In the potted garden

Do you remember me writing, a few months ago, about how our landlady wanted grass instead of food plants, and how we weren't allowed to grow anything?

This upset me at first, and put me off doing anything.

Our own blueberries - and some people say you can't grow them in Dunedin!


But then I stopped feeling useless and sorry for myself, I decided that I wouldn't let it prevent me growing what I could - in pots.


Lettuce grows well in pots - we've grown more than we can eat, all from seed

It has been sooooooo worthwhile! I've learned so much about how food grows, and our kids have had a wonderful time watching everything flower, then fruit, then ripen.

My son now wants to be a "super farmer"! I'll teach him all I can about organics and permaculture as he gets older, and - who knows?


Yummy homegrown strawberries

We've eaten countless sweet, sweet strawberries and loganberries and blueberries. Our desserts have often been free, and so delicious.

We've also avoided buying lettuce all summer long. This has saved us a lot of money.

Better yet, my kids are now in the habit of going out into the deck, and grabbing handfuls of lettuce to stuff into their mouths, or searching through the berry plants for ripe treats. What better way is there to teach children about healthy eating and sustainable living?

Instead, I find my kids are teaching me - I'm following from their habits and doing the same, going outside and grabbing yummy fresh food straight from the plants. Sometimes our children are our best teachers!


Parsley is great added to salads, ours is growing like crazy

We've had fresh, tasty herbs to add to our salads and our cooking. Try adding parsley and mint and chives to salads - they add a delicious taste!

I've had free tea to drink whenever I've wanted it - all I have to do is grab a few leaves of peppermint, add hot water and - hey, presto!



Lemons are starting to form on our lemon tree

We have tiny pumpkins starting, and itty bitty lemons just beginning to form on our lemon tree. I never expected to get fruit this first season, but it looks like we will!


Feijoa flowers are so pretty!

And nobody ever told me how beautiful feijoa trees are when in bloom. They'd be worth growing for their beauty, even if you never got a single fruit.

Yes, we can all grow food!

If I'd have believed I couldn't do anything, and that all I could do was just what my landlady told me, and grow grass, I'd never have enjoyed all the yummy treats my family is now enjoying.

Sometimes the obstacles to change seem a lot bigger than they really are. And sometimes the biggest obstacles are simply those in our own minds.

Moving from a potted garden to landed gardening

When we move into our new home, we'll move some of our plants and trees into the ground. The lemon tree, feijoa and olive will all get planted - as will the pumpkin, the strawberries and other berries.

The pots will get re-used for inside plants. Our new home has a tiny conservatory, which we will use to grow plants like lettuce and tomatoes that don't cope too well with our cool Dunedin climate. Everything will get re-used in a sensible way.

--
Cluttercut - Be the change

Read more...

Moving in - a busy month!

We move in to our new home in early March. I'm looking forward to it. And I haven't a clue how to look after sheep!

Our new home

As well as an unspecified number of chickens, we've inherited eight sheep that have come with our new, three acre property as "chattels". I guess I'll be on a learning curve with them!

Apparently the sheep have names, and I will introduce them to you individually as I get to know them myself.

However, one of them (the most stupid) is destined to be renamed "Steven Fielding" after a particular Australian Senator, who I believe has the brains of a sheep.


Will the silly Steven who doesn't believe in climate change please step forward?

So our next few weeks will be incredibly busy. Baaaa!

My son, now 5, is starting school in the next few weeks as well - and as he has special needs (autism spectrum disorder), this is a bit more involved than the usual, involving meetings with various social support workers, a meeting with the principal, and other stuff. So much fun - not!

Meanwhile, my daughter (almost 3) is changing kindergartens to one closer to our new property, so that will involve paperwork, settling in sessions, and so on.

Add to this my own slightly crazy music schedule - the normal 10 or so hours a week of singing at my two choirs is enhanced by an early concert and bonus rehearsals on weekends, just to spice things up a bit. I'm sure I'll remember what free time is like soon.

Speaking of free time though - I will soon have some! With my son at school, my daughter will be old enough for morning sessions at kindy - over four hours a day!

After five years with no breaks during the day from the kids, I won't know myself. I've decided to return to my career as a part-time freelance writer, and get my current-for-the-last-four-years novel finally finished!

Friends are very welcome to drop around for coffee any morning - please do!


View down the property, with the chook shed in the foreground

Thankfully the new house is in excellent condition, with very little that needs immediate attention. The swimming pool gates need an upgrade, and we need to put locks on the windows (our daughter likes to open windows, and with a two-storey home we're taking no chances) and on the doors. But that's it, as far as we know, apart from clearing out a downpipe.

However, I suspect I'll be very busy over the coming year. For the next few months at least I'll be planning out the property, working out where such things as woodlots, vineyards, olive groves, extended orchards and veggie plots are going to go.


The house and land from above

We'll be operating the property as a fully organic, mini-farm on permaculture principles, and will be taking in WWOOFers.

Once we've moved in, I'll take a movie of the property, and post it, so you can see it properly, and get an idea of where we'll be living. I think we're really lucky to have found the place, and am very much looking forward to having a home of my own again. After 18 months of house-hunting, I think the search has been worth it.
--
Cluttercut - Be the change

Read more...

Think before we jab: two cases of chicken pox

I just arrived back in Dunedin on Monday, after a crazy month and a half in Australia. I'm back online at last.

