Chapter 28 - Peace, Love and Mung Beans Festival

Chapter 28

Peace, Love & Mung Beans Festival

A couple of years ago at one of our New Years Eve parties, the band “Pond Scum” an ad hoc ensemble of musical friends hadn’t exactly rehearsed enough prior to the evening to perform very many songs, and quite frankly after a few brews they were just over it.  Instruments left on stage they got into the sprit of the night and focused on the drinking rather than the playing.  One by one some of the invited guests both friends and family just got up on the stage (yes, we have a stage in our backyard!) and played and sung whatever they knew to the other party goers.  I looked over at my brother and sister in law, glasses of red wine in hand sprawled out on a picnic rug listening to the impromptu concert and the thought crossed my mind how cool it would be to host a Music Festival at our house.

I like a good party, and I tend to get really carried away with trying to make it an experience to remember for us and for our guests to talk about for some time to come.  Like the Cinco De Mayo (15th of May in Mexican) party with Mexican buffet, margarita bar and the stage festooned with handmade crepe paper flowers, the Halloween party with the eyeball cocktails (basically Tequila Sunrise with canned lychees floating in it) and real pumpkins carved into jack o lanterns and the Christmas lights evening with blow up Santa train and moving reindeer.  So now I had another party to focus on I was determined to make it a memorable and better still, an Annual event.

So the Peace, Love and Mung Beans Festival was born, which is actually a pseudonym as we incorporated our suburb’s name into the real title and while many of you will be invited next year we don’t necessarily want hordes of blog readers from the four corners of the world crashing our event!  So please forgive the subterfuge.  Invitations with a 70‘s Woodstock flavour were created to reflect the true spirit of peace and harmony of the Music Festival with all invitees encouraged to register to perform at the festival on the promise of complimentary lanyards and Access All Areas Back Stage Passes.  Camping grounds were provided, and the official T-shirts printed and duly advertised for sale (just to cover costs).  I even sewed up six Balinese style flags in psychedelic colours to decorate the yard and add a groovy feel,only to find them later on eBay for a very reasonable price.  Our local cheap as chips shop was selling pink lawn flamingos and I was dying for an excuse to buy a pair and now I had one!  The chickens and dog checked them out and thought they were very strange animals indeed.

If you have ever had to get people to commit to an event that actually involves performance you will understand that the registrations were very slow to come in and a bit vague when it came to how many pieces and what exactly people would be performing.  In the end we even phoned a few of our friends to see if they were actually going to come to the party regardless of if they wanted to be on stage.  It got to the weekend before and we were so close to canceling the whole thing when a few people started to RSVP.  Phew!

The day before, Benny drove to his brothers place to borrow some PA equipment and lights which we knew were going to make this back yard event as professional looking and sounding as it could.  His brother has a business doing PA for gigs but unfortunately was away on the weekend in question but happy to lend us the gear to use.  It couldn’t be set up in the yard until the last minute because of weather and chance of theft or damage which made the actual day very pressured for Benny.  I chopped cheese, celery and carrot for nibbles platters, fetched tables, put up the flags and then seconded my mother to man the Merchandising Stand and my mother and father-in-law to handle the Sausage Sizzle.

Three o’clock rocked around and the first three people arrived, put outtheir lawn chairs and esky unfolded the picnic rug and set up to have a groovy time.  Then some more families came, then more families and some of them even brought some of their friends which was awesome, and by about half past four it was time to kick things off.  Unbeknownst to some I had been learning the guitar for about a year and a half and had rehearsed a song to play at the festival.  A little nervous about my debut I coerced my sister, brother-in-law and husband to accompany me, and a little band was born.  We performed Wonderwall by Oasis and it went over fairly well except my vocals weren’t well amplified and so the crowd couldn’t really hear my singing which in all honesty is probably a good thing given the nerves.  But in Benny’s words we set the bar fairly low for the rest of the performers so we helped alleviate other people’s fears about getting up there and having a go.  

The first performance out of the way, thirteen other individuals or groups had their turn, introduced by duel MC’s our son and his friend Rory.  Each act was met with excited applause and cheers of encouragement.  We had solo guitarists, singers, a drummer, a comedian, family bands, duets etc including people that had never been on stage before.  To make sure we had enough entertainment to keep everyone engaged for a couple of hours we interspersed some competitions with a 70’s flavour.  There was an air guitar competition, how long can you hula hoop and quoits throwing.  All had prizes of boxes of chocolates so we had good deal of participation by both kids and their parents.  Some of the funniest moments were adults re-living their childhood gyrating their hips to keep their hoops off the ground and strumming the air while whipping their hair around, having a ball. I’m sure a lot of potential funniest home videos were shot on iPhones that day.

Once the actual concert was over, night had fallen and poor Benny could relax from his mixing desk and have a beer, we turned up our son’s playlist really loud and let the kids run riot on the stage.  They loved having a go at bashing the drums along with the music, lip syncing into the microphones, and having a play on the keyboard.  It was such a great time and I am happy to report there was no damage to anything.  Meanwhile other friends continued to arrive just in time to enjoy the laid back party at the end.

Because it started early, most people were gone by about nine o’clock and true stayers by eleven.  Plenty of sleep and a couple of Nurofen and I was already planning next year’s event in my head.  I reckon we won’t have much difficulty filling the bill next time with many friends over their dinner tables already discussing what they will be performing at Peace, Love and Mung Beans Festival 2014.

