Greed.. and, yeah, I rant again :)

So, as always this post will most likely end up side-tracked and ranting about something to do with Nazis on the moon, or the price of fish in China, however.. lets try :)

Greed

I have now looked at this screen for about 5 minutes trying to think about how to start this. I will start with a summary shall I?

• Greed is the problem
• People are greedy
• Society encourages greed
• This is not a new concept

OK, so now that I have that down, I will attempt (ATTEMPT) to expand a little :)

People are greedy, but for no reason. Why do you need more cars than you can drive at one time? Why do you need clothes that costs so much more because of a logo, symbol or who 'made' it? Why do banks (which are people too) need to send people bankrupt so they can get an extra $5,000 to add to their $50 kazillion they already have? There are people that hoard money, until they die, for what? What are you going to do with it? Are you planning on buying your way into whatever afterlife you believe in?
I think that the real fundamental problem is that people think they NEED when really they just WANT, but when you break it down further, why do you WANT it? So someone will like the way you look (when you are not even you) or so that people will think that you are powerful, strangers that might never see you again and you will not ever know them, why care? Why care what people think about you when you are not really you?
If you are a greedy person at heart then no matter what you have in your life, you will always be a greedy person and nothing will ever make you happy. I am not saying don't have money, but attempt to buy people because they are probably not the people that you want around.

Greed attracts greed. That is why you see so many "like-minded" people together. A greedy person will be with other greedy people and they will live their selfish lives together yet alone. Happy beautiful people (really happy and beautiful on the inside) will be with other happy beautiful people and they will be always that way. If you don't have new clothes, the people in your life should still love you, if you don't have nice (expensive) things then, who cares? Not the people around you.
If you live a life where it matters, you are wrong. You are fighting for something so futile, something that is so fleeting, so wasteful, just so stupid.

I know that most of the people that follow my rants, that read these entries and what-not are beautiful people, I know that most love animals, love nature and love life. And that makes me happy :) So I am sure that I am not saying anything new here.

When you hear that a bank makes $10 billion profit (PROFIT) a year, and there are people in your own country that don't have shoes, don't have food, die from living in the streets with nothing.. how do the people that run the banks feel? I don't think that they do. I think that they are dead on the inside. I would love to talk to one, really talk to one. Sit down with someone who earns so much money and does nothing good with it. You do hear about the odd millionaire that builds an apartment block and gives it to the community, a park, a shelter, etc.. but few and far between.
And don't get me started on people that get stupidly overpaid (like pretty much ALL the politicians), and when I say overpaid, I don't just mean with money, benefits also. Why do politicians need to fly first class? No, really, why? I don't. For work if I fly anywhere I fly the cheapest possible way (because work pays), if I want to upgrade accommodation, flights, cars, food, whatever, I will pay the difference because it is something that will just benefit me. So why do the politicians think that they need to be treated as royalty (don't get me started with royalty) when their SOLE job is to serve the counties needs, not their own gain.

Why am I ranting about all this now when it is nothing new? I always think like this (yes it hurts my head). I was recently watching a show called "Tudor Monastery", really interesting show about people that try to live in that period. Great way for me to try to learn what I need and what I want in my life.
HOWEVER... the show highlights the monasteries greed at the time. It really upsets me when people use religion (or fear/love) to 'earn money'. The monastery owned all the land around them and the people working the land had to get permits to fish, and then they had to also give a percentage of the fish to the monks. Greed. When the bread makers made bread they had to spend twice as long making the 'highers' bread by grinding it twice and sieving it, and they could then make their bread with the 'left overs'. Greed. And this continues throughout the whole show. And throughout the whole of history. Most religions have drifted so far away from what matters. Why do you think that your god wants you to build a giant steeple of gold and jewels at the costs of the environment, humans, and other animals in the area? Do you really think that it was your gods idea to build a world and make you destroy it to show that you love him.... really... think about it for just a second or two.
Real world example if you are not following along:
I make you a beautiful painting, a painting really magnificent, a painting to share with the world.
You decide to show me how much you are grateful for my gift to you, you light it on fire, a big fire, a huge fire, a fire that the gods could see. To show me that you are thankful for my painting you destroy my painting... Thanks? ....

Sorry for the rant, things are just 'wrong' in the world. Whatever you believe started this world, a cosmic bang, a god (or several), a giant spaghetti monster, whatever it is, do you think that we are doing the right thing? As a whole.

I don't think that the problem is fracking, the problem is not oil drilling or coal mining or icecap surfing or whatever. The problem IS people. People and their mentality is the problem.
If you don't like the whole fracking thing, don't protest stopping fracking, mines and the like make those companies so much money that they could buy the whole country! Instead, how about you look at not using the products that are created by those industries? Don't protest the killing of animals, protest the use of furs and meats. If everyone stopped eating meats and wearing furs then there would be no need to kill animals, right? If everyone stopped using gas, then, no need for gas to me mined... etc...

So instead of picketing and protesting something that is making people a LOT of money (including the governments that are allowing it) how about try to think about an alternative, educate people in something (like recycling products or alternative fuel/medicines/living).

Enough of my rant, which I know kinda got sidetracked, however nothing about fish in China or Nazis on the moon! You all get the idea? I hope so. I am trying to change my life to make less of an negative impact on the world around me, and I love helping people do the same. Learning is fun, teaching is awesome! :)

Well, to leave on a positive note, I have stuff to do in the garden now, here is a sample of some of my flowers in my green house... :)

I hope that you all have a great day today, smile and be happy :) Try to love your life and the people around you for the right reasons, and if you have to be greedy, just get more chickens!! ;)

The rat race...

Sometimes you are too busy with life to have a life.. strange? I think so also.

So what is with this picture? A cat and a dog sleeping on the bed, well, nothing really to do with anything (like most other things I write about (and think about)) except that they are two of my many many babies, cat = "Thunder Cat" the youngest of the three cats, dog = "Scarlet" the younger of the two dogs. They are best friends, they always find the time for each other. No matter what they spend time together at least once a day. I think that alone is beautiful.

