Cheese

With all the lovely spring grass that is growing madly, we are getting more milk from our milking goat Dorka.  About 1.5L per day.  We don't drink that much milk, so every week or so there is enough milk to make a small batch of cheese.  We started off just making a soft ricotta type cheese, just with vinegar to curdle the milk, which worked fine, and made a soft cheese that was nice on crackers, or in a cheese and spinach pie.  We then decided to buy some rennet to experiment further. 

Its amazing the difference in the curdling between vinegar cheese and rennet cheese.  Vinegar is instant but the curds are small and the cheese soft.  Rennet needs to sit a bit to set, but the curds are so solid you cut them!  Its almost magical. 

The first batch of rennet curdled cheese became this fetta!  Which was great, and had a slight resemblance to halumi cheese. 

We have since made a batch of mozzarella type cheese which was nice too.

Lots of 'playing' to do, experimenting with the technique to get the types of cheese we like.  Really happy that we are able to skip yet another thing at the shops, and reduce the amount of packaging that we use.

Since I haven't posted a photo of the kids for a while, here they are growing fast (and eating enough to show for it!!!!  Next winter I will be planting LOTS of apple trees, as these 2 clean us out of apples!!!!)

Enjoying the last of autumn

I think autumn is my favourite of all the seasons.






Although I enjoy the bounty of summer, I don't enjoy the extreme heat and the threat of drought and fire. Winter although cold and wet is a nice time to relax a little. Work still needs to be done, but the pace is not so hectic. I am enjoying these last days of sunshine before we decend into the 'dark' - the winter solistice is now only a bit over 3 weeks away.

We have managed so well on our stand alone solar power system (which is a pretty modest 1kWh set up). We are in a really bad site for solar power generation as we are surrounded by tall trees and as the days shorten so does our little 'window' of sunshine - currently we get about 2 hours of sun on the panels!!! However we haven't had to resort to the generator or hand washing (yet!).

I think one of the best thing about this time of year is that its a great time for planning and dreaming. And there is LOTS of that happening here, with new projects and big projects in the early stages. But I will write about those as things progress a little!

I'll leave you with a funny photo - our new goat Rosie - ontop of the pizza oven shelter! Goats...

Our boy is 2!

Last week our little boy turned 2.

On Sunday we had a small party for him to celebrate. With pizzas cooked in our woodfired pizza oven of course! And of course we made him a cake. Daddy is the cake maker in the family, and this year we made a train.

Simple joys

I love this time of year, a gentle time, not too hot and not yet bitterly cold. The apple harvest is over (for us), but now comes the next harvest! We have been enjoying these goodies every few days, and I think it will improve as autumn progresses.


There has been a bit of this:


and this:

Lots of watching these little guys:

(sadly we lost one, so now there are only 4 - 1 rooster and 3 hens)

And lots of walks around the property, enjoying the clear autumn sky.

Summer solstice

Yesterday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. It was warm and sunny, but not too hot. We spent the afternoon with some good friends and soaked up the sun and actually sat down and relaxed (doesn't happen too often around here!!) We used the opportunity to move our 'movable' chook pen while they were here!!!

The chooks are all great. The chicks are growing pretty quickly. I am fairly certain that one is a hen and one is a rooster - the third one I haven't made up my mind yet!


We de-loused one of our hens (not the mum and chicks thank goodness), she is called 'runty' because she is somewhat stunted in growth. We now know why - she was covered in some sort of lice (not the small mites I have seen before, but flea sized 'bugs' and many of her feathers had large clumps of eggs stuck to them). She has really improved since though, and although she is still small she seems to have a spark in her step now. She will need another treatment soon though, as some eggs remain. We will treat her and the whole flock probably in a weeks time. Should be fun!


The garden is growing well, zuchinnis are nearly ready to harvest, and some of the tomatoes and beans are flowering. We have harvested some potatoes, which were delicious. Nothing beats homegrown potatoes! I have many mustards and lettuces and other greens going to seed, which means that by autumn the garden should be nice and full of plants! I am also considering starting a very small and local seed/glut/jam/chutney etc swapping group. It seems like a good way to get diversity in your food and garden without extra money or time. I recently made a large batch of cherry plum jam and chutney (collected from the roadside), and its nice to swap it for something made by someone else (even if its their cherry plum jam - we all do things slightly differently, and subtle differences are nice too!)

