Piglets

Reading back on my last few posts I realise I have been a little tardy with the news.

Sausage has indeed has her litter and dropped thirteen piglets. Unfortunately four of these did not survive the first day, either stillbirth or else accidentally squashed by a nervous sow. This is the way of things with pigs. The remaining nine piglets have powered on however and are growing by the day.
Our pig pens were never designed to keep really young pigs in and so the piglets squeeze under the yard gate every day and go for a roam.

Seen here on a muddy day raiding the chooks food. They are enchanting little things, full of life and curiosity. It is endless fun watching them play and explore. The chooks are not very impressed with the state of affairs and must move smartly to avoid having their tail feathers tasted by a curious piglet.
At the time of writing the piglets are due to be weaned and I think their mum is pretty sick of them by now anyway. At this age they develop some rather sharp teeth and bad table manners which helps the sow decide to wean them.
So we have found a new home for Sausage where she shall free range as a breeder sow for a family of self sufficiency types. We are very happy. This Saturday we will load her onto a trailer and she shall go to her new home. Likewise most of the piglets will be sold off as weaners and we shall keep three or four for our own needs.

Well it had to happen sooner or later

I was woken by the child bride this morning with the news that there was a very large python in the chooks shed. Not the way I like to be woken at the best of times.
Upon inspection, without even so much as a fortifying coffee, I did indeed find a rather large scrub python curled up and sleeping off a big feed of one of the chooks. This is something I find quite irritating.

 Note the bulge halfway down? That is one of our prime laying hens! Not happy.

So we gathered up a large sack, some baling twine to tie it shut and the camera. I then hauled the now quite indignant python out of the chook shed and we bagged him up before a long trip down the road. All up he was a little over four metres long. Not quite as big as the last one I saw hereabouts but certainly large enough to be a nuisance.

I released him in a large stand of rainforest about twenty kilometres away where I hope he will settle in and not try to get home.  

Cloud Farm Christmas

Well Merry Christmas from everyone on the Cloud Farm! We had a good Australian Christmas. We ate too much, drank too much, showered the young feller with presents and generally had a good time. One thing we have not done is swelter in the heat, so far this has been the coldest December we have had here. By this I mean that there are blankets still on the bed and the days are nicely balmy. Beautiful!
This year we have gone through the cycle of the seasons that we have come to know and love. In this part of the world we experience a particular microclimate different from other parts of Australia. So although we experience the typical Australian summer and winter cycle (we don't really get a dedicated spring or autumn) we also get the summer mist months, the wet season, the windy month, the blue sky end of winter and so on. We are learning to expect each in its annual turn and enjoy the cycle.

All the fattener pigs have now been slaughtered and are in the freezer or pickling tub. I took the last carcasse out of the cold room and cut it up into pickling joints today. Two hams, two boned rumps, two bacon sides and two pork bellies. The shoulders were boned out and will be used to make sausages.
It sure is quieter out in the pig yard. Only old Sausage our sow remains. She is heavily pregnant at the time of writing and should drop her litter early in January.

Anna, the first lady of the dairy shed, chose to come into heat on Boxing day so we took her next door to see Francis the bull. After last years shenanigans we were ready with a plan. This time we put a halter and lead on her calf Isobel and Anna followed quite willingly. This would have been ideal except that Isobel the wonder heifer decided she was not going to have a bar of it and instead chose to fight like hell... Oh well, now I have a year to plan for next time.

 This morning I took the camera with me when I did the milking. I find when I sit quietly milking all the animals will ignore me and go about their morning business. The guineafowl will bring in their new keets for a feed and drink. The King parrots will come down and steal the chickens feed and the red cap finches will flit about almost close enough to touch as they wait for a turn at the feed trough. 

Lately I have also noticed that my somewhat eccentric dog Rufus has begun running a bovine grooming station each morning. When Bonnie has finished her bucket she will come over to the gate of the milking shed and let Rufus give her a good clean all over the face. They both appear to quite enjoy their morning session.

