Getting cultured

The first time I've ever made yoghurt! 

Boiled the milk, let it cool til I could hold my finger in it for 10 seconds (just!) then added a dessert spoon of good, organic, whole milk yoghurt and wrapped it all up into a snug, warm bundle for the night with plenty of baby blankets:

Then Cam walked in to admire my handiwork and realised I'd carefully wrapped up the SAUCEPAN! 

So I had to unwrap it all, pour it into a container more appropriate than a saucepan to set in, and wrap it all back up again. Ah, the getting of (acidopholus and bifidus) culture can be a humbling experience!

The next morning, on porridge, voila:

(A bit runny! Maybe all the inadvertent cooling and warming... But yummy!)

The spice of life, via worms

Cam is reading Frank Herbert’s Dune and methinks he is picturing his little harvester worms as miniature Makers, turning lettuce scraps into spice for the garden… 

He has just made  an industrial-sized worm farm out the front, from salvaged hardwood doors and some nifty concreting. Now you can drive up through the pines and round the parking circle, tip a load of horse poo off your trailer directly to the worms, and carry on to your next appointments.

He uncovered the existing worm farm to let in the light and waited for 10 minutes while all the worms fled deeper to get away from it:

Then he scraped off a 10cm layer full of baby worms and put it into a separate container, and again and again until we now have seven little worm hatcheries hatching worms under wet newspaper. We are collecting vegetable scraps from the two fruit and veg grocers in our strip of shops and the worms are voraciously munching their way through it and fattening up in preparation for their big move out to the front.

Backyard nomad

I have been a mama five months, and thus far a nomad mama:

Our home in Samoa,

where Yarrow was born in the middle of the wide blue Pacific,

with two local midwives.

Home of me madre, brother, belle seour and deux nephews in Canberra.

Home of the outlaws in Melbourne.

Our roving home.

Christmas home, hired with Price clan on NSW south coast.

Floating home.

New Year's on the Murray, building the houseboat.

But now this nomad mama will be putting down roots, potting up seedlings & tilling the soil:

Kim and Clive’s home. 

They are off to Uganda to do good permaculture things and grow an abundance of food at the Sabine Home orphanage.

So I shall hunt and gather at the back steps! A nomad mama learning to be a farmer mama…