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Hey there!
Things always seem to be happening…
The council put out a local catalogue with events happening in spring so people would start getting out and about.
Sharon and I had two special soap workshops done in town (One done, one yet to do) and an extra workshop at her place yesterday.

I also volunteered to do a couple of guided walks over in the Sisters Hills/Rocky Cape area.
I had my first one on Saturday.

Just a small ‘group’ – a couple of nice ladies who lived locally but had never done this walk before… and a gentleman who (believe it or not) went to school with my mother!! Small world. He even had a class photo of them that he sent me! Terry grew up in the area and spent a lot of time down at Anniversary Bay but happily had never been up the track I started out on or seen the Wet Cave so it was nice I was able to introduce him to something new!

The entrance always looks a bit iffy

The ladies weren’t game enough to come in! (It does look spooky)

It was actually a fairly nice day – it drizzled for about half of the walk, then dried up. Without the wind it actually got quite muggy

The old banksia trees!

A bit grey but the views were still nice

Eventually we got down to the shore

Time for a bit of a fossick about

And a sit down just to enjoy the peace!

The ocean was so calm

Seaside life

As we came out of the bush track onto the beach there was a large family who had been walking around the area… but from there on in… no people as usual

(Except us)

Time to go inland up that horrible hill and hope everyone didn’t hate me for it

Puff puff… everyone did it fine!
But we did sit down for some lunch/snack and enjoyed the views… until the leeches marched in!!
Then there was a bit of a hurry to get to our feet and move on!!

Quite pretty in an ‘ew’ kind of way

Once up the last lot of hills, we looked back to the weather that was chasing us

The last part of the track is rather nice… just meanders back down to the car park

Parts of the track were really boggy…

They airlifted in materials about 4 years ago to work on the track… all still sitting there in a pile. 🙁

Grouchy looking weather!
But the little wildflowers were pretty

Getting back to civilisation again!

Just before heading down the numerous steps to finish off, an echidna was discovered on the side of the path, digging up ants and bugs!! He/she didn’t seem too worried about us and even put his nose back out for the photos!
I adore them! Furry spikey funny things!

We were out about 4 hours – and everyone really enjoyed themselves which was great!
I hope I have a few more people booking in for the next walk over to Cathedral Rocks later in the month!!

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend!
Cheers

I was all mentally prepared for a weekend in front of the fire in full sloth mode.

And the sun came out.

I will admit Friday night was abysmally cold, but Saturday wasn’t too bad and today was actually lovely out there

On Saturday the sun slipped in and out – it was nice being outside and watching the bees for a bit. They were pretty…. busy!

I did spend time putting together a couple of soap making starter packs as Sharon and I are booked in to do a few workshops soon

Even though there hasn’t been tons of tulips… they’ve been such a lovely splash of colour in the garden

Even Pip got a bit of a wander about

And poor Flea!! She is looking quite bedraggled!

Not fair moulting when there is snow nearby… brrrr

This is my one remaining lettuce in the hothouse
I seriously killed the rest of the THREE punnets!!
I have no idea why!
Oh and I think some slugs ate the newly emerged lettuce seedlings!!
Going to have to buckle down and try again!

Conversely, the tomato nursery with the Yellow Grosse Lizzies are thriving!! Go figure!!

Anyway… hope you’ve all had a splendid weekend!
Cheers!

Hello! How is everyone??
Friday again. Gee that day seems to roll around quickly!

Whats been happening??
Last weekend I did an introduction to permaculture course out in Penguin at the Reseed Centre.

The space was originally a school so ideal area for gardens and classrooms for teaching!
The course was so interesting. I thought permaculture was a type of gardening, but it really is so much more…

There were a number of people running and presenting information. They started with the big picture stuff and as the weekend progressed, moved down to the small picture stuff.

I liked the three basic tenets : Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share.

And one thing that really seemed to resonate and make sense with me… the term ‘self sufficient’ is bandied about a lot… but if you consider all your basic and semi basic needs – self sufficiency doesn’t seem particularly achievable for the average household.

Not only would you need to grow and harvest food – preserve etc. but there are a host of things that we rely on in this world… water, power, mechanical knowhow, health professionals, and on and on. Even if you mastered somehow all that was needed, you’d run out of time and just be an exhausted pigeon!!!

I like the idea of moving more towards community resilience and diversity. Not moving into a commune or anything, but having a bunch of people that share resources and skills that are close by.

There is already a lot of stuff happening (like seed banks/swapping etc)

We did some practical stuff like garden orientation, position of the sun at certain times of year – knowing your property so best places or optimal places to put things to get the most out of your plants.
Did a bit of a soil check and pH test (mine was right on 6.5 so pretty handy!)

