Super-easy apple cider

  When I read you can make scrumpy from apple juice, I had to try it. The instructions were simply ‘buy good quality juice, drink a small amount, add bakers yeast, leave out for two days, fridge for two weeks’.

  Note there are no amounts in the above instructions.

  We set up one bottle with 2 teaspoons of yeast, and the other with one-note that each bottle is 1.5 litres. After a few days we could definitely tell it was working, and by the end of two weeks it was sufficiently alcoholic to drink. But very yeasty. The smell put me off it so the husband had the job of drinking it. It also went sour fairly quickly, so I would guess that 1 teaspoon is too much, and a quarter of a teaspoon would be my next try. Plus, as much as the label touted this juice as natural and wonderful, it was reconstituted. I think the next time I get homebrew urgings i’ll start with real fruit, homegrown for the natural yeasts.

  It did make us go into our local homebrew shop and ask them to set up a kit for us-I think this is something I could get interested in……………..watch out liver!

Blogging offline*

Everyone seems to be rambling on about a Blogger malfunction that I managed not to notice-seeing how little i’m online that’s not surprising, but i’ve also been blogging offline for years so I probably wouldn’t have noticed even if I was still in full internet-whore stage.

  Blogging offline? It’s actually very easy. Much easier than trying to use Blogger’s excessively difficult interface. NOTHING works for me on Blogger, I groan in anticipated pain whenever I have to go in and edit something. Invariably, there’s always extra spacing, the pictures have moved around, and it’s always so HARD.

  Here’s how to set up offline blogging-

-Download Windows Live. Register your blog. Open WL, and start blogging. Hit ‘publish’ whenever you’re next online. You can save many posts, download your theme so you know it’s all pretty beforehand,  set any date/time you like and upload posts for the automatic future, add tags, blah blah. It rocks. The only thing you can’t do is edit the appearance of your blog-sidebars, pages etc. Which is why mine is so half-arsed.

  If you’re rabidly opposed to anything Microsoft (hello, Matt!) then you can always try Scribefire. I did a couple of years ago, it was shite then. Hopefully they’ve improved it by now.

  *Written with the benefit(?) of a few wines and a foul mood.

Making toothpaste

  I love being able to walk down entire aisles in the supermarket and not need anything. I’ve been able to do it with the soft drink aisle forever, I ditched the baby aisle midway through ‘needing’ it, bakery and butchery sections are completely irrelevant and I haven’t looked at disposable female sanitary products in years.

  It was high time I snubbed my nose at the entire toiletries aisle-it’s time to go, toothpaste. This has been the project that has definitely created the most interest among people I know. I’m always getting asked how it’s going, people have been sending me all sorts of links and information-it’s been interesting to see!

  First try, aloe vera gel. As we have an aloe vera plant, very local. All you do is crack the ‘leaf’, put the clear gel on your brush and brush. It tastes quite good, foams slightly and seems to work well. Sounds like a perfect option, except if you get the yellow part of the gel it’s very bitter, and it’s not very child-friendly-they can’t really help themselves. Plus the plant is downstairs and we’re upstairs, so we chalked this up as a very good substitute that we’ll use when we can plant it at the back door.

  Next, plain bicarb. Ugh. It worked OK, but tasted horrible. I never wanted to do it again, let alone twice a day.

  Finally, a toothpaste recipe. It’s been the stayer because it’s cheap and quick to make, it stores on the bench, and can be independently used by the two year old (yes, we finish the brushing, but he starts it).

  So, how to make it? Take 2 tbsp bicarb, 3 tbsp of glycerine and 1 tsp peppermint essence. Mix well…….and that’s it. It does separate slowly so needs the occasional extra stir. I make a double lot and it lasts about 2 weeks, with fourteen brushings a day. The taste is somewhat salty but you adjust quickly. The kids complained a bit at the start, but seeing as my attitude is along the lines of ‘too bad, that’s all you’ve got so suck it up’ it passed pretty quickly.