They play together, which gets a little scary to watch at times, since Scarlet likes to sit ON Thunder Cat :) and Scarlet can fit Thunder Cats whole head in her mouth... but that doesn't stop him from biting her ears and nibbling on her face!

I love all the animals that Queen Cassawary and I have here, but finding the time is the hardest part. One of my goals, the MAIN goal I think, is to live one with nature, live a life that is perfectly in tune with my surroundings, and by surroundings I do NOT mean buildings, roads, pollution and negative people. I mean trees, animals, sun rises, moon beams, rainbows... all the good things in life.
In order to get there though I need to work, and work hard, it feels like I work five jobs some weeks. After I finish my "9-5" work, then come home and start cutting wood, or feeding all the animals and plants, or fixing a hole in a roof, or building a new something (green house was just done, I will write about that next). With all that taking up all my time it is hard to put my feet up and just enjoy life moving around me. I am so tired, so burnt out.

Please don't get me wrong. I love what I do, not the whole "working for the man", "9-5", "making someone else's dreams come true", stuff but the work I do at home, I love the fact that I can still do most of the things at home myself. I have been learning so much, so much about plumbing, building, wood/metals, animals, weather, dirt, composting, veggies, so so much. I love all that. I love seeing the 5 acres around me grow, change and attract more native (wild) animals. In my eyes this is my way of knowing what we are doing at this place is working, if it is attracting animals to come and live in the trees then they must know that it is a good place to live! :) That is my logic anyway.

I want to leave my job, I think that I NEED to leave my job, not just for my own sanity (as that place is driving my nuts more and more), but in order to complete what I am doing here. Complete it for the sake of everything around me. I have so many projects that keep getting put on hold when they are half complete, because work will call me in on the weekends, or after hours (and no, I don't get an awesome overtime/loading rate, so it is NOT worth all the extra work I put in).
I can start ranting about being under-appreciated at work, about the people that I work with not being about to correctly utilize myself and others around, I could talk for hours about the horrible working conditions, both mentally and physically, and on that note I could talk about how some work places (like mine) are about government scrutiny when it comes to these kind of things, but I will not talk about all that, because that is all horribly negative and it is not even 5AM yet! :) Stay positive!

So, what is THIS post about? If you have been following my blogs so far (I know I have not had the time to do anything in such a long time) you will know that most of my blogs start with a good idea (about where the post is going) but then end up ranting about Nazis on the moon, ants taking over the government, or the demise of humankind. This post is the same, the two reasons why I started writing this post this morning was 1; I have some time, finally!, 2; I wanted to share WHY I haven't had time, so you all don't think that I have just abandoned you all in the cyber abyss.

Let us get back to a better mental place shall we... with GEESE!

I love these guys, they are such characters! :) They provide so much in life, I love to watch all my animals integrate with each other as well as everything around them.

Oh, just quickly, before I continue with talking about some of my projects, while typing this all out I get these awesome red squiggly lines under some of the words, if you don't know what I am talking about, just type in "sqazzletops" and you should see what I mean. These little lines mean that I have messed up the spelling of the word that I was trying to spell. Great invention to the person that made spellchecker! :) However, why is it that so many "professionals" don't know how to use it? Nearly every morning I see a spelling mistake in a headline in the news, a spelling mistake in the summary of the article, or just the complete wrong picture for the article. Of course I am talking about online newspapers, however these are from companies like SKY news, etc.. not just the normal tin-foil-hat-wearing-cave-dwelling-star-gazing papers I normally spent time reading. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that this post (or anything I do) is grammatically perfect, but I didn't do the 2 hour online course that these "professionals" have done, so I can plead ignorance to that! Sorry to the "writers" of that paper, but there is a difference in "destop" and "desktop" when talking about a computer. See? I even get that squiggly line when I write destop... now I have two lines... doesn't your online course teach you what that means and how to fix it?!?!? Is your life so busy you can't do your paid job correctly? ... OK... rant over, I promise...

So what have I been doing since I last got on here?

I have started building the aquaponics system. No, this is not all I have done, cut a blue barrel up, however I will do a whole post on each thing. I have built a green house (from recycled wood and shade cloth), built a few new gardens, building a fence (that is fun), built a pond for the animals, finished the NOCC, and all the normal little things that I get up to, lots of research!

I have been trying to take photos, before, after and during, however sometimes I forget about that, sorry. But I have lots and lots to catch you all up on, so I will try to get to that ASAP, the mornings have been icy cold lately, so it means that I will spend a bit more time inside in the mornings, by the fire, and be able to write/rant more to you all.

Well, I get paid to show up to work, so I should get ready for all that good stuff. I hope that you all enjoy your days, don't work too hard for other people, make sure that you actually get to put your feet up and enjoy life around you, breath and love life!

Until I see you all again (soon I hope!), be happy and stay safe.

RIP - Stuart :(

-- R I P --

This is such a sad page to write :( Unfortunately we lost our youngest Alpaca, Stuart, over the weekend. Just looking at his little dorky face right now makes me so sad, this is the part about living with animals that I really don't like, the saying good-bye part.

Stuart was such a cheeky little Alpaca, he was always interested in knowing what was happening around and trying to stick his little nose into things, although Clive was his 'guardian' and never let Stuart get into too much trouble.

His cause of death is not 100% known, although it appears to be a gastric-intestinal issue. For all those who understand that, good (I am not one of them, that is what Queen Cassowary does!), but in 'simple' terms I think that it means that he ate something that did not agree with his internal workings, what did he eat? Who knows. There are a lot of plants on this 5 acres, and after looking around on the internet I have found out that nearly 100% of all animals and humans that die have drunk water in the past.. so, I have no idea still what caused it.
This is a problem, because if it is a plant that they are allergic to, then I would love to know about that sooner than later, however we will see. Clive has shown no issues yet. Stuart took a turn really fast. One day he was playing and being his normal bouncy self, then he started to sit down a little more than normal, next day more-so, we called the vet who had no idea how to deal with Alpacas and only gave us general 'horse' advice. We found a "mobile-vet" who apparently has dealt with Alpacas in the past, however doesn't return calls and when we got hold of him, he was not really interested in actually coming out to help. I think that this highlights a problem in society that we all know about, when "professionals" forget why they do what they do. Why did someone become a doctor? To help people, so why is it that you meet so many cranky doctors that only issue out Soothers for a broken leg? Or only stick to one brand due to endorsements.. same with vets... They become a vet (like Queen Cassowary is firmly on her way doing) due to their love for animals, helping animals and being around animals, but when asked to pay a visit on Saturday morning..... way too hard, the sports game is on! Don't worry about trying to actually help someone in need, we lost Stuart that morning...

