A hand made house

The building of houses has, in our culture at least, been well and truly handed over to the 'experts'. Most of us would see it as a project too big, too technical and with too many opportunities for spectacular failure to tackle ourselves. So we direct our desire, or instinct even, to create a comfortable shelter, shaped around the needs of ourselves and our families, to the interiors of our houses. But it's interesting to think about what kind of house we would build if we had to, if it was down to us to make good use of the materials that we could scrounge, buy or barter in the few miles around us. What kinds of shapes and structures would we use? Would size be as important as facing the winter sun, good ventilation in summer, a human scale, easy to paint?

When I was a teenager I was fascinated by the architecture of Hundertwasser, who allowed the very human and very particular needs of the ultimate occupants to guide his design, rather than fashion, or the technical constraints of modern building materials. His buildings sought to reconnect people with their natural surroundings, as that was, for Hundertwasser, a essential condition of human flourishing. He also believed that structures, not just the decorated interior, should be idiosyncratic, personal, moulded from and around its inhabitants. I absolutely agree with him. I know from personal experience that the structures around us can shape our mood, our attitudes towards ourselves and others, our actions and even our aspirations. After living in the heart of Sydney for eleven years, it was the realisation of this that made it impossible to stay, and that indirectly led to my new home on this farm.

When I walk around here and see the myriad little shelters that the creatures around us have created - the wombat condominiums in the back dam wall, the swallows' elegant little mud nests, the cosy little rat bush rat tunnels lined with our passionfruit leaves - I do wonder about our stark and square little house on the prow of the hill, buffeted by winds from every direction and visible for miles around. Much of our garden planning has been trying to mitigate the effects its construction and siting - we freeze in winter and cook in summer. This house was a quick rebuild, after a disastrous house fire in the 1940's, started by a rogue coal after the ashes from the stove were emptied under the house, so I understand that speed no doubt governed all decisions here. But perhaps if Hundertwasser had wandered into town he would have retained the hilltop site, as resting the gaze on a distant horizon is the perfect mode of contemplation, but dug us into the ground for warmth, covered our roof with grass and spring flowers for good cheer, and built us a front step that caught the winter sun and of just the right height to have our bum in the kitchen but our feet firmly planted on the ground. Maybe it would look a little like this amazing 'low impact woodland home' - built in three months by two people with no previous building experience, out of local materials, for the princely sum of three thousand pounds. Check out the link for their wonderful and inspiring story (all photos in this post are of this house, images used with permission). If we ever find ourselves in need of shelter one day, perhaps we'll try and see what we can do with our own hands, and our own Hobbit-y aspirations.

Eight things about me

The lovely Kris has tagged me to do this 8 things meme. I have to admit that I have never before memed nor am I sure that I can think of eight random things about me that are sufficiently interesting to recount. It's also taken me an embarrassingly long time to get around to this. Sorry Kris! Anyway, these are the rules.

A. Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves.

B. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed.

C. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Here goes:

1. I'm very judgmental when it comes to coffee. I remember being completely appalled when I first moved to Brisbane. Not only was the coffee terrible but it was nearly always served in a glass chalice with a great big long swizzle stick of a spoon. But for all the times I've hated a coffee, and resented the lack of care and attention that went into making it, I've never once sent one back.

2. I have a completely hopeless memory when it comes to day to day stuff. I can barely remember things from one day to the next. I am one of those people who needs to write everything down or else it will not be done or remembered. And it's not just trivial house or work stuff that I forget - whole decades of my life are nothing but a haze. But if you're after the names of the planets, the colours of the rainbow, the periodic table, a perfect recital of one of a fairly large number of poems, the scientific names of plants, the world's longest palindrome, well...I'm your girl. I've always wondered if this a sign of true left-handedness or just some form of degenerative brain disease. Apparently you can only tell if you have a brain scan.

3. I am a very, very tidy person, but only in spurts. In between I am very, very messy. The one place that is consistently tidy and clean is the chook shed. I get the most extraordinary pleasure from sweeping out the old bedding and floor coverings, digging it into one or another fallow vege garden bed and bringing in armfuls of fresh, clean hay. If I were a chook I would love hanging out in that cosy little house.

4. I have a hard time being decisive. I do so much thinking but I really can't bear to commit to an outcome just in case there is a better one I just haven't thought of yet. This is currently driving me nuts in the garden. I plan and think and sketch and draw and pace and plan. Then I plant. Then I think and pace and draw. Then I move whatever I planted to its new 'better' location. Then move it again. What if my pursuit of the perfect garden means I'll never have a real one?

