Popping in again and Autumn Preparations

A very late Good Evening to you 😊

Time passes quickly again and I struggle to share all we are doing.
Suffice to say we are working through our Lenten journey this year with a little more success than our Advent one.
With the last two weeks of Lent to go we are about to enter our very crafty stage of this time and finish up our Lenten readings as well.

As we are now into the Autumn season we are anticipating a relief to this hot summer weather that seems to still lingering. However we are starting to prepare for colder weather ahead.

One of the preparations is for our more frost susceptible plants to be placed in our greenhouse or in a home made poly tunnel we have yet to construct.
We lost a few of our more rain forest Australian bush-foods last year in our frosts, it being the worst year for frost in many years. I had locals telling me that they also had lost plants that they had never had a problem with before. My scented geraniums even suffered and they are very hardy plants.

Reading a beautiful Bunny themed Golden Book

We still have not put our autumn crop of vegetables in and so I am thinking we will have to get seedlings rather than starting from seeds this season.

As this is a very changeable time of year here with weather I had anticipated that I would need to stock up on my cold and flu preparations and start our Immunity Tea so we could have more protection when the 'seasonal illness' start.
True to form though I was only part way organised when a couple of the kids got a sore throat. So I responded a little slowly with some of the preparations we had on hand we had pretty good success rate but poor Moran has been much slower responding with getting her voice back. Yes, that's right she is virtually mute much to her annoyance.

On Friday night, just in time for the weekend, Stephen came home after a strenuous afternoon of strenuous activity with a cough, sore throat and feeling generally blah!! This time I was on it right away and although he isn't 100% recovered on Sunday afternoon he was quite significantly improved. The coughing which he tells me was about to settle on his chest on Saturday night has gone and I am very confident in saying it was the result of our home Herbal remedies.

Home made Elder flower Wine

We have also been quite busy with making more probiotic and  fermented drinks to keep our immune system healthy. Sadly I have not done as much as I would like but Autumn has started to take this on as a new passion.
As we reach the end of season for stone fruit we have also been cooking up apples butter, making plum jam without added sugar and dehydrating any fruit we don't want to cook. My favourites are apples and plums which I am certain the children love just as much as I do.

Warm clothing is also an item to check as we  have a fairly hard to heat house and the bedrooms are extra hard. In an effort to not use as much electricity, and money this year we are not planning on heating any of the bedrooms with electric heating so we are investigating thermals  for everyday use and hot water bottles to take to bed. This is a first for us as we have taken 'hot packs' in the past but I am told by a reliable source that hot water bottles last better, so we will see how we go😏

Naturally we will be engaging in some firewood gathering and cutting activities in the next few weeks and it would be nice to have our firewood all prepared before the wet and cold winter arrives.

I can't wait to sit around the fire with our family snuggled up reading together with some knitting and craft projects on hand and just enjoying the season I feel brings us together.

Having Tea Time as part of our Learning Week

So much more has happened in our lives the last couple of weeks and this is but a tip of what we have done and our planning but it is late and I need some sleep before the new week of learning so I will have to tell more tales of whats happening here as soon as I can.

Blessings to you and your homes,