my life, nothing more nothing less..

Dinner and the grubs

2012-01-24T18:56:00.000+10:00

I cut the lovely home grown purple sweet potato open tonight, to find one of them full of tiny little grubs! I can't believe it! I've never had grubs in my sweet potatoes before and I've grown them for years. But, this is the first time I've grown this variety, maybe there's something about the purple sweet potato variety I have that attracts a certain type of pest?

I google'd around and can't find any info on what might be the culprit.. I suppose it could just be a once off too.. but anyway, if you see little tiny bore holes in your sweet potatoes, particularly the purple variety, have a really close look and you might find that inside the bore holes are little wiggly grubs!

Bit of a bummer.. ruining my beautiful potatoes. An extra cool thing about purple sweet potatoes, be it purple on the inside or the outside, is this faint rose like smell that you get when you cut them and peel them; I'm certain sometimes you can taste it when they're cooked too, well, the inner-purple ones you definitely can, it's a sweet flavour.. Ever noticed it? Sort of like a red rose? Ever noticed these pesky little grubs too? Hmmm..

Still had enough to make a nice dinner though, thankfully hehe.

Oh, just one funny note before I go. I saw the forecasts for rain last week so on the weekend I planted heaps of seeds; onion, watermelon, cucumber, flowers, lettuce, and cabbage too. Bugger me, guess what came up first? Looks like the cabbage has won the race, tiny little seedlings emerged from the soil today, I didn't think they'd take off at all, it's not even the right season for cabbage growing hahaha. Funny : ) Gardening is fun isn't it.

Finding new tunes

2012-01-23T19:46:00.000+10:00

The year has only just started and I've already found a new band that I like! A couple of weeks ago while reading the news online, I clicked upon a link, which went somewhere, which went somewhere again, and before I knew it I was watching a trailer for a basejumping/parachuting documentary and loving the tunes. A few days after that I bought that song, then a few days later I bought a couple more, then a few days later again I bought the album haha. Its really different to anything I own in my music collection, which is really great I think, the songs are really .. different - really short, like 2 minutes each and stuff, and they're everything from slow ballads almost to more grungy indie stuff..

I've always loved music, always, and it's nice to find new music and continuously expand the repertoire .. I think its bloody hard to find any decent music these days, and when you find something you like it's like getting a nice surprise.. hope someone else also enjoys the tunes : )

I'll paste in two songs; a nice slowy and the original video that got me hooked. If you bother to watch the second, watch it in full HD, full screen, you'll almost be dizzy with some of those shots hehehe, awesome. ... p.s... doesn't it make you want to jump out of an aeroplane or something? (answer is yes). Here, enjoy some tunes: The Rural Alberta Advantage (hehe funny name too)

It goes slow for you, but so fast for me

2012-01-22T10:10:00.002+10:00

This is what I was thinking when I was snuggling one of the kids to sleep last night, and trying to stay awake myself. Time just keeps flying by quicker and quicker these days. I remember being a kid though and time felt so slow, the days and years seemed to go on forever! Now, a year is comparatively much less time than it was as a kid, when I'd only known a few or more years, a year now is 1/30th of the time I've experienced so I think that's partly why it feels so much quicker... along with all the other factors like work and life planning and other stresses of normal life.

I'll be 30 soon & Kez'll be 29; Nina will be 9 this year (half way to adulthood!!!); Saxon just turned 6 last week; and Oscar will be 3 this year - wasn't he just born? hehehe. I can't believe Nina will be 9, seriously, if she decides to go to University in another town or something that means she's lived with us for half of her time at home already. It's hard to imagine, sort of mind boggling! Here she is in a nice new knit that Kez did the other week : )

Saxon's birthday last week was good, he's been excited about the presents he got from us and everyone in the family - today he's going fishing for the first time with his uncle & aunt.. daddy isn't in to fishing hehehe.. so auntie Rach and uncle Ryan got him a rod and are gonna take him. He's looking forward to it a lot!!

Dad's been visiting for a few months too, getting new knees (double knee replacement); he's a real trooper, doing well and proving its not too hard to get two new knees at once!! hehe. He's off off and away in a few days though; its been nice having a visit.

In other news... let me think. Nah, I don't really have any thing else happening.. I planted out a heap of seeds in the garden a few days ago, when they surface I'll be sure to write about it.. the kids are back to school again on Monday too, so life will resume full speed ahead once again!

Yesterday I took Dad & Ping to Stoney Creek for a swim.. it was really nice swimming, despite the pics looking very quiet there was a heap of noise and a LOT of people there.. it'd be the perfect place to go if you took the day off work though, there'd be no one around at all.. must go again some time :)

Got a few goodies planned for 2012, well okay, only a couple of camping trips planned but nonetheless they'll be great. Will write about that closer to my birthday :) Talk soon R

More ice cream! ..and crocodile!

2012-01-15T08:51:00.000+10:00

For the love of malt! I love malt milk, hot or cold, I love it with cocoa and leatherwood honey, I just love the stuff! So last night I used the rest of my tin to make vanilla malt ice cream (with light brown sugar). It's rich as, tastes wonderfully malty, but is a tiny bit more icey than my last attempt because I didn't get to stir it as much. Still, I can't complain, its awesome! I love this ice cream making stuff haha.

Not much has been happening lately, the highlight of the last week would be going to the crocodile farm yesterday with my sister and co, and dad. The kids enjoyed it and the coolest part was holding the baby crocodile and giving it a pat. What lovely skin they have. I also bought some crocodile meat before we left and that made us a fine dinner last night (and looks like lunch today!). It's a nice meat, if you're in to meat (as opposed to being vegetarian hehe); whoops, I forgot to take a picture of it because the kids and I ate it in a bit of a frenzy. Anyway, it was good!

Actually, speaking of crocodiles made me think of another highlight of the past week. I went and had a go at kayaking in a friend from works skin on frame kayak. It's a beautiful kayak, made by a bloke in Tasmania, the frame is some sort of timber that I'm not sure, and the paddle is completely Huon Pine, absolutely beautiful. The skin isn't animal skin, but some sort of resinous see through stuff, pretty crazy! I was totally wobbly, never been in a closed kayak before, never practiced getting out upside down and have no idea how to flip one if I went under. So I basically just stuck to the shoreline of the river, and down a creek to a bridge and back in a circuit. It was good fun, but a little daunting - I'd much rather be in an inflatable kayak or raft going down some awesome white water, which doesn't sound logical at all but for some reason it is to me!

The funny thing is, two of the big 4-5 metre crocodiles we saw yesterday were actually caught from this part of the river!!! AHH! Everyone knows there's crocodiles, but the risk seems small for some reason. :)

It was a fairly good week all up. Hopefully the year picks up even more with a bit of camping once the hot weather is gone, and, gardening of course!

This afternoon I love...

2012-01-05T18:58:00.001+10:00

Loving these cool summer afternoons, Qld is definitely the best state

(except for cyclones, flooding, drought and bush fires hehe)

Nah seriously, I love it here.

I love the afternoons in summer because they're always full of fun activities,

like today, cutting bananas and collecting the eggs (the Chooks have only just started to lay after a break).

Ahhh clear skied summer afternoons. Lovely.

Not a cloud in sight, just a gentle cool breeze after a long hot sunny day.

Home made ice cream!

2011-12-30T20:07:00.001+10:00

What a tasty thing to post about on the first day of the year; happy new year everyone :)

My sisters and their partners gave me a really fantastic ice cream recipes book for Christmas! It's called "Jeni's splendid ice creams at home". It's full of some seriously awesome recipes, I'm in awe looking through the pages!

I've never even made ice cream at home before - which is pretty funny since Kez and I both like to make things ourselves rather than buy them pre made. I can't believe we haven't already tried making ice cream haha. Ohwell better late than never!!!

The basic recipe (which actually forms the base of most the recipes in the book) and technique seems pretty straight forward; I don't have an ice cream machine though so I did it slightly old school.. the book doesn't cover doing that, but it's not really that hard as it turns out.

After making the mixture on the stove and using the mix master, I actually left the mixture in the mix master steel bowl instead of putting it in a tray or other container; so every time I took the bowl out of the freezer I just popped it straight on to the mixer and turned it on. It turned out to be a really good way to smooth the ice cream out and mix it evenly.

Without the machine it took way longer too.. I started making it at 7pm, and at 11:30pm when I went to bed it was only just thickening up. At 3:15am it was starting to get more proper, at 6am it was almost looking like real ice cream, then at 7:30am I put it in a new container and left it for 3-4 hours and finally, it looked FANTASTIC!!!! What do you think? mmmmm drool.

I'm so impressed overall, I thought for a bit it wasn't going to turn out because it was taking so long to thicken and set... But I was totally wrong, it turned out bloody beautiful!!!! Now I'm sold on making your own ice cream!!!!

A few good logical reasons to make ice cream at home more often include: no artificial colours, no artificial thickeners and emulsifiers or "flavours", no need to worry about gelatine (Kez is vegetarian), and of course last but not least it just tastes way better!!! :D

Ideas for my next attempts, apart from trying some of the amazing amazing amazing recipes in my new book, are to make a Malt flavour with pure malt extract, and also to try and get creative and use my native bee honey as a stand alone flavour or with some other flavour - what would match a tangy lemony resiny honey flavour?? Hmmmm will have to ponder that.

Bread making is beautiful

2011-12-29T11:03:00.001+10:00

Bread making is beautiful, in so many ways. The smell of the flour, the feel of it on your hands when you're kneading, and, the help that you get along the way. :)

The bread we baked today turned out nice, it sank a little after rising, which sucked - maybe too much water? Or maybe it was the not-so-elegant pouring of seeds (mental blank, forgotten what they're called - poppy seeds! that's it!).

But it still tasted nice of course.. I loved the apricots in it, wish I had more (just using up left overs in the cupboard). I had planned to soak some currents in some fine rum but alas I had no currents! hehe. I love having the bread straight out of the oven, with that crackling crust, spread with butter and eaten warm.. mmmm delicious!

Holiday awesomeness

2011-12-23T15:37:00.001+10:00

Ive been enjoying the holidays a ton, and have to show off some of the awesomeness!

Awesomeness one: rummy goodness and baking! Kez has started making this fancy dessert, and boiled down a big bag of plums in some lovely 8yo Cuban rum. The boiled down plums look amazingly delicious, and we drained out left over liquid from them and I'm using it to drink MORE rum with haha yesssss! AWESOME! Tastes great!!

Awesomeness two: real milk! Its hard to find nice quality creamy milk around here but look! I stumbled upon the Ivyhome Dairy milk in the shops at the beach! AWESOME!! So nice and creamy and delicious!

Awesomeness three: figs!!! The nursery at the beach is bloody awesome and I saw a Black Genoa Fig that I HAD to buy, I've been wanting a fig tree, it's such awesome fruit!!! And now I've got one!! Yesss! Awesome!Have fun on the holidays!

Enjoy the holidays!

2011-12-20T21:20:00.000+10:00

Work has wound up, today was my last day for the year - YIPEE! Now I get to sit with family and friends and put my feet up for two weeks roughly. We'll spend plenty of time at the beach, which I'm looking forward to a lot, I love that feeling of salt water on your skin and the sound of the waves on a cool shady afternoon.

Oh, and yes, there will be rum. Fine Central and South American rums of course.. There's going to be lovely steamed pudding that Kez made, and not sure what else, all sorts of yummy food though. Will have to get Kez to make custard with our lovely araucana eggs, she's the custard making master! Mum is gonna make a Cassava cake as well, ohhhh yeah cassava goodness ohhhh drool.

I didn't get time to post earlier but my sister has just had her second baby, a lovely boy named Darcy. They're all home now, and he's come just in time to spend Christmas and New Year with everyone, which is just lovely :) He's beautiful! Cheers for Darcy, Rox, Bren and Matilda! Our big big sister is coming here from Sydney just to see him over the holidays, looking forward to seeing her too :)

Speaking of Christmas, Dad gave us our first gift tonight and since we won't see him for a week we opened it straight away! It's a stunning rolling pin made by his friend John (a wood turner!) in Tasmania; it's beautiful, I love it, and its my favourite wood too - Black Heart Sassafras. Stunning, thanks Dad and John! Many a pizza, scone, and more, will be rolled with this beauty!! Indeed, the kids will probably roll more once I'm gone haha! It's made from a solid block, so, no little holes for bits of dough to go inside, or water, it's the real deal!

Well, on that lovely note, enjoy the holidays everyone, drive safe if you're traveling and talk soon!

R!!

Digging up the sweets again

2011-12-17T19:33:00.000+10:00

Hey hey : ) This afternoon was a beauty. The kids and I got stuck in to one of the sweet potato patches, and dug up a few kilos at least of lovely pink skinned white sweet potatoes! I've been watching this patch for around six months I'd guess, so it was nice to rip in to it and see what was below the ground.