Another use for all the plums!!!

All the best for christmas and the last bits of 2009.

Three

Our girl turned 3 last week. Time sure does fly. We had a small party for her here, which was really lovely, despite heavy rain (yay!).

the tree on the right was planted when she was born, its now well and truly taller than us (even after the goat ate the top off!

Spring seems to be all around us, even though its still officially winter. The silver wattles are in full flower (and unless I have forgotten what they were like last year, they seem to be much more heavily 'in flower' than in the past- maybe due to the hard summer we had - a neighbour with sheep this year had all multiple lambs - 5 sets of twins and 1 set of triplets - they have never had this before...)


The daffodils are up and their flowers seem a little light on, more just leaves.


Life is good here though. Much work being done, nothing much interesting as such, I've done a drainage trench, there has been some building, work on the vegy garden and planning of future vegy gardens. Tomorrow (hopefully) I will be picking up 2-3 hens to add to our small flock. Should be good!

Our boy is one!

2 days ago our little man turned one. We are having a little party for him on sunday.



Sorry, I realise the photo is not that good, he is at that come over and try and grab the camera stage, so nice photos are hard to get. Usually its a close up of the eyes or something like that!!! He is a big boy, scooting around on his bottom. He is starting to stand up now, especially holding onto me. Hopefully he will walk soon, but he hasn't been in much of a hurry to do things yet. Content with what he has at the time.

We haven't taken his 'tree' photo yet. If you don't know, we planted a tree for both the kids when they were born, and have been taking a photo around their birthday each year. Hopefully we will do that soon (the weather was not great today - and I forgot the day before that...)

happy solstice, and the end of 2008

I want to wish everyone a very happy solstice (summer or winter depending on where you are in this great big world). Here in the southern hemisphere, its a time to celebrate the sun and be outdoors (although the weather hasn't been all that sunny - but the rain is well and truly welcome...). Although I'm not a Grinch, I find all the traditional christmas things a little silly in summer, they are symbols of winter, and were the traditions of the winter solstice - ever green trees, lights, fake snow, big filling roast dinners etc etc. We are a bit different, and want to celebrate the seasons, so for us, although its Christmas its a time for all things sunny and summery.

Anyway, I want to take the opportunity to look over the year that 2008 was. For us it was a year of great challenges, good and bad. Its been a year that has been driven very stronly by our goals, of where we want to end up in life, and of reducing our impact on the earth.


The biggest things to have changed my life this year are the arrival of our little boy in May, and the loss of my beloved pony Brandy in October (she had been with me for nearly 18 years). Both presented challenges to me, and have made me realise that I have more strength and courage than I have ever given myself credit for.

We have too much grass...

So we all wish you a good 'festive' time regardless of what you believe or what you do, enjoy a rest from the usual things and spend some time with those you care about.

Its oh so quiet...

Brad has taken our little girl to Tasmania for the weekend for a big family function. I stayed home, because the animals need me, and I'm not much of a fan of flying... I'm an earthy person - I like my feet planted firmly on the ground... I miss them terribly though.

Its a good thing I did stay too, as my old pony has 'issues' - but I wont go into that as its all a little too gruesome, and unfortunately when my family returns, the vet will have to be called and 17 years of friendship will be over... I can't believe it... well, I guess I can, as I've known that it was time, but I was in denial. Hopefully now we will have had our share of death and loss for a while at least (please).

My weekend has been busy even if so incredibly quiet (our daughter is quite the chatterbox). I've planted out about 50 odd corn plants, cut some grass, tidied up etc. Next on my list is some heavy pruning around the house, more cleaning, and possibly some time at the book shop (a toddler in a book shop sort of spoils the whole browsing experience, so I'm making the most of her absence...)

