Living the Good Life

Free Offer - Humya's Gifts Series

2012-01-18T04:24:00.000-08:00

After blogging about doing something with Humya's Gifts Series I got out the trusty list of Australian publishers, few who accept unsolicited manuscripts, saw the usual, 'respond in 6 - 12 months', a cheeky list of what you can and cannot do and how they will 'destroy any submissions' which don't comply and I decided life's too short for that kind of BS. So, instead I made my life shorter by deciding to give it away free and then had enormous IT problems that stole 24 hours of it.

But the short of it is that if you have an e-reader that handles pdf files, or you or your child are prepared to read it electronically, all four of the series are available at www.togetherpress.com you'll see the big thumbs up girl (Krissey) on the right, click the Krissey!

For those of you who've read Who Killed Dave? it's somewhat similar in style, but without the grisly/sex bits. Krissey, the main character is ... well let's just say that when I finished writing the series I missed her. I carried her around in my head for four years, I grew really attached to her. She became real. I suspect she's the kind of kid I'd like to have been brave enough to be. (I was painfully shy and nerdy).

The four books, The Alone Spot Experiment, Blacksnake Road, Light Riders and The Gift of Goodbye are all about 25,000 words in length - they're aimed at the early teen market (and younger, kids read up, they won't read down). Girls and guys, women and men have read the series and enjoyed them. So if you're fond of a giggle... though The Gift of Goodbye, while it has its giggly bits... is a tear jerker.

In the nature of all things free, feel just as free to tell others or put it on any freebie websites you belong to. I'm not asking for anything, but if you or your kids do read them, love 'em or hate 'em, I'd appreciate it if you could send in a quick review.

Straw bale rendering workshop

2012-01-14T02:25:00.000-08:00

Forgot to mention that the outside of the house isn't completely rendered yet. Internally it's complete, the back wall or the weather wall is almost complete, but the other three sides only have two coats on them. So we're offering people the once in a lifetime offer (yeah, who's kidding who) to help us complete the rendering with a rendering workshop on...

February 4-5 - Saturday and Sunday
From 10.30 – 4pm

& the following weekend 11 & 12 February
(either date optional)

Woofers welcome to stay the week
The house is at completion with the internal walls fully rendered.
Lunch provided

I figure I've pretty much perfected the no-crack straw bale rendering process

and don't need to do it all myself anymore :-)

Who Killed Dave? The Movie

2012-01-14T01:56:00.000-08:00

Well actually Who Killed Dave? is not a movie yet - it's just a screenplay. I've taken a month off work to do a lot of things, (a part from sit in the house and gloat) one of them doing a final re-write and send it off to producers.

I've been reflecting that in the last five years I've not completed anything new. (I wrote Who Killed Dave? in 2006). I've been working in dribs and drabs for the past three years on Louis(e), a literary novel based on the life of the first European woman to stand on Tasmanian soil. Louise was a French woman who posed as a man on the Recherche, one of the two ships that came in 1790 as part of D’Entrecasteaux’s scientific expedition. The facts of the story are relatively few when it comes to the part she played. But it's fascinating. I've not tried to recreate someone's life before. It's difficult as I'm not sure I have a 'licence' to say things about someone that may not be true. Putting a voice to a fictitious character is easy, putting it to a historical character, even if they have been dead for over 200 years... it always feels so darn libellous.

I've also spent time re-editing Humya's Gifts a four part story for young people that I wrote some years ago. I had a literary agent pick up on it, but the market is so small in Australia it didn't go anywhere. I re-read yesterday and laughed and cried the whole way through. I'm going to send it off to see if anyone else does too.

I feel like I'm on the brink... now the house is finished I can finally focus on something other than work, uni, and a huge garden. Hey Trev, what do you want to do once the house is complete? “Plenty of gardening and some work to pay off the house.”

One book I don't want to write is a 'Straw bale House adventure'- ready to move on.

In da House!

2012-01-14T01:34:00.000-08:00

When I wake up it's either the light coming through the window, or the accumulation of baa-ing, bleeting, grunting animals who've quickly worked out that we've moved, it's morning and if they carry on enough they might get breakfast early.

There's the lingering joy of stretching out on a king size mattress (the bed beneath is still at pre-manufacture stage)before going for an early morning wee. And it's 'whoa wee'... it's only just around the corner, no need to go outside anymore. The room is warm, no risk of icy condensation dripping down the back of your neck. Washing my hands afterwards - no need to turn on a pump first. And the bowl... well it's beautiful, the old one had spent fifty years under someone's house and was a sickly shade of stained yellow. This is first of many moments of gratification. The bathroom, well I keep saying it's a luxury model. It's clean, spare, almost zen, the whole house is actually. After five years of roughing it in a 6 X 3 metre shed, a small bathroom add on and a 23 foot caravan and squeezing all our meagre belongings in it... it's heaven. I love observing how the light falls on every surface on a 24 hour basis. A moonlight night doing a circuit of all the rooms is just as rewarding.

Unpacking the unnecessary things like decorative carvings, lamps and pots - they all finally see the daylight. It's been so long I'd forgotten some of them.

We're not finished, Trev's tiling the bathroom still, I've just finished repatching mud work and re liming some pf the walls, I'm yet to re-oil all the window frames and deck. Trev has the skirtings to complete, there are only two internal doors in the whole house, beading needs to happen on the ceiling lining, and the kitchen benchs have yet to be built. But none of that matters. We're living in the house where the temperature is generally always 20 -22 degrees regardless of what's happening outside. It's all come together and the wait has been worth every last windy day of, 'is the shed going to blow away?' bit of it. Our mortgage falls into the range we had anticipated, but the house is better than.

We're on a bit of a high and constant self-congratulations is starting to get a bit old - it's been a long haul... the hard part is over. Maybe one day soon I'll even convince Trev that his uniform of patched, stained and altogether too grubby overalls can help fill the rag bag. But I suspect not.

Photos to come...

Swarmin'

2011-12-28T14:09:00.000-08:00

Finally had a day in the garden,the weeds had all my carrots and onions by the throat and were choking them. Three weeds in (or should I say out)and Trev was by my side.
'What the hell?' he says. I look up and there's a frenzied cloud of bees or the Bohr Model (that symbol of atomic energy with the whizzing atoms) X 10,000. I had a swarm.

I'd been wanting to have a go at catching a swarm. Already hot, when suited up in three layers, gumboots, gloves and a hooded, netted hat I'm sweating and looking not unlike someone about to go into a radioactive area. Trev's made a beeline for town and left the property. Caleb has been winched away from the computer long enough to open gates for me and stand guard in case any 000 calls need to be made.

The bees have congregated in a two year old almond tree and inconveniently wound themselves between a main stem of the tree and the support post. Not good. I have my tree loppers, a large cardboard box, my smoker at the ready. But I soon realise three hands are required to lop the branch, and hold a kilo or so of bees on the branch with another. I try to use the side of my body as a left hand when I lop. But it's a fail. The branch hits the ground and there's a kilo of pissed off bees. I wait for them to reassemble around the queen and settle down before picking them up and depositing the branch into the box. A bit of pruning and it's in.

There are still heaps of bees on the ground, but they get the idea the queen is in the box and conveniently crawl in with her. I sit the box in the shade and place a wet sheet over it to keep them cool.

I go stick my head in a bucket of cold water and try to conert the colour of my face to something a little more becoming than puce.

Trev, my own personal carpenter arrives back and he quickly makes up a new hive base and lid. Soldering wax onto frames while I lug down a pallet and find a spot for the new hive.

The theory is, you lay down a sheet in front of the new hive and dump the box of bees at its doorstep and watch them crawl in. I dumped them, they crawled in. My doubts erased.

I now had one depleted hive and one new hive. I thought my beekeeping over for the day. Off I go with the whippersnipper. An hour or so later and I come within inches of whippersnipping a second swarm of bees. They're on the ground in long grass. This is not supposed to be the way it happens. What do you do with bees in the grass and bad weather coming? You decide, what the hell you'll drop a cardboard box over top of the lot and they can crawl in and out of the small slot at the top. They'll find their own way out and to safety when they're ready.

Two days later... There's still a lot of activity in the box. I lift up an edge and yep, they're making it a permanent home. There's an odd frass build up on the ground. They're eating the box. Keep it up and they will literally, 'eat themselves out of house and home'.

My own personal carpenter and Ehren (who thought he was coming to Tassie for a holiday) help me rig up a third hive body. I cut the top off the cardboard hive and lay the dangling wax comb they've made in between frames of the hive and only partially close the lid. They're going to have to get used to crawling through the entrance hole at the base before I close it.

Here's hoping it's early enough in the season for all three hives to thrive before winter.

Learnt alot this week in my beekeeping adventures.

One Rant Support

2011-12-02T14:53:00.000-08:00

Trev and I have an agreement that we listen to each others rants and make supportive comments. But it tends to be a bit one sided. I rant, he listens. He rarely rants and when he does I, well... I tend to not support wild and exhausting rants about things like changes in sporting seasons and the lack of cricket on the radio. Sorry Trev.

However, Trev has gone for a new audience on Facebook where he posts some wild and woolley and entertaining raves. My rant support rates are way down. Hope this boosts them.

Some of you may have gotten the idea that I hate ducks and would prefer they were no longer the blight on my life they have until now been. This is true; what those of you who know me as a mild mannered fellow of little colour and few words may not realise is that this – let’s not call it hatred, more a malevolent indifference - applies to all animals, especially those we laughingly call domestic,... as well as certain select and pestilential birds, insects and other assorted life forms for which invective is inadequate but that I have not the time to name.

Trev in his longer haired days with Ehren, his gorgeous son

So in this humanitarian and far sighted vein, I move away from the duck and turn my eyes to chooks. There is a strong scriptural base to much of my ranting, and these thoughts on the chook are no different. Those of you familiar with Genesis (the book, not the band) will know that chapter 1 verse 32 says: “and on the eighth day, after having a bit of a spell, God created the chook and he saw that it was very good.” Now, some biblical commentators aver that on the seventh day, God rested the rest of a deity well pleased with his work, but I think that he was just totally stuffed after all that creating – I know creating tires me out – and that’s why the chook is missing a few vital parts, most notably the brain.

Genesis goes on to detail something of a falling out between God and man. Genesis 3 gives us the details:
And then the man, Adam, spake, saying, “Lord, that chook is everywhere in our garden; it scratcheth out the new seeds thou providest and crapeth over every surface and the light of intelligence shines not in its eyes.”
And God replied, saying, “ Speak not thus of my creations, thou into whose deplorable hide I blew breath but two days ago”
Then Adam (perhaps a trifle unwisely) said unto God “ Lord, if thou art too thick to realise that all this ‘on the second day god created’ business is a metaphor and that we’re really talking geological time scales here, that’s too bad; the fact remains the bird is an idiot and you stuffed it up”.
Then God waxed exceeding wroth and said unto Adam” Get thee gone from my garden; show thy face there no more and hereafter blame all thy woes on thy woman, who I created whilst thou weren’t looking.”

And so it happened. Where they got that far-fetched tale about the snake and the apple, I’ll never know.

Turdus Merula

2011-11-27T02:00:00.000-08:00

The Latin name for this years main garden pest.

It's the blackbird. Last year we had one and it ate every last raspberry, seemingly on it's own. We killed it. It took several weeks with a small mesh box propped up on a stick with a string trailing through the shed window before I was able to pull it in time and catch the wee bugger. It felt terrible to kill him. He was just doing his thing. Not his fault that some dick-(ybird) decided he missed the sound of a blackbird in his English garden and voluntarily introduced them, all for the sound of it's cheerful note a couple of hundred years ago.

This year the garden is full of the sound of 'tok, tok.'
No doubt counting down their last seconds as we work out ways to stop their clocks - permanently. Gone were the cherries of last year, the strawberries too. This year forewarned is fore-armed. Though arming oneself against a sea of troublesome birds is illegal. It's not the culling of birds that's an issue but the owning of a firearm without appropriate cause and license. We don't live on the prerequisite number of acres and while there have been times I would gladly have bought a slug gun (and shot slugs with it too) it's simply not going to happen.

Instead we invested in six posts, heavy duty wire, star pickets, 100 metres of bird netting and a whole day digging holes, sewing netting and generally getting sun burnt. The raspberry cage looks great. It creates a kind of outdoor indoors that excludes birds of all sorts, hopefully any probing possums and the odd opportunistic Caleb-has-left-the-gate-open-again-Goat. It's been an expensive exercise. Onto strawberry saving measures next week.

Oh, the linocut was inspired by my garden 'friends'. I decided to have a go at lino-cutting and had thought to be inspired by native Tasmanian flora and fauna. Yet somehow this dark feathered, yellow beaked fiend eventuated. Insidious beast.

Who or what would you like to permanently eradicate from your garden?

No Caleb, sanding has nothing to do with the beach

2011-11-20T02:26:00.000-08:00

Caleb's still working hard to pay off a laptop we bought him some time back. It's virtually the only way we can get him off it.

He's recently moved what we dubbed 'Caleb's Mountain' 14 cubic metres of pine bark. It took him a fair while, and the goats didn't mind having a bit of a chew on it either. I think Caleb's ploy was to wait so long they ate it for him.

Trev sanded the floor back with a drum sander but between each coat of water based, low voc polyurthane (yes we compromised) it was lightly hand sanded.

Quotes to get it done professionally were exorbitant, or at least in our eyes, so as usual we (mostly Trev) did it ourselves and it cost just over 10% of the professional price and just over a week to complete.

It's getting so close to the point we start bringing in the small amount of furniture we have (most of it was sold in QLD rather than drag it down) Lucky we're into the minimalist look.

The plumbing is almost complete. Complete enough in the bathroom that we can start tiling with the recycled glass tiles.

The electrician will be back soon to light up the house now the ceiling lining is in and he can. Looking forward to walking through the house at night with the lights on - though we'll turn them off when we leave each room of course :-)

We will have been living in Tasmania for six years come the 1st of December.
It will be five years building in March 2012. Maybe I should write that book, 'Five years of slow building.' *grin*

But we keep coming back to the point that as much as it has been a drag at times it's also been very rewarding and there's always the size of our mortgage to feel good about too.

Next adventure... debt free in three years... what do you say Trev?

