On rendering a water tank

A plague on anyone who will go to great effort to leave a job half done! Especially upon whoever originally did the cement render on our second water tank!

Last year our second water tank blew out one night and dumped its load down the back yard. Definitely a concern when you rely on what you can store from rainfall only. Granted we have a lot of rainfall here but the bulk of it drops over the wet season and our winters are usually quite dry. So the tank was a problem.
When I had a look inside I was appalled to find the tank had failed simply because someone had been too half arsed to do the rendering properly in the first place. For those uninitiated in the art of rendering water tanks, when a corrugated iron tank nears the end of its years and is ready to rust out it is common practise to render the inside of the tank with a layer of cement. In essence this creates a concrete water tank by using the previous tank as a form. Done properly the concrete should be reinforced with wire mesh and at least seventy-five millimetres thick, whereas I found this tank had no reinforcing and less than twenty millimetres of concrete. Frankly someone had well and truly wasted their time and caused me a lot of work and heartache.
So with good weather predicted I peeled the old lid off the tank and cleaned it out, purchased a tonne of mortar sand, a roll of wire mesh, ten bags of cement and a bottle of brickies mortar fat. I then erected a bipod made from bush poles so I could lift and swing buckets of render into the tank and strung a tarp to keep the sun off and prevent the render from drying too quickly. I was ready to go.
Load the mixer. Three cement, eight sand, a cap full of 'fat and a half bucket of water. Let it work till it is smooth and sticky. Pour into a bucket and set the next batch in motion. Hook the bucket to the pulley and then climb up the ladder and over the lip onto the stool inside and down into the tank where it is cool and echoes with every movement. Pull the rope to raise the bucket of render and gently pull it down into the tank. Work around the inside wall from floor to top. Scooping with the trowel and wiping on with the float. Repeat all throughout the day until the coat is done. Clean up tools and then drink beer. Stiff back and hands, stiff crackly clothing and socks.
Three days later and the job is nearing completion. I hurt in places that I was previously unaware I owned and my hands are in tatters. I am dreaming of rendering water tanks in my sleep.
But it will be worth it because I will leave the job done properly. I will also have added a new skill to my repertoire. So in a way I suppose it is worth it. I suppose what really annoys me is that someone went to all of this work some time back but stopped half way instead of seeing it out to do a proper job.

Liverwurst

What to do with all the odds and ends of the beast after slaughter? I have often found myself saving all sorts of bits that are just too good to throw away- tongue, cheeks, liver, kidneys, hocks and trotters, tail and stomach.

OK yes I just heard most of you go "Ewwwwwww"... Sorry but I actually quite like offal. If you are at all squeamish about this sort of thing you had better skip this post.

Nevertheless I sometimes find myself looking at a frozen bit out of the freezer and wondering how the hell I am supposed to use it. I had one of those days recently when I realised I had a bucket of frozen pig livers. Much more than we were going to eat any time soon, anyway I already have most of a beef liver left for frying. One of my absolute favourite dishes is sliced liver with onions fried in butter. Eat it hot with copious quantities of cold beer in front of the fire. Great restorative after a hard days winter labour.
Anyway back to the pig livers.
I had always wanted to make liverwurst and this was my chance.
Take

• 3lbs lean pork shoulder (or all of the odd bits of fleshings left after butchering)
• 2 lbs pork liver (this is about one large whole liver anyway)
• 1 large onion
• 2 tsp salt (pure sea salt is always best)
• 1 tsp fine ground fresh black pepper
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp dried marjoram
• 1/2 tsp ground/rubbed sage
• 1 cup iced water

1. Cut the liver into strips and simmer in water until cooked but still slightly pink in the centre.
2. Cut pork into 1 inch cubes
3. Put pork and liver through the fine blade of a mincer. Do this twice to get a very fine consistency.
4. Mix the spices with the iced water.
5. Add the water/spice to the meat and mic thoroughly for at least two minutes.
6. Stuff into large (35 to 45mm) sausage casings and tie into a three truss.
7. Simmer in water kept just below the boil until cooked through.
8. Cool to room temperature before storing. They will freeze well and should keep in the fridge for a week or so.

I was quite happy with this recipe. The liverwurst is nothing like the cheap version of paste sold in the supermarkets. It has a most beautiful herby fragrance to it and a mellow flavour and a firm texture. It is superb with red wine such as a good Shiraz, forcing us to consume a lot of wine recently in the name of thoroughly examining this new recipe. That is a good excuse as far as I am concerned.
I intend to make a second batch soon, when I obtain a couple more pork livers, with a higher ratio of liver to pork and a little more salt. Say three parts liver to two parts pork and an extra teaspoon of salt.
Good food.

Time of lean, time of plenty

When you live on your own food you usually have either too much or not enough. Lean and plenty.

Last week we took Anna off the milk, that is to say we stopped milking her each day and have allowed her milk supply to dry up. This is necessary for her health as she gets near to dropping her next calf. To continue milking a heavily pregnant cow in the last month would be cruel, her body needs everything it can get at this time without the strain of supplying milk too. This means we are without milk until after the next calf is born. We did give in and begin buying the occasional bottle of shop milk. Yuk! Of course the way around this is to have two milking cows calving at different times of the year. I like the idea of a Brown Swiss. The milk is almost as good as a Jersey and they produce good beef steers too.

