Eight Acres

I know I keep saying that I hate cleaning, but now that we are in our new house, I have more motivation.  Firstly this house is way nicer than our old house, from the colour of the walls (that we chose of course) to the high ceilings and better lighting, I just enjoy being in the house more than ever before.  And I know how much effort went into getting it this nice so I don't want to see it getting dusty and dirty.   Permaculture principle "produce no waste" suggests that timely maintenance prevents wasteful rework and big jobs to fix things that could have taken very little time if they were done earlier.  This helps me to prioritise small cleaning jobs before they turn into big ones. One new thing that we have tried since moving is the ENJO range of cleaning products ( affiliate link ).  You won't find ENJO in your supermarket, its sold by independent consultants, and also available online ( I get a small commission if you use my links) . E...

Sometimes I write about the herbs I've been growing for a long time and use frequently, other time I use these posts as an opportunity to find out more about a new herb.  Feverfew ( Tanacetum parthenium ) is the latter!  I've had it in my garden for a couple of years after a friend gave me a seedling and it has self-seeded, but I haven't known how to use it., so its time to look up the herb books! How to grow feverfew Apparently it is a perennial, it must die back when its too cold or too hot and dry because it disappeared for a while.  It grows from seed or root division or cuttings.  If you let it flower and seed it will self-seed (that's my favourite type of plant!). How to use feverfew The flowers are pretty, however they repel insects including bees, so not one for the bee garden (although can be used as a companion plant around brasiccas to repel cabbage moth etc and the dried leaves can be used to keep moths out of your wardrobe...

The more I learn about the bees, the more I'm fascinated by them and amazed at the things that researchers have figured out!  To be successful beekeepers we need to try to learn as much as we can about the bees in our care.  Some of the books on beekeeping use a kind of rote learning approach and tell you exactly what to do with your bees, but they can't possibly cover every situation, so you need to also learn to think for yourself using bee-knowledge to make the best management decisions for your bee hives. The book The Buzz about Bees: Biology of a Superorganism  (affiliate link) was recommended by the awesome Rusty on Honey Bee Suite  so when I decided that I needed to know more about bee biology, I purchased a copy ( using Amazon credit from you guys clicking on my affiliate links, thank you!! ).  This is a good-sized book, packed with information and wonderful close-up photos of bees (they look all fuzzy and cuddly at that size!). I learnt s...

Our butcher is coming next week and he will do two beasts this time, so we are getting organised.  I've written a lot about butchering over the years and this will be our eighth and ninth animals killed on our own property.  On that last day, they will know no fear, maybe some curiosity (who is that strange man pointing that stick at me?) and it will be a quick end to a fairly peaceful and comfortable life.  Its not such an easy day for us, it can be quite emotional seeing the death of an animal that you've raised from a young age, not to mention physically draining putting all the meat away, but its all worth it to get the best quality meat possible. One of the things we are doing this year is make our own sausage mix.  If you want to know more about home butchering in general, here are all the posts I've written in the past: Homekill meat - some tips for beginners Home butcher vs meatworks Homekill butchering Homekill butcher day - tips and tricks ...

I've been wanting to try making soap with milk for ages.  We haven't been milking our cows, so I was waiting for a friend to have enough goat's milk to spare.  I know I could just buy milk, but that seemed like a strange thing to do (you start to forget that milk comes from the shop when you've been milking a cow for a few years!).  Anyway, I was happy to wait as I had plenty of other soap to make. While I was waiting, I also received a review copy of a new soapmaking book called  The Natural Soap Making Book for Beginners: Do-It-Yourself Soaps Using All-Natural Herbs, Spices, and Essential Oils  (Affiliate link), by Kelly Cable of the blog Simple Life Mom .  Kelly has an amazing Etsy shop full of soaps and natural lotions, so I am very excited that she has decided to share her experience and recipes in this book.  And seeing as it contains several goat milk soap recipes and my friend finally had some goat milk to spare, I recently got my chanc...

If you've just bought a farm, large or small, you are going to need some equipment, but what items are essential?  Which can you buy secondhand and which ones should you buy new?  Here's what I think, I hope you'll share your own experience.  Of course, there are many different types of farming, so exactly what you need is going to depend on what you are going to do, so I'll write mainly about raising cattle and improving pasture. me on the little tractor You might start by thinking about getting a tractor.  I've written about buying a secondhand tractor and a new tractor .  The size of the tractor that you need will depend on the implements that you want to use, so you really need to figure out your implements.  In fact you can now get implements that run off a quad bike , so you may not actually need a tractor. Implements that you might need include: Slasher - on most farms this will be essential for improving pasture and just keeping th...

It doesn't get seriously cold here, but its cold enough to be uncomfortable if we don't make some effort.  We are actually finding that our house up on the hill is warmer than down in the valley, and we are above the frost line, so that is a nice change, but it still gets down to 5degC overnight.  We have a woodstove, but we have to cut the wood ourselves, so you don't really want to use more wood than really necessary to keep the house warm. There are three ways that heat is lost from a building: Conduction - direct transfer of heat from a warm object to a cold object, this is heat lost through the walls and roof of your house to the cooler air Convection - caused by a flow of cold air, either draughts or air circulating around exposed windows  Radiation - heat transmitted in the form of light waves, this can be another source of heat loss from windows, roofs and walls of your house. When you understand how heat is lost, you can see the solutions for kee...

Last week I wrote about how we don't have a microwave and I really don't miss it.  So continuing the theme of "weird things about my kitchen", we also don't have any plastic cling wrap or paper towels.  And we haven't had them for so long I can hardly remember why we ever needed them. I didn't mange to avoid all plastic at the farmers market, but I tried I always thought that cling wrap was wasteful.  Not just from an environmental perspective, but I also didn't like spending money on something that I only used once.  When I was at uni and took sandwiches for lunch, I used to bring home the cling wrap and use it again until it didn't stick anymore.  One year when we did Plastic Free July (I can't remember when exactly - here's what I wrote last year ) we decided to stop using cling wrap.  I used up the last of it recently when we were painting (its really hard to renovate without creating waste) - its handy for wrapping up paintbrus...

The dogs are still sleeping outside on the veranda.  I think they are getting used to it.  Unfortunately if they don't sleep well, neither do we, as they are right outside our window.  I go out and put their coats on most evenings and I often find them like this: the little dog on the big bed and the big dog on the little bed.  I have to rearrange their blankets and put the right dog on the right bed.  The second photos shows the dogs in the correct position with their jim jams on... So with winter solstice on 21st June, its now officially winter and its bittersweet to know that evenings are getting longer but summer will be back before we know it!  We have been pleasantly surprised to find that our property up on the hill is up to 5degC warmer than the valley most mornings, so we might get away without a frost up here (overnight temperatures have been 8degC, so the dogs are fine, but they would LIKE to be inside).  We have had the fire going most ni...