A great Blog

2011-11-07T23:41:00.000-08:00

Stumbled on this great blog.
I recommend reading the list of things Julie and her family have done over the years to increase their sustainability - what a great list.
I'm definitely checking out the link to bamboo toothbrushes!
Towards Sustainability

Direct Link to buy Who Killed Dave?

2011-10-18T00:24:00.000-07:00

There's been more than one person who hasn't been able to find the link to purchase Who Killed Dave? I've put that down to my poor webpage design!

www.togetherpress.com/buy.html

Who Killed Dave? Cheap Copies

2011-10-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

I've been contemplating where to put Trev's machinery and tools when we move into the house and realise there are still boxes of Who Killed Dave? taking up room in the shed. It seems self-publishing is the swear word of the literary world. Not that there is much literary about Who Killed Dave? It's goal is to make people giggle. And for those who've read it it appears to have succeeded well in that.

Google Who Killed Dave? for a diverse range of reviews.

Anyway, long story short. They were being sold for $24.95, now half that price $12.50 till Christmas time, free postage, a giggle guaranteed.

It's a good Christmas pressy for a friend, though I'm told that it's not the kind of book you'd give your mum. Having said that I have had a very positive review from an 82 year old. But then, she's contemplating setting up a floating brothel off the Tasmanian Coast...

Who Killed Dave?
100% recycled paper, vegetable inks, carbon offset - Australian sales only.
Amazon sell the e-book version.

The Iron Maiden

2011-10-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

Nope, not a pig, goat, sheep or extraordinarily large chook. It's the slow combustion stove. We've cut lots of corners on expense and this time we went hard on the biggest Australian made wood fired stove available. Four ovens and a large fire central fire box. It arrived some time ago, and spent a month or so facing the wall and defying all attempt to photograph it. Now it's installed, hooked up to the hot water tank ready to heat the house, the water and our food. Trev's done a great job of removing timber floor boards and provided extra support for its 380kg weight, along with lots of fire proofing. It turned out that the pipes coming out of the wall meant the flu lined up with a roof batten so he then had to (much swearing) remove part of the roof and create a timber box to allow for the flu to go through. It's now almost ready to fire up. Still have a little plumbing to go and tiling around the outside.

Looking forward to seeing how it heats the house, thermometer all at the ready.

Paddy grown Sea Grass Matting

2011-10-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

The ceiling lining had been decided some years back, but when it came time we decided against Solomit Straw panel lining and went for paddy grown sea grass matting. Not a local product, but one that will last through the years, look good, be up to a thorough upside down vacuum, doesn't require glues and is a natural product.

Trev's not so sure about the final look saying the house looks like it's wearing a tweed coat. It's not complete in the images as it still requires beading around the edges to keep the sides from the slight sag they have at the moment. But the final look is well established.

Trev tore a muscle in his side while putting this up and thwarted all (correction: most of) his attempts to complete the job quickly. Doing a self-build does take it out on you physically. I've buggared my shoulders with hauling too much mud around and spend more time than I like to think grimacing and trying to find a position that doesn't hurt. Some days there aren't any. Looking forward to lying in the sun reading books. If only I'd get to the point I can let myself. A very wise doctor once said to me when I told him how stressed I was and I'd come to Tassie for the quiet life 'Yes, well, it's true of life that you take yourself wherever you go'.

I think our next adventure might be an adventure in slowing down.

Two Fat Pigs

2011-09-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

The two little piggy wiggy's are no longer, in their place we have two fat pigs who have recently been introduced to Trout. The two girls spend a fair bit of time tickling trout. They all lie together, top and toe and bicker aimably enough together. They eat prodigious amounts, have required purposed built, reinforced housing to handle the rigorous self-scratching regime.

They have now ploughed up three areas of land and it means re-fencing the electrics on a regular basis and taking advantage of their ploughing to re-seed the areas they've been in. I've written an article on pigs for the upcoming ABC Organic Gardener Magazine.

Trev is on close terms with the pigs, though he, like me, is very careful not to fall over at feed time! They are incredibly solid animals and single-mindedly hungry.

At this stage Pinky and Browny are both due around Christmas day, can't wait for piglets!

Pot of Gold at the End

2011-08-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

Actually the bank gets that, we get to live in a house in exchange. It's getting much closer, walls, floors, ceilings,windows and doors. Electricity - mostly complete, plumbing has started, our great steam engine of a slow combustion wood stove has arrived and challenged but not overcome Trev's ingenuity in manouevering it around the house and into place. Also removing floor boards and increasing the level of support for all its 380kg.

We're planning on having an Italian themed Christmas at our place and inviting around all the lovely people who've had us over at for dinner and we've not returned the favour. Quite a few over the past five or so years.

Looking forward to that...

Today, Tonight Tomorrow

2011-07-25T04:09:00.000-07:00

I admit to being very slack on the update front in the last few months. Trev and I both have our heads down and bums up as we race towards the housing building finish line.

I could detail the progress but if you hook into tomorrow nights Today Tonight on Channel 7 you'll get to see us shivering on an icy Tasmanian morning, pretending not to look embarrassed about the state of our winter garden which is also suffering from neglect of the house obsessed variety. Also get to meet the pigs, the goats, the lambs and the chooks, and a quick squiz at the inside view of the house and hear us blather on a bit.

With a silly little embarrassed smile she hits publish post and shambles away.

Recycled Glass Tiles

2011-05-01T00:27:00.000-07:00

Trev and I searched for Tasmanian tiles for the bathroom and discovered there are none. Mostly due to the prohibitive cost of sending them to the mainland and the cheapness in which one can import tiles from overseas. But we wanted something local. So true to form we found a hard way to go about it. Making our own.

We'd said no concrete, but as this involves minimal amounts of cement and it creates a thermal mass and utilises a recycled product we finally compromised and gave it the green tick of approval.

Onto the scene comes one angsty pre-teen with a, before now, unfullfilled desire to smash and break things. The desire survives parental approval. Caleb donned safety gear and happily smashed around 30 blue bottles purchased at a tip shop. He's since gone onto shades of green which are easier to come by.

Trev made up moulds from a sheet of form ply. I consulted him on percentages of cement to glass and sand and then went and did something else anyway. Yes, he does get frustrated. I discovered that filling half the tile with a mix of white cement and roughly smashed glass with no sand provided the best quality tile, the second half of the mould is topped up with a mix comprising less cement and more sand. Both in shades of boring gray. It will never be seen. Between the two different mixes is laid a sheet of fibreglass mesh that provides an added degree of strength to the tile.

Once screeded off and tapped and vibrated level the tiles are left a couple of days before the moulds sides are removed and the tiles turned over and revealed. They look boring. The white cement covers all the glass. Out comes the angle grinder with a coarse grinding attachment. Dust mask, gloves and glasses donned and off I go. The blue glass peeps through, then grows as the first layer of cement is ground back. I keep going till it's liberally sprinkled with beautiful blue chunky glass.
Next I mix up a small amount of white cement (which should have PVA glue in but I've never remembered to put it in yet) and use a plaster spatula to thinly spread the mix over the tile to fill in any air bubbles or holes. It's left to dry and then out comes the...

Variable speed polisher with a diamond polishing pad attached. I start at 50 'grit' and move slowly down to 2000 - by the time I'm finished the concrete is smooth with a sheen on it. It looks beautiful, I can even see my reflection. I look disgruntled. I have sore shoulders and a murderous headache. My carpal tunnel syndrome has flared up and I'm wondering why the hell it is we always have to do things the hard way. But the tile looks beautiful.

Repeat this process every weekend till hospitalised.

This weekend I've started a new tile. I found a design online and used it as a template for a feature tile. I've stuck down the design inside a mould and siliconed between the pieces. Trev gave me a good tip, to dip my finger in detergent and press the silicone to a similar depth the whole way around. Once this is dry I'll trim it with a knife so the lines are all the same thickness and remove the paper. Into each of the segments will go a mix of either green or blue glass and white cement mix. When the tile is complete it will have premade grout lines and hopefully look gorgeous in either the bathroom or the sun room.

I had intended to make black tiles with green glass for the sunroom but quickly discovered that you need nineteen mountains of black oxide and even then it's not a good black.

I learnt how to do this from youtube. There's a much more anal bloke who can tell you how to do it much better than I at Day Creek

Solastalgia

2011-04-23T23:58:00.000-07:00

Completing a uni assignment and needed to find five different psychological disorders for a character in a screenplay. Found this in Wikipedia and just loved it.

Solastalgia is a neologism coined by the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003 with the first article published on this concept in 2005.[2] It describes a form of psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change, such as mining or climate change.

As opposed to nostalgia - the melancholia or homesickness experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home - "solastalgia" is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment. A paper published by Albrecht and collaborators focused on two contexts where collaborative research teams found solastalgia to be evident: the experiences of persistent drought in rural New South Wales (NSW) and the impact of large-scale open-cut coal mining on individuals in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW. In both cases, people exposed to environmental change experienced negative effects exacerbated by a sense of powerlessness or lack of control over the unfolding change process

Lock Up! (your daughters?)

2011-04-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

The house is a house with walls, floors, ceilings, doors and windows. Yes. We can lock it up and you'd need a crow bar to break your way in. A $30,000 mortgage to get us to this stage. Though of course most of our one income goes into paying for the house before it gets to the mortgage stage. I must catch up with just how much, probably more than the same again.

It's lovely to walk inside the house at the moment. The light is fantastic. There's almost a sense of reverence when we do. Because soon, at least not too far away, this will be our home and we'll no longer be the poor cousins living in the shanty town shed at the bottom of the block. The rooms aren't too hard to visualise in their finished form, and it's not going to take forever to get them to that state.

We're about to go shopping for a slow combustion stove and a solar hot water system and have them installed. (happy to hear suggestions on best brands for the stove) The laundry tub, the shower stall, the kitchen bench and sink, the ceiling Solomit lining, the power, which has all been run, 'lit up' as Trev says, a few more doors a fair lick of paint, the rest of the floors beeswaxed, oh heck, might stop the list making it's starting to get a tad long. Still, things that can be done pretty much in any weather and most of it while I'm at work :-)

N.B The photos are now old news, the floors are now complete as are the internal walls (thanks again to John Fibbens for his help). I'll have to get back out there for an update.

How my parent's are 'fearing'

2011-02-25T00:19:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Net, who asked about my parents and how they are fearing in Christchurch. It was a great Freudian Slip. I was thinking yesterday that if we could have a global image of fear and grieving there would be hotspots in Christchurch, Yemen and Libiya.

My parents are OK. My mum had an adventure she'd rather have done without.
She volunteers in an op shop that was hit fairly hard with the quake. All I know is that the window imploded right where she normally sits. They got out onto the street and stood and watched the minister's church opposite disintegrate.

I probably shouldn't repeat this, because there are a million and one better stories to tell of selflessness. But the minister was most anxious about his cat and used his mobile phone to find out if it had survived. When he finished mum asked if she could use it to call Dad to find out if he was OK.
His response. 'No, it's a credit phone.'

Mum tried to drive home but soon realised that this wasn't going to happen and she was safer walking. She struggled through the liquifaction, sometimes unable to find the bottom she'd have to haul herself back out. It's a long way home.

Dad was OK, the house a little less so. Doors no longer close, a two metre long five row stretch of bricks fell away. TV's are smashed, the typical mess we're seeing on TV. But nothing compared to many of their friends.

Mum told me today of one friend who lost her husband last year and then sustained a lot of damage to her house in the first quake. Now she has a bundle of clothes and no house. All she wants is her husband.

It's hard to watch it on TV. I see the street names from my childhood. Years ago I climbed to the top of the cathedral just when they gave the bells a work out and leant back on the swaying spire and waited for it to crumble. I've stayed at the YMCA, have a wonderful pair of ampersands I bought at Ballantynes. It seems, at such a distance so unreal. But talking to mum, no less unreal her end either.

I've heard them say on TV, 'earthquakes are a fact of life for New Zealander's' as though they are a daily occurance. Nothing like this has ever happened. Newly demolished 1860s churches testify to this.

I can only recall about five earthquakes and I lived there till I was twenty three. The most remarkable one was leaning on a sliding door eating lunch with my family. I must have been nine or ten. The door began to rattle. I turned around to tell my bloody brothers off, no one there. I turned back to see them riding the wild barbeque table over the patio. It was the kind of thing where you went 'whoa!' and laughed over.

Nothing like watching some huge fellow throwing sandstone blocks off someone trapped beneath. Nor watch the agony of those waiting.

As for the minister. I've advised mum to tell him that it's a credit line to God he's got too and he's used his up.

A computer Free Day

2011-02-13T18:30:00.000-08:00

This is what every second day is supposed to be so that Caleb actually creeps out of his self-imposed computer hole and seeks daylight. Like a blind mole, or a particularly light sensitive worm. I'm sure there are other households with children suffering this same affliction. I'm concerned Caleb will look back at his childhood and only recall Earthworm Jim, Kratos and Prince of Persia as his friends, have a hunch back, vision permanently focussed at 30 centimetres and will only have computer geek language skills. He thinks he's L33T (elite) you n00b.

Once, when asked to do something else his response was he couldn't think of anything. Mine, 'Find your imagination'. He was silent for several moments before responding in a 'computer like' voice, 'Imagination - not found.'

This morning his computer free day resulted in this little spurt of humour that while we all appreciate is not going to earn him any online time.

The Fine art of Appreciating Apricots

2011-02-13T17:57:00.001-08:00

You take one apricot, insert it into the appropriate facial aperture and make 'hmmmm, hmmmm' noises as you chew. A swipe or two as the juice runs down the chin.

My brother used to say that 'Linda eats apricots and spits out the box'. Too true. A good apricot is as good as any mango.

There will be apricot preserving coming up in the next couple of days so Caleb can eat his favourite pancakes with apricots for breakfast in the middle of winter.

Cal's room

2011-02-13T17:51:00.001-08:00

Almost complete, just the Solomit (straw panel) ceiling lining to go. The beauty of his room has not resulted in any lowering of abandoned sock numbers. Found twelve unmatched pairs in there recently, seems statistically impossible but he managed it.

The blue wall is made from homemade goats cheese paint, a mix of quark, lime putty and blue pigment. It was a buggar to apply so Cal and I ended up getting creative with it. I thought it was quite angsty and teenage, but made the mistake of writing in a few words that came to mind and World, Love and Beautiful are definately way too hippy. I've obscured them some what, but he's still not quite sure. I've bought a white wall decal of a great big abstract twirly scroll thing that we can place over top to add to the overall effect.

