No anti fungal cream here.......

Ever since we changed the way we do things around here with our gardening techniques, I have noted a whole load of strange beings appear. Some days it feels like we are being invaded by strange little creatures that have appeared during the night and leave a strange puddle of goo or an alien garden just appears out of nowhere. It is quite a fascinating subject when you get into reading all about fungi and the like. I have started looking into growing edible mushroom, I have heard a tale that it can be done in used coffee grounds...... Fabulous.I can have my coffee, and eat my mushrooms too. My other hope is to go edible mushroom foraging one day, I just have to convince my husband and children that it is a fabulous idea, even though they can't stand mushrooms. I may have to open a bakery for this one.

Anyway, for now I am going to put pictures that I have taken around the place in here in hope that someone may read this and be able to help me identify what they are

These tiny yellow fungi appeared during the damper months of last year, from memory they where only on the dead logs.

This one was in the leaf litter and mulch

This one is the most interesting, not a great photo, unfortunately it's sideways.  It comes up every year, smells like rotten fish and it starts of with a brown cap which dissolves into slime pretty quick. The pink looks like it would feel like foam or those little packing nuts that you sometime get in packages. 

I'll leave this post for now as the children have gotten up. So I must go and face the fact that its my birthday and I'm another year older....

It's only the beginning......have I lost my mind?

Well, this is it. My first post. It has only taken four or maybe eight years to take the plunge and commit to a blog.

A journal for me and hopefully something useful for others. I have so many notes and scribbles in various notebooks that I loose track of all my research. This will hopefully keep it together and organised.

 

We live in kurrajong,  which is situated amongst the hills along the way up to the blue mountains. When we arrived here we had one daughter and we both worked full time, now we are raising three girls and for now I am a stay at home mum.

I was asked recently what was the catalyst for what we are doing and I couldn't come up with a  particular moment, I think it grew out of a few different things....our children having food sensitivities, the rise in our grocery bill, wanting to go organic and free range, being told to watch the Gourmet farmer and River Cottage (bad idea if you don't want to be inspired) and honestly I just always wanted to be a farmer.

A little ambitious I suppose to try and grow most if not all of our food. But, I do so love a challenge, and when it works the rewards are great. The food really does taste better and there is great satisfaction to work at something and reap the rewards. But the greatest reward for me so far is the enjoyment the children have gotten out of it, and how willing they are to try the food we have grown and harvested ourselves (and yes, even the vegetables)

After much reasoning, cajoling, cake baking (also known as bribery in this house and maybe even some eyelash batting while trying to plead with my very patient and understanding husband he agreed for us to try. On three conditions 1) It can't cost a whole lotta money, 2) it's affordable and 3) it REALLY can't cost a whole lotta money. We do our best to keep the costs down but being a small property there are are lot of inputs feed wise.

What I'm not...I am definitely not an expert, not qualified  and not even sure that I'm doing it the right way half of the time. What I am is willing to give it a go, share what I have learned, learn from anyone who is willing to teach and determined to make it all work in such a small area.m