Apples

Autumn is fast approaching, and around here autumn means apples! Its the start of the apple harvest, and this year seems to be a good year! Our tree (a very old tree - probably at least 50 years old) has born a great crop of HUGE apples. The birds have been eating them, and the wind has knocked many down (food for the chickens and I've been making chutney), but there are many there, still ripening.


Apples are one of the great harvests in the cool temperate zones. You can store them as they are (usually wrapped in newspaper in a box in a cool place) if they are un damaged (not windfalls), make chutney, apple sauce, apple butter, bottle them, dry them, juice them and make cider. I am planning on doing a bit of all of these!!!



The other great thing about apples is that there are so many wild trees on the side of the road (in country areas, especially along roads that were once busy, but are no longer used much), probably grown from discarded cores or spread by birds. I have taken note of the different fruit trees growing wild in our area and so far I have found - apples, pears, chestnuts, cherry plums (various varieties), peaches and loquat. I always keep my eyes open for edibles when we are out.

Nearby there is a heritage apple nursery, and this year I want to head there and buy some more apple trees. Not the run of the mill varieties, but some of the old and no longer common varieties, and I want a Cox's Orange Pippin (I did plant one a couple of years ago, but alas, my 'patented method for hardening off trees' did not suit this tree and it kindly died on me...)!


Aside from being (almost literally) showered in apples right now, things have been relatively quiet around here. We have been working at getting our winter firewood in (pretty much done), and have started on a bit more fencing. The nights are getting cooler, and the sun is dropping in the sky. The equinox is in less than 4 weeks, and then it will start to get both cold and dark. We noticed that up here in the hills the sun sits lower in the sky in winter. It will be the real test of our solar power system - how it will cope with the low sun angle and the gloomy misty winter days of the hills. Wont be long and we will find out!!!

I will leave you with a photo of the kids. Happy, healthy and active little rascals.

Bountiful!

Despite the heat and dry conditions over summer, the garden has been providing us with some good harvests.



The garden still needs LOTS of work, alot more organic matter incorporated into the soil, ALOT. There are only so many trips with the wheelbarrow that I can manage per day, and the heat lately has got me out of the habit. I don't mind hard work, but pushing a heavy wheelbarrow up our hill on a hot day isn't much motivation!!! We are in the planning stages of a very big and thoughout chicken pen/vegy garden set up. Its basically the 'chicken tractor' that is often mentioned in permaculture books. There will be one largish under cover shed, where the hens will roost and get out of the rain, with a reasonable sized yard attached to it. Then comming off this will by long beds, which will be the vegetable garden beds, so when the harvesting is done, the chickens can be let into one of these beds and clean up, turn over and fertilize etc. If everythign is off limits, then they will be restricted to just the yard and shed. Hopefully it will solve a few problems that I have - increase the fertility of the soil, more area (and therefore food for the chickens) and stop the chickens from destroying my current garden when I let them out (very important to me!!!). Its going to be a fair bit of work, but hopefully will give us a very productive garden.

Speaking of chickens, we have another 2 hens gone broody. Hopefully tonight we will move them to our chick hatching pen (the old rabbit cage). Our daughter is pretty excited about this, and is talking constantly about chicks hatching etc. Not sure though about the timing, it seems a bit late now, as the chicks will hatch in autumn, but perhaps it will work out well, they will probably be ready to lay in spring.

As I am writing this we are being blessed with some lovely rain, and lots of it. It rained all night, and the day before we got a heavy downpour (which included very large hail - like golf balls!). Its just lovely, and at least I get out of watering the garden!!! I guess I should get the trusty wheelbarrow out and do some manure collecting instead!

the harvest season

Its hard to believe that I am writing this post on a gloomy, foggy, rainy day, considering that in 2 days time is the one year anniversary of the worst bush fires we have seen in our area, and entire country. I think the figure is around about 200 people killed, but I think the exact figure will never be known, as the fires were so bad... I know I am not alone in my apprehension about summer, and what we might face, sales of 'fire gear' was through the roof, and many shops in early spring (when we had a mini-heat wave) had sold out of protective gear like smoke masks and goggles and fire pumps.... Summer is not over yet, but at least we can relax a bit, as we can be sure that we wont have the same conditions we had this time last year - we have had rain!! And over 20mm (not quite an inch) of it over night!!