Good to have another room close to completion.

The Life and Death of Baby Banjo

2011-02-13T17:37:00.001-08:00

It was around 6pm, broad daylight, and would be for another three hours this time of year in Tassie, when we spotted a dead wallaby by the side of the road. Trev and both leaned forward at the same moment and yelled,
'Is that a rat?'
But we both agreed it might have been a baby wallaby. We did one of those dangerous manoeuvers not destined to help you make friends with your local copper and went back for a look. Sure enough it was a wallaby, she was out of the pouch and trying desperately to get back in.

Trev swooped her up and we bought it home and rang our local wildlife carer. But alas, not available for anything but advice. Despite feeding her recommended amounts of the right kind of food and keeping her warm and quiet she developed diarrhoea and died a couple of days later. It was only a slim chance she made it, but we had to give her that.

Duckies

2011-02-13T17:23:00.000-08:00

Heaps of them, enough to throw in a bath and bathe in them. Not that that's a likely event. Caleb's last duck bath some years back ended in howls of pain when Nibbler thought she spied a fat worm.

Our two females bought out eight ducklings each. We thought we might have had a rare double yolker twin set, but eventually the duckling managed to get its legs out of the egg and struggle around like Mr Bean with a Christmas turkey on his head. I helped it out, and it was just one same size duckling as the rest, just in a big bloody egg.

The first duck, Squeaker, quickly knocked her duckling numbers back to three by running around so much they dropped dead of exhaustion.

Duck breeding lesson number one. confine duck and ducklings in a 'duck house' for the first week or two till they've developed stamina to keep up.

We have 19 ducklings. Before they went on the duck cluck we had much discussion about the amount of poop on the door step and reducing duck numbers to nil by a process of trialing peking duck recipes and then... numbers kind of got away on us.

Caleb, who's not adverse to eating an animal after it's stopped being cute is looking forward to this event. Trev and I, older and less inclined to kill anything but slugs, (which the ducks were bought in to do and failed spectacularly at), look at each other sideways and wince.

Create a Buzz!

2011-01-10T13:37:00.000-08:00

I've signed a few petitions in the past and it seems I get more arrive in my inbox daily. I was moved enough to add the one on South Africa and 'corrective rape' a couple of days ago.

Today I received one no less close to my heart but not humanitarian in this case. This one is about out lawing pesticides and chemicals in the EU and US that may be causing the demise of the bee population. Apart from honey they provide 90% of pollination services. I won't spray on too much about sprays - here's the link to reading more. Only takes 5 seconds to sign and I find it intriguing to watch the names and locations of the signers as they sign. 1 every second.
Online Petition

Making Paint while the sun shines

2011-01-09T16:04:00.000-08:00

Actually I do all my gardening in the morning and late afternoon when it's cooler. During the sunniest part of the day I either mud the house or paint it. I've had fun making more than food recently, experimenting in recipes of the non-edible kind.

I've painted Caleb's room with goat's cheese paint. A mix of quark and lime putty and clay pigments. I'll have to take a photo of his wall. We worked on it together and it got a bit wild. He now wants to tone it down a notch. Pity. I was happy with the wild stuff. But will comply.

The mud walls are being painted with lime wash, which is made from lime putty (we made from quicklime as lime putty is hard to get, and expensive due to the cost of getting it to Tassie) water and pigment. I've used sandstone coloured clay pigment for the wall in the photo, but have 2 kg of titanium dioxide coming next week which will be used on all the internal walls for a white finish.

Lime is dangerous stuff to work with, being very caustic, hence safety glasses, and usually gloves, though not for this mock up. Typically someone pulls out a camera and I can't help but smirk at the lens. My mother has the same affliction. Usually why I'm found behind the darn thing and not in front of it.

N-ice Cream

2011-01-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

I'm on holidays, so cooking figures more highly, simply because there's more time to do it. No one is complaining. I was disgusted to see hot cross buns on sale in the supermarket recently. I enjoy being disgusted every year. The moment Christmas is over it's onto the next commercial seasonal event. It didn't stop me making spicey hot buns when I got home though. No wonder Trev has put all the weight back on and added some. He calls his paunch, his porch and is forever making it the focal point of conversation by pointing it out for us all to take note of. Anyway, the real point of this post was to add a recipe for homemade vanilla ice cream. A great way to use surplus eggs. We also used goats milk, but had to buy the cows cream. It tastes sublime.

Ours turned out strongly yellow, something to do with orange chook eggs I suspect. The image is all that's left of yesterday's ice-cream.

Italian Mummas must really love their Babies

2011-01-09T15:11:00.000-08:00

I decided to make pasta, the make your own from scratch variety. Little knowing that three hours later I would still be rolling out pasta thinnly and making little parcels with goat cheese and herbs. One of the last jars of tomatoes from last year came out and became the basis for a sauce and grilled zucchini topped the dish. I learnt that you can't sit them on top of each other or they become one amorphous pasta blob and I needed to use less filling and have more of a compressed edge to keep the cheese inside. So, there I was, thinking it was the one and only time I dedicated myself to such a mascochistic cooking experience, now I will have to repeat it and get it completely right some time soon.

Caleb recently made Tagliatelle with a rich meat sauce for Trev and himself. Mastering more of the cooking basics that will hopefully see him well fed once he leaves home. He's almost taller than me now, his voice has broken and he has hormonal days, one's where a mummy cuddle is simply out of the question. Sigh.

The Last of the Windows

2011-01-09T14:51:00.000-08:00

The last of the windows goes in. The house's eyes finally look less blank.
Just the doors to go in.

I was cooking dinner last night when Trev yelled 'Help!' Off we ran expecting to find him lying in the grass with various bits broken, but no, he was stuck at one of the top windows in a position he couldn't shift from holding up 15kg of window in one hand at an awkward angle. Caleb went to the rescue and the final end opening window went in.

Chick magnet

2011-01-09T14:41:00.000-08:00

The house is a chick magnet every sparrow within coo-ee has taken to it's eaves, its corners and crevasses and stuffed every inch with nesting material and baby sparrows. Their nesting material is generally our insulation. It can't happen. It must stop and the books say they can be deterred if you remove their nests often enough. So Trev does. Usually it's only eggs, but this time, alas, it was wee chicks. Needless to say they didn't survive long out of the nest.

Building a house often inspires nesting instincts, how many times do we see young couples vowing and declaring not to reproduce while building, only to be found nailing up boards with a baby strapped to their back not long after. Just wish it wouldn't inspire the sparrows too.

Coffee ... with Love

2011-01-09T14:35:00.000-08:00

For the past year or so Trev has made me a coffee (fairtrade, organic of course)most mornings, and fluffs up the milk and draws me a heart on the top with it. We're not a particularly demonstrative couple, gently ribbing each other is our form of verbal affection. No great protestations of undying love going on here. But when my coffee comes with its wee heart inscribed in the top, it kind of goes beyond words.

A single Swallow doesn't make a summer

2010-12-31T14:46:00.000-08:00

Trev, Cal and I watched a young swallow playing with a white feather. It flies up with it, drops it and then swoops to catch it before it hits the ground. Over and over again. A great game and just a wonderful symbol of the joy of summer.

Not sure if it's from the same nest, but we have four wee swallows in a nest outside the bathroom window, if you crane your neck you can watch them coming and going. We've been watching them since they were eggs, great to watch their wee beaks open for food, and then to see them fly.

The three of us were standing together on a hilly knoll having one of those 'Lords of all we survey' moments when a pair of swallows decided we were too close to their nests and swooped us making clicking noises to scare us off. If you closed your eyes you could feel the wind from their wings as they brushed past.

To offset the wonderfulness of birds we have a blackbird who got under the netting and ate every last cherry off one of the trees and has now demolished the majority of the raspberries, or any worth eating. Plans to evict him are in progress.

But one of the loveliest things I saw this summer so far is just below. This was taken after the three of us did a marathon session with shovels making ditches around three 20 metre rows of raspberry plants. I looked back and saw these three, Pappa Bear, Mumma bear and baby bear shovels, planted in a row. Kodak moments like these make the blisters worth it.

...only that was months ago and I never did get back to take that Kodak moment picutre. Hence this has remained in drafts till I rediscovered it. Summer over, the swallows long gone.

Peg (who's not silly) and the bearded Tilly

2010-12-28T14:11:00.000-08:00

Months ago now we bought two Saanan goats, Peg and Tilly. Peg quickly taught us just how smart a goat can get. She can take the lid of anything, and when Trev built a goat palace extension with a gate and a 'helicopter' latch, she showed us how quick she could work that out too. While Peg is a character we both fell for Tilly. Tilly is the smoochiest goat I've ever met. She's very gentle, nuzzles up to you, tenderly gives your ear a nibble, rubs her head up against yours, kisses you and loves her affection returned.

Bella got the 'ump' for a week or so and either ignored the new two or took a half-hearted swipe at them if she could. They've settled down now, though Bella still remains aloof. Between them we get around 4 litres of milk a day.

Peg and Tilly haven't been in kid for years now, and we've been warned they give around 10 litres each when first freshened. An amount that makes my hands ache just thinking about. But will try to have them in kid a year out of sync.

Minding our Own Beeswax

2010-11-27T22:38:00.000-08:00

Caleb recently purchased a new laptop. He's paying it off by working for us on a low $5 hourly rate (more for excellently completed jobs). He helped me hammer the nails in his room, Trev punched them in. Caleb puttied the holes and washed the floor and then using my freshly made beewax polish, polished the boards.

The colours in the timber came out beautifully. Not like you'd see with estapol etc where it looks like a layer of reflective water on the surface. Much more subtle.

Beeswax Floor Polish100 grams of beeswax chopped into small pieces and placed in a wide mouth glass jar.
In a small pot of boiling water place the jar with the lid loosely on. Heat the water slowly (do not boil) and stir occassionally to help melt the wax. Wax has a low melting point, do not over heat. We used some of our own beeswax and strips of old beeswax off cuts from the hive. The cheapest way to buy it is from apiary suppliers. Or, if you have a friendly neighbour apiarist, ask them.

When the wax is melted remove the jar from the water and, while stirring, blend in 100mls of mineral turpentine. Allow to cool.

With a lint free cloth rub the wax onto your floor boards. 'Dries' within half an hour, you can then buff it for an increased shine. We tested a spare board for staining. Water simply beaded on it, and dirt wiped off. We realise it's not going to have the same kind of durability as synthetic finishes. But that's a compromise we're willing to make.

Little Brown Pigs Big Adventure

2010-11-26T18:03:00.000-08:00

I was in the garden and heard an outbreak of piggy noise. It was coming from two directions. Off I flew and sure enough, there's a little brown pig at the gate wanting to come through. Bleeding from under her eye, and her mouth and looking thinner than her little pink piggy mate. We did the re-capture dance... she runs and squeals, we turn and dive... many times. Finally Trev had her and we reunited the pair.

Little pig piggy has been getting lots of smooches, and scratches. Scratch her belly and she falls over in ecstacy. So she's been getting very used to interaction with humans, especially of the food producing kind. Not so little brown pig, but hope to inaugurate her to the delicacy of home baked bread soaked in goats milk and have her eating out of our hand soon.

Wonder just what adventures she's been in.

Also apologies for the last title. Not sure what I was thinking, 'something or other' not 'rather' Doh!

Empress of Blanding and ... something or rather

2010-11-21T21:23:00.000-08:00

We have two new wee piggies. A Large Whites and a Berkshire. They're about the 6-7 weeks of age and cute as buttons. Though there was a lot of muttering, 'I like suckling pig!' under Trev's breath while we ran hill and dale retrieving the wee buggars from neighbours when we discovered their fence breaching powers. Both gilts. We hope to eventually raise guilt free pork/bacon for Trev and Cal to eat. These two are breeders. They'll largely be fed on whey, comfrey, boiled spuds, windfall apples, carrots, sunflower seeds and food scraps. They're free range so will supplement their diets on grass and bracken fern root while ploughing up areas and fertilzing it for us. Very much looking forward to having them happy to see us and the scrap bucket at the moment it's the sound of stuck pig when we go in for the cuddle. A bit more positive food reinforcement to go yet.

Trev wants to call them the Empress of Blanding and something else even longer as they're references to pigs in PG Wodehouse books, which he loves. My guess is they will end up being Piggy and Wiggy or something less illustrous.

Busy as a beaver and as bald as one too!

2010-11-21T21:16:00.000-08:00

Trev's hair could have been said to have been coming out at a rate of knots (it was pretty tangled). The bald spot from the bedsores on the back of his head is slowly coming back, but just as fast everything else is falling out. Trev hasn't cut his hair since 1993, so today was a bit of a shock to the system. Apparently high temps and severe illness can make the hair go into a resting phase. As such everything falls out, and well, it's time to start again. So a scissor cut followed by a number 3 buzz cut and Trev's hair twirling days are over for at least the next three years. (He gets his pig tail and twirls it in his fingers, thumping it on his shoulder). It's going to take a while to getting used to Trev's longest hairs being the nasal variety.

Trev's mum will be pleased, even if he does look like a bit of a crim. When he was in a coma she did mention, with a certain gleam in her eye that now would be the time to get out the scissors.

Cheap Christmas Copies

2010-11-07T21:21:00.001-08:00

Give someone a giggle this Christmas... copies of Who Killed Dave usually retail for $24.95, I'm selling them for $20 (including postage) up till Christmas. Saves you around $10.
My Christmas fund, your Christmas fun :-)

Cheap Christmas Copies

Remember to ask if you want them signed to a particular person

reviews here and here

The book is printed on recycled paper, printed with vegetable inks and is carbon offset. While it's an environmental print, it's definately not about the environment!

Blurb...

Dave died in mysterious and grotesque circumstances and the murder has caught the imagination of a
nation. There’s a television poll running and 46% of voters believe Robyn is guilty.

Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t, she wasn’t in any state to remember.

But hey, if you’re pointing fingers then Kaos Court is full of people crazy enough to commit the crime.
This part time masseuse, part time tarot card reader is going to need all her skills to find out who killed
Dave, because it’s the only thing standing between her and Detective Mark Hood, a man she could never
marry, not when your first name is Robyn. Right?

