Roadside plum harvest

In almost any place around the world you will find wild fruit trees on the sides of the roads, particularly small country lanes.  In our region we are lucky to have an abundance of 'cherry plums' and apples (and plenty of blackberries too, but you would want to find an unsprayed patch - as most blackberries in our area get heavily sprayed), as well as chestnuts, peaches and pears.  Some groups are putting together 'scrumping' maps so that the whole community can make use of the harvest. 

I took the kids recently to pick a few buckets full of plums.  The kids ate heaps of them, about a kilogram was turned into a delicious chutney and another kilogram or so was made into wine.  I had planned on making jam as well, but didn't get around to it (last year I made several batches of plum jam).  Chutney making is very well suited to the woodstove, as it requires long slow cooking (something I never could do well on our old electric or gas cook tops - as I've always felt guilty about power use...).  My chutneys have become more or less just a creative process, not much measuring or weighing, just a bit of this and a bit of that!

The wine making is probably the least abount of work.  Last year I made about 12 or 13 bottles of blackberry wine (its been sitting for almost a year now in our cool pantry - we get to sample it in April this year).  This year I thought I would try to make wine from our local plums. The wine is fermeting away in its glass demijohn and will probably take a month or more before it stops, at which point I'll be able to bottle it. 

Its fun to use the foods that grow locally, and to learn different ways of preserving them.  I am looking forward to the apple harvests this year, as our roadside apples are loaded with fruit.  I am planning on drying a whole heap, plus making chutney, bottling some and making some cider.  Meanwhile the blackberries are starting to ripen...

Chicks

Then end of last year was a pretty dismal time around here, regarding our flock of chooks.  We lost some to the fox, some to unknown causes, chicks either failed to hatch, or died soon after (the fox took my 2 good mother hens...).  The last attempt at hatching chickens was going well, till about 2 days before hatching, the hen abandoned the eggs (it was very hot, and her broody cage was probably not situated in the best position, she was also bothered by lice).  Out of her 4 eggs one chick hatched.  Since its as much work to care for one chick (and keep it warm) as it is for a few more, I few 'day old' chicks to keep it company.

Raising chicks in a brooder is not really my ideal scenario.  Although they are all doing great, after having watched our mother hens care for and teach the young chicks how to behave, I think its the best way to do it.  I've been feeding them as natural diet as I can manage.  Lots of egg (with crushed garlic and dried nettles), millet, seasame seed, a little wheat and rolled oats.  I also collect some wood lice (slaters) for them. 

What I find amazing is that even these chicks who haven't really seen adult chooks, know how to scratch and have a real appetite for bugs.  Its quite incredible that an animal regarded as unitelligent as the chook can have so many inbuilt instincts.

The kids are enjoying these chicks, they actually get to pick them up (probably more than I would like) and watch them, which is harder with a protective mother hen about!!!  I'm thinking that we have 2 roosters and 4 hens, but only time will tell!

summer

Life has been good, but not particularly eventful here.  We are probably in one of the few parts of our state that has not had extraordinary rains, although still more than is typical for summer.  We have also been lucky to not have our typically hot weather - with more mild 20-35C so far this summer.  Summer usually makes me nervous, and adds a whole new dimension of work as far as watering the garden goes.  So the garden is growing well, the grass is still green (not the usual thing in mid January!). 

sweet corn

zuchinni - the best I've ever grown!

We are devoting most of our spare time to building the house, along with other urgent jobs like shearing (which we finally got around to do this week - again Brad did them using the hand shears), and pulling out Ragwort.  The Ragwort has been very prolific this year, not just in abundance, but also in the sheer size of the plants (some are as tall as us).  Personally I don't think its such a big deal, its real problem is that the most common livestock here don't eat it, so therefore its taking the place of grass.  I've been doing some reading on 'natural farming' although I use that description loosely - a book by Joel Salatin.  The book (The Sheer Ecstacy of Being a Lunatic Farmer) has 'joined the dots' on alot of things I read about and know, and the issue of Ragwort is one of them.  By consistently grazing the same animals, and getting them to graze the grass down before moving them on, you are actually encouring the growth of plants that they DON'T like!  As they eat the stuff they like and let the 'weeds' grow strongly.  Makes sense, yet that is how pretty much all 'produtive' farming is done.  Litres of chemicals poured over the land to deal with an issue that cross grazing with sheep or goats would control....



I've been inspired by Salatin's example and am currently reading more about our food system and diet (Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food).  Its definatley a topic that is close to my heart, and we are pretty passionate about producing real food, that hasn't been adulterated by the industrial food system. I'll leave it at that for the moment, but I highly recommend reading about these topics, especially about how our food system works and what you are eating.  Food is probably THE most important thing in our lives, and we should be eating the best food (even if its expensive) and in its 'natural' state - not processed.

The weather (apart from when it has been raining) has been very nice for taking photos.  Such beautiful blue skies.  Here are some snapshots of the last few weeks.

2010, 2011 and beyond

2010 was a very short year for us, well it felt short, like we could have blinked and missed it.  I think that is because of the preparation for building the house, you know how time flies if you have a deadline....  We have been pretty busy with the building stuff now, and its nice to actually be able to do something, instead of just waiting for paperwork etc.  You can read more about it here.

As far as general life on the farm 2010 was a bittersweet year.  We lost quite a few animals, our goat gyspy, an alpaca, but by far the most abundant losses were in our hens.  We started spring with 13 hens, and now we have 5 left.  But typical of the way nature works, one of the hens is sitting on a few eggs, so new life may replenish the losses. This quote pretty much sums it up, and keeps coming back to me, as it seems so 'real'.

