Tale of a table..

It's been three weeks since we moved into our little tiny unfinished strawbale. And while there is still so much to do, we're feeling pretty good about where things are at and how we're settling into this new place of ours. It's been quite the flurry of painting, planting, erecting, barrowing and digging with plenty of laughter, tears, singing, dancing, eating and stories amidst. 

Before we moved in, we were fixated on how little the space would be. We meticulously planned our furnishings and "storage solutions", certain that, try as we might, we couldn't accurately envisage living in such a tiny space. But then the strangest thing happened. As we started to move stuff in,  the space seemed to grow…. to the point where it all felt a bit cavernous. We had a cosy sitting area on the eastern side and a makeshift kitcheny area on the western side with a big wide empty area in between. The big empty earthen floor area was a boon for the passive solar qualities of our little house but it felt a bit strange, and the "kitchen" just didn't work as a kitchen. The bench spaces were too small and constantly seemed cluttered and pretty much useless. One day last week I mumbled something along the lines of how it would be good to have a bit more bench space and within the week Annie had created quite the most magnificent bench/tall table I could ever hope to see and use. Those of you who actually know Annie will have born witness to her astounding productive capabilities. Others may have caught a glimpse through this blog. Within two days Annie had transformed our old dining table into a long and tall bench with shelf  that now runs part way down the middle of our tiny house. 

What a thing of beauty! Oh and note the glorious Winter sun streaming in..

You may recall Annie discussing the making of this dining table some five years ago. It was our dining table for our last five years in Sydney and it saw a lot of good times. Yes it was a little wobbly on account of the maker's burgeoning carpentry skills. Yet we so loved our dining table made from floorboards we carted the tabletop down when we moved. And so certain were we that we would not be needing it in our tiny strawbale we parked it at the very back of our storage container. Ah, but we were wrong and it is not the first time, nor will it be the last time we are wrong on this house and land creating project/shenanigan we've embarked on. 

Annie took extra special care with this bench building, planing and bevelling the legs and really utilising all the carpentry skills she has acquired since her first foray into table building. Like much of our house the legs are made of old bits of fence. Yes it is a bench comprised entirely of old floor and fence, and gosh how beautiful it is. 

And so now we have a glorious bench that is ostensibly for food preparations (of which there are very many in this tiny house of ours) but it's also a storage space, a "cubby" for Oscar, a place for leaning, a place to hold cups of tea, a place for books and a place for collecting all the joys and detritus of life with two little kids. And miracle of miracles it is tall, like me. Yes I am a tall lady and find many parts of life require some stooping but not so this table/bench. Joy of joys, thank you Annie you clever, industrious, generous lady friend of mine...

And Oscar says "thank you for creating more rampaging opportunities..."

Sharyn and Swampy sittin' in a tree...

Sharyn and Tom (Swampy) of Wandella, are the parents of our friend Carly, who is one of the highlights of our new-town-friend-making adventures.

One day soon, they'll be celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, and to mark the occasion, Carly was thinking pearls, as these are the traditional gift for 30th anniversary celebrations. Carly figured she couldn't really afford real pearls for her Ma, but thought maybe a Pearl & Elspeth might be a reasonable second. I was thrilled and honoured to be involved in such a gift and immediately set to work brainstorming with Carly about what kind of P&E to make for her parents.

I first met Sharyn and Tom at their pretty awesome handmade home in Wandella when we went to Carly's Blue Light Disco themed 30th birthday party. The party was rockin', with a band, animals on spits, a jumping castle, tons of people dressed in incredible 80s-wear, kids running around feral, a lotta love and a massive bonfire - exactly the kind of party I want to throw sometime. I had already pretty much sussed that Carly was rad, but when I met her folks and (5) siblings and saw the place they all grew up I began to understand the reason Carly is so rad, and I felt really happy.

The gift-making was based around the following criteria: Her ma likes my skirts, digs owls ("Put a bird on it!") and loves and looks awesome in autumnal kinds of colours. Her dad is a "butch yobbo"/"earthy kinda dude" who would probably appreciate a lounge-y kind of item like a cushion or knee-rug for snuggling, and who wears heaps of black denim and flannos. What a brief!!! The answer to this brief was (of course!) a skirt for Ma featuring Sharyn and Tom rendered as owls in applique,

and a black denim and flanno owl-shaped cushion for Pa.

