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June in Review

July 3, 2010 in Den, Frugal Living, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Reduce Reuse Recycle | 1 comment

What’s fresh?

(Noting what’s fresh & local to know what I can grow & when and a record of fresh pickings from our garden to improve future planting plans, manage gluts better etc)

From the store:

  • Lettuce
  • Carrots
  • New potatoes
  • Spring onions
  • Strawberries
  • Peaches

From the garden:

  • Lettuce
  • Radish

  • Rocket
  • Runner beans

  • Peas

  • Courgettes

Sowing & Planting

(Building a record of what I need to prepare for next in the garden)

Planted squashes gifted by friends – I germinated them and we split the loot!

I am delighted to report that we have a marrow plant!!!   I have been lamenting my short-sightedness in not saving seeds from this wonderfully versatile veg and all the while, a plant was growing, from seed in the compost!

Planted out my lavender plants that I had grown from seed.  I’ve got 3 healthy plants that have gone into the borders of the flower garden.

Planted 2 tiny persimmon trees, grown from seed:

Baking & Making

(A chance to reflect on the culinary success & failures of the month & share crafty moments)

Picked some of the beautiful courgette flowers and dipped them in a light beer batter.  Gently fried them for a couple of minutes… divine!

Painted glass jars for candle holders and made a wind chime from holey stones collected on Zanjice beach:


Reading

(Love sharing the books I’m into)

It’s a measure of how busy we are that I have no time for reading!  Still reading Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed’ and really enjoying it.

What’s the vibe?

(This month’s gut reaction)

This month the mood is – optimistic!!!  Bookings starting to slowly roll in; first guest loved it so much he came back!; 2 other visits already in June (one American soon-to-be professor and a French guy)…  Keeping everything crossed and smiling through!

Listening to

(Trying to listen to some new tunes every month)

Have listened to lots of music, loving the sound system at the campsite… but unfortunately because the laptop is down in the basement whilst we are listening to music up in the building, I’ve no idea of the names of artists and tracks half the time!

Fun Stuff

(‘Nuff said)

Enjoyed the company of an old friend.  It was wonderful having Kirst here & was so sad to say goodbye…

Here we are at our friend Therese’s villa:

where we laid in the sun and had a dip in the pool:

This is what I loved the most – laughing my head off with a special, beautiful buddy:


We had a very special evening on the campsite with friends Katie & Tim.  There was a massive storm close but high enough up and far enough away so that we heard no thunder, only witnessed the incredible lightning.  We sat outside in the early hours watching the sky light up right above our heads in forks and flashes that had us gasping with wonder.  And in between the illumination, we were humbled and awed by the masses of stars that crowded into every gap in the clouds…

We hosted our second proper party on the eve of Summer Solstice.  Thankfully the numbers were smaller, as we had to dive for cover from the rain early on and it got pretty crowded in the building for a while but the storm held off and the evening warmed up and we all had fun.  The Full Monte Feast was a big hit and the Sangria was delicious and didn’t give us a hangover, which was a bonus!  We had a great fire going and a hardcore of us sat around it until the early hours but only 3 of us actually managed to stay up to greet the dawn.

And of course, there’s been the footie…  We couldn’t escape the World Cup because Bob was such a massive fan and when England pplayed Algeria, we invited Bob and all the boys round to watch it on our big screen:

Tim Time

(Bizarre & extraordinary happenings?  This is Montenegro)

Bob would walk down the hill to the nearest petrol station to watch the football and the friendly folk there looked after him.  When we went to pick him up after the Spain-Portugal match on his last night and have a farewell drink with him, the lovley guy behind the bar got out his bottle of delicious Russian vodka and shared it around…  It was obviously a very special bottle and the liquor was so smooth – I’m sure if I were him I’d be trying to save it and savour it, not share it around with random english folk!  So kind!!!

One Green Thing

(One more step along our green journey)

Steve painstakingly dismantled an old wardrobe, salvaged from Maja’s grandmother’s house, and used the wood to make an amazing cabinet that surrounds our 2 gas fridges and cupboard space and has sturdy lockable doors to make closing up the site easy and effective:


Weather Report

(Charting the weather for us and our garden)

June has remained changeable.  We have had more rain than usual; some terrific storms; cloudy, overcast but warm days and some scorching hot, gorgeous summer-like days.  Will summer proper ever come?

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Grey days for Grey water

June 14, 2010 in Environmentally Friendly, Reduce Reuse Recycle, The Build | 2 comments

Things have not been going well on the DIY sewerage front!  Our ingenious grey water system was: a) leaking and b) starting to smell.  This was round about the time we had just finished installing the final piece of the puzzle – the irrigation system into the raised beds – all the baths were stone walled in and we’d declared the job done.  Ahhh.  Not so fast Professor!

We’d went into denial  for a bit, kidded ourselves the leak would stop and generally dug our heads in the sand whilst tackling other tasks.  We could put it off no longer and it was time to dig out the last bath to see what was going on in there:

Oh I get all the best jobs don’t I?!

The good news was that the root system of the plants in the bath was incredibly well developed.  The mint, reeds and grasses had established themselves and thrived on the nutrients in the waste water.  We took this opportunity to split some of the clumps of bamboo and grass up and redistribute the flora to maximise plant filtering in each bath.  The bad news was, it was pretty smelly and yucky in the bottom where the water had been sitting and it ALL had to come out to check thoroughly for leaks.  It was about this time that we got the call from Amy to ask if we could host the Naming Ceremony for Eloise, in 3 days…  Right, well we HAD to have the bath reconstructed by Sunday and all smells and open baths GONE.

Matt, as ever, was a total star and helped Steve to seal all the possible area where the water could be leaking out – particularly the oversized outlet hole and the area around the original bath plug hole.  With heavy hearts, they dismantled the stone wall Steve had built – they had to be absolutely sure that all the pipework (now buried under the stone wall and dirt) was intact and functioning correctly.

Having sealed everything, adjusted the pipework and tested for leaks, the boys confidently declared the problem solved.  The bath was rebuilt (hurriedly, it has to be said) and that, we hoped, was that.

