Dreampot cooking....and a bit more permaculture learning....

I purchased a dream pot a few weeks back, and this is the 2nd time I have used it. Yesterday I cooked up a coconut ginger chicken and rice. Both the rice and meat dish cook at the same time, and after the initial heating up on the stove, the pots are place in the dreampot and continue to cook. This works very similar to a slow cooker, but doesn't use any power or gas after the initial heating, so will be a great option for when we move to the property, as we will be on solar power.

It can also be used to make yoghurt and keep things cool. They're not cheap to buy, but hopefully a good investment. It will also be good for when we next take the caravan on a trip away, as it is safe to cook in this whilst travelling, which is what a lot of people use it for.
Not too much happening here other than that at the moment, I have things I could be doing, but can't seem to get motivated enough to do them...it's starting to get hot here again during the day, and I'm not a real heat lover, once it gets over about 28 deg my energy levels drop and I would rather be inside. Probably live in the wrong place then! The late afternoons after about 4.30 are just beautiful though....great outside and BBQ weather. I am currently reading Linda Woodrow's book on home permaculture design, I am really enjoying it. Even though I have done my Permaculture Design Certificate, this gives more detailed instructions on the actual setup...Linda, where did you learn all this info from? You are so clever...it's giving me lots more to think about with regards to my design at the new property...I thought I had it worked out pretty much, but back to the drawing board I go :) Better now than after I had started putting gardens in though...

Garden show 2011

I went to the Qld Garden Expo today at Nambour. I went last year and loved it, so definitely wanted to go again this year. It was really cold when Kasey and I got there, but it soon warmed up to a beautiful day. I didn't go to any of the "talks" or demonstrations this year, I was there to mainly stock up on some more fruit trees and I wanted to get some bamboo plants, even so, we were there for 6 hours. But I came home with lots of treasures..

Fruit trees galore, including a fruit salad tree which has peachcott, plum, nectarine and peach all on the same plant. I also bought avocado, wampi, lychee, curry plant, japoticaba, black sapoate and some lovely anthuriums for the greenhouse in red, chocolate and black.

 I also bought an outdoor mushroom kit which will grow for a few years in the garden, the lovely big field mushrooms, as well as 2 shitake mushroom kits, 1 of which can be stored in the fridge until after the first one is finished, and it can then be put out.

I bought these lovely 2 purebred australorps at the show, they are enjoying a lovely dust bath in their new home, while the other bigger chickens are out of the pen...I think they may be in for a bit of a hard time once the other chickens go back in to their pen later this afternoon.

 I also bought this home canning kit, it has tongs, a jar lifter, lid tongs etc and a jar funnel. I also got  a couple of dummy eggs, as the girls like to lay in the wrong spot, so I hope this will encourage them to lay in the right spot. They wer also giving away these shower timers so I grabbed a couple to "encourage" shorter showers.

I picked up this sweet little sign, down from $25 to $10...

And of course, the obligatory face painting while at the show....

I bought this book the other day, I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but will get to it soon. I haved also booked in to a 2 day cheesemaking course at the end of October, we make 10 different cheeses over the weekend, so I am really looking forward to that. I have also found a local who sells native bee hives, so will purchase one of those over the next few weeks, so slowly starting to implement the ideas from my permaculture course.

Permaculture Design Certificate - Done!

I finished my Permaculture course yesterday.....we had to do up a big design project of a property, I used ours, and do a presentation on it. It was great to do this project, as it cemented all of the learning we have done over the last 3 1/2 months.  Lots to do to bring all of the elements in to our property over the next couple of years. Learnt so much over this time, so it has been a great experience. I want to further my learning now in some of the elements I want to bring in, such as beekeeping, herbal remedies etc so lots of things to look forward to expanding my knowledge base with. Met some absolutely lovely people, and we have started up a facebook group for our PDC group, so we can all keep in touch and encourage each other on our journeys to bringing all of our new found knowledge to life on our properties.

This is the concept plant drawn up for our property, this is only a very small part of the project we had to complete, there is another 11 A3 pages of information, drawings etc to go with this. 

I want to try and now keep Thursday's as a day to dedicate to learning, and also as personal time for me...will see how that goes... lol....this is the lovely group of people that I went through the course with, all very diverse, but we all have similar goals in the grand scheme of things.

