Farm Photography

When I was up at my parents' place a few weekends ago, I got out the Nikkon and went around trying to find some new things to photograph. I particularly wanted to try small things - macro photos if you will. Well, it is hard. Clearly I need to do some sort of reading on the subject!

Ick alert: there is a photo of a daddy-long-legs spider below. I've put it at the bottom so you can skip if that freaks you out.

I am so proud of this one. Have you ever tried to take a photo of an ant? They never stop moving!

Do you see the bird? I have no idea how bird photographers capture anything. Talk about flighty subjects.

The moo-cows weren't being particularly friendly. But this shot does show quite well how horribly dry it is out there at the moment. Farmers need rain!

My mum has managed to successfully grow frangipani, despite zero-degree winters. I'm so impressed!

Tail light on an old car my brother keeps in the dairy. I'm not sure, but I think this may be the Falcon ute that I learned to drive on!.

Daddy Long-Legs Spider

Do you do any macro photography? Or animals? Any tips?

Sunday Summary - 1st December

This week I have been...

Reading - All Good Things by Sarah Turnbull. A memoir of the author's life when she moved to Tahiti. It's pretty cool.

Tidying - my patio and yard. A huge job, but one that is very satifying.

Loving - those moments when you stop and just breathe. Like when I saw this beautiful Moreton Bay Fig at the markets today. What a glorious elder of its kind.

Watching - a mish-mask of television including The Walking Dead, NCIS and Sleepy Hollow. I like to pretend that Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow is James Norrington from The Pirates of the Caribbean's long-lost brother. (Don't blame me, it was on tumblr).

Dreaming - of landscaping my pool area with terracotta pots and minimalist spiky plants.

Thinking - a lot about Christmas. I wrote a guide to a Happy Homemade Christmas last year, would like to do something similar this year, but I'm not going to be doing much homemade stuff! So I might just curate some great other blogs that are doing it.

Baking - my own pizza dough! For the first time, I was insanely pleased with it. I also made a banana loaf today, finally used up all those over-ripe bananas in my freezer.

Hanging - out at the farm. Went and saw mum and dad last weekend, did some deep-breathing and chilling out. Going up to the farm recharges my batteries. I took some photos, which I have the intention of blogging but are still on my camera...

Looking forward to - work winding down after we complete end-of-month accounts this week. More scrapbooking in two weeks. And then some time off!

How's your week been?

Blogging and the self

I had a manager once who was a big advocate of journaling. Not just personal diarising, but writing about your professional life. She believed it helped relieve stress, organize your thoughts and aided problem solving. She also used to tell me that it was a great way to find out more about yourself. 
 

 

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I think she was right. The more I blog, the more insight I gain into the type of person that I am. When I read things I have written, things about my personality become clearer - what is important to me, what I believe in, things I'm passionate about. 

Recently, I learned that there is a blogging conference happening next year that is taking place on a cruise ship. My heart leapt. Two of my favorite things! Blogging and big ships! But then I realized there is no real way I could afford to go, unless I got a sponsor, or earned enough from this blog to pay for it. 

 

I briefly toyed with the idea of monetizing this blog but after googling a bit I quickly lost interest. There's a reason you don't see any advertising or sponsored posts on here. It's because I'm fundamentally lazy. I don't even keep an editorial calendar (I've heard that's a thing) - how could I organize myself enough to attract advertisers or put brand pitches together? Ha ha. I just don't have enough interest in it to make much of effort. A bit like my relationship with housework actually. 

 

That doesn't mean I couldn't. Money IS a pretty good motivator. And it doesn't mean I'm not going to monetize or open up the blog for paid content in future. It just means I've learnt enough about myself through blogging the last few years to realize I'm no go-getter. I'm a Slow Blogger. 

 

I'll continue to write a about things if and when the feeling grabs me. Because that's how I roll... For now, anyway!

 

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Has your writing helped you gain insight about yourself?

Fighting Food Waste: Herb Butter

If you're like me and have a black thumb when it comes to plants, growing your own herbs is something that you may struggle with.

So when you do buy fresh bunches from the shop for whatever ambitious cooking endeavour you're embarking on, what do you do with all the leftover?

Well, you make herb butter.

This is an old frugality chestnut, but I recently saw it on Save With Jamie. I had some flat-leafed parsley left over and it was rapidly wilting in its little plastic container, so I thought I'd give herb butter a go.

The method is pretty simple. Get a big block of butter. Leave it on the bench for a while while you have a cup of tea and a sit-down.

Come back and finely chop your leftover herbs. I'm assured you can use any you like. I used my mezzaluna because I have hopeless knife skills (and also it's fun!).

Put the herbs in a bowl with the soft butter and mix it all up.

Spoon onto some baking paper and mush it into a little log. Wrap it up and twist the ends. Put in freezer.

Here's the important bit: remember it's in there! Take it out to spread on crusty bread for soups, on top of steak or whatever you fancy. You could also add some garlic to make it even more awesome.

Fighting Food Waste will hopefully be a series here at Surely Sarah, feel free to tell me your tips!