** end of my normal side-tracked rank... for now...*

Stuart will be missed, by everyone that met the cute little guy.
I think though right now the one missing him so much is Clive, he walks around the yard looking for him, calling for him, I know that he is worried about him and wants to make sure that he is OK. We know that he is OK now, he has moved on to some large 1,000 acres in the sky, filled with butterflies, rainbows and lots of juicy grasses to eat.
For Clive though, we are getting two more Alpacas this week, express delivery for the little man. From the same breeder that we got Clive and Stuart from, so hopefully they still remember each other, since we only got them at the start of the year.
We will see.
I just hope that it keep Clive happy and this doesn't happen again.

Well, one thing that this land has taught us is that you learn something new everyday. So now we know how fast this kind of animal can come into trouble, and we have also learnt that Queen Cassowary has to hurry up and become a vet so we don't have to rely on people who have lost their way in life!
We are still on the look out on the land for what might have caused this problem, however we just have to monitor the situation and react.

I will leave you all now, not the nicest post that I have ever written, however I wanted to let you all know what is happening around here, good and bad. I have to get ready for work, the reason why I can't do what I want to do around here :(
However there are a lot of new projects that I have done, I have been trying to take progressive photos of, so I will be putting up some new DIY small projects, and a new larger project (a green house), and I realise that I never finished the post about the NOCC - van, it is done and up and running now, so I will put a big page up about that very soon!

And I will put up a post regarding why I have this NEW ad company on, and NOT the Adsense (which is not as nice and friendly as I was first led to believe, a rant for another day!!)

Until then, I hope that you all have a great day with whatever you are doing, and I hope to interact with you all again soon :) Stay safe!!

Feed the community - Fund raising shout out!!

Well people, the time is here. The time that I ask something from you. Please, don't get scared, just hear me out :)

  FEED THE COMMUNITY

The above is a link to the page I wrote about what I am going to do (for those not following along) but as a quick recap, I am planning on building a large aquaponics system on my 5 acres, producing food to feed people who need it. That being that can't afford it, don't have a house, hit hard times, etc.

Instead of the normal "fish tank" approach to aquaponics I will be using one of the dams that I have. The dam is lovingly filled with ducks, geese, fish, yabbies, etc.. and that will be the main nutrient source for plants.

So, the part you are all waiting for, "what do you want from me?". Simple, I would only like on of three things from you (or two or all).

1.  Donate money to the project to help it get started and all happening. You can click on this link to take you to the Kickstarter campaign page.

2.  Donate items. If you are in the local area (South East Queensland (near Toowoomba), Australia) and have anything that might help out on such a large project, this includes; pipes, shade-cloth, wood, metal, water tanks/barrels, seeds, seedlings, etc..

3.  Just share this page, or the Kickstarter page. If everyone who sees this (and the Facebook posts I am about to release into the wild) just shares it on their page, or a page they think might be into this kind of thing, then the word will spread around the world and hopefully people can at least give $1 and help support this idea. (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1050551391/feed-the-community-aquaponic-garden)

So there you go. The easiest and cheapest thing that you can do to help out this "Food is Free" initiative is to just share this idea. Share the idea that I am looking for public funding to help this. If this works then I hope that others will be inspired to get public funding and create free community food projects like this and share the love! :)

I would also just like to note quickly that people have already started to donate things. So thank you. I have received my first 1000 litre water tank, seedlings, and a lot a local people donating assorted things.

Also, my most favorite seed company, Fair Dinkum Seeds, who I have harassed a lot for information and help! Thanks for that!

Feed the community

"So, what am I doing now?" you might be sighing while asking yourself..

Do you know the "Food Is Free" idea, movement, philosophy.. whatever you want to call it. That is what I am doing now.

Food Is Free

OK, that heading just took about 10 minutes, so please enjoy it for a while.

Now that you have done that, so what is Food Is Free? It is the idea of planting/growing/making/harvesting food, a lot of food, more food than YOU need and sharing the overflow. Trading with others with similar mind sets, and just giving food to people who need/want it. This is open to abuse, clearly, however it is based more on a honor system. The system of love, peace, happiness and all the other good feelings that you get when life is going well.

I know a lot of the people in my local area do something very similar, they have beautiful local gardens and are happy to swap/trade/give away things that they don't need, when they have too much food or want something else, they will take carrots from one person in exchange for lettuce, eggs, garlic, whatever, you get the idea. So this project is just like that, but bigger.

This is going to be a charity. I will be experimenting with a lot of different growing styles, foods, types, etc, and trying to get the best, the most, the biggest, healthiest of them all. I want to cover this 5 acres and make it an huge eatable forest. I know this can be done, however people do it on a small budget of only $15,000 (cough! ONLY), I don't have that, so I will be trying to do all of this on a budget of about $1.87, hand-me-downs, freebies, charity, etc. anything I can get I will try to use. I will be seeking the cheapest parts (but trying not to sacrifice too much quality), cheap delivery, cheap labor (if needed, and I know I have had offers from WWOOFers (www.wwoof.net) for this already!).

