Moving Back

Just to be annoying I am moving back to http://ittybittyhomestead.blogspot.com/ because, well, WordPress is annoying.

So duck on back over there to see our exciting news!

Em

Happy Holidays

I think I am just about recovered from Christmas now – it was a rather tiring couple of days. We left for Sydney on the 24th, arriving there in the afternoon. Christmas eve was spent at Troys mum and step dads place overlooking Lavender Bay. Except for the brightness of the lights and the noise, it is a pretty spot there. We went for a walk across the road in the park and down into the ‘Secret Garden’ which was absolutely amazing. It has been built on railway land by the ex wife of Australian artist Brett Whiteley. I felt like such a kid, wandering along the paths which curve in and out and around through the gardens. The thing I liked about it the most though is that the bottom area has been designed in the style of a food forest. There were fig trees, citrus and what I think may have been a Davidson Plum as well as strawberries and other herbs scattered around the place. It was a little patch of paradise and gave me some great ideas for designing our gardens down here.

Christmas morning we headed up the road to my mums place where we had a nice lunch with my side of the family then over to Troys dads place for a couple of hours with that part of the family before heading for home. We had a good run getting out of the city and then a nice easy drive all the way back home, arriving here a bit after 10pm. It was tiring, especially for Troy who was driving, but well worth it to be out of the city after 24 hours! It was good to see our families but I have no desire to go back to the city any time soon. It was such a huge relief to drive back into town and of course, to come home to our cats who we have never been away from overnight.

So now we (and the garden) are enjoying this gorgeous weather and a little bit of a holiday feeling before I go back to work tomorrow.

Hope everyone else had an enjoyable and safe christmas!

Em

Busy Little Bee

Just a quick update – once again life gets in the way and all the things I plan on posting about on the blog are forgotten or I dont have time for. The past couple of weeks have been very busy between work and the community garden (of which I am now the Secretary by the way!). When I havent been at work, a meeting or a workshop I have been ‘spring cleaning’ the house, washing doonas etc. It has been pretty warm and having evening shifts means I dont get much time in the garden as it is either two hot, or too dark when I am home!

Despite my neglect it is all coming on just swell. Troy has been faithfully watering it so except for a few seedlings which werent happy being transplanted, we havent had any losses. We are harvesting a handful or two of snow peas each day and a meal or twos worth of spinach and silverbeet a week. The lettuce are all big and green and healthy looking and we could be eating a salad a day easily with what we have growing. Only one problem though – they are bitter as hell!Oh well, at least the worm farm will benefit…  We have also started harvesting the first of the small tart plums from the trees on the nature strip which is quiet a novelty although I think I will be chucking most of them in the freezer to make plum jam when I have enough.

Hope everyone is well and not wilting in the heat!

Em

Lessons Learnt From a First Time Seed-raiser

Here are some of the details of seed raising I have discovered this year during my first attempt at raising large numbers of seeds.

#1 – make sure whatever trays or containers you are using to raise your seeds in are sufficiently deep to let them put down decent roots
#2 – if you dont have a sunny spot for them, get a grow light! Otherwise you will end up with a tonne of weak leggy seedlings
#3 – water at least once every day with a spray bottle or the seed raising mix will dry out and your seedlings will hate you
#4 – only grow one type of plant in each tray or you will disturb the slower growing seedlings when it is time to prick out the bigger ones
#5 – if you are going to be transplanting into small pots before eventually going outdoors, have these and the potting mix ready before you expect to need it
#6 – small delicate vegies and flowers are easier to just scatter in the garden and let grow direct. They will not take well to being transplanted
#7 – if you dont have a greenhouse to start seedlings early, just wait an extra few weeks. The seeds sown at a later date will catch up quickly and be more healthy and vigorous than the ones planted earlier
#8 – do not transplant seedlings too early or before they have been properly hardened off or they will just keel over and die, or be eaten.
#9 – unless you want far more than you can eat in one go, stagger your plantings
#10 – USE LABELS! You will not remember what you planted no matter how good you think your memory is.

And that, dear friends is some of what I have learnt this year. Hopefully I will remember my own lessons in another 12 months!

More Photos

Time sure flies by when you are busy! The past month has seen me spending FAR too much time at work and not nearly enough in the garden. Damn our reliance on money! 😛

Everything in the garden (mostly) is coming along well provided we dont miss a day of watering. It has been so hot and dry here that the plants are all regularly wilting and the spring garden which should have had at least another month to grow and produce is already finishing up with the ruby chard and coriander bolting to seed and the snow peas producing despite being all of about 20cm high! I have thus changed my plans for the garden and will dedicate the whole front area to a cottage garden where flowering early is a good thing, and turn the back area where it is more shaded into the main vegetable patch.

