Happenings lately in our sunny strawbales:

Completely home-grown roast dinner:

Ours – potato, sweet potato, beetroot, pumpkin, spinach, chook.  Others (shared with us) – zucchini.

YUM! 

Chook wasn’t tough at all. 

Which is good, because another 2 will be processed to the freezer soon.

Harvest happenings:

That big-un is over 30cm across and weighed a good amount too.

Sweet potato soup was on the menu J!

Last week, we had a delivery of the good stuff:

4 m³ of Mumby Magic – and it will work its magic in our orchard as soon as we spread it out. 

Poor orchard got all put in without us mulching properly so it is well time for us to give the fruit trees some love before winter sets in.  Plus we will be establishing a food forest as the understory in there so we grow more greens and grains so we can free-range the chickens a bit more.  I can’t wait!

Now, lookie what my Honey has been doing!  J

Now if you know your paving, you will see that he has been cementing in the edges – and that can only mean one thing!!  The paving around the house is finished!!!  Yay!!!  Cue the party whistles, balloons and confetti canons J. 

The photo is actually Michael digging up the edges of the lawn so he can extend the retic right to the paving now (and further) because we can safely let it grow to the edges now. 

Pepper, of course, immortalised herself with wee footprints in the wet concrete edge:

And yesterday, I got serious with getting some winter crops started J.

Planted seedlings of broccolini, spinach, bok choy and cauliflower, plus seeds of similar greens:

We fenced up the garden beds to keep the voracious chooks out!  And did similar inside their run as I put down seeds to start their food forest in there:

Seems voracious birds are a feature at the moment.  Lookie at our sunflowers:

The parrots didn’t even wait until they were finished growing, these were all still green!  We will get no seeds from these few plants – lucky we have plenty others saved!

I made soap:

 

(It should look nicer when it has finished cooling)

Picked vegetables:











 



















(With a helper J)

Made a vege pasta sauce and pickled beetroot J:


 













Planted potatoes and transplanted some self-sown tomatoes (even though it is way too late to be planting them, I like to give them a go – they went to the effort to sprout after all).  Sowed some carrot seeds amongst those transplanted tomatoes.  Staked up some other tomatoes that I planted a few weeks ago – they are a fast-growing roma, and are already flowering, so we may be lucky and get some more before the cold sets in.

Finished the fruit string bag:



















It works J - and I liked it so much I have already started another.

And the normal everyday things – 3 loads of washing, topped up the compost bins with straw, helped the hubby feel a bit better by letting him sleep most of the day (he has ‘flu – a real one L). 

So, it’s been some time (again…).  It’s been some busy times, relaxing times, happy times, normal times.

We’ve had end of school events (lovely celebrations) and our first Christmas in our new home (just the six of us).  We waited until the big girl got home from her school trip to get a Real Christmas tree and then it got all decorated – isn’t it beautiful?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the Santas got sat out in the entry hall:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And a wee little display on our drawers:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, Christmas was our relaxing time – it’s been the usual busy otherwise – and mostly with (you’ll never guess!) paving of course!!  Michael went the extra mile this time – in fact extra 200 miles – to pick up 12 tonne of pavers from a property in Mandurah and relocate them to our verandah – and that is the literal pick them up off the ground too! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I tell ya, this house sure has been a paving adventure – and still not quite finished yet – but getting oh so close…

We have also updated the garden beds – we have been harvesting so many tomatoes and silverbeet and just the last week, giant zucchini:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, they are on the menu today to be cooked up into passata, spinach quiches and zucchini relish – yum!

And because I was inspired to take an ‘artistic’ photo of the sunflowers in honour of Vincent van Gogh – here they are:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I don’t say I know much about van Gogh, but the Dr Who episode is very touching – so touching that I added a “For Amy” to the famous sunflower print (it will hang in our library, after going to college with the eldest I think, she’s the Whovian) and it led us to buy a beautiful book, ‘Sunflowers for Van Gogh’, by David Douglas Duncan at a garage sale, which has in turn inspired the photo.  More photos to come I think…really would love to get the wild, unkempt look of the paintings…