Emily, our heifer to Anna, is for sale now. She will make someone an excellent house cow. If she does not sell she will probably become our second house cow instead. Emily really is a bit of a sweetie. Must take after her mother like that. She likes to come for a scratch and a chat when the other cattle are not about and she gets jealous if Anna gets attention and she does not.
We sent Leopold, Anna's most recent calf and now a strapping big steer, over to a neighbours block to fatten and keep the grass down. I was necessary to do this to wean him. About the only fault Anna has is that she devoutly refuses to wean her babies and will let them suckle well into adulthood. Obviously I cannot have a newborn calf competing with a half tonne steer for milk.
I also wanted to ease the grazing pressure on the property. I have since let the cattle into the orchard where they have done a fine job of knocking down the rubbish growth. I will go in and clean up today and probably have a bonfire tonight. I also have strung an electric fence across the bottom of the house yard and allowed them in to graze that. No mowing for me!

Still no veggie garden and no progress on the chook pens. A large repair bill for my Ute has completely gutted the projects account so no materials until further notice. I would love to be able to earn what I need without being reliant on a long commute each working day. One day perhaps.

Growing gold

Just had to share this. I have finally cracked the trick to growing ginger.
Very happy indeed. For five years now I have been trying to grow sweet ginger without success. According to all of the books and everyone I have spoken to it is very easy. Yet year after year my ginger made a brief appearance before withering and dying. To rub salt in the wound, all of the wild (non culinary) gingers in the area grew like weeds! A fact not lost on me as I sweated and laboured in the summer sun cutting back tonnes of the wild growth that was attempting to overtake the garden beds. I was able to grow all of the ginger relatives with no problems- such as Turmeric and Galingale yet still the simplest of them all continued to elude me. Yet I would not give up, apparently I can be pretty pig headed in that way according to the child bride.

Just harvested. The roots come out in a tangled clump.

So last season I threw away the gardening books and guides along with almost everything I have ever been told about growing ginger and made up my own mind. I had obtained some more rootstock from a kind friend who could not understand my inability to grow this weed, "Man I'm almost throwing the stuff away it keeps getting out of control..." (to which my response is unprintable). I planted this out in a rich mix of local earth and my own compost in a large tub and placed it in a spot that would get some morning sunlight and a fair amount of water. All in contradiction to just about everything I have ever read.
And it grew!

Hose out the dirt.

Today I noticed the tops had died back with the cooler weather. So I pulled the ginger and discovered lovely plump roots, sweet and fragrant when broken. It was like winning the lottery, I was so happy. After a quick wash under the hose I broke the roots into sections so the air could circulate all around and set them in the sun to dry for a day or so. I will actually be replanting most of the root to increase our stock for the eventual semi permanent ginger beds I plan to keep.

Drying in the sun. Hardens up the skin and helps it keep longer.

The child bride tells me that ginger is about $32 a kilo in the shop at the moment. We eat a lot of ginger with our cooking so you can see why I am growing our own.
Well I'm off to get some of our pork out of the freezer. Stir fry pork belly with ginger sauce for dinner!

To see what we can Sea

We took the littlest cloud farmer to the beach the other day. He is two years old now and had never seen the sea before. Well he loved it. I was a little worried he might be frightened of the noise and movement. Far from it - he made a beeline to the waves and tried to dive in! He thought the waves washing him off his feet were absolutely hilarious. Fish and chips, sandcastles, shells, wind, water, and sand in the undies followed by a skinny dip (him, not me) to wash off. Very tired afterwards, slept well all night.

Trying to go in before Nana can stop him.

A busy month.

Been a busy month. A few weeks back I went over to Tolga and picked up our new hot house. It was still standing and I helped the owner and his crew of hapless backpackers carefully pull the structure down. There were about ten sections, each fifty metres long to be disassembled and it was hot, hard work. Nevertheless I am glad I did help as I have a much better idea of how to reassemble it. I plan to cover the veggie garden under two side by side sections each sixteen metres long. In order to do this I will have to level the veggie garden and terrace the lower end. A big job but I know a good man with a big digger that should make short work of the job.
God willing I will have it done before the wet season.

The hot house components stacked in the stockyard.

The drawback to the whole plan is that I have not planted out the winter crops and the veggie garden is currently a grass patch. Not only are we missing our own veg but I am going into severe gardening withdrawal. Damn but I need my veggie garden.

A well deserved rest after a hard mornings eating and sleeping.

What else? Well the remaining two pigs are HUGE now. They still have a month to go before slaughter and we are stuffing them with all the food they can eat until the last week. Then they will only get a diet of soaked corn as this ensures the fat hardens up. Important for bacon and ham. I have grown tired of boiling potatoes in the kitchen twice a day so I made a boiler from an old gas bottle I found on the dump. This goes over a fire outside and can hold two big feeds worth of potatoes in one hit. I am thinking of eventually making a boiler shed on the site with a brick stove for the boiler pot and a covered wood store. This will allow the cooking of potatoes throughout the wet season without too much trouble.

