Category Archives: Self-reliance

A New Hat

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GMan always wears a hat when he is out in the garden.  The one he wears is a cloth one which has seen better days and only has a relatively narrow brim.  On several occasions we have looked at broad-brimmed straw hats but they never seem to be quite the right fit.

Today we were in the local hardware store and he tried some on.  We found this one which was perfect – except it did not have a chin strap.

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I assured him that I could make a strap without any problem.  I was not sure whether I had any cord at home but when I checked my collection, I found some red cord and a toggle that I had saved from the drawstring on a fleece top which had worn out.

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I threaded the cord around the base of the crown on the outside then passed the ends through to the inside, attached the toggle and tied off the ends.  The cord sits under the band on the outside so is not visible.

GMan is very pleased with his new hat and very happy with the chin strap which I created in about 5 minutes using things that I had on hand.

 

 

Tomato Trial

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I apologise for the break in posts but my computer access has been somewhat curtailed due to some repairs to the main computer.  It is all resolved, thanks to the local computer shop, and we are back in business.

Today I want to share my latest success in preserving our bumper harvest of cherry tomatoes.

After removing the stalks and rinsing the tomatoes, I blitzed them in the blender.

My dehydrator has solid sheets for making fruit leathers so I poured the resulting puree onto the sheets.

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Here is the same tray after drying for about 8 hours.

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I removed the dried tomato and broke it up.

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It was quite leathery and pliable so still had some moisture.  I returned the pieces to the dehydrator and dried them some more.

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Finally, I ground the dried pieces in the blender and this is the result.

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From a couple of kilos of cherry tomatoes I have 1 jar of powdered tomato concentrate.  This can be blended with water to make tomato paste which I can use on pizzas or added directly to casseroles or soups.  I am sure there will be a hundred and one uses for it and the great part is that I have a single jar which stores easily in the door of the refrigerator.

Storage from the Sun

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When I wrote this post last month, I mentioned that we were getting a battery system for our solar panels.

Well, the installation was completed on Tuesday afternoon and since then all of our electricity consumption has been independent of the grid.

As well as the battery system we also have more panels.

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This is the cabinet which holds the batteries.

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Inside, it looks like this.

003The interesting thing about the system which we have is that it is a hybrid system.  In fact, we really have 2 banks of solar panels – the original ones which we have had for 5 years remain connected to the grid and any power generated is fed back to the grid with a monetary return to us.  The only things that we have connected to this system are the oven and a single outdoor power point.

Everything else is powered by the solar panels of other system during the day and at night by the excess which is stored in the batteries.

This also means that we can power our home from the batteries (except for the oven) during any periods of power outage.

Following the completion of the battery installation on Tuesday, we have had four brilliant, sunny days.  The screen shot below shows our generation and use and tells the story clearly and simply.

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This shows the last month and each bar is one day.  The yellow bar shows the solar generation, the green line is power exported to the grid, the red line is our consumption and the black bar is power drawn from the grid.  The last 4 days are since the battery system has been operational.  Our solar generation is higher (we now have more panels), 100% of what we generated from the grid-connected panels was exported to the grid and most importantly, we have not used any power from the grid.

I know that every day will not be clear and sunny nor will we have as many hours of daylight as we are getting at the moment as we head towards the summer solstice.  However, we are confident that we will continue to be able to supply our power needs independently of the grid.

There are numerous new technologies available for battery storage systems so it would pay to very carefully consider your circumstances before rushing into a decision like this.  However, if you live in Australia and are interested in more details about our system please email me and I can get some information for you.

A Simple Storage Solution

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Several years ago we bought 2 free-standing hanging racks.  They were for our daughters who were both living in accommodation that had no built-in wardrobes.

Fast-forward a few years and their circumstances changed and the hanging racks both ended up at our place.  One was boxed up in the garage and after a while I sold it on Gumtree.  The other was quite useful as I had it in the spare bedroom/sewing room.  I also use it to hang clothes waiting to be ironed or wheel it into the lounge-room to dry clothes in front of the fire during winter.

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I am working hard to streamline my sewing room and reduce the general clutter.  When I sold the small chest of drawers that had previously lived in the wardrobe it meant that I could use the hanging rail in the wardrobe for the ironing that was yet to be done.

The hanging rack can be dismantled but it is difficult to store.  I am not ready to part with it yet as it is useful during the winter months.010I decided to make a storage bag.  I found some pieces of very strong cotton fabric in my stash and fashioned a bag which was big enough to hold all of the pieces.  I added a couple of ties and it was finished.