There's something cool about that, growing in the ground where you can't see, and when you pull them out its like finding little gold nuggets (okay, yes, I'd prefer they were actually gold nuggets haha). But you know what I mean. It really brings the kids too, all the worms and just the whole thing about pulling these awesome potatoes out of the dirt - "how big is this one gonna be?" "woah look at this worm its so big!" "i think there's gonna be a potato under here!" and so on :) It's very cute and I'm glad they love it so.

Its nice to have them helping too, hehe. And Nina even helped me wash and scrub the dirt off them after it was all over. I got a gorgeous picture of her, holding one of the best potatoes, she found the two biggest ones which she was most proud of, of course! She's beautiful.

The plan is now, I guess, to get some manure in to the beds that are empty, and then in a couple of months plant them out with good autumn stuff : ) Dunno what yet!! Tomatoes will be included of course, but not sure what else.. fun fun, lots of fun to be had.

Rescuing some native bees

2011-12-05T19:31:00.001+10:00

My cuz called Sunday night, and asked me to head over to his parents place (my Uncle n Aunts) to have a look at what he thought was a native bee hive in the water box. So I went over today for a gander with the kids, and sure enough there was a wonderful nest inside the water box. It's crazy! Below ground level, it'll surely get flooded by water after the next big storm season, or sprayed and chucked out by a worker trying to get to the water mains taps! WHAT were you thinking Bees making a nest there!!?

So, I'm gonna get a new empty hive box, and get them out as quickly as possible. It'll be really cool, because its not the same species as the bees I already have, from the structure of the brood it looks like Hockingsi - so I'd be able to compare honey side by side between the two! I was thinking I'd buy a new hive this week, but with postage and all its VERY expensive, so my cool brother in law has offered to make me a new box, which is sooooo great, I'm gonna go catch up with him about it tomorrow.

I tasted the honey too.. what can I say? Bloody beautiful! Smokey sorta like a dark toffee, sort of malty, not really 'tangy' at all as it's often described as - in fact the word "tangy" is the only description I've heard of what native bee honey tastes like, which is puzzling because it wasn't tangy at all to me.... Maybe people are just used to highly processed mega sweet honeys, the cheap stuff off the shelves in the big shops?.. it was a lovely taste anyway, and very unique compared to other honeys I've tried. The kids thought it was awesome too.

So anyway, the plan is in motion, and hopefully I'll gain this nest as a new hive to keep at home before Christmas time :) Yipeee! I'll post more on it as it happens :)

I'm thinking, that, maybe the queen is actually visible in this pic I took! Not sure, as I'm a bee keeping noob but, I think its the striped bee who's backside is 'just' visible to the left .. actually, I'll include a zoomed in shot as well so you can see what I mean. Cool hey, she's directly in the centre of the zoomed in pic!

We went camping

2011-12-04T19:00:00.001+10:00

And, sat in the quiet..

She did stuff and I did nothing, staring happily around at the scenery until dusk turned to night.

We went camping

And, dangled our feet over small ledges,

too scaredy to dangle them over the really high ones.

We went camping

And, just sat in the bush,

with no one else around. Aw pity this pic is low res : /

We went camping

And, dived into our own private pools of rain water,

then dried off in the sun. Beautiful!

We went camping, by ourselves for the first time ever!

And it was great fun! Thanks for minding the kids Kezs parents ;)

Tomato pwntage!

2011-11-28T16:31:00.001+10:00

HAHA! YES! Look at my tomato pwntage! Today I picked nearly a kilo, mixed up of five varieties.. from my first ever white tomato, up through some cherry varieties to my favourite, black russians.

The white tomato is interesting, I mean, I've never grown a white tomato before and I'd hardly call it white. It 'should' be an ivory sort of colour I think, but mine look lemon, they might change on the bench after a couple of days though? They're tiny as well, the whole bush is a dismal little wretch, and it only fruited one lame little truss of four little tomatoes. HA, oh well! I think I'll plant a whole heap of big white tomato seeds and see how I go with a different white tomato variety. : )

These bushes are all coming to an end, except the black russian, it'll buy me some time to get more seedlings up and going so I can keep the tomato love happening through summer.

Did I mention I had the best possible helper today too? Oscar faithfully assisted Daddy picking all the tomatoes, of course he preferred to pick the green unripe ones, and the ones that I didn't put exclusion bags on and had gone mouldy and maggoty haha. What a cutie though, he proudly brought up his yucky and unripe tomatoes to add to the tomato bowl after we were finished ... he didn't see me sneakily taking them out later though hehe.

Inside my beautiful native bee hive

2011-11-20T17:44:00.001+10:00

I opened the bee hive for the first time today, and its stunning! Amazing! It has the most lovely smell, of eucalyptus-like honey and resin, and I just think its so cool how they've made these wiry ladders up to the top of the hive we they're making honey pots. The nest is just amazing, and their nature is so gentle, they didn't even mind in the slightest, payed no attention to me opening up the hive at all..

The pic doesn't do it justice, its truly stunning to look at in person.

Its not yet full enough for me to add the next tier to the hive - the honey box (which they'll fill with honey reserves when they're strong enough). I'll check again in late December and if they have enough honey pots for themselves I'll add the honey box on.

Their brood is under at the bottom of all the other nest material, you can catch a glimpse of it in the picture (bottom centre), nice looking cells.. the wiry structure at the top is holding their honey pots, and you can see new ones being made as well (centre left - small egg shaped honey 'bags').. So glad I opened it for a sneak peak.. Didn't taste the honey though because they clearly don't have much for themselves..

Looking forward to open it up again! and having a taste!

Tiding up the bees

2011-11-15T16:40:00.001+10:00

Ah look what my rather nifty brother in law made for me (Thanks Bren!!). A proper stand for my bee hive! How tricky is he? The hive fits like a glove, and Dad n I cemented the post in so its bloody sturdy as shit mate, no knocking this bee hive over (like what could have happened on the dodgy old wobbly star picket I had it mounted to!).

haha, brilliant.

The next thing happening with the hive is, hopefully this weekend I'll pry the box open to check the volume of brood and nest inside, and if the hive is full enough I'll add an extra level for honey production. Either way I'll post pics of what the hive looks like inside.. pretty cooooool! Hopefully I'll steal a tiny taste of the honey too! : D

A tiny egg?!

2011-11-14T21:17:00.001+10:00

Suss this out! I went to collect the eggs today and our bossy chook has gone broody, YET AGAIN! She goes broody then comes good for a week, then goes broody again, and the cycle has been happening since Winter, heh, I don't mind 'really', but I think she stops the other hens getting in to the nesting box so we end up with almost no eggs, which is sort of annoying.

Anyway, I pushed her off with a stick today, and there underneath her was another chicken's egg, and what I assume came from her - a tiny egg (her eggs have always been the smallest, even for Araucana eggs, but this is like a bantam egg or tiny bird's egg!).

I wonder what to make of it... I wonder if she's getting to the end of her laying, or if this is just a one off woopsy-daisey 'oops I laid a tiny egg' .... ? Confused. Hmm. I just google'd it (funny how that's a verb these days) and it seems that it happens a fair bit, though I got no explanation why... Will keep looking.

Cute little egg huh? Its like the size of my thumb tip.

The pains of growing tomatoes - and my favourite thing to do with them

2011-11-09T18:42:00.003+10:00

Ahhhh yes, the tomato patch is a fair bit of work here - especially in summer - and the old tale about tomatoes being so easy to grow is sort of a myth I find. In my area there's so many pests that it's almost impossible to grow nice organic tomatoes, unless you go to the extreme like I do and individually bag up each truss. I really don't want to spray the tomatoes with anything, so, I endure the frustration, and use exclusion bags as my method of pest control..

It's laborious and a pain, and sometimes the bugs STILL get in and ruin the tomatoes, but overall it is worth it, because when you manage to lock the pests out 100% you end up with THE most amazing tomatoes in the world.

If a tomato doesn't get put in an exclusion bag, or if a bug sneaks in to the bag, this is what happens.. full of larvae and sometimes caterpillars. : / Like the top two in this pic, they were bagged up (the split one is just cuz it rained after ripening), and a bug got in and stuffed a couple of tomatoes. It's pretty annoying..

It's been pretty damn tedious with the tomatoes lately.. sort of just starting to annoy me a lot.. I totally wish I could just grow them without doing all this but, I suppose you just do what you gotta do hey. Eventually after all the effort, you get a bag full of the most awesome tomatoes you've ever seen.. and you go "ah yep that was worth all that stuffing around!".. I actually got a few bags yesterday and the day before, 100% pest-free, stunning! A lovely combination of pink, yellow and black tomatoes (below).

My favourite way to use tomatoes is either a pizza / lasagne sauce, or to roast them on a tray and plonk them on top of a fresh home made pasta. It's to die for.. such a lovely flavour (there really is nothing like a home grown heirloom tomato is there?). I just seem to like tomatoes more and more, and every time I make a good pasta or something, with nice home grown tomatoes, I get all excited and want to grow MORE tomatoes, MORE and MORE of them hahaha!

Actually, when you think about it; home made pasta is a great way all round to use home grown produce, not just tomatoes.. your own eggs and herbs as well.. fantastic!

Yippee, mangoes!

2011-11-09T18:23:00.004+10:00

Yes, behold, the very first mangos of the season. Alas the tree is actually a bit short on mangoes this year, but anything is good so I best not complain - otherwise it might not fruit at all haha. Can't wait 'till they ripen, home grown Bowen Mangoes taste even nicer than the very best in the shop... the shop ones taste a little watery in comparison.

YUM!

How sweet are sweet potatoes?

2011-11-07T18:17:00.000+10:00

I love it how, you might see a tiny bump of skin on the surface of the soil, then you put your hands deep in, and jiggle out a masterpiece like this. Loving sweet potatoes, how quick they grow in a raised garden bed instead of just in the hard-as-a-rock clay on the ground!!! SO QUICK! This one is purple out, white in; I'm wishing I planted the white out purple in ones in the softer soil hehe, but this is still great.

Last camping trip for the year

2011-11-06T18:00:00.000+10:00

Just got back from the last camping trip of the year I suppose, it's gonna get really hot and sunny from here on in (uncomfortably so!), and we'll be busy until the new year anyway I think. So, goodbye camping for now, I'll come again soon!

There's nothing like camping at a nice quiet campsite - I hate going camping to busy packed out places and having people at every angle, hearing them snore, fart and everything!! I like some quiet space, the sounds of wind on leaf, crackling fire, birdsong, and looking up in to the swaying trees, and of course going for a swim in the cool fresh creeks. I love camping!

Ah nothing like fine pizzas and fine rum

2011-10-29T22:35:00.001+10:00

Ohhhh just got back from a most awesome pizza night at a friend's place out of town. There's nothing like home made pizzas, and I tell ya we had some bloody nice ones. They were so nice that all I could do was eat them up, and not even take one tiny little picture. We got so involved eating delicious pizzas of all kinds, that we completely forgot about making dessert pizzas and were too full in the end! haha oh well!

I also tried a new rum, Goslings Family Reserve Rum. I'm mega, mega, mega impressed - it's officially tied first place for the best rum I've ever tried, along with El Dorado 25yo. It was seriously smooth, even straight, and had the most awesomely full bodied aroma and flavour, just a stunning rum in every way. Cheers to this rum, drool.

Thanks for the cool pizza night and rum tasting David and Sandy!

SketchTravel - a great little animation

2011-10-28T08:30:00.000+10:00

Lastnight I found this great animation on Vimeo while the kids and I were snuggling up watching stuff on appleTV.. I totally love it.. Suss it out! Here's the blurb on it:

This animated short was created as a part of Sketchtravel projectwhich is an international charity art project where one red sketchbookwas passed around between 71 artists around the globe for 4 and halfyears.The original Sketchbook was sold for 70,000 Euros (96,200 US$) and itsentire proceeds will go towards building libraries in the third worldcountries in partnership with a child literacy non profit Room toRead.

SketchTravel from Curio on Vimeo.

Awesome fruit

2011-10-27T17:00:00.001+10:00

A nice lady at work has been bringing in Black Sapote for me lately! Its a fruit native to South Africa, but some people around here grow it. I totally love it; it's got this weird but cool thick mousse-like texture, with a sweet taste that reminds me of lychees and ice cream beans (another odd sth African fruit). I reckon this has got to have one of the most amazing colours I've ever seen in a fruit, it looks genuinely NOT like a fruit, the black flesh is the most perfect opaque dark chocolate brown pigment you can imagine!

Just this week I also noticed that the local organic food business has started selling them for $2.50 each!!! Soooo I guess I've been getting a good deal haven't I! Hehe lucky me.

Anyway, if you see this odd one around pick it up and try it, sometimes its called chocolate pudding fruit but it doesnt taste anything like that! I like it most cold from the fridge, it's really refreshing.. and I bet it's awesome to bake with!

