Making a photo stick

Before we even moved into our little place I had suspected that fixing things to the walls would be a bit of a drama. With a cement-based render you can pretty much just fix things using masonry screws and fixings. But our clay/sand render is so crumbly I just knew that wouldn't work.

Some people plan for their hangings before the rendering stage, and attach pieces of wood to the strawbales, then render around the wood and attach screws/cupboards/picture rails etc to the timber once the place is rendered. We had planned on doing this as well, but the frenzy of our workshop, trying to build as much as physically possibly in the minutes when the rain stopped whilst also trying to keep everything covered in tarps when the rain did inevitably come down, meant that several things - like our cupboard and picture fixings and conduit for the electrics - fell by the wayside. We just couldn't afford the time.

Now we're in, it's not actually a huge drama. The orange and yellow sunshiny crockery cupboard above our kitchen bench was hung from our trusty rafters using the gal strapping that's normally used to brace roofs. A crafty and functional solution!

Bigger, framed pictures are hung, gallery-style on long wires which are also attached to the rafters. But what to do with all our little photos and cards? Some kind of display method was called for, and, as in all of my how-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-that moments, I turned to my trusty pile of fence palings and made…. drumroll please… a photo stick! You can make a photo stick too. It's super-easy-peasy and, like all things made with recycled hardwood, it looks super-awesome. 

Step 1: Find the most beautiful, interesting piece of old hardwood you can lay your hands on. (I was really excited when I rummaged through the pile and found the paling that I used, because it had a little crescent-moon shape that had been eaten out of it by critters! Gotta love creatively-chewing critters helping out with the decor). While fence-paling are clearly the most beautiful building material in the world, I believe that something like this would also probably look good made with driftwood or a really interesting/gorgeous branch, if you're into that hippy stuff.

Step 2: drill randomly-spaced holes along its length. Or less-random, if you're a non-random kinda person. That's cool too.

Step 3: Thread small-guage wire though the holes, to make flattish 'loops' on the front side.

Step 4: Attach lovely photos of people you think are awesome and landscapes and reminders of happy times using little wooden pegs clipped onto the wire.

Step 5: Stand it up and enjoy!

Photo stick in action

If you don't have fixing-challenged walls, you could also hang something like this horizontally, with photos above and below your sexy fence-paling.

one month in

It's been a little more than a month now since we moved into our little strawbale home, so we thought it was time for a little reflection on the things that we've learned and are still learning about home building and living on the land.

Probably the most surprising thing has been just how liveable (dare we say 'spacious'?) the place actually is. It's just on 24 square metres. Just so you know, the size of the average house being built in Sydney these days is around 300-400 square metres. So it's small. It's one room, with a loft. But it has everything we need, and still room for toys and books and fun stuff like that. And we haven't even built our undercover outdoor kitchen-y bit yet. We're feeling really good about keeping things small, though Pearl is missing having a kitchen (new birthday books like The Gourmet Farmer Deli Book aren't really helping on this front). Yes it's true, Pearl can feel her fingers aching for some baking action or some handmade cheese action but none of this is possible with our current bare bones infrastructure. However, on the up, we will be building a wood-fired cob oven sometime soon and so we anticipate some great baking days ahead. Also the delay on having a home with a proper kitchen is a good thing in terms of having the time and space to really think through what our kitchen should entail - mega-pantry and cold store anyone? Special room for hanging handmade smallgoods? Oh yeah....

Annie is still not totally over the floor debacle, and it seems that our 'flagstones' are still shrinking, so the puttying/grouting/filling task remains ongoing. The rug (complete with springy, freecycled underlay!) in the 'loungeroom' helps things, and Annie is slowly working on a braided and coiled rag rug, so it's not all bad. In fact, Annie is pretty sure that if the whole thing hadn't been such a bitter disappointment, she probably wouldn't even notice it. She just doesn't cope well with failure. But it's OK! It's been a learning experience, and we've definitely made note of the things we'll do differently next time (yes, we will be making another earth floor when we build again) like not using any bagged clay and making a more sturdily rammed substrate using something like road base. We'll probably also do a cob floor, rather than rammed.

We're all completely in love with our sleeping loft. We probably always thought it'd be a nice cosy place, but it's far surpassed expectations. It is beautiful. The sunrise/sunsets are beautiful, the Bermagui-oiled ancient floorboards are beautiful, the fence-palings are beautiful and the view is freaking amazing. And yeah - it's comfy and cosy as well. We actually don't know that I'll be rushing into having a bedroom any time soon, so enamoured with the loft are we.