Chapter 27 - Happy Place

Chapter 27

Happy Place

While I sit here in the slight chill of five o’clock afternoon mid August, swatting the mozzies (surely it's not warm enough for them already), sipping champagne which sits stable on my newly “made with love” outdoor coffee table, I know I have found my “Happy Place”.  The place I will go to in my mind during the rare chance at meditation (sans mosquitos), the place I will go to when things get me down, and the place I hope to be every afternoon once we move full time to the farm.  

The veggie garden has had a few incarnations over the last three years and finally it is becoming the place I envisioned it to be.  The crop circles which gave us an abundance of eggplant, tantrically entwined carrots, furnace hot rocket, and a pestsometimes known as mint, have now been transformed into the promise of veggies to come.  I know if I look back to the previous Crop Circle Chapter I will get a total expenditure of the project, which of course I am avoiding as just last week I called the local landscaping supplier and ordered three cubic metres of organic potting mix to fill them.  I am sure that done the right way with the proper preparation the “no dig” method of gardening works a treat.  But we all know that is NOT me.  Jump in without all the information, without considering the area, the light, the preparation etc and end up with a tub of plants falling over without sufficient soil to hold their roots, and a tub full of grass that has come through the sparse layer of newspaper and taken over and strangled any veggie that might have existed.

So failure admitted (apart from the eggplant), I physically pulled out all the runner grass and put it in the compost, shoveled out the decomposed mulch and deposited around various trees and plants, layered weed mat, and heaps of newspaper into the circles and started all over again.

I had done a rudimentary calculation of the amount of soil needed to fill the five circles and had come up with an estimate of eight cubic metres.  Thankfully Benny worked out it needed more like two, and so I ordered three.  The guy came with the truck and thanks to the new and improved gates we have at that end of the yard, was able to drive right up to the edge of the pots and dump the load.  Looked like a lot of soil to me and I thanked my lucky stars that Benny had dissuaded me from ordering more.

The weekend came and while I was out being Mum’s taxi, the hard work began.  Benny shoveled soil into four out of five, only because I still hadn’t emptied the last one of the grass infested mulch that was in the fifth.  Once I was home I pulled out all stops and got that done and also shoveled in the soil, thankful that he had left the closest pot to the soil for me to do.  That, my friends, was enough work for the day so on Sunday after reading one of the books I had collected on growing veggies, I and my list went to Bunnings for five packets of seeds.  Yep seeds this time not seedlings.

That afternoon I planted the five things I knew I would eat, and were appropriate for our climate and the time of year, yep I learned something from my previous experience.  As they were circles and I couldn’t very well plant rows, I used a bamboo cane to draw out a spiral in each pot, from the centre out allowing about 15cm spacing.  In the first pot I planted silver beet, the second which received the most shade cos lettuce because it keeps the longest and you can just remove the leaves that you need as you need them.  The third I planted with carrots as it was closest to the awesome fragrance of the rosemary bush which I read keeps “carrot loving” pests at bay. 

I also used a little trick I had learnt from a DVD I bought myself last Christmas “A Year in Pete’s Patch” (available from ABC shops) and mixed the itty bitty tiny carrot seeds in with a jar with sand to disperse them.  With a hole pierced in the lid it is the perfect pouring receptacle to plant a thinned out layer of seeds without having to use tweezers to pick them out individually.  The next pot I planted with snow peas and used a different technique.  

As I needed to make sure there was room for a trellis to support the growing vines I drew a line through the centre and then on either side a zig zag planting a seed deep in the ground every 5cm.  This way each of the plants will support each other as they grow and all will be able to reach the support of the trellis.  The last pot I planted celery from seeds that I had had for over a year and as yet they are the only ones that have not germinated.  Reckon there must be a life span for seeds? 

Fast forward one week and all the lettuce plants had sprouted, two weeks and the silver beet, and carrots had broken through the ground.  Three weeks later and I have gorgeous little snow pea plants as well, but still no celery.  I have an old wire chair (cushion just inside the front door for ease of grabbing) and a solid timber side table on adjustable feet that can be leveled to adjust to uneven terrain (gotta love him!) to hold my cuppa or wine, laptop, book or whatever floats my boat.  Happy Place in place, the next job is constructing a trellis that can be moved from pot to pot if needed.  Think I might give that job to Benny as I feel that some hand made pavers will be a nice addition to the garden and a crafty project for Lawson and I to do over the next few weeks.  Stay tuned!

PS - One week later.... and my new mobile trellis is installed!

Chapter 26 - Lemon Chicken Tree

Chapter 26

Lemon Chicken Tree

I’m sure that kids who are lucky enough to grow up on a working farm are from an early age exposed to the harshness and realities of the circle of life.  They marvel over seeing baby chicks hatched, witness lambing season, calves and puppies being born.  Also they experience the loss of the old sheep dog, animals taken by predators and maybe even the slaughter of a beast in order to put food on their table.  Is it fair to say that perhaps this may even de-sensitize them a bit to life and death.  This is not the case with me.  After growing up in a relatively normal suburban environment, I have somehow been sheltered from both birth and death.  Sure over the years I have lost grand parents to old age, and lost my wonderful Dad to cancer before his time, but on the whole I am lucky enough to say that not a lot of tragedy has befallen our family.  Even our one and only family dog died at the ripe old age of 18!  Having a small and widely spread extended family I haven’t even experienced many babies being born, except of course our own lovely child, thirteen years ago.  Now I don’t want you to think that I am comparing the death of a loved one with the story I am about to tell but rather I just wanted to give you a measure of context as to my reaction to what went on.

