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I grew up with a simple life. When I was about 7, we moved from an apartment at Kedron, Brisbane, to a 24 acre property at Dakabin.
We had chooks and ducks everywhere, and even an incubator for a while. My sister and I ran and explored and climbed trees. Until the council resumed the property, put the council rubbish dump next to it, and turned it into the local pound. No, I'm not bitter, really.
We then moved to an even more remote place, 50 acres on the Burrum River, surrounded by national park, a 7km sandy 'fire break' track our only link to the outside world. Being so far from civilisation, my sister and I qualified for distance education (homeschooling). My mum, being a teacher, embraced the lifestyle with no qualms. You can see the giant mango trees in this picture, overshadowing the house.
My mother was a huge influence on my desire for simple living. She read Grass Roots, had a vegie garden, grew pot plants to sell at the local market, and convinced my dad that we should get goats. Dad was the one who built my dollhouse, helped make the pen for said goats, and helped make our old drawer goat cart, and took us down the river (about 20 metres from our front door!) to catch tiny fish, which he would grow and sell.
From there, we moved to the property where my parents still live. My mum still had her vegie gardens and our goats, until my sister and I went to an actual school in Hervey Bay nearby.
Eventually, I finished school, and moved to Brisbane to continue my education. It was in my third year of my Psychology degree that I met DH. We were friends for many years until we fell in love and were married on the beach at Broadbeach on the Gold Coast on the 11th of January 2001.
I guess DH and I were caught up in the consumerist culture. DH had a good wage, due to 24/7 shift work, and we bought all those things that society thinks you need. Big TV, nice car... well, that's about it actually. Our favourite entertainment was driving around at night, enjoying the music and lights of the city.
We lived in a couple of different apartments in Brisbane, until we finally bought the one we were living in when it came on the market just as our lease was up. Our daughter was born there 6 months later.
And I guess that is when I began the return to simple life. Both DH and I have allergies and asthma, so I knew that to avoid this for our daughter I was going to have to work at it. I have breastfed her long term, in fact she still breastfeeds to sleep at night. We introduced solids very slowly, especially given that DH had been diagnosed as gluten intolerant a year or so earlier. I had to learn to cook everything from scratch, as most of what we were used to eating had gluten in some form in. We used cloth nappies, as I never had liked the idea of disposables.
But I have to admit that though I'm not religious, I do believe that things happen for a reason. If we had sold when we had first tried, we probably would have bought some little house on the outskirts of the Brisbane, or even tried renting for a few years (which could have been disastrous given the current rental market here in Brisbane). Instead, by the time our unit finally did sell, we had settled on buying a block of land on the far north outskirts of Brisbane- we were lucky enough to find this block just as our unit sold.
So here we are. Every day is a learning experience, from building a chook yard, to growing a real sized vegie garden. DH, who was born and raised in the one house in the city, is surprised to find he is really enjoying this life, even with the hard work it involves. DD is flourishing in the outdoors and dirt, and showing no sign of the allergies and asthma that plague DH and I.
We read and hear about peak oil and though we don't follow it religiously we are aware that the resources on this planet are finite and one day, be it in our lifetime or that of our children or grandchildren, they will run out. Already we are starting to feel the pinch with rising petrol prices and, I believe, soon to follow rising food prices. Growing our own food, raising our own chickens for eggs, and learning to make many of our cleaning products, household items and clothing simply makes sense. Hopefully we will be able to use the money we save (once we stop having to spend so much of it on the initial setup costs!), to pay off our mortgage faster. Eventually, we hope that I will be able to make enough with my photography to support us (without a mortgage), so that DH will either be able to quit work, or at least find a job he enjoys, rather than one that just pays the bills.
Then we cut three 8.15m lengths of 1.8m wide wire, and joined them together, overlapping by about 10cm. We used these nifty wire squeezer things and pre-cut C shaped bits of wire. Saved a LOT of hassle of threading wire through to join them, and it should be nice and strong.
This made a HUGE 8m x 5.something metre bit of wire.
Then we pulled and dragged that over the poly pipe tunnel. Thankfully DH's dad was there to help us. It would have been a much harder job with only two of us.
We fastened the edges of the wire to the side of the shed with some corner metal bits from building this shed.
And the same with the roof. Hopefully that should keep any predators out.
DH has started fastening the wire to the poly pipe structure, but dinner and a grumpy child interrupted, and the rest is left for another day.
So, soon this will be their new home. The green garden shed (3m x 3m) will eventually be theirs too, but right now it is full of all the stuff we can't fit into the living space here. Once the house is done, most of this will either be thrown out, or move into the garage.
