Two posts in under a month... amazing.
It's still hot and dry here. The weeds in the vege garden have taken over, what a mess! We're still picking quite a bit though. Buckets of cucumbers and zucchini, sweetcorn for lunch and dinner everyday, the capsicums and chilies are looking great. Tomatoes are slow and I don't think we're going to get a great crop, will be plenty though as we still have canned from last year. The beans are doing nothing. I've ordered more weed mat, we want to be able to cover most of the vege patch to make life a bit easier. We're about to move the cows into the paddock behind the vege garden, I can cut all the grass in the vege patch and throw it over the fence for them. At least that way we get something out of all those weeds. I've been canning dill cucumbers and coleslaw this week. The coleslaw is delicious, I'd love to have dozens of jars in the pantry! The freezer is almost empty of meat, not much in there at all. We have a dozen chickens, 6 pigs and 7 sheep ready to go to freezer camp as soon as the weather cools a bit. Most will go into jars and be shelf stable, the frying cuts will go into the freezer for autumn and winter BBQs. We've only been milking a couple of times a week in this heat, the calves are on the cows the rest of the time. I'll start again in a month or so. Picking apples and a few peaches and strawberries whenever we want them. Chooks have been laying well, even on the really hot days. Time to pack some more jars of pickles. Patricia.
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A quick run down on the past 12 months. NO RAIN, well hardly any. Dry as a chip here. We had a terrible autumn with no where near our normal rainfall, a dry winter and then a horrible dry spring. Summer has been extremely hot and dry so far. What does all this mean? We have had to buy in feed for the animals. This has put nearly everything else on hold as it's using up nearly all of our little income. We have been progressing though, the 'wedge' paddock area is coming on, some fences finished and some well on the way. We've started on the poultry pens and will be putting up a round yard in this area as well. Looking forward to autumn (and maybe some rain) to start sowing improved pasture in these tiny paddocks. We had two great helpers here and they worked like champions on the fences in this area (thanks Trey and Carl) Our beautiful cows calved. We now have farm fresh milk and when I have time all the other goodies we love, yoghurt, cheese, cream and butter. We need to get our milking parlour built and a proper dairy set up before I can do much more with the milk. We bought a Surge milking machine from the US, my arthritis has stopped me hand milking :(, we are still working the bugs out as it's an old unit that needs work. My woodwork shop is started, I can't wait to get more done on it. Hopefully in autumn when the preserves are finished for the year. Most of my tools are still packed, it will be like christmas when I finally get to put them in the workshop. We've done very little to the house, it just never seems to be on the priority list. Maybe this year. Would be lovely to have stairs instead of the ladder and to get the spare room finished. We picked up a huge amount of insulation a while ago, once it's installed we should be able to keep the place cooler/warmer. We have only just started to rebuild our chicken flock (after the great chook robbbery). Hopefully we'll be hatching by the dozens next spring, well that's the plan anyway. The horses have had a rough year, one thing after another went wrong. We still don't really know what happened, I can understand them all losing weight at once but one at a time??? We have been told it was most likely a plant toxin, either in the hay or somewhere on the property. Then a serious lice problem on top of it..... All's good now though and they are starting to look good again. Equinox and Charlie (the first to get ill) are looking really lovely, Darcy and Sister are getting there, you can see them getting fatter everyday. Baby is still thin but I can see changes in her finally. We are going to find new homes for all but Charlie and Equinox, it's too big a burden on the farm to run 5 horses. As much as we love them as always the farm comes first. We've added a few more fruit trees to the orchard and they have done really well, the ones we planted a couple of years ago have given us good crops this year so far. I'm running late with the chores now so I'll end here. Hopefully I won't make it another year before another post.
Patricia. Amazing how fast time goes. I think things are finally starting to come together, we've been doing just enough of everything to keep things running and then moving to the next project. We're just beginning to go back and improve those hastily put together projects. We still have so much to do, we need many, many more buildings and fences, there is still a lot of soil improving to be done and much tidying up, not sure we'll ever really finish but we're progressing. I can even see a day in the future when we have stairs to the bedroom and walls and windows as well.
The vegetable garden has been good and bad this season, much more organised but the heat has really slowed things down. We are picking tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, squash, mangelwurzels, beetroot, cucumbers, capsicum, silverbeet and herbs. Corn although planted quite late is growing inches a day. Everything else is struggling. We will start sowing autumn crops over the next month and hopefully they should do well as the weather cools. Our little Dexters are not so little anymore and we are hoping for calves any day now..... Fresh milk, homemade butter, yoghurt, cheese and cream...... LOVELY. The pantry is usable (although it still needs two walls and a door) and it's wonderful to have somewhere to put all my jars. We should have the hallway and laundry floors finished in the next week or so, it's ready to pour we just need a day when our backs are up to the challenge. I really have to take more pics and post more often.... Patricia. All the sun we've been having has softened me up, been very cold for the last few days. I wouldn't mind at all if we'd gotten more rain with it but have had very little. At least its slowed the weeds down a bit.