I have started a new Face Book page (www.facebook.com/FTCMurphysCreek) to start to raise awareness of what I am trying to do, why, when, where, all that good stuff.
It is titled "Feed The Community - Murphys Creek", Murphys Creek being the area (of South East Queensland, Australia), however I am hoping that it will spread. I have titled it this way for a reason, I am hoping that more people will start to do this kind of thing and just call is "Feed The Community - your town", and keep the movement going! :)



This relies a LOT on charity, the good will of people just sharing THIS page, the Face Book page, donating, giving, caring, the ad-sense from this blog, whatever. So far this "New Life" blog that I have started has had such good feed back. So many loving, caring people out there that are so happy to share love with (most of the time) just a stranger like me. So thank you to all of you. I am hoping to piggy-back from this (limited) success so far and launch the new idea.

I will be attempting to launch this on Kick-starter in hopes to raise money to start it off. What money do I need? Well, since the ground that I am on is very hard (clay) and has had a LOT of damage done by the old owners (burring rubbish (including plastics and metals)) I have decided to start the project off with an aquaponics system. This is not like the aquaponics system that I tried (this link), but one that is a lot bigger, a larger scale one. While I was making the previous one I was thinking about all the problems with the design, future problems, and how I could best use it, and that is when this project came to mind. I figured that I could only really do what I wanted to do by scaling up a lot, and that the food production would be a lot more than I needed. The idea of just using it to barter was the first idea, but I do like to give to people that need it, to help others, so instead of just being selfish and hoarding all my lovely organically grown veggies, I will share them with my local community.

So far the chickens are on board! Thanks ladies!

So what do I need right now? Well, not just money (in fact no money right now at all!), I am looking for parts to MAKE the aquaponics system, this includes water catchment (such as drums, barrels, tubs, sinks, baths, etc..) pipes (PVC, rural, irrigation, hoses, etc..) shade cloth, metal poles/star pickets, wooden stakes, pumps, pretty much anything. These don't have to be new at all. BUT! The one thing I really REALLY need first up, is design help. I need someone who might know a bit about aquaponics to offer some time (even just on the net) to helping me design this thing. I don't want to get a pump that is too big/small, I don't want to mess the water flow up and ruin everything.

If anyone wants to volunteer help, please let me know (email is fine, remove the ()  in the address) and we can start to chat about what I want, and what I need.

Until I get a design that will work, I will not launch the kick-starter campaign yet, otherwise I don't know how much money I might need. The money will go towards the buying of the pump, pipes, tanks, clay-pellet things, seedlings, etc..

Well, I best get off this and back into the real life, or nothing will actually get done! :)

Until next time, I hope you all have a great night/day/week/month/year/... and smile at the things that make you happy, ignore the negativity!

Aquaponics/Hydroponics, it's a start!

My new Aquaponics system

So, it is time, I have decided to stop killing innocent plants in the ground and see if I can broaden my horizons by killing them in a aquaponic setup instead!

Like I have said of most of my other posts, I am NOT a builder, a mechanic, a water engineer, or anything of the sorts, I have no idea what I am doing. A lot of what I am trying is just guess work, and a lot of thinking time goes into it all. Some (most) of what I try fails, but then I learn why it fails, and we all get to move on :)

So, the new idea, using the main dam/pond where the ducks and geese (yabbies, turtles, whatever-else) like to play as the main water source, I will pump the water through tubes (PVC pipes) which will hold seedlings (and then plants), the plants will eat up all the goodness from the dam water, then it will go back into the dam. I think that it will do two really good things, 1- feed the new veggies with great water and allow them to constantly get water (should stop them from getting attacked by the sun), 2- keep the water moving the the dam which should help all the things inside there stay healthy, happy and alive.

So, the first thing that I need to do is create a frame. The frame is going to just hold a PVC pipe (which I have a whole stack of random sizes and lengths). Using all the spare wood I have around the place, I measure and cut the wood in half. I want this to be high enough that I will not keep bending down and hurt my back.

Once I have cut two bit of wood all about the same length, it is time to actually work out what I am going to try to hold. This is a 90 mm diameter PVC pipe, and it has been luckily selected as the first attempt at making a plant bed as part of the aquaponic system! I know, it is an honour (I will note here that the diameter of the pipe DOES matter, it has to be wider than the diameter of the pots you want to put in it, that will come into it all later on). I have stood the pipe up and using two of the bits of wood, braced the pipe (this is to ensure that the top of the X will be wide enough to hold the pipe), while there I nailed the wood together. I will note that I nailed the wood twice on this side, that is to stop it from collapsing, then I turned it over and nailed it once through the middle on the other side. Like I said, I have no idea what I am actually doing, but I try to think that if I was a piece of wood, what would I do to mess up the life of the person trying to use me!

So, doing that again on the other side, then I end up with two large X's that will hold the pipe. I need this to be on a slope, this is because I want to push water from one end and then make it run down the pipe and out the other end.  However I live on a slope, so not a GREAT concern :) I do have a different concern though, I think that the structure below could/would/WILL collapse, there is nothing holding the X upright, so, I will add two braces, one on either side going the length of the frame.

There is a problem with adding those supports, it means that it is no longer two big X's, it is now one larger monstrosity which will be harder to move around, but more importantly it will be a fixed length, so if I wanted to change the pipe for some reason to a longer or shorter one, the frame might not be good enough :( I don't know any other way of stopping it from falling over though, so this will do for now.

You can also see in the photo two of the three site supervisors I had there. Just so you all know that it was done by the books! :) So here it is, with the supporting bars to stop it from falling. I made them on an angel and opposite angels because I think that if they were flat or the same angel on both sides it would not stop the problem 100%. Time will tell :)

At this point I tested the pipe layout to see if my idea will actually work (no point in finishing a project that could never work), so I tested it out, I have uploaded the short movie to my YouTube account, in the movie you can see that water does go to the other side of the pipe, even though it also flows back through the side I poured it in on. That is ok, that is just because there is nothing stopping it, so I will do that now. I don't have end caps for this pipe, and I am not going to go out and buy them just yet (I will if it all works well), but I do have some other joins for pipes that will work.

Nothing too special, but I had a 90 degree end (left) and a 15 degree bend (right) for 90 mm diameter pipe, so they SHOULD work for now, for what I want to do. I would like to have the end caps, or at least two 90 degree bends, but I work with what I have.