The rain is also welcome for the garden, which has survived well, considering I can only handwater with a watering can (with a large garden and 2 kids there are only so many trips I can make). We have been enjoying beans, carrots, zuchinni and potatoes from the garden, as well as our own eggs (the hens are laying like mad) and milk. So entire meals from our land are possible! The tomatoes have only just started to set fruit, and this is a problem shared by many gardeners this year. Many have noticed a lack of bees, which is probably part of it, and most likely our 'odd' weather this past spring/summer. I wonder if its just an odd season, or is this part of a change in climate that seems to be happening. I guess we will have to wait and see.

We have a blackberry glut! I have made a few batches of blackberry and apple jam, which is beautiful, as well as apple and blackberry pies and other deserts. But at the moment I have a batch of blackberry wine on the go! This is my very first attempt at wine making (we have done beer making from the purchased kits).


It is definately fermeting, as its bubbling along fairly rapidly, and we have snuck a taste and it tastes nice. The recipe is quite simple and only required the purchase of sugar (I buy organic sugar by the 25kg bag), lemons and a small sachet of wine yeast. There are many recipes in books or online, so I wont go into the process as such, but you basically just mash the fruit, cover with water and leave it over night, then add sugar, yeast and lemon juice and put into demijohns. I believe it will ferment for a month or possibly more, and once its finished you rack (siphon) it off into bottles and cork it. Then the hard part - to leave it sit for a whole year!!! We will only know if its nice when we would need to start the next lot!


The next harvest for the area will be apples. We have one old apple tree here, which is loaded with fruit, plus a few young ones that we have planted and are yet to fruit. But we are lucky that along most of the roads up here are many wild apple trees, either grown from discarded apple cores, or spread by birds. Either way, they are a great resource, and in the next month or so we will make a few apple collecting expeditions! Can't wait. I think we will look at bottling some apple pulp for pies etc, and dry apple rings. Our horses and goats love apples, so will have a go at some more long term storage too. As they say 'a dollar saved is a dollar earned', which is pretty much our way of life here, we would rather spend our days picking apples or blackberries, than going to work to buy them!!! They don't call it the 'good life' for nothing!

Pest or not???

Around here, the blackberry is regarded as a terrible pest, to be sprayed and destroyed at all cost (the cost being the health of the sprayer and their family and the environment....). We try and do our bit to keep pests down etc, and we try and get the blackberries out of the native vegetation, as they can be a little dominating over revegetation. But to us blackberries are also a really valuable resource.

Blackberries at this time of year (mid-late summer) are in full fruit. As an example, this morning we spent maybe 30mins or so, and picked nearly 2kg of berries, and got to enjoy a nice walk while we were at it. In the supermarket blackberries sell for at least $5 per 250g punnet.... (hmm, the 2kg of blackberries simmering on the stove would make a pretty expensive jam.... we live a pretty luxurious life!)


Blackberries are fodder for stock - we keep goats and goats LOVE blackberries (horses like the fruit, alpacas the young shoots). I think that they would be happy to only eat blackberries for their entire lives! Bees love the blackberry flowers - so for bee keepers they are also important (fingers crossed the bees will happen this year).

Blackberries are medicinal. The leaves can be used to make an ezcema remedy, and the berries (eaten) are a pregnancy tonic among other things (Raspberry leaf tea is normally drunk during pregnancy - and raspberries and blackberries belong to the family Rubus). There are specific remedies that use blackberry, read up on it in one of the many herbal books around - I recommend Juliette de Bairacli Levy, who has written on herbs for both humans and animals.

Hmmm, now I present you a pest, probably far more damaging to the garden than the humble blackberry....


This young man has discovered the art of pulling up carrots! Yes, the carrot patch that I am so proud of, my very first successful carrot patch..... I think there might have to be a child proof fence put up around the bed, or else we will only be eating very very tiny carrots!!!

Click go the shears

We have been waiting on the shearer to come and shear our 4 alpacas for a while now, and he hasn't turned up. Not anything new there, shearers can make life difficult, and can turn up with little notice. Its been hot (on and off thank goodness) and 2 of our alpacas have alot of fleece around the eyes, so they were essentially blind (wool blind).


So, after a friend dropped off some fleece that he had shorn himself with the old fashioned handshears, we got to thinking.... So for the cost of shearing the alpacas once, we got a reasonable set of handshears. But the real advantage is in the satisfaction of doing it ourselves! From 'back to back' the process is all done by us by hand, and that is a good feeling. Although I think Brad gets the easier end of the deal!!! He does the shearing, and my job then is to spin and knit the fibre into clothes.

