If you have chickens, sooner rather than later you will have to worm them. Especially if you come across this sight while walking barefoot through your chook pen... I had no idea what this was when I first caught sight of the gently swaying bundle of tentacles warm and cuddly in a recently dropped, dropping! A quick Internet scan and it seemed they were very likely to be round worm - but no matter what they were called they needed to go. Worming chickens seems quite easy when you are at the local produce shop with a selection of wormers in hand. Basically, you remove the chookies water a few hours before bedtime (to ensure they are thirsty in the morning) and then the next day give them water that is laced with the wormer - and watch them spend the day dehydrating in the hot Queensland sun rather than take the one sip required to kill off the worm population that have taken up residence in their guts. After a week, I was convinced that some of them may have taken the required

Back in New Zealand, it was easy to grow things. You popped the seedlings into the garden in the morning, watered them once and came back at dinnertime to harvest them! Well, at least that's what it felt like. Now that I live in Queensland, Australia (by the way - that makes me a QueeNZlander in local parlance!) Things are a bit different in the garden. You pop the seedlings in the garden in the morning and by lunch time they are withered, dried up and blow into dust by 3pm. It has been a long and frustrating journey to grow anything but tumble weeds in the back yard (imagine high noon in the desert and you have the idea!) but today... *drum roll please* I harvested a single beetroot! Now, the issue was how to enjoy such a delicacy between the two of us (our latest student from Austria was comatose after a two day flight and probably wasn't going to be excited by my single beetroot dish no matter how exotic...) Since I was knee deep in organic and permaculture books at th

Some good friends decided that we needed to get together for good food, nice wine and great company and so invited us on a picnic. Yay - we love a picnic! It took a few weeks from invite to actually getting together due to rain, work and train timetables but it was so worth it when it finally came together! I saw a picnic idea on the net that I just had to try! It was cute, sustainable, used things I already had at home and cost me nothing... A picnic in a jar? Its fun and looks good too! Here's what I did... I made strawberry cheesecake into 4 individual jars - screwed the lids on and packed them into the picnic bag! I made a rocket, feta and garlic dip and a roast capsicum, parmesan and cashew dip (by shuzzing them up in a blender until they looked and tasted good!) popped 'em into a jar and into the picnic bag too! I made a few feta and onion tarts that sadly, didn't fit into any jar I had... Found a spot with a view of the river, some wine and

Like most households, milk crates appear in and about our house as they are the right size to sit on, strong enough to stand on and the right shape to store things in. They are usually free or picked up for a dollar or two at garage sales or at dump/tip shops. They come in red and blue in our area (depending on weather they are originally from Paul's or Dairy Farmers!) and that simply doesn't go with my outdoor decor - neither does the plastic look but that's another issue. Something had to be done. I decided to cover them with material that fitted in with the rest of our current outdoor setting - A quick look on the Internet for inspiration and confidence and... The finished product being modelled by the cat! Here's what I did... I started with the standard Brissy Blue and Red Milk Crates... Then I bought a sheet and a couple of pillow cases from the local Footprints Op Shop This is less a pattern and more a method to follow - Cut the sheet i

I have been following Christine at Slow Living Essentials for a while and in January she set a challenge to record on our blog, monthly, how we have "slowed down" under nine categories - I have been doing this for the last eight months and really got a lot out of it. This is my October reflection on Slowing Down - the Slow Living Essentials way! NOURISH: Make and bake as much as possible from scratch. Ditch over packaged, over processed convenience foods and opt for 'real' food instead. At the beginning of this challenge, this is something I wasn't doing regularly. These days its the "norm" to be cooking something for dinner. We have our "take away night" on a Thursday when after we have been to the library, we pop into the shopping centre and buy a $5 late night meal deal meal and get out takeaway fix then. It feels special but is still a great bargain, even more so when we bring our own water or drink from home! Home made On