Why we cancelled the newspaper

We cancelled our local newspaper about a year ago. A year before that, the children who pushed the paper into letterboxes after school were laid off, and it changed to a morning paper which came wrapped in plastic and was thrown onto our driveway out of a car window.

Plus, we were sick of spending some of our precious time and brain power absorbing bad stuff. Another dairy owner attacked, another fraudster convicted.

Just now I read a relevant post on the most excellent blog of Ben Hewitt. This chap opens my eyes to a completely different way of life.

This is what he wrote, and, as usual, I like it. You might too:

"In my life, at least, I have noticed that the less time I spend captive to events I am powerless to influence, the healthier I feel. Perhaps more importantly, the more energy and optimism I have to disperse into the very small corner of the world over which I do have influence." From this post.

How to create a garden that feeds you all winter

We have been eating from our garden all winter and it's fantastic. New Zealand is a great place to garden, even in frosty and sometimes-foggy urban Hamilton.

A lot of people don't bother with a winter garden. (Do they really have to eat that floppy, expensive supermarket broccoli?) We've been mostly sustained by salad and to-be-cooked greens from our garden. It's in our fairly small backyard which gets several hours of shade from our house when the sun dips low in winter. Yet things grow sufficiently and they are delicious, convenient and so, so cheap. Here's how we did it.

When and how to start the garden

The secret is to get cracking early. In February and March, when there's so much garden produce you're giving it away, we sprouted our winter seeds. Firstly I went through a seed catalogue (Kings Seeds, but you might also consider Koanga Gardens or Egmont Seeds). I much prefer to look through a paper version of a catalogue, scrawl out a list, and place my order on-line. Do not be stingy here: a packet of seed costs little more than a single head of broccoli when prices climb in winter.

If you leave it too late, the plants won't get enough growth on them before it gets cold and the days get too short. If this happens many of then will stay small until spring, at which point you'll have missed the winter boat and have been at the mercy of supermarkets and suchlike. Still, you'll well on board the spring boat.

Then I got sowing. At that time of year seeds sprout really fast. The two drawbacks are that because it's so hot you need to be very careful they don't dry out, and there are generally clouds of white butterflies around that lay eggs on many seedlings, which are then devoured by caterpillars. Such a waste of effort!

The solution is netting of some sort, for example old net curtains, draped over top. (This post shows our draped late-summer garden, and this post shows how I now cover my seedlings with the help of a fortuitous side-of-the-road discovery).

Plant the seedlings out as soon as they're big enough and you have space, preferably with large amounts of home-made compost. If you know how to avoid using slug and snail pellets, tell me how and I'll spread the word. At this point we have to use them or we'd have no vegetables.

Choosing seeds

Salad greens. Look for salad greens that thrive over winter. Most lettuces survive fine, but they don't grow much. We planted purple and green mizuna, mustard greens, rocket and beetroot. (I don't like beetroot, but their leaves are pretty good.) These plants thrive in the cold and don't mind a frost. Plant as much as you can: even if you can't eat it all, it protects the soil and suppresses weeds all winter, and when it flowers in spring it feeds the bees. Plant it among brassica plants to cram more into your space.

Green mizuna

These greens are slightly bitter, but I have developed a taste for them and now crave my wonderful salads garnished with sundried tomato, red onion and feta. I'm almost dreading the mildness of summer lettuces - will my tastebuds even notice them? - but my taste will change again.

Just remember to harvest this stuff when it's not frozen stiff by frost because it goes mushy.

Another alternative is to grow some summer lettuce in a warm sunny spot. The big polystyrene box I use was given to me by a fruit shop when I asked - their grapes come in these boxes. Polystyrene, though environmentally foul, is a good insulator.

Brassica. You want a long harvest season, not 12 heads of cauli in July and then no more. I chose different types of broccoli, a couple of 'sprouting' types and some standard heading types. Also look for a mixture of 'early' and 'late' varieties. That way you can plant them all in late summer or early autumn so they reach a decent size, then harvest each as it comes ready.