Keets and their mum in the morning sun. They have just had a feed and begin yawning before settling down for a sleep in the sun. Cute.

A month of works

 Alessa our Maremma (flock dog) is beginning her morning rounds. She likes to keep tabs on both the neighbours properties as well as her own. The neighbours are ok with this as they get protection for their livestock from wild dogs too.

 Meet Gobbles the second. Yes, I know he is a grey and not a bronze but he came at the right price- free. Sometime last month Gobbles came off second best with a large predator. I am quite disappointed with Alessa for not stopping this but it is the one and only attack we have had here since she joined us so I should not be too harsh. Before we had her we were losing stock monthly to the wild dogs.

 Installing new gates so the power company trucks have access to the pole out in the bottom paddock. If I don't have these gates here they will just cut the fences and drive on in. If they touch a single strand of our fences now there will be hell to pay!
In the background you will see the electric fence set up on the "long paddock" (roadside) as they say. It is a good way of mowing the verges as well as feeding hungry cows before the grass starts growing again. We have had good rain now so I will take it down today.

There is something very appealing about a pile of ripe pumpkins waiting outside the kitchen door. I love it. I also love roasted pumpkin and pumpkin soup- my speciality.

Ulf's prime pumpkin soup

1 good pumpkin. Queensland blue is best but any rich pumpkin will do.

2-3 tablespoons of good honey

2 lemons or limes

Cream, 1 cup or more

Cayenne pepper or hot Paprika to taste

 

Boil the cleaned pumpkin flesh until it is just soft then drain. Mash or blend until smooth and add cream to form a thick soup. Add honey until reasonably sweet then sharpen with lemon/lime juice to taste. Stir in Cayenne pepper a little at a time (be careful here as honey can amplify the effect of hot spices!) until the soup has a nice bite. Blend till smooth.

Serve hot with a small dollop of cream on top and toasted crusty bread to the side.

More porcine adventures

The three little pigs have become the three big porkers! Still cute in a big muddy piggy way. We will have a slaughter day with a few friends in a couple of weeks. In the traditional way I will help a neighbour slaughter his pigs and then he will help us with ours. These will be mostly for fresh pork and sausages. If I can cadge the secret recipe from a friend I am also going to do a few pickled pork joints. I tried one of his pork joints earlier in the year and it was unlike anything I have ever tasted! He pickles the pork in a brine made with pineapple juice (amongst other things) and generally keeps the recipe a close secret, so wish me luck. I really want a slow roasted pickled pork with crackling on Christmas day.

 Sausage, our sow, is heavily pregnant. She has become a real pet and has a sweet nature. She talks to us each morning with her honks and grunts as we prepare her breakfast and loves a nice scratch on the rump. It is a good thing she is so sweet natured as a 200kg sow could otherwise be quite dangerous . Apart from just enjoying the contact, this is one reason I take pains to tame all of our livestock.

Unfortunately we will probably be moving sausage on to a good home after her next litter. Our setup for pigs relies on having a fallow period after each batch and having a breeding sow in residence does not allow us to do this. This means the pig yards remain bare all year round and this is not good for the land or the pigs. We will be very sorry to see the old girl go. We will also make sure she goes to a good home.
So after her next litter we will be going back to the original plan and buying a batch of weaners once per year. Not as nice as having a tame sow but better for the land.

The summer flush

A little rain and everything will change overnight. We finally received about 20mm a few weeks ago and then another 25mm or so over the last few days. Suddenly everything begins growing at a furious rate. The dusty paddocks are quickly turning a lush green and the weeds in the veggie garden are fighting back with spirit.

The mint has come back from its winter raggedness beautifully. It loves hot damp weather and just looks so photogenic. We use it in yoghourt dipping sauces and raitas. We also make Senkenjabin from it. Senkenjabin is an ancient Persian cordial. It is superb to cool down with on a hot day after hard work. It is also excellent with Vodka, sort of like a Singapore sling, I call it a Topaz sling.

