It's been a while but we're back

Hello, yoo-hoo, remember us!?

It's been a while but we're back. Where have we been? Just around, doing our regular thing but with a little less time.  Despite our previous commitments to downshifting Adam started working full time at the start of this year. We enjoyed a charmed existence through most of 2015 when Adam was working (very) casually. We had heaps of family time and time to pursue other interesting projects around the house and in the community but the time came for Ads to get a bit more structure and a little more income in his life. He applied for a few jobs then came his dream job - Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo Project Coordinator with Birdlife WA. He coordinates the Great Cocky Count - a mammoth citizen science project plus coordinates surveys of nesting hollows and other side projects. Look, this is him cuddling a Carnaby's chick near Badgingarra. That thing is so ugly it's adorable. Only it's mother and Ads would love it!

Adam is really happy and motivated in his new role. As for the downshifting lifestyle, well, anyone who works for a not-for-profit can probably understand that we've got the earning less bit covered :) but that's fine. We can afford his pay cut and the upside is that Adam is learning a whole new set of skills and is enjoying his career more than ever. The full time work hours are a bit tough but he hopes to reduce his hours slightly as of next year. 

As for me, I'm still busy at work part time. This is me giving a worm farming workshop a few weeks ago at my second spiritual home Earthwise Community Garden:

And me volunteering at my first spiritual home, Hilton Harvest Community Garden giving a composting and gardening talk in May. Spot the difference!

Together with the other wonderful committee people, we have been really busy at Hilton Harvest (and do check out the website - I've been managing that and am pretty proud of how it looks at the moment). I'm there every Monday morning with a little rag tag group of gardeners whom I love. We compost, weed, plant and generally potter about. We also have a work for the dole crew who are hard working and lovely, plus we run the Buds n Blooms interegenerational gardening group. All our activities are listed here, just in case you want to join us! We've got an amazing vision and helpful City of Fremantle people supporting us. I get so much out of volunteering at the Garden - way more than I put in. 

So as you can see we have been working hard and are just about to choof off on a well deserved little holiday for some luxuriating in the warmth. I look forward to writing more posts soon as there is more to catch you up on including the wonderful Permaculture Design Course I did a couple of months ago and Ads is keen to share some geeky deets too. We are also mulling over a few interesting home projects including bees and special compost systems...stay tuned. We're back. 

xx

Our Green Christmas Tree

I know, I know. Miminalism and decluttering are the things to do at the moment. I can dig that. We just got rid of a mattress and a bookcase on Gumtree this week. We're into it. But it's not my religion. The classic minimalist aesthetic is not my cup of tea. I love Bea Johnson's work on bringing minimal waste to the mainstream, but there is no way I could live in a house like that! The inside of my bathtub has more character. And anyway, sometimes a bigger and better, new and improved thing doesn't have to be bad.

Introducing our new, relatively enormous CHRISTMAS TREE! It's beautiful, isn't it?

My little Quincey is 9 now. He is in the twilight years of his childhood and I want to make those years memorable and wonderful and warm. Will a new Christmas tree achieve that? No. But when we pulled the old one out of the bag and he said it looked scrawny and had probably shrunk since he was little and please could we get a new one, well, he did have a point. 

This is our first and until recently our only family Christmas tree. We got it in the UK in 1998 at

Poundland. Yes, for one pound. You have to gaffa tape the feet to the desired surface (or prop it up against the couch as pictured) for it to stay upright. It's shedding. It looks like an anorexic version of Oscar the Grouch. It's time.

So where do you head for a new Christmas Tree? Gumtree of course. Our new one was 15 minutes drive down the road. Perfect size. Pick up immediately. Cost $25. Bargain.

I was a little worried that we'd need more decorations to make our new one look good, but turns out we had enough with a few home made extras. An added feature of the new tree is the lack of fairy lights. We haven't had lights for years now and we still feel cheery when we gaze upon it. But I think that's because of the Angel Quin made in Kindy.

As for Oscar. I'm going to take him to work so he can brighten our days there. He's the perfect desk top size.

PS
I really think I'm on a winner here with the advent calendar situation. All the cards came in just one cardboard box wrapped in plastic. So not bad waste wise, and definitely better sugar wise!

Happy Festive Season everyone!

Sustainable House Day - We're OPEN!

