Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Decisions

Some decisions are easy to make and some take a bit of time to mull over. Sometimes I consult with family and friends before I make the final call. But most times I   have made up my mind already and just want confirmation that I’m not going down the wrong track.

Decisions start for me as soon as I get up in the morning and wander out to the garden to choose which fruit I will have on my cereal. This summer has been wonderful with lots of luscious strawberries, blueberries, peaches and plums. It hasn’t been the best year for plums, quantity wise, but the taste has been just wonderful. This time last year we had given away kilo’s of plums and I had nearly thirty kilo’s frozen for the coming year. (that was very lucky due to the lack of bananas for most of 2011). So far, this year, I have only seven kilo’s of the large black plums frozen. I have made eight pots of jam too and the prune plums have yet to fully ripen but I know that we are well down this year. That’s okay as I think that plums do produce better every other year.

  purpleplum1                                   plumjam

We only have one, fairly small blueberry bush and this was the first year we had berries to try. Last year the birds ate the few that were produced. This year my strawberries and blueberry bush were under netting and safe from the greedy birds! There seems to be so many more birds around this year and they certainly have a feast from our yard. Besides the plums, peaches and apples, they help themselves to the chook food too. Pretty soon they’ll be too fat to fly!

But I digress. As my job around here is “homemaker” the next decision is what to take from the freezer for dinner that night. I try not to have set nights for certain meals as I think that would be a bit too boring for us. So, if I choose a red meat for tonight it will be fish or vegetarian the next night. The accompanying vegetables are decided by what’s in the garden. We’re eating tons of salad at the moment, the rocket is escaping from the raised bed; snow peas are waving in the breeze; radishes popping up left right and centre; cucumbers are fattening up rapidly and tomatoes are blushing in the sunshine. I’m waiting on the eggplants (what’s new) and I’ve just discovered four rockmelons in the grow house, yipee. Zucchini, kale, button squash and beans round everything out.

It would seem that most of my decisions revolve around food, and I suppose that they do, as that’s my contribution to this household. I don’t go out to work anymore so I have no cash to bring in. I provide the fruit and veggies; I keep chickens so that we can have eggs; I make all our sourdough bread, biscuits and cakes; I make M his morning yoghurt every week and have been known to make cheese in the distant past.

cast iron sourdough

 

                      bakeup3

 

                            

This is important for me to be able to do this, as I went out to work for money since I was sixteen and I have always paid my own way, even when things were really, really tough as a single parent with two daughters. It hasn’t been easy making this adjustment, but I think that I finally have accepted that what I do IS important.  Especially now when M is finding it hard to sell his hothouses. So at the moment cash is very limited and we’re slowly working through our savings because Centrelink and all it’s intrusive forms is just too hard to contemplate.  But, having said that, we do need to see about health care cards. M requires medication every day for his blood pressure and I need it every day for pain. The prescriptions and doctor’s appointments are costing us quite a lot and with a health care card it would be much, much better. So the big decision was “do we ask for help?” The final answer is yes, for the moment.

But, if you do know anybody who would love one of these beautiful little hothouses

hoophouse

www.hoophouses.com.au

is where you’ll find all the information you need. we’d love to hear from you – really!!!!

Jan

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