Today I had my very first go at dehydrating – pretty exciting stuff I tell ya!!
Ok, so it might not be what gets your average Joe or Jill excited, but I can think of endless possibilities with being able to successfully dehydrate stuff.
One of those is not running out of stuff so often – because you think you have some of whatever-it-is-you-need, in the depths of the freezer someplace…but one of the biggies I can see, will be storage.
We are a family who are very big fans of one-pot-meals, especially when things get busy.
Those one-pot-meals often contain a lot of varieties of vegies, as its a really easy way to ensure we’re getting something nutritious into us.
We are also a Family who will soon be moving into a 63 square metre space – which will have very limited storage.
Part of that limited storage, is not having endless freezer space, and one of the things that takes up a truck-load of room in our freezer, is vegies.
Whether store-bought; or vegies that have been home-grown and then frozen during a glut – they take up a lot of valuable freezer space!
So we’re saving space where we can – and this is just one of those places – food storage.
I gotta tell ya – this is waaaay cool!
2kg of mixed vegies, and about 400g of mushroom, all shrunk down to 4 jars.
And I could have easily done it in two, but as shelf storage in the kitchen isn’t an issue quite yet, I decided on one jar of each for storage, and one jar of each for current use.
I think I’m going to be doing quite a bit of this dehydrating lark, as its a wonderful way to stockpile food goodness 🙂
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Sitting in the dehydrator, ready to be processed.All nice and dryyyyy2kg of mixed vegies.2kg of mixed vegies, and about 400g of mushrooms – all shrunk down to THIS! Pretty cool huh!?!?!!
As I’ve said before – I’m at the point in my Life now where there’s some things that have taken on more importance than others…one of those things is my OWN happiness.
I’ve worked at my current job for almost 9 years now, and have worked my way up about as far as I am able to, with the way that this particular business is structured.
I’m also at the stage where I am no longer enjoying my job – a job I used to love.
Because of that, I have scaled right back and have gone from working 5 or 6 shifts a week, down to two – and for a day either side of those two days, I’m either talking myself into going to work, or ‘recovering’ from the mental and emotional load that’s has come from being at work.
Additionally, my workload responsibilities have increased dramatically in the last 4 years, but the pay rate has remained static, other than the obligatory CPI increases.
It’s just not an ideal way to ‘waste’ 4 days a week…
As far as I’m concerned, there a lot more useful and productive ways I could be spending my time – and that’s my goal at the moment.
I’m hoping that by the end of the year, I will be able to resign/retire from work – and once again be a full-time House Spouse.
My Love and I have discussed this in depth, and we’re pretty sure that once the house in town has sold – well be able to swing it!
I am currently earning less each month than the mortgage payments on the house in town, so with that mortgage gone, we’d actually still be ‘ahead’, even without my wage!!
Life is not static, no experience (pleasure or pain) permanent, but for now – I simply have to live it, and make the best of it that I can – whilst working toward and preparing for being able to move to the Farm full time; leave work, take up my role of full-time House Spouse, and continue to grow the Life I want and need…
When I’m making this particular one, I think the flavour is improved by using roast chicken – but (a) I don’t have the time or patience to pre-roast chickens at the moment, and (b) buying a roast chicken from the supermarket every time I want to make a curry would work out more expensive than buying a curry from the takeaway shop!
Soooo – what I do is this: our supermarket often has a ‘sale’ on their roasted chickens right before the next lot come out of the oven, (I’ve become pretty good at learning the timing of that!) and they mark them down to about a quarter of the price.
So I buy 2 or 4, depending on freezer space, take them home, pull them all apart, make up meal sized portions, and date-stamp them before popping the lot in the freezer.
Then – whenever I want something to have roasted chicken in it – whether it’s a salad, a curry, or a pasta dish – it’s just a matter of grabbing a bag out of the freezer.
Super simple, super frugal – & super tasty! 😁
Green beans, baby kiflers, and a portion of frozen roasted chicken – all waiting to be added to the pot to become a yummy chicken curry!
There’s no two ways about it…I’m a coffee junkie!!
A usual day for me is at least 4 cups — 6+ if I’m at work.
BUT – I very rarely buy takeaway coffee.
Theres two reasons…
I make a great cup of coffee – even if I do say so myself – so I’m more than a bit of a coffee snob but even more than that, I’m a coffee CUP snob!
Takeaway coffee can be dodgy at the best of times – unless you get it from a regular place, with a regular barista – but it realllllly shits me paying up to $5 for something I can make for about 40c at home, which I know will taste great every time.
But what irks me even more, is takeaway cups!!
They are shit for the environment, and to cap it off, they usually taste like shit too…!
My preferred coffee cup is a double-walled stainless thermos type, with a closable lid – to keep my coffee hot hot HOT.
I soooo don’t like lukewarm coffee. lol
Last weekend, I somehow left alllll of my stainless cups out at the Farm – which meant that I had to use one of my other ‘travel’ cups for work this week – and it darn near killed me!
My coffee didn’t stay hot for longer than a half hour, and the coffee certainly didn’t taste as ‘good’ as it usually does.
It may well have been psychosomatic – but thats totally irrelevant!! lol
Soooo – I planned to duck out to the Farm this morning before going to the supermarket, to drop stuff off that I’d packed in the car earlier in the week; and intended to grab one of my cups while I was there…which of course I got sidetracked with unpacking stuff and forgot all about – until I got to the supermarket, and went to take a quick slug of coffee before going in, and was greeted with a mouthful of tepid coffee from the non-stainless travel cup. BLERCH!!!!