No such luck.  At the end of Eloise’s special day when the system was being put through its paces with lots of washing up, there was still greywater seeping out into ground and now the second from last bath was backing up.  Disaster!

We thought there was a number of factors contributing to failure:

  • the tap onto which the hosepipe for the irrigation system into the beds fits was blocked.  Despite frequent cleaning it kept getting blocked as particles of muck were dislogded into the pipes from the soil in the baths being so badly disturbed
  • the hosepipe system that fed the garden was not perfectly positioned for a 2% gradient.  It was simply laid on the ground and had humps and kinks in places – through which the water was not flowing, contributing to the system backing up
  • the hosepipe into the beds was of smaller bore than the other pipework and therefor the water wasn’t running away fast enough

However we couldn’t be sure that the last bath hadn’t been damaged as it was rebuilt or the pipework dislodged.  Now very fed up with revisiting tasks that we thought were sorted, Steve dug out the last bath – AGAIN.

It was the right thing to do because he discovered that the bath was clay-clogged mess.  For the baths to function properly, filtering the waste water and acting as a  reservoir for the surge of water, it should be constructed of layers: big stones at the bottom, followed by smaller stones, followed by earth and compost.  These had not be reinstated properly plus there was too much clay and this was making it difficult for the water to permeate through fast enough.

We have left the last bath empty for the past few days, anxiously checking for leaks…

With the last bath not functioning, the system has been deprived of a vital reservoir in the chain in dealing with surges of water.  So the second from last bath has begun to back up as the water isn’t able to flow fast enough out into the garden.  There’s been much adjusting of the hosepipe system, encouraging the water through and clearing the blocked tap…

We are hoping that if we:

  • carefully rebuild the last bath, reinstating the layers and replacing the clay with soil and compost
  • take out the tap altogether
  • and level the hosepipe system on sand with the required 2% drop,

that the water will flow fast enough and the system will not clog or back up.

We are considering using a Y-shaped adapter in some places in the hosepipe so that 2 raised beds can receive water at the same time and therefore speed up the safe & non-smelly disposal of the water!  If all of the above doesn’t work then we will have to consider scrapping the hosepipe arrangement altogther and using larger bore pipe to carry more water.  We are reluctant to do this because: we’ve already invested in the hosepipe, which won’t be much good elsewhere; and because it will look ugly and clumsy.

It’s tough working all this stuff out ourselves.  Keep your fingers crossed for us folk.  We potentially have our first guest arriving in a few days and it has to be sorted by then…

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May in Review

May 30, 2010 in Den, Fun Stuff, Making & Baking, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle | 3 comments

What’s fresh?

(Noting what’s fresh & local to know what I can grow & when and a record of fresh pickings from our garden to improve future planting plans, manage gluts better etc)

From the store:

  • Lettuce
  • Carrots
  • New potatoes
  • Young cabbage
  • Spring onion
  • Tikvice (big, thin-skinned, local courgettes)
  • Strawberries
  • Cherries

From the garden:

  • Lettuce – especially: Cut & Come Again, Radichio, Curly Endive and Cos
  • Radish
  • Rocket

In Nature’s garden:

Sowing & Planting

(Building a record of what I need to prepare for next in the garden)

Have sown more:

  • radish
  • lettuce
  • beetroot
  • carrots
  • rocket

as I try to succession plant to keep these veg cropping.  I was gifted some local beans (broad bean stylie, known here as ‘Bob’ apparently!) so have planted these and some more melons & pumpkins and today have been given a load of different squash seeds will get planted tomorrow!

And some more herbs:

  • the first coriander plant is already going to seed so I have planted lots more
  • basil – because I’ll need LOTS to go with all the tomatoes that are romping away!

The marigolds from last year’s seed are doing fine – the germination rate is poor though.  The courgette plants are BIG, and healthy fruit is forming. The pumpkins are stretching out but the melons are not doing so well.  Peppers & chillies were looking vulnerable (planted them out too soon – note to self!) but seem to be coming round. Carrots are forming well now & the runner beans & peas are flowering beautifully…

I finally have 3 strong cauliflower plants to be planted out soon.  The cabbages are looking really healthy & sweetcorn is finally getting tall & strong:

Baking & Making

(A chance to reflect on the culinary success & failures of the month & sharing crafty moments)

We bought a beautiful, big, fat, fish (unidentified – Steve’s best guess is a bream) from our fisherman friend and enjoyed half it’s fleshy meat steamed with garlic and lemongrass.  I boiled up the bones with leftover veg and the following day used this stock & the rest of the fish to make a deliciously rich fish stew.  Oh yum!  But stunk the house out!

All my creativity has gone into the campsite this month.  Probably the best example is the new, improved plastic bottle window – finished and shown here behind the breakfasting campers…

Reading

(Love sharing the books I’m into)

Finished Liz Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ and enjoyed every word.

Currently reading a Wally Lamb book – haven’t read any of his since ‘She’s come undone’ and wondering where the book is going at the moment but enjoying it nonetheless:

‘Tis still the season for browsing books – there’s a whole stack piled up on tables: reference books of flowers, veg & herbs etc, etc.  No particular favourites to report this month…

What’s the vibe?

(This month’s gut reaction)

Struggling with this one this month – too busy doing, not feeling… I guess ‘happy but knackered’ about sums it up.  We’ve achieved a lot this month so feel pretty satisfied on that score.

Also, if we’re honest probably feeling a bit desperate – no firm bookings until end of August; little interest in the house rental and still so much to do on the marketing side that Steve & I struggle to agree on or make time for.  The volunteer that was supposed to show mid May never did and we haven’t heard a peep from Pedro for a while so maybe we won’t get his help in June either…  Roll on 1st July, when Mr Nik will be welcomed back into the Camp Full Monte fold again!

Listening to

(Trying to listen to some new tunes every month)

Not a lot but now we have a proper sound system on the campsite I’m looking forward to remedying this!

