So long 2020

2020 is almost over. 

What a year huh. One of the weirdest. Some pretty terrible things happened. But there were also lots of really good things about this year (eg Trump losing the election🎉). It has been quite a unique year.

I am writing this blog post like a Christmas letter, to let you know what we’re all up to, but also to sum up and bring to a close this collection of ramblings about how to embrace the crappiness of imperfect parenting through a pandemic. Realistically, as much as I love keeping a record of all the things the kids are doing and the latest Covid developments, I really don’t have time to update a blog. There are so many other things that seem more important to do right now. 

Suddenly we have a teenager living in the house who is taller than me. Lucy is doing really well at school and her German is becoming pretty impressive through the German Immersion program. She recently won a silver academic award for her excellent report card this term. We are very proud of how organised and dedicated she is to her schoolwork, and also of how independent and grown up she has become. (Well, mostly grown up... except for when we’re having a screaming match about unloading the dishwasher or something.) School and homework tend to take up most of her time but she still adores activities like indoor climbing or stand up paddle boarding, and she and Molly have been having tennis lessons together. 

This is Lucy on the stand up paddle board at Brown Lake, and Molly up a tree at Point Lookout (Stradbroke Island):

We just found out that Molly has been accepted into the school band for next year, playing bass clarinet. She’ll start learning it at the beginning of the year. She’s come a long way on the piano this year and is playing some pretty great little songs. 

Her drawing skills are still amazing and she’s been churning out super cute pictures of animals every day. Molly has really taken to our quails and spends a fair bit of time with them in their pen each day, cuddling them and feeding them. The other day Penny the quail passed away after a very hot day (got up to 39!) and we were all sad but Molly was absolutely devastated. Penny had been looking a bit glum for weeks and the heat just took it out of her. We buried her in our Alex Memorial garden out the front and planted a Cranberry Hibiscus bush over her. All just part of (urban) farm life I suppose. The other quails all seem pretty perky and are still giving us plenty of cute little speckly eggs. 

Emma finished kindy this week, then off to Prep at big school next year! I can’t believe it. She has also just grown up all of a sudden. She’ll be 5 in January. Emma is our feisty little entertainer who keeps us all in giggles and in awe of her physical strength and enthusiasm for everything (except for things like holding her pencil correctly or having a bath). She is also quite the little artist, learning from copying Molly’s drawings over the last year or so. I hope she’ll start learning the piano from Grandma once they move up to Brisbane, because Emma really loves to sing and sit at the piano and make up songs, something which the other 2 rarely do... but she doesn’t like me helping her at all (she knows better) which is why she hasn’t started lessons yet. 

All three are still mad about dogs and Charlie gets a lotta love from them. He has squeezed his way into the house and it seems he is now an inside dog. 

(This is not our new dog. It is Stirling the dingo who lives at Lone Pine Sanctuary.)

Scott is still working from home mostly but rides his bike into the office once or twice a week. Not much else to report on Scott... he is working most of the time, and the rest of the time he plays with the kids, or drinks beer while watching Netflix. Oh and he builds quail pens and pizza ovens and various other garden structures in his spare time.

I have just finished the Design part of my Permaculture Course and will be presenting my design to the other course students around the world on Monday (if I can figure out how to use Zoom and how to make a PowerPoint). I plan to get really stuck into the garden after Christmas and get all the fruit trees planted and food forests started, before continuing with the teaching part of the course. Unless, of course, Australia is on fire again like last January, when we couldn’t go outside at all because the smoke haze was so bad. 

This king parrot ate all our tomatoes. But we forgave him because he is so beautiful.

The herb spiral is looking great and making the bees and lizards very happy.

The pizza oven is coming along, only one last layer of lime plaster to go! Just in time for us to make very hot pizzas in the summer heat. Actually cob ovens are meant to be good for cooking in hot weather and near small children, as the outside doesn’t get very hot. We lit a fire in it the other  weekend and it sort of worked -it cooked the pizzas but took 15 minutes instead of 3 minutes because it didn’t hold the heat long enough. This was probably because we didn’t keep the fire burning for enough hours, or maybe it hasn’t dried out inside enough yet. Anyway, soon we’ll be wood fired pizza experts and everyone is invited to come over for a pizza party.

Australia is slowly getting back to normal (or the new Covid normal) and borders have reopened. I hope I’ll get to see my family again soon. Mum came up for a quick visit in July which was nice but I haven’t seen my dad or older brothers in over a year. Luckily I have my little brother Dave and his awesome family very close by. And we had a lovely visit from Aunty Kelly (Scott’s sister) and Uncle Chris recently. But I think Scott won’t be seeing his U.S family for quite a while yet...

So that’s where we’re at. School and kindy finished last week and so now the girls and I will start planning our Christmas. Last year we started our new tradition of picking a country and making that the theme of our Christmas celebrations. To take the focus off presents and all that. And also to learn about the customs of another country. Last year we chose Mexico and we made decorations and a piñata and a nativity scene, Mexican style. I also tried to cook real Mexican Christmas food and it was fun and delicious. This year it’s Germany (Lucy’s vote). We haven’t thoroughly researched it yet but luckily we have our good friends Jess and Christoph (aka Jesstoph) around to give us lots of authentic ideas. (Christoph is currently working on how to turn an ice cold mango daiquiri into a traditional German Christmas beverage...🤔🤷🏼‍♀️)

With Lucy’s best friend Matilda

After Christmas we’ll be off camping at Stradbroke Island for a few days which will be divine. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and that 2021 will be a brilliant year for us all. 

