this could work ??

OK I have just found this recipe online however I don't buy milk we only use powdered milk at home so I'm assuming I will just make four cups of powdered milk as per instructions on milk powder packet and then add the required amount of extra milk powder.  Also I don't own a cooking thermometer just a family thermometer for when we are sick I don't think I want to use this and I think it might not be suitable for use at those temperatures anyway, Do I really need a thermometer has anyone made yogurt without one ?? Off course next year I would like to be making our yogurt using goat milk but that is a wee way away so I think I need to figure this out for now and worry about that later . 

Homemade Yogurt Recipe

4 cups of fresh, organic 2% milk
1/3 cup of powdered milk
1/2 cup organic yogurt (this will be your starter)

Making yogurt begins with milk. Readers of 101 Cookbooks will not be surprised with the advice to buy organic milk that is fresh as possible. Slowly heat the milk on the stove over low-medium heat.

At this point you can choose to add powdered milk. Powdered milk creates thicker yogurt that takes less time to ferment. It's optional if you are using whole milk or two percent. Some skim and one percent milk include added milk proteins which make the product taste less watery and will behave the same way as if you added powdered milk.

For your first batch we are going to go with two-percent milk plus 1/3 cup of powdered milk. This combination of milk with the powder will produce a delicious, basic yogurt.

The most tedious thing about making yogurt is watching the milk get hot. You need it to hit 170 degrees, but not have it boil. So you want to pay attention to the pot and have a thermometer at hand. Once you've hit the target temperature, remove from heat and then wait for the milk to cool. Unless you put the pot in the refrigerator it will take some time to cool to 108-112 degrees.

If you are using existing yogurt as a starter, have it handy in a cup. When the milk is cooled to the proper temperature, mix a small amount it in with the yogurt. This will break up the yogurt and makes blending it with the rest of the milk easier. Once you add the starter, the milk can be placed in the pre-heated yogurt maker for four to eight hours. Refrigerate before serving. Makes one quart.

 A little mini update on food from home while I'm here. Still no chickens laying. We haven't eaten any roosters yet. We haven't eaten Billy(Goat) yet. My silverbeet is still awesome and we eat that regulary. One carrot grew but it took months and tasted horrible. I pulled out all the broccoli as it was covered in greeen catterpillars. The accidental Tomatoes are still growing under the pohutakawa tree , we have eaten one and it was a bit soft not quite the right texture. We still have four or five pumpkins to eat from my vine and they are lovely. Tree's we have planted are Tamarilo, Fejoia, Lime, Lemon, Orange, No fruit yet obviously. Although playcentre has a lovely hedge of fejoa tree's and we always take a bag home and the boys eat them whole .
Home made bread is the staple carbohydrate in our house along with home popped popcorn. I am going to buy one sack of wholemeal and one sack of white when our flour runs out and start making 50/50 bread with the idea of maybe moving to full wholemeal bread once we are used to that.
As you know homemade yoghurt is a work in progress and homemade cheese will start when we have a nanny goat.
The sheep should be here soon and we can start eating them next year. Need to keep talking to neighbors about who is killing what when with the hope of getting some home-kill meat in the freezer, just need to get the cash behind us to be able to spend a few hundred on meat in one hit rather than drizzling it away at the supermarket every week. 
So still buying groceries every week but the bill has decreased and the amount of packaging is getting lower.

I had a little case of feeling sorry for myself yesterday when visiting friends in Mairangi bay because they are able to walk to the park or the beach. Yes I miss footpaths , but we are able to do more at home so I guess Either way you can't have it all. There are positives and negatives to living rural or living in suburbia. Yes Fin is not so great as his suburban friends on his scooter but he is probably much better at feeding chickens and wearing bare feet on rocks or running in long grass. But ahhh how I longed to have the freedom to leave the house without jumping in the car.

 I am also considering a little project called an AFM,  auckland free month. Off course Nev will still go there everyday for work but I would not be going there for any visits that would force us to do more around the house on weekends and enjoy more of the local area. Save petrol money and reduce my big fat carbon footprint in the car.

Still hunting for part time work , Trying to remain positive I won't keep count of how many jobs I don't get because I only really need to get one .