A whacky whodunit comedy that cartwheels from one chaotic moment to the next.

And who killed Dave? ... You’ll never guess!

Did I mention...?

2010-11-02T03:10:00.000-07:00

That I've mastered the final coat of mud on two rooms and am quite impressed with the final result. Played with types of sand, clay (including hacking out an old Kaolin hill in the area with Cal and Trev) adding various 'hippe' additives of cooked flour paste and linseed oil and tried lots of techniques to get it right and seemed to have got it right enough to have no cracking and not too many lumps. I keep seeing hand rendered walls in movies and remarking, 'Hmm, should have got me to do that, look how uneven that is' kind of remarks. In jest, believe me, in jest. Once these walls are done I'm hanging up the trowel for good.

The Progress Meter

2010-11-02T02:56:00.001-07:00

It's been sitting on the same mark for almost two months and then, within two days had a sudden, not that inexplicable, leap forward.
All down to John 'The Workhorse' Fibbens. Workhorses in carpentry are usuable fairly stationery objects, and John doesn't really come under that category. The photo of John is perhaps not his best view point, nor his most distinguishing feature. He's a force to be reckoned with. Thanks John. Trev working alongside and Caleb offsiding, two rooms have now been enclosed, insulated and a floor laid down, plaster walls are up in two rooms. It's amazing to see what a difference a floor and internal walls make. Yeah, seeing it written like that you'd expect a fair bit of difference. But I've been walking across gaps and joists for so long now a solid floor is fairly miraculous. Caleb occupied the room within two shakes of a lambs tail (not yet born). Unfortunately he decided to revisit his old room where the insulation was stored and watched TV for an hour using it for a pillow. Not unsurprisingly we had a red cheeked Cal visit us late one night complaining he had an 'agigitated face.' A quick shower appeared to have resolved those issues.

Of course, human nature as it is, now I want ALL the rooms finished. Another day on Saturday will see a third room completed. Then up to Trev to finish off the last upper windows. But due to the ulcerated bedsore on Trev's heel it's still hellish to climb ladders for him.. But he is getting there. A week or so ago he had a sudden turn for the better, energy, stamina and strength seemed to, after what seemed a long gradual return, make a leap of there own on the progress meter.

Little Lambinos

2010-11-02T02:47:00.000-07:00

Louise has been wandering around doing the woolley beach ball thing for a while now. She spent most of yesterday near the top fence (they always go as high on the property as they can, a flood instinct perhaps) and had two wee female lambs. We left her to things for 24 hours, but now it's time for a cuddle. Born female they're off the butchers list, thank God. Lamboghini is due to have first sometime soon too. I don't think she has any idea why she's stacked on the weight of late.

Environmental Thrillers

2010-10-16T23:01:00.000-07:00

LA Larkin, the author of The Genesis Flaw will be discussing the Rise of the Environmental thriller with me (forgot to mention that) in Hobart 26 October. Should be an interesting discussion at my favourite bookshop, Fullers in Collins Street. All welcome.

Who Killed Dave? - Now an e-book

2010-09-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

I created a digital online version some time ago - but wasn't that impressed with the quality. I've finally got around to creating an e-version with Amazon.

It's just come on line at Who Killed Dave? - Amazon and costs $11.99 AUS and $9.99 US.

I've yet to embrace e-books at home, but see it is a good way forward. Maybe a Kindle Christmas present Trev? How do you feel about paperless reading?

Faith in Human Nature - Restored

2010-09-28T03:20:00.000-07:00

Been a couple of weeks now of having Trev back home. He's taking it slowly as it seems that's the only way possible. He continued to lose weight at home due to lack of appetite and he's now lost 15kg, most of which is muscle judging by the lack of strength. He's slowly increasing this however. It's been blowy of late and I saw Trev almost knocked off his feet by a gust the first week he got home. But doubt that would be the case now. He had a go at chopping wood the other day and had to ask me to help him get the axe out of the puny bit of wood, which he's used to picking up a big chopping block size of wood stuck to his axe and whacking it down upside down to get the blocksplitter through it. The kind of wood I couldn't pick up in way too many Sundays. To say that losing 30 years of hard won muscle in 12 days has been hard on him is putting it mildly. He's had a few dark days there and still finds it hard to understand how something so mild in Caleb and I could come close to killing him has also been difficult.

But the one thing that we come back to again and again is how bloody wonderful everyone has been, how when we didn't have a car, lo, there was a loaner, when there wasn't any wood in the woodbox, lo, there would be wood. Goats needed milking, lo, udders would be empty. While in the motel we had a call to the room to say a box was downstairs for us to pick up. Bemused Caleb and I went down to pick it up and it was full of organic fruit/bread, goodies and a card with $100 in it.

I can't remember what bought it on, but one day I stood up and in a computer generated voice I said, 'Faith in Human Nature - restored'. It has been a tough year in a lot of ways, one's I'd not share on the blog, and Trev becoming so ill was major icing of the decorate mountain tops kind. But it hasn't been entirely negative, we get to keep Trev and the restoration of faith in human nature... well, the two insignificant words Thank You, keep popping up, they hardly do justice to what it feels to have been on the receiving end of so much caring.

Even so, Thank you! to all those who offered support in all its guises.

H1N1 (swine flu) vaccinations are free, only 20% of the population in Australia have opted to have it, mostly because they think, like Trev, that they're bullet proof or that the threat has passed.

Earthquake New Zealand photos

2010-09-14T17:40:00.001-07:00

While Trev was in hospital there was a bit of a tremble in my place of birth, and where my parents live. My mother, who's not long had a heart attack or two and didn't need the extra stress of has been giving me updates on the constant shaky state of things in Christchurch. She's sent through a link of photos of some of the damage. The earthquakes continue...

Earthquake damage

Trev's at home

2010-09-14T17:19:00.000-07:00

Not sure I'm totally happy about that. Thought it wonderful at the time, and while he's generally behaving he did manage to fall into the caravan, and this morning, without my knowledge, back out of it. Had to extricate him from under the step and haul him back up. He's peeved there is so much of him to haul up. He's lost 10kg, once he knew the full horror of where he'd been for the fortnight he was keen to discover the weight reduction benefits, and while keen to keep them has been demolishing food ever since. Which is great. Interestingly he constantly thirsts for fruit juices, lemons/oranges, fresh squeezed.

They weren't that keen for him to leave, but having heard bad weather was coming and having been transferred to another ward where he was able to take advantage of the quiet open spaces of 2am. He hauled himself around till he was capable enough of walking (like a tight rope walker, said the physio and encouraged him to walk with his feet further apart, now he walks like he's pooed himself) nevertheless, he's walking. But very weak and breathless.

We had another drama the other day when Val and I leapt into the car to go see Trev, who was finally conscious only to discover that our car, which has only ever needed maintenance, never repairs, needed repairs of the kind requiring tow trucks. Just about pulled out my hair, a neighbour leant us their car, and now other friends have given us a loaner till ours returns. Expecting to pay $1200 for that. Someone remarked that we were clocking up a lot of good luck in the future, but I have to be honest and say we've clocked up a lot in the past, and getting Trev back, while not luck, it had skill involved on behalf of his caregivers, is pretty lucky too.

Last night after our semi-successful attempt to get Trev into bed without mishap, he started hyperventilating and breathing very noisily. Almost convinced myself to take him straight back to hospital. So spent a lot of the night coaxing him onto his side where he breathed easier and listening to see he kept it up.

Trev fully intends to test out his coordination on the keyboard and respond to emails soon. But considering I watched him brush his hair this morning (it exhausted him), it might be some time away yet. I just have to convince him to stay still long enough to recover.

Trev's in Dubai

2010-09-09T14:40:00.000-07:00

Well he is, according to him.

We asked him why he thought he was and he told us it was because of all the muslims. 'Not that I have anything against Muslims' he told us. 'And why is the clock going backwards?' then diagnosed the issue as being in the northern hemisphere and the coreolis effect.
He wasn't supposed to be talking but he wouldn't stop and mostly so quiet no one could hear. But when I told him to shush for a while I heard a distinct.
'Fuck the shush'.
He was grumpy as hell. He kept trying to enlist Caleb to get him a drink. We weren't allowed to do it because of the risk it would go straight into his lungs. He was pissed off. 'Why are you all against me?' Glares all round.
'Would you like to be on your left side, or your right side?' the nurse asks.
'I don't care as long as I have a drink in my hand'.
'What would you like to drink?'
'A beer'.
He couldn't understand how he'd got to Dubai, and how we were all there too.
I explained we were in Australia and Tasmania, at the Royal Hospital,
'Oh yeah, we came here to get married'.
He was disabused of that idea pretty quickly.
He was, as we all thought, shocked he'd been in hospital so long. He can't remember much, he thought he'd spent some time at Gary's. But I don't know of any Gary. He also thinks he may have seen the white light.
'Can I have a beer yet?'

Later we see him, we're allowed to rip off the gowns and masks because he no longer needs to be in iso, his swab was negative for swine flu. He keeps repeating, 'I've had tamiflu?'
He's out into the main ward now where he's a little less belligerent and eventually the 'fuckin' clock' is going forward once more and he's able to drink and eat, the best yoghurt ever and pureed icky looking stuff which he tosses back. His face mask is now a nasal prong thing and he hates it. He wants it out. He struggles to get his hand to his face to pull it off, but he is so weak, and his muscles so wasted he physically can't touch his nose. He's warned why it is he can't remove it, but he continues to try. Later he looks like he might make it, and Caleb touches a finger to his arm and restrains him with the pressure of a butterfly. Caleb gets the glare from hell.

Of course all these antics impress us hugely. We have ear to ear grins. I try to impress him about how ill he's been. I read him lots of emails from people and blog comments. I tell him all the wonderful stuff people have been doing for him and us.
'Hmm, I must be an Ok kind of bloke then'.
He looks overwhelmed, his bottom lips trembling.
'You OK Trev?'
'Yeah'.
'I thought you were crying'.
'Yeah, well I'm feeling emotional. Can I have that fuckin' beer now?'

I won't be blogging for a while

2010-09-06T14:27:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

The hospital made a complaint yesterday about the blog, seeing it as a breach of patient confidentiality. While I believe care has been taken not to name any staff, and of course any other patient in ICU, or said anything negative about his care, which has been fantastic, I'm prepared to comply. Human nature being what it is I'm not going to jeopardise our relationship with the hospital.

Trev has an oft repeated phrase in regards to freedom of speech, 'I might not believe what you have to say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it.'

Thanks for all your kind thoughts, your support has been a real boost. I have made a journal of blog posts and all your comments,emails etc for Trev which he can read when he's ready to read it.

Love

Linda

Trev, Trev, Trevor!

2010-09-05T14:27:00.000-07:00

Should have seen the look on the nurses face when she asked to see what I was giving Trev in a little dropper. Told her that the medical profession can't find anything but water and traces of alcohol in homeopathic medicenes, that seemed to allay fears.

Trev went back a bit today. High temp, upped the level of PEEPS and oxygen and bowels still not moving despite two hit men of interns giving him two enemas. They stood at his bedside, 6 foot something, with hands behind there backs and unsmiling faces till I left. If Trev could have seen them it would have given him the shits all on its own. No shit moved however.

He's stirring, not when I told him I loved him, no, only when I told him that he came fourth in the footie tipping competition! Hard to see him go back, even a little bit.

Had a really shit day really. Started when I found Daisy dead. Ehren fed the goats half a bale of hay, Caleb did tell me, but I was distracted with other stuff and didn't realise just how much, and the silly thing did what she always does, guzzled herself till she gave herself bloat. I didn't even realise she was sick I've been too busy washing dogs (Nuju decided to sit in the rain then roll in dirt till he was a black dog), feeding people and answering the telephone. So I didn't even do my goat check when we got home. Looks like a miserable death for her.

We had to bury her Sunday morning. Ehren and Caleb being the grave diggers. Then I fell arse over tit in the mud and hurt my back. Got to the hospital to find Trev has gone, just slightly downhill and they can't find the (expletive deleted) $800 Vitamin C. Will need to jump onto it first thing today. It's probably sitting around somewhere. So much for spending $200 to get it there by Saturday morning. Still trying to convince every doctor and nurse, one at a time, the value of trying it. Yes, it may have no effect,but also nothing detrimental, it may be beneficial. Worth a go.

(wrote the above last night before ringing the hospital)

Trev's bowels (bells) are clanging... moved 'em. Which is great news. Still no improvements elsewhere.

(now morning, rung for the report from the night nurse)

Temp down, but a restless night where he appears to have been stirring and trying to open his eyes. They suspect the ventilator is causing discomfort, which is probably true, but as he has a bad back and it's the worst possible position for him to be lying in, it's probably that too. Can't stand ten minutes in that position and it's now the tenth day.

Gathering all my info on Vitamin C, courier names etc and going in to see if we can sort the C.

Father's Day

2010-09-04T14:49:00.001-07:00

Seems he may be the one giving us the present! That of his presence.

Yesterday he stirred for the first time, almost didn't believe it. The physio was seeing him for the first time and she was shaking his lungs to try and loosen the muck. It disturbed him enough for him to come to enough to move his head. She was asking him to take a big breath, and lo! He did.
His peeps are down to 14 (the gate posts moved though, we've been hanging out for 12 and the possibility of having the ventilator out, but now the numbers 6).
They're giving him 50% oxygen blend, and his blood oxygen levels are 92-95% which is good. He's full of fluid and his hands look like puff fish. His bedsores and dusky patches are growing, his stomach still isn't working and they're now delivering all his nutrition intravenously.

They've backed off giving him the Vitamin C, I have to wait till Monday to go in and battle that one out. Had a good nurse who asked about why we'd got it for him and she was receptive, which is better than others. I went to Gould's Naturopathica yesterday and bought Trev homeopathic drops that are supposed to help with the right lung expelling gunk and blood, which is the big thing he has to do, mostly on his own. We gave it to him and later on I looked at what it was. Arsenicum. Glad the nurses/doctors didn't see that!

The nurse said she thought he'd got to the turning point. We're all repeating, 'turning point' to each other and looking smug.

