Eight Acres

 After we tried growing forage crops on our cultivation areas we decided it would be worth trying to establish a perennial pasture instead.  We planted about 10 acres out of 20 acres as a test two years ago using Rhodes grass, Creeping Blue grass, Digiteria and Wynn Cassia. It took a few months for that pasture to start growing and in the meantime we were worried that we had wasted a lot of time and money, but gradually the grass came up and got thicker and now we have a pretty good coverage.  The Rhodes and the Blue grass are creeping, so they start to fill in the gaps.   We were able to let the cattle into graze it after about a year and since then we've been careful not to overgraze and waste all that effort.  We (Pete) also slash the paddock when the grass stalks get too long.  This helps to spread the seed around, return some organic matter/mulch to the soil and reduce the fire-hazard.   Eventually we hope to use strip-grazing or intensi...

 For several years I made yoghurt using my Esiyo thermos and the Esiyo packets.  Then I started using powdered milk instead, which was cheaper and just as easy.  And then we got Bella our house cow, so I started using real milk, not as easy, but more nutritious and just as tasty.  I have also tried making coconut yoghurt, which is a great alternative to dairy.  This is a summary of what I've learnt from all my yoghurt experiments to far. What is yoghurt? Yoghurt is the result of fermenting milk (dairy or otherwise) using bacteria ( Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus salivarius subsp. thermophilus bacteria. Lactobacillus acidophilus , bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus casei are also used for some yoghurts).  The bacteria convert the lactose in milk to lactic acid, making it tangy, and also act on the proteins in milk, which causes it to thicken. Ingredients for making yoghurt All you need is some form of milk (powdered...

 Selling my soap at markets and to friends and family has made me realise how many questions people have about handmade soap.  Here are the answers to some of the common questions I get from people who are interested in using handmade natural soap. 1. All soap is made with lye Soap is made by reacting fats and oils with lye.  Lye is also known as caustic, caustic soda or sodium hydroxide.  If you've used caustic to unblock a drain, that's exactly what I use to make soap.  Our ancestors used wood ash to make potassium hydroxide lye for soapmaking by percolating rainwater through a barrel of ash from a wood fire.  This was a very inexact science, and so the soap was often very harsh. These days we can buy very pure sodium hydroxide lye and weigh it out to make sure we use exactly the right amount in our soap.  Most soapmakers (myself included) actually use a little less lye than is really needed, so make sure that the soap has extra fat (this is ca...

 I get a lot of questions about bees.  Its funny when you start talking about bees with someone who hasn't really thought about it before.  You don't realise how much you've learnt from until you start trying to explain to someone how to catch a swarm or why we don't know exactly what type of trees our current batch of honey has come from.    Before we got bees, I really hadn't thought much about bees at all, and now I think about them all the time, there are just so many bee things to think about!  Here's a few bee facts that might interest you too. There's more to bees that just honey bees! In Australia we have a number of native bees ( and New Zealand has some too , and so does the USA ).  There are ten Australia species of social bees that build hives and make a small amount of honey (known as "sugar bag"), and they don't sting.  They are known as native stingless bees .  Lots of people keep them in little boxes in their yards, th...

 When Pete and I received council approval for our removal house in July 2014, having spent the previous year and a half organising to move the house and doing the minimum required for council approval ( read part 1 here), the work was only just beginning.  By this stage we had finished installing new plumbing, rainwater tanks and septic system, new electrical wiring, lights and ceiling fans in every room (as required for environmental standards), insulation in the roof, three sets of external stairs and lots of cyclone strapping.  The interior of the house, however, was for the most part untouched, apart from removing old fluorescent batten lights and Bakelite light switches.  The kitchen was the original 1950s era design with very low benchtops and an asbestos-lined pantry; and the bathroom was a cheap 1990s DIY job.   A tour of our secondhand house (BEFORE) Replacing the roof  As soon as we had the paperwork from the council we starting looking f...

 I haven't written a "how I use herbs" post for a while, but my herb garden is still growing in the shade of the carport and increasing in number of herbs (although some have also unfortunately died, but I will start them again).  Our local produce share has been a great source of herb cuttings and I've had to talk myself out of taking more home as I really can't increase the number of pots in my garden until I get something more permanent organised. I was given a small elderflower plant at the produce share a few months ago and I have been growing it up until its ready to plant out.  I thought I better find out more about its preferred growing conditions and medicinal uses before I decide where to put it.  There are several varieties of Elder (genus: Sambucus), and as usual I don’t know which one I have, but they all look to be fairly similar and when I see the colour of the berries, that might help to identify it.  I think from the fact that it was a sucker f...