Yoghurt

Wee hee I've made my first batch of yoghurt yum! Definatley the way foward I think packets to make yoghurt from are about $2 cheaper than yoghurt. Although I really need to learn how to make it properly from old yoghurt plus milk I think , will do some research and hopefully not food poison myself in the process.

My next food stuff to takle is going to be hummus the boys love it so if I can figure out how to make tasty stuff myself that's an easy quick snack for everyone.

This will be our first winter in the new house so it should be interesting to see how we go as we haven't installed a heat pump or fire place, we have a couple of those horrible column heaters,  hopefully we won't need to use them. Last winter Fin was suffering from asthma like attacks at night time so it will be interesting to see if he suffers again this year. He was never officially diagnosed as an asthmatic but he was prescribed an inhaler and did wake during the night unable to breath properly. We were however living in a damp cold home so it will be interesting to see how his health goes this year. 

Goats and Chickens are fine. Nev finds the occasional chicken on the wrong side of the fence and clips it's wing and then sends it back over the fence.  The sheep are not here yet but I'm looking foward to their arrival, the paddoks look a mess with long long grass everywhere. My dirt pile is probably about one third left after building my second garden under the front window frame, I won't photograph it until Nev and I have moved some logs up to frame it it looks a bit scruffy at the moment. I think the projects might slow down a bit over the winter as it really is quite windy and freezing in our little valley.

anyone need a kayak ??? Nev is popping it on trade-me this week

Compact year.......

Right looks like we are officially trendy and there is a word for us ! and a whole group of Americans did the same thing so it must be cool. I think they called it 'the compact year'. The basic idea being that you go a year without buying anything new, aside from food and toiletries.

I made my decision that I don't need to buy anything new for a year at my second consecutive weekend attending school galas. So much stuff that is still perfectly fine that people don't need/want any more. I filled two bags of kitchen bits and two bags of books for $4.00 , there were also a couple of rooms full of clothing and being a pretty average sized women I'm pretty sure I would have easily been able to fill a couple of bags in there too.

It's not going to be a true family year compacting because I'm guessing Nev is still going to buy his clothes new, but he's very tall and there tend not to be so many second hand clothes for men as there are for women. Men are more likely to avoid shopping at all costs and wear favorites until they die. Women however see shopping for new clothes as a hobbies so it's pretty easy to pick up near new items for me. I think the kids pretty much already live on hand me downs anyway, they are already so cool and living the compact life.

Speaking of Nev he has made the decision to sell his kayak , and spend the cash on wood for planter boxes, and a telly. Sad day for the kayak but as he pointed out he doesn't have time to use it anymore and it will just sit around and get sun damage anyway so might as well sell it while it's still worth a little bit. It will be really nice to get the planter boxes built around the deck as that will be the last of the clay gone before winter , hooray ! I'm also pretty excited about a telly too as apparently you can buy a little box for fairly cheap so that you can plug your external hard drive straight into your telly. So I can sit in the lounge and watch the telly all evening and Nev can sit in his office and play on his computer undisturbed all evening, ahhh married life.  

Nev and Charlie have just come out the other side of a cold and are both doing much better. I'm just starting to feel a bit run down so hope I can avoid it and Fins seems to be a bit whingey but one can never be sure if he's actually any worse than normal because he's sick or if I'm just less tolerant of his three year old whingeyness than usual as I'm feeling less than 100% .

Charlie wanting to help Fin and Soph's in the kitchen baking biscuits, I should have taken a photo from behind the bench too, he is standing on this little hippo footstool awww.

May I please be excused I am going for a poo

No that isn't why i've missed a week of blogging just Fins coolest saying at the moment that I wanted to share.
We missed last week because I was slack at the start of the week and than Nev took the computer away to a party with him over the weekend. 


Still busy applying for jobs no luck yet but will keep trying, rejection is stink. I don't think I have ever really had this much trouble looking for work before but that was before I moved to the middle of nowhere and had two dependent children. I'm probably not as attractive a perspective employee as I used to be. Will keep pursuing homebased child care and also look into taking on a lodger . These options are still limited by locality but I feel I might have some luck eventually . Currently doing a bit of a sell on trademe, It's great to know we are not having any more kids so as soon as Charlie grows out of anything I can get rid of it I guess selling things isn't the greatest answer to raising cash because eventually I might run out of stuff..... I will think about that when it happens.