For some strange reason we are opening our house for Sustainable House Day again this Sunday. It's a lot of work in preparation but we love it. We've opened before in 2011 and in 2013 and we remember the fun of chatting to people about gardening, PV, chooks and bikes all day. What a wonderful way to spend a day! What we tend to erase from our memory is the weekends full of weeding, planting, sweeping... but what the heck, I actually enjoy that kind of work anyway and our garden needs a good spring clean every few years so it's good motivation. We're exhibitionists, so we're just embracing it!

Looking through all the amazing houses that will be open this year I have stopped to wonder why we should open ours. Many of the other houses are new builds, all 100% solar  passive and 9 star rated. Their houses look like Ikea magazines (minus the disposable furniture I hope!) and are all neat and shiny. Our house, by comparison looks like granny knitted it, what with our fridge worm farm, our chooks and our scruffy native garden (yes, that is a knitted wheelbarrow below).

Our house is a 1960’s brick veneer house which provided many challenges to retrofit to be more sustainable and energy efficient. We are located on the south side of a hill with a beautiful gum tree to our north (which we can't bare to chop down) and to start with we had no north facing windows. So there is no way we would even be on the star rating scale. Since we bought the house in 2001 we’ve made heaps of changes. But the main change has been with us, as in, our behaviour.

We are firm believers in behaviour change as a significant part of the solution to our current environmental crisis. One of the most inspiring person I've met, Colin Ashton-Graham (a behaviour change economist) starts his presentation like this:

See these light globes? Tell me, which one uses the least amount of power.

And of course everyone votes for either the LEDs or the CFLs and Colin goes, 'Sorry folks, the one that uses the least amount of power is the incandescent globe. It's the only one that is switched off.' Ha! That's how clever Colin is! He then goes on to explain that a sustainable house with unsustainable people in it is less sustainable overall than an unsustainable house with sustainable people in it. Our everyday choices like turning lights off when not needed, opening up the house to let in cool sea breezes in summer, only having one fridge, cooking more at home with local, organic produce, riding more, getting into community and purchasing less crap are central to sustainability. Having the latest sustainability gadget isn't really our thing (unless its bikes, that's Adam's weakness!).

So, while we do have some interesting stuff to show, especially our garden, we also hope the behaviour stuff will rub off too. Anyway, come and visit. We're open from 10am to 4pm this Sunday, September 13 - be lovely to meet you!

A sustainable wedding

Well, after 18 years of being boyfriend/girlfriend/partners Amy and I finally tied the knot. It was a great day and of course we tried to give it as low a footprint as possible.

The biggest factor in this is probably travel. We certainly didn't want people flying to Bali or Costa Rica just for our big day due to the air miles. So, we went ultra local: in our back yard! It just made sense for us, we love our home and garden, we have the space and it made it lower stress as well. We could set it up as we wanted, not having to rely on other people to do things like waste management, decorations, etc. Sure, it made a bit more work for us but Amy and I had time off work to do this. In the end two people out of seventy flew to the wedding and everyone else drove or rode a few kms.

We borrowed almost all the plates, cutlery, etc from Amy's parents church. We also borrowed chairs, tablecloths, cushions, lighting and more from friends and family. No plastic involved there and no cost. Amy made decorations, lots of beautiful bunting.

We paid some great local artists help out with photography, dress making, catering and music and we even had our friend Tim from Sand Sculpture WA to build us a sand sculpture as a wedding present to us.

With waste we put all the organic waste to the chooks or compost bins. All recyclables fit into one yellow Sulo bin. This was mainly bottles (wine and beer). We considered getting a keg of beer but in the end we didn't think we'd get through 50 litres and a lot would get wasted. This turned out to be true since we only used about 20 litres in the end. Most of the beer and wine was from WA, some from over east.

The flowers were flown in at great expense from the front garden (Banksia menzeisii and prionotes). Amy's dress was made from an old table cloth and she didn't buy new shoes or a tiara! The food was all vegetarian, made from mostly local and some organic produce. We even managed to use some of our own produce: home dried cherry tomatoes and pickled olives.

The power was 100% renewable, either from our solar panels or from Synergy's natural power. The water came from the rain water tank.

We had a great time and definitely recommend backyard weddings if you have the time and space.



Mulberry season!

Perth is a tough place to grow food. However, there are a few exceptions - sweet potato, olives and most fun of all, mulberries. Here in our suburb, there are several cracker mulberry trees right on the verge. Great big trees, great for climbing and getting mulberry stains on your school uniform. 