Naughty or Nice? Spiders in the Tomatoes

2011-10-25T17:26:00.000+10:00

I was picking tomatoes this arvo, and I found something sort of cool! I've been noticing over the last couple of weeks that a native solitary bee (haven't looked it up yet) has been coming and pollenating my Black Cherry tomatoes - it seems to be only interested in the Black Cherries which is cute. Anyway, as I picked some this arvo, I turned a basil leaf next to the tomato bushes and there I found this little spider had caught the bee! (Well, it might not be 'the' same bee but I have only noticed one bee at a time....?)

So I thought, hang on, aren't you naughty spiders supposed to be helping me by eating the insects that are bad for my tomatoes!!? haha. Ah well, I think, if I was a spider I'd just grab anything that came past too.. not a bad effort to bag a bee though!

I took these pic on the iPhone, turned out pretty damn good ay! : D

A nice weekend

2011-10-24T20:04:00.000+10:00

We had a great weekend, my sister in law's wedding was a blast and to top it off on Sunday I had a good friend visit that I haven't seen for years, and Kez's uncle dropped off a bag of Redclaw for me! It was a really busy weekend.. so, I might dish up pictures instead of words. I'll talk more again soon!

Saxon about to have the bigger tails of the Redclaw. FYI, these are our
native (to Nth Qld & NT) freshwater crayfish. They were introduced south
of their natural areas and become pests in dams (by digging burrows and
clogging up machinery). They're an awesome delight to eat, I love em.
I'm gonna take the kids out west for a day of catching them (hopefully)
some time in the next few weeks.

The kids had a sleep over at their cousin's house, what fun!

yipee, my Sister got a great pic of us together, we hardly
ever get to get pics as a whole family cuz one of us
always has to hold the camera haha!

Spring flowers

2011-10-13T17:25:00.001+10:00

Loving the spring flowers in the yard at the moment. The bottle brushes are blooming, and the pink one is flowering for the first time I think.. well the first time I've properly noticed anyway! It has a lovely pink brush, and the smell is awesome! It's like no other bottle brush I have, its a sweet smell like sarsaparilla.. mm, just .. lovely!

I was hoping to see some native bees on them, but no, the bees are very shy at the moment - I wonder what they're up to.. they're loitering around the hive a lot and I haven't seen them anywhere else. hehe. The white one is my favourite (although the pink is a strong contender by the smell!). It's brush is really dense and bright white (not cream like some others) - it only looks creamy here cuz the sunset is shining on it. It's a lovely little bottle brush called White Anzac, not sure why it's named this, I'm curious though..

Natural fibres and home made clothes are best

2011-10-10T21:14:00.001+10:00

I was reading today and found an article about polyester clothes and plastics pollution. It's crazy, well, it makes sense really but it is something I've never thought of. We all know that large pieces of plastics pollute the ocean and cause problems with wildlife, but scientists are discovering that tiny fibres and pastil particles the size of grains of sand are showing up everywhere, on beaches and in animals.

Every time you wash a polyester garment in the washing machine it can release thousands of tiny plastic fibres. All the fibres end up in the ocean and on the beaches - and who knows, probably in to the cells of the fish you're eating at dinner time... idunno! They've collected samples from beaches where every single vial had tiny balls of plastic in; even found that in Mussels, these plastic particles have actually gone through the wall of the gut and lodged in other organs.. crazy crazy crazy.

Its not very cool is it. What is cool though is how good a cotton shirt feels compared to one of those STUPID polyester crap ones... what's also cool is how awesome it is to knit yourself a jumper instead of buying a polyester one on the cheap and easy.

Oh, I almost forgot to post the link. Go. Read it. Then think before you buy a polyester something-or-rather. http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2011/10/cleaning-clothes-dirties-oceans/ and http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2011/06/swirling-seas-of-plastic-trash/

Sooo.. I was thinking of buying a fleece underlay for my windproof jacket to wear in winter. I changed my mind and decided I'd knit myself with with Alpaca wool, .. I haven't started yet.. but I'm glad I changed my mind and now I'll definitely go ahead and buy the wool some time and get started.. after reading those articles and having a reality check.

It's been a while since I've done any knitting too. It'll be good to get back to it.

Only ever buy real stuff, 100% animal wool, not synthetic rubbish!
Kez n I are both wool snobs ere.

awww when I was browsing through my knitting photos I found this,
gotta upload it again.. its a pic of the kids in an orphanage in Vietnam, I made half
a dozen beanies and posted them there last year. Should do that again some time.

This weekend I love...

2011-10-09T17:55:00.001+10:00

Finally getting back to the beach again, for the first time since Winter some time.

I love the breeze, I love the salt water, and I love the dry sand
(unless its whipping up in to your eyes).

And of course, I love the sound of the waves and the kids playing.

Chooks doing the work

2011-10-09T13:26:00.001+10:00

Hey guess what! The chooks have done some gardening for me. As I walked around before, just checking out the usual places for eggs, I saw that they'd dug out a bunch of soil and exposed a nice big cluster of lovely orange sweet potatoes!

It's the first time they've helped in the garden (not counting helping by poo'ing in there), instead of ruining things in the garden haha (like, eating all the strawberries, digging up seedlings and eating all the lettuce for example).So, it would seem, that the chooks are the perfect sweet potato digger-up-er-ers. Good on ya, thanks chookies!

The one at the top is a bit rude, how funny! I could make all sorts of dirty jokes with that one. hahahah

I have a much better pic of the one on the top, holding it in a suggestive way,
but its too rude to post here.. hahaha

I have bees!

2011-10-04T16:17:00.000+10:00

Look what arrived today in the post! Isn't it amazing what you can buy without even leaving your own house? Inside this lovely little white box is a little hive of native Australian bees. Fear not, they don't sting, at all! They're simply cute little bees that make a tiny amount of honey, and exist perfectly maintenance-free and cute in your back yard, pollinating plants and just, doing the usual bee-stuff.

The master-plan is, that next year in Summer the hive will be built up and strong and I'll be able to take honey from it (and annually after that).. I'll probably pop a few tiny spots in the hive at the end of this summer to try the honey though; I've never eaten native bee honey before! After a couple of years or a few years, or whatever, I'll hopefully be able to split the hive in to two, and so on until I have a good amount and can get a reasonable store of honey for myself each summer. Actually, in reality we probably eat too much honey for that to be even possible haha. Anyway its a nice idea.

First things first though.. now that I look at it on that lonely star picket, I think I'll have to do some cosmetic upgrades. Get a nicer post for it for starters.. then plant some small crawling native shrubs (flowering ones of course) around the fence line there. Yes. That will do better.

It could also be something I still do when I'm an old fart, see, I like planning things long-range. When I'm an old fart I'm sure such hobbies would be handy and entertaining, or even possibly generate a tiny bit of income which I can spend on false teeth and new glasses every time I loose a set!

hehe anyway I'm rambling. I got bees, they're awesome.

Oh, I nearly forgot, I have to install the honey box at some point.. I'm not exactly sure if I'm supposed to do it straight away or once the hive has grown to a certain point.. but I'll find out. Basically what happens is I take the top part of the hive off (the insulating part at the very top up there), and then replace it with an extra box which the bees will crawl in to to fill with honey stores. The top that's on the box at the moment then goes on the top of the honey box.. catch ma drift? I'll take some pics when I do it, cuz it'll mean I'll get to see the hive inside - CooooooooooL!

I'm over the moon!

2011-10-03T13:00:00.000+10:00

Yep, totally, Over The Moon, the milk! Before we left Sydney my sister helped us find this little organic food shop, and I bought all the bottles they had (only 6L unfortunately!) from the over the moon dairy. This milk is seriously nice, unhomogenized and perfectly beautiful; the first few cups are like drinking liquid cream if you don't shake it up to distribute it, its fantastic!!

I love love love great tasting milk. I wish oh wish I could drink this sort of milk every day, oh this is the stuff dreams are made of. It really is different, and tastes different to the standard milks you can buy from the big supermarkets (especially the cheap ones!) - I don't care what people say!

Even if you have no taste buds and can't taste the difference, if you compare the contents list to another big-company-milk, the Over the Moon one has more protein, more milk fat (which curiously contains a similar amount of saturated fats to other milk but more unsaturated fats), less sugars (but curiously again it has more other carbs, in what form I wonder?), and finally less salt.. go figure, sounds like a good deal to me.

If you wanna see where I found out about this milky goodness, check out the post from the flavour crusader! ... mmm.. milk.

Sneaky chookies

2011-10-02T19:00:00.000+10:00

It's funny; we got home from our holiday and my sister in law said the chooks had been laying 5 eggs a day (one per chooky right).. so with anticipation I waited and checked the nesting box a few times yesterday... NOTHIN.

This morning I get up, look out the back, and there's the dog basking in the sun with a lovely green araucana egg in her mouth - her teeth just ever so slightly piercing the shell... I think she was carrying it around licking it or something haha. So I had a think.

I remembered seeing the dogs pacing up and down the fence yesterday so I went on an egg hunt with the kids along the fence line and voila! There's the eggs, sneakily hidden between some rolled up wire fencing!! How funny is it that on the day we get home basically, they totally change their mind and start laying eggs somewhere else haha. I love how random these birds are. Chickens are certainly entertaining aren't they!

The best speckled egg we've had, that one in the middle at the back..
the one to the left of it has a fine white speckle too which is interesting and pretty cool.
I like getting different coloured eggs : )

The garden in just two weeks!

2011-10-02T08:00:00.000+10:00

I was blown away when we came home yesterday, the garden is just SO different!!!!! It's awesome! I can't believe the difference really.. where to start? Well, the first thing I noticed was the tomato seedlings I had have gone from little plants around 1ft high, to small sized bushes already with fruit on them! And nestled away in the tomatoes is a fennel bulb that has grown so much its ready to be picked and eaten already!!

The Hillbilly Tomatoes went great guns, I picked TEN beautifully ripe ones as soon as I got home, along with a few cherries from the other tomato bush near the house. Next to the Hillbilly is the sunflowers, which surprised me again, they were sort of around 4ft when we left and now they're 6ft high and one even has a beautiful big flower the size of a dinner plate. Gorgeous.

Other than that, its just the little things, like all the flowers that have come out while we were away.. it must have been the warm weather that just clicked on as soon as winter ended huh.. very pretty : )

Living for holidays

2011-10-01T10:48:00.002+10:00

We always say at our place that we work to live instead of living to work. And we really mean it, we have at least one holiday a year, sometimes two or three even! We don't spend much money on other things, holidays are fantastic things to save up for and I think that I'd get a bit bored I suppose if we just sat around and spent all our lives and free time at home.

We just got back from an awesome holiday, a big family one (sometimes Kez or I go on our own holidays while the other stays home with the kids). It was great to take the kids on this big trip though, all of us together.

We took the car, drove 4000kms in total, and went all the way down to the bottom of New South Wales to the highest mountain in Australia!!! The driving was pretty awful, only cuz of the time in the car, the roads were good though and the traffic on the inland roads is really quiet.

On the way down we stayed with some friends on their farm near Goulburn. It was a perfect little retreat, their house is totally in the middle of no where and it was so relaxing to stay for a couple of days and just soak up the nature, the quiet and the beautiful open spaces.

Picture this 360 degrees, with the sound of the cows and the trees in the breeze

After that we went to the snowy mountains, and had the most awesome dew days skiing on the slopes. I haven't chucked skis on for twenty years, but after a lesson or two I really picked it up, I think all that skating when I was little helps somewhat, muscle memory or something.. Heh. Anyway, as I was saying, it was bloody awesome, we loooooved skiing so so so so SO much!!! So much in fact that I bought my own ski pants and I'm thinking we should do it at least bi-annually!!

The view from our apartment, we were skiing up the top up there!

The kids totally loved it, Oscar spent the three days in day care cuz he's too little but Saxon and Nina went so well. They got all day lessons each day, by the end of it Nina was skiing down from the top, man it was so cute. Kez n I bumped in to them on their lessons occasionally and went down with them which was great fun.

This is Nina before we abandoned her to ALL DAY SKI LESSONS! She was white in the face, and felt sick with worry and fear hahaha, I felt so sorry for her I think I might av even had a tear or three in my eye, urhm!

I loved the feeling of skiing, it's so much fun, I dunno how to explain it any other way.. Just loved it! And the scenery of course was stunning, we got all sorts of weather, on our fourth night there it snowed overnight and half the next day, we're so lucky to see that in spring! And before that, at the end of our last day skiing the top of the mountain was shrowded in cloud, which was just so beautiful, despite being bitterly cold. So cold my lips went numb and I couldnt talk properly haha.

On the day we left, it was so cold all the water bottles in the car turned to ice, and the car was covered in a layer we had to scrape off with a card!!! Haha! Brilliant.