Then... last night I rung up to see how he was and was told they'd changed his sedation medication and that he was stirring and trying to open his eyes. We're off soon to see him and hope that's still the case. He's off the noradrenalin (which was supporting his blood pressure which had been getting extremely low), so hopefully peripheral circulation will improve and he'll have less issues with the bla bla skin. Still has a low grade temp, but nothing major. They're giving him special foot splints as he's starting to get 'foot drop', and he'll have a hard time walking when he's ready too due to muscle wastage.

So, even though he's not out of the 'woodwork' (as one nurse termed it) yet, it's more and more unlikely that it will go any other way other than up (with a few slips back to be expected).

We're all very tired, Caleb was almost completely silent yesterday, so even though it's fathers day today he can stay with friends and do something 'normal.' Today is the 9th day, feeling guardedly hopeful I'll get to say gidday!

On All things Trevor

2010-09-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

Trev remains stable. No real progress forward apart from the new trick he has of coughing up muck and rolling his eyes to the back of his head. His lung x-rays show no improvement. They're going to lower his sedation a bit, but not so much that he wakes. They are hoping that will result in more coughing and more up mucking.

I've had success on the Vitamin C level (please forgive if I've already said this, I can't recall), but the hospital couldn't source it, said it would cost $25,000 - $30,000 to get it through Canberra (and Trev would probably have died of old age by the time it got here). So I made lots of calls/emails and found an Australian supplier in Melbourne. It's expensive, especially when they said it would cost $600 to deliver it by 7pm tonight. So I opted for the $200 to get it there by lunch time tomorrow. Sorry Trev, figured I'd make sure I can afford the next batch instead of pay so dearly for the first).

Just cleared it with the hospital and they will start administering it tomorrow when it gets there. I'm pretty excited about my depleted bank balance. I hope this is the thing that will get things moving for him, and in the right direction. He's been piddling around so long he's getting bed sores and the noradrenalin levels concentrate his blood in his organs and his peripheral circulation is bad and he's getting dark necrotic looking tissue on his feet and heels and lower spine They can't turn him on his side or his oxygen levels plummet dramatically. I'm so glad he's on morphine, even if he does wake up an addict.

We're at home now as we couldn't stay in the motel any longer. We won't see him again till tomorrow morning. But Ehren (Trev's oldest son) is busy chopping wood that a neighbour dropped off to us and I'm checking chooks, ducks, garden, cleaning up and generally making myself busy.

About to start work on a journal for Trev with clippings and cuttings of emails/blog comments/cards etc from all you wonderful people so when he wakes he gets to feel as overwhelmed as we do by all the love and well wishes coming his way.

Thanks to you all for offering it!

Love

Linda

Update on Trev

2010-09-01T15:33:00.000-07:00

Hi Again.

Trev had a good night with his temp finally near normal. His PEEPS came down for the first time from 18 to 16. This is the amount of pressure the ventilator is using to force air into his lungs. The amount of oxygen in the mix came down too. He was on 100%, now he's on 40%, coming down 5% at a time. This is all good. If he keeps this up, which we have been warned against thinking like, as steps forward are usually followed by steps back, they'll be thinking about taking him off the ventilator soon.
Hopefully his digestive system will start up again as it shut down and he's not been on the nasal tube feed since the beginning. I just hope he doesn't see this as a weight loss strategy!

Very much looking forward to tempting his appetite with all things gourmet and nutritious soon.

Learning to try stay on an even level for all those around me. When things are good you just about have to scrape me off the ceiling, when he has a step back it's sweep me off the floor. Not fair on those around me as I take them with me on the giant swings. Having said that, we're all feeling pretty darn good this morning after this mornings good news.

Cheers

L

An Update on Trev

2010-09-01T01:12:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

Trev recovered from his bad night and is again stable.

Had some advice about large doses of Vitamin C intraveneously. We just pitched the idea to the ward director who rolled his eyes but came at it. Said he'd already been to a conference where they were talking about how families were all asking for intravenous vitamin C. Said it couldn't hurt and was going to arrange it. He said, 'If Trev dies in a couple of weeks you'll blame me for not giving it to him.' I agreed with him. He made a few derogatory Kiwi remarks as that's where the Vit C info came from. But I let him get away with it. We'd already snuck in straight rosehip oil and massaged every bit of skin we could find with it. Only 3% absorption through skin, but better than nothing. He said Trev had been given an 8.5 out of 10 for seriousness that first bad night and is now down to 7 - which is good.

Some small improvement in lungs, he's off nitrous oxide and still holding his own. The Doctor says it's going to be rough going for the next while as in a couple of days they may look at weaning him off the ventilator and he will be coughing and choking on all the crap in his lungs which will be unpleasant for all, but most particularly Trev. We're all very selfish in wanting him back and conscious so we can tell him how much we love him and that he needs to get well and make us more hummus, his last batch is almost finished.

We've been incredibly lucky with neighbours pitching in at home with the various menagerie, Nuju, the sheep, goats, chooks and ducks. Which is fantastic and a load off our minds to know it's just not a problem. But hope to be back home soon. We're really keen to know it's an upward curve he's on.

Thanks for all your support and well wishes! It's great to hear from everyone, and a good reminder of all the good in the world.

Trev is very ill

2010-08-30T22:50:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

I've a favour to ask.
Trev went into hospital on Saturday morning with a fever and difficulty breathing. He was diagnosed as having pneumonia as a result of a flu virus. It turns out it's swine flu. Caleb and I both had it and were fine, but Trev's immune system came close to killing him. By 4am Sunday morning the hospital called to tell us to hurry up and come see him as he had deteriotated very quickly and was on life support. It's Tuesday and he still is. His temperature has come down from 40 degrees to 37.7, but his lungs have yet to show any improvement. He is in an induced coma, paralysed so the ventilator can do all the work for his lungs and as such is not aware of the life and death struggle he's going through.

We're currently staying in Hobart and spending as much time as we can with him.

I'm a great believer in the ability of people to help or heal others with the power of thought. Yes, I know, very hippy trippy. But it can't hurt to try. I'd like to ask that you might find a moment to send Trev a bit of healing energy. We love the silly buggar a lot.

Thank you.

Red Robin Take Two

2010-07-25T19:49:00.001-07:00

This little guy is so cute he's cutting into my gardening time, 50 blackcurrent cuttings went in yesterday, going to try transplanting the gooseberries too, but must admit to looking dubiously at the length of the thorns and finding myself other things to do.

Little Red Robin

2010-07-25T00:44:00.000-07:00

Every time I turn over a clod in the garden I have a little red and blue army of watchers appear. The red robin's pose nicely on any available post, raspberry cane, fence, branch. While the blue wrens tend to hide becomingly behind clumps of grass and scrutinise every lump of earth. The moment I walk away they dive in and help themselves to a squirming worm dinner.

The Stark Conspiracy and Total Toxic Overload

2010-07-12T19:15:00.001-07:00

Years and years ago I read Ben Elton's book Stark - and over the years the memory disintegrated to vague recollection of a guy called Zimmerman and the plot involved a camel. So it was with interest I watched the movie adaptation of the book, which starred Ben Elton himself as the whimpy pommy anti-hero. Written in 1989 and destined to become a million seller (a rariety for a first time author)it's a comedy based on environmental issues and set in Australia. A link to the wikipedia entry Out came the remote control when super bad guy and meglomaniac has his monologue. De Quincy says,

'Recently our politiicans have been playing the green card in the grubby scramble for support. As we STARK conspirators know, such tokenism is entirely cynical, the ecological situation can never be reversed while market forces remain superior to political will'.

I think we all recognise that, but how does it change, or even stronger how 'do we'as a personal responsibility, make the change? In the past great change has only ever really come about through bloody revolution. But our stomachs are too refined for such vulgarity (at least in the West), so a bloodless coup? But our current system is a great machine that swallows idealism whole and spits out personal interest/greed in a cynacism shaped cookie cutter.

It does seem as though, as the inventive species, we need to find a new and relatively harmonious way to tap into change on a broad scale. Any ideas how this can be done?

We love carrots

2010-06-14T22:19:00.001-07:00

But these guys love each other more. We couldn't bear to part them, so cooked 'em and ate 'em whole.

In the X, Y, Z of things we're in the W's

2010-06-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

Walls and windows forever...

Or so it seems. I was just reflecting on the obsolete professions post and how I'd like there to be earth renderers a plenty.

Trev has had to take a break, by necessity, from the window side of the story. He accidently managed to dangle his little finger in the buzzer, which, at 4,800 revolutions and freshly sharpened, removed its fleshy pad but left a nice new angle -which he will no longer dangle (at least not in moving parts). Lots of blood intially, and still changing dressings each day, but it's looking less like raw meat in a butchers shop. My squeamishness is making it hard to type. Change of topic required...

Trev's windows look fabulous, he has 8 out of the 10 of the windows in the walls completed, just the bathroom and our bedroom to go. Still 8 small windows in the celestry (sp?) to go. He's as sick of windows as I am mud.

We've continued to change the render recipe but you'll see one of the images showing up a heck of a lot of cracking. I've decided not to go the way of the bulk coat and just go thin layer of mud over thin layer. No cracking that way. Tedious however. And before you say less clay our experiments show almost 100% sand still cracks. By the time I'm finished I may even be able to say Linda Cockburn M.M & E.R (Mixer of Mud and Earthern Renderer.)but I doubt it.

Obsolete Professions

2010-06-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

I've been researching obsolete professions. The context being that as an evolving world some industries do, by necessity, die. In our modern world we clutch at them, desperate to make sure no one's livelihood is in dispute. But in the end things change, professions and professionals need to evolve and change with it.

Here are a few I found that fascinate. There were some listed in The great Cat Massacre - and other episodes in French Cultural history, that we have not just lost the skill, but what the skill even was.

Belleyetere - Bellfounder.
Burneman - Carrier of barm or water for brewers.
Chaloner - Dealer in shalloon, a material made in Chƒlons.
Cissor - Tailor (not lost, but an interesting word association)
Combere - Woolcomber
Dubbere - Cloth dubber, i.e., one who raises the nap of cloth.
Dudder - Probably a maker of coarse cloaks.
Daunsel - Gentleman in waiting, groom or squire.
Dysshere - Probably a ditcher, or in some cases a disher.
Frereman - Servant of the Friars.
Furber (Furbour) - Furbisher of armour.
Hetheleder - Provider of heather for fuel.
Latouner - Worker in latten, a metal resembling brass.
Palmer - A Pilgrim, one who had been, or pretended to have been, to the Holy Land.
Pannebeter - Pan-hammerer, or perhaps clothdriver.
Pardoner - One licensed to sell Papal Indulgences.
Pattenmaker - Maker of iron-rimmed pattens for footwear.
Pinder - Keeper of the Pound or Pinfold.
Seinter - Girdlemaker.
Sleymaker - Maker of instruments to part threads in weaving.
Spurrier - Spurmaker.
Vaginarius, Sheather - Scabbard maker. (another interesting word association)
Whittawer - Preparer of white leather.
Blockmaker - One who crafted pulleys
Whitesmith - Tinsmith; or one who finishes & polishes after the Smith

This list was adapted from Olive Tree Genealogy

What it makes me wonder is what professions will become obsolete in the future? Obviously those who serviced typewriters have now moved onto other industries. I know the makers of clay pipes are nearly all gone due to the perfidy of PVC.
I admit to sometimes walking in the city and looking around at the businesses which would fail spectacularly if my spending habits were typical of the majority. Gone are the jewellers, the perfumeries, bags and shoes. Female fripperies are history, hairdressers are in short supply, sports equipment, obsolete.

On the up side, every second shop is a bookstore.

What business are you in? Will it still be around in a low energy/resource future? Will it be able to evolve? Are you part of the evolution?

Burdizzo

2010-04-05T22:49:00.000-07:00

I'm always striving to find the most humane methods for dealing with animals. I figure we're intimate enough with our sheep (leave the kiwi/sheep jokes right where you found them)to know when their behinds need a trim to keep away dags, flies, and their cute little white offspring. So their tails stay on. But with three boy goats born this year, and only one requiring the continued use of his testicles I had to come up with a better method than the elasticator to castrate them.

Ramses, the black sheep became pointlessly named after his run in with the elasticator. I watched the process with dismay. He was in obvious pain for some days.

I did a bit of research and found the burdizzo, which is a large hand held clamp used to crush the blood vessels leading to the testicles. The device is bloodless, so little chance of infection, and it's painful for a short period only. We used it on Chalk and Cheese. I held the poor fellows down, Trev gave them the squeeze, the squawked, got up, walked away and within minutes were eating again and giving us wary looks. It'd be nice to let them stay intact, but intact boy goats smell horrendous and don't make good pets, which is what Chalk and Cheese are.

The cost of the burdizzo's? I found places I could get them in Australia - for $300plus dollars. But in the US - $30 - you can guess where I got them from.

An Exodus of Animals

2010-03-31T02:57:00.000-07:00

We had nine goats. I loved all the frisky baby animals. But it wasn't to last.

Bint and her noisy mother Charity were sold to friends who were told of her strident qualities. They're both happy and Bint has been renamed Africa. A definate step in a less perjorative direction. We've visited them both since.

Next went Puggles, who, unlike most male domestic animals is not going to be eaten and has kept his wobbly bits, and was recently seen trying to use them on the female members of his new herd. Lucky boy. I also heard he gets off on electric fences and stands on it making obvious little frissons of delight as it pulses through him.

Then we had Chalk and Cheese, my favourite little fellows. I'm not sure I even recounted their birth story, which involved their John Travolta like entry into the world (one leg completely folded back, the other out front). Cheese had a folded ear, and was runty in comparison to his brother Chalk. But he has an adorable nature and loves nothing more than a cuddle. I didn't think I'd be able to get them a home which didn't involve a large roasting pan and a carving knife. We advertised. I'd already told Trev, they can be wethered, but not tethered. Sure enough, phone call number one wanted to tether them. Trev sighs and tells them, 'Linda won't sell to you if you're tethering, sorry'. We think the end of the story, next day we get a call to say, 'no worries, we're going to keep them as pets in a mobile cattle yard'.

Daisy, was a terrible mother. She just left them all the time, she never had a clue where they were, they huddled under the goat palace on their own at night. I'm so glad they had each other for company. She fed them, but tossed them around when she'd had enough and socialised with the other animals instead. Trev called her the kind of mum who went out late at night, left her babies at home on their own, and wailed loud and long when the house burnt down and her children died. Well, he was right. They came and took Chalk and Cheese, and she wailed for days, searching high and low and calling out. I fed her tidbits and molasses water as I had for poor Bella too. It's a horrible part of rearing goats that you just can't keep all the kids.