This is the spot which will become to next vegie patch. As you can see there is a fair bit of work to do on it! The branches need to be moved/disposed of (anyone wanna buy me a mulcher for xmas?) and the compost is being used to fill up the raised bed, after which the compost pile will be relocated so we can make the most of the shady green patch under the tree. The old bbq is currently being used as a potting bench but hopefully we will have it fixed and working eventually (it needs a new bbq plate and such)

To the top left of that pic you can see a patch of green which is the apple tree (with a bunch of young trees underneath it). It is covered in fruit so I think we will be eating a lot of apple pie this winter!!!

That tree is one of the only patches of green in the side paddock. This is looking towards the front from a bit further up, near the plum tree. The grass/weeds are so dry it hurts to walk around barefoot now because they are so hard and crispy.

Now for the side and front where we actually have some green stuff!

These are the recently transplanted beans, starting to work their way up the bean tepee.

Behind them you can see the lettuce and silverbeets I planted 3 weeks ago – they are coming along quite nicely and only one died. They are surrounded by tiny lucerne seedlings which will hopefully create a nice green cover in a while to shade the soil and keep it cooler.

The front garden is starting to look pretty good now with the left side mostly mulched and the number of weeds slowly being reduced.

Out of the picture, bottom left, is what remains of the corn after the frost a month ago knocked them back. I have a few more seedlings out the back in the greenhouse which are big enough to join these older ones now as well. It wont be a big harvest but hopefully we will get something!

As you can see the snow peas are producing but with the plants being so small I am not expecting a feast!

I am however looking forwards to a glut of tomatoes, with a tonne of seedlings coming along nicely in the green house and this single mystery tomato out the front. This has come up from seed that was scattered in the pots many months ago in Sydney so it will be either reisentraube, tiny tim or grosse lisse.

And as our final pic, a little bit of pretty! This is one of the lovely old roses in front of the porch. Isnt it lovely? There is also a smaller one of what I think is the same rose on the other side of the stairs.

Until next time, take care and stay cool!

The Growing Garden

Just a quick picture update today…

Here are all my babies in their cozy new home. Dont they look happy? Some are waiting to go out, I just need the weather to improve and to build some climbing structures for the peas… oh yeah, and work out WHERE I am going to put them.

This is the progress on the side garden – first path dug out with the topsoil going onto the beds. Once I have finished the other paths I will try and get my hands on some saw dust to line them all.

I have already planted out some spinach and lettuce I brought home from the swap and the strawberry plants in their pots here were planted out this morning.

And this is last nights dinner – the most freakishly yellow pasta I have ever seen! This was made using the free range eggs I bought from one of the ladies at work. The yolks are just amazing!

Till next time,

Em

Just Like Christmas…But BETTER!!!

Well it has been a busy couple of weeks here at the Itty Bitty Homestead. Well, not so much here, as up the road where I work. 4 days last week and 5 this week (all 7 am starts) makes for a very sleep Em. I have however survived and am getting used to the hours and routine. Of course just to keep things interesting, all my shifts for next week are 3-11pm. Oh well, at least I get to sleep in.

Except for the early starts, the new job is going really well. The clients are lovely and (most of) the ladies I work with are too. Plus, how is this for an awesome day at work – on Wednesday myself and another carer took two of our clients down the coast for lunch. Fish and chips by the beach in the sun, lovely spring air AND to top it all off, we saw a whale! Very cool but of course, no one had cameras. It was showing off and having a good splash around….I love my job 😀

Continuing with the theme of the busy week, Wednesday arvo we had a visit from Troys mother and step dad who were passing through town on the way back to Sydney. They stayed in town overnight and Thursday we went out to dinner to one of the nicer places here. It was a pleasant evening although I felt the ache from the tiny bit of wine the next morning. Oh and they got us a lovely housewarming gift – a mini greenhouse! So now I can have my kitchen bench and windowsill and dining table and mantle back.

