Finance Approved!

After a few months of trying to sort out a few things financially, the bank has finally approved our loan to buy our new home. Yay! Our dream of living on a big block of land is only a short while off.

We have agreed for the current owners to remain in the property after the settlement has gone through, although this was only because we've brought privately (direct from the owners) who are an elderly couple wanting to downsize. They weren't expecting to sell for another 2 years, so haven't found somewhere yet. Now that we've got finance approved though, I suspect that they will want to move into a new property themselves fairly soon.

Part of the original plan was to sell our other home in Perth to free up some cash. Unfortunately we couldn't get a good price, so plan B is to rent that one out, and then live in this new home (we've been renting here in the meantime). Financially it will only cost around $100 a week more (worst case scenario in 30 years we'll own it outright), but it is really about the non-financial reasons that we're buying (big garden, we can do what we like to the house, settling down permanently in Victoria).

On the gardening front, it's also the first time that I've been able to plan a garden quite like this one. Our other gardens have been more a default setting - either the previous owners had it set up one way, or we didn't have the space to have much choice. This time we've got a stack of options, so can really consider many more aspects.

I'll post something shortly to show some past gardens that we've had, and I'll post another time to explain the set up of our new garden.

While we won't be handing over the cash any time soon (or rather, borrowing from the bank), it will be a stretch on our budget compared to what we've been able to do in recent years, so for now it's about settling into a routine and budget that we'll be having to live to shortly. And as part of that routine, I'm off to plant some seedlings out into our winter vege garden here!

Budget (Home Made) Pizza

Time for a confession - I'm a definite pizza fanatic. One of my first jobs was delivering pizzas, and through that I got to learn the pizza making process. If was also a money saver. During our first years of marriage, I was working part time, and with my wife's low income position (Office Junior) our combined income was around $20k per year. Pizza's that weren't fit for customer's consumption became a staple in our house for free meals!

Since that time, things have improved (thankfully)! Whenever we've travelled, sampling local pizza has always been a priority to me - along with other foods of course. A highlight was a few years ago when I was in Chicago and got to experience Chicago-style pizza at Pizzeria Due on the North Side. It's a deep pan pizza, but can not compare to Australian deep pan pizza.

I've previously come across a recipe for a Chicago-style pizza dough, and have made it before with moderate levels of success. Today I thought that I'd give it another go. From a budget perspective, I made two pizzas for maybe around $4 using the following ingredients.Plus added water...

I deviated from the recipe a little, but basically started with activating the yeast by adding to warm water and sugar. If you do that a few minutes before combining with the flour, salt and cornflour, then you end up with a a foamy mix of water and yeast.


By gradually adding the liquid ingredients to the mix, you end up with your dough. It's still not perfectly mixed, but a few minutes of kneading the dough helps with that process. Then you simply roll into a ball and leave for an hour approximately until the dough ball is roughly double in size.
Strictly, this recipe makes one base, but for the sake of spreading the dough a little further, it is more than satisfactory if you half the dough and make two bases. They still ended up almost a centimetre (a third of an inch) thick. After splitting in half, roll the doughs out to slightly larger than the pan, as they will shrink a little. I also pinch the edges, which helps form a great crust (poke the base with a fork a bit so that it doesn't rise or bubble too much also).
Parbake the bases for around 5 minutes in a hot (220C) oven, and then you can get the toppings on. True Chicago-style pizza toppings would be easiest to describe as being and upside down pizza on a pie - it's literally like the cheese and toppings are on the base, then the sauce (which is like a napolitana sauce on the top. While the sauce is quite "wet" compared to regular pizza sauce, it really combines well with the pizza dough soaking up the moisture. If I haven't done it justice in this description - you'll have to go to Chicago to experience it yourself!

The pizzas I made today were fairly straight forward. One bacon and pineapple for the kids, and one with bacon, chicken, onion and avocado for the parents. A fantastic meal, and there's leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Plus, it was only $4, not $12-15 per pizza that we would have paid tonight in town.

