Ten Years.

You are supposed to get tin, lead or aluminium on your tenth wedding anniversary.

Are you serious?
I’ve been married ten years… ten long years, and all I get is a bit of worthless metal?? That can’t be right. Surely Not!

Ten years putting up with each other. Ten years of listening to each other talk, whinge, snore! Ten years of fighting over the doona, and negotiating who has rights over the remote control.

Ten years is a long time, and all you get is tin?

Somehow it doesn’t seem right!

Lucky for me in the last ten years I’ve gotten just a little more than that.

We’ve bought houses, and cars and furniture together. We’ve talked and argued and shared. We’ve been through super crappy sad things, really tough difficult things, and totally amazing wonderful things. We’ve travelled and made a home. We’ve had three (almost four) children. We’ve done so many things… so much more than any bit of tin, aluminium or lead could ever represent.

So I was pleased to get a bunch of roses (ten red ones for each year we’ve been married and four white ones for our children) and take out chinese for dinner on my tenth anniversary. Very pleased indeed.

I may refuse to friend him on facebook but I really do love him.

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Link Love – The Arty Edition

drawn with black fine liner, coloured in photoshop

I have a hankering to do arty stuff at the moment. To sit and draw and doodle and not be stifled by the idea that I am crap at drawing. To paint just for the sheer joy of seeing colours on paper. I’ve been inspired by these links…

Paper cloth at iHana’s Blog - a very cool way to use up paper scraps by gluing them to cotton making a more durable, usable, interesting paper cloth! This is a gorgeous crafty blog with some delish photos and interesting projects so take some time to look around a bit while you are there!

Water Colour Beads from gingerblue.com – oh my how gorgeous are these!?!?!

Zentangles on Squidoo – who knew there was a name and form to doodling little shapey things. Loving this!


Painting Tiles at Artsyville
– wondering if making some of these would be ‘too much’ for one of our newly added bathrooms when we renovate? kitchen splash back maybe?

More arty inspiration at Daisy Yellow

Anyone else inspired to get arty at the moment?

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The Story of Dash the Rooster.

*** This blog post is about killing and processing our own home grown chicken. There is no graphic images, and I don’t describe the process in detail, but if that is not you thing, that’s ok, I understand, click away now ***

In the very early spring of last year Jasmine, our bantam hen, hatched one baby chick. The chick was named Dash, because it ‘dashed about the place’ all the time. We were hoping that Dash was a she, not a he, but as Dash grew and grew and grew it became obvious that Dash was indeed a rooster.

We already have a rooster, his name in Hamlet. He is a beautiful, majestic, placid, black barnevelder rooster and his son Dash quickly grew up to be just like his father. Initially the two boys got along just fine, but recently things became difficult between them. Both crowing and preening for the top position, and both with rather impressive spurs, it was a recipe for disaster.

We simply can not keep two roosters.

Way back when our first chick hatched (sadly mother and baby both died a short time later) we began talking about what we’d do if we got roosters. We explained to the girls why we couldn’t keep more than one rooster and we talked about how we might deal with that. That was the first time we broached the subject of eating our home grown chickens.

We are not vegetarian or vegan. While I respect those who are, it is not for us at this present time. We are, however, trying to be more mindful of what we eat, and how it is grown and prepared. We’ve been working towards eating more whole foods, cooking things from scratch, eating less processed nasties and growing our own food. After some discussion, initially between the adults and later including the big girls, we felt fairly strongly that if we could not kill, process and eat our own home grown animals then we should not be eating animals at all.

We can’t afford to only buy meat from lovely local producers at the farmers market, or even to buy organic meat from the chain supermarkets. What we can do is grow our own chickens, ensure that they have a full and happy life, that they are allowed to be chickens, scratch in the dirt, eat grass and bugs and all kinds of good food, hang out with other chickens and yes… be loved and cared for by us. Not only do I believe that this is infinitely more respectful and humane than how most meat animals are bred and kept, I also think this produces a better quality of food.

So we were firm on what we believed and why, but as Dash got older and as his final day loomed closer, I am not ashamed to admit that The Baldy Boy and I were both a tad apprehensive about the whole she-bang. We put it off for a while, neither of us being able to decide on the perfect day to do the deed…. that is until today.

Today Dash met a quick and humane death. He was plucked, cleaned and processed (I helped but Baldy Boy did most of it) and cooked lovingly (that was my job) and enjoyed by our family.

This is all that is left of our chicken dinner!