Fun Stuff

(‘Nuff said)

Some good laughs with our #1 posh camper, Danny:

Relaxing with friends after a successful & satisfying work day on the land…

The Irish were back in town for a week – yes, the inimitable Jimmy & Annie – and we enjoyed a fun, impromptu evening with them and some other mates, roaring with laughter.

And combining business with pleasure, our first ‘proper’ event the Full Moon Party…

Tim Time

(Bizarre & extraordinary happenings?  This is Montenegro)

This is my favourite story at the moment from Hayley, our friend at Black Mountain Holidays:

Inspectors turned up at an apartment in Kotor and found 2 tourists in residence with no tourist tax.  This is a 70 cents per day tax that holiday makers are supposed to pay and should be available from any travel agency.  In overly dramatic Monte-stylie, they were told they would be deported immediately if they didn’t purchase the tax.  They contacted Hayley for help after not being able to find anywhere locally that issued the tax.  Hayley got onto it and found to her amazement and disbelief that there was only one agency issuing the tax in Kotor and for the privilege they would charge the tourists 50 euros!!! This is crazy!  All other agencies issue the 70 cents tax, with little/ no commission – it’s just one of the things they are required to do and its not a money-making exercise!  Flabbergasted, she tried to find somewhere else the tourists could go.  The only place that was in the Kotor municipality (and therefore valid for issuing tourist tax for a Kotor based apartment) was in Risan, some 45 minutes drive away!!!  They have no car, were collected from the airport and will be taken back there but have no other means of getting around, never mind to Risan of all places!  Hayley threw a fit and as far as we know she & the tourists are holding firm against the ridiculous inspectors & agencies – if no-one can find them a place to buy the tax at the stated price – then tough!

One Green Thing

(One more step along my green journey)

Re-used old baby milk cans to make attractive containers for my dried goods in the campsite kitchen:

Weather Report

(Charting the weather for us and our garden)

May has been changeable.  We have had lots of rain; some terrific storms; cloudy, overcast but warm days and some scorching hot, gorgeous summer-like days.  Here’s hoping it settles down in June…

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BIG LIST update

April 15, 2010 in Frugal Living, Organic Gardening, Reduce Reuse Recycle, The Build | 1 comment

Back in November last year we compiled a BIG LIST of all the high level tasks and I outlined them in this post, promising to update our progress every month…  Mmm, I’ve been a bit rubbish, haven’t I???

Well, nearly 6 month later, here’s an update on progress and the latest news of what’s on the BIG LIST now…

  • drainage

Ur, well, the first item on the list & that’s where it all started to go wrong!  The drainage ditch turned into our Elephant Task and no matter how much we broke it into bits, we got so tired of chewing those chunks!  But the drainage on the main campsite is now DONE.  We still get soggy patches where underground springs mysteriously appear when the water table rises, but things are better.  It’s still a quagmire when it really buckets down but that’s mostly because of all the distrurbed earth which Nature needs to knit together again. 

  • installing our rainwater collection systems

This is a tricky one.  Water is so precious, of course we should be saving every drop.  But unless we can salvage a couple of big water butts from somewhere, we simply cannot afford to invest in the materials needed to install the system properly.  Our first check list for whether we do a task or not is: how much will it cost?

Thankfully, the water tank we filled up at the start of last summer is still half full!  So having enough water for everything is NOT an issue, in fact we are desperately trying to empty the tank so we can fill it fresh from the spring before it dries up.

  • finishing our greywater irrigation system

We started with grand plans for this project but the cost of fancy joints and weird plumbing bits was crazy so we are going to make do with bits of hose and ’stuff’.

It’s been a stressful time on the greywater front.  We were keen to cover the ugly pipes and protect them, but were concerned about piling mud on them and screwing up the levels.  These pipes have been lovingly positioned and levelled to have a 2% drop all the way along – not too much or the water will rush through the system and not be properly filtered, nor too slight a gradient or the water will not run fast enough and stagnate.  After enclosing them with earth we waited for it to settle and then had to tweak the system a little, straightening the pipes and inserting stones as rests in places.  The system still works; the water flows through well.  The problem now is with the last bath.  We noticed a slight leak when doing the landscaping around the end of the system.  It was too wet to use Plumber’s Mait or other good stuff so Steve cemented over the entire piece where the pipe exits the last bath through a rubber bung.  Our mistake was then carrying on regardless, in denial that the fix may not have worked…

It still leaks, really badly.  And now there’s a frigging stone wall enclosing it and a load of dirt!  The only hope is to dig the bath out and attack the problem from the inside.  Watch this space to see if this works or if we have to dismantle the entire stone wall:

  • levelling ground to create flat terraces for outside eating areas, a  Boules pitch and lots more tent pitches

We’ve levelled a lot of ground dealing with the spoil from the drainage ditch.  The area we played Boules on last year will be less lumpy & bumpy & sloped than before, if not pristine!  Ideally, we’d like to build a proper pitch – a frame filled with sand maybe – but not exactly a priority for this year.

We’ve cleared the ugly pallet fence between the raised beds and the stream so there is a bigger space there for tents and Steve has great plans to use the last of our sleepers and level earth on the very lower terrace.  But even if this doesn’t get done, with a little stumping, strimming, raking and mowing we can accomodate up to 30 people quite easily.  More level ground would enable us to space the tent pitches out much more, but even so tents will still be less cheek by jowl than many campsites!

  • making a rough, covered outside kitchen near to the eating area and BBQ

No progress made on this at all but we have all the raw materials: sink (reclaimed from the side of the road); pallets to make rough decking; an old table for a work surface – and it will be one of those projects that just gets done because it HAS to (hopefully in time for the Full Moon Party!).

  • repairing the critical collapsed terrace walls with planted tyre walls

Mmmm.  We have tyres.  We have tidied up the area around.  That’s as far as we’ve got and in truth we may not get an entire wall done this season.  After all the inside jobs have been done, it’s next on the list…

  • tile the last shower & the urinals

We can’t put the tiling off any longer!  We need to get the building functioning again.  Everything was moved down to the basement or back to Topla and the shower block has been left empty and abandoned.  We need to be living up there as soon as possible so that means finishing the last shower, tiling the laundry sink, installing the urinals and tiling around them and half tiling the loos so they are easy to clean.  We also need to fix the position of the cooker so we can tile around it for ease of cleaning and that means fixing the position of gas fridges & more cupboards in the kitchen.  Then we can lime wash all remaining bare plaster, move all the furniture and stuff in… and enjoy!

