Sounds good Kristy!

We’re all moved into our home now. We’ve also sold our old unit and should have that all settled next week. Our goal now is to pay down the home loan and arrange our living costs to be as low as possible.

So far we’re not doing well on this plan and seem to be at Bunnings every day for bits and pieces for projects around…[Read more]

Sounds good to me. Though remember in the non fruit seasons it might get a bit bare. Maybe have some options for chooks for the forest for those seasons.

My two chookies have provided us with 6 eggs in 5 days. Yay. The smaller tailless one sneezed a couple of times yesterday, they got quite wet in storms, hope she’s alright.

I can finally join in. Got my two hens yesterday. 1yr+ Rhode Island Reds. All settled into their new home … Pictures of chooks:
http://widgetgrove.com.au/2011/11/our-first-chooks

AND today I got 2 eggs!
http://widgetgrove.com.au/2011/11/our-first-eggs

I’m keen to set up a garden just for them with all the permy plants in it. I’d better…[Read more]

My husband and i (mostly he) dug a 0.5m square pond here in soft soil. We ended up putti down black plastic, so i am interested in your natural approach. Only took a couple of days for frogs to move in. We had grand plans of a solar powered water pump to keep mossies away. New house has a frog pond, a fountain, a little dam and troughs, but i…[Read more]

We settle on our house in 2 days. I keep revising our budget, but i can’t seem to reduce costs so far. A big expense in the plan is electricity. I think we’ll focus on reducing our usage as a first project.

Yesterday i harvested 4 globe artichokes, steamed. Fried garlic, pepperoni and had on bread with mayo. Can’t wait to figure out to preserve some for pizzas etc.

I dug around one bulb today and it’s tiny, i’m in north vic. Probably atleast a month to go. However i need to move house in a couple of days. Wondering if i can transplant.

When you do find a place calculate what rates are going to be. Our rates here in Wodonga seem to be huge. I think i might be paying $2000 a year. Wowsers. That’s an expense we’ll have to oay for the rest of our lives now and no escaping it.

Did you end up doing hugelkultur porgey or burning? I’m curious about doing hugelkultur beds at my new house when i have fruit clippings.

In some ways the zone info would help, but every garden is different. Even here in Temporate riverina everyone is able to grow diff things and a huge range in harvests. There’s good gardening guides on gardenate.com and abc gardening website based on zone. Other than that it’s trial and error. I would like a temporate zone thread tho :).

Hi

I just put in an order for 4 australorps and have been doing some reading about chook paddock rotationso i want to set up for doing that, especially as i have so many fruit trees that will need cleaning up under. New house comes with a chook pen and a shed with a bird house in it but i’m confused about the size of the door, must’ve been…[Read more]

When i moved in here I paniced and planted crysanthamums and pyrethrum. Seemed to work? Could be a coincidence that we haven’t had any since. It was so bad i’d find them in my clothes in the morning and stains on carpet ew. They’d crawl on roof around lights. Then none ever since.

My father talks about a big coffee mug he had years ago from there. He loved it because of the large size and i guess it was special to him. Eventually it broke and he would love another. Let me know if you have one that sounds like that. I could get it for him for a gift, if it’s for sale :).

Lol wow. Let us know how it goes. I am planning an outdoor bathroom that this can work for.

Pulled about 10 small Parsnips, steamed with garlic, the fried with butter ;). Ate strawberries from the bush too.

Very wonderful, thanks for sharing. I do a lot of my gardening that way. Cooking too, i often wonder why people go through so many steps for things that should be simple. I guess I’ll add complexity as simple versions don’t work.

So many similar stories. We’re having to sell our city unit at the moment and are being told it’s the wrong time to sell and all that. But we also want a simple life. It’ll be nice to just have our country block and not worry about tenants etc. thanks for the update earthgirl.

Gosh, I had this idea recently too, probably also inspired by the movie and by packing my gorgeous recipe books into boxes to take to the new house. I’m in for this challenge too, maybe one night a week will be recipe book night. Thanks :).

Bought 4 mor glass cordial bottles and am going to do lemon barley cordial next. Got some lemons from our new place and more oranges. Mulberries are about to come ripe. I could do maybe 1 jar of mulberry jam hrmn…