5. I have always wanted to live on a farm, with chooks, dogs, kids, a vege patch, a big rambling garden and a friendly herbivore or two. It seemed like it would be the perfect life - full of life, and the beginnings and endings of things. Now I do, and it is wonderful. I am grateful every day for the opportunity to live like this in such a beautiful place. But every day I also think of my friends and my family, and wish that we could all find a way to be fewer miles apart. When I was younger it was all about the places. The older I get the more I understand that it is really about the people.

6. I am a big fan of the uniform. I have often contemplated making myself a uniform that I could wear every day. It would, one hopes, be stylish, sophisticated and interesting, but would take all the work out of it.

7. When Martha was littler than she is now, and we were both up for much of the night, Mark started bringing me a cup of tea in bed in the morning, and minding Martha while I sipped it...very slowly. Martha sleeps a lot better these days, only waking once or twice at most, but I'm still getting my cup of tea. It's one of my favourite times - sitting up in bed, by myself, looking out over the ranges to the distant horizon and imagining the many possible paths to the other end of the day. I guess it's only a matter of time before Martha starts to sleep through. I wonder what will happen to my cup of tea then? I think about this every morning, and often find myself, as Amber once said, 'nostalgic for now'.

8. I am absolutely appalling at opening food or drygoods packaging of any kind. It's a strange kind of selective impatience, because I will spend ten minutes prising apart sticky tape if I want to save wrapping paper. I think it's also because I'm not very good at following rules, including all those little dotted lines and scissor clipart and directives to 'open on the other side' so beloved of food manufacturers. My paternal grandmother Ena was the same. I can remember sitting, horrified, across the kitchen bench from her while she opened a carton of milk - by hacking the whole top off, in great jagged strokes, with a carving knife.

Okay, that's eight. As for tagging others, well, I'm only going to tag two - Amber and Tabitha. Maybe they can tag 16 each to make up for me!

The best bread ever...almost

I've been mucking about with bread for quite a few years now. It's taken a lot of trial and error (and, I admit, a bit of reading up on the glamourous world of 'bread chemistry') but I've discovered that making really good bread is not nearly as complicated or time consuming as you probably think.

There are a few things that I believe are vitally important - your flour (I use Laucke Mills 'Wallaby'), using as little commercial yeast as you can (preferably none), the length of time that the dough is left to prove, or rise, your kneading method (as little as possible) and the baking method. I'm sure there are bakers out there who might disagree, but for me, these are really the key things.

Of all these, the baking method is the most troublesome, frustrating and often disappointing for the home baker. Producing a good loaf of the kind that I like to make requires relatively high temperature and moisture levels, and ideally, heat that is transferred via conduction, convection and radiation. This is why masonry bread ovens are so great and home ovens generally so inadeqate (they are mainly designed as convection ovens). Not having access to a masonry oven, I've tried lots of things to 'soup up' my modest little Westinghouse, some more successful than others, some more annoying and incovenient than others. At one stage I even had a tray in the bottom of the oven full of rocks collected from the garden to try and raise the radiant heat levels (it didn't, as far as I could tell but the house was full of acrid smoke for hours). The most successful thing I've tried so far is using a cast iron casserole (as recommended by the legendary New York Times no knead bread recipe among others). It gives a more than acceptable result, and is my standard approach these days. But every time I go to preheat my poor beaten up cast iron pot it only reminds me that my bread is, at best, only a rough approximation of what it could, and should, be.

Not any more.

For months our friends down the road have been labouring over a masonry oven. Hand built and home designed with a bit of input from the Internet and a friendly brickie, the oven has slowly emerged, in all its statuesque glory, from an unpromising pile of rubble and wheelbarrow loads of firebricks, sand, cement and vermiculite.
Yesterday was cold and wet and windy, but we were toasty warm as we huddled around the oven waiting for the coals to burn down and the oven to even out in temperature. This took quite a few hours - this was your genuine 'slow food' - but fortunately Phil has a well stocked cellar.

The baking itself was full of drama. As soon as the loaves hit the hearth they sprung up into little dough balloons before the crust started to form and get brown. Quite brown. Very quickly. While 'oven spring' and a crisp, variably coloured crust are the true hallmarks of a good hearth bread, I'm not sure that balloons and brown-verging-on-blackness are in the handbook. But hey, this was our own bread, in a real oven, and dammit, it smelt good!
Yes, we have to work on the temperature - all the loaves had to be rescued within 20 minutes (normal home oven cooking time is 40 to 50 minutes) - but there was nothing like tearing open the loaves to see a lovely, steaming, glossy crumb, smothering it in butter and eating while still hot. Absolutely wonderful. And though wildly imperfect, it was the most perfect imperfect bread I've ever had.

Green

Martha's 'feature wall' in the subdued light of a rainy day. I love this colour (Porter's Paints Green Papaya). Green is meant to be the relaxing colour isn't it, and this certainly exudes tranquility and calm. We bought a four litre tin, and have three litres left. I think the spare room will be the next one to get the green treatment.