A new addition to the BIG LIST, all wrapped up in being able to move on site soon is:

  • clean, mouse-proof and limewash the basement

We need a proper usable space to set up an office, store clothes and things, have a cold store for food stuffs etc and the basement is it.  We need to tell the resident mouse (there’s only ONE mouse, right Kirst?!) to move on and get it cleared, cleaned, painted and organised!

  • paint the outside of the buildings

This is one of the tasks on the list for our work day on 8th May.  I painted a patch on the back of the workshop in limewash last year and it still looks great, even after all the ravages of winter.  A bag of lime is pennies (in comparison to the price of paint here) and will make loads of wash, a real cheap option for us and less harmful to the environment.  Having a sparkling white building will make an enormous difference – and help us sell the site in photos better!

  • plant the flower & veg beds

Made reasonable progress on this task.  There’s still lots to do and there’s a bunch of plants queuing up to put their roots down but there’s no chance of doing much more until the rain stops.  We desperately need some hot dry weather to follow the deluge of the last few days.  We haven’t been on site for the past 3 days due to the appalling weather and I dread to think what’s going on up there….

Since we are determined this year to keep greedy cows and intruders out, there’s a new task on this list:

  • secure the boundary

In practice this means: running barbed wire along the edges of the boundary where a cow can possibly invade and electrifying the main fence to deter the village kids and travellers who got on site, poked around and stole stuff last year.  If the barbed wire doesn’t get them, the x 1000 volts will!

Another key task is:

  • build a generator shed

We need a proper weather-proof, sound-proof, easy access structure to contain our trusty genny.

We have been gifted some great wooden stairs from Keith & Maja so now we need to treat them with wood preservative and install them firmly but that takes care of:

  • create safe, stable access at each end of each terrace

We now need to start making some rope hand rails or some such stuff to help support people safely down them!

Finally (well, never ‘finally’ because the list never ends but…) now we’ve dismantled the old compost heap we need to:

  • build a new compost

Gulp!  Still a bunch of stuff to do.  Thank God there’s no guests arriving until end of May!  And we are feeling a little less over-whelmed since we’ve had news that a potential volunteer, Jaime, will be joining us in May for 1 or 2 weeks; a volunteer from Spain, Pedro, is looking to join us in June and will possibly stay for a couple of months if we all get along well and last, BUT NOT LEAST, Nik, dear Mr Nik, without whom it all wouldn’t have been possible last year, is coming back this summer.  Hurrah for willing helpers!  Anyone else fancy it?

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A Window of Opportunity

February 26, 2010 in Frugal Living, Reduce Reuse Recycle, The Build | 4 comments

Yesterday was a big day.

It stopped raining.

Yes, really, the sun came out and when we visited the campsite it wasn’t  all under an inch of water as it has been.  The amount of water throwing itself from the clouds, flinging its arms around everything and creeping in through the walls and windows beggars belief…

It’s been so frustrating, not being able to finish what we’ve started with the ditch and mud moving project.  It’s been too wet to move up there.  We couldn’t take another chunk out of our elephant because it was slippery when wet…

So – a chance to be on site without ‘mud shoes’ on (the comically large growths that accumulate around our actual shoes as we try to walk around the site!).  Time to make a window.

About 6 months ago, when considering the kitchen area in the campsite building and wishing we could have a little more protection from the weather, I had a green idea.  The open spaces in the kitchen are a bonus in the summer when the breeze wanders around, breathing respite from the harsh heat – so we need ‘pop in, pop out’ windows.  Holding up a 5-litre plastic water bottle and noticing that it’s bottom resembled a cool glass brick, I wondered aloud if we could put these empties to good use in a wooden framed demountable screen, that you could kinda see through…

The appeal to friends to save their big water bottles went out and many people, but especially Danny – thank you honey! – saved us roomfuls of the damn things.  To be honest, I’ve become a bit anxious about the whole project.  Everytime Steve curses the bottles that sit at the table with us in Topla and trip us up in the basement at the campsite, I think “I hope it works after all this”.

Having dismantled the tent up top last week, we were able to liberate the 3 long planks of wood that had been propped on bricks in the field tent & acted as our work surface.  We had wood, we had bottles, we had a dry day.  Time to make a prototype of the window and prove the idea of making a wooden frame and stuffing it with rows of plastic bottles would work.

This is the view from inside the building and this is what it looks like from the terrace below:

What do you think???

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Greener & Leaner – A Plan…

February 2, 2010 in Den, Environmentally Friendly, Frugal Living, Reduce Reuse Recycle | 4 comments

Maybe that should be Plan A?  I’m sure there’ll be several tweaks to my good intentions along the way…

Over the holiday period (yes folks, pretty much the whole of January is a holiday here in Monte!) I’ve been reading books & blogs about all things green and feeling inspired, overwhelmed, excited, depressed, frustrated, hopeful & hopeless, all on a regular basis.  Torn. Generally.  Wrestling with my hopes & dreams – trying to  focus on things in the  ‘possible, simple & cheap’ pile rather than the ‘wildest dreams but not a hope in hell right now’ pile.