The house is going well Chickens and goats are all behaving and staying where they should be. Nev took Fin to milk a neighbours goat the other night and they bought home 1 ltr of Goat milk both the boys drank it happily so that was good to know they do like it before we go and kid Jean and turn her into a milking goat. Chickens are still lovely .. no eggs yet ... I suspect we may not get eggs until spring or summer because they are just about to reach the age of lay about 5mnths but the days are also getting colder and darker and I think they need 16hrs of daylight to lay. The little black bantam is the tamest of all and apparently she flew onto Nev's shoulder the other night.

I am part way though my garden under the window I just need my lovely husbands help to move up the big logs from the log pile to use as frames and than I can plant some lovely little plants I picked up at the local kindergarten gala on the weekend. Small town gala's and fairs are fantastic, I had the lovely nanny with me and the lovely young Soph. Everyone had a great time purchasing toys and clothes for around 10c a piece and the highlight of the day was the fire Engine ride for $1 !!  Great economic way to take small children out for the day.

I also made my first batch of Laurie bread the other day yum ! Butter instead of oil is certainly the way foward. Made a couple of batches of fejoia Jam too, not sure if I'm a big fan or not but I don't love fejoia's either , will just carry on making Jam's out of whatever fruits happen to be in season and being given away or sold ridiculously cheap.

work ??

Neville is just completing his fourth chicken house building ! Goodness me he will be able to start his own business soon. We have just put the teenage chickens in with the first lot of chickens and it is going really well. Mum the old Bantam is beating anyone who comes anywhere near any of her babies so they should all be fine. We wont be purchasing any more fertilised Eggs from the Internet now just breeding our own. Although in saying that I'm not sure how old a rooster needs to be before he can fertilise an egg .. maybe I will double check that before I make any commitments. The first bunch of chicks we will try and hatch will be bantams because they are such good little mums and go broody every five minutes, some for us and some for the folk further north.
Even though none of our chooks are laying at the moment I am really enjoying having chickens. Even if I ever have to move back to the burbs I will make sure to have a couple of chickens in the back yard they make lovely pets and are the best little waste disposal units for kitchen scraps.

I'm currently on the search for part time work and did some CV dropping last week just shop work a couple of nights a week and a day of the weekend. I hope I hear back from somebody . I'm really looking forward to having somewhere to be a few days a week and bringing in a little bit of cash of my own even if it's only a little it will be nice to be bringing home some bacon of my own. I am really enjoying spending the little bacon I do on locally grown produce at the moment at a honesty box type arrangement up the road. My silver beet is on the table most nights and pumpkin is making a fairly regular appearance on the menu too.

Finley is well, the brother bashing has all but ended and the whinging is on the decrease. The new sneaky trick is to squash the brother or hold onto an arm or a leg so we will need to get tough on these too.

Charlie has reached an age of trying to be fussy. I'm doing my best to ignore this in the hope that he gets over it when he figures out he is still hungry and he's not going to get anything else just because he is silly enough to spit the food offered back out. Fin is the opposite at the moment eating a ridiculous amount of food , he started his day with four weetbix this morning just to give you an idea of the portions this small man is consuming.

I've also got to say I'm really enjoying not having a dog at the moment. Dogs are kind of messy , and they require quite a bit of time .....  but ....... wasn't she lovely

Gardens gardens gardens

As the title suggests it's gardening time. My beautiful triangle is beautiful but I have decided I want a nice little garden under the front window and to start shelter belting. My under window garden progress so far has involved digging up some rocks (metal) what ever you want to call it. I now need to get Nev to help me move up some logs from the wood pile to use as framing and then start filling it in from the ready compost that has accumulated in the same pile (that must be why we haven't done anything about that pile of logs for the last three years). My shelter belt preparation so far has involved instructing Nev to leave his grass clipping piles next to the fence line. Granddad will be bringing the plum tree cuttings some time in the autumn perfect time to plant. I will then need to source some bark to scatter underneath to avoid needing to weed or needing to keep bother Nev about where to put his grass clippings. I also really really need to start killing the grass on the wrong side of my triangle garden as this really should be driveway and looks very scruffy.

Big money projects coming up in order are sheep, planter boxes. The sheep will arrive next month wowee 10 sheep. Four to fatten and 6 to start a heard from. Luckily we have a good neighbour who is pointing us in the right direction along the lines of what our acerage can support etc etc.

