Abundance

Its been a while since I've posted on the blog.  Life has been very full, and there is just never enough hours in the day to do it all! 

We have had an amazing growing season here.  Although the weather hasn't been as typically warm as most years, we have had LOTS of rain (over 200mm in February...  2 years ago we had about 7mm!!!).  Everything has remained green, which has been lovely, and has meant no worrying about bushfires or watering the garden.  I'm enjoying it, although it has meant that we have had a dismal tomaoe harvest this year. 

We have enjoyed a very abundant zuchinni harvest however!!!  I've had to get a bit creative with using them up!  This year I've grown capsicums for the first time and I'll definately be planting them again.  They have been pretty successful.  I also planted sweetcorn which grew well, but we did have issues with pollination (I think our site is too windy). 

Currently we are getting LOTS of apples (from our own tree as well as from friends and roadside trees).  I've bottled some lovely cooking apples from a nearby organic apple orchard, and made some chutney, and cakes etc.  I've also got a batch of apple and blackberry wine on the go.  I'm still hoping to make a batch of apple butter or sauce or something and maybe some more bottled apples.  

In the next few years our fruit trees that we have been planting will start to bear fruit and we will be able to enjoy a real abundance.

I've spent a bit of my time building a duck pen to house a few ducks for eggs.  We finished it off today.  As I understand it, duck are much better winter layers than hens, so they'll offset the reduced egg production from the hens. Next up on my list is to improve my vegetable garden fencing (and expand it - its currently about 8mx8m but I think double would be ideal). 

Work on the house building has stalled, but I think work may start up again soon.  Its hard as owner builders to find the balance between working to pay for the building and doing the actual building.  Both take alot of time.  I think there will be an update on the house soon on the blog.

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...

Chestnuts

Its been getting colder and wetter now, and the autumn winds are sure blowing up here. We have been enjoying eating the wild mushrooms popping up on our land, they are beautiful flavoured. We are also fortunate that there are several chestnut trees growing wild along the roadsides in our area. Chestnuts are definately a food of the autumn and are something to be enjoyed on a cold evening.

The kids and I ventured out to collect a box of chestnuts on the weekends. For me chestnuts have alot of memories associated with my childhood in Switzerland, and of times spent at my great-aunts place in Chestnut growing country. I have always enjoyed getting the nuts out of their very prickly cases, and the process of peeling them.

We roasted a small amount of nuts a few nights ago, ate some and turned the rest into soup. They are great for thickening up soups or stews and add a nutty flavour. You can also add the cooked nut into stir-fries and make deserts as well.


I doubt any one else in our area collects these nuts, so I am sure we will go back and collect some more before they all rot. I think the chestnuts will be the last of our harvests before winter sets in. I've been propagating lots of winter greens and brassicas for the garden, which are going in as we speak. I suspect that unless the weather changes pretty dramatically I will be making a big batch of green tomatoe chutney, as only half a dozen tomatoes have ripened so far!!! Maybe for next spring we will have to set up a small greenhouse!

The equinox and beyond

We celebrated the Autumn equinox on the weekend, with a bit of a harvest party, and our woodfired pizzas of course! We had a lovely day with a great group of friends and family. The food was amazing, with most people bringing home grown and home made food (or both!). It was a lovely way to celebrate a time of year that was typically the time to bring in the harvest in preparation for the dark times. Here in Australia this time of year is still quite mild and the harvests will extend beyond the equinox.

Our tomatoes are ALMOST ripe now!!!! Its been a funny growing season this one, with very early hot periods (that sent most people into a frenzy of 'what is summer going to be like' (me included), then it turned bitterly cold for a while, and then back to a typically mild summer (like the ones we used to have)). Despite this we have had a pretty good crop of beans (the purple king climbing beans have been great - definately will plant more of these in spring), reasonable crops of zuchinni (good for me anyway!), potatoes and lots of very little carrots. We had a great crop of blackberries (all gone now though - the plants are dying back) and still inundated in big juicy apples. I think the last crop will be the chestnuts (there are about 10 wild chestnut trees nearby, so we will do a collection of these once they are ready), and then I think it will be pretty quiet till spring.

So what do we do with the abundant crops (especially the wild ones in our area) - well, I have gone somewhat overboard on the preserves I think!!! Brad suggested a table at our equinox celebration with 'please take one'!!!!


Personally I think there is something comforting about a pantry full of jams, chutneys etc. It feels as though no matter what happens to this world and civilisation at least we wont starve. Perhaps its from the 'old days' when we had to preserve the crops so that we would survive winter before the spring crops begin bearing. I guess its not really relevant in todays world, as everything is available year round in the supermarkets, if its out of season its just imported from overseas or grown in a hot house. I find that growing your own and gleaning from the wild plants forces you to eat more in tune with the seasons. And I am happy to go straight past the jam, chutney, milk and eggs in the supermarket!!!

So now we head into the dark, the days are noticably shorter, the shadows definately longer, and the nights colder. We are heading into unknown territory with regard to our power system (we installed it around the time of the spring equinox last year). So far it has performed perfectly, with an excess of power (typical for solar power) over summer, but once the sun drops lower in the sky we may not make enough power to keep the batteries charged enough. The sun sits pretty low in the sky up here, quite surprising to us, considering we lived only 30mins away and it was never so low at our old place.

So for now we are planning on enjoying the light while it lasts, spening time in the garden, and getting fencing done (as well as the final jobs to keep us a bit warmer this winter). Soon it will be bitterly cold, and I have a backlog of fleeces to spin, so thats what I will be doing this winter!

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!!!