009Here are a couple of photos showing the finished article doing its job – holding the disassembled hanging rack.  I simply tied the ties in a knot over the rail at the desired length.

011 012Now I am off to do some more sorting in the sewing room.

Have you got any creative storage solutions?  Please share.

Made from Scratch

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I have previously written a post about making your own pasta from scratch.  Barely 6 months after I wrote this post I made the decision to eat a gluten-free diet for the sake of my health.  The pasta making attachment has languished at the back of the pantry and I keep promising myself that I will try making my own gluten-free pasta.  Well yesterday was finally the day.

After searching the internet and using some ideas gained through making other gluten dough such as pizza bases, I decided to give it a try.

Here is my recipe:

2 cups gluten-free flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
10g psyllium husk
3 eggs
25ml water
25 ml olive oil

2012-01-31 01Combine the dry ingredients, add the eggs and then gradually add the water and oil.  The mixture will not roll into a ball as it does if using wheat flour but it should be damp enough that you can squeeze it together in your hand.  Mix thoroughly for about 3 minutes.  Cover bowl with a damp teatowel to retain the moisture and work as quickly as possible.

Take a small ball of dough and knead well in your hands, press out into a thick disc and feed through the pasta roller on thickest setting.  The dough will crumble but persevere and do it several times until the dough starts to feed through in sheets.  Continue to fold and feed through until you have a good consistency and then feed it through progressively thinner settings.

003Once you have the thickness that you want you can cut it into lasagne sheets or attempt the next step of making fettucine.004It is certainly more difficult to make than conventional pasta but I am hoping it will be worth the effort.  Both the lasagne sheets and fettucine have been frozen so the final verdict will be when they are cooked.  I am very confident that the lasagne will be successful but I will have to wait and see with the fettucine.

Based on what I have done so far, I would say that this has been a worthwhile exercise and I will tweak the recipe further if required.

Watch this space………..

Seasonal Jobs

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Summer is gone and today was a sign of things to come.  Although many of you would scoff at our version of winter it is a clear contrast to our hot, wet summers.

Winter is heralded by cool clear days, cooler nights and a biting westerly wind which can make the apparent temperature seem much less.

Autumn foliageThe leaves have turned and are falling so it was time to gather some firewood as our wood-burner is the only form of heating we have in this house.

We retrieved the dry logs from the woodshed.  These were leftovers from last season.

002This box is right beside the door that leads upstairs.

003And some more under the house.

We are now ready for when we decide to light the fire.

FireplaceGMan has chopped another pile that was by the bottom gate and these are now stacked in the shed to dry out.

Salvaged and Spread

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Now that the weather has finally moderated it is a great time to be out in the garden.

2015-04-18 01We took the ute up to the neighbour’s place to collect the first of 2 loads of mulch that they had kindly offered to us.  This was from when they had some trees trimmed and mulched about a month ago.  Although we have had some light rain in the past day or two the ground was not too wet and GMan was able to bring the ute close to where we wanted to use the mulch.

The newspaper collection has been replenished somewhat, thanks to the generosity of friends and also some that GMan collected from his office.

2015-04-18 02Once again, the newspaper and mulch covered pretty much the same area.  We now have more than half of the front garden deeply mulched.

2015-04-18 03Here are the first of the sweet pea seedling peeking their heads through the soil.  There are also some almost microscopic seedlings which I suspect are the snapdragon or heartsease that I sprinkled in front of the sweet peas.  I am very excited at the prospect of growing some old-fashioned flowers.

2015-04-18 04These are some of the flowers on one of the hibiscus shrubs in the front garden.  It is in the part that is yet to be mulched.

2015-04-18 05It was 4.30pm and I had just finished photographing the garden handiwork when I noticed that this sunshower.  It is the regular rain and relatively warm climate that we enjoy which keeps everything lush and green.  Of course, the rich, volanic soil helps, too.

Permaculture Principles or Plain Commonsense

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Whatever you want to call them, there are things we can do in the garden that will save money and resources.

Here are a couple of projects we have been working on this weekend.

2012-08-05 01When we came here there were numerous shrubs/small trees planted close to the front verandah.  They provided some screening and privacy from the road.  Over time we planted a screening hedge of native shrubs along the boundary so the ones closer to the house became less important from a privacy point of view.  We extended the area in front of the verandah and slightly reduced the amount of lawn.  The shrubs have been pruned several times to try to keep the blow the level of the gutter.