We're really pleased with how the lime-washing has stabilised the clay walls. When it was just clay it was a little dusty, but the lime-wash seems to have bound it all together. It's also just so beautiful and light.  We love the bale walls, perhaps more than we thought, and can safely say that we are absolute card-carrying strawbale devotees and would not even consider any other type of building. Not that we're absolutist or anything... 

No but seriously, this little straw bale is just so comfy temperature wise. When we were building, and people asked us what kind of heating we'd have, our answer of "We're not having heating - it's a passive-solar-designed strawbale house - we won't need it" was inevitably met with chuckles (read:"damn hippies don't know what they're talking about"), wry, knowing smiles, or comments like "Ah... you've never lived through a Bega winter, have you...". 

So relentless were such responses that we actually started doubting our little building before it was even finished, and started looking around for a little wood stove or some such. But, even though we moved in here in Wintertime when the night time temperatures get down below zero and we wake up and see frost all around, in our little strawbs with the old (ie. non-double glazed) curtainless windows, we have been quite snug without a fire or any form of heating. Is that not amazing?

The land itself continues to delight us, and has shown us some quite lovely little surprises in the form of stunningly rich black soil with crazy-good water-holding capacity and a spring-fed dam, which is a major asset. We are, of course, still discovering it all, and expect more surprise and excitement as the days go by..... Seeing how happy our kids are here on our land has been so heartwarming. It's like the physical space has allowed their imaginations to soar and they spend so many hours immersed in amazing play scenarios together and alone. We're seeing new sides to both of them as they embark on new adventures and journeys and discover their new world.

We still have so much to do. The coming weeks' to do list looks something like this: finish the outside lime render, instal more fence paling sealing inside, build a covered pergola over our dining room, paint, instal solar system, finish kid's cubby, slash grass, get ducks, build fences, get chickens, mulch kids play area, prepare the ground for the 850 trees we are planting as part of a windbreak/wildlife corridor, continue to plant out our first veg and herb garden, start to plan our first food forest garden, plant citrus, olives, pomegranates, almonds and avocadoes,  make some decisions re livestock... Oh and on it goes.... But now we're here, actually here on our land it all feels very possible and really pretty fun.

Let your little light shine

The last few weeks we've been frantically buying up as many mandarins as we can, while they're still vaguely in season, since we learned how to make these adorable little mandarin lights, and became addicted to their warm glow around the house at night. 

Awwwwwwww... ain't it purdy?

The process for making them is super easy - all you need is a mandarin and a splash of olive oil. One of those things that made me wonder a. why everyone doesn't make these when the mandarins are plentiful and b. why it took me 34 years to learn how to make these little babies.

Mandarin candles drying on the window-sill

At the moment, as we are living without any electricity in the house, the mandarin lights, teamed with some beeswax candles, a gaslight (aka the "noisy light") and a head-torch for reading and skirt-making, have been our only light sources. It's actually been really beautiful, and has meant that we've been doing super-fun things like getting into bed really early each night and just lying there reading or chatting. 

The no-electricity thing has been way easier than we'd anticipated, and there have been some definite benefits to our family. And of course we have a generator for important things like angle-grinding and skirt-making. So I guess we're not really electricity-free at all...

Today I got an email from Phillip, the man who's making our solar system for us, letting us know that the system is now ready to be picked up and brought to us by Pearl's dad, who's making the trek down in the next couple of weeks. 

Our power unit - batteries in the bottom, circuits and what-not in the top. All totally weather-proof so we can just park it out the back of our little house and run a cable to the inside.

This was pretty exciting! Mostly for the following reasons:

1. We are absolutely desperate for some music!

2. It'll be nice to be able to have a light bright enough to craft or read by that doesn't roar.

3. I kinda miss being able to use my sewing machine.

4. It'll be good to be able to charge things like the computer and phone without having to schlep them into town and bludge off our friends' (thanks Vickie!) and employers' power supplies.

5. Pearlie's excited about being able to use the food processor, too,

and of course, last but not least, its going to feel gooooood to be free of the power grid.

The power system awaiting installation of the batteries and....

Batteries in!

When we moved here we were quoted $50 000 to connect to the power lines on our street. Given that this was more than the total budget for our little house, this was out of the question. And also why the cripes would we want to pay $50 000 just so we could pay electricity bills??? While we still lived in Sydney the prospect of off grid solar made us nervous. We didn't know anyone doing it and there seemed to be so much hoo ha around potential battery dramas. But once we were quoted the crazy sums required to connect to the grid we quickly got our heads around not connecting. Once we moved it seemed like every second person (not just hippies) we met had off-grid solar. And so we find ourselves beginning a new life where we are responsible for our own power (and water and waste and hopefully food..)