The other thing to look for is re-sprouting ability, which broccoli are great at. The secret is to leave a little side sprout when you cut a head of broccoli. That side sprout will turn into another big head for your dinner without you having to do anything else. Often that happens even if you don't leave a side shoot. Happy, lazy gardening.

Not beautiful, but continually productive.

My finger's pointing at the place I first cut a head
off this broccoli plant, about 2 months ago. It quickly
went rotten at the site of the cut - but the
plant keeps producing.

Also, grow kale! I avoided it for ages because it was so fashionable that I was suspicious of it. But it's very easy to grow, gives a long and constant harvest when you just pick a few leaves from each plant, and tastes great. It's much, much more delicious than cabbage, and seriously healthy. I feel a kale and herb omelette coming on for lunch. My hens are being generous these days.

Cavolo Nero kale among thousands
of self-seeded parsnips.

Dark green leafy things
I never have much luck with spinach, but a few silverbeet plants are excellent. Ours have been getting an annoying rust problem which we don't know how do deal with (tips, anyone?), although not all of it at once. If you have chickens, keep them strictly away from silverbeet. (Do as I say, not as I do!) Otherwise you'll have a silverbeet famine and be deprived of green smoothies.

Herbs
Our oregano, sage and parsley have done well all winter, and the coriander's been fine too. Coriander prefers cool temperatures - probably not as cool as it has been, but at least it doesn't bolt to seed like it does in summer.

Also, don't work too hard. No one's going to give you an award for a weed-free garden, the weeds grow fairly slowly at this time of year, and the vegetables still keep coming. I do try to pull grass out from the garden, though, because it's hungry and steals nutrients from the vegetables. The chickens love it.

DISCLOSURE: I have bought 4-5 heads of broccoli and a cabbage this winter. Once or twice a week we have frozen peas or beans. I think we provide 80% of our own greens.

Hopefully you can find this post again at the start of next year when you need it! Maybe you could bookmark or pin it on Pinterest? In the meantime, it's summer seed raising time NOW, and our strawberry plants need to get into the garden - they're already trying to fruit. More on that soon.

Trading skills with rainbow looms

In our house, like in so many houses with children, there are rainbow looms. This involves a plastic loom and many, many small coloured rubber bands. The children spend hours weaving intricate bracelets and charms. They get their ideas and instructions mainly from YouTube, so their weaving time - hours a day, in this house - is usually spent in front of a screen.

Recently we bought some rainbow loom rubber bands from a shop in town. It had a few bracelets on display to show what could be made with the loom and bands. We thought we could do better, so I rang the shop and suggested my children supply them with some clever and inspirational bracelets for their display, and perhaps they could give us some rainbow loom merchandise in exchange.

It worked! The children each came home with an 'original' loom - as opposed to the inferior cheap copies they'd been using - and the weaving went on and on into the evening. What a great deal! I had hoped they'd get more sales as a result of the donations, but when I went in for some more bands a few days later, the whole display had gone. Strange.

My boy Jack (10) is the family leader in this adventure. It's turned into another one of his passions, and he spends most or all of his free hours thinking and finding out more about what he can make. Did I really write this post a couple of months ago about him being like a caged bird? Since he's found this new passion the bars of the cage have dissolved. For now.

The new loom from the trade has led to even better bracelets! He was even part of a business the children at his school set up, making loom bracelets to order. Sadly the deputy principal put a stop to it - a learning opportunity lost.

But there are girl bracelets around here too. Oh yes.

Is it 'good' for the children? Not for their bodies, I think, as they sit hunched up and still for hours - apart from their fine motor skills, which definitely get a work out. Here's an article about all the other skills they develop - persistence, patience, visualisation, creativity etc. It's from the Rainbow Loom website, of course.

There might even be some Mama creations in future. Not with rubber bands - the loom products are non-biodegradable junk. Instead, I'm going to try crochet! Have hook, have wool, have instructions, have inspiration....

A free pattern at Ravelry

The three images above were found on Pinterest.

Keeping Chickens NZ - a new facebook page

I love the idea of fueling the enthusiasm of New Zealanders for keeping chickens. Quite a few of us do, and a lot more of us would like to!