  Interestingly, the general agreement is that our teeth feel consistently cleaner. They certainly look whiter across the whole seven of us. Morning breath is a thing of the past, as is waking up with a terrible taste in my mouth. And I can eat an orange straight away without it tasting icky! Could the commercial toothpastes *gasp* be causing the very things they say they prevent? My cynical self says probably. After all, they don’t want it to work too well. Then people wouldn’t be continually tempted to spend more by upscaling to whitening/tartar control/bells’n’whistles toothpastes-not to mention whitening packs and professional treatments. Dentistry is a big business y’know. This is the same industry that used to put holes the size of a spaghetti strand in their tubes, until one brand enlarged them and usage, and therefore sales, soared. They are first and foremost businesses, aimed at selling as much as possible. We would do well to remember that.

References

The Organic Sister

Hazeltree Farm

Making juggling balls

  Remember these? Surely you had these as a kid?

  You need-round balloons, rice or millet (millet works better, buy it from feed stores), plastic bags and small rubber bands.

   I worked out around 100g of rice made a nicely sized ball for us. You can go quite a bit bigger, but not too much smaller-you need to keep the balloons taut. Unless you buy smaller balloons.

  Get your plastic bag in one had like below, pour the rice in…….

……..tie up firmly with a rubber band (these ones are horse ones, which incidentally work really well for small plaits in hair and making dreadlocks), and trim bag. But not too short-best off to make it longer and turn it back over the bag of rice. Make sure it’s very secure, unless you like rice strewn through every crevice of your house.

   Cut the neck from your first balloon……………

………..and stuff the bag of rice in, rubber band end first.

Time for the next layers-cut holes in your next balloon so your original balloon will show through in places. Just one or two, and cut a couple more in each layer so it progressively shows more of the colours underneath. Cut the neck off too-I nearly forgot that it was so obvious.

  Stuff it in, making sure the hole in the first one is covered, and voila! Keep making as many layers as you like. I generally keep to three as a minimum as they stay together better.

  

  Make lots! Don’t limit them to juggling either, they make excellent eggs for your lawn clippings nest.

Then when you’ve finished with them feed the rice to the chooks-you don’t have chooks? Get some!

Ditching deodorant

That’s right, I haven’t used deodorant in months. I’m a stinky feral hippy-don’t come too near because I may just raise my arms and you’ll pass out from the fumes.

  Actually, not. Sorry to disappoint. After not being able to find a non-toxic deodorant that actually worked without thrice-daily application, it was time to DIY. First up we tried diluted tea-tree oil. It was passable, it worked as well as the commercial eco variety. But it was impossible to carry around in my handbag for midday reapplication.

  At one such midday reapplication (think market stall, stinking hot, insane humidity) I was afraid the first paragraph was coming true so pulled out the eco roll-on, whinging about it’s crapness. And a friend said ‘Why don’t you just use bicarb? I do’. So I tried it and haven’t looked back. Man, the stuff is awesome. Dust some on in the morning and you’re fine all day. The husband has made me sniff his armpits after mowing the lawn in 30 degree heat and he doesn’t smell. Anyone who lives with a male of our species knows that that is a truly fantastic accomplishment, yet to be achieved by Lynx/Adidas/Rexona and company. All from bicarb.

  I have read you can mix bicarb and arrowroot 50/50, and you can chop herbs and put them in the jar to infuse the powder with scent, but i’m pretty happy with plain bicarb in an old pasta sauce jar. Fashionable, my bathroom is not. We use our fingertips to dust it on, and are on the look out for an older style shaving cream brush or similar to use instead.

  And that is as easy as it is. Really truly.

Reducing the waist size in a skirt

   I have abnormally skinny girls. No, really-my seven year old, while being average height, has the waist measurement of a 3 year old and weighs 18kgs. It’s just their natural shape, which makes sense when you have two small parents.

  But it makes buying clothes for them a nightmare, which is why I make most of them (which can also be a nightmare if you can’t alter commercial patterns or draft your own). I recently came up with this method to reduce the waist in skirts, after having to pass up so many gorgeous skirts at the Salvation Army op-shop. They sell skirts there for $1, which is how much the one below cost me. If you have a chart-matching child it’s still worth doing this for too-large sizes, as it gives you the ability to choose from so many more clothes.