By this time we're down to 4 animals. Bella, Daisy (who we are milking) and Brie and Hazel, the six month plus twins who are our future milkers. Brie died. She was healthy at breakfast, and then dead. Lying beside a fence, no marks on her. No sign of illness. She was a healthy, happy animal. Poor Hazel, (who had a voice like a ten pack a day smoker) spent days calling out for her. Caleb and Trev buried her in the orchard, where Trev, overcome with emotion quickly planned to grow asparagus over her body (practical sort is our Trev).

Two weeks later Hazel was found dead. Almost the same spot, exactly the same symptoms, happy, healthy, hearty appetite... hours later, dead. We've never had a goat die. This was horrendous and really upsetting for everyone. This time I wasn't at work and helped in the grave digging, burial duty. We buried her, and then thought about looking for a snake bite. Which is the only conclusion we can come to. Bella and Daisy continue to be happy, healthy and hearty a month later.

I miss my rowdy herd.

An Influx of Ducks

2010-03-31T02:42:00.000-07:00

We introduced Nobbler to Nibbler several months ago. He was seen trying to mount her head a few times before he got his orifices sorted out and Nibbler laid 12 eggs and sat diligently on them for the prescribed time period, only getting off to harrass our ankles and to take a quick drink. We went away for the day having heard the peeps of little ducklings in the shell that morning. We returned expecting ducklings and indeed there was one. Dead, the rest of the eggs scattered over a metre area, the nest torn apart and one disorientated duck. The eggs were cold and silent. Caleb and I took them up and hurried them inside where we warmed them under the fire, in a box with a hot water bottle. Most died inside the shell, but three eventually struggled out of their shells, fixed their apple pip eyes on us and imprinted on the wrong beasts.

We raised the wee darlings for weeks in the warming drawer and Caleb made a great mini mobile duck house for them to stay in during the day. A paint tray made a great sloped swimming pool. I wanted to call them Gold, Nugget and Bouillon (as in the soup not the gold bars). But they have firmly remained generic 'duckies'. We've tried to reunite them with Nibbler and Nobbler, who harrassed them horribly. They're in a large cage close by and hope we can get them gradually used to each other before trying to reunite them again.

As it is Nibbler has complicated things and is currently sitting on another 10 eggs.

DIY Dad

2010-03-31T02:24:00.000-07:00

A $27,000 quote for windows had us scratching chins. It just isn't going to happen like that. We have set ourselves a pretty hard task of building the entire house for under $80,000 and we're doing very nicely - till then. We also wanted to use native timber - but no, everything was Western Red Cedar, from the US, which, while durable is also very flammable.

If in doubt work, work it out. Our DIY motto. We've invested in $2000 worth of additional hardware. According to Trev any time he takes on a new job and saves us money is a good opportunity to tool up. We now have a Festool Domino (makes big fat dowel joints incredibly easily) and a jointer, or buzzer. We're also looking at saving $20,000 on the windows. Guess this is the point when I bat my lids at Trev again, pretend to swoon, use possessive nouns and mention the word hero. Kinda got to really, obligatory. Got to say his windows do look pretty darn good. We're still waiting on the glass order to turn up. So no pics of the installed thing. But not far away.

We've had lots of discussions and internet searches going trying to come up with the best window hardware to match his lovely windows. They've easily been the most difficult decisions to make over the whole build. What kind of walls do you want? No worries, what colour roof? What kind of roof? Ten seconds decisions. How do you want to open the windows and keep them open or closed? Weeks and still deliberating.

The windowless view from Trev's and my, one day will be bed.

sh*t Kicker and Mud Slinger

2010-03-28T01:38:00.000-07:00

That's me. Official title.

Trev keeps saying he's retired from mudding (having gone onto more important and skilled work) but keeps being dragged back into the fold for the high bits. But I've not been alone (all the time). We've had a wonderful group of people helping out. I'll try remember everyone - we've had Luka, Kika, Monika, (three German backpackers) - Hugh & Kari, Tanya and Jamahl, Glyn, Joe, Ehren, Leela, Ginni and Leanne. Between us we've managed to give the outer and inner walls their second skin.

I've done one room in its thick coat/bulk coat/infill coat/brown coat (it goes by many names) but it's all just thick fat layers of mud. If the scratch coat was mud massage, this is mud pack. It's about four centimetres plus thick. It took me five days to do one average size room (two walls). About 2.5 metres a day. I learnt a lot - including;

1. I needed more than just PVA and sand over wooden posts - the array of hairline cracks spreading out from it look almost like tree branches.

2. I learnt to really feather it well between one days mud and the next - big fat mother of all cracks that meant we chipped it back away and remudded the area resulted when I didn't.

3. That going inorganic with orange plastic mesh around windows and corners really reduced the cracking, and was worth the compromise.

4. That the best wall (no cracking) was achieved by making a mix and not getting back to it till a couple of days later and the straw was starting to get a bit stinky.

5. And that minor hairline cracking still happens despite putting orange mesh across one whole wall area.

It's a long, not unrewarding job. I now know what a birds eye sore on the tips of your fingers feels like. It was hell for typing, maybe part of my inexcusable excuse for taking 2 months off blogging. (I wore through plastic gloves and ended up wearing my fingertips off too). I have yet to fall victim to the desire to make butterflies and frogs on the walls, (too hippy dippy for me), but I suspect there will be a small mud lizard somewhere inconspicious at some stage.

The soles of my feet are permanently yellow, all my old work jeans are no longer blue. But sometimes I get a little that way when I look at how much further there is to go.

*photos to come

Who Killed Dave - reviews

2010-01-29T19:21:00.000-08:00

Thank you to all you kind people who've now reviewed Who Killed Dave?
There maybe more that I'm not aware of, so if you have posted a review and it's not on this, please let me know.

http://withextrapulp.com.au/?p=573
www.mumarandom.blogspot.com
http://myrope.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/who-killed-dave-and-do-you-care/
http://michael-sett.blogspot.com/
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/258823.Linda_Cockburn
http://with-both-hands.blogspot.com/2009/12/who-killed-dave.html
http://houseinthegarden.blogspot.com/2010/01/review-who-killed-dave-by-linda.html
donnadid.com/2010/01/09/who-killed-dave/ (actually Donna didn't)
www.blogged.com/profile/caryls2
http://gliriolielin.livejournal.com/ Not sure this is actually a review
http://quasior.blogspot.com/2009/12/who-killed-dave.html
http://womblesreads.blogspot.com/2010/01/who-killed-dave.html
http://out-shadows.blogspot.com/2009/12/who-killed-dave.html

My favourite review is still my mothers - as made in earlier comments.

Robyn's mother (the main character in Who Killed dave?) is based on my own. Though my mother isn't nearly so awful... but she does have the same verbal dsylexia. Spoonerisms, malapropisms are common fare with my mother. She has a repertoire of them that have entered into the Cockburn lexicon. Some of them made it into the book, the rest I made up. Mum's keen to tell me that she's never said Incompetence pads instead of incontinence pads.

Mum's review is based on a comment I made about 25 years ago when she recommended a Catherine Cookson book and I said CC was 'Milly Molly Mandy for adults'. I forgot all about this - naturally, but Mum never did.

During a telephone conversation (25 years later) mum suddenly blurted out.
'I've read your book. It's the sexiest Milly Molly Mandy I've ever read!'. Apparently it gave her nightmares.

Fair enough too - it's not the kind of book you share with your mother, but I couldn't see myself not sending it to her either. She did well to read it at all. Don't think Dad got past page 2 - can't blame him either.

It's not for the faint hearted. The screenplay version is almost complete... a fair bit of swear-age removed. Onto writing something completely different - literary fare this time, humour playing a very small role, if any. The change in genre is a rusty gear change in my head.

Three men and a sheep

2010-01-05T11:54:00.000-08:00

Yeah, yeah, bugger off with the Kiwi/sheep jokes.
This was all above board, I chaperoned.

Our neighbour, Tony, gave us a couple of sheep to help keep the grass down. The amount of rain we had the growth has been phenomenal.

First they had to be caught. This is not so easy. It was the most exercise I've had in years running up and down hills, trying, vainly, to herd the sheep through a gate I'm not sure they even realised existed. Eventually two were rugby tackled, trussed up and put in a wheelbarrow, and wheeled over to our place for release. I admit, the scene caused a few outbreaks of cackling.

Trev catches a tiger

2010-01-05T11:46:00.000-08:00

He did. He really did. We had a tiger in the backyard, and Trev caught it. Tiger snake that is. He kind of had to. He went to start on the mud pit and a tiger snake fell out from underneath the black plastic sheeting. It was in there after a mouse. About a metre long it was a youngish snake. Trev put on chaps, gloves, armed himself with sticks and went about demolishing the pit to find the thing. I was incredibly brave and perched on a window sill and gave directions (don't ask me to hold the bag, not going there again). Eventually he had it pinned down, it attacked the stick Trev used to hold it down, and even managed to bite itself a few times. Later we looked it up and found that snakes are immune to their own venom. Just as well.
Trev bagged him, showed the boys the snake, we all piled in the car, drove a couple of km's away to an uninhabited area and released him.

I made suitable fluttering of lashes and comments along the line of, 'You're my hero' for the rest of the day. Trev stopped trembling with adrenalin sometime after dinner.

House Massage

2010-01-05T11:21:00.000-08:00

It's what it feels like I'm doing. Not in-house just yet, it's all external. Mixing up big mud packs of sand, clay and straw, stomping around on it till my feet are stained yellow, filling up a bucket climbing various arrangements of ladders, scaffolding and giving the house a deep tissue massage of mud, getting it right into its pores so it stays there, ready for the next coat. There are four layers, the first Trev did when he sprayed light clay slip onto the walls, in and out.
Then it's been packing the 'holes' around doors, windows, between bales with straw (if it's a big hole) or a mix of light clay slip mixed with straw. Once dry the wall is sprayed with water to make the next layer adhere to the first. It's the scratch or discovery coat, the one I'm working on. I started off with bare hands, but soon wore the skin off it. Back to gloves. Over three-quarters of the way there with that coat. Then it's the bulk coat - a much thicker coat that brings the wall, hopefully to level and packs out any hollows etc. Then a final coat or so of lime paint.

Not sure if I'll be able to do it, but we've found lots of natural ochre in shades from pink to red in the clay pile from out of the dam. Maybe it can be used to colour the lime paint - maybe by the time I get to the final coat I'll be happy to buy something off the shelf. Would be nice to know as much as possible came from our block. Having said that I just rushed outside for a 20 ton delivery of sand, our decomposed sandstone from the holes Trev drilled just isn't up to it.

This weekend we're having a strawbale 'thingy' where people can come have a go at rendering too. We won't even charge them for the experience, we'll pay them in beer and pizza. The whole thing is such a big job it's nice to share.

I'm on holiday till the 20th ... my holidays revolve around extended sessions of mud massage.

The image is Trev with his form work corners. He places the formwork, tamps down a mix of clay slip and straw, and works his way up the side of the house. It's incredibly hard when it dries and gives a nice sharp corner to the house.

Silly Bint

2010-01-05T10:56:00.000-08:00

I'm not that keen on Anglo Nubians - it's true. I think they're stupid, docile, complaining and un-co. This uncharitable opinion is entirely based on purebred, papered Charity.

She looked the least pregnant of all the three does and as she's 'long in the wheel base' compared to the Toggs, she hid Bint well for most of the 5 months of the gestation period. In the last few days her rather large teats filled out, her pin bones became sharp and obvious, her vulva protruded, she made her way to the top of the block and stringy threads of clear fluid started to drip, - yep. Enough signs to know I needed to hang around just to make sure all went well. So far I've always been lucky, and just a small amount of assistance has been required. Caleb was with me keen to watch the process, eager for more babies.

Things didn't go well. A single hoof appeared, nothing else. Charity, who is a vocal girl, was clearly distressed. Caleb became equally so. Nothing for it but to find the missing hoof, locate the head, see if I could arrange them in the correct order. The leg was pulled back. I found the small hoof and very gently bought it forward. Charity pulled back her head and screamed. I've not heard a goat scream. Once the hoof was right I could feel the small face, the next push and out she popped.

Caleb wanted to call her Hope ... he hoped there was another one behind her. He'd then have Faith. Anglos are renowned for multiple births. We'd almost bought another goat instead of her, but once I found out she had 5 kids in difficult circumstances we decided on Charity. But here she was, her third gestation producing a single kid.

We tried to call her Hope, but Bint it has become. She had great difficulty finding the teat despite a lot of effort, once found, she would lose it, she'd come looking in our armpits, crotch, necks for teats, and bunt against us. We'd relocate her time again, and she'd repeat the same frustrating sequence. Trev called her Silly Bint and it stuck.

She may be silly, but she is without a doubt the most gorgeous, calico patchwork rag doll of a kid I've ever seen. Despite her mixed parentage she's managed to retain almost 100% of her anglo nubianism, with only a touch of Togg about her face in the white blazes.

Last night we heard a distressed bawling from Charity. The kind of bawling that alerts us that something is terribly wrong. Caleb and I went out with the torch and Charity rushed down the hill to us, hysterical.
'I've lost my baby!' she roared.
We checked the dam first. It's one of my fears, but no baby. All the other goats were rushing around frantically too. They knew the problem. Charity's distress reduced to small pathetic bleats of a mother in a supermarket searching for a lost child. Eventually we found Bint, fast asleep in long grass. We reunited them, and relocated them to the goat palace where they both should spend the night without losing one another.

Last on the list is Daisy, who is being rather laid back and lazy about popping anything out - she'll need too and soon, she's so wide I'm worried she'll brush up against something sharp and explode. No signs, she just keeps her head down, bum up and eats. It's her first time, I get the impression she thinks the additional girth is the result of all that mastication going on. She's in for a surprise.

Hopefully, with my new nickname ... the goat whisperer, I'll be able to help see her through.

