About

The Author

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I've always suspected that I was a hippy at heart. Though many of my hobbies are the indoors kind (reading and video games, with a fairly recent foray into crafts like knitting and embroidery) I've always felt an urge to be in nature. When we lived on a property with a huge, decades-overgrown garden I enjoyed nothing so much as crawling through it and exploring the lovely nooks and niches. Nothing has tasted as good to me as the fresh-picked homegrown corn of my childhood, and few memories are as vivid as those of the times I spent outdoors with my siblings - stalking each other in night-dark paddocks, climbing through the branches of a gnarled pepper tree, or the various cubby-houses we made with abandoned brick outlines or low-hanging tree branches.

Now that I'm old enough to be In Charge Of Things (and not just a resident in my parents' home) I've found that I can't get enough of the more eco-friendly aspects. Recycling, composting and vegetable gardening are important parts of my life. I peek out at the garden every time I pass a window, and every day I look forward to crouching down beside the garden beds and seeing what has changed since the day before. And you know what? Something always has!

I'm hoping to try my hand at all sorts of 'old-fashioned' things - making my own jams and sauces, pickling and preserving, and as many garden-grown meals as I can come up with. And hopefully, as I go, I'll learn enough about what I'm doing that I won't have to stare in dismay at another yellow and wilting plant without knowing why it's failing!

The Blog
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I decided to start this blog as a place to chronicle my accomplishments (and failures) - not only for myself and the sake of posterity, but also so that perhaps other absolute beginners like myself can one day learn from my mistakes. So many of the lifestyle blogs I find are full of inspiring success, and that's great! But it also isn't something I can learn from when my own efforts are less successful.

So this will be a record of all my homestead-y pursuits: the garden, my adventures in using and storing what I grow, and the things that I make with yarn and thread, too. Because it feels really good to create things instead of just buying them, and I want to show other people how nice (and entirely achievable!) that can be.

Contact Me
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If you find anything you read here interesting or inspiring, please feel free to leave a comment or use the contact form on the sidebar. Even better - if I get something wrong, or you have some advice, definitely let me know. This is all about the learning process and I'm constantly seeking new sources of information and help!