  This skirt is a girls size 12, so truly huge. I wasn’t a big fan but my girls adored it (it’s an ‘olden days skirt’), and for $1 they get to have their way. Any lightweight skirt with a zipper opening and fitted waist will work-heavyweight fabrics will most likely get too bulky, and ditto to skirts already elasticised-but you can shorten the elastic in them if it’s cased.

You’ll need elastic, tightly woven ribbon or bias tape to match the waist measurement of the skirt +2cm and wider than the elastic. I used 6mm elastic and 1 inch ribbon.

*Note on elastic length-Because you have a zip to work around your elastic will be smaller than their waist measurement. How much smaller depends on a number of factors-i’ll tell you when to cut it accurately.

Start next to the zip. Fold the end of your ribbon/tape under, then stitch along the top edge, under the seam on the skirt, all the way along.

Do the same for the bottom edge. See how the bottom edge doesn’t sit next to the zipper like the top does? That’s to allow for the curve of the waistline as my ribbon is non-stretch.

  Insert elastic, using a safety pin or bodkin. Leave the elastic just poking out……

…..and stitch it down firmly. Pin your elastic down at the other end, try on the child, and adjust accordingly. When you’re happy with the fit, stitch it down the same way as the first end.

Nicely gathered waistline………

…….now fitting skinny child.

Try to photograph said child twirling, and fail fairly spectacularly.

Tie-dyeing for little ones

While I let my kids tie-dye with real dyes occasionally, it’s a bit of a nightmare. This is much easier, and a good activity for a group of young kids.

Needed-food dyes and paper towel. You can get recycled, biodegradable paper towel now, which can be composted when you’re done with it.

Mix up the food dyes with water in bowls. Make the colours fairly strong, you want them to pop.

Give the kids a sheet of towel and explain that how you fold the paper affects the pattern of the dye. Suggest they try squares, triangles, crumpled balls and any other origami they can think of. When they’re happy with their fold get them to dip one corner/edge in their chosen colour-it will wick up the paper towel reasonably fast, so emphasise that they’ll only need to hold it there for a few seconds. Then remove, shake, and put another corner/edge in a different colour, as many times as you can-usually only three.

Unfold and see what pattern has appeared! Repeat until you run out of towel, most likely. Once dry use for other crafts and play-wrapping small presents, cutting and pasting shapes, mosaics, over-drawing pictures based on dye shapes etc etc.

 

You can also try ‘dyeing’ paper. This is blank newsprint our neighbour gave us, and the result of using straws to add then blow the dye around. It was used as wrapping paper for birthday presents.

  

Best of all? It all washes off straightaway. No blue cheek like my Frosty has at present.

Making a worm farm from a bathtub

Yes, I love bathtubs. Here’s how to make a worm farm that actually works* from one. Total cost for us-$10.60 ($10 for bathtub, $0.60 for bucket. Bricks free, tin free, timber free (from pallets)-even the nails are reclaimed. Allow more if you’re not a freegan.

 

Find yourself a bathtub, from the tip shop etc. Any pipe fitting is fine-we’ve even made one from a tub that had the entire plug area cut out. You need to find a place to position in where it’s sheltered from the weather-no rain, and very little to no direct sunlight. If you’re in a colder area you may want to position it so it gets some winter sunlight, as this will keep the worms more active. If it snows where you are…….well, thankfully I have no experience with that, but you might want to look it up!

Upend the tub and block the escape route-double-layered flyscreen and a couple of rubber bands does the trick nicely if you have a pipe or plug hole. If not, use liquid nails or similar to glue the screen on.

Prepare your stand. Concrete blocks or bricks work well-you want enough height to sit a bucket under the plughole to collect your liquid gold. The plank is to tilt it slightly to aid drainage-obviously, the non-plug end will sit here. Excuse the wet and dirty ground-the landlord doesn’t seem to think that water running from broken gutters and making a stream under his house is a problem worth fixing.

Sit your bathtub on top, making sure it’s steady. It should be nice and clean and shiny, worms are rather sensitive (so only use water and elbow grease to clean it out).

Add a 10cm layer of mulch to assist with drainage-this is good for the initial settling-in period, especially if you’re an over-enthusiastic beginner. It’s also good if you’re the type to forget about them-they will eat it eventually.

