Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

If you’ve followed our posts you’ll know we have a passion for homesteading, striving for self sufficiency and the like.

I want to put pages together for all the recipes for cleaning products etc, that we’ve found work amongst other things, but that’s for later.

Our vegetables…..we live on a rocky outcrop, in a wooden house but no fertile soil. Any beds we have were dug out of rock, or built up and filled with potting soil. So the question arose. How do we produce food for ourselves out of rock??

Well 2 ways, we could make raised beds. (But boy was it expensive to get this right) Or we could experiment with Grobags. So Gro bags it was. We’ve made our own, using old compost bags filled them with half compost, half topsoil, and so far things are looking good.

We have tomatoes, green peppers, onions, lettuce, herbs etc. All growing and producing the beginnings of vege’s where they should. I haven’t had to buy lettuce in 2 weeks, and all the herbs are being utilised. It feels amazing to put dinner together from our own garden, even if it is just lettuce and herbs at this point.

We’ve planted carrots, beetroot, bean and pea seeds which all appear to be popping out of the soil. Cross everything, not just your fingers that our luck will hold! We’re strictly organic, so lets hope we don’t get swamped with predators! We’ve companion planted as much as possible so lets hope this keeps the yuckies away.

The kids enjoy the planting as much as the eating. We work on our bags, which are starting to line the property, long may that last, as a family, no one has a job to do, we all sort of muck in and just do it.

It’s amazing the gratitude you feel when you eat something that you’ve watched growing for weeks. There is a reverence felt at dinner that definitely wasn’t there before!

We’ve booked 3 Rhode Island Reds (chickens) for collection this weekend, so we should be producing some eggs shortly as well. We’re starting with 3. I’ve never owned a chicken, so if I can keep these alive and happy, then we can add on a few more.

The path to self sufficiency has been long and hard, but we’re moving forward now, one tiny step at a time. This coming weekend has been set aside for the building of the cement/brick base that our wood burning Esse stove will be standing on. Turns out the wooden floor we have cannot support all 600kgs of her. She would have crashed through the floor, this would include her firebox, with hot coals and flames. In our wooden house. Charming!
The weather patterns here in Cape Town have definitely changed. It’s mid March and the days are chilly indeed, not the warm idyllic March days we had when I was a child.  We can’t wait to get Esse in and warming the house. Like most wood burners, the amount of heat you can get from her is impressive. This will take us another step closer to getting off the grid, as she will be heating up our hot water for bathtime as well.

Have a relaxing monday evening.

Sue. xx

Filed under: HOMESTEADING, Homeschool on March 17th, 2008