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!

and now for a nice chicken dinner

The meat chooks graduated from the pen to the freezer yesterday and today. I was quite pleased with the size and quality of the carcasses. Very large and plump. Of course the little feller had to help as you can see below. 

 It was a team effort. I caught, killed, scalded and operated the plucking machine before delivering the clean carcasses to the Child bride who dressed them out (which is a polite way of saying she cut of their heads and feet off before pulling the guts out) and bagged them for the freezer.

We ended up with thirty-nine good large carcasses, a bowl of hearts and a large bowl of livers. I have a recipe from a Danish friend for the hearts. She crumbs and fries them. Apparently they are a real hit with her otherwise finicky-eater children.
The livers I will use to make a very special pate recipe given to me by my sister in law, Robyn. It is simply the best pate I have ever eaten anywhere! I will publish the recipe (provided it is with her permission) in the future.
Last night we had a large roast chook for dinner. It was rich and tender and had a much stronger, but not at all unpleasant, flavour. It is simply the flavour we have come to associate with pure organic produce. The bird was large enough to supply three meals for a small family of big eaters.

On feral pests

 

As if cane toads, rabbits, wild dogs, feral cats and mynah birds weren't enough we now have a new feral pest to deal with around here.

Peacocks.
Yes that is right, we now have feral peacocks or more correctly; peafowl. A week ago six peafowl wandered down the road and thought this looked like a good place to stay. They don't belong to any one we can locate and pretty much go where they please.

I know many people wonder why this is a problem. While I will concede they are pretty enough, peafowl bring a host of problems. For starters they are both loud and bloody noisy! In addition they will fight with our existing poultry for the food and ransack the chook shed. But mostly it is a problem because peafowl fly well and like to land on the roof - the same roof that catches all of our household water and I prefer my drinking water without a large dollop of peacock poo! 

So the peafowl must go. As efforts to drive them off have failed so far we intend to instead tame them with regular feed in one of the spare chook pens where they will eventually be trapped before being sold to some peacock fancier who lives a long, long way from here. Unlike most other livestock on the place they will not be fattened and eaten. This is because I am informed that peacock tasted marginally worse than barbequed sneakers...

Anyone want to buy a peacock, going cheap?*


*well actually going "macawww, macawww" all bloody day long as they roam about like they own the place.

Pics from around the farm

After the late season rain finally let up I managed to get a veggie garden in for the winter. The corro sides are to keep bandicoots out. I am pleased to say they work really well!

I have decided that planting on raised mounds is not a good idea- too hard to weed. This year I have gone for ground level rows and they are a breeze to keep clean by comparison. Of course, they will suffer much worse in the wet season if I don't have the hothouse up by then.

 Below are our implements for keeping the garden weed free. A his and hers matching hoe set (well *I* think it is romantic) and a wheel hoe of my own design.

Meet Mr Bastard. I may have mentioned him before. Mr Bastard is a boulder that gave me no end of trouble when building the new chook pens. I finally had a huge digger machine lift him up and carry him away. Somehow he has managed to slide down the back of the dirt pile where he was placed and has made his way into the orchard. When the man with the digger returns I will have Mr Bastard moved again. This time he will end up as a sitting rock at the end of the kitchen garden- where I can keep an eye on him!

Rufus has grown. He loves his Dad!

I caught a nice shot of Sausage having a good rub in the afternoon sun. Sausage has become a bit of a family pet and it looks like we will be keeping her as our breeding sow.