This was no ordinary Monday, if it had have been perhaps the events would not have gone this way, but for some reason the universe conspired to line things up like this.  I had to make a delivery to Lawson’s school and do some shopping after that so decided that I would drive him that morning instead of Brent, leaving the house relatively unattended and the chooks and dog out in the sunshine roaming free.  When I arrived back home I stopped in the driveway to open the gate, I hopped out of the truck and saw a whitish cream coloured dog in our yard.  The expression “my heart sank”, doesn’t quite come close to the panic and adrenalin that made my stomach sick and my heart ache.  I opened the gate tentatively as I didn’t quite know what this dog, from goodness knows where, was going to do.  It bounded up to me wagging its tail and I told it to go home and closed it out of the gate.  I then became the mad woman from hell screamed for my chickens and ran over to the big heap of white feathers under the mango tree anticipating the body of Georgia to be under all that.  Thankfully she was not.  But there under the bright red hen house was the distinctive plumage of my mate Schnitzel.  In a ball, not moving, obviously dead.  In my panic I went to look for the other chickens knowing full well that nothing could be done for her now.  I screamed and cried and clucked and screamed again.  I tell you its just as well most of my neighbours where at work because I seriously would have been locked up.  Down near the shed was another pile of feathers and the body of little Omelet.  She had been sick with peritonitis and probably didn’t have the strength to escape from the dog.  I searched for more, dead or alive and couldn’t see any so went to the shed to find something to wrap my two babies in.  There in the corner behind the mowers was another dog!  This one looked young and had a guilty expression on its face.  I turned around to see that the other dog had returned and so I dragged it out to the road to see if it would point me towards its home and the owners that I was going to make pay dearly.  No sign, no inclination towards this house or that.  I found a neighbour doing some yard work a couple of doors down.  I cried him the tale and told him I was concerned for the other chickens.  He offered to come and help me and we managed to lock both dogs in the shed til the officers from the pound arrived to take them away .

I wrapped my bubba chookens in a tablecloth and put them in a box and prayed the others would come home when it was time to go to bed.  Benny came back to the house, all the way from work to console me, for which I was very grateful.

Around lunch time Georgia appeared.  She stood under a bush at the back door and it was obvious that she had suffered an injury to her side and her wing.  I felt that she had sacrificed her wing to save her life.  I didn’t want to distress her further so left her there to see how she went as the day progressed.

I went to pick up Lawson from school and sadly told him about the tragic loss of our two favorite chickens.  We had a big cry on the way back home but were relieved to drive in the yard and find the other two girls had come back and were unscathed.

Later that afternoon we heard our neighbour calling out the names of his dogs, uh oh.  These german gun dogs were used for pig shooting and thus had a taste for blood.  Because of this they were always kept locked away in a pen in a corner of their yard were even I as their neighbour had never seen a glimpse.  He called to me over the fence and asked if I had seen a creamy whitish dog and another brownish one.  I told him the whole story and even though I was sad I didn’t feel great about having his dogs taken away to the pound.  I apologized and explained that I didn’t know they were his dogs and would have called him if I thought they were.  He was happy the dogs were safe, equally apologetic that they had killed the chickens and almost embarrassed that this accident had  happened.  Seemed the dogs ate their way through the wire fence, slipped through the narrow gap between two other fences and came across the creek into our yard.  The next morning he bailed them out of doggy jail and was back on the front door step apologizing again.  But what can you do, they are great neighbours and the fence is now very, very secure.

During the day I worked up the courage to bury the chickens.  One of our friends had buried their beautiful old dog under their lime tree when it died and it produced more fruit than it ever had in the years after that.  So I went out to my lemon tree that has never in three years produced a fruit, gently pried it out of the ground, and dug down further.  It was hard work made harder by tears, but somehow I felt that as I had benefited from their companionship so much it was only right that I should be the one to bury them and not leave it as a job for my husband to do.  I placed some straw on the soil in the hole and lay them side by side, said a little prayer and covered them over, placing the lemon tree on top.  

It’s now a couple of months down the track and we have two new lovely black hens (Eugene and Tandoori) producing lots of lovely eggs and even the older girls have been spurred along to produce some again.  The “lemon chicken tree” is now in flower with more blooms than ever before and looking healthier with the prospect of many fruit to come.  I talk to it regularly as I am a bit of a nut, and the irony is not lost on me that one of the few things you cannot feed chickens is citrus, but you can definitely feed a citrus chicken.

Chapter 25 - Try this at Home

Chapter 25

Try this at Home

Since my chapter “Pickled and Preserved” I have had many requests to share the recipes for Eggplant Kasundi and Holy Guacamole Salsa, so I thought that this week , as the projects don't necessarily keep up with the blogs, that I would share those with you.  Please bare in mind that these taste all that much better when the majority of the ingredients have been grown in the sun in a particular little corner of your own back yard.  So if you enjoy these recipes I hope that it spurs you on to get your own hands dirty and plant at least two of the easiest vegies to grow; the humble cherry tomato and the exquisite eggplant.

Eggplant Kasundi - this recipe was adapted from an eggplant chutney recipe.

Ingredients

• ¼ cup pure olive oil
• 1 medium red onion, diced finely
• 2 jalapeños
• 3 cloves of garlic crushed
• 1 thumb sized piece of ginger grated
• 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
• 2 teaspoons ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 4 tablespoons tomato paste
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• ¼ cup white wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon seeded mustard
• ¼ cup water
• 8 Lebanese eggplants, or 12 dwarf eggplants diced finely
• ¼ cup chopped coriander leaves

Method

1. Heat half the oil in a large saucepan and cook onions, chili, garlic until softened. Add spice and cook stirring for 1 minute or until fragrant. Add tomato paste and cook until combined. Add sugar and vinegar and cook mixture until reduced and jam-like. 
2. Fold through diced eggplant, water and seeded mustard.
3. Cook over low heat for 20 minutes or until eggplant skin has softened. Fold through coriander leaves, season to taste.
4. Pour into sterilized preserving jars.  Great served with cheese on a cheese board, on sandwiches, with egg dishes etc.