Growing the Strawberry Collection

As we prepare for our move to our new home, one thing that I'd love to grow more of are strawberries. Our kids go crazy for them, and can easily eat around 200grams (1/2 pound) a day if allowed. While I've grown a few plants in our current home, these don't provide much of a harvest. In keeping with the simple/affordable living focus of this blog, I've decided to grow more plants off the runners. As a result, we now have almost 30 plants.

I started with the original plants in small pots, and then lined up window boxes for the runners to grow into. These were filled with premium potting mix to encourage the runners to grow roots quickly. The runners are the reddish/brownish lengths of plant between the plants in the photo below.The first step is to simply cut the runners off. While you could do this a lot earlier than I have, leaving them a bit longer allows the roots to establish quite well. Otherwise, you may find that the plant doesn't survive.


Next you lift the individual plants out. In this case I'm using some old pots that I've still got around, but some other plants I've transplanted this year I've used milk pots. These pots I'm using this time around aren't ideal, but I figure that this is temporary until I can establish a permanent strawberry bed in our new home.
With the ten plants that I replanted today, I've now got 27 plants (off the initial 3). I'm pretty happy with that many (great starting point for next summer, although some plants look like they're fruiting already), but I'll probably buy a few more plants next summer to work as replacement stock and keep that supply going! From a budget perspective, the plants cost around $2 each initially, so now my unit cost is down to around 25c!

Grape Propagation

Our family has just bought a new home and although initially it will be a rental property it is likely that we will eventually live in it. The land is around 1/3 of an acre (1500 m2 approx), so not only will there be a little grass, a play area for the children and an outdoor entertaining area, we will be able to afford to (finally) have a properly organized vegetable garden, fruit orchard and a chicken run.

From a sustainability perspective, I don’t think that we’ll be entirely self sufficient, but I do think that we can substantially reduce our need to purchase quite as much fresh produce from the supermarket. Plus, I will probably be able to experiment a little more than I have been able to previously. When you’ve only got minimal space, you need to go with what works. On this new property, I’ll be able to try out a few different things just for the fun of it.

First up will be a bit of a trial vineyard. And by vineyard I mean growing a few grape vines! I know a guy locally who runs quite a successful winery, so I’ve been able to get hold of a few different varieties of wine grapes, and will have a go at being able to propagate them.

In all, he’s given me 5 varieties: Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Merlot. While I’ve got four cuttings of each, I’m really not sure what number will actually take successfully. I’ve got in mind one area in the new home that I will probably grow them, but I’ve decided to start the propagation process now. That way if and when we move in, I’ll know how many vines I’m dealing with.

To propagate grapes is pretty easy and straightforward. I’ve taken some cuttings from the pruning that the vineyard goes through at this time of year. Every vine needs to be cut back, so it provides plenty of opportunity to get cuttings.

The cuttings need to be trimmed to where the buds grow from. The two or three buds planted under the soil will grow roots, while leaves and vines will grow from the buds above ground. Or at least that’s the theory. I've used a fairly basic store bought potting mix this time around, purely to make my job a bit easier!

While I’d prefer for the garden to have little non-organic input as much as possible, because I only have a four of each variety, I have used a powder that is supposed to help the cuttings take root. If I was growing off my own vines, I’d just plant a truckload more and be happy with a lower success rate.

I’ve then put the pots (labeled with their variety as I would never be able to tell what is what variety) beside a north-facing wall (which gets most of the winter (Southern Hemisphere) sun. It’s a bit of a micro-climate that seems to be providing a bit of warmth to our strawberries, so it should provide a bit more protection to the new vines.

I doubt I’ll ever get enough grape juice to actually make wine, but I figure when we move in that I’ll probably have a few table grapes as well, so hopefully these will complement those grape vines. Failing that, I know our old chooks loved eating grapes so they can always be chicken food!