I really can’t complain about our living costs. Since we started along this path of “quasi-sustainability”, our food expenses have dropped dramatically. Paradoxically, we’re eating better than ever before, with very little pre-prepared or heavily processed food in our daily diet. It’s tough economic times though, so we’ve again reassessed to see where we can [...]
Archive for the ‘Frugal Living’ Category
Frugal Living #5: Small Things Matter
Posted in Frugal Living, tagged Frugal Living, money saving tips, home budget on August 31, 2010 | 52 Comments »
Baking Bread
Posted in Food & Friends, Frugal Living, tagged bread baking, Dan Lepard, Guardian recipe, multigrain bread, sourdough starter, spelt, spelt sourdough on August 13, 2010 | 20 Comments »
I’ve been baking bread… …most recently, five loaves of sourdough spelt. My breadbaking schedule tends to be dictated by my sourdough starter – when it’s frothy and ripe, I’ll often mix up a batch of dough, even if it wasn’t planned. I purchased organic Canadian spelt (we didn’t grow any in Australia last year) from [...]
Nasturtium Pesto
Posted in Frugal Living, Recipes, tagged Garden pesto, homemade pesto, nasturtium, nasturtium pesto, Pam Corbin, Pam Corbin Preserves on August 11, 2010 | 34 Comments »
In our winter garden, there really isn’t much growing at the moment. The broadbeans are struggling, the seed potatoes still aren’t in the ground, and there are just four lonely apples on our young trees. The nasturtiums, however, have really taken off! Planted around the base of the fruit trees as ground cover, they attract [...]
Free Range Chicken
Posted in Food & Friends, Frugal Living, Musings, tagged free range chicken, free range chickens in Australia, FREPA on August 6, 2010 | 29 Comments »
Now that we have our own chickens, it’s suddenly become more important to me that the chickens we buy for meat have had a reasonable quality of life. They’re such interesting, intelligent birds, and while our girls haven’t quite made a vegetarian out of me yet, I am now looking more closely at the meat [...]
Profiling Chickens
Posted in Frugal Living, Musings, tagged backyard chickens, naming chickens on July 25, 2010 | 26 Comments »
Am I boring you yet with all these chicken posts? Just one more to complete the set – I thought those of you who were following their antics might like to know what we eventually named them all. . . . . . Top of the pecking order is Queenie, full working title “Queenie the [...]
Weekend Breads
Posted in Food & Friends, Frugal Living, Recipes, tagged baking bread at home, beetroot dip, corn bread, maize meal, semolina, semolina loaf, sourdough corn loaf on July 21, 2010 | 29 Comments »
As I mentioned in the snippets, I baked Joanna’s cornbread and Sally’s semolina loaf over the weekend. The semolina loaf (above) is a charming yet easy yeasted loaf, which went down well with my family of sourdough lovers. The fine semolina gives the bread an interesting flavour and a smooth, creamy coloured crumb. I made [...]
Dandelion Fever
Posted in Frugal Living, tagged backyard chickens on July 11, 2010 | 19 Comments »
Friends, Romans, countrymen…send me your weeds! Our chickens love oxalis and onion weed, but more than anything else in the whole world, even more than corn on the cob, they love dandelions. Thankfully they grow like…ahh…weeds in the front yard. I thought you might enjoy seeing the frenzy that precedes the daily feeding…
Glorious Eggs
Posted in Frugal Living, tagged backyard chickens, homegrown eggs on July 3, 2010 | 32 Comments »
Our chickens have started laying. Over the last couple of days, they’ve given us four little eggs. They’re quite small – between 43 to 49 grams (yes, I weighed them), which is hardly surprising, since our girls are still very young. Here’s one of them next to the standard 59g egg that we buy from [...]
Permaculture Gardening
Posted in Frugal Living, tagged home grown vegetables, Linda Woodrow, Permaculture Home Garden, raising seedlings on July 2, 2010 | 21 Comments »
This book has changed our lives. Written for Australian conditions, Linda Woodrow’s brilliant text for turning a suburban backyard into a self-sufficient organic garden is full of really clever ideas. I thought I’d share just one of them with you today. One of the tenets of Linda’s plan is to plant out advanced seedlings – [...]
Bed of Buckwheat
Posted in Frugal Living, tagged backyard chickens, buckwheat on June 24, 2010 | 20 Comments »
As you know, our chickens are here to garden for us. The plan is to move them from bed to bed, allowing them to eat everything in sight and then fertilise the soil, ready for planting. Yesterday, they had their first rotation – into a bed of buckwheat grown just for them. I thought you [...]
Snippets
Friday, 8.40pm
This made me cry...
. . . . .
Friday, 6am
One of the nicest things about sourdough is how well it fits into our lifestyle. I fed my starter up last night, and have just kneaded up a 3kg batch of 50:50 bakers flour:wholemeal spelt dough. I'll leave it alone now until late afternoon, when I'll shape and bake rolls and loaves for the weekend and next week's school lunches. The boys are eating a loaf a day on top of what they take to school, so thank goodness the breadmaking process is simple!
Chickens
Our hen Bertha is the wild woman of the chicken coop. She's a bit lopsided, with a bent comb and a puffy chest - Steve the vet once described her as "matronly". She's always dishevelled, with her breast feathers poking out at funny angles and she'll happily walk around covered in bits of food and dirt. She's certainly no show chicken, but she lays big eggs, and she's whippet fast and very smart. She's also downright ornery. :)
PS. Click on the photos for a better look at Bertie! :)
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