Eight Acres

 Do you find this time of year stressful?  I used to, but over the last few years we have made a few changes and now Christmas is a simple and stress-free time instead.  I know that some people love Christmas and can't imagine reducing the fuss and the festivities at all, and that's fine if you really do enjoy it, but if you are feeling stressed at this time of year, maybe consider simplifying your Christmas plans to give yourself a break.  Here's a few ideas:   Reduce or stop presents Sometimes people ask me if I've done all my Christmas shopping.  I always say "yes" these days because we have stopped worrying about presents.  It was easier than you think.  We just told all family that we would not be giving presents and we didn't expect presents, so please don't stress about getting anything for us.  Now the lead up to Christmas does not involve jamming into shopping centres trying to find presents for everyone.  We are buying les...

 While mindlessly scrolling Facebook I saw a post which was an article from 2017 that had been reshared. The title of the article was " No, poor New Zealand families can’t just ‘grow their own vegetables '". I read the article, and it got me thinking. I know that people grow vegetables for lots of reasons, saving money may be a minor reason for some people. Growing your own vegetables can give you a greater variety of vegetables that you can't get in the supermarket, you know they are chemical-free, they taste better, and you get the enjoyment of some physical activity outside in nature. But that doesn't mean that its not possible use your vegetable garden to reduce your food bill. I read through a few of the comments on the Facebook post and the majority agreed that starting a vegetable garden was too expensive and time-consuming for those already struggling with the high cost of living. However, a few comments gave me hope - suggesting that enough useful veget...

 We bought our 258 acres property with no house, knowing that we would eventually build a house so that we could live on the property. While we were agonising over the exact type and layout of house we wanted to build, a small Queenslander house was advertised for sale on a nearby property.   We moved the house... We had lived in a Queenslander house before, and we knew that they were a lot of work to maintain. We had actually sworn that we would NEVER live in another Queenslander house! But when we saw this little house advertised, and that it was in pretty good condition, we decided that it saved us making a lot of decisions about building a house. We bought the house for $10,000. Then we had to pay to move it to our property. We had to re-do all the electrical wiring and plumbing. Add new stairs, replace the roof. Paint inside and outside. Gut the kitchen and bathroom completely and start again. Remove asbestos, add insulation in the roof. Re-finish the floors (which a...

Have you signed up for Plastic Free July?   The idea of Plastic Free July is to try for a month to actively avoid single-use plastic. You can sign up for the whole month, or just a week, and you can avoid all single-use plastic or just the TOP 4 challenge (plastic bags, plastic water bottles, takeaway coffee cups & plastic straws). This post contain affiliate links from Biome , as well as advice from my personal experience.  You don't need to buy a whole lot of things to reduce your plastic consumption, there are many things that you can make yourself, I just suggest a few of the items that have helped us and may help you too. Why Plastic Free July?   Plastic is designed to last forever, but when we use it for "disposable" items they do not biodegrade and end up polluting waterways or filling landfills.  Each of us can make a difference by just reducing (or aiming to eliminate) single-use plastic from our daily lives. Three reasons to avoid single use ...

 I'm always looking for ways to use the natural materials that we produce on our property, and one of those is beeswax. I've been using beeswax to make beeswax wraps, various balms and salves, beeswax wraps and leather dressing. And I've been selling beeswax to other people to make their own DIY products, including candles. Beeswax candles One thing I hadn't tried yet it was beeswax candles myself, so I did some research on the options for making beeswax candles. You can either pour the beeswax into a jar with a wick or you can use a mould (usually silicone, but also sometimes metal or plastic) to make a freestanding candle. I decided to try making candles using silicone moulds, so I ordered a couple of moulds online and some wick cotton to make the candles. I watched a lot of YouTube videos to learn how to make the candles. Prepare the silicon moulds for candle-making The first thing you have to do when you get a new silicon candle mould is to cut the mould so t...

 Over the years I've hatched hundreds of chicks using an electric incubator, but I never used a clucky hen to hatch chicks. I had thought about doing it because I don't like relying on an electric incubator, but I just wasn't sure where to start. Then one afternoon late last year I spotted a chicken (or rather Max the kelpie dog spotted a chicken) in the long grass with seven little baby chicks that she had hatched. This escaped mama hen had sat on her eggs for the past 3 weeks and when they hatched, she brought them all back over to the chicken area and was trying to get back in. Side note: Our hens live in chicken tractors (In case you didn't know, we keep our chickens in chicken tractors. We currently have about 20 hens and one rooster in two chicken tractors. We use feather net electric fencing so that the chickens can free range outside of their chicken tractors in a limited area during the day. Unfortunately, there always seems to be one or two hens that fly o...

 Your grandmother probably had one of these by the sink for doing the dishes. It can also be used to dissolve soap for hand-washing in the laundry or putting some bubbles in your bath. You are going to wish you still had one because they are so useful! What is a soap shaker? A soap shaker (also known as a soap saver or suds maker) is the old-fashioned way of using a bar of soap for the washing up. Its just a metal cage with a handle. You put soap in the cage and swish it around in hot water to dissolve some soap. Then you can easily dry out the soap between uses so that it lasts longer. How can I use soap to reduce my plastic consumption? Like so many things now, we are realising that our grandmothers had some good ideas in the garden and around the house. They had to be frugal and make do with what they had. Naturally that meant less waste, and particularly less plastic. Soap shakers are the perfect way to reduce plastic in the kitchen - no more bottles of dishwashing liquid...