On the way back we spend a few nights in Sydney with my sister and her family. It was so nice to visit cuz we don't get down that way barely ever. We all took the kids to the zoo, watched cool shows there, and the next day we spent at museums! It was so much fun walking around looking at everything, there's some amazing sights there. I think I liked the natural histories one the best, all the animal and bone specimens, gems and minerals and so on. We had a bloody fantastic time!

But, all good things do come to an end, we choofed off from the big smoke waving goodbye (after going to a really rad organic food shop and stocking up the esky first hehe) and headed off for the big drive home. Saw some nice scenery on the way, we took some crazy non logical turn and ended up spending the first half of day one in the car going through farms, valleys, forests, and really pretty wine growing regions, it was totally pretty and even though it meant we wasted a lot of time I was glad to see it all heh.

So, we're home again now, back to the usual stuff now until the next holiday huh! What's planned for spring? Dunno, I fancy some camping, might have to throw in a little trip out west to catch freshwater crayfish, um, not sure what else. Time to go cuddle the chooks and see the garden now that we're home again!

Roll

Fruits of the garden

2011-09-07T18:30:00.000+10:00

It's been a nice week / few days in the garden - mostly because of the Hillbilly Tomatoes that have started to ripen! I got 8 so far this week, and lost a truss of 4 to the dogs unfortunately, but there's still more on the vine so that's good news : D They're absolutely delicious, with the first one I roasted it and put it over a pasta - it had a wonderful sweet fulsome flavour; and it's not as ugly as most of the pics I've seen, I find them quite pretty, a lovely orange with this beautiful rose blush that comes on the shoulders and blossom-end. Lovely.

This morning I noticed that the Arabica trees were in full flower! Much sooner than I expected, I mean there's still ripe cherries on there from last time! Crikey! I tricked the kids good and proper, told em the trees had been snowed on during the night and they believed me (even though its probably never snowed here [since the last ice age] and never will [till the next]). hehe.. Funny. This arvo I went for a gander and WOooohh the most awesome jasmine scene hit me from a few metres away, its a wonderful smell. Upon a closer inspection I saw cute little native stainless bees all over it - I bet they're having fun cuz the Macadamia Nut Tree in the neighbour's yard is also flowering (native bees like them a lot!).

Uhhhh what else is new? Hrmm.. Oh. Yes. Bees, of course. I've ordered my bees from Russell Zabel. I can't wait. Should only be a few weeks away now until I can have the hive delivered, I'm gonna be very excited that day!! I have a spot picked for the hive already, so once that all goes down I'll be sure to put a post up with some pics. Can't wait to get the lovely things.

Ay, another thing, one of our chooks have gone broody to the max. She's all cranky, won't let the other chickens lay eggs in house1 (we have two hen houses - one the Araus sleep in and one the Browns sleep in - but they all lay in the one house now.. well.. DID until the last couple of days). I had to push her out physically, and she did NOT like it AT.ALL. I got a chooky-frown, and a chooky-growl if you can imagine a chicken growling haha. I'm sure I read somewhere that to rectify the situation you need to lock them out of the hen house, so I've locked the hen house tonight to see how that theory goes... Feel sorry for the other Arau that sleeps in there, poor thing, locked out cuz her buddy is naughty.. hehe. Ohwell.

Not much other news, but I'll catch up again soon!

R

Father's day camping

2011-09-05T13:01:00.000+10:00

It was father's day yesterday, and for the weekend, I went on a great retreat with Nina and Saxon and some other friends. We went camping to our favourite spot near home, while Kez stayed home with Oscar (who's a little stressful to go camping with to be honest, just too young yet) - thanks Kez hehe.

I had an awesome time with the big kids, we loved it so much they complained immensely upon packing up and leaving.We had some lovely walks, cooked jaffles on the fire, and went for a few little swims too. It's only a few days out of winter so the water was absolutely freezing (even in summer its cold!), but we got stuck in to it, and got in and out a few times. I found the whole-body numbness was awesome, every tiny little body-ache or sore spot vanished! haha.

I can't wait until Oscar is 2 or so years older, its sooooo stress-free camping without him (aww poor Occy); we worry he'll trip and fall in to the fire, or walk off if we take our eyes off him, plus its a bit nuts doing the whole cloth nappy thing while camping. Little fella... : )

The photos speak for themselves.. so have a look, you'll see why I love it so much. It has the best views, the most beautiful cool water (drinkable and delicious), awesome cliffs, more secluded campsites than most places, and great walks. It just ticks all the boxes for me, this place, ahh yep. Love it. If only I was rich and had a helicopter, I could fly up there to see flood waters rushing over the cliffs, I bet the ground would rumble.. : )

The things you see while walking

2011-08-31T18:24:00.001+10:00

I was out today on my usual jog/run/walk/pushup 'thing', and I saw some really cool little things. The first thing I saw, well - you know how in kids books when fairies are involved there's usually a 'ring of toadstools' or something like that? Well, I saw heaps of circles and swirling patterns of fungi today on the walking track. It was cool! So I took a picture, naturally. We've had the better part of a week's solid rain here, so these were all over the track!

Man, the colour turned out weird in these pics didn't it.. dunno why.

The second cool little thing I saw was a tiny little egg, I don't even know how I saw it actually, must have been when I was walking.. its very cute, so fragile, I brought it home for Saxon so he can take it to school for show and tell, but woopsy, it got broken within about 3 minutes haha. Oh well!

There is one sad thing about my exercise track though. The nearby bush is finally about to be bull dozed for "development" (grrr hate that word!). They're putting in a massive hardware shop despite the fact that there's already one a block away, plus a housing estate. I can't help but think about all the animals that use the small area of bush for their homes - the Wrens, Owls, Native Bees, Crawchies, Snakes; and the Kangaroos that visit in there for a chew and a laze around.. it's a shame really isn't it.. And why do they always bulldoze trees for housing estates? It seems stupid, the trees could stay there and the backyards would come with trees and shade and native animals.. ahhh idunno.

When I got home I had a lovely time with Saxon and Oscar in the garden, we picked a nice pile of cherry tomatoes, the second ripe hillbilly tomato, and even got a few gorgeous little strawberries! The rain has been keeping the chooks away from the garden, I think this is why we were able to get some strawbs for a change :)

The rain has done so much good outside too, the grass is greening up already, the ground is softer; and I think about 6 pots of tomato seeds I planted last week have come to life with tiny little seedlings.. I got 3 Black Russians for my father in law; 1 Anna Russian, 1 Speckled Roman, and 1 Black Russian or Hillbilly for me (can't remember which seed was in that last one). Very happy anyway.

Sooo anyway, not much else happening, it's gonna be an interesting weekend but you'll hear about that next week hehe.

R

Got a couple of great roots

2011-08-28T16:06:00.000+10:00

Yip, I got a couple of great roots this weekend, coriander roots that is. I'll have to put em in a container and make a thai curry paste later in the week I think. When ya buy coriander from the shops they never have enough root on em so this is a great haul (and from only two stems!).

I cut my first Hill Billy tomato this arvo too, chopping stuff for dinner, quite nice! There's a pretty pink blush at the centre, I think if it'd ripened on the vine a bit longer that this would have spread out and sweetened the tomato.. the red part seems really sweet tasting.. I'm gonna roast it tonight and bang it on top of a pasta.. mm mmm.

Whats on this weekend

2011-08-27T21:52:00.000+10:00

Just a quick note! Having a nice weekend so far, we have rain again finally, after barely a drop for months. It's been quite heavy on and off today, bucketing down now actually. I love the smell of it, the fresh cool air, and its also perfect timing considering I just sowed a heap of tomato seeds the day before. hehe.

Today the kids played so well together, I just had to get a snap, I don't think they fought all day today!! YES! They don't fight much, really (they're wonderful), but all kids fight and carry on at some point, but not today! They had the best time playing lego together - seriously, is there any better toy than lego? (The answer is no..) :D Here's the cuties playing with all my old stuff, which (luckily) my Mum hung on to then gave back to me when we had kids :)

We went to my nieces 3rd birthday, which was lovely, I took some pics but they're all blurry!!! My sister made a rad cake like the night garden, with a little bridge between the two grass hills hehe - nice cake too I might add. I got to pick up and take home my adopted Grand Mother, who's 96 now! Poor bugga, I got to her place a minute after the rain started pouring, and out she ran, getting wet, and my land cruiser was on a hill and the hand brake isn't working so I had to stay on the brake while TRYING to hold the door open for her (hahaha poor dear!). She's tough though, up she got, shook off the rain and off we went. I'll have to catch up with her again soon, I told her I'd make her an angel cake (11 egg white cake) and give her some of my green aura eggs - to which she was most interested.

Tomorrow should be nice, I'm hoping to do some baking, bread making I think; I haven't done any for TOO LONG. I wonder, should I sauté some raisons in a fine rum then drain off the rum and use the raisons to make raison bread? What a bloody great idea. Lucky I'm making a note of that idea or else I'd forget it. :s

Haha..
ah well, nighty night.
R

An old rummy fav

2011-08-26T18:26:00.000+10:00

Guess what, I can buy cool rum in town now! It's been a long time since I've bought a nice rum, especially an old fav. Last week though when I found out I could get stuff locally that I used to have to order from Melbourne, I jumped at the chance! I got an old favourite, Pampero, as well as another classic navy rum (Pusser's) to fill my decanter. Bloody awesome mate! Slurp.

If you're in to rum you gotta try these two rums. Absolutely delicious. The Pampero is from Venezuela, and is rich in smell and flavour, with a heavy vanilla and oak taste, and very smooth. The Pusser's Rum (the same rum that the Brits used to give their sailers) is a stunning blend of 5 (I think) rums from Guyana (200yr old wood still) to the British Virgin Islands - absolute classic. Both of these rums have an even nicer make, the Pampero has the Aniversario and the Pussers has a 15yo, both of them are so smooth you can easily drink it neat - a friend and I always say at a wiff of them "ohhhhhh I could live in that smell!" (or something to that affect) - they really do smell THAT good.

Great rums, so glad to have them in town! I'm having a cup of each tonight before tea : )

The catch for today

2011-08-25T16:53:00.001+10:00

Ah YES at last, at last my first Hill Billy tomato has almost ripened!! I decided to pick it lest it get hit by bugs or birds, and it can finish ripening on the kitchen bench. I'm so glad, I almost thought I wouldn't get to try it at all for a bit there cuz the bush is very sick looking, the leaves are all starting to yellow and die; and I haven't been able to figure out why.. I've tried the usual remedies, perhaps the soil is just in dire need of some repair time (add lots of nice POO and stuff maybe).

So, this tomato is a little small for this type of tomato variety "apparently", according to most sites and the packet they are often 900g each; this one is 190g haha, still, its a good enough size and weight to impress me, smells lovely too.

So, as well as the cool tomato I picked a little hand full of cherries, and I actually got some chooky eggs too but the crapiest sneakiest thing happened! I realised I had too much to carry and didn't want to drop my precious tomato or eggies, so, I put it all on the trampoline, and RAN upstairs to get a bowl, and RAN back - this all took about 30 seconds - and AN EGG WAS MISSING. Bloody birds shit me to tears some times haha. Buggers. I think it was a sneaky old Currawong, because a few minutes later one came and sat high up in the Melaleuca singing away. I gave it the evil-eye and frowned with one eye brow.. though.. the bird didn't seemed phased at all by my rude facial expression.

hehe. Got some nice sweet potatoes last week too, but other than that I haven't had much out of the garden, I've just been going crazy with tomato seeds and seedlings. All good fun still though. : )

Potato Sandwiches

2011-08-21T16:09:00.000+10:00

What more can I say? Delicious. Potato sandwiches great!

Here I've got potato, home grown orange sweet potato, and the purple one is the purple flesh sweet potato variety - the 'hard to get' one. I finally got some after wanting it for a couple of years when I saw a doco on ABC about the purple sweet potato farmer in Queensland.

I found out my uncle had some earlier this year (he grows everything you could ever think of), and very excitedly went to visit to bum some off him. He was hoarding it so preciously I couldn't get a tuber off him haha. He gave me a cutting instead, which I happily took and I grew a few months back. Of course there's no potatoes on it yet, but after wanting it for ages, getting it off my uncle and thinking I was so cool, there it is this weekend, for sale, in the normal old SHOPS HAHA. Rather amusing really.

Anyway, who cares; my home grown one will still be cool when its ready to dig up. And its good you can get more interesting things at the shops these days.

Tomato Frenzy

2011-08-18T20:13:00.000+10:00

Man, how annoying, I typed a post up and it vanished somehow, unsaved. VANISHED. Ah well. Here we go again. I'm going through a bit of a tomato frenzy at the moment. I've been watching and waiting for 3 months now and the vines I've got are ever so slowly fruiting, no ripe ones from the Hilly Billy yet and it's actually not looking healthy which is a bit of a worry; but the cherries are starting to ripen up here and there (Tommy Toe). Still.. I want more tomatoes. It's just a shame it takes 90 days or more to get them up and running.