The house is being somewhat overtaken by seedlings at the moment but some are about ready to go outside. Also, we had the seedling swap today so I got rid of a heap of the peas and beans I was raising (and I gotta say, they looked to be the healthiest seedlings there – go me!). In return I bought home 2 raspberries, 2 strawberries, a loganberry, a tiny plum ‘tree’, a bunch of rosemary cuttings, some basil, broccoli, a few different flowers, lettuces, chards and maybe a few other things, plus some red wiggler worms to start our worm farm! Yay! I have them all set up in their new home and ready to start doing their thing.

Tomorrow I will be digging out spots for the berries and planting them out and more pottering in the side garden. It has taken a lot of work but I am getting there. Pictures to come of the progress of course. For now, here are some I prepared earlier!

This shows the weeding in progress – the entire patch was foot high grass and weeds. You can see the pile on the right which I had already ripped out at this point.

Here we have some baby plums, I think, on one of the fruit trees.

Kitten practicing being a tiger amongst the weeds up the back.

One of the many ‘weeds’ around here – a pretty little Poppy

This is what I brought home from the seedlings swap today. Arent my new babies so cute?

And these are most of the seedlings I am raising at the moment, sitting in the sunniest and warmest spot in the house. Good thing I have been too tired to make pasta all week!

So there we have it, another week, another plant or hundred added to our little ‘stead. Stay tuned for more updates!!!

Seed Raising Frenzy

Despite the fact that it is still FREEZING here, it is apparently a great time to be starting seeds – inside at least – so I have been busy cutting up milk cartons and so on in order to get enough containers to start all my seeds in. I now have beans, peas, corn, tomatoes, eggplant, kale, sunflowers, rockmelons, squash, luffas and maybe a few others I have forgotten, plus a bunch of flowers, all happily sitting on the mantle above the fireplace. Hopefully the heat rising up will keep them warm enough to germinate and grow happily until they are ready to go outside.

These ones are near the fire – the mantle isnt big enough for all my babies!

All lined up, nice and cozy 🙂 The ones down the far end are the seeds I am raising for the seedling swap in a couple of weeks.

This is why they are INSIDE! Check out the pictures Troy got the other day while I was at work.

Looking left from the front of the house.

Looking right…

My vegie patch…

Looking out the back at the neighbours wood pile…

It was very pretty and I felt like such a kid getting so excited over the snow but it is only the second time I have seen snow actually falling. It was all gone by lunchtime but was a real treat while it was here. I was very happy to see when I got home that the seedlings already outside weren’t bothered in the least by the cold white stuff falling on their heads.

On the work front, I had two full shifts this week, one morning, one evening, and have met some great ladies and some lovely clients. Next week I have been given four shifts which is great in regards of the money I will be getting, but I have a feeling I will be very tired by the end of the week – they are all 7am starts! I picked up my first pay check yesterday and of course it was burning a hole in my pocket so I toddled off to the hardware store to pick up some more seed raising mix and of course a few seeds. I tried to resist! I really did!

I got a call while I was there from the lady I met at the gardening workshops so ducked in to say hi to her as she is just around the corner. We had a great chat and I got to see her garden set up and get some local advice from her. It has given me a few ideas for this place. She has just gotten a few chooks too so hopefully I will be able to learn from her beginners mistakes hehe. One of the things they have done is build raised beds to plant their fruit trees in, which can be unscrewed and taken with them when they move out to their property. I thought this would be a good idea for us as well – by taking the structure apart the dirt will fall away and you will essentially have a bare root fruit tree which can be moved easily, instead of having to dig a big hole to get it out of the ground. So brilliantly simple! And it will make the trees much happier than being in pots. Now to beg or borrow a trailer and head up to the tip recycling centre one weekend for materials 🙂 And of course a visit to Mr BVVF to see what manure we can scrounge! Whoever woulda thunk I could get so excited about the prospect of getting my hands on some free sh!t!!!

Spring…for now

I think it is finally spring proper here now – perhaps. The other week we had some lovely warm weather which had me feeling very optimistic however a cold snap and a bit of rain put a bit of a dampener on that (bad pun intended). Yesterday was a bit warmer and today is warmer still with lovely clear blue skies although a bit of wind blowing still. The flowers are continuing to bloom although my little apple tree is still totally bare. It IS alive though – I scratched the top of one of the buds and there is green underneath. Perhaps I need to knit it a little jumper, poor sooky plant. The other dwarf fruit trees are mostly coming along ok. The two citrus arent growing, but they arent dying either. The mango is looking very unwell with no leaves on it and the main stem is looking slightly…wrinkly…instead of firm and green. I have given it a good dose of seasol which will hopefully perk it up a little.