Anyway, so its just me the boy and the dog till monday evening... Counting down...

I'll leave you with a photo of how clever my Brad is... this is a little horse he carved out of cypress for our daughter with just a stanley knife...

Perfect

How else can you describe pizzas cooked in an oven you built by sheer physical labour and mud (plus just a little straw and sand)?

We had a great day on sunday to celebrate our daughter's second year. The weather was pretty good for August in this part of the world, the food was great and so was the company. Unfortunately 'granddad' couldn't make it, so I hope he likes the photos.

Our little girl is not real used to crowds so at one stage she was a little overwhelmed by it all, but she did enjoy her self, and loved taking her cousin to see the animals. Now we are looking forward to her second birthday in only a few weeks.

Brad being the perfectionist that he is made her just a fantastic birthday cake - a wombat. She just couldn't quite believe her eyes in the morning when we showed it to her, she then tried to pat and kiss it!


I didn't quite finish her top that I'm making her, but its not far off being finished.

Well, its lovely day here today - first fine day in ages, so I'm madly washing clothes, tomorrow I'm planning on planting out as many trees as possible as I'm worried that spring is here, and the poor things wont have time to get their roots in the ground before summer comes.

We are planning an extravagant vegy garden/greenhouse/chook tractor system. No doubt we will start on that before we finish off some of the other started jobs! Ah the joy of being dreamers!

Two

Can´t quite believe it, but our little girl turned 2 yesterday. The terrible twos are now upon us, and we will have to wait and see how it will all go. I´ve read that 3 is worse, so we are in for a fun filled next few years. Our little girl is now in a ´real´ bed, can say 3 word sentences, says lots of words, especially useful for demanding food etc. I think she demands more of my time now, than as a newborn, although she has always been a needy child, we now realise this, since the baby is just the opposite. Very calm, chilled out, and patient.

We are having a bit of a party for her on sunday, and we will be cranking up the pizza oven - SO EXCITED! We fired it up again, and it heated right through this time. No major cracking (cracking is a normal part of a clay oven, as clay shrinks and expands). Pizza trays and peel (the thing to put in and pull out the trays) are ready, now its just a matter of days...


A bit of stress at the farm at the moment is that there are 2 vicious dogs killing sheep on nearby farms. These dogs appear to be similar to Rottweillers, big and good at killing. There is going to be a bit of hunt for them this weekend, as they are decimating sheep herds. Hope they catch them. I am the last person to want to see an animal dead, but I worry about my 2 alpacas and my arthritic old goat Archie. They would not have any chance against such dogs. I am losing sleep over it, and my heart stops when I go and check on them, I don´t want to find them all mauled... Here are my beautiful boys.


Our scythe finally arrived! We ordered it from Scythe supply in Maine USA. We can´t wait to use it. Its been custom made to fit Brad, but I should be able to use it too, but with the kids around its not really a child friendly thing to do, so I guess Iĺl have to wait till they are bigger.


I´m frantically working on a top for our little girl. But I really want to have it done by her party on sunday. No way though, I would need some sort of miracle! Its a modified version of the standard top down raglan, but below the arms, I´m doing a feather and fan lace pattern. Its knitted in some handspun and dyed mohair. Depending on how much yarn is left, it will either have long or short sleeves.


I also have to sit down at the spinning wheel, its been too long now, and since I got some new books on spinning I want to have a play... Soon I hope.

Anyway, lots of food prep to do before now and sunday, will post pics of pizzas (well if they turn out that is)...

Tree planting again

Well, its probably one of my favourite 'chores' on the farm - tree planting. And today was extra special as we planted our little boy's tree. A blackwood, which is also his middle name just like his big sister who got a Mountain Ash. This year we are only planting 100 local indigenous trees, as we figured we might be strapped for time with a little one on our hands, plus plenty of building to do etc.

We spent more time trying to take a photo of the whole family, than what we spent planting trees (we only did 16 today, just to see how the kids would cope - our little girl did not like us planting trees last autumn-winter...). Its almost impossible to get everyone to look at the camera, or even be in the photo! (Freya our dog was being particularly difficult).