Holy Guacamole Salsa

Prep time: 10 min

Cook time: 15 min

Ready in: 25 min

Yields: Serves 6

Ingredients

• 6-8 large Roma tomatoes OR can whole tomatoes, drained OR better still two punnets of your own homegrown cherry tomatoes
• 2 small or 1 medium onion(s), diced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
• 2-3 hot chilies, seeded and halved, we use our own homegrown jalapeños 
• 1/2-1 cup (a handful) fresh coriander leaves, to taste
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• ground pepper, to taste
• 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin, optional
• juice of one lemon or lime, optional

Method

1. If using fresh tomatoes, add ½ inch of water to a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Place cherry tomatoes in whole.  They will break down during cooking at which time you can mash them with a potato masher or fork.
2. While you dice the onions, simmer tomatoes until water evaporates and tomatoes start to soften. Peel and discard any skins if using large tomatoes.
3. Toss tomatoes, hot peppers and coriander into a blender container. Blend until smooth.
4. Heat 1 Tablespoon of oil in the pan over medium-high heat. Sauté onions and garlic in hot oil for about 10 seconds; just a flash in the pan.
5. Add blended tomato mixture to the pan with the onions and garlic and give it a stir.
6. Season with salt and ground pepper to taste. Add cumin if desired.
7. Simmer on medium-low for about 15 minutes, or until salsa is reduced and thick. You may need to increase cook time if tomatoes are very juicy.
8. You can add the juice of a fresh lime or lemon at this point, although it's not necessary and will temper the salsa's spiciness.
9. Serve with tortilla chips, enchiladas, tacos, scrambled eggs, etc.

Chapter 24 - All in a Day's Work

Chapter 24

All in a Day’s Work

I am constantly amazed at how much can be accomplished in one day of solid work on our little patch.  

How something can be transformed from a weed covered wasteland to a crop producing aesthetically pleasing place of peace.  Inevitably though to devote an entire day to the garden means to ignore our son in the process.  We just can’t seem to get him involved in any of our projects and in all reality I remember being just the same when I was a teenager.  Can I remember planting vegies in the garden or weeding a patch of lawn...NO fear!  So I guess I cant really blame him, I just wish that it would be something we could do together.  So now we are getting a little smarter, organizing lessons on a Saturday or workshops for him to attend, or phoning a friend to come and hang out in the yard for the day to help get him outside at least and pries  him away from his laptop and the internet.

Just recently I wanted to tackle the “garden bed” on the left hand side of our driveway because frankly as a first impression it was leaving a lot to be desired.  As Benny was on a motorbike ride with his mates from church, I called up one of Lawson’s friends to come and hang out with him and viola I had several hours to myself.  We had weeks previously bought six bags of sugar cane mulch from the local Bunnings and they were stacked neatly in the shed waiting for the opportunity and time to arise.  This particular garden I had neglected for quite some time and so now it was full of weeds (I wish I had taken a before photo), and so I set about pulling most of them out physically which took the best part of the first back breaking hour.  Now from previous experience I knew that if I meticulously laid wads of our accumulated local newspapers and covered them with a healthy layer of fresh mulch, then before I could turn around the chickens would be in and scratching it all up again.  So I had to become a fence builder before I could go any further with the project.

In another little garden bed near the tennis court I had recently planted jalapeños and bell chilli peppers and had kind of taken a punt that I didn’t really need a high fence to dissuade the chickens from getting in there and digging up new plants before they got the chance to get established.  I bought some half metre garden stakes, hammered them in the ground at intervals and cut the snake and vermon mesh to about the same height.  This I ran along between the stakes and secured with zip clips which I later trimmed off to make them virtually invisible.  This provided me with a low fence that protects the new plants but will allow harvesting to be easy once the bushes have gained some height, at which point the fence could be reused and relocated to an area of new planting.  Tricky hey!

So using my newly acquired expertise I used the same technique and created a long low fence on top of the brick garden edging (one day that will go) that would provide a barrier to the chickens and prevent the layers of mulch washing away in the event of heavy rain.  Then I turned on the sprinkler system and wet the ground for a while.  Another technique I have learnt which stops newspaper flying away with every gust of wind before you have the chance to put the mulch on to hold it down is to turn on the sprinkle system as you are laying the paper.  Not something I advise in the height of winter but very successful on a scorching summers day when you are wringing wet from sweating your guts out building a fence!  The black poly pipe and its little jets created a fine mist of water which was just enough to soak both myself and the paper and wet the ground sufficiently underneath it.  Once a metre or so of paper was laid I would turn off the sprinkler and lay the mulch, then on again with the sprinkler and paper and then off again for more mulch.  This is when I really could of used a hand because each run to the tap which was not located close at hand, involved hopping over the fence and back again, way too many times.  But the boys were playing and I wasn’t going to interrupt them just to stand there and be my tap turners so I got more exercise than I bargained for and persisted.  Until I ran out of newspapers.  Do you know how many papers I went through and it only covered half the area I needed it to, and of course it was too late to stop the project now mid way through.  So I had another brainy idea, I took all the discarded plastic bags the mulch came in, cut the welds, flattened them out and lay them on the ground like a weed mat.  They covered a lot of ground and were much easier to handle than the paper and seemed to be just as effective.  So six bags later the garden was covered and the project complete.  In this particular garden I have a hibiscus to attract the bees and for some colour, a Tahitian Lime, Avocado, Olive, some stray Bird of Paradise that  I think run under the fence from the neighboring property and my Lemon Chicken Tree which will be the subject of my next chapter so I wont spoil that with an explanation just now.