On the Garage Sale Trail

Last Saturday was the 2013 Garage Sale Trail. It's the third year it's been held and my first time! Hard to believe I know, but for some reason this regular opshopper had never checked it out before.

The idea of the Garage Sale Trail is to organise folk around Australia to hold garage sales on the same day, with the goals of sustainability, growing community and helping money change hands for people and charities.

With the help of the interactive map on the website (which displayed sales in your area that people or organisations had registered and enabled you to create your own "treasure trail", so handy!) and the mobile app, off I went with a purse full of change and high hopes.

Unfortunately I completely bombed out! I think I was too late, as you may know, the early bird gets the worm. But this little worm had a sleep-in.

Nevertheless, I had fun poking about in other people's stuff, and you never know what gems you are going to find.

At the end of the day, the Garage Sale trail had over 13,000 sellers registered across the country, 1.5m items listed for sale and they project over $4.5m will flow into the local economy as a result of the day. That's pretty amazing stuff.

Did you do the Trail? Do you love or hate garage sales?

Sarah Suggests: Welcome to Night Vale

 

[Source: Alpha-Geek deviantART]

I'm not really a podcast kind of girl. I prefer watching things to listening as an exclusive activity, and apart from a few episodes of "Made of Fail", I haven't ever really been interested.

But that changed when I started listing to "Welcome to Night Vale". I kept hearing about it everywhere on twitter and tumblr. I saw fanart that I didn't understand and people shipping characters I'd never heard of. From a podcast. Take a moment to wrap your head around that one. Anyway, I now listen to it on the train to work, which can be a really weird way to start your day.

 

[Source: Dean Grayson deviantART]

So what is Welcome to Night Vale? Well, going by their website, it's "a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale." What you also need to know is it's fictional. But I'm hoping you will get that by the end of the first episode.

The bigger question, is why is it suddenly the biggest podcast on iTunes? Techgeek attempted to answer this recently. Basically, it makes weird seem normal. Clouds that glow and rain dead animals, mysterious angels, a levitating cat and a ban on going to/looking at/thinking about the dog park are all part of life in the desert community.

The other interesting thing is that the popularity of the podcast seems to have been contributed to a lot by Hannibal fandom. I guess if you like Hannibal, you'll love this. And even if you don't like Hannibal, but like offbeat, quirky and unique things, you will love Welcome to Night Vale also.

Download from itunes here
Personal fave merchandise: Night Vale NRA stickers
Check out the fanart on DeviantArt here
Search the tumblr hastag here (must be logged in)

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Sarah Suggests is an ongoing serious in which I will highlight stuff I think is cool. It might be a book, a movie, a tv show, a magazine, podcast, song - whatever!

Blog Action Day - Modern Abolition

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Abolition is a world I associate with the American Civil War. With Abraham Lincoln and Gone with the Wind. But recently I learned there is such a thing as modern abolition and that was quite a shocking thing.

Because if modern abolition exists that means there are modern slaves.

Oh, I knew there were still slaves in our world. I am not completely blind to sex trafficking, and I've seen Blood Diamond. And I remember reading a book once about a young girl from Africa (sorry I cannot be more specific than that, I genuinely cannot remember where she was from) who was sold into domestic slavery in London, to a wealthy couple, her own countrymen. But I haven't thought much about it since.

This month, mum bought me a copy of Peppermint magazine. I've never read it before - kind of always considered it to be a bit expensive, a bit hipster. But what a revelation - it had an article on "Made in a Free World", a "network of individuals, groups, and businesses working together to disrupt slavery and make freedom go viral." Founded by an amazing guy named Justin Dillon, they work to raise awareness, increase transparency in our supply chains and engage people, groups and businesses about modern slavery.

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There are an estimated 27 million slaves worldwide. Take a moment to think about that number. TWENTY-SEVEN MILLION. That's more than the population of my country. That's more people in slavery than ever before in the history of humanity.

They exist in so many more industries that one would guess. Not just the sex trade - there are slaves laboring in manufacturing, mining, agriculture and fishing.

What I do like about Made in a Free World is that their action plan does not include boycotts. Instead, they work to try to help businesses identify slavery in their manufacturing chains, exposing forced labour where they may not have even realised it was happening. They also are trying to raise consumer awareness via their Slavery Footprint website, which can help you identify how many slaves work for you. Yes, YOU. How many slaves helped make your coffee, or grow the crops used to make your clothes? I did the survery. It said I had 34 slaves working for me, mainly in the areas of medicine, gadgets, electronics and car manufacture. Now that's an eye-opener

Here's a great video about children enslaved in Ghana's fishing industry.



So what can you do? Read about the issue more. Get educated about it. Here in Australia, Anti Slavery Australia works to help those in slavery or forced labour situtions. This may be anyone who is trapped working in their family's shop and paid no wages to a sex worker being held to "work off a debt". Have a good read of their site, there are many things you can do to get involved. You can volunteer, donate, fundraise.

But I think the most important things are awareness, and questioning. The more you know, the better the decisions you can make about your consumerism. The more questions we ask, the more exploitative practises are exposed.

How many slaves work for you?

{This post was written for Blog Action Day 2013. This year's theme is Human Rights}