The system we're getting is small - 1.2kw. But it's more than enough to supply us with what we need. Especially now that we've lived without power for a month. It's really helped us to realise just how much we don't need, much like the whole tiny house shenanigans itself. We're diggin' it, but that doesn't mean that we're not looking forward to having this little baby parked out the back, a handful of solar panels on the roof, music and power drills crankin'. And it's arriving just in time for the end of mandarin season, too.

I love that they're using a power drill to 'model' the system

Our neck of the woods: Monday

OK so I know I said that I was only going to post 2 photo from each day, but this morning was just glorious, and I couldn't help myself but snap merrily all along my ride into town. When I left our place, it was mild and sunny -- almost warm. The mist was lying low over Bega-town, and the many many clumps of creamy clematis that are flowering all along the farm fences and in the trees seemed to be smiling at me as I pedalled along. 

As I started my descent down to the river flat, though, things really started to sparkle, and I reckon the temperature dropped about 5 degrees. It was unbelievably cold, and such a heavy frost was lying on the ground, I couldn't believe I'd only travelled 4km from home. I'm finding the frosts very beautiful as they shine in the early morning light, and I love love love this little trail of frosty sparkles lying in the wombat-track that leads to this old, no-longer-used and lichen-covered gate. 

Lichen is something I'd never really noticed before, until my lovely friend Niki told me about how much she loves it. You know when someone you really love shares something they love with you, then you kind of love it too, even if it's just because that thing then always reminds you of your beloved friend? That's how it is with lichen for me, and I'm lucky because there's a lot of beautiful lichen along our way, so I'm reminded daily of my beautiful Niki, which is pretty nice.

The road along the river flat is littered with flood-washed trees and branches and detritus. Every time the river floods, that road becomes an extension of the river, and massive massive timbers are rushed along, wiping out gates and fences and bridges and other trees in their path. 

It's quite phenomenal to ride past them each day, to think of them being carried along by so much water, while now the river languishes on the other side of the road, almost a mere trickle, wanting, like we all are, for some hearty rain. These awesome logs were sparkling too this morning, as were the striped shadows of the poplars lying in the fields.

Happy first days of spring!

We're really enjoying and revelling in how aware of the weather and season changes we are up here on our little block of land. Part of it has to do with the fact that we're outside a lot, on account of our little house being so small, and all its amenities (and prime fun-and-beautiful bits) being not-inside.



What better way to spend an early spring day (Ok - several days) than dragging a mattress into the middle of a paddock and setting up camp.

This morning, for example, the second day of spring, we were awake with the sun, and not long afterwards (just time enough for hearty cuddles in bed and some reading of our current favourite book, Farm Anatomy) we were outside, cooking breakfast on the barbecue and surveying the clouds, wind and frost levels. Yes, it's the second day of spring, and we're still having regular, heavy frosts. While some people in the Bega Valley can get frosts as late as November, we're lucky here in that the frosts only settle in the bottom of our valley, not near our house or veggie garden or orchard. This is a bonus, because it means we can get started on planting our spring and summer-growing food plants pretty soon, without fear of them being apprehended by frost.


Frosts at the very bottom of the valley, making friends with a blossom tree and some blackberries

One of the fantastic things about moving up here at this time of year is that we arrived just in time for some serious food-planting adventures, which, let's face it, is a big part of why we moved to this block of land in the first place. So it's exciting for us, but also nerve-wracking, because this, hopefully, will be our forever-house, so we really want to get things right. We're already planning the menus for home-grown feasts for birthdays 40, 50 and 60, so we need to make sure that the things we plant get a good start so they can serve us (and our friends!) well.