So far only 1 and a half are done. It takes much longer to shear by hand and with 2 young children sitting patiently while we shear, we just can't do them all in one sitting. I would estimate between 1 and 2 hours per animal, most of that time being spent on the 'rubbish' parts of the fleece - the legs, belly, neck, tail, and around the head. All fiddly and the fleece is shorter and often very guard hairy and coarse. The 'saddle' or 'blanket' is the prime fleece, and its fairly easy and quick to shear.

If you haven't seen alpacas shorn before, you lie them down on their side and tie the front and back legs to posts so the animal is stretched out and can't move much (no action photos - we are too busy holding the animal and getting on with the work!). They are much stronger than sheep, and I don't think it would be a safe thing to try and shear them the way sheep are shorn!!! This time I administered a little 'rescue remedy', and the animal was so calm we both stopped to check if he was still alive!!!! I can't say for sure if it was the rescue remedy or whether it was just how he was going to behave, but he sure did fight before we got him on the ground, and actually dragged Brad about 10m along the ground!!!

So, another step forward, a new skill obtained, and its only January!!! I think there will be many things to learn this year, probably not all will be as easy or fun, but knowledge and skills are invaluable.

Meet the chicks

Here are some photos of each of the three chicks that we hatched last year. They are now about 5 weeks old, and doing great.

Featherlegs - the only rooster of the three, and by far the most charismatic of the chicks. Quite a character, although he is not afraid to peck the hand that feeds him!!! He has taken on his father's characteristic leg feathering. Most likely his mum is our other welsummer hen 'Henny'.



Fivetoes (now named Daffy - by our daughter). She has taken on her father's 5 toes. Also likely to be half welsummer. She has the most feathering of the chicks.



No distinguishable characteristics (yet to be named) - I initially though she was a he. Much slower at feathering up. She has no particularly distinguishable characteristics. Most likely, her mum is our Light Sussex x Leghorn hen, a very good layer.


Life has been good, if a little busy here. Trying to keep the ragwort from setting seed is probably one of the big jobs at this time of year, and unlike everyone else in the area, we are tackling it organically - so pulling or cutting the plants off. We hope that one day we can show people the place and say that you don't need to spray chemicals all over the place to deal with weeds. At this stage no one believes that it is possible!!

Apart from weeding, another job that we have to tackle is tensioning the fence and adding droppers between the posts to make it harder for the goats to get out! Hmm, I read in a book that the goat owner spends many hours upgrading fences and trying to outsmart the goats, but the goats have all day to think of how to get out!!! How true! Ah, fun times.

Goodbye 2009

Today is the last day of 2009. I find it a good opportunity to look back on the year that was and the achievements/milestones.

2009 was a pretty big year for us. This time last year we were still working on the old house, we still had a lot of work to do. We not only finished the renovation work, but also built us a tempoary home while we build our strawbale house. Halfway through 2009 we made the move to our land, to begin the 'dream'. It was an interesting time, we had very little in the way of the 'mod cons' we were used to. Makes you realise how little we need, but also how much we take for granted as 'westerners', compared to what so many in the world have.

We have added to the 'family' with the addition of our milking goat and more hens and roosters (which lead to our chicks! Self sufficiency in hen replacement!!). We have learnt how to cook and bake on the wood fired combustion stove, how to set up an off grid power system, and milk a goat. We have managed to somewhat tame our clydesdale horse, and can now put her halter on, and pick up her feet a bit. So much more to learn in 2010.

All that time I spent travelling up to our land every couple of days to check on animals has been spent creating and tending the garden, which is growing nicely. 2010 should see more beds dug and more manure and compost added to the established gardens.

Its been a hard year, I certanly feel tired. But its probably been one of the most rewarding years as far as our own personal achievements go. But 2009 was also an incredibly scary year. We suffered a seriously hot heat wave, temperatures beyond what we have had before, which lead to the worst fires we have had before (with unprecedented deaths). I hope that 2010 is kind to us, but as I write this its hot outside, and the grass is drying off.... Hmm, 2 months to stress and worry, till autumn comes.

So what is the plan for 2010? Hmm, hopefully some rest and relaxation. Hopefully more time spent with the animals, taking care of their needs. Fencing, gardening and weed management. We hope to have the house plans drawn up and maybe to make a start on the house, towards the end of the year.

So goodbye 2009, the new decade begins, hopefully with the 'flavour' of hope, change and compassion on a global scale.