 

Senkenjabin   

4 cups sugar

2.5 cups water

1 cup wine vinegar (good quality please)

1 large handful of fresh mint

Boil water and dissolve the sugar, add the vinegar and simmer for twenty minutes. Then remove from the heat and add the mint. Allow it to steep as it cools then strain and bottle. This is the cordial concentrate, to use dilute with cold water to taste and serve with ice. Also good with a large shot of vodka.  



 The bananas are loving the weather. Over winter the grey water pipe from the grease trap clogged solidly. Attempts to free it proved fruitless as it would promptly clog up again. On inspection I found the pipe had not been laid with enough fall and this was allowing sediment to settle in the pipe. So I was forced to dig a new trench with a greater fall. I laid it in a different direction that had more of a slope and delivered the water to the banana stand. Sort of like a reed bed system and the Bananas love it- lots of nutrient and wet feet. Banana heaven.
Consequently the bananas have responded by throwing bunches in all directions. I counted about eighteen bunches this morning. This variety is a type of "Lady finger" sugar banana. Intensely sweet and delicious, they are a fine eating fruit but will turn chalky if used for cooking. Down in the lower orchard area I have a small stand of Cavendish coming on to use in cooking. I like banana cake!

 This is a Banana flower. The centre is often used in Asian cooking and is very good. The little florets are the actual flowers and each will become one banana fruit when pollinated. The bees love banana flower.

 This alien looking fruit is a Buddha's Hand. It is a citrus closely related to lemons. It is almost completely rind with almost no actual flesh at all. It makes up for this by having the most intensely lemony scent of any citrus and is excellent as a citrus potpourri or else as a clove studded pomander.

Rolling into summer

It has grown hot already and the summer is expected to be hotter still. This in turn means we will probably have a high chance of a few cyclones this year. The rain they bring is welcome but we are all still a bit gun shy after the last two direct hits (Cyclone Larry followed by cyclone Yasi) which did enormous damage.
Speaking of rain, we have had none for a long time now. Almost emptied the tanks so I spent three days taking turns with our neighbours pumping water from the creek down in the rainforest. We use an old water line that runs through their property to our tanks. It is a leftover of the days when both properties were the original dairy farm. We use their pump but provide the fuel and share service costs. It is a good arrangement and we are good neighbours in turn.
Years ago we used a Glockemann ram pump to deliver water to the house tank. It was powered by the force of the water alone and delivered about nine hundred litres of water per day with no electricity or fuel required. Unfortunately it was not very flood proof and each time we had a fresh come down (a sudden rush of water due to rain upriver) we would lose all of the drive pipes and the pump would almost be torn free of its anchoring chain.

Someone in Innisfail at the bottom of the mountain sure received a lot of very expensive drive pipe. So after losing it all for the last time I packed the lot up and sold the pump on e-bay. It ended up going to rural England of all places....I miss that ram pump.

A few days ago one morning I noticed Anna had hidden herself off under a tree in the top paddock. Sure enough she was in labour. I checked her to make sure all was fine and left her to get on with it while I fed the other livestock and watered the veggie garden. About twenty minutes later I went to see if she had made any progress yet to find it had not only been born but was already up and walking. Anna is getting very good at dropping nice healthy calves!

The young un turned out to be a strong and healthy heifer. Jersey cross Dexter. She should make someone a fine house cow someday. We have christened her Isobel. Looking forward to beginning milking Anna again soon.

The veggie garden is going at a great pace and we are eating well! The winter veg are still going although I expect the heat will finish them off over the next month and I have begun planting summer veggies.

 We are enjoying eating with the seasons. It gives you a real appreciation for the flavours of the season and the diet feels much more varied. Does that sound strange? You see, we found that when we bought food from the shop we became stuck in a rut of the same type of food each week. When everything is always available to you, you are not forced to try new things. As we are forced to eat what we can grow here we are likewise forced to learn how to cook foods that we would not have usually chosen to buy at the shop. Far from being a disadvantage we have found ourselves enjoying all sorts of new dishes. As our garden and our gardening skill grows so our diet becomes more varied. Life is good!