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...