So in the meantime, I built this little shelter for them from leftover materials from the building. The base is a pallet, just in case we have a lot of rain, as we get quite a bit of runoff on the block. That should be high enough to keep them out of any water. The bricks are just stacked, but I've put sticks and pipes down the holes in the middle to stabilise them. The roof is an old sheet of colourbond leftover from the shed, tied firmly to the pallet. The area is sheltered from most of the wind by the garden shed, but hopefully it's all tied down firmly enough to stop anything blowing away if we do get a big wind. The gaps at the back near the roof line I've stuffed with newspaper, so hopefully their won't be too many drafts.
We did try pulling it out with a rope, but it snapped immediately, so DH borrowed a heavy duty chain from our neighbours. I'm quite impressed that my little car managed to shift this, it's huge!
Once we had pulled it out of the heap of dirt it's been sitting in for the last 4 or 5 months, DH took to it with the chainsaw. We only use it infrequently, so we just have a little electric one, but it actually does a pretty decent job. Better, in fact, than the electric one we hired to try to take out this stump's predecessor.
Even after we cut a wheelbarrow load of firewood off it, it was still huge. But we didn't have any more time to devote to cutting it up, as we had other plans for the day (namely, a trip to the museum with DD.)
This was my project for the day. You'll get to see the finished thing in a few days (once it is, in fact, finished.)
Preparing for an early dinner.
So I sat down, and spun the second lot of very expensive wool from Spotlight (that I bought before I found my new wool stash). I think I did a lot better this time, the wool was much more even, even if it did keep breaking, which it didn't do the first time! It was still very curly when I wound it off the bobbin, but I now know this is how it is meant to be!
So carefully following the instructions in the book (which is "Hands on Spinning" by Lee Raven, don't know how it compares to other books, as it's the only one I've read so far), I let it slowly sink into some warm, soapy water, then rinsed it in some warm clean water.
Then I gently pulled the ends to straighten out the kinks. There are still a few, but on the whole, it is much straighter, and I'm sure will be MUCH easier to knit with!
The next drawer up is the woven cotton. (Can you tell I like cotton?) Again, mostly op-shop bargain racks, with some purchased stuff that I already own.
This is an example of a recent op-shop bargain, these three cotton nighties were on the bargain rack. Lots of large amounts of unseamed cotton! That pink floral one in the middle is just lovely, and I think I'll make a skirt for DD from it.
This drawer is all the poly/cotton and specialist materials. On the bottom left is all my PUL, a very useful breathable plastic style material used for making nappy covers (and quite hard to find in Australia, or it used to be anyway). While I won't be making any more nappies any time soon, it will have lots of other uses. I also have some hessian (orange and pink in the middle back) which I'll probably use for bag making, and some netting (top left) which will probably become vegetable bags (although I'm tossing up trying latch hook on the larger holed stuff, if only I could figure out a way to stabilise it.)
Then there's my wool/yarn. The bigger lots in bags up the back are acrylic, and most of the smaller balls down the front are cotton. The cotton is mostly op-shop buys, with a few lots from the bargain bin at Spotlight. Middle left is some string that I found at the op-shop, thinking of trying some macrame with it some time. (Yes, somewhere in all the spare time I have!)
This lot won't fit in the drawers, but deserves a mention. This is some of the fleece/wool I've acquired since getting my spinning wheel. I was very lucky, my mum rang a friend of hers who has sheep, and she was just about to have them shorn. Since she is unable to spin any more, she passed on a lot of her existing wool to me. The stuff in the bags is washed and carded, and the bit in the pillowcase is raw fleece straight from the sheep. Isn't the brown beautiful? The yellow stuff is actually white, that is all the lanolin in it making it that colour. And this is only a sample of the stuff my mum still has up at her place! I'm going to be one busy spinner!
I caught DD later on just running her hands across the material, feeling what it was like. Is this the beginnings of a crafty habit beginning? That is how it started for me. My mum made a lot of our clothes and toys when we were younger, and I still remember playing in the lounge room as she sewed. She had a foam broccoli box under the bed with her laces and ribbons on, all carefully wrapped around A4 sized bits of card, 3-4 different ones to a card. My sister and I used to love looking at them, and often asked for a piece of this or that. I only now realise how nice it was of my mum to give us bits. A collection like that takes a while to build up, and to give up pieces just to give a child the simple pleasure of playing with them, tying them in the hair of a doll, probably to end up trampled in the dirt at some later stage, is what real love is about.
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