Last year I decided on the final format for this area.  We will have a selection of flowering hibiscus in front of the verandah.  We bought 5 hibiscus at the Garden Expo in July last year and they have been progressing well.  However, one of them was beginning to struggle and we realised that it was being shaded by one of the grevilleas.  We cut down the three remaining shrubs, mulched everything that was small enough to go through the mulcher and cut the bigger branches into manageable lengths.

2015-04-06 02While Gman was mulching Istarted laying out newspapers (usually about 6 sheets at a time) and hosing them down to stop them blowing away.  The we piled the mulch we had made at one end.

2015-04-06 03This shows a close-up of the small logs that we used to create the back edge of the area to be mulched.

2015-04-06 04Here is the mulch spread out.  It was convenient that we ran out of mulch and newspapers at about the same time.  We are going to bring home whatever newspapers we can collect from work in order to continue our project.   There is still quite a bit to do as you can see from the next photo.

2015-04-06 05You can also see some of the hibiscus.  They seem to really be enjoying the full sun now that the overhanging shrubs have been cut down.  We have been offered a huge pile of mulch from the neighbours so that will go towards completing the mulching of this area.  The next job will be to buy some more hibiscus.

2015-04-06 06Finally, I wanted to show you the garden bed that I started last weekend.  It is now dug over, edged with rocks and seeds planted.  We have no shortage of rocks as they are everywhere on the block in all shapes and sizes.  I have planted sweet pea, snapdragon and heartsease seeds in the hope of having a border of colourful spring flowers.  The sweet peas are in a furrow close to the fence which will do double duty of keeping unwanted animals out of the vegie garden and being a trellis for the sweet peas.

Flashback Friday

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As with all new projects, ‘Flashback Friday’ is being fine-tuned.  As well as linking back to the original post I am going to copy and paste it into a new post.  So, here goes…..this is from August 2012 just before Izz turned 3.

I have been making a gift for Izz for her birthday.  She has a doll’s bed which has been passed down to her but no bedding.

I bought 2 u-shaped pillowcases recently from the op shop.  Here is one that I have unpicked ready to use.  Note the roll of fabric which is the dismantled and pressed frill.

2012-08-06 01The Duke bought a piece of foam cut to size for the mattress and I have covered that using some of the pillowcase fabric.

2012-08-06 02The next step was to make a patchwork quilt.  I worked out the size and number of pieces I would need.  The plain pink is more of the pillowcase, plain mauve from a piece in my stash of fabric, Dora pattern is a few leftover scraps from the doona cover and curtains that I made for Miss O last year and the pink patterned fabric is from a blouse I picked up at the op shop.  The frill is the one I unpicked from the pillowcase.  The hemmed edge remained intact so I simply regathered it and reapplied to the quilt edge.

2012-08-06 03I bought a large piece of cotton/bamboo batting for a bed quilt I am working on for Izz’s bed so I used a small piece for this quilt.  (I think this is a rather spoiled doll!)  The backing is more leftovers from some op shop fabric.  I quilted it by simply machine stitching along the seam lines which is nothing fancy but seems effective.

2012-08-06 04The finishing touch was to make a matching pillow.  A couple more fabric scraps and some salvaged filling from an old cushion and I had a complete set of bedding for the doll.  Here is the mattress with the pillow.

2012-08-06 05The total cost of things I bought specifically for this project was $6.60.  This is a gift which I know will be loved regardless of the cost.  I am looking forward to seeing Izz’s face when she opens the gift.

Now I need to work on the the bed quilt I am making as well since her birthday is in 2 weeks and I want to be able to give her the present before we go on holidays.

2015-04-03 01In the interests of presenting a complete picture here are a couple of photos I took when she received her parcel.

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Mad Hatter

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Apologies for the lack of post yesterday but I was otherwise engaged so no opportunity for blogging.

I was in the office for most of the day today but late this afternoon I spent a couple of fun-filled hours creating these millinery masterpieces for Miss O and Izz to wear to the Easter concert and hat parade at school.  I had picked up a couple of packets of Easter decorations at Spotlight yesterday and we combined these with various things that Belle had in her box of craft bits and pieces plus a couple of sheets of coloured card.  Some glue and staples to assemble the hats and these are the results.

2015-03-31 01I apologise for the poor quality of the photos as I quickly snapped them this evening and I clearly have not mastered the camera function on my phone!

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