(A bit of a clay soil with a couple of clear layers there in the bottom)

I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed the chook that insisted on coming inside and bok bok bokking loudly over the top of the presenter! Very much reminded of Flea!!

While on the subject of classes… my basket weaving class has diverted into working with bull kelp! This insanely huge leathery material is very cool to work with
Again… getting ideas from Adele and guidance on how the Aboriginal people made use of this wonderful product.

When dry they shrink up a reasonable amount

So today I chose quite a big piece to work with and took a bunch of guelder rose prunings in (nice straight but flexible sticks) for people to use to share.

Voila!
A traditional water carrier!

I’ll take the string off when it dries… and by then hopefully it will keep its shape.

And brrrr back to hail and rain and snow forecast for much of the state this weekend!
So we stocked up on a lot of easy to reach firewood at the back door!

The herb garden is getting nice and lush so I raided the oregano to get some drying.
Also found some freesias and rosemary

The netting is now hanging in the lounge on the clothes rack

The flowers are now residing in one of my sister Rosemary’s lovely ceramic creations.

And some tulips are still out there in the garden hanging on and looking beautiful

Yellow…

And some have reached the end

I am enjoying munching on the cape gooseberries… really putting off uprooting that entire garden so I can do salad stuff as planned. The cape gooseberries are thriving there though!

Thats about it update wise!!
I reckon I’ll be hunkered down inside for the weekend if the forecast is accurate!
Hope your weekends are fabulous!
Cheers!

Hi again!
Well… the raspberries popped out some leaves so they went high on my list to sort out.
They needed a pruning weeding and a general all area make-over

I made a huge problem for myself… I should have taken the net off when they woodchipped over the fence…
I didn’t realise how much of it there would be and thought the netting would stop the raspberries from being buried.
By the time I knew better… it was too late

I said many many rude words as I shovelled a ton of chips out of the way… and you can’t just shovel happily. Because – sticks. Sticks stop the shovel from shovelling…

I had to cover Pips ears!

Finally unearthed the whole thing and shoved it aside while I worked on the patch.
I pruned back the canes and cut out the dead wood.
Jeff came down and helped me sort out the net (Untangle and renet) and shovel lots of woodchip around the patch… (He had been mowing again… that time of year when you can almost see the grass grow)
We then mulched the actual canes with straw.

Plenty of timber hanging about to weigh the netting down!!

I still need to get back in there and restring the supports along each patch but by the time we were done here… I was done!

We let the girls out and naturally they started to kick out the woodchip immediately.
This is why they were left locked up during the process – otherwise I’d still be there trying to get the job done and piffing chooks out of the way!

Flossie getting a cuddle

Back up behind the house and a couple of cows appear.
A few minutes later they are all there staring at me.
So I proceed to run up and down the fence line (in gumboots) with a bunch of cows stampeding along behind!!
I find this hilarious!

Anyway…
Next!
Potatoes!

Handy chopping boards all over the property at the moment!

I didn’t want to go out that day because it was doing one of those Tasmanian Weather Days and raining and sunning off and on every 10 minutes.

Told myself not to be a woose and get out and plant. So I did.
Rain never really hurt…
Tasmanian Weather immediately hailed on me!!!! Eyeroll.

But because I was in Tough Woman Mode, I soldiered on

Marked out the plot and dropped the spuds in

This season I also decided to mulch straight away since I had the straw. I never get back to my poor potatoes for mulching … maybe this will keep them happier this season!

Nice to get another important gardening job ticked off the list.

Tulips are still blooming which is lovely.
I am tempted to cut and bring some inside, but I don’t have that many and I am enjoying seeing the colours when I go out back.

And the snails haven’t ravaged them either this season thanks to the iron pellet stuff I’ve been using!

Hopefully the nice weather keeps it up more often than not!
Hope your week has started well!!

Cheers

Well, there it is… the last log being loaded onto the rack for milling

The guys have done a spectacular job and its been really interesting to watch

There she goes! (Spinning blade of death….)

I’ve been Chief Sawdust Relocating Manager

So much beautiful timber!

The weather has been a bit manky recently…we have done some work cleaning up and Jeff has done a lot of work splitting wood for future fires

Unfortunately for one of Jeff’s fingers… he also had a slight ‘small axe incident’
So far he hasn’t been to the doc but did all the usual nursey things.
I think he will live…

I’ll return with some gardening stuff next post.
A few more advancements have happened

I am going to have to get more heavy handed with the red so its not quite as pink in the final stages!
Anyway… its a start. Christmas soap! (Peppermint)
And oops… just remembered the tree embed I put in the freezer earlier. Will have to get that out and remove from mould before bed.

Crochet update!
Its really growing
Although there are a horrifying amount of tails to tuck!! (sadly this is not going to coincide with a visit from my Mum… darn it) (No pun intended haha)

Its going to take me an eon!