Weeks, nay months later and the garden still looks fresh and weed free.  There has been sufficient rain which is hopefully retained in the soil much longer now for the mulching and lots of beautiful sunshine to boot.  Just this weekend I noticed some new growth on the lime and what looks like some buds on the lemon so fingers crossed my hard work has paid off.

The best thing was later that afternoon while I was cleaning up, Lawson and his mate came out to the yard to skateboard on the tennis court and his mate looked at the garden with a big dopey grin and amazement on his face and exclaimed “Did you do all of that in just one day?”.  Amazing what you can achieve in one day, isn’t it.

Chapter 23 - Weeds

Chapter 23

Weeds

One of the toughest things about managing the two acres that we have is our constant battle with the weeds.  The advantage of living in this tropical state with its bounty of warm sunshine and plentiful rain means we have healthy vegies and lush grass which is almost always overshadowed by an amazing crop of the tallest weed trees you have ever seen.   I grew up in Victoria where for the most part plants were small and dainty like the little alyssums that grew between the pavers at Aunty Maizie's house and the pretty pink blush of the delicate cherry blossom flowers at Nanna’s. Even the weeds as I remember them were small and fragile and could be teased out of the ground by Mum and Dad with a little hand tool.  Now my memory of this process may be a little hazy as I wasn’t much into gardening in those days and it did seem like an awful waste of time when there were Barbies to be dressed and ballet to be practiced but I feel that the Victorian weeds were a great deal weaker than the ones that grow up here.

Now just as you may never have heard of cherry tomato trees, you may never have come across in your suburban backyard the anomaly known colloquially as the Spiky Apple Tree.  These are the mother of all weeds!  They start out as a pair of small fleshy leaves on a thicker than usual stalk which seems at first very easy to grab and also lifts out of the soil in full without breaking, bonus!  If you are smart and lucky enough to grab them early, always with gloves on to protect what’s left of your manicure, you will inevitably still feel the sharp jab of the immature version of the spikes that grow hidden just under the leaf or just below the cover of the dirt.  That just hints to the power of the prongs it develops if the plant is allowed to mature.  These plants grow fast, really fast, and because of their method of propagation they grow en mass.  See, its not only a coincidence that I talk about them and reference the cherry tomato trees as the spiky apple produces hundreds of green berries the size of marbles that if squashed resemble an underripe cherry tomato full to the brim with seeds that represent potentially another grove of spiky apple forrest.  Once mature these trees develop trunks, which will keep growing until about six meters tall and the trunks fifteen centimeters or more in diameter.  They are covered in the biggest (and small sneaky ones) thorns at every point on the trunk.  At this point if you have been crazy enough to allow other projects to get in the way of weed control you will need to chainsaw them through the trunk, drill holes in the stump and inject with a syringe any type of scary poison that will finally stop them dead in their tracks (that is apart from the potential babies growing at the foot of the tree).  Then you must chop it up and cart it away which will leave you scratched and scarred and bleeding.  You have probably read enough so far as to rightly assume we have let this pest get away from us, but let me assure you that it was not all our fault.

Talking with neighbours always gives you a great insight into the past of the property you now own and as our lovely neighbour Ross has been in his house on one side of ours for about thirty odd years and has had at sometimes a closer relationship with some of the previous owners than others, he is a wealth of information about our home and its previous occupants.  He told us the story of the “mad irishman” who would wander down to the secret garden every morning and play his bag pipes in his pajamas! Then there was the drug lord down the road who came home one day in a Rolls Royce he had won at the Casino.  He told us how with the second owner of our house, he helped cement the boulders together to build the tranquil, cascading, water feature at one end of our swimming pool, how the excavation works of the same owner ruined the tranquil creek and its turtle habitat and how he and that same owner put up the fence dividing both their properties not long after that.  Ross also warned that very same owner about the spiky apple, but this horticultural brains trust thought that they were the best, fastest growing trees he had ever seen and just let them run rampant!  The seeds then flowed off down the creek to propagate many more spiky apple forests and so on and so on...  So we have been and will continue to be fighting a loosing battle with this particular weed it seems.

There are all sorts of other weeds to contend with also on the property, like the one that grows like a vine that overtakes full trees and ties them up in knots with rope that could support Tarzan, and the one that pretends to be a ground cover plant by producing pretty yellow flowers that attract the native bees but lays down roots every five centimetres which makes it near impossible to pull up and remove entirely.  One that I fight the good fight with every week in my vegie garden we probably all have in common.  You may know it by either of these names; cobbler’s pegs or mother of millions, or perhaps your family had a special pet name for it all of their own.  All we know is that the weeds have been here long before us and previous owners and will no doubt continue to be here long after we are gone.  Whatever the case in our feeble attempt to control them they are in fact controlling us, eating into our precious time that could be spent enjoying the place or doing other projects and eating into our finances with purchase of chemicals, sprayers, chains etc.  I cant see at this point a real solution to our weed problem but...hey just an idea but don’t goats eat everything in sight?  I think maybe we should get a goat!

Chapter 22

Where there’s Smoke...