Planter boxes will be a biggie in smartening the place up as the will cover up the final clay spaces !! and we will trellis the back of the one on the side of the house to block out the veiw  of our working area, septic system, water tanks, chicken housing, compost bin, incenerator. All the ugly stuff that you need. Will photograph ugly area's for you next week but I assure you the whole lot just looks a bit scruffy.

On the note of spending all this money, I am still searching for part time work here is my advertisement on a local website . I also need to get my bottom down to this puhoi playgroup I keep blabbing on about and put up a little add there too. I am still looking through trademe and seek from time to time but there really doesn't seem to be much that interests me. I'm looking to either start doing more home based childcare or maybe a part time job say one evening and one weekend day. I guess I'm being quite fussy but I really have no interest in paying someone else my intire wage to look after my children so that I can go and work in a dead end job.

Quick family update. Fin is good our current big battle is the whinge , we have decided to adopt a no tolerance policy either stop that noise or go to your room because nobody wants to hear it. Hopefully it works better than the previous approach which was todays pc parenting advice of ignore the negative behaivour, (translation ignore it for as long as you possibly can before your head finally explodes due to listening to someone whinge and whine and generally make much unpleasant noise for 99.9% of their waking hours and then you shout at them and have a little tantrum all of your own to add to the atmosphere of the household.)

Charlie is still mainly crawling with the occasional few steps when he's certain he has an audience. He also applauds himself and says wow over and over every time he does this.

Nev is well a little stressed about money or rather lack of money.

missing marble

We're back. After the madness that was Fins big day we decided it might be nice to escape for the rest of the week. We ventured even further north . To visit family and friends. At the start of ninety mile beach is a fantastic spot we might as well have been in Rarotonga the humid air the banana trees and the quiet quiet streets, yes we were lucky enough to miss all the Christmas new year holiday crowds. Finley had his first driving lesson. Yes with dad not me steering an ATV on the sand. Not something I would even think to show Fin to do but he understood what was going on and did a great job, ah the joys of boys. Charlie was his usual self at the beach and crawled as fast as he could in which ever direction took his fancy not one to be deterred by a little something called a surf beach.

opse looks like I didn't get a shot of Fin driving exciting that he fell asleep he found it so exciting that he fell asleep


Then our surprise visit to the family farm where progress has been great the gardens put my garden to shame and make me want to get digging and planting,  when I see the vast nirvana's that have been created in such a short time by my industrious relatives. My fathers orchids which could feed the local school over summer, the happy chickens the bonny pigs. Ahhh the good life in the real north our queen street farmer eyes were green with envy. Upon questioning on our return Fin revealed his favourite part of his holiday was 'grandma glens house' upon further questioning 'what did you do there' the response was 'eating coco puffs' hmmmmmm I'm sure that wasn't really his highlight of the holiday but there you are apparently it was memorable . He was most impressed by young Dash a dog whom actually returns the ball when you throw it, he was also very interested feeding the fish in the pond oh boy I think we need a pond. Young Charlie decided to show us all his first steps on the last evening of the visit. Charlie also snuck home a little souvenir from grandads house revealed on our first evening home a blue marble in the nappy.

Project for this week include weeding my garden and putting down a band of something around the inside of fence in preparation for shelter belt planting probably just some cardboard and tarpaulin just to kill all the grass and weeds it will have to be a rather wide band as I don't want to plant to close to the fence as otherwise sheep or cows or horses or whoever happens to be munching the grass in the paddocks might help themselves to a little of what ever I plant.

Nevs projects are still fly screen construction and chicken house building. How ever the lack of funds will mean he will have to be very creative and use what ever we have around the home, more fun that way I say.

My brain is a little tired this morning after the late night arrival home on Saturday and the preformance that was Fin's sleep last night. I think he quite enjoyed sharing a bed with dad on holiday as last night he woke from 2 till 4 just lying on the floor whinging I'm not one to do night service to children unless it's life or death so needless to say I was not happy . Only to wake this morning and find all the coffee drank. Luckily for me I like to take home all the coffee teas and soaps from hotels. I had one packet of instant coffee left and have since had three decafs. I love my sleep and I love my coffee so feeling hopeful about an afternoon nap today and my dariling husband bringing home some more coffee for me.