March is marching on!

It's almost March and I'm left thinking where the hell has the year gone like I do every time, at this time of year. We are planning to be finished and be moving in to the house on the Easter weekend. Somehow I doubt if this will happen but it won't be due to lack of trying, and it won't be far off. Money has been the biggest barrier to us forging ahead with the building. I can't even begin to imagine what it would have cost if we hadn't used recycled materials and had a skilled builder on hand.

There are certain things that have to be purchased which are unavoidable. We are choosing to use gyprock walls inside for a start. Of course if we used rammed earth or something like that, we could use natural materials on the property. Rammed earth being very labour intensive, we then would be looking at moving in at the end of this year. Wiring is another thing which you can't skimp on, paint, internal and external carpentry etc.

We are also using professional trades people to do some of the work which costs money. We had the plumber in on the weekend, so that's another box ticked. We have another licenced carpenter working on Saturdays as an extra pair of hands. The painter has also started. Patrick did all the electrics on his own. There are things that I'm able to give a hand with more so than before. On the weekend, I cleaned up the site which made a big difference. I also washed windows and door frames for the painter to start on. The garden is at a stage where I just need to maintain what I have.
Next we need to insulate, and then the gyprock will go on. This usually means that the job is 3/4 of the way through. But we will move in before the exterior is finished so we are very close. Once there, we will do the external painting, paving, landscape etc.

We realised in a little planning meeting last night, that the house fence will have to be erected before we arrive, as we have two dogs. This is a cost that we hadn't counted on just yet. I knew that there would be something we hadn't thought through well... We probably won't be able to get away with no less than $7000 for a fence. Another $7000 we have to find.
On a lighter note, the place is looking great and we have our energy back around it all. Now we're just hell bent on getting in there.

The Garden:
The kangaroo's are eating my corn and raspberries! Spraying  a little round up around the boarder of the beds has been a good decision labour intensive wise as the grass was getting wy out of hand very quickly. It also meant that I've been able to reshape the beds without much work. I made them curvy and they look much prettier. The garden now looks like a garden instead of a vege patch. I currently have in strawberries, tomato, fennel, parsley, chives, calandular, comfrey, raspberries, corn, bush beans, broad beans, a variety of picking lettuce, celery, spinach, bulbs, a selection of flowers to keep bugs away, and roses.
Soon I plan to start taking surplus crop to the Food Co-op to sell as local produce.
I've put wood shavings on the pathways as a start to building up organic material. It's nice to walk on and keeps the weeds down. I got the wood shavings from the local carpentry factory.

TIPS:
I've just harvested two huge tubs of potato's. Broad Beans, or any kind of bean are good to plant after potato's (in the same bed), as they fix the nitrogen in the soil.  I've given lots of potato's away, and my mum is in the kitchen as we speak cutting and blanching the rest for freezing. You can also store them in straw (in a crate for example) in a dark, well ventilated area for 6 months.
Small variety tomatoes are best to grow, as they don't seem to get diseases like the bigger ones. October (East Coast Australia) is the time of year for putting in tomato bushes. If you live in a colder climate like the Upper Blue Mountains, there is no harm in putting them in a month earlier. This gives them a little more time to ripen. Two bushes are ample for a small family. I had one cherry tomato bush this year and we were pulling two punnets a week off it. We eat lots of tomatoes, so we could have done with one more. If you want to cook with them and make chutneys etc then more bushes would be needed.
I invested in a number of cheap wire wastepaper bins ($2.50). These are great for keeping bugs off baby plants or things like lettuces. I also hope that they might keep the frost away in winter.  Get the ones with the wire bottoms as well as sides. Every time I do my shopping I purchase a few more.