Sometimes I wish I had My Camera With Me

Today was rather warm in Central Victoria. Late this afternoon we decided to take the puppies down to the dam for a swim to cool off. It looked so nice we decided to throw ourselves in, as well. All of the splashing around caught the attention of my horses who came over for a sticky beak.

I wish I had my camera on hand to take a photo of my appaloosa horse picking up my skirt, swinging it around and then throwing it in the dam.

I wish I had my camera on hand to take a photo of my appaloosa picking up my husbands freshly discarded jocks and attempting to the same with them.

Readers, you can thank me for not having a camera on hand to capture a happy snap of a wet, naked husband attempting to shoo off a very cheeky appaloosa armed with nothing more than foul language and a hat.


I am still laughing.

Breakfast of Champions

The champions of my tomato crop this year thus far has the random cherry and cherry roma tomatoes.

EVERYONE else has bumper harvests happening and I have a garden of non-performers, no shows, non RSVPers, and general slackers in the tomato department.

However these little babies, top level achievers and dux´s of the garden on a trajectory of brillance have outdone themselves. I applaud you.

p.s. thanks for breakfast my little champs.

A Task for Sunday

The task for today is something that I have been putting off for no other reason than I am in a little bit of a lazy funk.

I really need to repot my cardamom, which since I bought it has sprouted at least 7 pups. Now, that is slack!!!!, I also need to repot my mint. I love my mint, but refuse to plant it inground due to its invasive tendencies. I have a couple of pots lines up to receive these two lovely plants of mine.

Seeing as it will be a scorcher today, I must getting cracking on this task for today before both plants and I melt in the heat of the sun.

For the Strawbale Junkies ...

Hey, Handy Hubby here.

Since there seems to be quite a bit of interest our Straw Bale House I'll post a tad more info on it. Firstly, here are the plans.

Here's the 3D diagram of it.

We're building the house in two stages. The first is perilously close to being finished. Only another two or three years to go. That is if we ever finish it.

Daffodil and I spent a lot of time working out what sort of house to build. We looked at all of the alternative building materials and finally decided that Strawbale were for us. For an owner builder, it's pretty forgiving. You can fix a lot of stuff ups with yet another coat of render. So far this summer we've really enjoyed the insulative qualities of strawbales. It's going to be 40 degrees tomorrow and the house will remain quite cool. We just have a ceiling fan to move a bit of air around and it's more than comfy.

I read 4 books and a saw few DVDs about Straw Bale House building before I worked out which of the brazillian methods we would use. I eventually decided that this bloke Brian Hodge from Heathcote in Victoria made the most sense, so I chose his building method. Checkout his website for more info.

There are so many decisions to be made when building a house and doubly so when you are building your own. The first major one we did after deciding to do strawbale was to put the house on stumps instead of a concrete slab. Our reasoning was three fold, firstly slabs are really expensive, $25k+. The floor frame cost us about $5k. Secondly, the embedded energy in concrete and the associated C02 emissions are just obscene. Thirdly, concrete is such a crappy surface to live on. It's bad for your feet and back.

Here is a picture of the stumps as we put them in.

Let me warn you that while stumps are cheaper than concrete if you do it yourself, you will get yourself a great set of abs from doing stumps. There are 120 stumps, that need holes dug, cleaned out, concrete chucked in, stumps lined up, filled back in and the soil compressed with a crowbar. I had abs of steel for at least three weeks after that was finished. Lucky for you I don't have any pictures of that.

Here's the floor frame finished or at least almost finished. Nothing is ever quite finished.

I'll find a few more pictures and post them along with some more of trials and tribulations of owner buildering soonish.

HH

Our Straw Bale House

HandyHubby and I are in the homestretch of building our own straw bale house. Being owner builders has given us the opportunity to build a house that is reflective of us. Everywhere you look there is something either eBay-ed, demolition yarded, or donated by friends whether that be a light fitting or a days labour in return for meal and a couple of beers at the end of the day. Even now, when friends come over they will look at a wall and say, I helped render that wall, and will step back and admire their handiwork. Alot of friendship has gone into building this house!

From the stumps to the roof, HandyHubby and I have built as much of this place as we are allowed. Of course, we enlisted a plumber and an electrician. It has taken a long time, but it has cost us a fraction of what a professional builder would have. This really is our home and we love it. I am not the technical writer that HandyHubby is, but I will endeavour to write many posts concerning our house within this blog, so bear me with straw bale enthusiasts! Ideally we would have posted information and photos DURING the build, but that requires planning and thought, and with the duration of the build thus far, many readers would have died of boredom....or old age!!

Saturday Vintage

Another little piece of vintage kitchenalia is an old butter churn. I picked this up a few years ago as an eBay purchase when I was in fully gung-ho the world is doomed and I will have to produce my own butter without the assistance of a mixmaster.

I have toned things down a little bit, and while I am a closet doomer, I keep the soap box in the shipping container where it is harder to access.

So, I picked up this butter churn in Ballarat, completely blew my eco-footprint out of the water in the process, but it was so worth it. When I removed the lid, a waft of buttery creamery goodness erupted from within this little treasure and for a fleeting second I could see myself churning cream into butter, turning the handle over and over again, feeling the texture thicken as the cream complied with laws of physics. Imagining the wooden insides becoming even more conditioned as the cream fat rolled over it again, and again on its way to becoming butter. This is how butter has been made in the past, it can be done again.

I just need a jersey cow and it will be on for young and old.

Oh.....My......God...

There was a little surprise in the orchard awaiting us today. Two little ripe Greengage plums on our second year tree. Suffice to say we ate the evidence before we could get a photo of them, but they were SOOOOOOO delicious. there is nothing like picking fruit straight from the tree and chowing down on its sunwarmed deliciousness. Divine. We are looking to plum tree number two for another mini harvest with drooling anticipation....and I know it is another year off, but maybe some home made plum jam from the next harvest.

I can´t wait!!!!

Next task is start googling to find out if we can propogate from the stone and get a true to parent offspring.