So it has been a rather momentous day at the Pickle Farm. We all learnt a LOT. Things we’ll do differently next time, whether or not there will be a next time, and how very different home grown and processed meat is. I had no idea that chicken had loads of fine wispy hair like feathers, nor did I know that their skin is normally a golden yellow (commercial chickens are often bleached to get the creamy white/pink skin). I know I need to get a whole lot better at jointing and cutting up a chicken, but I was surprised at how well we did following online instructions to clean and process the meat.

I know some of you may be horrified at the thought of this, even more so that our children were part of the process (I assume the girls would have been part of the plucking and cleaning, at least to watch, had they not been at school. The Small boy was super interested and watched some of it before he got bored), but I’ve thought long and hard on this. I want my children to know where their food comes from. I want them to understand that when they eat meat, that means that an animal died. I want them to be capable of making truly informed decisions about what they eat.

We did not force them to eat the chicken dinner tonight, I wasn’t even sure how I’d feel about it when it finally came to dinner time. We have been upfront and honest about the whole process from first discussion to plate and I was quite happy for them to just choose veggies, but they didn’t. They commented about the differences, they loved the extra crispy skin and they asked for seconds. They also thanked Dash for a good dinner.

Dinner was good. Different to store bought chicken, but very good.

And who would have thought we inner city dwellers who once thought nothing of living so close to our neighbours we could hear them fart in the shower…. who’d have thought we’d be growing and eating our own chicken one day!?

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Not this one.

It’s early.

Too early for the sun.
Too early even for the birds, which is never a good sign.

I can hear him coughing from across the room. I hope it is just a little tickle and he will go back to sleep but it isn’t. I offer a drink and his dummy and crawl back into my own bed. He keeps coughing and now I can hear him breathing.
That’s never a good sign either.

I bring him into bed with me and listen to his raspy breaths. I can feel his chest heaving with each one.
Really not a good sign.

He settles and sleeps, though he is still working hard to suck in air.
I wait, with him nestled in the crook of my arm.

I run through things in my head.

No raging temperature, just a bit of a cold, nothing life threatening as far as bugs go. But breathing with your whole body, noisy in and out breath, I have seen this before, and it’s really really not a good sign, never good sign.

For a little while I give in to being angry and resentful and play the poor me game.

He is my huge healthy baby, the one that over stayed his welcome on the inside. He is the one who was 100% breastfeed, who’s never had a drop of formula, who’s never seen the inside of a hospital, and only ever seen a Dr for self inflicted head injuries.

Fair enough that the girls get sick like this, and often. It’s not fair and it’s not fun but they knew hospitals and needles and machines that breathed for them well before they knew cuddles and breast milk and home. We are lucky just to have them and we expect a few side effects considering how they got here.

But not this one.
This one isn’t supposed to get sick like this….

It’s official now.
I knew it before we went, but I have it in writing now. We fluked an appointment with a really nice Dr (hoo-freaking-ray for finally finding a decent local GP – now she had better not leave!) who told me what I already knew – this is asthma. Illness induced asthma, just like the girls have.

It’s not the end of the world.
I know the drill well, we’ve got it down to a fine art.
It’s just when the protocol doesn’t work so great and I have to make that decision – to stay or to go, that’s what gets to me.

That, and the fact that this one isn’t supposed to get asthma.

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I’ve got nothing.

Seriously… I’ve got nothing people.

Zip, nothing, not one little thing.

Nothing interesting, profound, funny or even embarrassing to say.

I could entertain you all with stories of my day so far….

I’ve taken the girls to school, done 20 minutes at the park with Muski, a quick shop then home to let the chooks out, clean the kitchen, and cook dinner. I’ve also picked some rhubarb, stewed some apples along with the rhubarb, changed over the toys in the living room and built legos. I vacuumed behind the couch for the first time in ages (ah the things I find behind that couch!) then I mopped with a detol solution in a vain attempt to deter the blasted millipedes

Now I am running off to pick up the girls, home for a snack, change into ballet clothes and off to ballet and tap. Home just in time for dinner, then bath and bed….

So you see my life hasn’t exactly been blog worthy today.

Today of all days too when I am trying hard to write something amazing to impress all the wonderful people who are stopping by from Sleepless Nights since Veronica was kind (or stupid) enough to pick me as a winning entry in her advertising competition.

I know all of you who read Sleepless Nights are used to a far higher standard or writing and subject matter than this here little blog post, but today is Mental Monday and I just can’t manage it.

I promise I’ll try better tomorrow.

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