Lazy summer days

 Hi All,

Well, I haven't really been blogging, but here's a few pics of some of the things I've been up to lately...

I started my first ever longstitch (thanks Mum for the kit).  Yes, I'm doing it all wrong, but I don't care, as it's keeping my hands and mind busy.

Ashley and I have started learning to play our favourite songs on the ukelele, all self taught - it's so much fun!

We've eaten a LOT of yummy fresh apples off our trees

Grumpy Pa came over to visit in January, and helped with a bunch of odd jobs around the place, including our new section of fence

And tidying up the old wood shed, to give us bike storage

Papa Sam assembled the new trampoline that Nana Rose bought the kids for Christmas

 Major Tom is still healthy and well, and keeping an eye on things from a shady spot (look closely - that's him under the grape vine)

Speaking of grapes, we've had some lovely ones from the back fence this year :)

And the pumpkins are still hiding under the leaves, slowly ripening (we didn't plant them - these are self-sown in the compost heap).

The peach tree gave us 10-12 beautiful peaches, despite having a nasty case of peach leaf curl.  Instead of spraying, I used a whole heap of my Debco Saturaid and Wally's Break Through organic pellets, and just worked on getting the plant healthier.  Sure enough, it perked up and is beautifully green and healthy.  Hopefully next year's crop will be better as a result.

Our pears are ripe enough that the kids have started picking them to put in their school lunches

We're a little low on eggs at the moment, but the girls are slowly adjusting to less space

After a nasty spate of scaly mite, our chook "Leaf" has cute pink little feet, and the last of the infected scales are still dropping.  Thanks a bunch to some Raleigh's Medicated Ointment and a couple of days confinement to a cage.

 And just a few days ago, Papa Sam built an extension to our chook run, to let the girls have extra space.  When we need to, we can swing the gate to the old fence, to halve the amount of space the girls have.

That's all for now :)  Take care and love to everyone

Mama Fern

Oaty Sweetened Condensed Milk Slice

Hi All,

Thought I'd share my 10-20 minute sanity saver for the days where I've completely forgotten to bake anything for school lunches and it's getting late in the morning.  I found a variation of this recipe on the internet one day, while trying to work out what on earth to do with almost an entire tin of sweetened condensed milk left over.  And it only takes a couple minutes to prepare.

The ingredients are as follows:

• 1 can of sweetened condensed milk
• 50gm melted butter
• 3 cups rolled oats

Optional extras:

• 1 cup coconut (they're always best with this added)
• 1 cup sultanas, raisins or other dried fruit
• Zest of one lemon or orange

Simply mix all of the above in a bowl, press into a greased and lined 20x20cm baking dish and bake at 180 degrees Celcius for around 10-20 minutes, or until golden brown on top and around the edges.

Perfectly cooked

I like to ice mine with a layer of plain or lemon flavoured icing.  The kids love them, and you can add pretty much anything you find in store-bought muesli bars.

Love to all,
Mama Fern

Now we're cooking with... Sunshine!

Hi All,

Two of the kids and I decided to do some experimenting this weekend, making our own solar cookers.  I'd heard that you could possibly make one with just a piece of cardboard covered in tinfoil and folded in half.  I have actually tried those before, and they weren't great, but kinda worked...  So, we set to work and made a couple on Saturday.

Cooker number 1

Cooker number 2

And the waiting begins...

Well, they failed miserably (as could be expected).  We left them for a few hours, and all that happened was that the egg congealed somewhat, and didn't change at all.  Even near the hottest part of the day, when we covered the plates with glass, we still had no change whatsoever.

We decided to research designs and try again on Sunday morning.

Then Sunday morning came, and surprise, surprise...  It was heavily overcast :(  We delayed bothering with the new design since the primary requirement was to actually have some sun in the first place.

We went out shopping (and have hopefully finally found a replacement washing machine - yay!), only to realise that near the end of our shopping trip, the sun was blazing happily in the sky, free of cloud.  I had to inform the kids at this stage that as it was around 4pm, we'd have no chance of making the cooker and testing it properly, since the sun was losing it's heat...