"Earth brings us into life and nourishes us. Earth takes us back again.  Birth and death are present in every moment"

Since we left town, I feel that we have come closer to nature and the cycles of life and seasons.  Its easy in town to disconnect, it doesn't matter what the weather is like because you have the same temperature year round due to the wonders of heating/cooling systems, you don't eat seasonally as farmers will run heated hothouses to provide tomatoes year round or we import from warmer climates, so we can eat watermelon in winter.  Out here, the seasons are 'in your face', if its cold its hard to not notice it.  When you grow any vegetables, you become aware of when the naturally would grow in your area.

2011 is promising to be another full year for us, which will probably pass by far too quickly (considering we almost half way through january already - how did that happen??).  The house building will be a dominant part of our lives for the next few years.  We will also focus our efforts on establishing good infrastructure such as fencing, water pipes and additional tanks and catchments, more protection for trees and gardens and setting up yards etc for animal management.  Due to our sagas with our hens, we will also be looking at setting up a portable house that can be moved around the paddocks with a herd guardian of some sort.  We will also try and inrease our food production, and reduce our reliance on outside sources of food for us and the animals.  We will see how far we will get with that this year.

Passage of time

Five years ago we bought this land.  Its been an amazing privelage to have our own piece of earth to care for, despite the incredible amount of work and responsibility that comes with that.  Most of that five years has been spent sharing our time between probably too many different things.  Most of that time has also been spent feeling overwhelmed with jobs that 'should have been done yesterday'.

Our front paddock and gully (in background) as it was 5 years ago.

Five years younger, and proud of our first efforts at fencing!

Gully as it was 5 years ago

We often feel like we are chasing our tail, dealing with weeds (particularly those that seed and spread on to our neighbours land - such as Ragwort), fencing and animal shelters, keeping the grass down (our current weather hasn't helped that!), improving our infrastructure (such as water collection, storage and troughs), and just caring for the animals that we have.  Lets not even mention building the house!  It makes you tired in a way that just a 'hard day's work' doesn't, that sort of emotional weight that is always there...

With a long list of jobs like this, its often hard to stop and enjoy life for what it is.  But its something we are working on! 

Looking at photos from the first year of owning our land we have realised that we have done SO much already.  Sure the house isn't built and there is always a million things that need doing.  We have a lifetime to enjoy our land, our family and animals, and quite frankly we are only human and can only do SO much.

Lots of regenerating trees in gullies.

The same gully as seen in the first photo, now with LOTs of natural regeneration as well as planted indigenous trees.

A garden that is starting to flourish

A handmade house that is slowly taking shape

So here's to 2011, wishing for a good year filled with

fun,joy and happiness, 

good rain and good sunshine

good company and good friendships

good growth and good harvests

more life and less death (I'll compromise for balance!)

less foxes and less weeds

and shorter to-do lists!

We have bees!

Last weekend we got our first hive of bees.  I've been keen to get bees for a number of years, both for honey and pollination of fruit and vegetables.  For some reason there aren't alot of bees around in our area - certainly not on our place, and I can't really see any reason why that would be the case.

The hive we bought came with bees, and is just the ordinary Langstroth hive, very common in Australia.  My ultimate goal is to have several hives, mostly top-bar hives (so the bees build natural comb attached to bars that you can individually move).  We will build these hives, but with all the work that is needed here on the farm and building the house - building bee hives never became a priority. 

At this stage we don't have plans to sell excess honey, we generally prefer to give away our excess produce, but it will all depend on how productive the bees are.  We plan on leaving them enough honey so that we aren't feeding them white sugar as a (poor) substitute for the food they have worked so hard to produce.  Many commercial beekeepers take most of the honey and feed them on sugar (or worse corn syrup from genetically modified corn), so it will be nice to have our own source of 'real' honey made from flowers!

Plus the bees are facinating to watch, I go and sit and watch them fly in and out, you could just sit there all day (obviously I don't have time to do that!).  The kids like them, and our 4 year old already knows so much about bees and how they live - she loves the queen...

Sourdough

Its been about 2 years since I first started making sourdough bread.  Since that day, I've made pretty much all the bread we eat, I think I may have bought 2 loaves in that time, if that.  For the last 18 months or so, I've also been baking our bread in a wood oven which has added a new degree of challenge and planning!

I'd love to say that I'm a great baker (I suppose I'm not too bad) but I've had many failures and flops in that time.  Between heavy loaves that didn't rise to over proved loaves that crumble up in the middle when cut!  There is something of an art to baking bread, you need to bake it at the RIGHT time, and usually the flops are when I try and bake it to suit me, eg the oven isn't hot enough yet and while its heating the bread over proves, or its late at  night and the bread hasn't risen enough and I give up and bake as is for the sake of getting some sleep!  One day I will be more organised though!

What I love about sourdough is that you don't need to buy yeast.  I have my own little community of yeasts and bacteria that I look after and use to make our bread.  All you need is flour, water and salt, nothing more! 

Lately I have been dabbling in making sourdough pancakes.  I was inspired by this blog post.  We have made them a couple of times, and they were are real hit, even with Brad, who was sceptical about makeing pancakes with sourdough (he makes lovely crepes which are dearly loved by our kids).

I want to experiment more with making sourdough 'stuff'.  I have heard of using the starter to make cakes and muffins.  Something to try, come winter.  Right now the plants are popping out of the ground, and its hard to stay indoors to bake!