources" that can be accumulated "just incase" it can be used in the future. It's not like we have cupboards full - we don't have the cupboard space - but still the clearing is fairly constant.

Fabric and books are my vulnerabilities - old fabric, particularly my Nana's.

I have never missed anything that I have passed onto others.

The books that I have had for years and had been so dear to me at different times of my life are now gone; onto someone else's lap, on someone else's shelf.

I feel relieved as always. I'm happy that someone else is reading them.

And amongst all of this packing, it is spring here.

I feel blessed that she never forgets to return.

our wee suzy

Look at this little beauty I bought for myself last week. My birthday was coming up and it was in it's original box in my favourite op-shop. I mainly bought it for cutting our bread - it cuts even, slim slices rather than the door-stoppers we can often hack off. Hopefully it will make the bread go further or at least give me the illusion that it is going further.

I generally don't buy stuff and especially not gadgets but I simply just couldn't go past such an solid, metal, hand-powered machine.

You can hardly call that a gadget.

Made in Waihi, New Zealand you know.
I love the weight of it; the firmness of the handle.

The bonus being that the blade, much like a skill-saw blade, reminds me of my dear dad.

As you can see there are lots of criteria a purchase needs to pass before I buy it. I'm happy with that - excessive consumerism is sickening and the story of where most gadgets come from these days is down right inhumane and causes environmental death.

Around here we like hand-powered tools.

Recently we have discovered the effectiveness of the machete. Our scythe is temporarily out of use because of a blade that needs attention so we have turned to using the simple machete.

The hillside we have begun transforming into garden is steep and covered in waist-high grass.

The machete means that we only cut what we can mange to transform into garden bed; we don't waste time trimming grass that will be left to just grow back.

We can all work together because the quiet of a hand tool doesn't destroy the stillness, maintenance is a simple steel and the purchase price was a sweet $20.

A fossil fuel free landscape so far.

Oh and for those of you who have followed the story of the lyttel hearts, I thought you may like to know that His Holiness the Dalai Lama who has been visiting Christchurch over the last couple of days, was given a heart which he wore at the public address.

What a privilege indeed.

How blessed we were to have him visit and to be in his presence.

As he said, "we are all brothers and sisters and when a brother or sister is sad or broken, you go to them and share their sadness."

Deep gratitude.

harvesting has begun

On the edge of Sun week and we have begun harvesting from our garden beyond the daily salad, spinach and silverbeet pickings.

We had our first meal of the Lisette potatoes in the weekend and today I pulled 1.3 kg from under one plant.
We now have the list on the fridge tracking the amounts we harvest and the scales at the ready. Each time the girls come in from the garden with an armful of potatoes they weigh them and add them to the list.

Then there are these beautys (King Seeds, brocoflower). A few of these are growing in a spot where there was driveway 3 months ago. At the beginning of Spring we dug the bed with pick and spade, dumped a bucket of bokashied vegetable scraps and planted on it straight away.

We started experimenting with Bokashi a couple of years ago when we were renting and didn't have an active compost on the go. Now I choose to put all my cooked food scraps through the Bokashi system and either dig a hole and bury it or use it as an activator in the compost. With cooked scraps dealt with in this way it minimises rodents in the compost and is an easy way to boost a tired vege bed.

A bag of Bokashi costs $6 from the local Council Service Centre and lasts for about 4 months. We use a couple of paint buckets sitting inside each other, with holes drilled into the base of the top bucket and a snug plate turned upside down on top of the scraps.
Then there is the ever-growing collection of Cabbage Tree leaf bundles piling up around the back of the house. At a rate of about 3 bundles every couple of days we will easily get through the Winter months using these as the best firestarters we have ever come across.

Even when they are thoroughly soaked through, they catch fire quickly and add enough heat to the firebox that we didn't need to use kindling all last Winter.

And just waiting for me on the kitchen bench is 2.5kg of strawberries and some rhubarb in the fridge for me to magic together our first batch of strawberry jam for the season. Perfect timing since just this morning Sky licked clean the last jar from the last season's store.
Happy Summer.

small is how it is.