Anna hand-feeding our chickens last weekend.

I've created a Facebook page called 'Keeping Chickens NZ' to bring people together. It's a place for sharing interesting chicken news, and getting fresh inspiration and ideas on all things chicken-related. I'll also be sharing my chicken blog posts there.

You can look at it even if you don't belong to Facebook: click here to see it. I've just shared a video of a little boy cuddling a chicken on it - it's divine. I wish my chickens would do that!

Jane and the crazy orangutan

Why would an 80 year old travel for 300 days a year?

Because she's Jane Goodall, of course, famous chimpanzee researcher and now environmental activist. I sat on the ticket-purchasing website when I heard of her June talk in Auckland and managed to successfully hit 'buy now', unlike most of the people after me.

This photo is from Jane Goodall's website, where
you can read more about her work.

What a woman! She spoke for over an hour, with no notes, but enormous wisdom and intelligence. We were enthralled, much like the other audiences she speaks to on her travels, I am sure.

We laughed when we heard she wanted to be like Dr Doolittle as a child, and that the only thing wrong with Tarzan is that he married the wrong Jane!

After about 30 years of studying chimpanzees in remotest Africa, she realised that she must turn her attention to conservation and environmentalism. Environmental destruction and the bush meat trade were the main threat to chimps.

Decades later, she keeps going, driven to make this planet a better place. The audience in the Aotea Centre applauded and agreed. We laughed again when she said "Some people are very good at making money, and that's fine, as long as you use it to make the world a better place. For example, give it to me!" I'm sure I wasn't the only one making a donation in the following days.

She inspired me to take my children to the Auckland zoo in the school holidays that have just passed, not least to see the orangutans. Naturally Jane mentioned orangutans and the palm oil plantations that threaten their survival. I wanted the children to see why I won't buy commercial crackers and biscuits, which were the last bastion of palm oil in our house. These days they are just as good as me at checking labels and returning items to the shelf if they don't measure up. (Well, at least when I'm with them!)

Excuse the poor photo, but this guy did not disappoint. The zoo's male orangutan is awe-inspiring. Not only is his hair red, but his crazy body hair is about a metre long! It drapes behind him in rastafarian-style dreadlocks. He wouldn't look at my camera, but framing his face are enormous cheek pouches. My Stars Wars fan of a husband tells me that orangutans were the inspiration for Chewbacca.

So here we have an iconic species that is critically endangered - but what are most of us doing about it? Looking for crackers that cost less than $3 a packet and buying flavoured smelly stuff from the supermarket. I reckon we should cut it out and start behaving ourselves!

I also love this campaign - the idea that we idolise some extinct species and think how wonderful it would be to recreate them from ancient DNA, all the while ignoring the fact that equally amazing species are still alive but on the brink of extinction.

Priorities, people!

From the Auckland Zoo palm oil website:

In New Zealand, there is currently no legal requirement for palm oil to be labelled on product packaging, so you probably don’t even know if you’re consuming it! With many names for palm oil, it can be confusing!

Palm oil can be listed as:
• Palm oil kernel
• Anything containing the words
“Palmitate” or “Palmate”
• Elaeis Gunieensis (scientific name
for the oil palm plant)
• Hydrated Palm Glycerides
• Hexadecanoic or Palmitic Acid
Likely to be palm oil:
• Vegetable Oil
• Anything containing the
words “stearate, stearyl”
• Anything containing the words
“cetyl, cetearyl”
• Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (SLS)
• Sodium Laureth Sulphate
• Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate
(SDS or NaDS)
• Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate
• Calcium Stearoyl Lactylate
• Steareth -2 and Steareth -20
• Emulsifier 422, 430-436, 465-467,
470-478, 481-483, 493-495, 570

Giving chickens fresh ground

It's the middle of winter, muddy and grey. Sometimes on rainy days my chickens spend much of the day "in bed" - in other words, up on their perch. This amuses me greatly!

At this time of year the soil never dries out, and that really matters to confined chickens. These wonderful birds love to spend their days scratching and pecking through mulch, finding and gobbling insects and other greeblies. And my silverbeet, of course. The stalky look is not good.