Luckily we often ride to school and we have been watching the fruit on our favorite tree getting plumper and darker over the last week or so. And now they are ready to pick!

We picked enough to take some home and put in a pie. Funny thing was we collected them in an unused doggy poo bag. That freaked me out a bit because from the outside of the bag it looked like we were the very responsible owner of some kind of massive great dane. 

Anyway, once home we whipped up this yummy pie: 

• Short crust pastry: half a cup plain spelt flour/half a cup wholemeal flour or what every flour you prefer, a few tablespoonish scoops of butter. Rubbed in to the flour, add a tablespoon of sugar and a pinch of salt, add a little dash of water and a little dash of milk and combine with a butter knife. Not sure why we always use a butter knife to mix it, but my Granny said this was essential. Who am I to question her wisdom?
• Mulberry mix: chuck in a good few handfuls of mulberries (no need to destalk), a peeled and grated granny (fruit, not the Grandparent), and a tablespoon of brown sugar - no water as the berries are full of juice. Let it reduce a bit. 
• Roll out the pastry, put it in a greased pie dish and pour in the mulberry mix and bake, 180 degrees for 20 mins or so.

Vola! Great with whipped cream!

I just love making use of food that would otherwise go to waste. Mulberries are so sweet and fragile, they only last on the tree a day or two before they drop and are ruined. So while they are in season its great to take advantage of them. You can munch them straight from the tree or you can juice them. We also freeze them in containers to keep us going between seasons. People often ask how they can get berries plastic free - well this is the answer for Perth peeps! They are great on ice cream or in smoothies after they have been frozen. You can also make mulberry jam - but be warned they are very low in pectin so you will need to add heaps of lemon juice (which can effect the flavour) or add commercial jamsetta. 

Go forth with your doggy poo bag and enjoy the bonanza!

Okey rides!

Meet Okey. He's the newest member of our family and we already love him to bits!

He is a whippet, but not a pure breed which is fine for us as we will be having his ballies chopped off as soon as we can. And unfortunately he's not a rescue dog. We waited a while for a whippet-ish puppy, but alas, we were just too impatient. We wanted a whippet because they always come highly recommended as lovely chilled out pets. We are just too precious about our garden and our retic to risk a chewy breed. So far Okey has lived up to the chilled out pet description. He doesn't chew much, he has only wee'd inside once, he doesn't pull on the lead, he is gentle and doesn't nip. But he does cry at night a bit. In fact he howls. Ads and I are frantically reading the puppy books from the library!

We have been gently getting him used to the idea of the cargo bike. We've had him sniff around it while constantly feeding him treats, then he got a sit in the box. I assumed he'd freak out and go all shivery but quite the opposite. He just lay down and had a snooze!

So the next day we all went for a ride to the park - Ads riding, me and Okey in the box. It went well, he just lay back and enjoyed the ride! What a good boy! Our next step is to get a bolt in the box where we can clip a short lead so he can ride by himself and not jump out or strangle himself... I can't wait to get fully mobile in the cargo with Okey!

Let them play

We had a beautiful weekend, just the three of us pottering around at home. Ads and I have some serious work to do in the garden. We spent most of Sunday morning fighting with a section of boysenberry that we had let go feral. We won, but it was a bloody victory.

As soon as we had started working, however, Quincey chimed in with his usual 'I'm bored' mantra. As a keen (and recently frustrated) gardener, this was the last thing I wanted to hear the minute I slipped on my gardening gloves. Grrrr. I wanted to chuck him in the brambles Winnie the Pooh style. But I restrained myself and replied my usual reply 'You're not board, your just lazy. Go and find something to do'. And to my delight he did.

Any modern day parent will understand how truly heartwarming it is to see their kids play in nature, rather than on a screen. It's hard for us parents now, but we have to try. For us, Quin can nag for screens for 45 mins or more. I'm fairly stubborn and I consider this a test of my parenting. Most of the time, together we can push through this and something beautiful happens. He wanders off and finds something creative to do like he did on Sunday. It was a whole little world he had created. I was impressed with his patience - he was working on it for a good while before I found him. He'd also been working on some rather complicated Hero Factory blockade to our front door.

This was all much more fun than boysenberry wrestling so after I took these photos, I played too. It reminded me of how much I love looking for 'mini beasts' under rocks and mulch.