 When I first moved to Brisbane from New Zealand I arrived in late January. I firmly believed that air conditioning was a waste of energy, so when I stepped off the plane to 30degC heat (coming from a summer that had barely hit 20degC) I was determined to acclimatize as quickly as possible, even though I felt like I was melting. When I got to my hotel I tried sitting on the balcony with a cold drink, to begin adjusting to the heat. I don’t think I lasted more than ten minutes before my resolve crumbled and I was back inside trying to work the air conditioner! I have come a long way since then. I can now work outside in 30degC or hotter, in jeans, long sleeve shirt and boots, but I still can’t sleep if its too hot. you know what an air-conditioner looks like..... Our house at Eight Acres came with an older style ducted reverse cycle split system air conditioner installed in the lounge. On very hot days, we would turn it on and lie on the couch to try to cool down, but the...

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here .  You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!).  I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months.  I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

One more post on this blog and then I think I'm going to be ready to launch the new site!  I can't wait to share it with you. Well it hasn't rained for a few weeks and I always find this time of year tough because all the grass is dead from the cold weather and lack of rain, so its all just brown and dry and I start to worry about bushfires.  We are just waiting for rain.  Which is a shame really because apart from that its quite a nice temperature and the days are getting longer, so I should be enjoying the weather instead of wishing for rain.  Also the dogs get very dirty and static from playing in the dust! Food and cooking Did you see my post about growing mushrooms?  That was quite fun :) Land and farming We've been looking at getting a bigger tractor because we really want to try a yeoman's plough to improve our pasture.  And we finally bought a firefighting rig for the back of the ute. Chickens Barastock sent me some c...

In 2013 I interviewed chicken flocksters on different sized properties, from suburban blocks to small farms, in four different countries, about getting started with chickens. This was a continuation from my first series of interviews about “ getting started with growing your own ”. One thing was the same in every interview, everyone loves watching their chickens! I really enjoyed reading these interviews, so I hope you did too. It is interesting to read about how people keep their chickens (and other poultry) and why they make those decisions, with lots of great advice for new chicken keepers too. Here are all the interviews: Ohiofarm Girl of Adventure in the Goodland (USA) Gavin from the Greening of Gavin (Aust) Madeleine from NZ Eco Chick (NZ) Tanya of Lovely Greens (UK) Adam and Amy from Sustainaburbia (Aust) Linda from Greenhaven (Aust) And my interview with myself (Aust) I'm looking forward to more chicken discussions... By the way, my ch...

I'm still here!  I just got distracted by making a new soap website and I couldn't decide where to post this.  But I'm not ready to move just yet.  I wanted to show you my pot garden as I've been pleasantly surprised by what I can grow (in winter anyway).  We are going to build a proper garden and set up the aquaponics, but other things need to be done first and meanwhile my pot collection keeps growing every time I go to our monthly share meeting and come home with another herb! Celery, peas, winter savory and parsley I have my collection of pots stacked on my potting table, which is the size of a sheet of mesh - I think its 2m by 3m or so.  And I have more pots underneath.  The worm farms are up top as well.  It seems to be good for the shade-loving plants, like mints, yarrow and strawberries to be down below in the partial shade.  I really like the location, it is between the house and the shed, so every time we go to the shed or to the ...

A tractor with implements is an essential tool for getting work done around the farm (as I recently wrote about here). At Cheslyn Rise, our 258-acre property, we have a 75 HP tractor with front bucket and forklift tynes. We have ploughs, a hay rake, cultivator drill (seeder), an 800 L spray tank and a slasher. At Eight Acres, we only had a tiny 15 HP tractor with a slasher. Often we wish we could use the big tractor there too, but it's just not practical to transport it.  When I write about farm work we’ve done using our big tractor, I usually get questions from readers about how to do these things on a smaller scale, for a hobby farm or lifestyle block, especially our recent pasture seeding, which required two ploughs and the cultivator drill. Until recently, I haven’t had any answers. I think it's an issue that we’ve all experienced, it's hard to justify buying even a small tractor for a small hobby farm, and even if you do buy one (ours is second hand), it'...