But they begged to do it anyway, which I'm super glad happened, as it actually turned out to be at least a good time for testing our new cooker.  It was just before 5pm when we were ready to go.

The cooker was made from a plastic storage cube and a cardboard box, with polystyrene blocks as insulation in between the two.  We then covered the cardboard box with tinfoil, created some reflectors from cardboard and foil (yesterday's solar cooker failures, chopped into the reflector shapes).  After that, I put a small muffin pan inside (the only black cooking container I had that was small enough), and covered the cooking area with some clear cellophane.

Side view

Cooker set up and loaded with an egg

Close up as the cooking started

Finished result

As it was so late in the day, we didn't manage to get the egg fully cooked, but we tested the temperature around 5:30pm at a steady 60 degrees Celcius.  We took the egg out after the sun had gone behind the clouds for too long and we couldn't get any higher than 40 degrees.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get to try out some muffins, but still - SUCCESS!

Love to All,
Mama Fern

Brand new home for the girls

Hi All,

So, after much coercion and begging on my behalf, my beloved went out and built me a new chook enclosure.  The girls are upset at the lack of roaming space, but we're finally able to start working on the garden.

I'll leave you with the photos of his hard work.

Love to all,

Mama Fern

The old area, where the chickens roamed free

Before Sam was let loose on the new area

Putting in the first fence

Coop moved into the new enclosure

My favourite builder, making a gate

Completed enclosure

Starting afresh...

Wow, it's been forever since I posted anything on here, and so much has happened.

We moved house, finally.  Everyone has a space to call their own, and we're slowly turning this building from a house to our family home.  Winter was really cold, and the fireplace didn't quite compensate, so in the next couple of weeks, we're getting the place sorted for next winter, with a new fireplace baffle, underfloor and ceiling insulation, and a ventilation system.  Here's hoping it'll mean we're much, much warmer next year!

Making space :

We knocked out a wardrobe and tidied up the walls, to turn a small bedroom into a decent single bedroom.

Papa Sam enjoyed demolition WAY too much!

Now the plan is to replace his bedroom furniture and possibly put in a wall unit and wardrobe, to extend the storage options.

Wind, wind and more wind:

One of our fences fell down in a recent storm.  It turns out that the previous owners had pretty much just glued it to the neighbour's carport.  So there's a repair job for later.

 

Chickens a-roaming:

The girls have all re-homed well, but we've had a few issues getting them fenced in.  For the moment, they're pretty well free roaming, and enjoying the sandpit we have.

Garage sort:

And our Labour Day was spent building a shadow board for Sam's tools in the shed, as well as sorting out the general debris in multiple boxes and plastic containers.  We're just about done.

Birthdays:

We've had a couple of birthdays in the new house, so here's the cakey goodness:

Our youngest girl's 11th birthday cake

Our first teenager helped make her own cake

That's most of it!  Sorry for taking so long to update!

Love to all,
Mama Fern

Changes are afoot!

The heart is a garden where thought flowers grow;

The thoughts that we think are the seeds that we sow.

Every kind, loving thought bears a kind, loving deed;

While a thought that is selfish is just like a weed.

We must watch what we think, each minute, all day;

And pull out the weed thoughts and throw them away;

And plant loving seed thoughts so thick in a row

That there will not be room for weed thoughts to grow.

By Katherine Merrill

Hi All,

Well, we've done a really bad job of updating the blog lately, but, to be honest, we were all pretty ready for taking the new big step in our lives.  So, we've bought ourselves our very first house, and move in about 28 days.  Desperately looking forward to the extra space in the house itself and to everyone having their own bedrooms.

It's going to be a bittersweet experience...  Having built up so much history here, in only three and a half years, to suddenly have to start with a clean slate.  But we move on with all of the experience we've built up while living here.

From two lonely souls, each with their own fold of scared and insecure children, we've turned into a strong family, with a good support network and a whole menagerie of pets that we all adore.

We've baked, preserved, dug, planted, harvested...  It's been an amazing learning experience.
 

So here's to old friends, and to our old home within whom we loved, shared and grew together.  And here's to new adventures and experiences ahead!

Love to all,
Mama Fern