Our lives are not always as charmed as the pictures make it seem, but this was one of those rare and precious mornings. It rained in the afternoon and in the evening we went out with the torch to check on Quin's creation. A snail had moved in! How wonderful!

Sugar!

While other mummy blogs are espousing the virtues of a sugar free diet, this one will share with you how to unashamedly love it! Call me old fashioned but I love the traditional baking trifector: flour, butter and sugar. Not very trendy I know, and I do love a little quinoa occasionally but on the whole I'm not into superfoods. Superfoods are for supermums and I'm not one of those. Hence this post about sugar and its use, specifically in lilly pillie jelly.

Quin and I were visiting friends on the bike the other day and he insisted on stopping to pick some lilly pillies to munch on. These are cute little fruit that grow on beautiful big trees that are common in old Hilton gardens. They are native to the east coast of Australia but do very well here. The texture is weird and slightly astringent. They are free and bountiful and so we eat them! We've done jelly and cordial before and both taste a bit like different forms of fairy floss. What's not to love?

Quin remember how much he wanted to raise some funds for his next Lego Movie Lego set and suggested we pick enough to make some jelly to sell to unsuspecting family and friends. Not wanting to quash his entrepreneurial spirit, I agreed to help him. Four o'clock in the afternoon - a perfect time to start a batch of jelly and I knew I'd 'get it done in twice the time' with Quin helping (as my Mum would say to us as a kid's with a smile and wink to Dad!). So, enthusiastically taking his life in his own hands he balanced on the fence and on the bike and we quickly picked 1.5 kgs. Perfect.

The recipe is from my favorite preserves book, A Year in a Bottle by Sally Wise. The recipes are simple and never fail. This one is:
1.5 kgs lilly pillies
water
juice of one lemon
sugar

Boil lilly pillies in enough water to just cover them with lemon juice, then cook gently for 30 mins.

Strain through a colander, then through a sieve lined with muslin.

For each cup of liquid add a cup of sugar, stir until sugar is dissolved and then bring to a rolling boil.

When setting point is reached (ie test with a few drops on a saucer in the fridge - if it sets when cooled, its set) pour into sterile jars and seal. The jelly is beautifully clear and smooth and very fairy flossy.

Animal magic

A few weeks ago we went camping to Sandy Cape near Jurien Bay north of Perth. We also call it Sandy Crack because it's sandy and it gets in your crack. Also Windy Crack because it's windy. As sandy and windy as it is, it is also beautiful. During the pack up for camping I sometimes wonder if it is all worth it; all the gear and food, ice, surf skis, kids, a dog and a two and a half our drive just to hang out on a beach. And of course when we are there all set up on said beach it is abundantly clear to me how important it is to get in to nature. Because nature is magic.

Quincey had a particularly magic experience when we found this little fella (a Southern Spiny Tailed Gecko) by our campsite. Ads lifted up some of our gear and found him under it. Quincey ran over and squatted near him to say hello. We all told Quincey to not go too close or the gecko will be scared away, but actually the opposite happened. The gecko slowly crept up to Quin and sheltered in his shade. Quincey edged back and the gecko crept closer. How wonderful and magic and tender and special. A boy's close encounter with a wild animal. You can't script that or buy that. You don't even witness it very often.

Of course after their tender moments together we explained to Quin that, no, we could not take him home. So Quin cried and then sulked in the car for an hour. But I think it was worth it and that we will all remember it.

Have reusables, will travel

So, we are off to visit family and friends in the UK and Europe in a few days. With blowing all that carbon (18.53 tonnes of carbon for which 111 trees need to be planted, to be precise), the least we can do is try to avoid some single use plastics while we are away.

I've been collecting and making a reusables for a while now but I've also made a few purchases to facilitate travel sans plastic. Most of which will fit in my snazzy new bum bag:

Among other things, I'll keep with me one emergency cloth pad, home made lip balm, a bamboo spork, my lucky Onya bag and a hanky.

Quin also has a new bum bag. He will carry with him his spork, bamboo straw (apparently essential), Onya water bottle, and a minifigure (also essential).

I'm banking on Ads to lug around our big water bottle, keep cups, containers, camera, map books and all the other heavy stuff. Bless him.

I've also given some thought to my toiletries. It's easy to have your home made stuff at home, but I do wonder how they will travel. Glass might break and my deodorant might melt! But I'll try anyway. I'm packing my home made hair treatment, toothpaste, washable make-up pads, deodorant, essential oils and a base oil and my toothbrush.  I've given up my contacts which came in disposable packaging and I'm contemplating going make-up free. I think it will work - we'll find out if our personal hygiene is up to scratch if people ask to move seats away from us on the plane!