The Pugalist

2010-01-05T10:40:00.001-08:00

Pug for short - was born on Boxing Day to Bella, our way too old Toggenberg doe - we knew she wasn't pure bred, we accidentally bred her with a black Toggenberg who looks suspiciously like a Britist Alpine to me - and she gave birth to a wee buck who looks 90% Saanan with a bit of Togg thrown in. Generally goats have twins, but older goats manage to keep it to a dull roar with just the one.

Bella managed it with only a little assistance from me and, as in all things she does, with quiet aplomb.

She'd been producing copious amounts of milk for months and we'd had to milk her out as she'd looked like she was going to explode. Yesterday I milked 2.5 litres from one side alone as Pug only drinks from the other, her leathery teat is just too much for him. He's now over a week old and a wee ball of 'Yeah, I have legs and I can jump, and run rings around my mum'.

I've put in a few photos of his birth - they may not all be pretty, but they're a good example of how they are born. Two little hooves with a face appears, the rest is soon over. Mum licks off the yolk like sac, and when the afterbirth comes - eats that too. Not a pretty sight. But good for them.

The future for most bucks is either on a spit or wethered and tethered. Neither of which we want for Pug - we think we've found him a home where he will spread his mixed breed heritage of great milkers.

2009-12-04T23:48:00.000-08:00

50 copies of Who Killed Dave? to give away

The free books will be sent to the first 50 Australian* residents
who send an email to lintrezza-at-activ8.net.au
with Who Killed Dave? in the subject line
and their name and address in the email body
and a link to your blog

The conditions? Within 8 weeks you've read it, and reviewed it on your blog.(You're not obliged to give it a good review)
But no spoilers please - Who Killed Dave is a secret.

You can read more about Who Killed Dave? at
http://www.togetherpress.com/
*apologies to those overseas - the postage cost is too prohibitive

A word that rhymes with duck

2009-12-03T02:03:00.000-08:00

We got the ducks to get rid of the slugs. But obviously we can't have informed them of their function in life.
Trev told me, 'They'd be at risk of becoming magnetic.'
He'd watched them start at one end of my garden and throw down every snail pellet in sight. They're non-toxic, based on iron and in no danger of dying from anything but my left foot.
We have a large slug population, and they make me think more fondly of snails, who have a nice slime free zone to grab hold of them by and throw them in a bucket. These seem impervious to everything I've thrown at them - all the usual beer and vegemite traps, orange peels have done little to dampen their enthusiasm for my seedlings. I've taken to halving plastic bottles and pressing them into the soil around the plants to exclude them, though the ducks saw them as a personal obstacle course and challenge and tipped them all over.

It's my own fault we have so many slugs, I use enormous amounts of mulch and it's been very wet (though, to be honest that part hasn't been up to my personal responsibility).

Then the ducks ate my strawberries, knocked off the asparagus and gone thrown out of eden and into the bottom grassy area with their bath soon to follow. It was probably good timing. We've been witness to the weirdest of duck perversions (he kept mounting her head), but he's recently come to the conclusion he needed a 180 degree change in the arrangements and is out there looking very proud of himself.

But Trev did warn me that in his experience ducks weren't work a word that rhymes very much the same.

Mud buddys

2009-12-03T01:55:00.001-08:00

Trev and I have been slappin' up mud - well I'm probably the slap happy one, Trev's the one who is achieving the unachievable and creating right angles out of clay and straw slip.

He has an audience. Not one he's much enthused by. Brie and Hazel think the house site is a purpose made playground for goats. They love to jump from one window sill, race to the next, jump on that, and continue around the house, appearing at each window for a few seconds before conquering the next. They knock over Trev's test jars full of clay, sand and silt. And they talk, especially Hazel, in a very raspy bleat. Continuously. They've been sent behind the electric fence during the day to hang out with the soon to be mumma goats. Charity is happy enough to share her space with them, poor Bella is so old she knows she hasn't a hope of keeping up with them, but Daisy, big round bellied first time mumma bashes the hell out of them. They've learnt to keep their distance.

Posting photos as soon as I remember to bring my camera home from work.

Billy Button the baby bandicoot

2009-12-03T01:40:00.000-08:00

We rescued the 'wee fella' as he is affectionally known about 2 months ago. He'd fallen out of his mum's pouch, and not sure why she didn't push him back in, but by the time we found him he was lying there, very still and cold. Popped into a warm pair of hands and cuddled all the way to the local wildlife carer I was amazed at how unfazed he was.

The carer called us back a fortnight ago to ask us if we'd pick him up and care for him till he'd gained enough weight to be released. He needs to be released where he was found. We have an enormous population of eastern barred bandicoots. A nocturnal marsupial they love digging up 'corbie grubs', curl worm. The wedge shaped holes are all through my garden and across the block. They do sometimes dig up tubers and eat my strawberries too. But I'm willing to share. They're endangered and near extinction on the mainland, we have a good population here. Something that will change when our feral friend the fox builds up his population. He is here already.

Trev is absolutely in love with Billy Button, he hangs around his neck in a pouch for most of the day. We feed him mealy worms, curl grubs, chopped up egg, oats and grated apple and special milk formula. He is gaining weight steadily, which is good, but we're facing the re-release sometime in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully he won't come back because there's been a dog (Nuju)forced to salivate for too long...

The Age of Stupid

2009-11-21T08:17:00.001-08:00

Wondering if anyone can help me out here. I purchased a copy of the Age of Stupid a month ago from the UK for a community free screening. It's next week, the DVD hasn't arrived and it now seems they forgot to send it - sending it now, but it's unlikely to arrive in time.

Has anyone got a copy they'd be prepared to lend me? Or better, a place I can buy one in Aus?

Just another day in plastic paradise - not

2009-10-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

I've seen Cryptic Moth Productions movie Addicted to Plastic, it showed bird autopsies where the cause of death was pieces of plastic - take a look at the link of corpses of albatrosses with bottle tops, pen lids, lighters and more in their stomachs. A sad endictment on our disposable lives that others lives are disposable as a result.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

Thanks Lynn for sending on the link.

Mud Madness

2009-10-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

Trev has a new appendage to his name, it now goes, Poor Trev.
It's a fine thing to be able to say no-pvc, strawbale, no concrete - make all the rules and then bugger off into the garden and leave him to it. Not strictly 100% true, but close enough. Still, he's hard at it, and now with all the strawbales up, tensioned and true, he's charged up for more progress.

Trev's trimmed two sides with the whippersnipper and with lots of stuffing around figuring out how best to do it, we've bought a simple metal backpack sprayer, filled it with clay slip - which is thin clay slurry about the consistency of paint, and Trev kills his left arm pumping it up and spraying.

There's been a lot of web searching and phone calls to make. We've finally found pvc-free electrical cables - at 4 to 5 times the price of normal wiring. (anyone know of a cheaper source?) - pvc free plumbing is still being fine tuned with our ideas changing so often we're hard pressed to keep each others latest decision. Often touting completely different ones to different people. The windows, - to make them or to have them made, that is the question. Time and money being incredibly difficult as we don't have much of either. Still, we only have a $13,000 mortgage so far. Though this is expected to blow out soon with electricity, plumbing and windows being major expenses.

I'll add a whole heap of photos of the appreciating-everything-Trev-does, kind. Some stage soon I'll add what's going on in the garden, which is starting to look bloody marvellous if I do say so myself.

A time of Blossom and Baby Animals

2009-10-26T19:43:00.000-07:00

Brie (named for the dairy animal she is) and Hazel, because she's a bit nuts. Arrived, 6 weeks old and oh so adorable a couple of days back. Pure Toggenburg, I'm hoping the two sisters will be the source of milk and cheese in years to come for years to come. They spent the first night in the shed. Caleb opted to stay with them. We heard them bleating at 2am - the microwave dinging as he heated up a feed for them. The bleating persisted. But blessed with one very deaf ear, to block it out all I need to do is roll over and put my good ear to the pillow - I did. I'd told Caleb if it's too much come back to bed and leave them to it. He did, at 6am. I got up to give his head a tussle and told him what a good dad he was.
'No, I'm not' he muttered from under the pillow, 'I wanted to f'ing kill them.'

I'm hoping that reduced his likelihood of being involved in any teenage pregnancies.

They'd not had much human contact, so it's taken them a couple of days not to freak out when we come near, and are now content to be cuddled and take to the bottle twice a day. Watching them bunt heads together, jump and spring around... spring is finally here.

Lamboghini

2009-10-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

Yep, Caleb named the latest lamb - while Ramses, Lamboghini's predecessor, languishes in the freezer, subsides, sizzling, onto the plate and slides through Trev and Caleb's intestines, Lamboghini - thankfully female, and therefore safe - is cuteseying up the place. Born mostly black, she'll whiten up more than Ramses did. She's designated breeding stock, so will get to click her heels in peace for a long time yet.

Proper Gate

2009-10-25T21:25:00.000-07:00

I wanna propagate - er a proper gate. I've been fencing the four chook clock enclosures, in 1/4 of an hour segments. I've floppy fenced most of it, which means laboriously using pliers to halve a 900mm tall 50 metre long roll of chook wire and wiring it to the top of the previous 900mm tall chook wire fence. It's not tensioned, but left floppy to put off raids by animals, in particular the possums, and deters escapees who don't like the insecurity of a wavy bit of wire.

Trev taught me a great trick with a nail, where you place it above one wire of the chook wire and beneath another on the one you wish to sew it to, and roll it around 360 degrees a couple of times and twist the two together. Then you don't need to introduce any new wiring material. If that doesn't make sense and it seems like something you'd like to know more on, say and I'll photograph the sequence.

Anyway, I know have need of at least 2 gates on the enclosures that I'm currently planting in. I need a proper gate - one that preferably came out of a 'farm gates for simpletons' type book. Anyone have a recipe?

Ready to Launch!

2009-10-17T04:22:00.000-07:00

Another month has passed and I've been shocking at keeping up with the blog. I have to come back tomorrow and rave on about Lamboghini,the great straw walls, laying first mud,the chook maze, a wind turbine, and I've even been planning to soap box it on US backyards (with more spent on them than the combined gross GDP of 40 of the worlds poorest countries).
But for now, late at night with an essay on what's going on with Tasmania's old growth forests to read, I'm just going to leave tonight's missive at...

Who Killed Dave? my fiction self-publish using green printing methods is about to launch. 15th of November, 2pm at Fullers Bookshop in Hobart, with Peter Boyer doing the honours. If anyone just happens to be in the world's most beautiful rural metropolis on the day - consider yourself invited.

I'm waiting for the shipment of books to arrive, and I'm clearing out the space to house them all. I have 20 of the digital print variety still sitting there. I recently discovered that Consumer Affairs might take an interest in my claim of being carbon neutral - which it may well be, but I can't say so without accreditation, and that costs $3000 - so now I'm saying carbon offset - which is legally the safer option. It's a learning game.

So now I have 20 advance copies of the carbon offset book, which mistakenly says it's carbon neutral - but which is on 100% recycled paper, though not printed with vegetable inks (digital print is toner based). I need the storage space - so selling them off - postage free at $20.00 each if you'd like one. Click here

More info at www.togetherpress.com with excerpts and a couple of reviews. I was tempted to include my mother's. It went someting like this...

It was the sexiest Milly Molly Mandy I've ever read. It gave me nightmares.
Jan Cockburn

Still making me laugh. About 20 years ago I told her that her Catherine Cookson, Barbara Cartland novels were 'Milly Molly Mandy for adults' - obviously that comment has not been forgotten, or forgiven.

But she is right in that the book doesn't have a serious bone in its body - it's about falling into a book, being taken for a ride, one in which the car is full of laughing gas. Kind of Janet Evanovich does suburban Australia.

While the theme isn't serious, the process has been - I'd love to help mainstream publishing go green. Have a quick read of the green stuff page for a brief rundown on the whys and links to green printers and more.

The Mud Bath

2009-09-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

Lots has happened around the perimeter of the house. My brother Stu and partner Lynn came over for somewhere around 10-12 days and were treated to abysmal weather of the rainest, muddiest, windiest since we've been here. They gave up when the trailer/tent we had set up for them (assuming kinder weather) blew down. They 'weathered' it well. Lynn did a lot of back work, lying on it creeping around the bottom of the perimeter beams using the pnuematic stapler to put up the mesh to keep the rodents out. Then filling the space between the beams with blue stone. Stu and Trev made waterproof ladders, base boards and window bucks. Me, I went to work and spent 8 hours a day staring at a computer screen, in a warm, dry office. I still managed to feel throughly peeved I couldn't have been doing something, especially in the garden. Stu and Lynn took a day off to rotary hoe, weed, lay sawdust paths and generally make great use of themselves. I figure, if you spend that many days living in a 6 X 3 metre shed with five people and a dog and not get on each others wick, you're doing pretty well!

So we're up to putting bales up. But first we figured we'd get mudding. The mud bath is set up to help soak clay, some of which we ground through heavy mesh to break into smaller bits (and wear the skin on our hands and our patience thin). We're back to getting the boot in. The clay slip will be sprayed onto the walls with an airless piston style sprayer. This will allow for greater adhesion with the next coat of render. We're not sure how much to make, so I'm erring on the side of caution and will go with... lots. The stuff is quite intriguing, and taken with a fast shutter speed becomes even more so. I'll probably get over the mud phase soon enough, but enjoying it so far. Though Caleb has this bizarre desire to want to immerse himself, 'Look mum, some people can do butterflies in the snow... but look at me!'

Chook Pen update

2009-08-08T15:58:00.000-07:00

It's finished. I haven't got the fences up, they're not high on the agenda at the moment, there's nothing growing there, they can free range for a while.
Trev ended up having to get the doors up - I've been away from the place more than home for a while, still the case, so I caved in and accepted his help. He also made the neat latches too. The chooks love it. I'm happy with it, it doesn't handle close inspection. I'll settle for having a chook pen of character rather than perfection.

Straw Bale Fever

2009-08-08T15:34:00.000-07:00

In a time when fevers are associated with pigs it's nice to suffer the strawbale kind.

Trev has 6 and a half bales up, a very early symptom of the condition. We've had to stop there as he's off with Caleb for a week, and with the current weather (incessant rain), we'll need to wait till he gets back to get them up and the render on. But it's exciting. After all the issues of baling twine on the wrong sides of the bales (it was a very old baler) and having to put them on their edge rather than the flat and then changing how they were going to be placed on the perimeter beams, we've finally come to a decision on how it's done. It looks great, and feels solid already. I can't wait to contract the disease seriously and get them all up. Despite the cold and wet I'm even keen for the mud phase. Then the windows, then the floors, then the ceiling lining, all this while the power and plumbing will be happening. Then we're to lock up!