My favourite chicken, a 4 year old black Orpington, behind a
hen and chicken fern.

The vegetable munching of free-ranging chickens is a big problem. Another is that they poo on paths. (Well, why would they poo on the grass? That is where they peck and eat!) Children walk barefoot on paths and then into the house. So I fence my chickens into a pen. It's the only solution for most urban chicken keepers. Unfortunately at this time of year the pen's soil is quickly exhausted , and they end up on a hard, smelly pan of dirt.

The best option is to regularly move the pen. We don't have much space for that. Another option is to chuck lots of stuff, such as weeds or leaves, into the pen to create some mulch for them to scratch through. Every now and then I also dig over the soil, but when I did it recently my nostrils were greatly offended. I know chickens have a good sense of smell, so it must be a fairly torturous situation for them - their flooring, their entertainment and their dinner plate are all foul. It's too foul for my fowl.

But I can do better. I've come up with a way to give them a "holiday" on a bit of fresh ground. Earlier this month I went to the Fieldays (no spelling mistake, it really has only one d). I bought a bunch of horse-size electric fence posts for $40. I felt like a real farmer! I like the posts because they are light, but most importantly they are easy to get in and out of the soil, and therefore form the basis of an easily portable fence.

Back home I used strips of old clothing and whatever else I could find to tie some plastic garden mesh between the posts to make my moveable fence. The mesh is only 90 cm high - not high enough to imprison agile birds like brown shavers if they really want to escape - but I've noticed that on fresh ground they don't try.

So now my chickens have happy little breaks from their overused soil for a few hours at a time whenever the fancy takes me. I love watching them in their element, heads down and tails up, as they happily work hard at discovering goodies.

One of their favourite spots seems to be under our citrus trees. I suspect that they are eating something there does bad things to the citrus, which have whitefly and sooty mould. The slug damage to the ripe fruit weighing down our mandarin tree certainly seems to have stopped.

A tip: If you like to give your chickens fresh ground in this way, remember to give them a bowl of water in their temporary pen. They need to drink little and often, even in winter.

Can you spot the vege garden safe in the background?

This kind of ground is paradise for chickens. Remember, thousands of years ago they were junglefowl - give them a bit of jungle whenever you can!

Girlish prose

....when the goldfish hear the vibration of the boat they come swimming up to see what is going on. I thought it was amazing. They swim up and over each other like weaving a basket out of wriggling fish.

By my Anna, aged 7.

She was writing about a boat trip we did with her class along the Waikato River. We didn't see the fish, but the man doing the commentary told us of their curiosity. His commentary was particularly lame, I had callously thought at the time. He certainly didn't mention anything about the fishes' approach being like weaving a basket, and that is what amazes me - how does the mind of a child, born only 7 1/2 years ago, create that?

That's the thing about being a parent. There is a wondrous thing happening in your life, all the time, as the baby unfolds into an adult.

It's unfortunate that because it's happening all the time, it's hard to constantly hold on to the wonder. Our children have just brought home their 'learning journal' from school, which the teachers put together with samples of their writing, drawing, maths etc.Their stories are my favourite thing, and they always inspire my wonder.

I think we have to try, try and try again to notice the wonder of it all as it's happening, and not just in retrospect, when it becomes just a wonderful memory.

Dig up the lawn

Two or three years ago my husband decided we needed more room to grow potatoes, so he dug this big strip in the back lawn.

I didn't mind too much, although I keep thinking it should have some kind of edging. But now I love it! Ah, what food it gives us. Without it we wouldn't have enough garden to grow what we want. This backyard is our pantry, our medicine cupboard (I haven't had a cold for a year) and our playground. (Not the children's playground. They spend MUCH more time in the front garden which can only grow what will withstand being battered by powerful soccer ball kicks.)

Some people don't bother with a winter vegetable garden, but we get so much out of it. I've been hardly having to buy greens at all. Lunch is an omlette with stir fried kale, spinach or silverbeet, or a salad with feta plus toast and honey. Or soup - such a highlight on cold grey days - with root vegetables that are not from our garden. I'll try to remedy that next year.