Of course, there will be other regular bits like panadol, bandaids, colgate for Quincey etc, some things we can't avoid and I'm certain I will end up with bloody plastic straws at some stage, but we will give it our best shot - by the way, there are a few other good plastic free tips on the Plastic Free July website (just a little plug!)

So, we are just about ready to hit the road - wish us luck!

Love miles

I have this brilliant idea that no one else thinks is a brilliant idea. Here it is: you should only be allows to marry someone who lives within a 500 km radius of your birth place. I'm sure you can see the genius in this idea. But just in case it needs explaining...

The thing is that these days people travel so much. Its pretty much a right of passage to take a year off between high school and work/uni to pop over to the UK or South America, work, bum around a bit, have a blast, find yourself and meet the love of your life. This is a grave and terrible scenario because what happens next is that you move back to Australia settle down and have babies without the support of one set of grandparents, siblings and little cousins for the kids to play with. Said grandparents who live on the other side of the world of course feel pretty sad about missing out on seeing their own offspring, let alone their own grandchildren and then have to visit every second summer and on the summer they don't visit it is expected that you visit them. And if you don't, well, you have family that you barely know. Cousins grow up never having shared a Christmas day, Granny's don't know what size cloths to send, and siblings never get to just pop over for a cuppa and do the dishes for each other after sleepless nights with newborns. Its heartbreaking. I know this because Adam is English and we have family in England that we miss terribly.

We foolishly fell in love many many moons ago when I thought it romantic to shack up with a foreigner. I'm not entirely sure I could have helped falling in love, but had Adam never traveled to Australia we would have never met and I would be none the wiser. But he did travel, the rest is history. So we, like many others, find our selves in this position where we would love to visit England and have family visit here but, alas, the carbon.

Its serious, all this air travel and I don't like it. FIFO's don't just travel from Perth to Tom Price now, they come from New Zealand to Tom Price or Perth to South Africa. Kids fly over east ever school holidays to visit their Dads, and geez, do we love to holiday! Traveling overseas is so common - how can it be special if you go overseas twice a year? There is no 'trip of a lifetime' anymore, nowhere is new, everyone has been there before.

All that said, we are going back to England for Christmas this year. It has been about 6 years since our last visit and about 4 years since anyone has visited us so its due. Parents are getting older, babies have been born and teenagers are growing into adults. We are about to spew out some serious carbon. But we call them love miles and while we try to limit them, they are unavoidable.

Offsetting is not the answer to all of this but its a little something that is better than nothing - actually its not better than nothing, nothing is better, as in, not flying is better. Got that? Anyway, I offset our carbon emissions for the three of us for the flights to London and a few internal Europe flights too. According to Carbon Neutral we will produce 18.53 tonnes of carbon for which 111 trees need to be planted. It cost $416, which does seem a lot, but then, I nearly spent that much on a night out to see Beyonce (tickets, dinner, babysitter). I think a contributing to a safe environmental future is worth more than Beyonce - bless her.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to this trip of ours. We are going to exciting places that will be new for us and we will be renewing relationships with old friends and family.We just try for minimal air travel and where we do fly, we offset and we really look forward to it as a special, exciting time because it will be a while until we fly again.

A very virtuous meal (and plastic free to boot!)

My sister and her family thrive in a slightly crazy house. Kids, dogs, knitting, books, cellos, and cats licking the breakfast dishes...and yet it all works beautifully and when you walk in to their house you just feel good, comfy and loved - we love it at there house! This school holidays we decided to add pasta making to the mix. It was great fun, 100% plastic free and totally virtuous (apart from the flour coming from Italy).

I'll let the photos tell the story:

 The girls made the mixture of flour and eggs - the eggs were from our girls.

Quin thought it looked like messy fun so joined in pretty quickly.

 This bit was great fun! We made some spaghetti and some ravioli. 

Mixing up the mixture for the ravioli - this consisted of plastic free ricotta, herbs from Hilton Harvest Community Garden and home grown pumpkin.

 The finished, slightly oversized, ravioli! 

 And the spaghetti out to dry on the cloths airer - don't let the dog in!

 The finished product with a drizzle of Hilton Harvest olive oil.

 Delish! And it only took us five hours to make!