Damn sheep pushed through the vege garden fence and ate all my early peas off, they may recover if I'm lucky. Moved all those guilty into other paddocks, need to put a hot wire around the vege garden to keep out marauders, domestic and wild (we've seen a few wild rabbits in the last couple of days). Love pen clean out days, all that future compost and the look of fresh clean straw for everyone to sleep on or in is great. Put a large shelter in the big pig pen today, they love it. Stuffed it with straw, happy piggies. They were treating the smaller huts like toys and would move them all over the place. Ashcott, our Wessex boar, has his own pen now, everybody was picking on him too much, he just wasn't getting the trough time he needs. He's much happier now, eats his fill and can relax in the sun without being moved on all the time. Mike has created a little parking spot up behind the workshop for the trailers and farm machinery, really helping to tidy the place up. I cleaned up a spot near the little barn to put in another dog kennel, it's really satisfying to clean up an area like that. We are going to have to put some hot wires up so we can graze the cows in spots we can't mow, the grass is going to get out of hand otherwise. Bottle feeding a lamb at the moment, she was born on the 5th and the ewe just never produced any milk. She had a few days with mum so hopefully she got some colostrum. She's doing well now, putting on weight. Luckily I'm milking one of my daughters goats at the moment, so have fresh milk for her. Mike had a look at the new berry plantation today, he counted 6 still without shoots, not too bad out of 60, and they may still shoot in the next few days. The small berry plot in the vege garden is doing amazing things, should really be productive this summer. Strawberries are flowering, both the older beds and the ones I put in this week, will give them a deep straw mulch in a few days, keeps the weeds under control and the soil cool and moist. Time to milk a goat. PZ. I can't believe that nine days ago I said there were few weeds in the vege garden, a lot can change in a week! The big centre bed is completely covered, I should take a soil temperature reading, whatever it is it's idea for germination of heaps of our worst annual weeds. I'll rotary hoe this bed in the next week or so, I want to begin the main spring crops on the northern end and plant the southern half with mangelwurzels to see how they go as pig food.
Charlie the horse is looking so much better after the pour on, we're going to have to watch for lice over the winter months every year, easy to fix on the broken horses not so easy on the brood mares and Charlie. Put in two more strawberry beds yesterday and heeled in a hundred or so to be moved into the vineyard when we have it ready. The berries are looking amazing, should get a decent harvest in early summer. Seedlings in the poly house are doing well, mice are still a problem though, Mike set a heap of traps yesterday. All the winter planted vegies are doing well, should start picking lettuces again in a fortnight, the spinach, carrots and peas won't be far behind. PZ. I've been dreading getting some pour-on onto the horses, but it was no where near as difficult or dangerous as I thought it would be. Hope we get good results, Charlie really needs to be rid of those lice, damn things. New poultry pens in the northern paddock thanks to Jess and Chris yesterday, with the pigs and geese that paddock should renovate well.
Good results in the polyhouse, even after the mess the mice made. Lots of tomatoes up and plenty of lettuces, herbs and brassicas, not as many as I was hoping but enough anyway. Weeds are really taking off in the vege garden, I'll need to keep on top of them through all this warm weather. Mike fixed the handle of the new/old plough we bought, works a treat and has minimal impact on my back. Have been very slack in the kitchen, too much nice weather, I really don't want to be inside. I must do some serious freezer cooking and try big batch bread recipes. Doubled my Anzac biscuit recipe with great results, really need to triple it to fill the new oven though, Mike will be pleased. The recipe below is the doubled one, halve everything for a smaller batch. ANZAC BISCUITS (BIG BATCH) 2 Cups rolled oats 1 1/2 cup coconut 2 cups plain flour 3 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda 4 tablespoons boiling water 2 cups sugar (I use raw sugar) 1 cup butter 2 tablespoons golden syrup Mix oats, flour, sugar and coconut together. Melt butter and golden syrup together. Mix soda with boiling water and add to butter and syrup mix. Add this to dry ingredients, mix well. Place 1 tablespoon of mixture on greased tray. Bake in slow oven 20 minutes, standard oven. (In my commercial fan forced oven I bake at 160 C for 15 minutes, this gives me a well browned slightly chewy biscuit) This mix is quite dry and crumbly, the biscuits will bond together during baking. Enjoy, PZ. Well this winter has been anything but typical. None of the usual slow rainy days to catch up on everything.
