Winter 2019

Technically, it's still winter time here, but the almond trees herald spring's arrival with a loud buzzing of bees working on their prolific white flowers.

You may see Squeak's aviary back there.. he's on the ground waiting for the sun to arrive. The tree guards at the front of the picture are young Saltbush plants. Saltbush are known to be extremely tough plants, good for beneficial insects and food for stock like sheep. We'll use them as a hedge and as mother plants for many more cuttings to be planted around the property.

I zoomed-in on the daffodils that have been flowering for a month now. Some of them were pulled up by cockatoos last year, but these two remain, thankfully!

We planted some trees a little earlier in the winter, putting in some tagasaste and saltbush mostly. Someday, stock will enjoy pruning them for us. :)

We still have at least 25 or so more trees and bushes to get into the ground this season. They're almost all locally native, with a few exceptions for other tough trees. They really have to be tough! They should be going in this week.

As you can see, some of the grass and weeds have grown a bit out of control. We've not been using this garden bench, you can't really get to it!

It's a bit of a jungle, but it won't last long as the weather warms up. The mandarin tree has lush green leaves in places where they were badly burned last summer. We've gathered a lot of lovely green grass and added it to the compost heap. It makes a big difference to our otherwise high carbon-to-nitrogen ratio compost. Sometimes we've been using the little Kubota with the front end loader to mix the compost, and it's steaming and looking very good!

Other than that, we've been doing a fair bit of this..

The BabyQ gets used every single day, rain hail or shine.

The old Weber kettle set up for low and slow brisket. This is the snake method, which keeps the kettle going at roughly the right temperature for about 12 hours. The wood chunks add a pink colour to the edges, and also a flavour that's hard to beat.

Not just brisket though, but in this case, ribs too. No, we didn't get through it all in one sitting!

We're doing pretty well on the carnivore diet, although it's no quick fix by any means. Part of me wants to tell you that we're miraculously healed.. Well, our health has been improving, but it comes in cycles. The good days or weeks feel quite good, the bad days or weeks are not as bad as they use to be. On the purely positive side, this diet is the easiest we've ever been on, and we're not tempted to cheat often at all.

Last weekend we needed to be in Wagga Wagga, and we were tempted by the thought of eating out. It would have been 7 months since we cheated or had any carbohydrates at all! We walked into one restaurant and walked right back out again! We didn't end up cheating, it just didn't seem like it was worth the potential pain or bloating, or the setback to our healing progress.

Excuse me while I show off my little repair job on Marty's work pants. :)

We've also been playing with our solar system lately. Realising that Blue (our Victron charge controller) is STILL acting up, Marty has been keen to get it sorted out. We think it might still be under warranty. The only trouble would be that disconnecting Blue and sending her in to see someone will leave us without power for potentially weeks. So, to get around this issue, we researched alternative charge controllers, and found the Morningstar TriStar.

A quick search on eBay, and wouldn't you know, there was someone selling several lightly used controllers, with the monitor, for less than half the price of new. Excited, we purchased one, and went on the hunt for the required cords and instructions. We've managed to update the firmware and program it to suit our batteries. That was fun!

We learned about serial to usb adapters, and that, try as I might, I couldn't update it using Wine under Linux, so we eventually gave up (it took until 3am for me to give up, Marty went to bed a few hours earlier!). We then tried using a virtual machine running Windows XP. That actually worked, and now we're ready to swap them over, just as soon as this last cable arrives which measures the battery temperature.

The benefits of this charge controller over the Victron is what made us keen to try it. The firmware on the Victron couldn't be updated without spending at least $650 on a special cable, and we were not happy about that at all. (The TriStar itself cost us $500, and the cable cost us $40-something, but can be found cheaper online.) The TriStar's data logging is comprehensive and able to be viewed, saved, and graphed over our local network without additional expensive devices or cables. If it works (fingers crossed), we'll have a much better idea of what is happening with our system over time.

If Blue is still under warranty, we'll send her back and maybe they'll be able to fix her up. We can keep her as a spare, or use her to control another system of solar panels some day. Of course, the same fault may occur with the TriStar at the helm, in which case the issue may be with the batteries.

So hopefully all's well that ends well. I'll let you know how it goes - my inner geek is all excited!