I've got quite a few pots with seeds in, various varieties; Black Russian, Green Zebra, Hill Billy, and then the cherries including more Tommy Toe, Black Cherries, and Snow White Cherries as well. They'll all take ages, and I get the feeling that I might turn my whole veggie garden in to a massive tomato patch, hehe, which actually sounds cool.

In the spirit of getting more awesomeness, and the developing plan for having a massive tomato-growing-fest; I just ordered another five varieties! lol. Can't wait to get them, and start sowing seeds in old empty dog food tins (a great way to re-use rather than recycle the cans).. infact, I'd say the dog food cans are WAY better than plastic seedling pots and stuff. They have a good depth, so you don't have to transplant in the early stages if you're busy, you can let them grow considerably more; They're also better at keeping the soil moist (yes I do cut holes in the bottom of them), I think its because the metal is a bit thicker and more insulating than crappy thin plastic. Bottom of the line, dog tins are awesome to use when sowing seeds. How's that for getting side tracked and ranting.

I'll post again soon about more tomato goodness, but for now, here's the five newies I'm now waiting for; from a new shop I found that has heaps of tomatoes broken down in to types of tomatoes (makes picking what to buy easier); rangeview seeds.

Anna Russian - a pink oxheart, I'm keen as for this one, can't wait.	Purple Calabash a purpley beefsteak type
Speckled Roman - stripy paste type, I'm especially looking forward to this one too

Big White Pink Stripe

a big white variety (obviously)..

this one should be very

interesting indeed

Early of Edgecombe

a smallish orange oxheart type

A cool lizard!

2011-08-14T17:28:00.001+10:00

Today has been full of lots of animals, from the usual chooky pats and cuddles, we went and saw the horses at Nanny & Poppy's place, where Pop was having his first horse ride in a long time; and we also found a fine specimen which Nanny found out later is called the Burton's Snake-Lizard - a beautiful BIG legless lizard that full on looks like a snake, until you get close and notice that it's a bit strange looking, especially the head.

I've never seen any lizard like this in town, and probably never will, with domesticated animals like cats and dogs that kill animals like this. So it was a real treat. After we all decided it wasn't a snake I picked it up so we could all have a little pat. Lovely! It was pretty lazy, must have been trying to warm up in the sun I think, otherwise I'm sure it wouldn't have let me grab it.

What's interesting, and worth specific mention, is that the website that describes the Lizard says they're usually 29cm long, with reports of up to 40cm.. well, This one would have had to have been around the 40cm, possibly more.. Stunning, and in the perfect place where it's managed to grow to a good size without human / domestic animal interference.

I got some quick pics, which was a bit tricky, have a gander:

Proud moments, the food, and the tunes

2011-08-12T14:54:00.000+10:00

This is a bit of an update on the happenings and thinkings of late. I've been wanting to post for ages but haven't really had a good chance, nor the pics I wanted to use :P But anyway!

We started the week off with a really proud moment. Nina is up to her usual tricks, doing so well at school; she's been more formally recognised and has been put in the school's program for gifted and talented students! She gets a mentor teacher for an extra hour per week, where they get to work on a big project of her choice, and then shows the rest of the school at the end of the year. She's pretty chuffed of course, Kez and I are really proud of the sweety though. She's always done so well as school, hopefully it'll continue on throughout the rest of her schooling, I'm sure she'll be able to do great things one day :)

In the middle of the week it was Kez's birthday! On Wed night I took her out for dinner, the first time just the two of us had gone out for tea since probably my birthday the year before (a year n a half ago!). Man, it was AWESOME! I took a camera to take snaps of the food but when the food came out, it was so gorgeous and delicious that I totally forgot and just ate the heck out of it haha. The chef at the restaurant is a bloke I went to school with, and he pulled all sorts of strings for us, made us a special off the menu dish as well as shouting us some of our courses; it was totally fantastic!

I had the day off work yesterday though, I've been a bit yucky sick this week.. I lazed around the house all day with Oscar, fell asleep three times, and spent the evening snuggling all three kids on the lounge watching HD music videos of a Queen concert. It was heaps of fun, the two boys fell asleep and Nina really wanted me to find a video for The Show Must Go On... which there is no video for of course. But she wanted to see 'something', and she actually ended up spotting the following clip. I reluctantly played it, not expecting much at all; and was totally blown away. If you're familiar with the song I think you'll be bloody impressed. It's a song no one could cover well (not even Elton John - his tribute version was, well, crap), but this is great because its just the piano, and its the instruments as well as the vocals combined.. fantastic. If you don't know the song, look it up and listen to it before you play this.

The only other thing I've done this week is looked for milk. I found an awesome blog post on all the types of proper milk you can get around Australia. Unfortunately there's no good un-homogenised, organic and ultra awesome milk for sale around here, but I can get some delivered through an organic delivery service... so.. I'm thinking about doing that for a little bit, maybe. We'll see. Before I read the post (linked above) I also didn't realise that some milks have added stabilisers or other additives, how naive of me. I'll check all the labels on milk from now on, just out of curiosity.. but I'm sure the stuff we already buy doesn't have any nonsense in it. We usually like to buy 'Pauls' milk because Kez's uncle sell's his dairy's milk to the Pauls company - it is the best tasting milk on the shelf in town; what I should do is just head on out to his dairy and totally bum some fresh milk off him though hahaha.

I really want rich creamy tasting milk (with lumps of cream in it still!). I'll keep pondering on Milk. p.s.. on that topic, remember those ads on TV where the bushman goes in to the country bar and orders a tall ice cold glass of milk and everyone looks funny at him? That me totally! Last time I was on a flight, it was a late night one and the airline ladies were offering all the customers wine, of course, I asked if I'd be able to get a glass of milk instead, and while they laughed and thought it was pretty funny, they got me a nice big glass of it straight away.. MMMmm milk! haha

Anyway I better get back to it, talk again soon,
R

Finally some tomatoes

2011-08-07T08:00:00.001+10:00

I'm finally getting some tomatoes, at last! This is the first handful I've got since around summer time before all the rain that killed my tomato crops, and I didn't get any winter tomatoes either from the heavy rains in autumn that waterlogged everything I had in the garden.

So, at last at last. I have lots of little cherry tomato bushes coming on, and a lot of them have unripe trusses of cute little cherry tomatoes; the big hill billy bush is still struggling with that wilting of the leaves though; very disappointing as I really wanted some 'big' tomatoes instead of cherries all the time. Why do the big tomato varieties seem harder to grow, more needy and less tough?

Oh well, bring on the tomatoes, I'm dreaming of all the pastas dinners already hehe. I feel like looking around for what I might grow next.. as in, next year.. here's some varieties I'd like to try I think:

Red Oxheart
Amish Paste
San Marzano
Thai Pink Egg
Speckled Roman, or Verna Orange & Sutton white from the same page.

Damn, tomatoes, you are awesome.

R

The eggs!!!

2011-08-06T10:09:00.000+10:00

I've been wondering, now that the weather has been warming up (no winter isn't over yet but its t-shirt weather again); when the new chickens will start laying?

They're very cute, and come to the back door on some mornings like cats/dogs wanting their daily feed. hehe. They came inside the other day when I left the door open accidentally, little sneakies!! hehe. Anyway I've been really thinking they should be laying about now-ish, especially since the Araucanas have been laying for a couple of weeks (one egg a day per arau). So today I did a little bit of a walky, and there beneath the bougainvillea, where five eggs!!!!! Two of which were Arau eggs!!!!

How hilarious is that, I noticed the last two days that the Araus only layed one egg instead of two, and it seems one or more of the brown chookies have started laying in this hidy hole, and the Arau has thought they'd join in! Is it sort of like the equivalent of how if a dog sees another dog pee on something, it then pees on it to assert itself, are chooks the same with egg laying? Haha.

So, I suppose they've been out there for say 3 days at most, are the eggs still good? I think they should be; its been quite cool, from about 12C at night to about 22C during the day. And now that I've collected them, will they find somewhere new, or perhaps just keep laying in the same spot? hrmmmm what fun, to look for chooky eggs! Wish the kids were home to see it (they're at their aunty's place).

Talk soon!
R

Today I love...

2011-07-30T12:33:00.000+10:00

Laying in the grass under the beautiful winter sky!

Keeping the tomatoes healthy

2011-07-25T16:55:00.000+10:00

OH no! I see trouble brewing with my tomatoes, especially the Hillbilly variety that I've been talking up and looking forward to for months. I've been ogling at it since it showed its first leaf from the ground, waiting, and it's just started setting fruit a couple of weeks ago. I noticed the other day though, that the leaves are yellowing from the bottom up.

Is it normal die off? I thought it could probably just be that the plant needs more potash but it seems I've ran out (making a mental note to buy some this week).. or magnesium.. either way I've run out of both.. in the meantime I've given it some Thrive and some Seasol, hoping that might help keep it nice and strong until I get the other minerals.

... I'd be totally bummed if the tomato crop fails, I've been dreaming of nice home grown tomatoes again since last summer when we had TOO MUCH rain to grow any tomatoes (they all got waterlogged; and the exclusion bags even filled up with water and rotted what tomatoes I did have!).

Fingers crossed, I CAN NOT let these tomatoes do badly, I want tomatoes, GIMMI GIMMI GIMMI.

: o

Birthday season

2011-07-25T09:35:00.000+10:00

Hey hey, I haven't written in a while now have I.. It's a busy time of the year at the moment, we have 1 to 2 family birthdays each week for about 6 weeks straight I think. So naturally I've been feeling pretty busy and un-motivated! I've also been spending more of my computing time doing other things (like looking for alternatives to MobileMe) rather than blogging : )

Last week Nina turned 8! Eight years ago she was born and far out where on earth did those eight years go again? They go so quick, and quicker and quicker the older you get. She had a really nice day on the day, Kez and I made her cupcakes and she took a massive big container full of them to school (she's been wanting to do that for a while now!). Then on the weekend she had a party with a bunch of kids from school, which of course was really fun.

We got her a big bike for her present, nice big good quality 24", she can only touch the ground with her toes when she sits on the seat, which totally scared her at first but by the end of the day she'd come around; and over the weekend Nanny, Poppy & Mummy took her for a ride in the park, so she's loving it now! The big girl! hehe.

On another note; Dad was telling me about something interesting that happened on Nina's birthday last week, perhaps a meaningful coincidence (as Carl Jung would put it). Eight years ago a friend of Dad's was visiting on the day Nina was born, and that night when Kez was giving birth at the hospital they all held hands and had a 'big push for Kez' while having drinks at the dinner table (hahaha). So anyway, on Nina's birthday this year the same family friend emailed Dad to say hello for the first time in ages, even around the same time in the evening! So, the question is; is it just a meaningless co-incidence? Or was he compelled by the unconscious to make contact on the same day at roughly the same time as his visit 8 years ago on the night Nina was born? haha pretty cool really anyway!

A few more family birthdays to go before Birthday season is over, so another few busy weeks yet :) Talk soon though!

Birds, bees, and tomatoes!

2011-07-15T10:14:00.000+10:00

I have some not so cool, and some cool, things on my mind re; the birds and the bees. Starting with the birds! The CROWS (and that one naughty Carrawong that's hanging around)! They're sneaky fiends, and I'm sure they've been stealing our chooky eggs.

In desperation I adjusted the chook house doors so they're only a little bit open (yeah we leave them open all the times so the chickens can just come and go as they please). I thought it might slightly deter the crows by having such a narrow space and they might get scared of going in there and getting cornered or being vulnerable (more so than with a door that's wide open anyway?) ??? Anyway, I don't know for sure but after I did that we've managed to get two eggs this week. Two? Hrm so I'm sure they're still pinching the eggs.

I bought a 10m x 10m thing of commercial bird netting the other night, when it arrives we'll rig it up and see how it goes.. if we start getting more eggs (more than none to 2 per week) than we'll know that the crows were definitely stealing eggs.

I couldn't help myself when I bought the netting though; I've been entertaining the thought of getting our own native stingless bees for a while now, so I bought a book all about native bee keeping!!! Woho! So the theory is that I can read about it, and then in the spring time later this year I can acquire some hives!! How awesome will that be huh! yeah!

The other exciting news is that the Hillbilly tomatoes are just starting to fruit now, soon I'll be putting on exclusion bags to protect the little babies from the myriad of nasty pests I seem to get in the garden. hehe.. its been so long since I've had home grown tomatoes now, I really do miss it! Hurry tomatoes, HURRY! :D

This week I love...

2011-07-11T17:28:00.003+10:00

Camping!

We got away this weekend to my fav camping spot, the lovely tablelands, isn't it beautiful?

Watching the kids play

Like father like son - he's sitting by himself enjoying nature

The nice quiet fireside sit after the kids are finally asleep

The sound of running water

The extra helper

2011-07-05T17:00:00.000+10:00

The kids have been very cute lately, helping me pick, pulp, and hull the coffee, very cute indeed. Oscar got extra cute points though because I keep finding him sitting up to the table hulling the parchment layer off and putting the seeds in the seed pile - of his own accord. hehe, just gorgeous!