Dinner greens are usually either broccoli, stir-fried kale with olive oil and garlic, or a salad. These days the children eat all three, albeit reluctantly. Actually they both like boiled frozen peas, so sometimes we have those too. My least favourite.

Broccoli, kale, wild lettuces and wild parsnips.
To the left you can see shallots poking
their heads through the leaf mulch.

A dinner staple.

There are always salad leaves for sandwiches. I got a bit paranoid that the greens I'd sown wouldn't grow big enough before it got cold. So I used a polystyrene container cast off by a fruit shop years ago (I asked), filled it with compost and potting mix and planted a supermarket punnet of fancy lettuces.

It lives on our sunny, sheltered front porch. But I haven't had to use them. I'm addicted to the strong, spicy and slightly bitter taste of our backyard salad leaves - mizuna (green and red), rocket and mustard. They are fabulous with red onion, red capsicum (which I get from our local Farmer's Market - sadly the capsicum people are about to have a couple of months break), cow's feta and an oil/vinegar dressing.

 What else is in this mid-winter garden of ours?

Sprouting broccoli, mustard, self-seeded lettuce and celery.

Broccoli, twelve mini cauliflower plants (woops) and broad beans.

The broad bean garden above has been 'double dug'. It's my experiment with this method, which is key to biointensive gardening, that I've just finished reading a book about. Basically you dig the soil very deep - moving over the top 30 cm so as not to disturb the soil structure, and forking the 30 cm below it. I went nowhere near that deep. The idea is that the soil thrives on the air this process introduces. We'll see.

The other key idea is planting your vegetables close, and not in rows. I already do that.

I'm loving kale. I've grown two types: cavolo nero and a curly kale. I prefer the cavolo nero, but the other's good too.

Cavolo nero

Curly kale

And Kings Seeds' new type of rocket, Rocket Runway, has been a hit - it's milder than the standard type and thriving in our garden.

Rocket Runway

It's time, too, to be thinking ahead to spring. These are little alyssum seedlings. Those tiny-flowered plants remind me strongly of older ladies - I can't help but think of them flowering in our neighbour's garden as I grew up. Turns out they are a good host for an insect that eats the dreaded whitefly, which attacks our citrus plants. I've planted some in the garden, and this collection in a pot.

Is your winter garden giving you any treasures?

Are you tempted to dig up some of your lawn? Ian swears that once the children leave home the front lawn is going to be a giant potato patch. After tasting pink fir potatoes from the Farmer's Market last year, I think he might be right. They make unbelievable potato salads. There are some amazing potatoes out there that you'll never find at a shop. Hence the lawn....

My boy is like a caged bird

Jack, aged 10, is away at camp this week. It's his first extended stay away from us, and we don't like it! We miss him.

His distance has brought some things into focus. So soon he'll be a teenager - what do we want to do with these next short years? How do we want to live them with him?

Ten years ago there never was a brighter, more sociable, curious baby, who learnt everything with dazzling speed. That brightness is still there, but everyday things - a tractor, a cemetery, visitors to our house - no longer hold a trace of their past enchantment to him. Of course.

Now he seems like a caged bird, hungry for more. Go wider, we say! Roam the streets, explore the local park with your mates, come to the museum, learn about space, do woodworking.... but the only world he wants to escape to is the virtual world. It is so enticing, so compelling.

We have no television, but that makes little difference when there's an ipad (we won it) and a computer. We limit his computer time, which is what creates the bars of the cage, and is a constant source of friction.

His friends are the same, it seems to me, except their screen time is longer. Their physical activity is organised sports, or practicing for them. What happened to climbing trees and going for bike rides?

What will this do to our children?

Why I want your winter leaves

Autumn is such a giving season for a gardener! The summer crops have tailed off, but everywhere there are fallen leaves, which are actually repositories of carbon, nutrients and tiny creatures. They're easy to collect and store, too.