I would love to have the time, patience & 50 squids to make my own Stilton like Gavin but I don’t.  Or keep chooks like Rhonda but until we can safely secure our boundary and be living on the land pretty much full time, forget it.  I would love to have the greenhouses that El does so we can grow many more things all year round but no spare cash for that yet.  One day we’ll keep bees, like Jenna but not yet…

This is a great book that inpired me hugely:

But we have to face facts.  Right now, living where we do, with the limited local language skills we have, with the limited space we have to grown our own & no funds to invest in self sufficiency stuff – our ability to eat only seasonal food is, well, limited…

So here’s the stuff we can do – our simple plan for the foreseeable future:

  1. Install a rainwater collection system on the land, to collect water from the roof of the workshop and the main building.  With this ‘free’ water we will quench the thirst of the flower beds & gardens that are too high up to be irrigated by the siphon from the stream or the greywater system.
  2. Grow more vegetables & herbs. Last year, we read our packets of seeds carefully and planted things so many cms apart whilst our neighbours packed plants into every corner, cheek by jowl.  They won.  However, we suspect  non-organic intervention aided their big yields so we’ll be cramming more in but not as much as the locals in order to stay true to our 100% organic principles.  We’ll also be utilising the area we call ‘the orchard’ to grow more and doing some bucket gardening.
  3. Preserve more food. This year the only vegetables we preserved from our own garden were green tomatoes (in chutney) and pumpkin (in soup).  I intend to freeze more herbs, especially coriander and hope that the extra planting gives us gluts of stuff that we can learn how to freeze, pickle & can.  I think our basement on the campsite will make a good cold store so I’m going to try to buy more stuff whilst in season (like apples) and then store them to have some months later (hopefully).
  4. Eat less meat. Now that I’ve mastered the art of giving Steve vegetarian meals without him saying “Very nice, but where’s the meat?” I intend to slip in 1 or 2 every week (Sssh, don’t tell!).  This will save us some pennies and help keep weight & cholesterol under control.
  5. Find out more about the provenance of the meat we do eat. I have begun asking local friends for recommendations – who do they know who has a farm with dead animals to spare etc?  It will be tough because most people only have enough livestock to support their own families but even if we can get the occasional meat direct from a local farmstead, it will be a step in the right direction.
  6. Mend & make do more often. I was about to throw away a handbag last week.  I was reluctant – it is a roomy ole’ carrier and it has special sentimental value – but people were tutting and looking at me disapprovingly as bits of the handle disintergrated over everything.  Then I realised the only problem with the bag is the handle.  I am taking it to my very clever crafty friend this week and asking her to make me a new handle.
  7. Make more things. Ilona is an inspiration – the stuff she makes out of gubbins that folk normally chuck away is incredible.  I would love to have time to be more creative just for the hell of it but to be honest that’s a luxury.  However, when we really need something we have started to ask ourselves – ‘how can we make that?’
  8. Share the green love. Gently educating people around us has produced suprising results but we can do more.  I have learned that most people do bad stuff (by ‘bad’ I mean harmful to the planet; wasteful etc) out of ignorance – they don’t know any different & neither did we a few short years ago… A friend around here has become interested in our eco missions since she started collecting plastic bottles for our plastic bottle screen.  She doesn’t live frugally because she doesn’t have to but when I went shopping with her recently I challenged her about the money she spent on tomatoes.  “They’ll tast nasty” I said, “No matter how much you pay”.  Tomatoes here in season are TO DIE FOR – just the most tasty, delicious fruit.  I could literally live on them alone, drizzled with a little local olive oil & sprinkled with salt.  So, have them in season and avoid tasteless imposters at all other times.  I was right – they tasted nasty.  And so began the gentle conversation about where food comes from & why local & seasonal is best…
  9. Be conscious. Consciously think & do… Do I need to buy …?  Can I make a replacement for…? Do I have to throw this away?  Can I reuse…? What happens if I do…?  What happens if I don’t do…?  Is there a greener way?  Is there a cheaper/ more effective way?

Here’s some things I won’t be buying anymore:

  1. Household cleaning products. I am already using essential oils like tea tree, clove & rosemary to clean most things but I am about to purchase the few ingredients I need (baking soda, white vinegar, soda water) to make my own all purpose cleaner, glass cleaner & scourer.
  2. Jam. Well, ok, I will still buy it if I see it on special offer because I only managed to make marmalade so far this year but as soon as the first round of sweet fruits appear I will be jamming like Bob Marley and in the meantime we will be working our way through the jars of orange & grapefruit marmalade.
  3. Cling film. I am reusing plastic bags to cover things I would normally use the plastic film for.  Would like to ditch aluminium foil too but can’t find a suitable substitute for covering roasts in the oven.  Any ideas anyone?
  4. Dish cloths & cleaning cloths. I’m recycling old clothes, towels etc into useful rags.
  5. Paneer. Not that you can buy the indian cheese here anyway but I use a local substitute for my Spiced Paneer recipe when I cook up my Indian feasts.  No more however – I have just read how easy it is to make and am going to grow my own!

All out of inspiration now and bones are aching for bed (yes, we did get back to work today folks! Ouch.) So I’ll call it a day and update you on the things I’ve forgotten or as new ideas emerge.

ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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The Crying Game

February 1, 2010 in Frugal Living, Making & Baking, Reduce Reuse Recycle | 1 comment

We have now been home for 6 days and so far have only spent a couple of hours on the campsite working… We are getting distracted by a million other things – blogs, friends, fixing  computers… Steve has been staying up half the night fiddling with networks, websites, photos & other such tekkie stuff.  He crawls to bed between 3 – 4 am and then is reluctant to rise much before 10.00 am.  It all has to stop – we have a BIG LIST, as big as a big thing on a big day and nowt’s getting done.  Tomorrow is D-Day – rain or shine, we are up early and at work by 9.00 am.

Today we very nearly made it to the land but just as we were preparing to leave, the heavens opened.  It was the excuse Steve needed to stay put.  To be fair he was on a mission to fix Katie’s laptop & he’s done a brilliant job, earning us a day out on Monty B as a reward.  So I decided to use my day wisely and headed to the kitchen to make soup.

Every soup starts with onions.  And tears.

I am trying to eat what’s in season and avoid all imported products.  In practise, this means getting the cheapest products in the store as anything that’s exotic and/ or travelled a long way to be there is usually markedly more pricey.  The good, cheap vegetables at the moment are: the roots (carrots, parsnips, turnips), spuds, onions & white cabagge.  So that’s the fresh veg I had to work with.

I’m also trying to use up ingredients in my stockpile.  I have tons of coriander seeds, so I ground some and used it in the first soup: Carrot & Coriander.