The seeds I have planted in punnets are coming along nicely as are the seedlings planted into the garden. There are also a lot of seedlings popping up in the garden although at least half of those are weeds I am sure. I will have a lot of work to do once they get their adults leaves and I can actually identify them! I have also planted out a number of seed potatoes which were just starting to put out shoots so hopefully in a week or two they will start popping up through the mulch. The lucerne seeds I scattered have also sprouted so with luck soon they will be nice and big and shading out the weeds!!!

The broccoli and cabbage seedlings.

Other than the garden, I have been spending some time working on my crafts – sewing (and a lot of unpicking stitches), patchwork/applique, and a cross stitch for my nieces christmas present. I originally bought it a little before she was born. She recently turned two so I figure it is about time I get stuck in and actually finish it!!! It is amazing what one can do when there is no pesky work to get in the way!

I admit though that I have been missing the social intereaction and satisfaction that comes with the job, as well as having some structure and something to DO so I very happily toddled off to my induction yesterday and have my first shift today starting at noon. It will also be great to have some money coming in so I can pay off the credit card and then buy the materials for the chook pen 😀 I had a call the other day and was given a few phone numbers for locals who might have RIR’s or Australorps available. YAY! Hopefully by the end of the month I will have some cash spare to get them.

Well, not much else to report so I shall end this post with a couple of photos of the lovely spring flowers, and a big Happy Anniversary to my darling love. 3 years he has been putting up with me…what an angel 🙂

Blossoms of some sort. Perhaps purely decorative, but certainly very pretty!

The lilac bush just outside the kitchen window.

Remembering the Good Ol’ Days

Today Troy and I took a drive down to Jindabyne to visit the father of my best friend from high school and for me to show Troy around the farm. From year 9 onwards I spent most of my school holidays down there with Kate and I have a million fantastic memories so I was really looking forward to going back and being able to show my sweetheart around.

We headed off a bit before 11, taking some bread rolls with us and timing it to be in Jindy for lunch. It was a pleasantly short drive through some gorgeous country before we got to my favourite part – coming around the bend in the road and seeing the lake spread out below. VERY pretty. We drove down and I attempted to park down near the lake. Attempt being the operative word. Unfortunately I underestimated the depth of a rut in the dirt and managed to get the car somewhat..ah.. stuck. Oops. The front wheels were so low that I couldn’t even get the jack under to lift the car and stuff sticks or something underneath the tyre. Thankfully with Troy driving and me pushing from the back we managed to get the front wheels up out of the ditch.

THEN we had lunch. We had to shelter behind a row of bushes to escape the wind which was whipping across the lake. The entire surface was covered in white foam from the chop. I see what Mr BVVF said about the ‘September Winds’. After lunch we spent a few minutes collecting sticks and small branches and managed to fill in the rut enough to get the car back over it, then off we headed out to the farm. Thankfully both the road and the driveway (all 3 km of it) were it pretty good nick and we got the car up to the house without incident…just a few bumps and jolts.

It was very strange being back out there, 10 years after I visited for the first time. I have so many memories, it’s somewhat bittersweet to return and see how it is now. Kates parents have since split up and are both living in Sydney (as is she) with her dad only visiting the farm every few weeks or so, so all the animals are gone. The horses, the sheep, the chooks, the dogs… Only the cat and one goat are left. Rather sad when I remember how we used to be followed by a train of animals wherever we wandered and around our ‘cubby’ – now collapsed and covered in debris from the surrounding bush. The whole place has a rather sad, abandoned feel to it, not helped by the sound of the gusting wind and the way it played the metal pipes hanging in one of the trees like a far off flute. Sad, but beautiful.

The scenery is still just as gorgeous as ever although the trees across the valley are looking a bit more sparse after the ’02 fires burnt through there. Troy got some photos looking out across the valley which I will post when I get them onto my computer.

We spent the rest of the afternoon there just enjoying the peace and quiet and walking around the property a bit, chatting to Kates dad. We headed off about 4 and once again enjoyed gorgeous views driving back in to town. The country is so overwhelmingly beautiful around here although it looked a little eerie as we hit Berridale – there was a very strange misty fog in the air which gave the landscape an interesting glow. It was so nice seeing the lights of Cooma as we got close to town – it already feels like home. Have I mentioned that I love this town? 🙂

So, back home with the heater on, us and the cats fed and a whole lot of memories revived. I am sure I will sleep and dream well tonight. And maybe shed a tear or two for good times past.