It is fun hulling actually, tedious, can make your thumb and fingers sore if the parchment layer isn't dry enough, but still its fun... obviously if he keeps going over and cracking them open hehehe.

This week I love...

2011-07-04T16:17:00.004+10:00

The paperbark is flowering! I always forget which season it flowers in, until winter comes and reminds me with a delicious surprise. The smell is wonderful, you can smell the honey and toasty oats smell from near the tree, and in the winter arvos the sun lights all the little flowers up.

MMMMMM

I also love the winters here, we have the best winters in the world, blue skies, lots of sun, and an earthy look everywhere:

(Taking Saxon for rides up and down the lane at the inlaws)

Inspired by the stash

2011-07-02T11:39:00.001+10:00

Kez had the yarn stash out lastnight, this massive container full of all sorts of colours and types of wool. Just seeing all the stuff there made us all knit-crazy. Saxon suddenly wanted to learn how to knit - Kez taught him and he did about 5 stitches then got sick of it though haha. Nina also wanted to knit again, and I decided I'd even get cracking and make myself a scarf. I don't have a scarf, and apparently I "need" one, according to the ladies at work who're sick of me wearing a black hoody around the office haha. (yeah, sometimes the aircon gets ultra cold at work).

So, for my scarf, I've grabbed some scraps, some most awesome scraps.. I love these yarns because they're 'mooshy', they look like one thick thread rather than heaps of little threads wound round each other.. They knit up brilliantly and look totally awesome! Cooooooool

The garden saboteur(s)

2011-07-01T16:09:00.000+10:00

I was sure the kids were lying to me last week when they told me it wasn't them who'd ripped branches off the snowpea vines, strewn them around the garden, and eaten all of the big snowpeas we were diligently waiting for.. Saxon kept telling me it was the dog... and I was like "pfft, WHAT EVER, YEAH RIGHT, bloody dog, my arse, az if!!"

As it turns out, I should eat my hat, it wasn't the kids afterall. It WAS THE DOG! Can you believe it, a dog, A DOG, that pillages the garden for snowpeas? I'm pissed off but I think its comically absurd at the same time.

What to do about this, I have no idea... Actually.. I just went and pulled them all out, they were on the way out anyway. I've decided I'll go hard for tomatoes so I've started sowing seeds in pots and I'll transplant them in the same spot and use the climbing wire things that I usually use for the snowpeas for the tomatoes to climb on.

I've also had a crap attempt at keeping the chooks away from the leeks and strawbs, because they keep scratching the mounding away from the leeks and eating the strawbs!! We'll see if it works, haha. I think it will.. well, they haven't touched it since I put the wire there a couple of days ago now :) Aren't I so tricky? (until the chooks just scratch around the wire and under it haha. Okay now that I think about it, its sort of a bit lame, it'll probably do nothing to deter them hahaha oh well!

Nice, adding a place to my to-go list

2011-06-30T12:30:00.000+10:00

I had a better look around at the Qld National Parks today; and found what is definitely going on my TO GO TO list...officially. So officially that this week I'll ask family if any one else wants to go or meet there in spring next year!

Giraween NP: http://www.rymich.com/girraween/index.php?page=gi_gallery_02... ever been there? If so what's the best time to go, I wanna go when the water flows down the granite creek, it looks stunning.. Please do comment. mmm ... I'm already excited and its just a figment of my imagination for at least another year haha.

pic by Jolene McLellan, DERM.

Finally! A finished knit

2011-06-29T19:27:00.000+10:00

I've been working on a jumper for Saxon for so long its not funny, I mean it must be 8 months or so, who knows.. I've given up little of my time for knitting over this year, but finally, FINALLY, the deed is done.

He likes it, I like it, it fits, its soft, its warm, and cute - I'm so glad its done!

I must admit, Kez saved the day really. She did a few rows here and there for me to help it get done, plus when I finished the sleeves they didn't fit him by about an inch or more (yep, he's grown that much since I started). So she helped me finish them off and actually did most of the work pulling it out and re-doing it then sewing the ends in haha. Thanks Kez!

So, Saxy has finally got a jumper like Nina and Oscar, he just needs a hood on it hey... hmmmmmmmmmmmm I know, I should do it soon shouldn't I?

He feels like a big man

2011-06-26T17:00:00.000+10:00

Dear little Saxon, he's been getting around on one of Nina's old bikes since he was old enough to ride. Of course he's never complained about using girl's bikes - or to be more accurate, old girls bikes with dog-chewed handles etc. Today was the last straw though. We were heading out to the bike track for another kid's bday party, and when I pumped the tyre up the chain guard fell to pieces when I bumped it (cheap old plastic crap!).

So I fabricated a little story, told Sax that I couldn't fit the extra bike in to the car and while he was a bit disappointed he didn't complain. I sneakily had words with Kez beforehand though, and the plan was to swing past a bike shop on the way to the party and surprise him with a brand new big boy's bike!

So we got to the bike shop, and I told Sax to get out because he had to come inside with me 'to get in to trouble', he looked very worried but remained very brave (still with his bike helmet on his head) - he just had no idea what I was on about I think hahaha. So as we walked in his face changed to a curious smile and he said "ohh, are we going to ride a bike in here?" and I said "NOOOO! We're going to BUY YOU A NEW BIKE!!!" He was rather chuffed indeed. And whhhhhat a great co-incidence, it just 'happened' to be 50% OFF today at a sale. Awesome!!

When we got to the bike track, I got the bikes out and told him to push it over to the track.. but by the time Kez n I got there he was long gone, riding around the track already!! haha.. He came over to us and told us he felt like a big man, like Daddy.

Its nice to surprise the kids like this. We're so happy to see him with a new bike too and he loves it! :)

You sneaky little thing

2011-06-23T16:00:00.001+10:00

Oh my, look what I found lurking under the leaves, perfectly ripe, perfectly delicious and sweet as sugar. The strawbs have been secretly producing and I thought they taking a vacation from making baby strawbs! So, I found a couple of lovelies like this and also noticed the bushes have tons of unripe ones coming on, FINALLY! Yessssss! How sneaky of those strawbs...

Meet the little reds

2011-06-22T17:30:00.002+10:00

Je vous présent; les pppppppppppouuuuuuloir? Mmmm I can't remember what chickens are in french. Ohwell, meet the new chooks ay: you beauties, what a bunch'a'rippas ay!

a little blurry but oh well, they kept running away from me!

Saved by the garden!

2011-06-21T18:00:00.001+10:00

Woho! I was really struggling with what to cook for tea tonight.. Its grocery day tomorrow and the cupboard and fridge is looking a bit empty! But you know what happened? I got totally saved by the garden.

I ended up finding a home made curry paste I made a few weeks back, still in perfect hibernation in the fridge, a yellow/red thai curry paste, made with TONS of home grown food, limes, corriander, lemon grass etc. So anyway, then as luck would have it I had the extras for a good thai curry (coconut milk, brown sugar etc) and the garden did the rest with home grown potatoes, peas and herbs!

Half way through cooking the yummmmmmy thai curry

Hows that for awesomeness. Trying out our new black rice tonight too. Man food is awesome, is it awesome or what!? (note later: its not glutinous black rice, its a jasmin varietal... which took around 20+ minutes to cook plus half an hour of soaking beforehand. The texture was sort of like brown rice actually, but the cooked colour was of ripe mulberries!)

Sea vegetables?

2011-06-21T13:00:00.005+10:00

Guess what arrived this week!

Recently I bought some sea veggies online, although, I doubt they're really vegetables even though it had them under a sea vegetable category on the website, one is kelp (a grass) and one is dulse (an algae!!).

Well, I must say, they both smell and taste pretty damn cool. The kelp is from Tasmania, certified organic (wakume), and has a lovely flavour along with a good feeling for buying from my own country. I'm sure it'll go really nicely in some japanese soups next time I'm in the mood for making some :

The other, the dulse leaf, is really awesome and unique.. From Canada this one is, it tastes salty, smokey, green-tea-like, spinach-like, and beautifully oceanic all at the same time. I've only tried it as is at this point, but I can't wait to put it in a salad, or a soup, or just try it with some butter on it!

Very impressed! I got it from Santos Trading :)

The weeks fly by!

2011-06-20T18:19:00.000+10:00

I've turned in to a Mr Slack (picturing what I'd look like as one of those 'Mr Men Show' characters - probably like Mr Lazy haha he's funny), and haven't been blogging much. Nah its really not that I've been slack.. I've been doing some freelance work lately, and usually that makes me want to avoid computers because I'm sick to death of them.

Stuff has been happening that I wanted to write about though, that much is certain!

Where to start?

The 'shookies' (Oscar talk for Chookies):

After months of living together, the dog turned on the chooks and killed one of them last weekend. Tis a shame, but, it got me in to gear and I ended up buying 3 new birds, Lowman Browns they are, I don't know much about the breed (some modern cross I assume?), but they ARE cute. I've been cornering them in their new chook house and picking them up for cuddles and pats hehe, the kids like to give them a pat. No eggs all 'round yet though, I guess the weather is too cold. Once the heat kicks back in I reckon we'll get showered in eggs : ) hehe.

Oscy boo boo:

The lovely Oscar turned TWO this weekend, he had a woooooooonderful day, he got awesome new toys for riding around under the house, which is lovely to see that area turning in to a play area more and more... sooooooo worth raising, restumping and cementing, thank goodness we did it! He's so big, what a big cute baby boy. hehe.

The garrrrden!

Patients. It is all about patients really isn't it. The leeks are growing, every month I've been mounding up around them as they grow, they've got a long way to go though before they're edible. The strawberries are dormant waiting for the summer again, and I'm okay with leaving them there for that, I'm hoping that by having them more established we'll get more strawbs next season?

What else... hrm... The sweet potato roots I got off my uncle have taken off well. So within say 6-8 months I should be able to dig up the first purple skin white flesh, and the first white skin purple flesh sweet potatoes that we've ever grown. Can't wait. Yummy roasts or thai curries will ensue! The Taro has been steadily growing too, how I'll use it I'm not sure, might roast it like I did with the big tuber I had a month or so ago; or might try something new.

I'm watching over the tomatoes too, a watched pot never grows but I can't help it. Its been so long since we've had home grown tomatoes, after a brilliant tomato year last year, the start of the cool season (which should have been the best growing time) turned out disastrous - too many garden pests and stuff. Anyway, the hill billy bush is really getting on now, I saw some tiny flowers at the top of it today.. and I've got nice red cherry tomatoe seedlings coming up all over the place. I'm totally gonna let them all grow, we'll have a massive tomato fest in a few months I hope! I got a tad excited at the thought of staggering the crops out; so today Saxy and I sowed the cherry varieties in pots.. mwahhaha. Tomatoes. mm.

Well, that's about all for now, I best be off, must go eat creamed rice. mmmmmmm

A nice garden haul

2011-06-13T11:16:00.002+10:00

We got a nice little haul this weekend from the garden, Saxy helped me pull out half a sweet potato patch and all the kids helped pull some lovely baby carrots out. The coffee cherries are rolling in too, processing them is slow going as usual!!!

Some bad news of the weekend is that one of our chooks (Bok) has died. She went from the poor hen pecked hen to the biggest fattest most content chook of them all, then unfortunately she had a run in with the dog and came out second best. Poor thing. I'm trying to get some silver grey dorking pullets this weekend, not sure if they're already sold or not, but Kez n I have wanted to get more pullets for ages so I suppose now is probably a good time since poor old Bok has gone.

Will update again soon : )

Roll

Neglecting garden updates

2011-06-04T12:54:00.001+10:00

I've been hopeless at blogging about what's happening in the garden this year, which sucks now because I have no idea if the corn that is coming up is red maize or yellow corn!! Bugger ay, wish I'd made a note somewhere about what I sowed. Now I'm going to have to wait until I pick to find out.. ha.

A few things are finally happening though, I mean gardening has been pretty slow this year (in other words I've been slack too), especially with the chooks now, who like to get in and destroy everything I do. I've had a whole patch of lettuce eaten in one day, about 1.5 square metres of onions just dug up and ruined, and most of the seeds I plant just get scratched up. They are staying away from some things though which is good - like the sweet potato, the taro which is just sprouting up nicely now, and thank goodness the leeks. I love leeks, and this is the only time of year they'll grow here.

Comon leeks, keep going! Must do a little mounding up on them soon too..

This is the taro starting to come through : ) Purple sweet potato in the background..

It was great to pull a carrot out today, the boys have been patiently watching them grow for a while now. I have to say, forking up the ground regularly between growing stuff and breaking up the sods has made a massive difference to the shape of the carrot. I probably haven't tilled it up deep enough but the shape of the carrot for the first 4 inches is bloody superb, most perfect shaped carrots I've ever grown!! Saxon ate it in about 60 seconds flat : )

awesome hey.. lovely!