Throw in your workers! If you’ve bought a kilo of worms put them in a clump at one end. DON’T buy worms from Bunnings, they’re a major rip-off. Try to find someone local, and if you can’t look at Kookaburra Worm Farms, they do mail order. If your garden soil is clean and organic add some of that. Don’t buy bagged organic garden soil because that’s stupid. Yes, I have strong prejudices. Coir blocks also bulk them out nicely-right now you want them to have a bit of extra space to cushion them from temperature and moisture changes, so they don’t all die in shock.

Ours is from splitting an existing tub full, hence so much.

Put on a lid, place a bucket under the plug opening and you’re done! I know others recommend simply using paper or shadecloth as a covering, but you’ll be putting food in there so without a proper cover you’ll get lots of pests-rodents, cockroaches etc. Corrugated iron cut to the correct size works OK if you’re not handy, especially with a brick on top (anyone can use a pair of tinsnips, right?) But a timber lid, like the one in the first photo of this post, is ideal. Ours is made from old pallets. It will then also double as a seat-I have visions of an outdoor area where I can eat, then dump my scraps under my chair. Brilliant.

Corrugated iron version

When I get around to it, i’ll post about how to look after your worms and harvest the castings.

*Unlike other commercial ones I have tried, which are too small/too fiddly/too unnecessarily complicated. And WAY too expensive.

Crafting on a budget

  Crafts, such as sewing and knitting, have regained popularity over the past few years. But with that popularity has come a price hike. Add that to piles of cheapo Made-in-ThirdWorld clothes available to buy and you sort of start to wonder why you’d bother making clothes, when a simple skirt looks set to cost you $50. Especially when it’s quite likely you’ll screw it up!

  Easy solution-ditch the shops. Well, the buy new, fashionable shops. And head to your local op-shops and markets, and search out some………..

Patterns-From sewing patterns to knitting and crochet patterns to books covering everything from basket weaving to millinery, they’re all at the op-shop. I myself have a slight addiction to vintage sewing patterns and craft books-if you can’t find any except Eighties ones with massive shoulderpads, you probably live near me. At a maximum of 50c a pattern, and under $5 for books (I got six for $1 last week) you can afford to get a library happening. I nearly had a heart attack when I found out new ones are around $10-$16 each-you’d have to make a lot of each to save $$$ with them.

Fabric and wool-Much of this is ugly polyester and nylon, but good stuff does come up. Pinwale cord is popular, and i’ve made plenty of kids pants from it for under 50c a pair. I’ve also picked up Bendigo Mills wool for $1/200g, and my nanna cleared up at a garage sale, getting two pallets full of wool from a deceased estate for $50. That was four years ago and she’s still using it!

Linen-You must raid the linen section. Sheets give you large areas of fabric-flannelette for winter pyjamas and linings, cotton for….well, everything. You can make dresses from pillowcases, very fashionable in blogland a few years ago. Woolen blankets are astonishingly cheap and make excellent mattress protectors, heat resistant batting and nappy covers. I also have a slight addiction to chenille blankets-I get a rush when finding them, similar to what I imagine heroin would be like. But as they average $3 each, there’s no come-down afterwards.

My pretties………

  Existing clothes-These often just need a bit of imagination to turn them into something new. Last week I helped Lols turn a woman’s tunic into a skirt for herself. As it was already hemmed and had pockets it was pretty easy. You can cut kids pants from the sides of adult shorts/pants, and use the existing waistband/pockets. Woolen jumpers can be felted and the sleeves turned into longies, or frogged and made into something else. Bags from jeans. The ideas are endless. This is a bit of a trend right now, so a search for ‘upcycled clothing’ should bring you plenty of ideas.

  Also, tell everyone you know that you sew/knit/whatever. Lots of people start up crafts then ditch them, and are happy to offload the leftovers in their cupboards to someone who’ll use them. Post on Freecycle asking for freebies, you never know what might turn up.

  Mostly, I stick to craft shops when I need threads and notions. Most have sales and member discounts, so I sign up for everything and stock up when it’s cheap.

  And because of all of this, my kids clothes average out at about $3 per item. And so I can actually afford to dress the five of them in extremely funky clothing, rather than the dregs I would be left with should I have to buy everything now they’re getting bigger.