With the first bend on, the 15 degree one, this is on the 'inlet' side. It matters. This should just stop the water from rolling back, the 90 degree one will stop the water that is flowing towards it (so it needs to be bigger), ultimately they should/will both have caps, caps that screw on and stop all the water flow.
So in this picture you can see that I drilled a hole in the top of the pipe, that is where the water will pour into. This is not a random hole, I found a 13 mm connector (the black irrigation piping stuff) laying around, and I am using that to connect it to the water barrel (that will come).

This is the connector that I have put in the hole. You can see that it just comes through the pipe, however it doesn't really matter how far, as long as it is in the PVC pipe. I think that it would be a smart idea to ensure that it is also above the water line (where ever you want the water in the pipe to fill to) so it splashes as it comes down, surely this will help keep the water from going stagnant?
The whole thing will be sealed, so light shouldn't get in there, so bacteria shouldn't grow.

This is the other end, it is a little different than the inlet end, this is because I need/want the water to drain at about 1/2 way. My theory is that the pipe will fill to about 1/2 way, then start to flow through the black outlet (which will be connected to another pipe slightly downhill again, etc..).
So, does it work? I uploaded this video as well to my YouTube account so you can see, but the short of it is, yes, it works :) It leaks from the 90 degree bend, but that is ok, it is just a test. If it was the finished product it would a cap that was glued or screwed on.

This is a better look at the connection to the water barrel, you can see the 13 mm connector in the pipe, connecting the small plastic tube up to the water tap. This is elevated on a old fridge to give it height (just so I don't need a pump or anything yet), and the pipe is sloping downhill to allow the water to run through the pipe and out the other end.

Now, time to add holes for plants! :) The whole point of doing this.

This is how we make the holes, using my trusty drill with a hole saw attachment. You can get these from any hardware store (common tool), and to the left of the drill is the pot that I am planning on using. It is taller than the pipe, but not as wide. I have made sure that the hole saw (they come in different sizes) just fits about 1/2 down the pot, which I measured against the pipe to make sure water will just sit on the bottom of it.

Line up about the middle of the pipe, starting at one and and make your hole. Be careful not to push the drill through the pipe and make a hole on the other side, that will cause it to leak, we don't want that.

You can see the results of the drill, it makes holes. I have decided to make the edge of the holes about 15 cm apart. I don't know if that is too big or small, but I was just thinking about the kinds of foods I will be growing, and you need to make sure that there is a enough room to stretch :) If it turns out that they are too cramped, this will just be for seedlings or things like leeks that grow straight up and not bushy :)

Keep drilling holes the whole way along (depending on how many pots you have, how much pipe, etc..). Then put the pots in the holes.

I have left one near the middle empty for now, I just want to watch the water flowing past (fault finding really). The pots are not glued in, just held there nice and tight due to the size of the holes I drilled.
I tested it again (so many tests) and I have uploaded it again on my YouTube channel, so did it work? No... :( Why not? well, as you can see in the video the last pot had the right amount of water, then working all the way back up it got less and less. Why? I should have see THAT coming, the pipe is on an angle, which means that the water will pool at the end (which is ok), but then drain out, not allowing water to pool throughout the pipe at that height. So, how do I fix it?

Change the angle that the pipe is on. This is my guess :) So I changed the level of the pipe by putting wood under the outlet side (to raise it up) until it was just not level. If you don't know how to read a level, the bubble in the middle part (green) should be sitting smack in the middle (between the lines), mine is not, the bubble is to the slight right of the middle, and that is where I want it (at the start the bubble was all the way over to the right, indicating that the slope was severe).

Now that I have flattened it out a bit more, does it work? I uploaded again (YouTube is going to hate me soon enough!) and it works a lot better!

This was a test to see if this idea will work, it looks like it will :) I will get the 'stuff' I need to put in the pots, clay pellets is what is recommended, and try to find a pump that will move the water. For now I am going to leave it just this size, if this works well, I will expand it.

What is going in here? The seeds that are on the way from Fair Dinkum Seeds! I can't wait!!

** Really important things to note so far;

• Diameter of the pipe has to be bigger (wider) than the diameter of the pot you want to put in it.
• When drilling the hole in the pipe, be careful not to puncture the other side of the pipe.
• Ensure that the angle your pipes are on it not too severe or the water will flow out far to fast.

Mushrooms... sure, why not

This page is just some of the mushrooms that I have found around my place (in the last week), there are others that I have posted up here (in Crazy beautiful garden) but there is so much life around the 5 acres, it is hard to ignore. None of these were planted by me, and I have no idea if I can/should eat them (I know the chickens, ducks and geese give some of them a go )

I just wanted to illustrate that there are so many nice things around us, so many things that are so small, things that we step on, step over or just ignore. You can see the size of some of these little guys (by judging the leaves and grass near them)

This one was growing out of some hay that I am going to be using for mulching or garden edges.

I love this one, it just smashes out of the ground, leaving a crater around it, moves the grass that was growing above it. Amazing what nature can do when it wants something to happen.

This one, I am unsure if it is growing from under the leaf and pushing it up, or the leaf has fallen onto the mushroom, either way it is so beautiful. Amazing the intricate details in such small things.

There are so many shapes, sizes and colors that mushrooms can be. You don't think about it when you go to the shops and buy a bag to cook with, but there are so many others out there. It is easy to see how writers get inspiration to make "fairy gardens" and things like that, some are like seats, some (like this one) are like little umbrellas.

Some are not as beautiful in the traditional sense, but still there is beauty in the creation of this little guy, and whatever task he is trying to achieve.

And finally (for now) this. You can see the top of this one is unlike any of the others (although they are all unique) the top is not solid. Amazing. It is more like several sections put together (like a clover), either this is an abnormality in this mushroom, it is going through a life cycle step that causes this, or a chicken found it and wanted to just taste little parts. I don't know. I could ask the great and powerful Google, however as long as this little guy (and all the others) are happy, then I am happy to have them. My only concern is if the animals get sick from eating them, hopefully they are not that silly.. we will see..