Today I bought some Manuka honey (New Zealand honey, blended from their native bees and other forrest bees), first time I've ever tried it, though I've wanted to for ages. I am SO impressed. Its amazing, and makes me REALLY want to own bees even more. Towards the end of winter, I think I'll get 1-2 boxes of native bees (non stinging), and maybe the hives can be under the lovely big paperbark Melaleuca, or near the veggies. I'll plant some more native shrubs behind the coffee trees to help give them awesome pollen, I think it'll be cool, and I'd love a supply of my own honey even though it may be a tiny amount per year.

Oh, one more thing that's happening in the garden is the tomatoes are finally coming up unscathed by the chooks; I've been surrounding the seedlings with empty dog cans and pots so the chooks can't scratch them up, ha, take that chooks! The biggest beauty so far is the Hillbilly variety, its only a bit over a foot tall though and already has a couple of flowers; should I pull the flowers off so the plant spends more energy on getting a bit bigger before it tries to fruit????

The much awaited Hillbilly variety.. I've been wanting to grow these for AGES now.

Anyway, back to it I suppose, Saturday housework hehe.

Rice rice rice!

2011-05-30T19:45:00.002+10:00

Finally I bought some cool rice. I ended up buying from the Oxfam shop online cuz I haven't seen any grains other than standard old white basmati and jasmin around town here. I was a liiiiiittle disappointed because the Oxfam shop didn't say that the rice was a blend with normal white jasmin rice, but oh well (they 'should' have said that!)... so yeah, I got the purple and white blend, and a coral grain as well.. Tonight I'm gonna get Kez to make some yummy creamed rice with the purple and white blend :) mmmmmm yum, creamed rice.

Kroombit Tops

2011-05-30T12:44:00.007+10:00

I've been away since Friday, galavanting around Kroombit Tops with the fellas, on a very manly nature-time weekend hehe. It was an interesting trip, great fun of course, but definitely interesting in its own 'special' way.

For something that is only 250kms away, we thought by leaving home at 2:30pm we'd be setting up camp before the sun went down; WELL, how wrong we were. After me getting us totally bogged, and a way slower-going road than we ever suspected, we finally set up camp in the freezing cold dark at 7:30.......or was it 8:30? Buggers me, I can't remember! Could barely start a fire, but got there in the end, and finally warmed up a bit before a late bedtime.

In the morning it was a late start, we had to defrost first and recover from our late night and restless sleep, then we spent the day going on a bit of a tour of the Tops; and going on a bit of a wild goose chase as well.

We saw a few good sized black snakes sunning up on the roads

There were two things on our hit list, to see the Beautiful Betsy crash site / memorial (the wreckage of a WWII plane), and to see "the falls". Betsy was easy as to find, and was really interesting (everyone was glad we went), but the falls seemed impossible. I knew there was a road that went close, but I didn't realise it was the same road as the road to Betsy. I even walked to the bottom of the valley and thought that nothing was around except a small creek and a few ponds... I regret being so unobservant, as it turns out, I was a mere 80 metres away from the start of the falls and the massive majestic gorge we spent hours later looking for. It was hidden behind a thick patch of scrub, and now all I can say is, BUGGER!

This is what I found at the bottom.. just through the trees, 80-200metres, is the falls we missed

Some of the funny parts of the trip included the others bitching about my newbie 4WD'ing skills; I broke all their eggs and thoroughly dinted many a coke can. We had a lovely tipple on a much warmer second day/night, and the most lovely camp oven dinner thanks to my bro in law's camp oven mastery. Lots of jokes and hooliganism.

We'll definitely have to go back and see the falls when its flowing, but definitely not when there's been too much rain, the road gets slippery as anything even with just a light sprinkle. It was a great weekend, thanks fellas for the fun and thanks Kez for minding the lovelies at home. ...already thinking things like "next time we go, I reckon we...."etc hehe.

Another thing, must take crawchie pots next visit!

(us leaving) "bye bye Kroombit Tops, see you again some time"

Processing your own home grown coffee

2011-05-24T14:58:00.001+10:00

A fair few times now I've been asked by people to tell them how to process their own home grown coffee. I thought I might as well just blog about it, and next time someone asks I can send them a link to my post instead of retyping a whole bunch of stuff!

I think the first important point about doing your own coffee processing at home is, that it DOES NOT have to be perfect, and it really doesn't matter precisely how you go about it - think back thousands of years, tribes in ethiopia hardly would have had a strict technical and perfect system in place, just patience and some handiwork.

One good resource when it comes to the home grown coffee deal is the net; there's a ton of info out there, and some quick image searches can help give you examples of what a fully ripe cherry will look like, as well as what a fully dried seed will look like.

Picking the cherries

Its a fairly obvious step, and the simplest. The trick is to just be patient enough to wait for the cherries to fully ripen, don't pick them early, really, they won't be as sweet or as big. They'll be red for a little while, but wait until you get a beautiful rich red, like the pic below, or, if you have a yellow catuai like me, pick them when they're a rich yellow rather than a lighter yellow.

An extra note:

You don't even 'have to' pick them at all, you can skip the whole lot by just drying them on the trees until they're black, hard, and dry as anything; then after ages pick them up from the ground and pull the ones that are still on the branches off, and skip to the hulling step. It's not as common as a form of processing coffee, but I have had coffee from Peru processed this way and it was nice enough; apparently it does change the flavour profile (don't ask me how!) and in terms of commercial cropping, the snobs would say that you've skipped a whole bunch of 'quality' checks if you do it this way. Like I said though, there's no RIGHT way, or single way to process coffee. Lots of things work.

Sorting the cherries

This part isn't really essential, but it can help by getting rid of the crap cherries right at the start instead of later when you're processing. Put all the cherries you pick in a bucket of water, what ever floats to the top is lacking in density and is most likely a bad seed. If you're really 'precious', pop the cherry open and you will probably find its only one seed thats bad and the other will sink back down to the bottom of the bucket.

Pulping, water process or sun dry process

Here's where it's totally up to you. Don't let anyone tell you that a particular method is better or 'the right way' to do this step. There's options and they all work:

Skip the pulping, dry with the skin on and everything:

Yep, if you want, at this point, you can just spread your cherries out for drying as is. For someone doing this at home, there's good points and bad points to doing this. The bad point is that once that skin dries really hard, those bloody cherries are BLOODY hard to crack open without some sort of device to do it for you. I have dried a whole crop with the skin on though, it's not all bad. One good point is that when you process at the end you remove the skin (exocarp) and the parchment layer (endocarp) at the same time, so you're not doubling up in that regard.

Pulp em, soak em, then dry em:

Basically, this method involves pulping them first, you can squash em in a bucket and sort em, or just squeeze them one by one with your hands on to a table which is what I do. Then you put the lovely slimy seeds in to a bucket of water and leave for around 24-30hrs or so. What this does is it dissolves the mucilage (mesocarp) which is the fleshy membrane under the skin. The seeds will feel rougher if its fuller dissolved. Then you just lay em out for drying.

The inbetweener:

Now this is what I usually do. I pulp them, the skip the water process and just dry them with the mesocarp layer still on them. I reckon it helps them dry quicker, and it means less time stuffing around to be honest. It works well : )

Drying and hulling

So, to dry the seeds now, whether you're drying them with the skin on or off, you've really got to dry them for a couple of months really, so it does take time. In that time, try and get them proper sun, but make sure they DO NOT get wet, otherwise you end up with a pile of mouldy seeds that you have to chuck in the bin with a sad face. Commercial growers often finish the drying process off with machines, so really, it is hard to dry them properly with just the sun, air, and time. But its not impossible!

One continuous step I find helps, is to generally just pick a couple of handfuls at a time, and do it in batches. As they dry, you'll be able to sit down for half an hour or so and just crack the parchment layer off with your hands (unless you've dried them with the skin on, in which case they're bloody hard to crack open). You'll know if the parchment layer is dry enough because it'll just crack and crumble away, and won't be soft or sticky at all.. this usually takes a couple of weeks, maybe a week if you're lucky. By doing this you basically get your roast-ready seeds in one pile, with the parchment layer off already.

I'm doing a bit of everything this year, got some handfuls with the skin on, and also piles of ones I'm removing the parchment from during the drying process.

But, it doesn't always work this way, if you've got tons of seeds it just takes too much time, so leave the parchment layer on and aim to hull them with a machine. At home, the best machine to use is probably a food processor with plastic blades, bursting it on and off at a really high setting. Its really loud, and annoys everyone in sight, but it really cracks them open well - skin too. The annoying part of doing this is that you continuously have to tip it out, and hand pick the seeds out then put the left overs back in the processor and keep going until you've got all the seeds. I've read of people saying, "just pour them from colander to colander next to a fan and it'll blow the parchment and skin layers away and the seeds will drop through"..... well I sorta tried that and it doesn't work THAT well.. so, just figure out what works best for you.

Messy stuff, and fiddly, I'm cracking all the layers off with the food processor on this batch.

Roasting and Enjoying

Ah finally, ready to roast? How do you tell? Well, apparently your seeds should be around 11% moisture content, and as if you can tell that precisely by eye. Do some image searches to see what raw coffee seeds look like, or better yet just buy some to compare with. Feel them, they should be very hard, you can even break one in half to see if its dried through; they become opaque and have no translucent areas in the seed.

If you think they're dry enough, try roasting them, and if you find that you've been roasting them for 20 minutes or more and haven't heard first crack yet, then perhaps they're too moist still. When you do roast them, give them a slow start and a longer drying cycle to the roast, just incase there is a little bit too much moisture there.

For tips on roasting, search the net, there's just so much info out there about it I won't even go there.

For the whole processing journey though, you can also do some interesting reading on sites like this one:
http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=69
But it'll be more valuable to just go ahead and give it a go and find out for yourself.

Home grown coffee, from tree to cup, is really cool!

Don't forget to enjoy it thoroughly when you finally cup it. All that hard work, and time, and every tiny little aspect from the pollinating bees, the beautiful fragrance of arabica in flower, the processing, roasting, and finally the making of the brew.

After all the effort, I like to have a special brewing, sort of ceremonial, bush walk and carry all the stuff along, make coffee with fresh rainwater flowing past you and sip it down on the bank to the sound of the running water... or hike up a mountain and sit on the edge while you sip the brew down and enjoy the view. Take the time to appreciate it.

Nathaniel and I brewing in the nearby national park, ah that's the stuff.

The way to end a week

2011-05-20T16:54:00.001+10:00

Here's a nice way to end the busy weeks, savour the last hour of daylight with a fine sipping rum, and start cooking a favourite recipe to fill the house with yummy smells.

ahhh yep. That's the stuff.

(note the awesomely massive ice cube haha)

The new acquisition!

2011-05-18T22:26:00.002+10:00

I've been doing a lot of extra work this month, especially last couple of weeks, and with the extra pennies I ................... BOUGHT AN OZTENT! WOooohoooooh. Yes yes finally, we have our own tent, no borrowing anymore. And not just that, it's a bloody bloody bloooooody awesome tent, clicks up in 30 seconds. How awesome.

I put it up and down in the yard this arvo after I got home, the kids looooooooved it, running in and out and laying down inside, unzipping all the windows and so on. Very cute. I actually had to drive over 100kms each way to the nearest other town to buy it, the shops in town here couldn't get any till June/July and we really wanted to get it before we go camping next (very soon!).

What a great investment. It cost more than my first car you know! :D haha.

Are patches still rad?

2011-05-14T19:21:00.000+10:00

Or, were they ever rad? I dunno, who cares! I found some of my old patches in one of Kez's sewing containers, more importantly, all (except one NASA one) STARWARS patches!!!!! (nerdy laugh now!)

I quickly got a needle and thread and sewed one on to my army pants, woho, now I am a cool patched pants wearer. How trendy. How hip. How rad. Reminds me of being younger haha.

Darth Vader: See that fools, I'm on the patch, not you, it is my destiny...

Luke Skywalker: Pfft, R2, fire up the power-converters.

Rad. A starwars patch! Yay!

The 2011 crop

2011-05-07T12:03:00.002+10:00

I've just started to process this year's coffee, the two trees have a good crop on them and now that the house is raised with space underneath for doing stuff, I have the PERFECT place for drying and de-husking and so on.

Last year's crop sucked cuz it went all mouldy, I didn't have any where good to dry it.. so I threw it out in the end.. the year before I think I was just plain too lazy, so it's been a while since I've done full on home grown coffee from tree to cup. This year though, I'm totally gonna see it through again.

I'll sun dry the beans, and get the parchment layer off by hand I think, UNLESS too many cherries ripen at once, in which case I might pulp them, dry them and try the food processor to get the parchment layer off once they're ready.

Mmm coofffeee.