According to my new frugal principles, I am trying to use food sparingly and wisely.  I have some cooked, smoked ham which is delicious but quite fatty.  I trimmed the fat off some slices of ham and used it to flavour the base of my next soup: Peppery Potato & Ham.  There is a tiny bit of ham in the soup but the fat imparted such a meaty, smoky flavour that I didn’t need much.  Don’t worry folks – our cholesterol levels are safe, I removed the fat once the stock had taken up its taste.  Regular old ground black pepper is an unsung hero in the cooking charts -  in my opinion, it really helps to enhance the taste of spuds.

Back to my stockpile & to the jars of Indian spices I have lurking there…  The aromatic tastes won’t be worth a sniff if I don’t use them soon, so… Indian Spiced Vegetable Soup it is!  Here’s a shot of the 3 different soups – clockwise from left: the Spiced Veg & Peppery Potato in plastic pots ready to be frozen & in front the Carrot & Coriander which I manage to take a picture of in between sups!

I decided to break my own rules next & follow a recipe!  Another ingredient I have lots of that needs using up before it gets too old is English Mustard Powder and I found a great recipe for a Mustardy Lentil Pottage in Leith’s Vegetarian Bible.  I tried to take a photo of this hearty beauty but honestly it just looked like a bowl of sick!  Tasted delicious though.

I am so glad I picked up the recipe book because I found a French Onion Soup recipe that looked too good to pass up.  Who knew that in order to properly caramelize onions you have to cook them for 30 minutes!!?!  I am such an impatient cook that I would never be bothered to do this ordinarily.  Now I know that this is half an hour well spent & will be cooking my onions slowly & patiently more often in the future…

Of course, the obvious accompaniment to soup is… bread.  I have a gluten intolerance so try to minimise the bread I eat and only ever buy the local cornbread, which is mostly made with cornflour & has a lot less gluten than normal bread.  To my delight I found soya flour & rice flour in my local supermarket (both gluten free) and have been waiting for a chance to try making some bread.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find a recipe using only the ingredients I had – most recipes used a mix of brown rice flour, potato flour & soya flour & had stuff like Xanthum Gum or summat.  I pushed on, regardless, finding a recipe that I could follow-ish.  Looks ok but still pretty soggy in the middle – a bad combo of the wrong ingredients and my strange ‘dot dash’ oven…  It’ll be fine toasted though.

I have made 18 portions of soup today & used up a ton of empty marg & mayo pots from my stash of reuseable plastic stuff putting them in containers & freezing them.  That’s 9 lunches on the land taken care of.  We just grab a pot from the freezer when we set off in the morning and heat it up on the stove at the campsite when we’re hungry.  One step closer to being ready to do some work…

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Greener & Leaner? 2009 – A Year in Review

December 13, 2009 in Den, Environmentally Friendly, Reduce Reuse Recycle | 5 comments

It’s funny how things happen… I’ve had a blog post brewing in my mind for a while – a vague jumble of thoughts & things relating to the journey I’ve been on but it wouldn’t really come together.  Mon’s latest post nudged me towards a new blog and there I found Kate and her inspirational space.  Apart from making me feel quite overwhelmed and inadequate, her ‘year in review’ was the tickle on the tummy I needed to get started… Yes, a month-by-month recounting of my personal green awakening & how that has overlapped with living more simply & consciously – that’s it!  So, here I am…

First some context.  I wanted this blog to be a journal of sorts about the way in which Steve & I were growing our full monte life – all aspects of it.  But the massive task of building our eco shower block and opening our campsite has dominated most of the posts this year, unsurprisingly since there are only so many hours in the day and this is the progress that friends and family (who use this space to keep updated on our news) were keen to hear about.  Consequently, the ‘little stuff’ has got lost along the way.  Put together, all the ‘little stuff’ isn’t so little and it helps explain the ways in which my (sometime our) thoughts, behaviours, life are developing.  So this is a post about those ‘little things’.

The two diverse places we currently live between are also very key, contextually:

On the one hand we have eight hectares of land supporting an emerging eco project (all year round) and a clothing-optional campsite (summer only) where we live in a tent and use our purpose-built shower block and inside/outside kitchen.  There, we have limited solar PV power, standalone solar grounds lighting, petrol genny for indoor lights and power sockets, a solar-thermal hot water system, 3 compost loos, 2 waterless urinals (still not installed), a water tank holding 45 cubic metres of spring water from our stream, a DIY greywater recycling system, 6 raised beds for organic gardening and the makings of an orchard.  We refridgerate our beers in the stream and everything else in 2 small gas fridges; there’s no freezer or washing machine and we don’t use any electric kitchen ‘gadgets’ because its ludicrous to start the genny to power them when hand-power will do.

On the other hand we rent a 3-bedroomed, detached house in the nearest town.  The 3 floors of luxurious living space is way bigger then we need and under normal circumstances we would never live in a place like this.  It’s poorly insulated; the open plan design, walls of glass (& no blinds) and big draughty stairwell make it expensive to heat in winter and hard to keep cool in summer; it only has air conditioning units for heating & cooling (albeit they are the dog’s whotsits in their eco-efficiency) and has one small hot water tank for all 5 sinks, 2 bidets and 2 showers which is at the very top of the house so when you want to wash the dishes in the kitchen at ground level so much hot water is wasted in the distance it has to travel.  It has a poorly designed septic tank which leaks (and reeks) and generally the plumbing is a disaster.

But, it has 2 spare double bedrooms and endless sofa beds so we can comfortably accomodate all our friends and family; it is fully furnished, tastefully & luxuriously, so that was a whole bunch of expense saved; it has off-road parking big enough to accomodate our family of Fords (van & car) and is unbelievably cheap.  Living here is both wonderful (affordable, comfy, spacious, all mod cons and a view that takes your breath away) and awful (gets nil points for energy efficiency, the water goes off every night & consequently the pipes are filled with air every morning, smells of drains at times, has mould growing despite being newly-built, has dodgy electrics, takes days to clean and is freezing ~Brrrr~ in the winter) at the same time.  Every day it’s a reminder that appearances can be deceptive, that the devil is in the detail and that building with sound eco principles in mind is the only way to go.  Every day it makes me appreciate our campsite more where the water never goes off; where the sewerage doesn’t smell; where we recycle water, not waste it; where the on cost of heating our water and powering our solar lights & fans is zero and where our veg will flourish in the compost from our loos!

