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Showing posts from January, 2014

Growing our own - food harvest results for 2013

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Principle 10: Use and Value Diversity The intention was to give a running commentary of food harvest throughout the year - but it wasn't to be. I've bitten off a bit more than I can chew this year. Anyway, Kunie and I recorded all the data that we could - I managed a report for the first quarter and this final one for the year. In short, we recorded the harvesting of 509 eggs, 276kg of vegies, 90kg of fruit and about 4kg of herbs - which averages out at around 1.4 eggs and 1kg of produce per day. Certainly not enough to call ourselves self-sufficient (which is not our intention), but we are becoming increasingly self-reliant and rarely purchase vegies - with the exception of mushrooms and potatoes. Sen enjoying some freshly picked carrots Some produce was not recorded, so the figures are conservative. Strawberries, raspberries and carrots are often eaten by the kids in the garden. Salad greens and herbs, often available year round, are almost always picked without

Our outdoor kitchen - Part 1

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Principle 1: Observe and interact During the summer the last thing that you want to do is heat up the house. It's a time to preserve, which can be messy and involve long periods over a stove top. This is all best done in the outdoors. Every since I paved the carport we have been using it as an outdoor eating space during the hotter times of the year. Being on the east side of the building, it's perfect during the afternoon when it's well shaded. The next logical step was to create an outdoor kitchen, made all the easier since I recently paved the area that I had in mind. Double outdoor laundry trough I like to design furniture around the items that I have available to me that are suitable for the job at hand. In this case I had a large double laundry trough and a one of two giant pieces of slate that I dug up in the backyard (what a score!). The perfect job for me is to complete it using only what I have laying around. This was one of those jobs. All of the timb