Of course no carefully arranged display is complete without a cat boofing his way under the covers and causing a cat-tidal wave of crocheted squares…

Thanks Pip!!

Basket weaving!
Loving my Friday morning classes. So relaxing there.

Apart from tidying up the tails on the inside, I am done.
The red bit around the top (Might have mentioned this before??) are grasses that were dyed with beetroot and woven in.

I used it on my market table on Saturday to display my business cards!

Then, I learned how to make roses and lilies!

Adele (our teacher) started one that I finished and finished one that I started! But she let me take the both home.
I liked the process of weaving the flax to make the lilies.

And a series of folding and twisting creates the roses!!

Pip trying his best to give subtle hints about his sleeping bag being warm enough ready for him to crawl in to!

Anyway, thats about it from me tonight
Hope everyone had a super weekend!
Cheers

Ed and Paul have done an amazing job! Last log was done yesterday
I will have more photos and story of course but not quite got all the pics sorted yet!!

So I’ll show you some soap…

I did this today… the cut should reveal a Christmas Tree… and stripes?? I can hope! (Peppermint)

Yesterday I tried a new design…
I used the divider to get the base part done

I made up three colours for the bottom and blended them softly before pouring

I then grabbed my high tech soaping tool (chopstick) and made some waves

I am loving this design and am very keen to do other colours!

I had to cut them horizontally to keep the design intact and was really pleased when I did…

Rather elegant!!

The leftover mixture made some cute little bee soaps too!

Hope your week is going splendidly!
Cheers!

Poor tulip… everything got covered in grass clippings yesterday.
Jeff and I took advantage of the beautiful weather to mow and do more cleaning up around the yard.

The plum tree is done and dusted with its blossoms. Lets keep fingers crossed for actual plums and some nice weather to ripen them up.

The day before yesterday, we decided to finish off the top of the garden fence at long last

Since we have oodles of timber, procrastination has won the day as we haven’t had to buy what we needed

This way we have been able to staple the wire to the top bar and stop it from flopping about – as it does when big fat possums jump on it (Or birds)

It doesn’t look too bad and it certainly looks more finished than before!

I suspect the possums were getting over the fence near the top gate then using the two moveable composts and the sink as a jumping point out, so I’ve started sorting that area.

I have yet to move the sink (insanely heavy) as I have to sort a suitable area, but was able to empty and move the two composts

Hmmmm so much work to be done. Plus I am unsure how to sort the older composts just yet.

Neglected much?

A lot of weeding, sorting and wheelbarrowing later…

I am hoping the ferny moss takes hold in the old Man Fern chunks I got from Ruby’s place.

Plot by plot I am getting the garden under control.
It was a shock to realise we’ve made it to spring already!

Yesterday after the mowing, I tackled the snow pea plot as I will need it to swing into action soon…

Eeeek.
One of the wooden trellises had rotted at the bottom so I ended up taking it out… then I took pretty much all the other bits out and whacked in some proper steel droppers to secure the mesh to.
And dug weeds. Twitch. So. Much. Twitch….

Happily… another plot done by days end.

Looks 100% with the mowing done too.
Grass from now is going to grow stupidly quickly

Still easy to grab carrots whenever I need them.
Itching to pull that plot apart but… not really nec. until October when I will want to replant.

Oh… I killed all the lettuce (99% of them ) in the hothouse that I transplanted the other day!!!!

Maybe 4 are struggling along??? I have absolutely no idea why…
How disappointing!! And weird. Was it me or the punnets of lettuce?

The little tomato seeds that I put in at the same time have started showing up

So funny… yesterday morning only these guys were up.
By the afternoon… a whole lot more!

These are yellow tomatoes.
Hope they survive unlike the lettuce!!

My pot of sweet peas! I didn’t plant them. They are just doing their own thing. They never really thrived last season under my ‘care’ so I am ignoring them.

We let the girls out of the chook run after we had done with the lawn – They had a great time… Flea of course off on her own mission.

A good number of tulips are out which is nice and those iron pellets are keeping the slugs and snails at bay so I don’t have half chewed flowers so far!!

Yesterday was a pretty huge day… with all the mowing, weeding, whippersnippering, digging, weeding, planting, splitting kindling, etc etc.
According to Pip it was completely exhausting!! (This is where we found him at days end, dead to the world haha)
Cheers

Hi!
Spring is stampeding toward us and we’ve had a week of sensational weather

Jeff found this young kookaburra on the track – we took it to the vets but haven’t rung to find out what happened to him/her.

OK… so technically the Millars are not the ones milling, but we’ll take some credit for simply owning the trees and the property!!
Paul and Ed came in and started moving the logs about so Ed could set up his mill in the right spot.