As little as possible

Marty and I are enjoying doing as little as possible lately. There have been a few days of rain and gloomy weather, which is wonderful! Not enough power to turn on the NBN internet, so just sitting and reading, keeping warm with the wood fire.

Marty is reading "Building Your Own Home" by George Wilkie, and I am reading "The Sheer Ecstasy of being a Lunatic Farmer" by Joel Salatin. We read the best bits to each other, it's almost like reading two books at the same time. Marty showing me all the ways one can make foundations, and me reading almost whole chapters to Marty.

Marty started working again for the same company, only extremely casually, he only went in one day last month! It's so fantastic having him home all the time! We're still cleaning the local pub every weekend, and the less we do, the less we need.

We stopped in at Morgan's Lookout in Walla Walla, on the way to Albury for some food shopping, climbed the granite boulders and explored the surrounds. We spent an afternoon walking around the beautifully natural Mundawaddery Cemetery right near us. There is such a diverse number of local plants, I just love the trees that shade the cattle that utilise the area occasionally. It's certainly something to aspire to. We'll have to check out The Rock on the way to Wagga Wagga next time perhaps.

Duel BBQing has been a thing. When you've got an 8 hour brisket going in the kettle and need a little something to tide us over, a steak in the BabyQ is delicious.

Brisket has been our favourite so far, and it's very well priced.

We're still eating meat and drinking water, and mostly feeling only benefits.

Hoping we can get away with as little as possible for a while yet. :)

April update

Marty and I have been improving small things around the house, starting with our own hot shower. The hot water is made possible by a Joolca Hot Tap. We dragged the bath into the bathroom from it's home outside in the sun. We put up the shower curtain that was purchased at Ikea when we visited Marty's Mom just before we moved in here.. has it really been 5 years?! We even made another shower curtain for the other side of the bath as well. It looks all mismatched and crazy, but I love our bathroom now! Marty does too!

We have been eating a carnivore diet for 4 months now, we even quit drinking coffee (the first couple of weeks without caffeine was rough!!). So we're eating mostly beef, liver and kidney, and extra fat from suet, and drinking water. It's a simple diet, but it seems to be working wonders. Our weight is stable now, I'm 51-53kg (112-116 pounds), Marty is 55-57kg (121-125 pounds), but that's only a side benefit. My joint pains have settled down now, and my menstrual cycle is getting easier to deal with every month. Nails are strong, skin issues are clearing up. Our sleep is great, bathroom issues are non-existent. Our moods are stable, we have more strength and energy than before, although there is still room for improvement there. We're healing though, we can feel it.

We purchased a Weber Baby Q and really enjoy doing all our cooking outside now. It keeps the kitchen much cleaner, and it makes food taste delicious. We just finished making a trolley on castors for it, using a modified version of this rolling bar cart plan by Ana White.
 

We had a visit from an echidna recently too! First time we've seen one here, and I hope you don't mind, but I got a few photos..

Echidna walking over some irrigation pipe.

The echidna rearranging the logs in the garden between the lavender and the rosemary bushes. There's no shortage of ants here.

The echidna digging out the dirt from a pot of native violets. The violets are ok, I'm sure they'll re-grow!

Walking through the garden, it wasn't scared of us at all.

Mum and Mike came to see us on their way down for an appointment and were lucky enough to get to see the echidna too, but we haven't seen it since. The weather has cooled down a lot since then, and we've had the fire on just the once. Last night we were fortunate to get 56mm (2.2 inches) of rain! The water tanks are now half-full, and we're even planting some trees. Well, local wattle trees and old man saltbush, since they're tough enough to survive the dry summers.

Until next time!

Washing Day

It's something we all gotta do, and I usually have trouble keeping up with it..

Our twin tub saves on both water and electricity. Water has been in short supply here since last winter was very dry. And yes, while our electricity is 'free' from the sun, it's actually more like pre-paying for it, and of course it's limited by the size of our system and available sunshine (we do get plenty of sun!).

We got the twin tub at a clearing sale one hot summer day a few years ago now. I'm not sure if I remember correctly if it was $60, but I'm sure it didn't cost more than $80. It was so clean, it hardly looked used!