Nothing like some bulbs to let you know spring-time's a-comin'

Our bare-rooted fruit trees have been the biggest deal for us thus far, and are being tended with lots of loving care and worm juice. The Orchard has been planted along a swale/diversion drain above our house, which, when it rains, captures water from the road, and diverts it (slowly! - no erosion here) down to our little top dam, soaking the soil along the way and watering our collection of fruit trees. There will also be an olive grove and a nut grove added to this collection of food trees, in a similar kind of road-water-collecting arrangement, but that will have to wait…



Peach blossoms: freakin' beautiful









Due to the fact that it hasn't really rained since our workshop, we're watering our beloved fruit trees by hand, using water carted up from our bottom dam. The same is being done for the first 50 of our 800 Landcare grant shelter-belt/wildlife corridor trees, which we also planted this week. We're saving our pennies for a water pump to get water up from the bottom dam (spring-fed and therefore full) to our top dam (rain fed and therefore not so full), which we will then use for gravity-irrigating our fruit and Landcare trees and veggies. This will be an exciting day, but for now we're content with 5 x 20L drums filled up by hand and then carted up the hill in our car.





We also use these water-carrying adventures to harvest, dry and distribute the abundance of azolla we have growing happily on the bottom dam. We're using it mostly as a mulch and putting a little bit in the compost and worm farm, and she's working a treat.

The phase one veggie garden has also been receiving a bit of azolla love, and has been quite a pleasant revelation. I'd been a little apprehensive about how the soil would be in the area designated for the veggie beds we are going to use this spring/summer, as it hadn't received much (OK, any) attention, and basically consisted of a bit of earth right in front of the house that had been used to store all our building crap for the last 4 months. I expected it to be dry and compacted. In a rare moment of forethought, though, I had, during the frenzy of our strawbale building workshop, instructed someone to start putting loose straw and broken bales "kind of over there - I think that's where the veggie bed will be". This small mountain of straw had received no further attention, other than some food scraps and the daily emptying of our night-time wee bucket (essential in a very high sleeping loft like ours). This neglected pile of building waste has been the saving grace of the veggie patch! What a treat to kick back some of the straw to discover that a. the soil wasn't compacted at all, b. worms are diggin' it, and c. the soil is super-moist, even though it hasn't been watered since the build, when it got drowned in all the rain we had. Yee har! I spent a day and half going over it all with our friends' Gundaroo Tiller (which is totally ace, but I'm not going to write about its virtues because Milkwood already did it here), then spread about 10cm of manure/azolla/compost/worm castings, then covered the lot in another 10cm of straw (there's a bit of that stuff lying around here). We're slowly planting into it (a little rhubarb here, some comfrey there) and dreaming about a couple of months' time when it's (hopefully) crankin' out some quality food-stuffs.


New rhubarb leaves unfurl, watiting for next year's apple forage harvest

Even though we're spoiled with the abundance of egads-awesome home-grown and organic foodstuffs available at markets and given to us by generous friends and neighbours (this morning we had scrambled duck eggs from our friend Christa!), we're still itching for a bit of our own home-grown food, and we're watching with excitement and anticipation as our fruit trees bloom, our seedlings sprout and our dreams take shape here as spring unfurls around us.

 

Our neck of the woods: Friday

Today was cold. Really cold. Luckily for me I had some thick hand-knitted legwarmers on, and I didn't actually ride down the hill this morning because Pearl was working at the markets so we all drove to town together.
On the ride home though, I was in love with the light falling on Pappy's farm.

Pappy's is a reasonably large vegetable, honey and egg growing operation, just down the road from us. They used to sell out of a little roadside stall, which we frequented quite regularly, but they've now moved into town and, along with their own stuff, they also stock fruits and vegetables from other local growers. The thing I really like about Pappy's is that it's all really well labeled, so you know exactly what you're buying and where it came from. I think that's a good thing to know.
Olive's quite taken with the Pappy's neat rows, and wants to know if our vegetable garden is going to look like that. We don't really know how to explain that our new garden is going to be just like our old garden - rambling, overgrown and crowded, with not a row in sight. Just the way we like it.

Our neck of the woods: thursday

Another thing I'm really loving about this riding shenanigans is that the light and the ride and the temperature is all a bit different depending on the time I leave. This morning I left a little later than usual, because Pearl had her regular little spot on the local ABC radio talking about the SCPA markets (of which she is the most delightful and skilled co-ordinator). It was still frigidly cold riding down to the river flat, but there was no frost waiting for me, as there normally is. 

When I reached the bottom of the hill, I took this photo.

Then I started on my long flat ride along Buckajo road, which snakes along beside the river, and looks a lot like this.

Both legs of my journey - to and from work - are facing into the sun, so this photo is really reminiscent to me of my riding experiences in this later wintery time. But it's changing every day, and I know that in 2 weeks time the sun won't be so much in my eyes, and there probably won't be any more frost. I won't miss the cold, or arriving at work with my face so frozen I find it kind of funny to try to talk, but I will miss the sparkle, that's for sure.