I helpfully sat up on one of the big tree stumps snoopervising and taking photos.
Soon it was too dark to do much more

I had a busy week with appointments and also being at home helping with moving timber and sawdust and doing lunches when I was in.

What a great process watching the huge logs cut into the right sizes

The large and scary blade goes down the log in a horizontal position and then back in the vertical.

Kicks out a lot of sawdust of course!

Pallets have been put down to store the timber on and smaller strips of timber have been cut as dividers to the layers.

The grain is beautiful and the smell is amazing
A little sad to reduce this magnificent tree to mere strips of timber

Smaller and smaller

There is a new chook shed in there

So much…

Some I am piling up out of the way, some I am bagging for later use in the coop, some we put straight into the coop…

At the end of day two we had this timber done

And this (that came from only two logs!)

And Jeff split a pile of offcut logs that I stacked

Still lots to go!

And another day done…

A lovely sunset with pretty plum blossoms!

OK… today back with my new best friend

Cutting more of the dividers and cutting offcuts for middle sized wood for the fire.

Started on filling the big kindling box

We are going to have SO much of this!

We look like a lumber yard!

I’ve been working on the above right side pile

I think there has been progress!

I’ve set this smaller stuff onto another lot of pallets out of the way

And I have a small stack of useful offcuts that I’ve cleaned up that were too good to cut for firewood

The girls only get let out late in the day…. Flea no doubt would be up on the saw mill if she was out when the action was happening

She is like a lone wolf haha

And as per usual, despite her short legs, wherever I am in the yard… there is the pitter patter of Flea behind!

While the other girls took a dust bath…

Flea comes up to see Pip

Unsuspecting Pip

Then a displeased Pip trying to get back inside!

Check it out! First tulips!

So lovely to see a couple of them popping out!

The girls were in disgrace the other day as they got into the iris/tulip patch and vigorously dug it up… didn’t do the young tulips any good and look at the mess they made of the top part!!
NOT pleased!
Will be glad to get the fences back in order!

The rotters!

Anyway…. I am pretty tired!
Might take a rest day tomorrow!
Who knows?
Have a fabulous weekend all!
Cheers!

Yes I know… the above picture does not look very soap-like!
This is why I am not here much lately… just been busy!!
But the milling has started so we are finally on the home straight of this very long winded tree job!
Will return another day with more on that.

Back to soap

Just wanted something a little on the ‘pretty’ side. This one is Australian Lavender.

Now this fantastic experiment is for colouring using Turmeric!
My lovely friend Irene in Queensland grew her own and dehydrated and powdered it… and sent me some!

In the curing process it has lightened, but the speckle remains which is really lovely
I didn’t use any fragrance… just wanted to see what the colouring did.

Its gone even lighter than this – next batch I will double the amount of turmeric. Just to see!

Bit of a dodgy photo and it doesn’t tell you much, but these are shampoo bars.
I did the soap a different way with a few different ingredients.
And the lye mix was all milk and a skerrick of water – so it will be a very soft soap!
Now to wait a month before I can test it.

Last market… A lady from the market took this photo and I asked if I could use it here because I didn’t take my camera along
Can you see the soap on the back row? I’ve got some little slabs of the macrocarpa there as a raised bench to be fancier.
Also some fairy lights that you can’t really see.

There…

Nawww… Pip. As always I think he is cute. (He is on my lap right now but will pop him into bed in a minute and I will have to go too because I am pretty tired after today!)

Hope you are all having a great week so far!
Cheers!

(Slightly dodgy snap… haha)

Well, we had a few days of this and some serious winds

Even though Jeff had just cleared the gutters…

Pip mostly said, ‘yeah, nah’ and disappeared under a blanket

Today things fined up so…time to identify this seasons potato patch and make things happen

Yep. This mess right here looks suitable!

Part of the area was just… lawn!

I dug it up in squares and tried to get most of the soil off… it was sticky! and used it to bulk up the areas under the garden gates (to thwart rabbits)

It all took a while

And of course, when outside, where I be, there is Flea…

I call this ‘Contemplation of Corn’

The garden had a ton of enormous worms and she made a little piggy of herself on them!

Oh… and how many potatoes can one dig up out of a corn patch?
Glad you asked…

Just some of the collection I found!
As one of my friends pointed out… potatoes are sneaky.

I seriously wanted to give up before I was done… but I am glad I told myself not to be a woose and to finish it up!
Think I was walking two inches taller with accumulated mud

Looking forward to planting the potatoes.

A quick garden round up:
The white garlic. All nice and happy

Collected some carrot seeds

Lettuce looking woebegone

But… new growth showing

So I am hopeful lots of them will take off once they’ve gotten over the shock of transplanting

Something for the soup…

I took a long hot bath tonight… still feeling a bit on the achy side after all the digging and bending (and removing Flea from the garlic patch)

Hope your week has been going along well!
Cheers!