I really love the onset of Winter here in Queensland.  We have nothing much to complain about because the days are still so beautiful, temperate and sunny, and the nights though colder are just cold enough to be an excuse for ugg boots, fleecy jackets and an open fire.    Just outside the overhang of the roof line of the performance stage/deck, we have a patch of dead grass, which over Summer months greens over just in time for Winter to hit again and then become singed with the heat of the open fire pit. The part of winter that no one looks forward to more than my husband is making an open fire. A boy scout at heart if not in reality he loves nothing more than to scrunch up the newspaper into tennis ball sized clumps and neatly, nay symmetrically construct a kindling tower that any Jenga player would be most proud of.  It’s a point of consternation with Brent when I out of necessity am given the opportunity to construct the fire.  In my typical haphazard fashion the kindling is placed indelicately in a kind of teepee construction into the drum, in no way akin to the symmetry of its usual design.  Still works though doesnt it!    

But there is a bit of a problem this Winter.  After being here for almost three years now, if you look around our two acres you would be hard pressed to find another dead tree.  Benny has systematically chainsawed every last one of them into manageable sized logs and further chopped many into rough hewn kindling.   There is one tree that still stands proud if presumably hollow, but its very size is daunting and he hasn’t yet summoned the courage or planned an adequate escape path, should the whole thing not go the right way when the first cut is made.  Who knows, maybe this will be the Winter that the tree comes down.  In the meantime he has hopped the fence (only a metre or so) and taken down a couple of trees in the back acre of our neighbours rental property.  Lets just call it mitigating our fire risk.  

Then, as if on cue a second problem arose, because one problem is never enough, the trailer trash half forty-four gallon drum on study welded legs, collapsed and folded right in half.  So another fire pit had to be sourced post haste as the cold winter nights were coming on thick and fast.

In our household whenever there is a purchase to be made of any significance for the home we tend to email each other, not really to ask permission but rather a “two heads are better than one” scenario.  This day Benny who had obviously been hard at work (not) sent me a picture of a fire pit he had found on the net that he thought would do the trick, for my approval and whats more it could be here in just a couple of days!  You know how we have grown up with the saying “You get what you pay for”, well for $125 plus delivery I looked at this little decorative fire pit and commented that I really didnt think it would be big enough for the size and intensity of fire Benny loved to build.  But of course if he thought it would be adequate then go right ahead and order it in.

Before that weekend it arrived at Australia Post and I went to collect it.  I was able to pick up all 18kgs of it and pack it into the back of our little four cylinder sedan, giving me some kind of clue as the the sturdiness and strength (or lack thereof) of the pit, therefore justifying in my mind that perhaps I may well have been correct.  That evening (being a Friday) Benny put the erector set together and stood back looking admiringly at the somewhat attractive stand and tray.  He stacked it gently adding his usual ten to twenty kilos of fire wood and although it overhung the tray a bit it seemed that the pit might just do the trick.  We called Lawson to come outside and admire the new fire pit and after much coaxing he inevitably pried himself away from the internet and opened the back door.  Just then an almighty crash and a shower of sparks went up as the bottom tray and fire fell straight onto the ground to a chorus of uproarious laughter all round. “Great Fire Pit Dad!” said Lawson jokingly as he turned on his heel and walked back into the house.

Well, two weeks later we are still using the frame to contain the wood akin to a brazier, and the tray remains on the ground to collect the ashes.  A new fourty-four gallon drum is yet to be procured but we think that this is quite possibly the best way to go.  After all, the since deceased one lasted us for two whole years and the weight of countless dead trees.  It was one that our mate who was restoring his boat had used to hold up the hull while he worked underneath it.  A drum that had once contained thinners, when Benny went to cut it in half with the grinder he told everyone to stand well back.  Just another occasion when I have been glad we have him covered by adequate life insurance!  Now bring on the dead tree I say!

Chapter 21

D.I.Why?

There are loads of running jokes in our family as you are probably beginning to realise.  One that doesn’t fall on me this time but on my husband happens whenever we go to home wares shops, garden centres and the like and look at things for the house, furniture, gadgets, outdoor decorations etc.  When I find something that I like (invariably with a hefty price tag), he usually says “I can make that!”.  After which we have a laugh, because we know that whilst he probably could make it, he most likely wont get around to it.  And although its admirable to be that crafty and willing to have a go I tend to think that our house is more of a lesson in D.I. DONT, rather than D.I.Y.  Now before you think that I am casting aspersions on my husband’s abilities, I am in fact referring to the couple of previous owner geniuses and their dodgy jobs around the place.

Our friend Mike the electrician can attest to some serious scary wiring acts that have been performed around the house by one previous owner.   Using lighting cable to carry power, double dipping on the cabling to run multiple appliances etc.  Which of course have since been or will be rectified to code as we uncover them.  Also each of our sinks in bathroom and kitchen are leaking due to “do it yourself” plumbers and drainers.  In our laundry, which is another blog in itself, the plumbing there is so flung together that we cant even buy taps to fit the outlets and so have resorted to using a shifting spanner to turn the taps on and off!  

There are home made shelves that bow in the centre, home instal jobs on wall mounted air conditioners, the outdoor spa is actually an “indoor” spa set into a deck with the motor underneath the deck to supposedly protect it.  He even set it into the deck so crooked that seriously every time you look at it makes you cringe.  

But I think by far the best of the worst D.I.Y jobs is the ceiling insulation.  Talk about cringe worthy!  It is constructed of hundreds of styrofoam squares that are all through the bedrooms, hall and lounge room, all of them stuck with liquid nails directly to the gyprock.  They also lined our closet until we decided to remove the cat scratched panels, homemade shelves, bent rails and replace it all in a DIY job with a Bunnings modular shelving kit.  One of the jobs I am pleased to say that we had a bit of success with! 