My precious

I think that raspberries are just wonderful. They are nice to eat, but they are also SO easy to grow. I think that if I were in charge of the world I would make it compulsory for every house to have a small patch! My patch is a rather wild one, it started with just a few suckers that my mum gave me, and each year they multiply. I keep pulling them out of the path and planting them up at the farm or giving them away to others.

This year has been a good year for raspberries (well, actually, I can't think of when we had a BAD year for raspberries!!). I only watered them the first summer that I put them in, and occasionally a bucket of water from the washing machine, and yet we get bucket loads of berries, about 1kg every 2 days for a couple of weeks.

I've already made one batch of jam, and am about to make a second. Our daughter loves them, and helps pick them, and has eaten tonnes of them! The only down side is that each variety only fruits for a short while, so to have a long crop you need a few different varieties.

How much does one have to do?

I'm truly at my wits' ends with our goat Cookie. He is a real sweetie, very friendly and incredibly beautiful. But why can't he just not escape from his paddock? Even wearing the Y shaped branch that we have put around his neck to stop him going through the fence, he still manages to get out. He has a nasty habit of eating trees that we care about, either fruit trees or plants with sentimental value. But I also fear for him, as he is likely to follow someone home (he is a people goat), and who knows what could happen to him. I wish there was some simple solution, but then again, that is why everyone has goats that they give away, they are a real pain in the butt sometimes....


But on to more happy things. We have been getting a bit of rain now, and it really feels like autumn is on its way. Although we are still getting warm/hot days, the nights are cool, and I can feel the plants (those that survived anyway) breathing a sigh or relief. At the farm, my only vegies that survived were my potatoes (although there is nothing on the surface now as the grasshoppers ate the plants), I harvested some today, and we had roast potatoes for dinner.


I love the taste of real fresh home grown potatoes, they actually taste of the earth. 'Our' roast potatoe recipe is just to cut them up and toss in a baking dish with olive oil, and add a mix of garlic, peppercorns and rock salt that has been 'ground' in the mortar and pestle. Lovely with a big dollop of sour cream.... yum!


I've managed to finish the chocolate brown alpaca fleece. It ended up being 720g once it was washed and spun, so that is ok although, I would have expected a little more. Unfortunately the shearer made a little bit of a mess of it, and made lots of second cuts. Stupidly, I spun this fairly thick, so that I could cheat when it came to knitting my raglan, so that I could use bigger needles and get it done faster, so now I'm not sure if there will be enough, and none of my other handspun is spun so thick, so I can't even do stripes..... damn stupid me! I am thinking I will probably make Brad a vest out of this, and keep the white fleece ( the last one of my own fleeces! YAY!) for myself.


I've also been knitting away on my jaywalker sock, which is going ok, and a version of the baby yoda jacket (I'm making a 'vest') for the bub to be. I figured I should make it something....

Apart from that its all pretty much as usual around here, nothing much happening and yet constantly busy!

Peaches, glorious peaches!

Well, its that time of year when my beautiful peach tree rewards me for the forsight to plant it 5-6 years ago. Money well spent I reckon! This tree is a yellow fleshed clingstone, called Golden Queen. Fantastic variety, although I am biased. I have never bought a peach from the shop since I tasted my first one off the tree (shop bought peaches are NOT what peaches taste like).


The last few years we have had really good crops, and even though the birds have gotten to much of the fruit (plus peaches seem to just want to fall off the tree green...), we have still picked well over 10kg.


I've bottled 11 bottles so far, plus eaten many, and given some away, plus the chickens have had some etc etc.

I really enjoy the bottling of the fruit, not sure why more people don't do it. Sure it takes some time, but so does working to pay for the food we buy, and I know what I'd rather do! And the end product is so much better than anything you buy in the shop. The other advantage is that I can reuse and reuse the jars (most of them are already second hand) so I know that I am doing something good for our planet too. Funny thing, I had just run out of jars and a friend of ours came round to help with some work at the farm, and brought me 2 big boxes full (all with stainless steel lids too!).

Speaking of the farm, here is said friend and Brad putting up the guttering on the shed!


We still have a few bits and pieces to finish off the outside of the shed, some flashing, and the other side guttering. Its so nice to see the shed with walls now, a great feeling of accomplishment. Anyway, soon we can start on some new project!

This is the way we bottle the fruit....

A friend tipped me off about some cheap cases of apricots at our local fruit and veg shop. So, temptation took hold and I bought a case, 10kg of apricots. So I set to preserving....

washing, cutting and packing the fruit into jars. Pouring in the syrup, and then into the preserving unit.

and the result is 8 lovely jars of home bottled apricots, which we will enjoy for the remainder of the year, along with other fruits such as the peaches off our own very productive tree.

I also got 7 jars of jam out of the 10kgs of fruit, plus I still had enough to give away and for eating. Not bad for a days work.

Now I just picked 1kg of raspberries off our plants, so I will probably have to set about making some raspberry jam soon..... Ahhh the joys of summer.

The start of something good

Here we have the first few raspberries off our plants. Its only early days and last year we easily picked a kilogram of berries in one sitting. They are so easy to grow and so productive I find it incredible that they can be so expensive in the supermarket. We will probably eat many fresh, but also make our jam. Last year we made about 3 kg of jam, which has lasted us the year as well as having a few jars to give away as gifts.

The title of this post is also in reference to our very recent election! YAY! We are pleased to see our old governement out, and hopefully we can have SOME hope of better things to come.

No knitting or spinning news. Still working away on Brad's sock, and I've abandoned the jumper for our little one, since I'm not happy with the armhole shaping, and have had to rip it out once already. So I will probably just improvise on that. Photos once I have the back finished.