Blimey!  All this rambling – and I haven’t even started the year’s round up yet!!  The point I’m making here is that my improvements in living green and simply is limited by the rented (read “beyond our power/ will to change”) house we live in for 9 out of 12 months. Phew! Glad I got that out – I feel like I’ve confessed a guilty secret!

Right, on with the year in review, dammit!

January – mmm, can’t remember much about it.  But here’s a photo that might sum up where I was on my journey – mostly in the dark with some areas of light…

Sunset over the Sutorina valley

February – I started this blog and made a conscious decision to share the green things we did.  I also clarified to myself that the goal was living a full monte life – full in the sense of:

  • being open – to new ideas and old traditions
  • doing more of the things that make me/ us happy & fulfilled and less of the things that don’t
  • living life consciously, aware of my impact on things, people, the planet
  • having enough money to avoid deprivation & hardship – but recognising that’s very different (in a good way) to having what you want, when you want it without a second thought.  If it’s SO taken for granted, what’s the point?
  • pursuing our passions and having space to share these with like-minded souls

March – I tuned in to nature, becoming aware of the changing season and starting to document the wild flowers on the land. We sowed countless seeds in pots and trays and watched in awe as they grew to little plants in a matter of weeks.  I planted the onions in the beds – better late than never.  I learnt about companion planting and planned the garden to maximise healthy growth and natural disease protection.

April – I read “It’s Not Easy being Green” and got inspired about the possibilities.  I began to go eco-loco!  I stopped buying fabric conditioner (how ridiculous buying yet another thing in a plastic container just to make my clothes smell nice!) and started to investigate natural ways to soften skin, freshen breath, deodorise & perfume.  We planted up our raised beds with all our brave little seedlings and I harvested my first crop of fresh herbs.  I made it my mission to reduce the number of plastic bags I used and re-use all I could.  My biggest breakthrough was shopping with a basket and learning to explain in local language (+ lots of gesturing!) that the fruit & veg be put in it minus the plastic bags, yep, nude!  Go on, put the onions with the apples what the hell – it doesn’t matter! I brought my own re-usable shopping bag (made from recycled materials) with me to the stores and use this and old plastic bags for the rest of my shopping.

May – I became acutely aware of how precious water is.  When you turn the tap you have no real idea of how many litres gushes out each second/ minute – but when you pour it from a 5 litre bottle because there’s none in the tap you get really focused on the quantity you use.  I stopped leaving the tap running whilst I cleaned my teeth; never had the shower on full; turned the shower off whilst I was scrubbing and lathering and then back on to rinse; stop flushing little wees and adopted the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down” approach.  Nature continued to amaze as orchids sprung up everywhere on the land and butterflies flitted about & I learnt about the delicate eco system thriving there and how to work with it, not against it.

Spider Orchid

June – I bought some Eco Balls and stopped buying washing powder.  I invested in a Mooncup so no more tampons going into landfill from me!   Steve went mad with a new gadget that monitored power consumption and we learnt to our horror that even when switched off completely the PC and printer used 30W of power unless they were actually diconnected from the mains!  Already bonkers about turning off lights and using low energy bulbs, we now religiously unplug everything when out of use.

July – I minimised my veg purchasing and we mostly lived on the produce from our garden.  We were overrun with marrow and I found interesting ways to use them so we didn’t get bored of them and nothing went to waste.  I saved the seeds to grow more next year for free.  I started to get creative about ingredients I had already rather than buying more stuff and looked for tasty, healthy alternatives I could make cheaply rather than buying expensive things in wasteful packaging.

August – I acquired some wonderful books about living self-sufficiently, growing organically and other good stuff and began to educate myself and try new approaches.  I kept all the plastic pump-handled bottles (from window cleaner sprays etc) and re-filled them with my own potions made from essential oils, distilled water – maybe some vinegar & a little alcohol.  I made toilet cleaners for our beautiful compost loos, air fresheners and insect repellants – all natural, free from nasties, deliciously fragrant and they cost nothing to make.

September - Overrun with plastic bags (despite re-using all I could as bin liners, shopping bags & freezer bags) I looked into using them as a material.  The plastic bag plaiting began and I’m slowly but surely creating a flyscreen curtain made of plaited plastic bags.   I need loads so friends started to collect them for me too.  Our pumpkins ripened and I made buckets of soup and some yummy pumpkin pie – of course, saving the seeds for free pumpkins next year.  I continued to document the flowers, bugs, butterflies, spiders, snakes and other wonders that were on the land long before us and how they all fit together.  The only drawback with the compost loos is the increase of flies – there are definitely more of them about although mostly high up outside around the stench pipes but the wonderful thing is this has attracted more birds to the campsite, especially, unsurprisingly… fly catchers!

October – I hadn’t bought any household cleaning products since the summer and have been eeking out what I have.  Now I’ve run out of most things I’ve started making my own.  I use eucalyptus, clove & thyme oil for bacterial cleaners in the kitchen and bathroom; lemon oil deodorises the fridge and vinegar is my new favourite glass cleaner.  Clothes that fall apart from being over-worked on the land are recycled as cleaning cloths.  Inspired by an article I read here I started to use things ‘one more time’ – not washing things until they really need it; getting one more use out of an old sponge before finally chucking it away.  I now think very carefully before disposing of anything and even more carefully before buying something new.

November - I preserved all the fruit we’d grown or been given and stored them in recycled jars.  For the cost of a few bags of sugar and minimal other ingredients we had jars & jars of marmalade, chutney & lemon curd – all way more delicious and natural than anything I could buy.  I got really serious about thrifty living and stopped going shopping, just living off food in the cupboards and freezer.  I couldn’t live without milk and cheese so I had to relent and buy these and a few other things but I managed to spend next to nothing on food every week.  I created authentic Indian, Thai & Chinese dishes from scratch grinding my own spices and making my own pastes and sauces.  Always debonair in my recipe-following, I really went off the rails on a mission to use what I had rather than buy a thing… Sugar – got loads of icing sugar, that’ll do; basmatic rice – nope, plain ole long grain instead; palm sugar – no chance! brown sugar & honey instead.