And this is how I ended up with another beautiful double-walled stainless cup…
Needless to say – I got home from the supermarket, unpacked the groceries while the kettle was on to boil, washed out my gorgeous new cup, then promptly made myself a delicious hot cup of coffee, in my new cup, in celebration.
Ahhhhhh – its gooood..!
I usually have purple cups, but this one just looked too unusual and delicious!
Back in the middle of last year, we bought 1.5ac in the foothills outside of town, in a beautiful part of the northern Queensland Tablelands.
You can read about that over at the Strigidae Farm blog, so that I’m not wasting time by rewriting about it here. 🙂
So – for the last 8 months or so, we’ve been slowly working our way into making the shed a home, and getting our house in town presentable for sale.
Whilst most of it has been very enjoyable, it’s also been difficult.
My darling Spouse works a lot – and works long hours – pretty much 7 days a week, and loves the job with obsessive passion.
I only work a couple of days a week, and am now at the point of being very ready to wave goodbye to my job – and I’ll talk more about that decision later…
Up until mid last year, we used to take to breaks of about 3 weeks each, every 5-6 months – but since we found the Farm, we’ve decided that for the time being, all our finances and energy needs to be directed toward the goal of moving there permanently.
This won’t be able to last for the long term, as the only time my Love can really relax is when we are out of the country – so I think this is a decision that is going to need to be revisited…
We tried to do a ‘stay at home’ holiday in December, and it lasted about 3 days before she was back at work 😐 – and even though she adores her work – she needs a break…!
Anyways – back to the process of preparing for moving from house to farm – and the difficulties therein.
We’ve been slowly doing the shed conversion – and it now resembles a home enough that we could pretty much happily move in tomorrow.
The only things we don’t have, that the ‘normal’ home has is septic, and running water inside.
We currently use a system of buckets and jugs for water inside, we have a camp shower under an awning outside (which we love love love!), we do dishes outside under the awning also – which I’ve spoken about in another article, and we have a portable camping loo – which currently needs emptying every couple of weeks – but if we were there full-time, it would need emptying weekly.
I am the loo emptier – as my Love just doesn’t have the stomach for it.
Just the thought of it, and the facial colour changes, and the gagging starts.
Its pretty funny actually!
Emptying it doesn’t bother me in the least – and we are lucky to have a designated dump-point in town, which is free.
Oh yeah – the other thing we actually do needto be able to move out full-time, is to finish the fencing for the house yard, as we can’t bring our small dogs out until that’s done – or they’d just wander off and go make friends with the neighborhood – which probably doesn’t want them as friends. lol
Now this is where some of the difficulties come into play…
I am not in the most fabulous of health or physical condition – and some of the things that need to get done are just beyond me.
I also have a very small car, so the likes of moving furniture, just aren’t a physical or logistical possibility.
All I can contribute to that chore, is moving what I can to the patio at the house in town, so that it can be loaded in my Loves truck, and bought out.
And therein lies another couple of the problems.
a) I pretty much can’t help with carrying anything heavy down the stairs
b) the truck is almost never bloody home, to be able to put stuff into – and when it is home – there is no one around to help my Love get the stuff down the stairs and into the truck!
Aggghhhh!
I can help at the other end – cos the Farm is flat – so I don’t have to be wrangling stairs…
I’ve managed a lot of the packing of things like books, linen, clothing, and general ‘stuff’, and have been able to bring a lot of that out on my own.
Each time I come out, I load the car up as much as I can – so that the trip isn’t a ‘wasted’ opportunity.
But then there is the problem of not having anywhere to put stuff we need, once I get it to the Farm, because all of our drawers, cupboards, etc are still at the house.
Its ok with the stuff we can store – like books, blankets and winter clothing – as we have a storage container – but there just isn’t any place inside our Farmhouse to put stuff, (except for the kitchen shelving) – other than on the floor!
When you are living in a 9 metre by 7 metre space, one of the last things you need is stuff stacked up all over the already limited floor space.
Besides – I would quickly go a special kind of demented at the mess of it all…!
Soooo – we have still yet to find a work-around for that particular dilemma, but hopefully lotto will land on the doorstep – and I’ll just hire someone to come move everything. lol
At the moment, we also have a friend coming to the house in town, to do some of the bigger jobs that need doing prior to sale.
A lot of the little stuff I can do myself – but until the big jobs are done, and the majority of the “stuff” is out of the house – the just isn’t any point in getting into the little jobs – as a lot of them (like deep cleaning) will just need doing again once the building, sanding, painting, repairing etc has been completed.
And there’s no point cleaning to do the painting, until all the repairs are done.
Catch 22 again…
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Soon(ish), I will tell you about the plans we have for the gardens on the Farm.
There’s nothing quite like a productive (& pretty!) garden to make you feel more centered and relaxed 🙂
And remember, if you’re enjoying Simple Life Farmer, please sign up to have updates sent directly to you.
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I hope you do 🙂
Until next time, look after YOU!
Our bottom paddockBack when we first started converting the shed into our home. Here, we are putting in two sliding-glass doors – on either side of the huge window in the centre.
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