In the office from where I operate the business one previous owner used the previous kitchen cupboards and drawers for storage, and benches as a desk.  Thankfully they employed experts to do the kitchen reno and didn't do it themselves, as it is quite neat and tidy and well made, even if not entirely up to date.  The walls in the office are another home made job made entirely I feel out of recycled bits and pieces that he must have collected along the way, and when he ran out of bits... well, he just left gaps.  Cornice on three sides only, no skirting boards and a big hole in the wall (which I covered with a large whiteboard) where I figure he ran out of wall paneling.

We on the other hand have had some great successes with some of our do it yourself projects which ultimately give us a lot of satisfaction as well.  They never work out as smoothly as you would hope however and most of that is attributable to the things that are uncovered (caused by previous owners) once you start the demolition, and sometimes our lack of prior preparation and planning as we tend to jump in headfirst and fix the issues as we trip up on them.

When it came to the pool fencing for example, we paid a guy to come and do the timber fence running the entire length of the pool because we really didn’t know much about concreting in the posts and with such a big expanse we couldn’t afford to get it wrong.  A couple of thousand dollars later we have a lovely neat pool fence on one side.  As our aim now that the palm trees were gone was to be able to see the pool from the back yard, it seemed like the best most aesthetic option that gave us the desired effect was glass pool fencing and stainless steel bollards.  There was already a strip of concrete at the edge of the pool so we didn’t need to have that concreting skill nailed yet, so we figured we could do this bit ourselves.  Another trip to Bunnings and a couple of thousand dollars or so later and we had the materials needed for the project.  What we didn’t anticipate is the depth of the concrete being minuscule and therefor the bolts not getting a great amount of purchase.  But it is now in place and looking beautiful.  The pool itself is not glamorous but the view from the backyard is exactly what we were after.  So now when families come to play at our place while the parents are having drinks on the deck they can keep a lazy eye on the kids in the pool.

I think that what we have learnt over the past three years of renovating is that you need to know with every project that you are thinking of attempting, what you think you are capable of doing and what it will cost someone who knows what the heck they are actually doing to do it for you.  Then weight up what it will cost you to fix your efforts if they go very very wrong.  You do the math!  Also, get some quotes so you can plan in advance and save for the projects that you want to see done.  Sometimes the experts aren’t as expensive as you may have first thought.

Chapter 20

The Crematorium

I love to cook.  Some of you will know that I was once, a lifetime ago, a High School Home Economics teacher.  Cooking and sewing are some of my favorite things to do and hand in hand with the cooking is the entertaining, which I know I have talked about previously.  Every weekend (bar very few) we have people over for one meal or another and I, given the required amount of time on my own, love to research the recipe, shop for the ingredients and if the ingredients allow it, harvest from my own garden to prepare an awesome meal.  These are usually meals I couldn’t make unless other people were coming over as the two fussy eaters that I live with wouldn’t be happy being served it as a regular meal.  Now whilst most of my creations revolve around the glamorous six burner barbecue which allows me to be outside and surrounded by friends as I cook, some accompaniments are best prepared in the oven, otherwise referred to as, you guessed it The Crematorium.

When we bought the house we were so pleased to see that the kitchen had been remodeled, whilst not in our style it was to say the least serviceable.  It contained the basics of cupboards, drawers, a large pantry with a light that comes on as you open the door (gotta love that), more cupboards, an oven, cooktop, more cupboards and a dishwasher.  Whilst the cooktop isn’t gas as I would love it to be, it does the job and whilst the oven is there in its little niche in the wall, it is constantly on duty.  Yep it doesn’t turn off.  Here we are approaching the end of our third year of ownership and we STILL have an oven that is hot all the time.  Whilst this works well to dry the tea towels that are hung on the door and to keep rust away from the oven trays that live in it, it really isn’t ideal.  Downside number one is cleaning an oven that you cant touch the inside of for fear of singeing off your arm hairs.  Therefore it remains uncleaned (I swear thats the reason!).  Downside number two   is the amount of electricity that it must be chewing up remaining ON all the time and its total non compliance to everything safe to do with electrical equipment, especially things that are hot.  

The worst downside though is the oven’s complete contravention of the international table governing appropriate cooking temperatures and recommended cooking times for various dishes.  When it comes to baking I need to do a conversion of my own, not from imperial to metric but from metric to volcanic!  Divide cooking time in half and adjust temperature down by 100 degrees, and even then stand by the oven in the last third of the cooking time peering through the grease laden glass to observe the colour of the dish before it goes from golden brown to black in a matter of seconds whenever it feels like it.  I have literally cooked a quiche without physically turning the oven on!

Some of our poor friends who to their credit are always polite have had to endure the most beautiful homemade cheese and pesto bread, but soft fluffy insides only because the cremated crust was inedible, garlic toast which once again has to be eaten inside out, muffins that look like spewing volcanos because the outside crust cooks first and the molten inner pours out of the conical fissure to harden as a strange protruding.  Just weird believe me.  This week it was corn muffins or johnny cakes, a packet mix I spied in a shop full of USA produce and reminded me of my time in the States on student exchange.  I made up the very simple recipe, loaded the muffin tray into the oven, set the timer and walked away (and now you see my folly) for just a minute to have to race back when I smelt the black smoke billowing out of the cracks in the oven door.  

The only dish I seem to not have any worries with is the potato bake (old fashioned I know but goes well with a big juicy steak on the BBQ), which because it is covered in foil and quite liquid for most of the cooking time, can withstand the torturous temperatures and doesn’t blacken as other things would.  Every other dish is either a labour I don’t have time for or brings a disastrous result.