We will be also planting more fruit trees and paddock trees, but probably no more than 20 odd plants for now, I HAVE to get a peach tree in this year, or else I'll be waiting too long to eat a nice peach once we make the move to the farm (I haven't touched shop peaches since I tasted our peaches off the tree here at home). Which reminds me about my recent experience with milk (I know its probably a boring story...), we normally buy organic unhomogenised milk, and have done so for a few months without buying conventional milk. Just recently we had to buy milk from the local shop, and I am shocked at how awful it tastes! Now I grew up on the regular milk from the supermarket, and never particularly noticed a difference when we made the switch to the organic stuff, but this was just amazingly different. Now I just have to hang out to make the full move to the farm, so that we can have a house cow! REAL milk and tonnes of it! We are planning on making butter and cheese etc, but I guess we will just take it one step at the time. The hard part is having to wait!

Well, unfortunately being mum to 2 kids now has really killed my craft time.... I just have to try and remember that in no time I'll again have time for these pursuits, but sometimes I look at my poor neglected spinning wheel, and long for an hour or 2 to just spin. It'll come... I hope.... I'm just working on a plain sock for Brad at the moment, which is progressing, but fairly slowly. Would like to make a little poncho for our girl, but will see how I go.

New arrival

Well our baby boy is finally with us! He certainly was in no hurry and didn't want to take the easy way out in the world, giving me probably THE worst mother's day I could have possibly had (well, yes it could definately have been worse, but it wasn't great...), and arrived at 4:15am on Monday the 12th. He looks just like his big sister when she was born, same reddish hair. He is very quiet, and so far anyway, seems to be pretty well behaved!


And I guess as I'm writing this post, I did too survive the birth, although I do have the battle scars to prove it! He was supposed to be born at home, but a last minute tranfer to the hospital was needed, as the boy had to have his head tilted to the side...


Not much else to say, hopefully things will settle down into a routine fairly quickly and we will be back on the building and renovating. I've almost spun my white alpaca fleece, so next I'm planning some luxury spinning to treat myself.

Wet

Well, suddenly the weather has changed from mild nice days to constant rain, with an icy wind. We had about 50ml of rain! It'll be a nice good drink for all my trees hopefully it will see them through what is likely to be long hard summer. Hopefully not too long and hot, but I guess we will just have to wait and see. My poor goats were quite taken back by the sudden change, and were shivering today, poor little things. I wish it would be so simple as to just bring them inside...

The little one is walking and running now too, with quite a lot of confidence. Rarely crawls at all. Her latest thing is to carry bags and other things with straps she can get over her neck. Here is a picture of her with my handbag, and her precious wombat toy. She LOVES wombats, I'm a little worried about once she gets more mobile, that she will try and visit them in their burrows, but we will figure that out once we get to it....


Not much knitting happening, but I've been doing lots of spinning as well as lots of fibre preperations. I've had bits of different fleeces lying around the house for many months, so its nice to put them through the drum carder, ready for spinning. Here is some mohair fleece I have spun,

and the final result the first 200g or so of mohair, plyed and ready for washing. I'm planning on dyeing this as mohair takes dye really well. It will probably become a christmas gift for someone.

Brought to you by the sun

We are still in love with our solar power system. It produces about 7kW per day, which is great. We will see how much it will make over summer. But if we average this we wont be paying much for electricity anymore. YAY!

The apple tree in the garden is now covered in lovely pink flowers, hopefully these will all grow into apples and we will have a lovely harvest. Otherwise we will pick from the loads of road side apple trees, and do some drying and other preserving. The free road side fruit is considerable around here. But that wont be till autumn....


We have been working on another shelter for the alpacas, since our farm hasn't got enough trees (yet) for shelter. We get some pretty strong winds up there, so it really is important for the animals to have somewhere to get out of it. Not much else happening on the farm though. Grass is finally starting to grow, thank goodness.


Well our little girl is walking. Although she still prefers crawling, she can walk without holding on to anything for quite a distance. Not much else has changed though.