Before I launch into how to use them, a little acknowledged fact: they are even better collected from your neighbour's lawn than your own. I have a couple of neighbours who don't want the leaves but don't care enough to clear them themselves. These are the best type of leaf-neighbours, because those who want the leaves, or obsessively don't want them, will have only scanty pickings. Those people have already been busy raking (or using a leaf-blower - I just have to look away).

Last week I visited neighbours around the corner with bags and rake in tow. Within an hour the following had happened:
1. My children were playing with their children for the first time in a year.
2. I'd seen and chatted with the mother for the first time in ages.
2. I'd talked to another gardening neighbour who was strolling by. His mother, he said, wants to get chickens. I'd invited her around to see ours so she can get some ideas for coops, garden protection etc.
3. The gardening neighbour had given me a big bag of feijoas.
4. I was warm from the exercise and felt well-friended.
5. Their front lawn looked much tidier.

What to do with leaves:
1. Dumped a big bagful in the chicken's fenced-off run. The rain and cool weather had turned it into a hard, desertified soil pan. It's mostly under evergreen trees so gets some leaf drop, and we chuck weeds and small prunings in there, but chickens need stuff to scratch through all day every day. They were transformed by the leaves, their red combs jiggling as they scraped and pecked, scraped and pecked. Ah, some jungle floor at last, thought the junglefowl descendents.

2. Mulched the garden. The books say that autumn leaves should be shredded before being used as mulch because otherwise they turn into a solid, almost waterproof layer. I guess I'll find out. We've had big winds since then and my first fear - that they'd be blown away - turned out to be unfounded. I don't know why they didn't get blown away, but they haven't turned solid yet.

This photo shows a mulched part of the garden. Underneath Ian planted garlic cloves, which will send up their shoots above the mulch soon, we hope. Of course what we really want from mulch is to suppress the weeds, build up a lot of healthy creatures, including microorganisms, underneath (don't mention the slugs), and hold in moisture.

Our frosted garden this morning.

3. Sat a bag of them next to the current compost bin to use as the brown layers needed to balance out the green layers (kitchen scraps, weeds etc). More bags will be stored so we have enough brown material to last until next autumn.

4. Used them to 'sheet mulch' a garden, also known as lasagne gardening. This is a way of creating a garden with wonderful soil. A fortnight ago this corner housed just lawn and a dead tamarillo tree, both of which perched on top of clay. I laid down layers in this order, from the bottom up: blood and bone, lime and animal poo (chicken and guinea pig, donated by my friend), then cardboard, then compost, leaves, our own chicken poo, grass clippings, leaves, grass clippings, compost, leaves. I stacked the fern fronds on top to hold the leaves in place (again, no faith that the leaves won't blow away). In a few months it will be stunning soil filled with microorganisms. I'll plant another tamarillo tree there in spring.

Your keen eyes will no doubt have spotted what appears to be a burial mound, just the right size to contain the corpse of a tall woman. Nope, just sheet mulching. Over time it will sink enormously and the neighbour who hangs out her washing on the other side of the lowish fence won't get such a shock when she goes to peg up the clothes. (She hasn't said anything. Yet.)

6. For the decorative autumn crown use of leaves, see the bottom of this post.

7. Our most favoured leaf-neighbours are yet to offer up their leaf fall - the tree is still glowing red with its leaves. Their tree doesn't drop until June. Here's a photo from last year - the best reason of all to rake up neighbour's leaves!

Little retro shop

A couple of weeks ago I visited a little shop in Tauranga. It's run from a private home. The sun was shining loudly as if to announce 'This is NOT winter'! (Which of course it's not officially, until next month.)

The charming shop owner, Rachel - a retrologist - I love it! - sources lovely little retro homewares, and does them up - a bit of painting here, a bit of upholstery there, and a bit of general polishing and rearranging. She has the upholstery and some of the painting done by professionals, and the quality shows. Here are some of her wares.

Lovely stuff. I made a couple of purchases, and would have made more except I had nowhere to put anything. The prices were temptingly low.

You can buy from her via her facebook page, and here's her street sign:

She doesn't have eftpos, and instead gave me a hand-written invoice so I could pay her via internet banking when I got home. Which, of course, I did - and she said no one has ever let her down. Isn't that a great way to operate?