Trev admits to telling everyone when they ask, 'When are you going to be in?'
'This time next year' he says, without deducting any months from the passing time.

Spot Trev's hat? It's spun and knitted from our black sheep, Ramses. Our neighbour Juleen knocked it up.
Trev loves the hat, but he's not the least thankful to Ramses, he's off to the abbatoir next week - he's been misbehaving, beating up Panda, having full of warfare with Caleb's duck, and beleive me, the duck does NOT give in. Breaking into the shed and gutsing out on grain, and doing his best to knock Caleb over any chance he gets (but then Caleb deserves it - you don't play butty games with a lamb and expect him to stop when he's a sheep). I'll be sorry to see him go.

Transition Towns in Tassie

2009-07-15T04:12:00.001-07:00

A couple of weekends ago I spent the weekend in Hobart doing the transition town training - it's a fantastic concept we imported from Kinsale in Ireland and the UK, where it's doing very nicely. It's a community approach to the issues of climate change and peak oil.

I've written an article in the next ABC Organic Gardener Magazine on the topic, so I'm kind of loath to describe it all over again. You can read more about the concept at http://www.transitionculture.org/ and http://www.transitiontowns.org/ and our very first transition town in Aussie and others here.

Where I'm working we have a very supportive committee who were keen to jump on board the boat and our community centre now has funding over $40,000 to do something similar in Geeveston - http://www.climbitchallenge.com/ - it's not often you get to do something at work that you're so passionate about. Our launch is in a couple of weeks, Lara Giddings it officiating, and I'm busy collecting local food from within the community and schools and doing a low food miles feast. We were donated about four kilos of shelled walnuts today, the local beekeeper will supply honey and we're going to make baklava, a high miles recipe with a local flavour.

No doubt I will subject you to more raves about it over the year. Can't wait for our permaculture blitz's, with pruning, no dig gardening, making chicken coops, mini greenhouses, seedsaving workshops and much more. Local food production is only one aspect of the project, but it's definately something I love to get my teeth into.

2009-07-15T04:07:00.000-07:00

We lashed out and bought one of those dirt chewing beasts - the enemy of the no dig garden, a rotary hoe. When it comes to break new ground quickly, nothing beats them, and when you're stupid enough to keep expanding your garden range and you have carpal tunnel issues, it saves the pain of digging it laboriously by hand. I love it.

I strip rotary dug five lengths of one paddock and planted cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, almonds and hazelnuts. I also lashed out on a mulberry tree, - I can't get over the price they are here, in Queensland you hack a bit off the old tree stick it in damp ground and a couple of months later you have a tree. Not so here, here they're described as slow growing! It cost $56.
I'll have a go at propagating more from it in the future.

Ugly Duck

2009-07-15T03:48:00.000-07:00

He's not ugly yet, but bound to be - he/she is a Moscovy, destined to make gourmet meals of my slug invasion. Right now it's wandering around the shed laying little grey slugs of poo that Caleb, keen to keep his new best friend in good favour, is quick to mop up.

Whenever Cal goes for a walk it's waddling behind him or laying out on his forearm and watching the world from it's elevated perch.

Nuju, a bird dog, does nothing but salivate over it, he trembles with the exertion of controlling his desire to lunge and lunch. He has to endure watching the imposter eat his food from his own food bowl. The duck has no sense of self-preservation and lives up to it's name, 'nibbler', and nibbles on everything including the fur between Nuju's toes.

Trev's jokes revolving around various duck recipes have diminished, he's become quite fond of it - but it is soon to join the ranks of animals that dwell in the outside world as the unsweet smell of duck poo is getting to us all.

Photo to come. Figured I better get a few posts up and happening, because lots has been happening, except posts.

How do you convert a bus to electricity?

2009-06-06T00:56:00.000-07:00

Perhaps a strange ask, but I'm wondering (after a fair bit of googling) if anyone in Australia currently converts gas/petrol/diesel vehicles to electricity?

If not, has anyone converted their own vehicle? I remember featuring a guy years ago who did, is it something you'd consider, what are your thoughts on EV's?

Solar Rebates ... times running out!

2009-06-03T04:59:00.000-07:00

An image showing it's age, or perhaps the age of its subjects.

If you haven't already heard of the solar rebate program it might be time to cast your eye over it - it's ending June 30.
The rebate scheme means you can score a solar system (no they're not offering you the earth, moon and stars)at no to very low cost. We've paid a refundable $2,500, a 1kWh system will be installed, and when all the paperwork is over, it will be returned, we're looking at a cost of around $450 for our energy provider to hook it up to the grid. It's part of the government committment to 20% renewable energy.

government rebates

If you follow the link it will show you all current government rebates, follow the solar systems and communities link to find a provider near you, contact them to see what they will provide, some people are clubbing together in communities and getting even better deals. Oh, you have to earn less than $100,000 per year. Not much of an issue for most of us plebs.

Who Killed Dave?

2009-05-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

Launching!

It's been a very interesting experience, the first self-publish. Mostly because I've been trying to find the best possible practice when it comes to an environmental publish. So it goes like this...

I've printed it using POD (Print on Demand) in Australia using recycled paper, 91% recycled waste and it's carbon neutral. This is a first, small print run in order to gain a few (hopefully positive) reviews, and to present it to book distributors without whom you can't sell your book through bookstores, and they don't appear to make decisions on whether they will or not until you've printed it. It presents a few delimmas that a small print run deals with. So there are 100 first editions available!

Because I'd like to make it available worldwide the environmental and postage costs make it unsustainable to send it overseas. So I've signed up with Lulu, a print on demand US company for northern hemisphere sales. The book can be viewed here Who Killed Dave?@Lulu Unfortunately, while it's still carbon neutral - it's not from recycled paper stocks or printed using vegetable ink. But! It can also be downloaded electronically from the site for $5 US - making it an environmental read of the first order (as long as you don't print it.)

It also mean it'll be available through Amazon - eventually.

Some of you may have heard me rabbit on about it some time back - for those of you who haven't heard or seen it - excerpts and pitch are here

I had a ball writing it, I hope people have as much fun reading it.

The Little Chook House Project (stage two)

2009-05-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

Spent Friday slaving over a full wheelbarrow full of mudbricks. Loved it, had got the roof up during the week, and it was gratifying to finally get the part I was looking forward to, the grubby part (how typical). Still have two walls and four doors to go. But managed to drop by the South Hobart tip shop on the way home from Hobart yesterday and scored a $1 wooden window to lighten things up for the chooks.
Really enjoying the process of doing it on my own. Trev gives me advice and helped me shove a couple of screws in that were high and just before a rainy squall hit, but apart from that, oh yes, and cutting the wood to the required length, still not up to using a drop saw, last two times, one chopping fire wood, and the other small wooden posts, I've managed to bust the thing, not strictly my fault but I'm not much interested in tools that spit plastic bits of cooling fan at your face and then go up in smoke.

I'd like to hear what amazing things you've done in the name of home handy person ... particularly if you are a woman. Spoke to one of the female persausion the other day who was renamed Chainsaws. After being told she needed to take out the top of a tree she tied a chainsaw around her waist, climbed the tree and chopped it out. Hats off to her. Way beyond me. What about you?

and I will walk 400 bales ...

2009-05-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

We have 400 bales packed tight on a tarpolin, temporarily. It took Trev and I two days in which Caleb (who came down with a horrible flu right on time, and had to come along with us)Trev and I travelled to Hobart airport and hired a 9 tonne truck (Caleb was most impressed with his truck driving dad) and drove out to Cambridge where Laurie and Paul helped us load 400 bales in two truck loads and cart them back to Surges Bay. Trev handled peak hour Hobart traffic with aplomb (no, I didn't say 'a bomb') though it would have been handy a couple of times. Tip no 1. When driving with trucks please don't duck in front of them just before they get to a red light.

Anatomy of a strawbale throw

Didn't get home till 7pm the first night and were up at dawn the next morning to unload the last 200 and take the truck back. Arrived home stuffed to find that the sheep shearer had turned up so we spent the next hour or so running up and down hills after recalcitrant sheep, both ours and a neighbours. Glad the day was finally over and we could stay still long enough for tired muscles to stiffen up nicely. Still, beats paying gym fees.

Getting closer all the time to plonking the bales into the walls and adding another dimension to the house.

The Little Chook House Project

2009-05-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

I'm not a builder, as I like to tell everyone my help towards the house is being on the dumb end of the tape measure and doing a bit of the donkey work, lugging things around, pulling on ropes and every now and then Trev lets me use a hammer (sparingly). My skills are next to nil, so I figured I'd get around to a small project of my own to increase them without the issue of making a mess of the house at the same time. I was inspired by an article in the ABC Organic Gardener Magazine, either last issue or the one before. It was the chook clock. Mine is separated into 15 minute intervals. Basically the large area is divided into four by the central chook pen. From each corner a fence (will) radiate out to the corners of the paddock, dividing it into four wedge shaped garden beds. Each side of the chook pen will have a human sized and chook sized door. When I want the chooks in a particular garden bed, I open that side, leaving the others closed. So I rotate them around the beds without having to relocate the chooks, and pen.

I've already made the mud bricks for two of the walls, and as soon as we have strawbales I'll be able to complete the other two. Wanted to have a trial go at rendering too.

Run into the usual 'trap for young players' as Trev calls it. One of my post holes had a weird natural hole at the bottom, and of course once weight was placed on it my post collapsed into it, I had to do the wonderful Tasmanian trick of propping one corner of the chook house up on a few rocks. (some sheds around here have been sitting on piles of rocks as foundations for over a hundred years). The usual not quite square issue, matched with Trev's reject wood which is bowed, twisted and not square in the first place and I'll have some interesting doors to make.

Still, it's all experience, I just wish I wasn't still scared of the drill, the one that twists your wrists off your arms off their stems when you've got your screw in. It's also convinced me even further of Trev's natural born brilliance... I can only look on in wonder.

Pea Paper

2009-05-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

Not to be confused with paper that you use in the toilet to deal with pee.
I picked up a book from the library The Art of Papermaking with Plants by Marie-Jeanne Lorente. I adapted it to more organic methods, using wood ash as a lye solution rather than caustic soda. It worked well, I let the pea vine and leaves, which were already dry and brown rot down for weeks in the solution and then cooked it for several hours on the wood stove. I played around with the mix making paper that was purely the plant pulp and then added pulped recycled paper and created a different paper from that. I've got beans, pumpkin and tomato stems to use next, though, no doubt the goats will think it a waste.

We Flew

2009-05-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

My no-flying policy took a bit of a lickin' this month. We jetted off to see a friend in Queensland because we really wanted to. It was an emotional 5 day rollercoaster ride which ended on a high note when we spent time with Leela and Ehren, Trev's kids. Despite paying to offset carbon emissions the guilt of such flagrant non-renewable energy use was a trifle unsettling. It's my first flight in around 7 years, and that was work related.

Of course we had to make a trip round to our old house where we did our six months. We shouldn't of. The solar panels were not connected, not sure what the issue was, and why they weren't, the rainwater tanks were also disconnected,same story. My citrus trees are covered in scale and partially skeletonised. Lots of trees are missing, though my avocado tree is still thriving, there were macadamias, custard apples, carambola and chillies still going hard, and the surprise was the size of the three olives, massive.

I was chuffed, but then you can't kill an olive with neglect. Nor too can you do much to buggar up bamboo, they were HUGE! They were planted to be an eventual barrier to the road beneath, and if I'd continued propagating them they would now be a complete sound and visual barrier about 30 metres high.

One small gratification ... spotted some tobacco drying, not all is lost.

The Great Frost

2009-05-08T18:52:00.000-07:00

Autumn announces itself with a gentle turning of leaves, winter blasts it's icy warning with a frost capable of turning tomato leaves to black slop and NZ yams to a brownish slump, pumpkin leaves are limp seaweed hanging from drooping stems. Oh well. I manage to get half a wheelbarrow of tomatoes good enough to bottle. Between Trev and I we've 45 1.5 litre or bigger jars full of them. Plus pasta and tomato sauces using Trev's mum's recipe
Pumpkins are salvaged and stored, the yams stay where they are, they're capable of their own small resurrection at this advanced point and will continue to develop tubers under the ground. Though this bandicoot has rooted around for a couple of meals worth already.

On to the apples, bottling of which I'm onto today - it's wet outside and great weather to slave over a hot stove in.

Internal Walls

2009-05-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

Trev's right into it, getting the roof on has been a great boost, not just to morale, but to his ability to work in all weather. Each internal wall is made on the floor and then lifted into place. His perfectionism shows, each one fits (like a finger up a bum). It defines each space so it's no longer just in minds eye. The flooring goes on last and so far we've managed to avoid falling into the void. Next step is electrical wiring, plumbing and walls. We've decided to go for a small mortgage, as the next stages are expensive, so far we've managed to save for each step, but not this one. But there's a hold up on this, we've just discovered that the banks insurer will not insure a strawbale house, or a mudbrick or an EPS (polystyrene home). Which has left us bemused. Surely there must be an insurer happy to do so. We make jokes about the durability of our house, as a devotee of ABC's Time Team I hope that they will doing a segment on our house one day in the very distant future.

Anyone know an insurer willing to step up to the mark on strawbale housing?

Ethical Shopping

2009-04-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

It's a minefield out there. I struggle with the balancing act of packaging, organic, whether it's local, Australian, fairtrade, whether they've animal tested,it's genetically modified, whether it's toxic, or has exposed foreign persons to toxicity, or knocked down rainforest - it really is hard. I've always wished someone would do the homework for me. They have!

Ethical Shopping Guide You can buy the guide at a newsagent for $5 - ours doesn't stock it so I went for a download from the site - it makes for interesting reading. Though I finally made a connection I should have years ago. When they say vegetable oil on the ingredients, that usually means palm oil. I've avoided palm oil for ages because of the deforestation that goes on in order to grow it. The resulting lack of habitat for the orangutan and other locals. Extrapolated that means anything that says vegetable oil without stating which oil is now in the growing 'can't buy' section of the supermarket. Most varieties of potato chips ...