Permaculture course day 5

Day 5 was all about "cultivated ecology" ie: vegetable gardening.  The morning session was spent as a general question and answer session on vege gardening, and everyone had a chance to throw out a topic that they wanted to know more about relating to their vege garden or vege gardening in general. We also had a look at the "Mandala" designed vege garden, which is a permaculture designed keyhole, circular type vege garden. I can see so many advantages to this type of system. It will mean re-designing my gardens here, but I knew that was on the cards anyway.  There were food presentations just before lunch  on kang kong and cassava. Jeff did the presentation on cassava, which is so versatile, and he made a yummy cassava cake...it was really nice, and had a rice pudding, custardy type taste and texture. He also did some in the oven and made a fritter out of others. These will definitely become an addition to our garden. Tim did the presentation on Kang Kong, he made it up into a stirfry, this was also really nice, and can be used as a leafy green in stirfrys or in salads, again very versatile, easy to grow and tastes good to boot. It is quite similar to spinach, and I liked it much better than pak choi. The thing that I like about the food presentations is that I am trying food I have never heard of or tasted before, and it is opening up my eyes to the vast array of food available out there, that is much, much easier to grow than the standard vegies we've eaten for years as our standard daily menu. I think a cooking course might be on the cards after this utilising all of these types of foods. In the afternoon we got dirty in the gardens! We constructed a no dig vege garden, which is basically building up  composting layers on top of your vege garden and planting in to compost into this layer. This is obviously no good for root vegies, but fantastic for leafy vegies, and builds up the organic matter in your vege garden. This saves back breaking digging in your vege garden. This method is also fabulous for growing potatoes in. After this was a bit of revision of the day. So another informing, educational day. Next week is part 2 of water and trees in permaculture. I will be late for next weeks class as I have flowers arriving for weddings, and these need to be unpacked and regfrigerated before I can leave home for the day. I am really looking forward to the bus tour coming up in a couple of weeks where we go and visit other permaculture farms, I think this will be really inspiring. Tomorrow I go and do my skin care course that was postponed 3 weeks ago and Tafe. It teaches how to make skin care creams, shampoo and conditioners out of natural products.  I am really looking forward to this.

Permaculture course days 3 and 4

Day 3 was all about permaculture design 1, starting on the zones and how they all link within one another. Zone 0 being the house, zone 1 being things you need to access a lot, such as herbs for the kitchen, salad greens etc,, some fruit trees that you would access a lot such as lemons and limes for cooking etc.  zone 2 being things you access daily, the chook house, vegetable garden, etc, zone 3 being for a larger orchard etc, zone 4 being for pasture animals, bees, trees for firewood or cabinets and zone 5 being natural untouched habitat for wildlife. There are lots of other things to include in each zone, but that's a very basic overview. Some things could be in more than 1 zone, some things are right on the cusp of 2 zones, so it does come down to common sense as well. I did my presentation on passionfruit, and made a passionfruit slice and passionfruit cordial. It was an extremely hot day today at the course, so the cordial went down a treat. Saori did her presentation on choko, and made sweet poached choko, they were delicious and will definitely be something that I grow now.
Day 4 was about water and trees. We started in the morning in learning about the contours of land and how to read a contour map, and how to work out the contours of our own land. We then started on water storage, water tanks etc. The afternoon was spent on trees in permaculture, their uses etc. We also did a wander around looking at the various types of trees on the farm. Colin did a presentation on eggplant, and he made up eggplant fritters, they were really delicious! I have never tried eggplant before, so I was really pleasantly surprised. I planted eggplant in the garden some weeks ago, so I am now looking forward to those, but I may have planted them too late yet. They were creamy and meaty all at the same time, I was very impressed. Fiona did a presentation on Okra, I can't say these did much for me...but they may be nicer cooked a different way, apparently they are the main ingredient in gumbo, but I need to find out what that even is! We have an assignment to do which must be completed in 2 weeks time. I need to work out our roof area, and our yearly water use, and work that back to our average yearly rainfall and work out the number and size of water tanks we need based on all of that info. That will be interesting to do, and relevant to us as we have been looking at getting water tanks this year, as being self sufficient in water is something I want to do, especially with Unity Water charging us a fortune for water these days.
There have been other things happening around the place, but I have come down with some dreaded lurgy and not feeling 100% so will catch up on updating the blog in the next few days hopefully.