My hopes of catching up with other Aussie bloggers were spoiled by two cases of chicken pox, and a busy music festival schedule in-between nursing the two kids.

First my son went down with The Pox before Christmas, then my daughter a convenient two weeks later.

Not only did I not catch up with bloggers, I didn't even see old family friends, and my kids didn't get to play with their cousins much, being housebound in quarantine. Not fun - especially with temperatures soaring above 40C (100F).

Ned Kelly would have said "Such is life."

So my apologies. I would have loved to catch up. But fate (and disease vectors) had other plans.

The kids are well now, although my daughter is still a bit spotty, and my complete lack of faith in vaccinations seemed as solidly founded as ever.

So now I'd like to talk a bit about vaccination - and the wisdom, or lack of it, in our current attitudes which encourage us to jab every kid at every opportunity for every thing.

Good mother, bad mother - questioning a crooked system

My son was vaccinated - I was a "good mother" in his case, according to government strong arm legislation - but got the chicken pox anyway. My daughter was not vaccinated, and she got it too. Both kids are fully recovered, and seem no worse for wear.

In Australia, parents are blackmailed to vaccinate their children. If you do not, certain government payments are ceased. The only way around this is to get a "conscientious objector" form, which must be signed by your general practitioner, who may or may not refuse.

In my son's case, I accepted some vaccinations for him, and refused others. For example, I refused the Hepatitis B vaccination for him - he didn't seem likely, as a baby, to be exchanging needles or having sex any time soon, so I considered it unncessary.

I also declined several others that contained products from beef sourced from the UK (mad cow risk) and from pork (my husband is Jewish).

In retrospect I should have declined everything, but I understand and acknowledge the choices I made for him at the time.

Are the vaccination statistics honest? My guess - not likely!

My son isn't the first vaccinated child I have seen get the chicken pox anyway - when he was attending child care back in Melbourne a few years ago a full 50% of the children in the 3-4 year old group went down with it.

It didn't seem to make a difference who was vaxed and who was not.

The Australian Government claims that above 90% of parents now vaccinate their children.

Assuming that our Child Care Centre was a typical sample, it looks like the vaccination isn't working anything like as well as the manufacturers claim.

This isn't surprising - most companies twist their statistics to suit themselves, so why should vaccination effectiveness statistics be any different?

Autism and vaccination

We didn't vaccinate my daughter, because by the time she was born we were reconsidering the whole concept of massive vaccination schedules (over 40 dosages on the standard schedule before school age in Australia), and my son was showing signs of autism.

For the record, I do not believe that my son's autism was caused by vaccinations, but I do think that the massive multiple dosages we are giving our children are neither healthy nor necessary.

Some vaccinations in the past have been life saving (polio vaccination programs, for instance) - but do our kids these days all really need hepatitis B vaccinations, and chicken pox vaccinations, and mumps vaccinations, and on and on, and more and more?

I counted 47 dosages (some combined, some not) on the Australian schedule my son was supposed to have - no doubt it has increased since he was born five years ago. Where will it end?

I had chicken pox and mumps as a child - as did nearly everyone I know - and we're all still here, with no ill effects.

I also survived measles, lots of flus, and a bad case of viral encephalitis. - the only thing to actually kill me off. Except I was brought back again, thanks to some pretty incredible medical staff.

Can't keep a good girl down.

The only shots I have ever had were MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), a TB shot, a german measles shot (girls only, at the age of 13), and a couple of tetanus shots along the way. Am I being foolish to suggest that maybe, just maybe, this might be enough?

The real killers are not disease

The two things we can't vaccinate against - car crashes and suicide - still continue to take their toll on my friends and loved ones. Our society needs to re-think what is important in health and well-being. I don't know anyone who has died from chicken pox, but I know too many friends and relatives who have died from car accidents and suicide.

I've lost a cousin and two friends to car accidents, and another cousin is pararaplegic and brain damaged. From suicide I've lost two friends. These are the real killers in our society of our youth and children. I'm not alone in these losses - ask anyone you know, and they'll have suffered similar losses too. Maybe you have.

The Australian government considers me a dodgy mother for refusing to vaccinate my daughter, and yet drugs are dealt out by our medical experts like sweets to anyone who asks, antibiotics are routinely fed to our livestock "just because" that filter through to the people who eat those animals, and our teenagers - particularly those who are gay and discriminated against - continue to hang themselves.

I'd say I'm pretty low on the dodgy stakes when you compare my own anti-drug stance against the government's "let's deal 'em out and get them shot up, and let's treat anyone who is a minority as not quite human" status.

If we are serious about protecting our children in our societies, let's put money into road safety, separate bike paths and childrens' play areas away from roads, more accessible and safer public transport, and equal rights legislation for people of all races and gender preferences. We'd save far more lives per dollar that way. Maybe our cities would be more liveable and lovely as well!

A bit of moderation does a body - and a society - good

Vaccinations are an incredibly useful tool when sensibly applied, but lately our western governments seem to have taken a "the more the merrier" approach.

I am not sure this is wise or healthy for our children or our society.

If there is a polio outbreak, I will be first in line with my daughter. Any sensible parent would be. This would be an appropriate use of a medical tool.

But until then I think we need to use drugs, and surgery, and all medical tools - including vaccinations - sparingly and sensibly. On an as needed basis.

In other words, think before we jab.
--
Cluttercut - Be the change

Read more...