Making a bathtub garden

  Moving into a rental means gardening downsizes. There’s no point spending time and money on improving someone else’s soil, when the odds are we’ll move within a year. But small pots are so troublesome to look after, so I came up with this idea-now even our garden beds are transportable! We’ll just load them up onto the hire truck and take our soil and crops with us, and have no break in garden productivity. This one is based loosely on the wicking worm beds design, so it will suit us perfectly over winter here in Queensland. If you’re in a different climate you may want to do your drainage differently to suit. I know now I definitely need to cover them over summer-they dealt very badly with 100mL+ of rain in a day. Repeatedly.

  Here’s how to do it. (note: i’d been stockpiling fill for this one in it, hence the dirtiness-I had to dig it all out to do it)

  1. Find yourself a bathtub. Tip shops are a great place to start-ours charges $10 for a basic one, $15 with fittings.

  2. Give it a good scrub out, taking special care to clean and dry the plughole. Now, silicon a 20cm length of pipe (pvc, poly etc) into the plug, making sure it’s watertight. Slather it on. Leave to dry completely.

  3. Rubber band some flywire or nylon netting (something that won’t rot) over the opening of your pipe. This is your drainage outlet, and it is higher than the base to give you a water reservoir.

  4. Make your two watering pipes. These are anchored in the beds, allowing you to water straight to the bottom of the bath, minimising evaporation. The length of pipe you will need depends on your bath-one end needs to sit on the bottom while the other will protrude from the soil. Drill holes all around the base of your pipes, to about 20cm up.

  5. Fill your base with drainage material. Some people advocate rocks or sand, but they’re tiresome to clean out (which will need doing every few years). Sticks, unfit macadamias and poinciana pods from the backyard are a better option IMO-wood is a great water retainer, and they break down so sloooowly that nitrogen draw-down shouldn’t be a problem. Just keep it chunky.

  6. Anchor your watering pipes in their places, using some of your soil. I went to step 7 before remembering to take the photo, sorry.

  7. Throw a layer of mulch in-I used sugar cane, use whatever is available to you locally, that is weed-free. This gives it bulk and aeration. STOP worrying about nitrogen draw-down, i’ve got it under control here.

8. Now, add anything you’ve got in your garden that will give it nutrients. I’ve got  comfrey leaves and a couple of borage plants that keeled over and died in the floods. Plus a few banana peels that the kids threw in on their way past-it’s all organic material, right?

  9. Fill it up with growing medium! I think there’s some potting mix, cow manure and mushroom compost here, with a little dug-up garden soil to fill it up. Plus more of the icky macadamias, to save our bare feet. The food you get out of it will be equivalent to the quality of what you put in, so don’t be tempted to fill it up with crap-or you will eat crap.

  10. Mulch well, water thoroughly and let sit for a couple of weeks. Then plant, wait and dine!

  You could also build boxes for them out of timber from old pallets if they’re permanent, and paint them up nicely. You could use them around the edge of a patio, or instead of a rail along an edge in the garden. Grow herbs in them next to the BBQ, or right next to the back door…………

Sorry I don’t have any raging success photos to show you-they didn’t do too well with torrential rain and they’re just getting back on their feet after I replanted them. However, they’re full and growing well now, give me another month or so!

MAINTENANCE

They’re pretty easy to look after, but here’s a few pointers.

-Like any plant in a container, they’ll need regular feeding. I throw on a few handfuls of mulch from the chook run when it’s getting sparse-this will not burn them in small amounts. Any mulch that will also feed it is great. We also have a slow-release organic fertiliser-make sure anything you buy is CERTIFIED organic. Organic is slapped on many, many garden products that aren’t ‘organic’ in the non-chemical means.

-Don’t let them get too wet. They do not drain quickly. That is the idea, so there’s plenty of moisture in dry times.

-Seedlings and seeds will need water from above until their roots hit the wet zone.

-They will probably need to be dug out and re-done periodically. I’ve had some going for 9 months and they’re fine, so I have no idea how often. It sounds like a crappy task so look after the soil in them and you should be able to drag it out to once every couple of years.

Just use good sense, follow basic container planting guidelines, and you should be fine.