I give my Mum credit for suggesting using the Sunshine bar of soap for washing. (She told me that she had to use it when I was a baby, or I would come out in a rash.. why doesn't that surprise me?) I just grate it up and it dissolves no problem. Oh, I see they changed the name, it's Sunlight now. I think it's just over $3 for 6 bars. I wasn't happy using the 'greywater safe', 'eco friendly' liquids and powders full of salts and phosphates on the garden.

Soap works just as well for us as laundry powder or liquid. Rinsing is much easier because there are less bubbles, I'm getting away with just one single rinse, I'm not even using vinegar!

The Breathing Mobile Washer is a blue hand-held thingy I got online and was kindly sent to me by Marty's Mom in the USA! It's great for washing (especially if I want to wash on a cloudy day) and I use it for rinsing the clothes in the bucket below. That way I can have a second load of laundry going while I rinse the first load. I think I might have this down to an art! ;)

Anyway, that's how I'm doing the laundry and saving money and resources. The less money we spend, the more time Marty and I can spend together.

Marty has only two weeks left of work, something we've been looking forward to for some time now. Now that we've paid off the farm, we're going to give this thing another shot. One last solid attempt before deciding if our future is here or if we'd be happier somewhere else, doing something else entirely.

Hanging in there

113° Fahrenheit

The sad face on the weather station is apt, but it's got a pretty narrow happy zone, although it's happy today! It has since cooled down and we've even had some decent rain for the first time in a couple of months!

You'd think that would mean a few good night's sleep, but alas not yet. We're both feeling a bit like zombies, and my fibro has flared up as well. Neither of us feel like doing much of anything except keeping the chickens and Squeak fed and watered, and we dragged the remaining few plants from the shade house to under the veranda. That makes watering them easy, and keeps the humidity up a little. Not to mention, the wild bird's water and some water for the neighbour's Guinea fowl who are still sitting on a clutch of eggs under the almond tree.

Oh, and we're continuing to eat and drink as well. As much as we can given the conditions. I've been reading a book called "Strong Medicine" by Dr. Blake Donaldson - you can get a free copy from here - which I've been enjoying. While the rest of my body is happily repairing skin, strengthening nails, gaining muscle and loosing fat (I didn't think Marty and I had much to loose, but wow!), I've been researching the side effects..

Mostly hormonal effects so far, as fat is used, oestrogen is released, and all kinds of chaos ensues. I know that it's just part of the adaption process, but I've made a chiropractors appointment anyway. I feel like so much of my body has changed lately, and so quickly, that things just don't "feel right". I've tried lying on the floor, and oh! I got so much relief of the pressure points when I put a rubber ball under the painful areas of my back and hips! (I found that tip today while I was unable to get pain free, stumbled upon this awesome website which really helped me!)

We've been eating carnivore since December, but I discovered I react to eggs in January, so it's only really been just over a month of eating meat, meat and more meat. I am on the road to mastery in cooking roasts in the Weber thanks to this website, learning about making a perfect pot of french press coffee (thanks to YouTube) because it has to be pretty good if you're drinking it black without honey, sugar or milk, and I have a couple of different salt varieties to choose from now, including this one.

We don't have much urge to cheat, and if we crave anything, we just grab a bit of meat from the fridge and eat - craving gone! Shopping is simple, I buy all our meats from Wagga meat supply. There is so much less plastic packaging when buying in bulk, no more silly plastic trays! We're spending about $200-$250 a week on roughly 14kg (31 pounds) of meat for the both of us. It works out about the same, if not a little less than we were spending before, except this time, it's just the meat, the real food, no fillers, no junk!

We're saving another $200 a month on vitamins and supplements. We stopped taking vitamin C, activated B complex, activated folate, ginseng for energy, fish oil, and extra vitamin B6 - all the most potent brands I could find. None of that stuff really helped except the magnesium, and we still take that when required.

Everything I thought I knew is wrong, and it turns out the truth is the complete opposite in many cases. It reminds me of one of my very favourite Weird Al songs!

Well, a lovely sounding storm looks like it's heading this way from the SouthWest. The rain has come a little late for some of the trees and plants, but it's amazing how quickly things turn around given the right conditions. 😉