Getting a 2nd-hand flanno to use for this project proved to be quite problematic, given that op-shops in the far south apparently do not put flannos out until after easter (!) so I ended up using my own, favourite flanno, unwashed, to make the body of the owl.

This was an interesting exercise for me, and a good test of my newly-embarked upon philosophy of letting go of 'stuff', which has been quite profoundly influenced by my readings of Little House on a Small Planet and Radical Homemakers. But it was actually kind of easy, once I decided to do it, because I just knew that the joy that Carly, her Ma and Pa would get from the re-made shirt was way more than my attachment to the flanno itself, so hack it I did, to the soundtrack of Olive shrieking "Ami!! Why are you cutting up your shirt!!???".

I reckon it was worth it.

In other news, due to popular demand, I am posting the apple jelly recipe so that others can experience the labour-and-energy-intensive deliciousness that is apple jelly.

Ingredients

4 cups apple juice (approximately 1.35kg apples and 3 cups water)

2 tbsp lemon juice (if desired - I put it in)

3 cups sugar

To prepare juice

Select tart apples (I'm pretty sure the variety we used were Spartans, but when it's the side of the road you can never be 100% sure) - about 1/4 firm and 3/4 fully ripe. Remove the stems but don't peel or core them, just chop the whole apples up and put them in a saucepan with the water. Bring to the boil the reduce to a simmer until the apples are soft. Extract the juice by hanging the boiled apples in some muslin over a bowl. Squeeze it out to make sure you get all the goodness!!

To make jelly

Measure the apple juice into a saucepan and add sugar to the ratio in the recipe ingredients (for example, I had about 12 cups of juice, so added 9 cups of sugar). add lemon juice, if you want to, and bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer. Now cook the crap out of it until it 'sheets' off the spoon (this means that when you pour off the spoon it falls in a 'sheet' rather than a 'line' (if this doesn't make sense, email me).

Remove from the heat and skim off all the foamy scum (I was quite fanatical about this and did it continuously throughout the simmering process).

Pour the jelly immediately into warm, sterilised jars (I filled mine with boiling water, let them sit for about 5 minutes, poured out the water, then put them in the oven). Wipe the rims, put the lids on, then process them in a boiling water bath for about 10 minutes.

Try not to eat too much of the warm jam directly off the spoon while you're cooking because, though delicious, in large quantities it' actually kind of nauseating.

Good luck! Enjoy!

Azolla love

As I lay in bed last night, excitedly devouring 'Water in Permaculture' by Bill Mollison, I was absolutely thrilled to discover my good friend Azolla on Bill's list of totally awesome must have dam plants. Cool! admittedly, we don't have any of the other plants he mentions (yet!), but the azolla is currently covering THE ENTIRE SURFACE of the dam, so that has to count for something, right?

When I arrived home from work this afternoon Pearl suggested we go for some plum therapy - visiting the land and stopping off at 'our' plum tree. Obviously, she didn't have to ask me twice, so we bustled off up the hill, buckets and bowls in hand. Pearl and the kids stayed at the tree while I trotted on down to the dam to collect me some azolla. Our little vegie patch was in need of a good mulch, the azolla crop was totally out of control and, excellently, we'd just had a substantial dump of rain (and Olive's first ever hail!) so the timing was perfect.

The wind, this afternoon, was absolutely howling. The noise of it rushing through the trees up on our hill was simultaneously thrilling, beautiful and terrifying. And the volume of it was quite unbelievable. The immense wind had blown all the azolla to one side of the dam, and a huge flock of ducks were dipping in the bit of dam that had been left exposed, presumably excited to be able to access the water without the hindrance of pesky floating ferns.

As I luxuriated in the delicious contrast between the warm muddy dam-water on my feet and legs and the cold wind whipping my face, I collected handfuls of azolla. Anyone who knows me will be unsurprised to hear that I collected a lot more than I could comfortably carry, but I struggled on anyhow.

Pearlie, meanwhile was breaking in her brand new remodelled King Gees.

After searching for months for a pair of Pearlie-sized farm pants, to no avail, I decided to take matters into my own hands and picked up a couple of pairs of King Gees at the Bega Valley Swapsies clothes swap. I unpicked the side seams of the best pair, and used the other pair to make extender strips to sew down the sides so as to lovingly accommodate the awesome curvature of my lady friend.

Mission accomplished, and mission successful! Pearl declared them to be "the most comfortable pants of all time!", and they proved to be perfectly suited to azolla collection and distribution.