Signing off

Love

Al

Sent from my iPhone

Anniversary

 

For our wedding anniversary this year Scott took a day off work and we drove out to Sirromet Winery for lunch (the kids were at school/kindy.) The food (and of course the wine) was absolutely delicious. Perfection. It was the usual Covid dining out experience: signing in and providing contact details then sanitising our hands and sitting far away from the other tables (who were all filled with really really old people... but I guess who else is going to go out for a fancy lunch on a Wednesday...)

16 years ago we had our wedding at Sirromet. The ceremony was supposed to take place down at the Laguna but unfortunately there had been a huge storm early that morning and it was still too wet for the outdoor wedding we’d planned. And so it ended up being held in the cellar, amongst huge barrels of wine decorated with fairy lights and candles. By the time we’d finished the fancy wedding lunch, the sun had come out and so we all meandered down to the beautiful Laguna and took some photos there.

Some then and now photos:

The Laguna then

And now

Then: the ceremony in the cellar

Now: Restaurant Lurleens and the cellar (closed to public now)

 and some of the native wildlife

Lunch in 2004

Lunch in 2020

Young newly wed hands with shiny new rings 

Old married hands with well worn and well loved rings 

Note: if you look carefully you might be able to tell that Scott is actually making a rather rude gesture with his middle finger, while we took this very romantic photo... Yes, he may look like he’s all grown up now but he isn’t really🙄💗

My birthday pizza oven building party

This year I had one single thing on my birthday list. A homemade cob pizza oven please.

I’ve wanted to make one for years but we haven’t managed to get organised enough to do it. Until now! 

We decided to make my actual birthday the big oven building day but because the clouds were rolling in and the BOM had declared a very strong chance of rain, we only got as far as completing the base. (It never ever ever rains in July here. I was a bit annoyed that my mud building plans were put on hold but delighted that the garden got to have a bit of a drink.)

Inside the brick circle are pebbles, lots of empty glass bottles (some were celebratory birthday empties!) and packed sand for the insulation layer underneath the oven. Next we will lay the firebricks (the floor of the interior) and then make a wet sand form (which will make the shape of the interior) then put layers of cob over that. When the cob is dry we’ll scoop out the sand revealing the oven cavity. Rainy weather and sand castle shaping don’t really mix so we popped up the gazebo to protect the base we’d made and decided to just relax and eat pizza (cooked in the kitchen in the plain old boring electric oven) and drink beer, and then eat cake and smash a pizza shaped piñata.

T’was a very enjoyable day. I have some beautiful friends.

P.S. one of the greatest things about the day was receiving this special card from my niece Franka.

Quails

We finally got our quails!!!!!

Four weeks ago we collected our new little friends: 10 little Japanese quails that have just started laying some eggs for us. We have found 4 eggs over the last 3 days, pretty exciting. Each egg weighs about 10 grams, so about one seventh of a chicken egg😬 Yes, not entirely practical, for keeping a family of 5 supplied with eggs, but there are other reasons why we chose to keep quails instead of chickens:

1. Their eggs are really cute. (Fun fact: each quail has their own unique pattern that is apparently the same on each egg they lay.)

2. They are really quiet and make a sweet little chirping noise. OMG so cute. Even Scott gets a kick out of listening to their cheep cheeping through the window while he works.

3. Quails don’t need as much space to be considered free range. 5 quails to 1 square metre is considered adequate but ours have twice that amount of space in their luxurious hutch that Scott built. And they seem happy with their space, especially their dust bath. Oh man, they LOVE to stretch out in that pile of dirt and flick dust everywhere.

4. The kids love them. Especially Molly. She’s been the one to find most of the eggs. And the eggs are hard to find. Quails don’t want to lay eggs in a nice nesting box like chickens, just any old place they think is a good spot. So every day is an Easter egg hunt.

5. Over time, their poop mixed together with all the leftover veg scraps that they pick at and the pine shavings in the deep litter and their feathers and the dust, all creates excellent compost for the garden.

I’m keen to feed them all the bugs from the garden but suddenly there don’t seem to be any. Crazy. They love eating the worms from the worm farm but I don’t want to accidentally deplete the numbers in the farm.  Thinking of starting up a mealworm farm to keep the quails well supplied with protein. Scott just rolled his eyes when I mentioned this. Ha. Currently we have 1 dog, 10 quails, 40 odd silkworms (Molly’s birthday present, also very cute), 1000 or so native bees and a big bunch of Red wriggler earthworms in the worm cafe. I am also waiting to get my training/permit to be a wildlife foster carer for my local landcare group (which will mean little injured possums and other creatures visiting from time to time.) So, yeah, I think a big pile of gross mealworms is the perfect addition to our little homestead👍🏻🐛