Lately I have been really appreciating the freedom that comes with living in a small space.

We moved in here in January this year. We liked the section, there was a log burner and it was the only one around in our price range. The Real Estate Agent suggested that we just bowl the house and start again. He couldn't imagine a family of four living in such a small space and the state of the building is dodgey too. We added a sleepout for us all to sleep in. This meant that we had room for a creative space; a space I knew was essential for how we want to live together.

The house is now our home. The roof kept us dry all winter, the fire kept us warm and we haven't worried an inch during all these aftershocks (btw, there have now been around 1,300!). We laugh when people ask us whether our house is ok with all the quakes:we wouldn't know which cracks were pre and which were post the quake.

With every shake we are reminded that when you live with less, there is less to worry about.

We live in our home a lot and because it is small, there is just no room to accumulate "stuff." No room for kitchen gadgets. No dishwasher. No storage for finds that could be used in the future. No extra boxes of toys under the bed.

I like this. I find it freeing in so many ways.

With our girls being such avid players, things quickly get covered and unmanageable. This gives immediate feedback to the girls that unless they clear some of the mess away, no one in the family can easily move around or sit down. There is simply nowhere else to go and because of this they are fairly good at clearing away.

Our creative space is our little sanctuary where work can be left out and worked on over days.

There is the little time it takes to clean the place.10 minutes to vacuum. Done. Great. On to something we would rather be doing.

And then of course, there is the lower power and heating bills.
A smaller house = a smaller footprint.

But I think the benefit I appreciate the most is that our family gets to actually really live together. We have to share the same spaces. We think that the concept of "privacy" has become overvalued and deep lonliness and alienation, even from your own family, seems to be the accepted outcome. We like living together. It teaches tolerance and respect.

There are downsides too and things will change. The girls will get older and take up more space, it's tricky to share dinner with a bunch of people in the colder months and each day is an opportunity for me to learn patience when I go to start dinner and there is simply not an empty square inch on our tiny kitchen bench.

But our small humble home is worth appreciating.

When the Spring arrives with such warm weather and it is possible for the doors to be open and the girls to run outside, it feels like a small victory to have got through the cold, wet winter sharing this wee home.

Cold Frame Envy

With the warmer weather we have been steadily digging into the former driveway to make way for more garden.
But I needed some warm spots for raising my seeds.

Alas, now there are a few serious bouts of Cold Frame Envy around the neighbourhood.

The Problem can also be the Solution.

We haven't had our own garden for 3 years. We had been on the move for that long. We planted in pots and turned some lawn into vege beds in each place, but I haven't been able to really get into my own groove.
A good thing about this is that we could just focus on the community garden. For the last couple of years we just lived two doors up the road so the community garden was the garden I worked in and harvested from. And we produced great crops and made some good meals from it.



That said, there is such pleasure in having our own piece of dirt to work finally. So far I have mostly waited and jiggled possible designs around in my head.
Waiting has been worth it. Trying to wrap my head around what the water design could look like on our property has been tricky.
Greywater. Collection. Harvesting. Storing. Reusing. Diverting.
An added challenge is that we like to reuse any materials we already have and do as much of it ourselves or with friends. It has had me a bit stumped. Until last night.
So here's the picture: A half buried water barrel and the old shub from the sleepout acting as small collecting ponds with a larger pond at the lowest point planted with native bog loving plants to attract native birdlife. The main paths to be built so as they can also act as drains into this system.
Water can be diverted off this system in the Summer or can overflow into the stormwater drains in the winter.
Can you see it?
I can't wait to have the sound of frogs coming from our garden again.

Catching the rain

We moved into this place about 6 months ago and it has been a long settling in period.
We have dreams of a simple, homemade greywater system which can water our fruit trees in the long, dry Summers and which can be diverted into the stormwater drains in the Winter.
We also have begun to catch some rainwater. Eventually we would like this to supply the toilet and washing machine at least. But at this stage we have just pushed a few under spots in the guttering which are dribbling. The tanks fill up quickly - a good lesson in accumulative dripping! The girls have been helping me to syphon the water into the drains. Yes, it seems a bit senseless but it is always good to take the first step.