If you like mushrooms then I hope that you like what I have been finding around my place :) I do love capturing things like this kind of life, and being able to show people all around the world, however there is so much that a camera can't catch, so much that you just have to see for yourself.

Well, I will leave you on that note, I hope that your day is great, full of sunshine and happiness :)

Shelter for the worms....

I have worms... intentionally

This is not a weight loss technique, I have worms to make dirt for the gardens. A friend who is right into worms was talking to me awhile ago, and she loves her worms, she uses the dirt (casings) from the worm farms to grow seedlings. It is fantastic. The dirt is like nothing I have even felt before, it looks rich and vibrant in color, it is soft and fluffy, great to work with. Best of all, it is pretty much free to make it, and simple. Throw in food (off cuts of veggies and scraps) along with newspapers, cardboard, anything like that and the worms will eat it up and 'poop' out nice fresh organic healthy dirt :) Can't ask for more than that! Also water them occasionally, they need to drink too :)


Well, there are a few things that I know about growing worms so far, the main one is that they like eating scraps and living in dark moist areas. So, I want to make my little worms as happy as possible, and grow and give me lots of nice yummy (not to me) dirt. Since my friend gave me worms (they were in a small polystyrene box (modified to suit worms), I have upgraded them to a fridge. I know, that doesn't sound very 'homely' however the fridge is just the container. It is laying on its back with no lid on it, with drainage holes under it. On top of the fridge (where the door was) is an old wooden Venetian door to allow some air flow and water/light to come in, but not too much light, and most of all to NOT allow my chickens to have a fiesta in there! :)

From all the other posts you should have worked out that all the animals live together, this does meant that I have problems, a lot of problems at times. One of which involves chickens, ducks and geese trying to eat/destroy everything that I make, including (and especially) the worm farm! So making a lid was essential for the survival of the worms and my new dirt.
Apparently worms will keep reproducing to fit their environment, so having a larger container like this means that I should have more dirt :) I am not in a rush for the dirt, however I have this method and 3 different styles of composts working, so soon I will have so much nice dirt I will not know what to do with it all :)

So what are you looking at there? That tin shed is the chicken coop (where they get locked in a night time (chickens, ducks and geese), walking in front of that camera (always after attention) is one of the two Muscovy ducks, and directly behind her at two fridges laying down (one on the right is covered in shade cloth to stop the light). Right now only one of the fridges is being used as a worm farm, the other was going to be future expansion (until about 3 hours ago), but I will talk about what that is later.
This setup is not the best if you are a worm, kind of neglected there :( so you will have not happy worms, we want happy worms. With people, when we are depressed we eat more, but with animals it is the opposite (shows that we are not all that smart eh?), so I want worms that are so happy with life that they will eat through concrete (worms will not actually eat through concrete).

So what am I going to do to make my worms happy? I will build them a new house :) Of course.

So, using that shade cloth that I already have (was reclaimed from someone who was downsizing!) I had to go out and purchase a few little things.

The drill and gloves I already had, but just showing you what I was using :) I had to buy the 2x D-shackles and the 2x Eye bots, you will see why in a minute.

So, before I continue I have to mention again, I have no idea what I am doing, I just own a drill and gloves and have a lot of spare wood. Please, if you are going to try this at home, don't tell your wife I told you to do it! Be careful.

So, attached to the side of the chicken coop is this now, I drilled a hole just big enough for the eye bolt to go through, however the pack only contains 2 washers and nuts, and I wanted one on each side of the tin (to stop it from slipping), so I dug through my large pile of washers and nuts that I have reclaimed throughout the years, and found two that fit, and this is the final product :) There is a problem with this design, the problem is that same every time you use recycled materials. The shade cloth is a little wider than the shed, I will fix that later (and it will make it tighter) but for now it will work nicely.

So the idea from here is to attach once side of the shade cloth (this shade cloth has the pre-attached shackles on the corners) and the other side, well, that is the problem, there is nothing there. So I have(/had) two options, make a full frame (like the NOCC) or just the posts needed to hold up the shade cloth, I went for the second choice, not because it seemed easier, but because I like to try new things and see what happens.

So, I have to make a supporting frame for the other side. Like I mentioned before, I am not a builder or anything like that, so I sat down for a minute and just thought about what I needed, and what could go wrong. I know that I need wood that will be vertical for the shade cloth to attach to, however that will just fall over, so I should support it. So, I braced it in the front and across the two poles.

This is what I kind of ended up with.

So the piece along the top connects to the other vertical piece, and the blue part you can see stops it from collapsing, I also had to stack the wood under it to match the height (If you don't get it, ask, I have more photos and information :) )
Also to stop it from falling forwards (towards the chicken coop) I added supports.

Kind of hard to make out, but the large blue bits are going to stop the whole thing from falling forward (I hope!!)

After a large struggle (I was by myself) I got the frame up and the shade cloth attached, so far it has not fallen down! :) And it is working the way I wanted it to! Yeah for recycling!! :)

This is what it looks like now (compared to the first shot) so not much changed, well, not for the worse that is for sure. Now there is protection from the sun for the worms, and I can work in there potting plants and what-not while under the shade :)

I will note, that while doing this myself there were so many problems that I faced, including how to erect a frame yourself (I run out of hands), so clamps where used a lot in this, it fell down once at the start (before the clamps) and was a little dodgy before it all got finished. The only thing left to change now is the position of the furthermost point on the chicken coop, it is too close and causes the shade cloth to 'sag' near the coop, not a great concern, something I will deal with as time goes on :)
Here is a picture of the clamps (as the sun was coming up)

Yes, the tree was caught in the cross fire, but recovered nicely. Don't stress.

So there you have it, hopefully I will have happy worms that give me lots of nice dirt now :)
If you would like more information about what I did, please ask. I have lots more photos and information that I have not put up here. Let me know if you need anything :)

Well, I must go, I have much more to do, and more to come in the posts soon!
I hope that you all have a great day, filled with smiles and happy worms!!

Your soul, your aura...