Now I am aware that we have many priorities in this house all of which require time and money.  Of course we need to have chains sharpened at $30 a pop, new chains for $45 (almost two a month), petrol for the mower, engines serviced, mowers replaced, pool water tested and litres of acid and kilos of salt bought every week, bigger better chainsaws, compressors that are newer than the one we bought two years ago... but look, if I am to cook spectacular dinners every weekend I must be given the right tools to work with, any tradesman worth his salt would have to agree.  

So now, we are on the hunt for a new oven as it has finally taken on the priority it deserves and I swear when the installation of the new oven and the exorcism of the old one is complete, I am going to give it a bit of its own medicine and throw it into our weekend bon fire and incinerate the volcanic beast good and proper!

Chapter 19

Thrills and Spills

There is a running joke in our family that every 99 steps that I take, I trip up (funny for some perhaps).  So every time I catch my heal on a floor board, twist my ankle on a rock, go off the edge of the concrete path onto the sand and stumble, my beloved mumbles under his breath “99”.  The fact is that I do trip up quite a bit.  I’m not really sure why, perhaps it is my love of heals , even on work boots, or weak ankles or a balance issue but I am definitely more than a little accident prone.  Living on any property with hidden rocks, holes, drop off points, bits of unseen fencing wire, rough and tumble modes of transport, weeds that lasso you like ropes, and all manner of trip and fall hazards means that I come undone quite often.  Here are just a couple of examples...

When we bought the house Benny was soooo excited because it came with his very own ride on mower with trailer and two acres of potential grass to mow.  After much use and abuse the poor MTD, broke some whiz bang component that was going to be horrendously expensive to fix.  So the decision was made to purchase a new, second hand Husquvana ride on because they are big and orange and a lot more manly don’t you know!  As Lawson had become quite a hit at school with all his mates because he would tow them around in the trailer for hours on end when they came to visit, we didn’t dispose of the old mower but just removed the scary blades and voila it became a useful transportation vehicle.  I have myself used it on many occasions to move mulch and dirt and tools from one spot to the next and sometimes had fun being towed around in the back of the trailer too, until one day...

Benny and I usually walk the property at the end of every weekend and take a look at whatever we have achieved or talk about things that we would like to do in the future.  For some reason this one Saturday afternoon I met Benny on the MTD and he offered me a lift.  It is noteworthy to point out that some visiting kids had been playing on the vehicle most of the day without incident.  I hopped in and he took me for a spin around the Secret Garden and then proceeded up the hill towards the top house pad.  About one metre from the top something happened that seemed to play out in slow slow motion.  The seven centimetre long pin that held the trailer to the tractor came out and let go!  Seems the jiggling over rocks, the angle of the slope and my weight put the centre of gravity to the back creating enough angle, just enough that the pin fell out!  

I screamed nay shrieked as the trailer with me in it began to roll (slowly at first) backwards down the shale and gravel covered hill.  I can tell you I have had all sorts of nightmares about what could have happened if I had stayed put and it had picked up speed.  But I didn’t, I jumped out while it was moving which once more changed the centre of gravity tipping me out.  I fell, rolled and slid on the gravel on my forearm and thigh finally stopping on top of a sharp rock, and to add insult to injury the trailer rolled and tipped straight on top of my head! Now I don’t know how kids do it, fall down, get straight back up again, no tears.  Not me thats for sure.

Meanwhile Benny was oblivious to a point until he heard the scream.  He parked the vehicle and came down to inspect the damage.  One thing that Benny has on his side is his extreme calm under emergency situations.  He assessed that I hadn’t broken anything although it felt like it to me, and told me to just sit there until I was ready and then he would help me to get up.  I was soooo sore and sorry for myself.  I’m sure adults aren’t meant to fall out of trailers, heck they probably aren’t meant to be in them in the first place!  

So I have some scars to add to my collection and for a while it was a recurring nightmare, and quite frankly I have not been in the trailer since.  The lost connecting pin has now been replaced by a pair of pliers, the handle of which is much longer than the pin.  Still not sure it complies with any OH&S regulations, but it has been holding things together just fine now for over a year.

I’m sure that Lawson has had many more lessons on how to use the machinery around the place than I have.  Just recently h

owever I found out for myself one important rule with the ride on mower.  While I was coming down the steep section of the second driveway collecting the branches that Benny had cut with his chainsaw and piling them into the MTD’s trailer I decided to just put it into neutral and roll forward just a tad.  Big mistake, HUGE, the vehicle has no control in neutral, no brakes even!  As I careered down the hill picking up speed and screaming “HELP!” like anybody could do a thing, I took a corner way too fast and headed to the water tank on the flat hoping that I could just jump off it if I couldn’t get the thing to stop.  All of a sudden though my reasoning kicked in, I turned the key and put it in gear (which nearly bucked me off the thing) and I had control again, just seconds away from crashing into the trunk of a huge tree.

One evening in front of some guests I stepped off the deck, my hands full of plates and cups, straight into a hole dug out by the chickens, twisting my ankle and falling in a heap.  Not graceful at all, I lay there swearing and cursing the chickens and the pain and the fact that I was going to have to spend weeks with it taped up and loads of money in physio to get it to work not as well as it had in the past.  And this would be weak ankle number two after breaking a minor bone in the other ankle in a similar stair incident two years prior.

There have been many other minor incidents at the farm and now that I think of it, all through my life, so many it seems that I am starting to think that maybe I should take a new nickname from the piece of machinery that has been the cause of so many of my thrills and spills-  “MTD”, which I have since been informed stands for Made To Destruct!  Guess I am!