The temporary boiler set up. Blocks form the firebox
and the tank in the background keeps the firewood dry

Two weeks ago the turkey hen went missing for most of the day only turning up for a quick feed in the afternoon. Sure enough we eventually found her hidden in the bluetop under the lime tree on a nest of seven eggs. Not bad for a first clutch and she is sitting firmly. The duck also began disappearing for most of the day and we found her on a nest of some eighteen or so eggs. I am not sure she is sitting though. It is also her first time and she might need some practise before she brings off a clutch yet. I am thinking of stealing half of the eggs and putting them in the incubator.

The duck nesting in a pile of sticks.
 I have no idea how she gets in there.

The turkey hen on her nest. She is insisting that I actually cannot see her.

The weather has turned cold. It looks like we will get a good winter. I like a cold winter. It kills off most of the nasties in the garden and knocks the cane toads about. Today we all went out and took the tractor and trailer into the bottom paddock to load up with firewood that I cut down a year ago. We used to have lychee orchard on the place. It must have once looked like a good idea to whoever planted it but it was of no use to us. The trees only seem to fruit every second year and we would never have harvested more than a bucket of fruit from some eighty trees. However, they do make good firewood. So we loaded cut timber into the trailer and took it up to the house. There I hauled the band saw out into the turnaround and we sawed the timber into billets for the fire and a stock of timber for the potato boiler. It was hard work but fun and we had a good winters day outside.
There were a few weeks of late season rain last month. This was not so good as it meant the cold wet weather did not allow the grass in the fields to get the final flush before winter. As we have four cattle on the paddocks at the moment we will probably be running short of feed before spring. Not to worry though. I am scything excess grass in the house yard and orchard and this should see them through.

I came home last week to find Boris, our beef steer, in the front yard. The child bride had been doing the evening milking and got the fright of her life when she came back in. It looks like he managed to jump the fence into the orchard and then wandered into the house yard through the open orchard gate and couldn't find his way out. I had work the next day so we were forced to move him that night. I can tell you, chivvying a stroppy half tonne steer in the darkness is no picnic. Out the cocky gate, up the road, into the driveway and then through the gate into the top paddock. Of course he wanted to make changes to the route and took off up the road in the darkness and then into the bush across the road on the neighbours place. Much bad language echoing off the mountains in the moonlight.

Pig to pork

The time has come for the first of the pigs to "come inside" as the euphemism goes. That is to say, be promoted from pig to pork.

Using the unfinished chook shed, the weather was a bit too mucky to be outside.

Table for scraping in the foreground. Wood pile for the boiler on the left.
Boiler, a half 44 gallon drum over the fire, in the background.
Gambrel for hoisting the carcasse on the right.

So a few days ago I got together with a couple of good friends to do the deed. Now normally I am happy enough to do slaughter by myself but with a pig I find I need extra hands. You see a pig needs to be scalded and scraped if it is to be really properly slaughtered. This involves heating up a big tub of water and dunking the carcasse which is not as easy as it sounds. Especially when the pig weighs in at over one hundred kilos. Funny how the mind can play tricks, they look much smaller running around the paddock than they do when you have to lift it into the wheelbarrow. It took three large men to lift it.

Too big for the bath, Hmmm should've thought of that earlier.

We tied the legs together to make lifting easier and lowered it into the water. Then after the prescribed time we raised the carcasse onto the table to be scraped down. Scraping removes all of the bristles as well as the outer layer of skin. No matter what colour your piggie started out as he will become pink all over after being scraped.

Scraping using tin pot lids. Not very high tech but it works.

As it turns out the scraping did not go as well as I had hoped. I had made the water hotter than it should have been and so we lost some of the skin altogether. Bummer. Made no difference to the meat but looks bad. Then we hung the carcasse on the gambrel to take out the plumbing (guts) and cut it down the centre. A chainsaw works well for this although the real experts can do it neatly with a cleaver. I am not an expert. From the offal we keep the liver for liverwurst and the kidneys for breakfast. I also use the opportunity to check for parasites and to ensure the animal is healthy. In this case the kidneys were clean as a whistle. If you are really enthusiastic you can clean the intestines to use as sausage casings. I buy mine from the butcher (the only thing I buy from the butcher) ready cleaned and salted.

We then put the two sides into the cold room at a friends place (ours is not complete yet) for a few days rest.

Yesterday I picked up the sides and broke them down into cuts, roasts and mince. This morning we had some really excellent pork chops for breakfast. The meat is firm but tender and richly flavoured as good pork should be. It is completely unlike the white, soggy and somewhat tasteless meat of the chemically fattened victims available in the supermarket!

I was at the feed store this morning and I happened to notice a phamplet advertising different pig feed products. It claimed that with their feeds (full of growth additives and hormones) you could raise a pig to one hundred kilos in just twenty-two weeks. I laughed out loud. My pigs are over one hundred kilos in the same time on a diet of millrun, corn and free range pasture. We add some potatoes, skim milk from the cow and vegetable scraps from the garden and that is it! Not a single trace of growth additive or hormone ever, yet we produce better pork.