The vegetable garden is looking wonderful, very few weeds and we've spent months improving the soil. I'll start planting spring crops over the next few weeks. We already have tomatoes started in the poly house but have had trouble with mice, so fingers crossed we'll get enough plants without having to replant. Our poultry are doing very well, we've been getting eggs most of winter, the geese are laying as are the ducks, even the pigeons have made an early start to the breeding season. We've been eating farm produced pork, chicken, goat, mutton and duck all winter. Not much in the way of vegetables from the garden as we were so behind in autumn, but we have been eating micro greens and some frozen summer veg. We have upgraded a lot of our butchering equipment, and are now set to make sausages. I just wish we had our dedicated food processing area and cool room finished. Plucking fingers are on their way from the US as I type, as soon as they get here we will start on our WIZZ BANG chicken plucker (look it up on youTube), it will make a huge difference to poultry proccessing. Got the oven of my dreams a few weeks ago, so now i can cook for a week in one morning without having to juggle ovens or turn trays. Hoping to add a pressure canner to the preserving tools this harvest, will let everyone know how it goes. I've started a course on canning vegetables and meats, should be fun and informative. With all the sun we've had I think I missed the window for spraying the peach trees, should have been a week earlier, so we still might have a problem with curl leaf this year. The rest of our little house orchard is looking great, lots of apples and apricots this year I hope. So nice to get some work done in the vineyard, youngberries are in, as well as half a row of rescued Shiraz (there should be enough plants left in the rest of the vineyard to fill the row). Some strawberries to soak up excess water at every second dripper on the berry rows and at least one row of raspberries still to go in this spring. We bought a grain field bin a few weeks ago, and with a bit of work and some weather proofing we will be able to buy grain straight out of the trucks at harvet time, enough for the following year, this will save Mike's back and many trips to our grain supplier. Now if we can just do the same with straw and lucerne, we may never leave the place........ Both Mike and I are having serious back problems and are struggling with some of the work that needs to be done. For the first time in my life I'm having trouble shoveling and mucking out pens, super frustrating. We are going to have to design most things on the farm with this in mind, as well as asking for help when we need it. Maybe I won't leave it so long until the next installment..... PZ. We had 22mm in 30 minutes today, didn't think we'd get much done. The rain did clear and with the help of my daughter and her partner we got the chook shed finished. Tomorrow if the weather is kind I hope to build the perches, install the feeders and waterers and move the chooks in.
It’s hard to believe it’s the middle of March, the ground is sodden. We’ve had 64mm of rain this week so far and I wouldn’t have been able to rotary hoe if we had one drop more. It has been wonderful to have a green summer, the livestock has benefitted so much, but it does have its down side. Our vegetable garden is large and I knew it would be difficult to keep up with the weeds over spring but that didn’t worry me as I knew I could catch up when everything dried out over the summer months........... I don’t think we had more than a week and a half without substantial rain. The clover near the compost area is well over knee high and areas that were cleaned up less than two weeks ago have a thick cover of grasses and marshmellow seedlings (all dug in this afternoon). The new berry plot has performed beyond expectations, our little 15cm high sticks are now monsters spreading 3 or more metres. My dream of looking out of the front windows at a perfect, tidy,productive garden will have to wait till the cool of winter, although I’m half expecting a warm winter that will keep the blasted weeds growing madly.
March is such an exciting time of the year, there are so many wonderful vegetables that can be planted now. With a little bit of variety research to find what will do well in your locale, the list below is suitable for all of temperate Australia. My March/April Planting List: Direct Sown. Parsnip Broad Beans Carrots Parsley Dill Fennel Peas Spinach Rocket Coriander Kohl rabi Beetroot Swede / Turnip Celery Celeriac Garlic Shallots Bok Choy In seedling trays for transplanting Onions Cabbage Cauliflower Brussels sprouts Lettuce Silverbeet Sprouting Broccoli Other things to try Mushrooms. Some things will be ready for picking before the really cool weather, others will establish themselves well before the cool and be ready for picking as soon as the first warm days in spring. Enjoy, PZ. The terrible few weeks I've had with various illnesses has put me so far behind. I've been freezing all our produce as I haven't been up to all that cooking, should have enough tomatoes in the freezer for a years supply of sauce (see below), along with lots of pickles and chutneys. Started on the corn crop yesterday, 8kg of kernals and 2 huge bags of cobs in the freezer so far, think I've worked my way through a fifth of whats there.
Today, after a quick trip to town for building supplies, we finished the frame of the new chook shed and clad one and a half walls. We really need to get this finished, the chooks need to be back on pasture, pasture a long way from my vegetable garden. Checked Lilly the Pig's farrowing date, she's due on the 1st of April, so sometime in the next 6 weeks we'd like to get the new farrowing yard built. Weaning will be much easier, both on us and the sows if we have a dedicated yard. PZ's Tomatoe Sauce Recipe. 6 lb Tomatoes 1 lb Onions 1 lb Apples 1 1/2 lb Sugar 2 oz. Salt 1 pint Vinegar 4 teaspoons Ginger 6 teaspoons Black Pepper 2 teaspoons Cinnamon 1 teaspoon Nutmeg 1 teaspoon Mace few Cloves Grind all spices till fine. Mix all together. Boil 1 1/2 hours. Push through a sieve or process using a food mill to remove skins and seeds. Put back on heat and boil till thick. Bottle and label. To double the quantity you're cooking......boil longer, 2 1/2 hours before straining. Boil till thick. NOTE 1: I would recommend using a 1/4 the amount of spices above if you want a more commercial tasting sauce. NOTE 2: Quantities are British Imperial Measurements. My kitchen scales are a family heirloom. Enjoy, PZ. |
AuthorPatricia... tinkerer, tailor, survivalist. Archives
February 2014
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