December – I ditched my big kitchen bin because it requires shop-bought bin liners.  I have reverted to a small bin so I can re-use plastic bags and be more conscious about waste management.  We now generate one small plastic bag worth of rubbish every week.  Not as good as Ilona, who is a real inspiration (but lives in the UK where more stuff can be recycled!) but we’re getting there.  All our veg waste, egg shells, coffee grounds, used tea bags, toilet roll inserts & other bits of non-plasticised carboard/ paper goes into the compost; we recycle all the jars we use (not many – I hardly buy jars of stuff anymore) for our own preserves or for storing seeds; we recycle some of the bottles we use for our wine bottle window and some for storing our own syrups in ; we take plastic bottles and paper/ cardboard we can reuse ourselves to the local recycling bins; I keep egg boxes for sowing seeds in next year and reuse most of the old marg pots and other plastic containers for storage and for freezing left over food.

It’s taken me hours to piece together the ways I’ve changed over the months but it’s been fun and a worthwhile reminder of what I’ve achieved so far.  I have been prompted by some of the wonderful blogs out there to take my conscious living to new heights and to keep better records of what I save and what I grow so I can see the quantifiable changes over time.  I’d love to hear what others have achieved…

PS: Thanks again to Kate at Living the Frugal Life for kicking all this off.  Following her link to one of her favourite blogs I discovered this beautiful site and a poem that really touched me… ‘The peace of wild things’ ~sigh~.

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Hot Water Bottles!

October 1, 2009 in Environmentally Friendly, Reduce Reuse Recycle, The Build | 1 comment

With a honeymoon couple arriving the first weekend in October, we needed to crack on & get the hot water supply sorted.  Esad, our Croatian contact, had supplied us the hot water tank and expansion tank and talked through the installation of the solar thermal system with Steve.  Steve had donned his plumber’s hat and done as much as could but was nervous about plumbing in the copper pipe that would connect the solar panels to the tank.  Perfect timing then, that my sister Chris and her hubby Dave – a plumber – were arriving!  Dave was kind enough to bring a bunch of plumbing stuff with him and bless him, he got stuck into the task of cutting pipes, fixing angles, securing joints with hemp & Plumber’s Mait and generally being a total STAR!!!

Steve & Dave plumbing in the copper pipes

In the picture below, with Dave in full flow, you can also see the hot water tank, with all the inputs & outputs carefully labelled by Steve…

Dave plumbing pipes to the hot water tank

Dave & Steve were keen to see if the system actually worked so they filled up the tank and pipes with water and watched the thermometer rise!  We were all delighted that there were no leaks, that the thermo syphon action was working effectively and the sun was really heating up the water even in late September and with a fair amount of shadow over the panels from late afternoon!  Yippee!

The next step was to get the hot water connected into the water supply for the building but for this we needed a special tool to heat seal the plastic pipes.  Whilst we were waiting for our neighbour to show up with his machine and finish the job, Dave & Steve decided to finish the wine bottle window.

This was the window before they started:

Wine bottle window

They looked great but the gaping holes still had to be filled…

Steve & Dave cementing the bottles

And this was the finished window, pointed with cement and painted:

Wine bottle windows - finished

Meanwhile Chris got busy washing up green bottles as we started to prepare the bottles for the second window:

Chris washing up

Unfortunately, the heat machine did not arrive in time for Dave to see hot water coming out of the taps.  Steve got on with lagging the copper pipes whilst we waitied patiently for our neighbour to show up. Finally on Sunday27th September Milerad arrived and sprang into action with his magic machine!  There was a tense moment when we turned the water back on and turned the tap…  Would the system leak?  Would the water actually be hot?  No leaks and gorgeous warm water – not boiling hot (we can adjust the blending valve to increase the temperature) but more than adequate for washing dishes and having a shower.  Hurrah!!!

In the picture below you can see Steve insulating the last of the pipes.  Notice the green pipe to the right of the tank?  This is pipe that Milerad plumbed in for us to finally get hot water into the system.

Steve lagging the pipes

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Montenegrin Water Torture

May 23, 2009 in Environmentally Friendly, Reduce Reuse Recycle | 1 comment

Allegedly, they are cleaning the pipes and doing some improvements to the water supply, so for most of this week we have only had water in our apartment from 6-7pm every day.  We heard about it in advance and the news was that the schedule was a couple of hours in the morning and evening from 7-9am and 7-9pm, so when we arrived back from a day’s sweating on the land at 7pm and there was no water, we were gutted.  It turns out, we are further up the hill and on a different supply and they couldn’t really tell us when we would get water but it would be for some indeterminate time at some indeterminate hour! The next day we waited in all day, listening for the sounds of gurgling pipes and watching the dirty dishes and clothes pile up.  When it finally came on we rushed around like mad things putting on washing machine, filling up buckets, watering plants…

dripping-tap

This water rationing is set to last for another 7 days or maybe more and although it is inconvenient is a timely reminder of how critical water is to everything and how easily it is squandered.  We think we’re pretty aware and conserve water well but its amazing how much more you can do when you have to.  The water we shower in is captured and used to flush toilets for the next day; one small mugful of water between two people is all you REALLY need to clean your teeth and you can wash lots of dirty dishes in a very small bowl of water if you wipe stuff clean with a bit of loo paper first!

The craziest thing of all is that the water pressure here is a phenomenal 6-8 bar.  Such pressure is completely, unnecessarily excessive and leads to water being shamefully wasted – hosepipes burst with the pressure and spray water pointlessly into nothing for hours on end, showers use far more water than is needed because its comes out at such a rate – and then the water dries up and is rationed in the middle of summer!!!  Why don’ t they turn the pressure down for everyone and ensure there is enough to go around all year?  Yet another thing we will use our project to educate people about – we are proud of our perfectly adequate 1 bar of pressure and no pump!

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