Permaculture Design Course - Day 2

Day 2 - all about soil and composting. I arrived on time today - good start.  Basically the morning was about the composition of soil, how to test it and work out the PH etc . The afternoon was spent on Worm farming and composting, including building of a compost pile. We also had a look at ground covers and soil improvers. There was a couple of food presentations, 1 on sweet potato and Kate made a lovely sweet potato pie, it tasted almost like caramel tart - yummy.  Jacinta did a presentation on sweet basil, and made up a lovely pesto for us to try with crackers, also very yummy. My turn next, and I am doing Passionfruit. Day 3 of the course touches on permaculture design1..the first intro to designing a permaculture system...looking forward to it. I have taken a few photos from around the farm:

(Sweet potato beds)

( Kassava Bushes)

( More sweet potato)

( Pinto bean as a groundcover)

( Pidgeon Pea - soil improver)

( I can wear this t-shirt now)

( Signs for atmosphere)

( Pumpkin and Qld arrowroot)

( Arrowroot chopped up for the compost pile)

( Comfrey for the compost)

( Dried mango tree leaves for the compost)()

( Chopping up the greenery for the compost)

 (Garden grass clippings for the compost)

( Tree art)

( Starting to build up the pile)

( The completed pile)

 Looking forward to day 3...

Permaculture course day 1...and some lemons!

Yesterday was the first day of my permaculture design certificate course.  I arrived late...not a good start...I allowed an hour and a 1/4 to make a 40-45 minute trip to allow for traffic...WRONG....it took me about an hour and a half....geez....what's with the traffic! Anyway, I only really missed the intro...but ended up making a grand entrance instead of quietly sitting at my desk waiting for the course to start.  The farm has only the very basics in the way of utilities, so I will know for next week to take a lunch that doesn't need heating, and an esky with ice so I can take my own milk, teabags etc for a nice cuppa during the day. It's definitely an urban hippy existence there, does take a little bit to get used to. Day 1 was a basic introduction to the 3 principles and 12 elements relating to permaculture. There was a bit of roleplay (very embarrasing, but a way for everyone to get to know each other a little) and farm tour.  There was also a food presentation on Bunya nuts, the nuts boiled weren't really my thing, but the bunya nut pesto on the fruit loaf was quite nice, but I think that's because the fruit loaf masked some of the bunya nut flavour. We were also given our plant allocation that we each need to do a food presentation on during the course. I lucked out with passionfruit, and I have some growing here, so I get to make some yummy sweet treats for my presentation. Need to do the research between now and the next fortnight, so I can hand out the information sheet during the presentation. I was pretty bushed (and cranky) when I got home, as I spent another hour and a helf in the traffic, and was still quite tired today. This afternoon I planted out the comfrey in the garden, and as I was wandering around the garden, I thought I would check out the lazy lemon tree, and was delighted to see 5 lovely lemons at quite a good size, and a couple more babies coming along. This is the lemon trees first fruiting, so quite exciting.

I gave the bush a drink of seaweed solution this afternoon, and weeded around the base, and removed the big hungry catepillar on one of the leaves and gave it to the chooks, they don't seem very interested in it though!  I purchased a lots a lemons tree about a month back as this lemon tree didn't seem to be making any progress, it must have scared it in to giving up some lemons. So, tomorrow is Kasey's 7th birthday, so I have a couple of wedding quotes to go and do in the morning, and Toni is going to take Kasey out for the morning to the park or maybe to the beach for an icecream. We'll do presents in the morning, and then a family BBQ in the afternoon. She has a little friend coming to play early in the afternoon, and they always play so well together. So..I'm off to bed, I am pretty tired, so I think I will sleep well. Next week I need to put some serious effort in to expanding my home routines app, I have the rotational house work and daily am and pm routines pretty much sorted at the moment, but I need to now start to allocate days to certain tasks and also some self improvement time (think...exercise...blaghhh) and need to start making set times for sewing and craft, gardening, mowing etc...I want to try and work them in to my routine so I have set days for these things as a rough promptor to each day for me. I have a bit of time in between quotes in the morning, so I may visit Gloria Jeans, and pop myself, my laptop and my ipad in the corner for a couple of hours and try and sort all that out...we'll see how I go....

Animal mishaps & a Permaculture course

We got back from our holiday on Sunday. Always nice to get away for a few days. One of the chooks came down sick a few days back, after doing some research on the net, I concluded that she had coccidiosis...I think that has been the culprit with the other couple of girls I have lost recently..and it has been spreading through the more vulnerable girls.  I treated her with Sulpha D, and she has come good now, and I have returned her up with the other chooks. Now that I know what I am looking for, hopefully I can now keep it in check. I will need to give Damian the hurry along with the chook tractor, and give the ground in the current chook pen a spell, and try to get rid of any parasites that have built up in the soil, as the chook house has been on the same ground for many years. Hopefully now we are over the worst of the sick chooks for a while. Diesel has also been in the wars, he has banged his head really hard on something while we were away and has a huge boney lump on the back of his head, it's nearly as big as a golfball.

