Last year I decided to expand my gardening prowess from my normal repertoire of things that never seemed to grow, and I never seemed to eat. For instance, I grew silver beet, lots of it, but don’t really have any recipes gagging for silver beet, and I still have some childhood horror stories of the…

Ok, I have been blogging for a few months now, so I think I can open up to you. It’s time we got down and dirty and I confess something…something some of you may already know, but some of you may not. Maybe I should feel embarrassed by this, but I am not. I can…

While on our Honeymoon, Tom and I had an introduction to wood-fired pizzas. Can I just say that once you have tried homemade food that is wood-fired, it’s hard to look back at anything else. So, a few years later, when we finally had the priviledge to design our own backyard, it was the key feature we decided…

Day 1 Step 1: Build the oven floor To build the oven floor:

If you want a good wood-fired oven – you have to insulate it, and insulate it well! A well insulated oven can reach temperatures of 500-700 degrees C on the inside. Let’s just say, you can’t achieve or maintain that kind of heat if you don’t.

The final day is the fun part. You get to put your own artistic touches to the oven (and if you don’t have any arty bones in your body – you can always paint).

I think Opa Gerrit an amazing man. He grows all of his own vegetables. His vegetable garden is probably twice the size of my backyard (maybe 6 metres by 30 metres), and all year round he tends it. He has the ‘deep smarts’ about growing food that the next generation has completely lost.

My sister-in-law Rose is the nicest sister-in-law you could ask for. I am actually very surprised that my brother managed to woo her – seeing all he was capable of with me and my sisters involved experimenting on scientific theories involving electric charges.

A member of my permaculture group, Jenny, offered some of her cherry plums for the picking yesterday, so this morning we found ourselves in Diamond Creek bright and early. Today is forecast to be 39 degrees C, so we tried to beat the heat. I have never picked plums before (not that it’s difficult), nor…

One of my closest friends Anna dropped by the other day and amongst other things we discussed why most of us are lured into buying ‘ready made’ products and solutions. Anna and I have been friends for a long time, and we have both made heavy use of modern day solutions – especially when we…