On my way home this morning I was thinking about this blog, about something that I wanted to "share". When I say share, most of the time I really mean "vent", but either way :) I was thinking about what I would title this, and originally I was thinking "Customer Service is dead", however that was only the first part about my rant, and only focusing on the bad/negative. I try not to do that, to focus on just bad things around me. I find it easier/better/more helpful to try to focus on the good things, and brush off the bad, I know what you are thinking; Easier said than done! Well, trust me, most days it is a challenge.

 So, what is my problem today? Well, here goes;

 Customer Service is a dying art!
An art?
Yes, I believe that it is an art to deal with people correctly. When I speak about customer service though, I am not only speaking about a high-class 'Matradee', or a valet, I am speaking about everyone who wants to / has to deal with people every day. Sometimes I think that some people forget what industry they are in, if you work some place that provides a service to a customer, then without the customers you would be out of a job, so be nice!

What I think people need to know / remember (yup, it's still a rant!)

• The Approach

They way you approach someone (not even a customer, just anyone) should say a lot about you (in fact it does), so make it a good approach.
You do only get one of these, people say that it is the first thing that comes out of your mouth that matters, well, that is not the first thing people judge you on.

• A Strong Approach

If you want to tell people that you mean business, and that business is personal to you, think about that as you walk up to them. Stand tall, be proud and confident, this WILL reflect on whatever it is that you are trying to do. If you walk up slouched over, kicking a rock, spitting or in some form of daze, then unless the first words out of your mouth is an insightful look into the theory of relativity, then just keep walking. The person you are approaching has just put you in a category that might not suit your desired outcome. If however you wanted to look like a shady dealer, a pushover or a joke, then please, continue.

Most of us have had this experience, when you think that you are in control of a sales situation (as a customer) then you walk away after having purchased excessive  items that you had no intent to buy (including Zombie insurance, apocalypse insurance, etc..) and half way home you think "wait... what just happened, how did I just get walked all over?" Well, it is because the sales person was stronger than you. When we talk about someone being stronger, it is not all about physical appearance, mind you, approaching someone who is a foot taller and three times wider (muscle) is always intimidating, however you can 'smell' fear, don't let it emanate from you. Go into all situations with a goal in mind, whatever it might be, but ensure that you are flexible (just don't tell them at the start that you are).


OK, I know, I am rambling again and going entirely off topic. The topic was "Your soul, your aura..." so, I will get back to this lesson on how to get what YOU want in life, and how to be strong.

A look can change someones life.



When you walk past someone on the street, what do you do? I have noticed more and more that when I am walking around in a public place (which I don't like to do to start of with!) people have a blank expression and stare in front of them for miles, down at the ground, or at their phone (while attempting to walk in a straight line), I like to acknowledge people, maybe it was the way I was brought up? Who knows, but it is polite to acknowledge people, even just with a smile.
Why do I say that a look can change someones life? I can't count the amount of times that I have been served by a customer service representative in a store, and they have had a sour look on their face. A look of hatred for their job, their life, for you, who knows, but that look that people can tell a mile away that you are not happy. Fake it. If you are in customer service, service the customers, disregard whatever is making you look like that, and focus on the fact that this next person needs your help, they have come here for you, for you to help them fulfill their requirements.
However, so many times I have smiled at the surly looking attendant and they have lit up. A quick smile and you can see their whole life change, whatever was wrong, whatever was on their mind, melts away with a simple smile, a simple "Hello", what is it to you? Nothing, it costs you nothing, takes a fraction of a second to do, and for them, shows that their is someone out there that is smiling when they look at you.

It is also so true when you look the other way. When you are served by someone and the first thing that they do is smile at you. You are so much happier, you enjoy their company, even if it is only for 15 seconds in the drive through window. How many times have you left a drive through thinking "wow, what is her problem?", but if she (or he) had just smiled while handing you your overpriced preserve filled lunch, then you would leave thinking "wow, she was nice, lets come back here" yet she said nothing, just a smile.

Maybe I should release a self-help book for Customer Service representatives in the field? In my eyes, this is common sense stuff, but too often people fail at the simple things.

Well, enough of my insanity for now, I hope that your day is filled with smiles, even if it just from strangers on the street, enjoy life :)
I really don't like to have such a negative post, so here is a picture of some flowers from around my yard :)

NOCC - Progression

It's happening!

For all those who have been watching the NOCC (New Old Chicken Coop) come to life, well, from that last attempt which we no longer speak about, to this! It is not yet finished, however it is well on its way. We have hit a few 'unexpected' issues along the way, but it has been so much fun to work through them with my awesome partner in these crazy ventures (Queen Cassowary).

So as a quick recap, we got an old van, and we are making it into a chicken coop, well, more an isolation coop for when we get new birds or a sick bird. We moved the van into place with no 'major' problems, however the first attempt at creating the 'living' area was a fail. We have switched to wood frame (instead of poly pipes) and it is working :) So far so good!!

So this is what it looked like when we started again. Poly pipes down and a lot more wood was brought up from our 'resource pile'. The great thing about collecting things that you might use later, is that when you think of something to make or do, we have 95% of it here already :) Wood, tin, pipes, screws, wires, and more... (including the odd fridge!)

Back to the progress, we redesigned the frame of the coop to be wooden, this was a challenge as the outdoor area is going to be about 3 meters high, and 4 meters wide, so it is not too small. The problem with the poly pipes was that they could not support the weight of the shade sail over that large distance. We did consider only using chicken wire, however when there are no chickens, ducks, geese or guinea fowl in the isolation coop (NOCC) then I will use it to grow something (veggies in a hydroponic bed most likely), so I wanted to have the shade to enable the area to be used for lots of different things. So wood it is. Problem with wood at this size is the weight of the wood. Getting it that high was a task and a half. The only ladder we have is a three step ladder (plus the part on the top) and we don't have the funds to get a bigger one just yet, so we make do.