(Diesel has a huge egg on the back of his head)

I have taken him to the vet, and he is on some anti inflammatories, this is day 3 of being on those, and it really hasn't made any difference to the size of the lump yet, so if no better by Friday, I will contact the vet surgery again. He has also started mouthing toads, Monday night I thought I was going to have to rush him to the vet, as he got quite sick, even though we had washed his mouth out, but then I contacted the after hours vet, and she gave me some info on what to look out for, and also to wipe his mouth out with a cloth instead of washing it, to get rid of the slimy poison, as soon as I did this, he came good. And then last night, he came to the back door whimpering again, and was foaming at the mouth again, so I wiped it out first thing this time, and he came good within a couple of minutes. Damian is going to do the rounds of the yard with Dettol again to kill off the toads that are starting to hang around.

Tomorrow is going to be very exciting, it is day 1 of the Permaculture Design Course I am doing.  It will be every Thursday for the next few months, and I am really looking forward to it. I hope my brain can deal with all of the theory that is going to be associated with it! I will post later in the week with the details on how it all went. I am looking forward to absorbing all of the info and putting it in to practice here. I have also received most of my book order that I put it at the beginning of the month, I will post about those a bit later as well. At the moment I am trying to continue catching up on paperwork, nearly there, it is almost full time in the office at the moment doing bookwork....but the pile is getting smaller.

Coffee, permaculture and an eventual animal commitment....

Caught up with Tammy for coffee yesterday. We were there for 3 hours! It was a long chat. Tammy has done welfare and counselling, so she had quite an in depth talk with Toni while we were there about Sat night, to try and clear things in her head for her. We finally heard from the girls family today, who have said that she is being discharged from hospital today, and that they don't hold anyone responsible, and that it was just a terrible accident. All well and good, but I am afraid that I do hold this girl responsible, it was her decision to totally wipe herself out with alcohol and jump on my daughters bonnet and seriously injure herself, and cause Toni such distress in the process, I am really happy that she is ok, and no serious damage has been done, but seeing how upset Toni has been over the last few days has been really hard to deal with, I just hope that everyone that was at this party has learnt something, I would hate to see no lessons learnt out of all of this, at least this girl's parents are now aware that there teenage daughter is wiping herself out with alcohol and can maybe monitor this a bit, I am not naive enough to think that Toni does not ever have a drink, but I know that having her licence and her driving to these things means that she won't be drinking, I know that she would never drink drive, she does take after me in this respect, I have never ever driven after drinking, and I know she feels exactly the same as me about this, thank goodness.....anyway....hopefully everyone can move on now....On a happier note, I recently reserved a permaculture book from the library, and picked it up today, so this will be my before bed reading for the next few weeks.

I am really interested in learning about the permaculture way of doing things. There is a course I could go and do , but it is nearly $1200, and I may still go and do it yet, but if I can learn everything out of a book, I would like to, even though I do love doing the practical side of learning, and find that I usually learn better that way these days...my brain definitely does not take to learning theory as well as it used to in my teens and twenties and even early thirties. I am also waiting on a permaculture design book to come in to the library that I have reserved, and will read that as well, much cheaper than spending $200 to buy it online.  I would really love to totally immerse myself in this way of doing things, and get more animals and spend most of my time outdoors.....but I haven't been game to commit to more animals, having horses was a really big commitment, and I think it has taken me a couple of years of not having them to get over the amount of time and effort that took, not to mention money! Damian called them the 4 legged money pits, the whole time I had them, which was true to a degree, and I found that I no longer had the really relaxed disposition around them that I had when I was much younger, and you really need that to be able to deal with the skittishness that they have. I also found that I no longer really enjoyed riding them due to the same reasons. I would really love alpacas, a donkey and miniature goats, even a miniature horse would be lovely, gorgeous animals, a bit quieter, and lovely manure for the gardens, and lawnmowers in the process....Damian would like sheep or a small cow as he would like to have them for the meat side of things, but if I had a cow I would want a milking one, and I definitely don't want to commit to milking a cow twice a day right now....maybe down the track I may get my head around that!