This is the frame, made mainly from hardwood from an old shed frame. The screws that we used to hold the whole thing together are screws that have been kept from other projects, or saved from things that we have pulled apart over time. One of the most important things that we have found when recycling things, make sure that you sort things out. Put like screws together, put cables together, try to sort of everything you can as you pull things apart (or collect things) and add them to your growing 'resource pile' so that when you need screws, it is just a matter of getting the screw container, inside it you should have lots of little containers, or compartments) and working what fits where. It is nice when it all just happens, however sometimes you just have to buy things :(

From this part, we needed to connect the frame to the van, and to the other end of the fence (the part you are looking at now is the middle of the outdoor area. If you remember from previous posts, where the shade cloth is attached to the van, there is a wooden frame we made around the door, so we chose to use that as the far left point to connect to. That part was relatively easy, however really important to keep the whole 'shape' of the frame and support it later.

This is all we really needed (on both sides) just to ensure the frame would not move to much. Then the other side of the frame needed to come up. That was a new problem, as now the top of the frame was over 3 meters high, and screwing things above that was 'comical', however we did it. At times we joked "you know those 'health and safety on the work place' videos you see and think, yeah, sure, WHO would do that, who would balance on one leg on top of a ladder with a electric drill in one hand and a heavy beam of wood in the other, while looking at the 'view from up here'.." .. yeah.. that was us :) It was a really nice view though!

So this is the other side, the side that is attaching to the fence. It comes down on a slight angle to help water not pool at the top of it, hopefully it works. We do try to think of everything that we might need to take into consideration, however I am sure that we have missed one or two things, but we will catch up :)

Now, shade cloth time, so one end is already attached to the van (from the earlier failed attempt), no need to change that too much, just throw it over, nail it down as we move along.

And it is working! It is ALIVE!!! Under the shade cloth you can feel it cooler already, shaded and calming. Whoever goes in here will be happy :)
So we went along and touched it up, making the shade cloth as tight as we could, however realising as we along that there must be something more to this than just pulling it tight and nailing it on. There are some points where it sags a little, and some parts where it is not too even, but nothing around here is perfect so why should this be! :)

This is a view of one of the corners, just in the case that you are wondering. If you would like more information about whatever else (like how, when, where, etc) then please just ask, I have lots more photos and information, I just don't want to over load you.

We wanted to make a little gate at the end that is NOT the van end, so we supported the top of it (that will be the top of the door frame) and then built a gate underneath it. In the final view of the NOCC I will put up more details about how and why things are the way that they are.

This is Scarlet testing out the gate for me :) It is not finished, I have to put latches on it, and I am thinking about putting a spring on the inside so it automatically closes, fancy eh? :)

So that is the stage we are up to now, we are about to go and keep going. The shade cloth is up, a gate is up, the wire is looking good, nearly done! :)

I hope that you all enjoy the progress of this, I will let you know how it goes, but here are some other photos from the helpers that we have had so far in the project.

Scarlet on a coffee break, it is hard work supervising all the humans!

Robin was around a lot to ensure that the quality of the wood met her high standards!

And Charlie made appearances here and there, just to see if we had anything nice that she could eat, the answer was always no.

I hope that you all have a great day, we are going back out there to get this done! Enjoy your life, and be inspired by the beauty around you.

NOCC - a failed attempt

The van 'NOCC' - fail attempt 1

If you remember from an slightly older post I was changing an old van into a chicken coop, well I hit a 'snag'. They say that you learn more in life from failures, but with that said I should be so much smarter by now! :)

So the original idea was:

Using old 1' diameter rural piping (black hoses) we were going to create an arch and lay shade cloth over it, and up the sides run chicken wire attached to the bottom of the shade cloth, so there would be no spaces at all for the little chickens (or guinea fowl right now) to escape. Once we got the shade cloth and got it all up there, the weight of the cloth slowly caused the pipes to bend, once they got to a certain point, there was no stopping it :( Shame, but it is ok, we tried. So now I have two new ideas, and I am in an internal debate about which one to do. I think they will both work, but I am trying to think about all the other projects around the place, I would hate to use something here that I could only use on the next project.

So the two ideas, firstly I could use wood. The support around the van is currently wood, so I was thinking about using more of that. The wood that I am using is from an old shed (2 1/2 car garage) so there is more than enough wood to go around, and it is really nice hard wood. There are star pickets already in place, so I could just attach the wood to the star pickets, make a frame from that and done. Also the wood would be a lot stronger, and would enable us to make easy changes, like adding a hanging water feeder or watering system. 

The other idea is using reclaimed steel poles. These are galvanised steel from an old exterior structure. We are not metal workers, I have nothing to cut something that thick, or to weld on to something like that, but we do have a lot of the 'joiners' that link those kinds of metal poles together (like the supports for a chain link fence). The reason why I have such a big debate in my head, is that those poles would be 100 times stronger, last forever, and never give way, however, with all that said, they might be put to better use on something that needs that kind of structural integrity, not something that just has to hold up shade cloth.

I know what you are thinking "first world problems here!", and you are right, there are people with no wood to spare, and no steel poles just laying around their yard, and this is the reason why I take so long to make a decision, I would hate to waste it when I know there are people out there that could also use it. 

I think that I will use the wood. I have enough reclaimed and saved screws and nails to put it all together, as long as I have wood that is long enough to go the entire length (I could just join, but that always creates a weak point). Also I do feel more confident working with wood, don't get me wrong, I still have no idea what I am doing, but I have a drill and a hand saw - what could go wrong??

So, come Saturday morning, I shall start the process of making a large wooden frame for the new guinea fowl enclosure :) This afternoon (when it gets cooler, it is 30oC (86oF) 45% humidity right now) I will start to move some wood up there, same thing tomorrow after work I will move more and get the area ready, then come Saturday morning, let the drilling, sawing and nailing begin! :) And then hopefully by Sunday morning the guinea fowl are in their new house.

Again to recap, this is what went wrong, the support were not good enough, we used star pickets to support the bottom of the pipes, but the tops where the problem. So we are going to replace the plastic pipes with a wooden frame.

So, until I update you again on this, thank you for laughing at me, and I hope that you all are learning things as I am, and when it comes time for you to do something like this, hopefully you all get it right with minimal problems :)

Enjoy the rest of your day, and be happy with what you are doing in life, generally.

:)