The Catuai is ripening first, it's cherries are yellow not red. It's quite a cropper too, it usually has more cherries on the tree then my normal old K7 variety.

Perfect afternoons

2011-05-06T17:54:00.000+10:00

ahhh, just got the computer back after a week of computerless fun. Turns out the computer was overheating, well, that's what we 'think' anyway because the only fault the shop found was a faulty fan.... and I might have accidentally been blocking off the ventilation ports with crap on the desk haha. Oh well!

It has been a splendid week really. The weather is devine, and we've had lots of treats. Get a load of this stuff!

Ah c'est magnifique:

Before I put a few pics up, I must pour some lovely Armagnac.... (notice the vintage?) yes.. that's right, the grapes from the year I was born, this drink is older than I AM! Even Kez didn't mind the taste and that's certainly a good indication (she hates spirits mostly!) : )

So, the week.

As I said, the most lovely weather, the afternoons have the light of a vintage photograph, perfect for fire sitting and roasting marshmellows. Nathaniel and I cooked up feed on this and we all sat out and roasted a packet of marshmellows .. superb!

Pulled out some home grown sweet potatoes, had a vege shortage in the kitchen so out they came, looking rather lovely indeed.

LES OEUFS! We had the best week in a few weeks with our chookies, AND Kez's friend Clare dropped off some duck eggs for me! I've used them to make scones mostly, but Saxon and I also poached a couple and ate them like that to taste test. So what does a duck egg taste like, poached? Wellllll, I'm not really keen ay - the white is as a chook's egg is, but the yolk has a very animally ducky dirty taste. Its certainly not a strong taste, but its there lingering around and even in the smell, sort of like a poo in mud 20 meters away ever so slightly wafting in the breeze. OK, so I probably (take that as never) will poach a duck egg and eat it again, but they're bloody awesome for baking.

Ah and finally, we had a lovely time last week with all the cousins and auntie and uncle visiting. We got lots of good pictures of all the kids together!

Lets get on with another weekend shall we ; )

Planting out some new stuff

2011-04-28T11:00:00.003+10:00

We visited my uncle out of town the other day, for the first time in ages! I was lucky enough to get tons of goodies off him, from his massive garden. Check out the haul!!

There is: taro, red yam, white skin white flesh sweet potato, white skin purple flesh sweet potato (a rare one I've wanted for ages), purple skin white flesh sweet potato, and some sugar cane! Woohoo! The kids and I were straight in to the garden bed this arvo when we got home! Hehe

AH, still, that smudge on the lens - cleaned off after I took these pics.. : /

Like the size of the lemon? Its as big as Saxy's head! haha

First camping trip for 2011

2011-04-27T13:09:00.001+10:00

We just got back from a five day camping trip at the lovely Carnarvon Gorge! It was our first camping trip for this year, and our first time to Carnarvon.. it was so good we can't wait to go back, and now we're all in the mood for more camping! We wanna get roof racks and a decent tent, like an oztent or something!

I loved the bush at Carnarvon, the gorges, creeks, valleys and canyons are full of absolutely stunning features. Even the tiny creeks that all flow from the high lands and down into the main creek were pretty, they carried white sand from sandstone to make little white bottomed pools and water courses, crystal clear water (which I found rather delicious and perfect for making coffee with I might add).

We did a big 14km walk one day, Sax walked for 12kms before he had to start getting piggy backed, he done so well. Nina skipped out on the big walk that day but our nieces came too, all the kids impressed us so much, they didn't even complain the next day about how sore they were like us adults did ha ha.

Unfortunately we forgot the camera the day we did the big walk and saw most of the stunning stuff, and also half the pics I did get have a fingerprint smudge on the lens!!!!! Bummer hey. Well, we'll just have to go back again to take more pics haha.

Here's some of the pics we did get though, and a nice one of us that my sis took.

The views from the hike up to Boolimba Bluff

Looking up the most awesome Amphitheatre

Us minus Nina at the Art Gallery

The kids had a great time with sparkles at night time

But they didn't always like getting their pictures taken (haha)

What a jolly old walk, up to the Boolimba, us three slackers tagging along behind Kez

Did I mention that Frank and Bernie came? Yeah.. They went on a hike up the boolimba together, and I found them catching their breath at the look out. They had a good old time ay.

Nina loves camping

2011-04-18T18:12:00.000+10:00

Kez n I found this on the computer today...

Written of course by Nina when no one was watching. hehe.

Friday musings

2011-04-15T18:19:00.001+10:00

Here's the end of another week already. I discovered a few things this week, which were cool. I found what I think is one of my favourite spots in the yard - I just decided that now. I didn't get a photo but its like a window of peace through the trees. There's layers of trees and a gap between them, and when the sun sets it shines through the gap on an angle and lights all the leave up. I'll try and get a picture some time soon, its relaxing to sit outside and watch the birds fly between the trees, and the occasional leaf falling to the ground - especially at this time of year.

I'm having a Friday Tipple this arvo, and I'm one nip away from depleting the congac reserves my Dad helped me stock up (hehe) around a year or more ago. The delightful Louis Royer.. So I was trying to have a think while I looked through the window in the trees, if I like cognac more or rum more. I think I do like rum more for a few reasons (you get more for your money for starters, and aged rums seem to be smoother straight and have way more body). Still, I very much like to have a cognac on hand for sipping. I was thinking next time I do a big freelance job or for my 30th birthday next year I might get a 1980s armagnac (basically the same as cognac but different grapes - congac is distilled from one grape varietal). It'd be pretty cool to sip upon a drink that was born of grapes picked the year you came in to the world. HMmmmmm :)

It was a good week for music, I finally bought some Davie Bowie tracks I've always wanted (Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold the World), the kids love them; and today I also got a Metric cover of an old 1960s song called Expecting to Fly, love the melody, a good cover I think.

Well, I could blab way more but I'm off now, my dinner is rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrready! A lovely roast pumkin and ash rolled goats cheese pastry, oh, with sauteed leek and cumin mm mmm.

Leave you with a couple of filth tunes aye.... AIIyyiee

A streak of handiness!

2011-04-11T19:48:00.000+10:00

Guess what!

I, the un-handy, have had a slight handy streak.

Yes it's perfectly true
(I'm the handiest chappy),
more handy than you?
Nay, lo, I truly do jest,
I'm still not that handy,
not like the rest..
Though, if you look what I've done,
you might be impressed,
the point of it all is,
that it was really good fun.

Handy thing 1 was painting with Saxon, the stairs are looking more finished but still no where near done. I quite like painting for some odd reason.

Handy thing 2 happened this arvo, when I quickly slapped together a new nesting box for the chooks with lovely hardwood scraps. It all happened turbo light speed, somewhere between doing some freelance design work and doing dinner for the kids, I got the urge to just GO AND DO IT IMMEDIATELY.

Why?

Well, one of our chooks is badly picked and pecked on. A while ago it had heaps of feathers pecked out, even a couple of little sores from the others pecking it on the same spot all the time. After we free-ranged them, the stress levels of all the birds seemed to vanished and while they still pick on the poor chook (her name is Bok), she is much healthier and happier (has ALL her feathers back).

She hasn't layed an egg for ages too. I wonder if the other birds are kicking her out of the nesting boxes, I only had two nesting boxes for three chooks, and the other two birds full on just sat on top of Bok when she was in the box at night. She goes in really early so she even gets a spot. This had to stop! SO! I, the handiest of the unhandy, made a long box to fit perfectly snug in the roosting part of their night house.

Shhhhh, don't tell anyone, the secret bad thing is, that I only hand little screws in my toolbox, so they don't go in far and if I drop the box it'll probably break HAHAHAHA. Still. Looks bloody nice (for an amateur, comon!)

Happy snuggling Treesa, Ankor, and Bok, ... and lay again soon Bok : )

I'm gonna go peak at them soon in the dark, I bet they're all snuggling eachother and not being bullies.

Today I love...

2011-04-04T18:45:00.001+10:00

Today brought new weather, finally a change from rain and cloud, its all blue sky, cool breeze and sunshine. mmmm mmmmmmmm. Definitely my favourite weather.

New growth in the garden, lots of peas coming up, and the strawbs are growing nicely.

A beautiful micro forest, of mixed seeds - a bug blend to promote good insects coming.

Chooky A Eggy. Which is how Oscar puts it, the cutie.

Le Rum de maison Rolley

2011-04-03T18:00:00.001+10:00

A year ago I emptied out Dad's port keg, which he'd given to me (full of port) three years earlier. At the time I'd left the port untouched and what I'd drained out and re-bottled was (and still is) absolutely lovely (not to mention THE secret ingredient in my pizza sauces).

I filled it all the way back up with a combination of locally produced Rums (by locally I mean made in Australia), everything from 2 to 8 years of age. It's been in the keg a year, and I think I've only ever had one glass over this time. To mark a year in the oak, and my birthday this coming week, I'll certainly have to tipple and taste to see how the flavour is developing.

My thoughts so far?

I think the Rum is beginning to pick up some port-like flavours, and there's definitely a subtle yet distinctive flavour that the re-bottled port shares in common with this Rum now - might be the oak itself, or more likely its the flavour of years of port and sherry absorbing in to the oak and then influencing the flavour profile of the fill. I think these flavours which are noticeable in the port I re-bottled are just starting to influence the Rum.

It's definitely a bit smoother too. Definitely. Well.. that was fun. Now, the nozzle will be closed for another year. 'Patience is a virtue' my Dad used to say when I was little.

Up comes the spelt!

2011-03-31T18:23:00.001+10:00

I recently bought a packet of spelt seeds, and decided to completely tear out the suffering tomato vine and use that area to grow my own wheat. We're no where near the wheat belt latitudes here, but I figured the weather would still be suitable enough if I sowed straight away and it has our mock winter to grow in.

Anyway, the first week after Oscar and I broadcast the seeds in the bed, the chooks kept getting in and scratching it all up and eating the seeds (I think). I thought "ohhh man there goes that idea!". But no, here, we have, my very own wheat surfacing from the soil after a couple of days of rain. Its a bit sparse so maybe the chooks really did eat most of the seeds, but oh well!

GO spelt go! Just because its now sprouted doesn't mean the chooks won't still ruin it I suppose, but I certainly hope not. I used ALL the seeds I had for this patch; I ordered 5000 but only 1800 seeds turned up : / So I hope I can at least get some growing to propagate more seeds.

Oscy actually helped throw the seeds around, it was cute

This of course begs the question, "what on earth are you gonna do with your measly spoon full of flour you get from meters of spelt?".. Well the answer is .. I don't know exactly. I could use the grains to throw in the chook pen for chook feed, or I could use them to give my home made bread some whole-grain seedy goodness. Or, I could just go all out to get a tiny amount of flour, and use it in some bread or something. Alternatively I could just throw the towel in half way and plough it all back in to the soil as green manure.

Anyway time will tell how it goes and what I decide to do, but its cool that I'm gonna grow my own spelt. heh heh. (fingers crossed)

We got helpers

2011-03-27T21:38:00.000+10:00

We've had a good and a bad weekend here. It started off with our car getting stolen at 2 in the morning, from our driveway. I raced out to see someone else sssssscreeeeeeeeeching out and tearing off in to the distance. Naturally neither Kez or I slept for the rest of Friday night, and still feel quite like zombies.

Of course, no word on the car, I guess it'll turn up eventually - maybe. There's always some good though despite the crap stuff that happens.

Lets see, Saturday picked up quite a lot, Mum had the kids and for our anniversary Kez n I went to a japanese restaurant that we love - Tsuruya - the only one in the region that's worthy of a visit, always worth the long drive to have what I've come to realise is really comforting food. I love their soups and broths, the way they handle tofu like it's art, and the food is just great. (green tea ice cream is also really nice).

The rest of our spare time has been mostly filled by trying to tidy up the reno stuff; We've been painting the stairs and the kids have helped a lot. They love helping; and they love painting; and why not, they do a good job too the cuties. Leave all the fiddly stuff for Daddy of course.

Hrm yes, that long grass in the background; I hit a large rock and full on bent the mower blade 90degrees. It ploughed in to the dirt and sprayed clay blobs everywhere - heaps even flew in to the house and stuck all over the walls! My father in law dropped past on Saturday morning to help me get the blades off and straighten them back out.

Even Oscar has pitched in this week; he's taken to helping with the vacuuming and always wants to just, give the place a quick second-over after you've done the vacuuming. haha. I got a video of it too but haven't uploaded that yet.

In the garden, the chooks are being menaces! Its bloody hard to raise any seeds. Oscar helped me sow a small bed of spelt (ancient old style wheat); and, I'm sure you can imagine what the chooks are doing in that garden bed!!! AHH! I hope we get SOME spelt, but then, they'll probably eat the seedlings too ha.

Anyway, I'm still zombiefied so I'm gonna finish the jobs and get to bed for what I hope will be a good nights rest.

R

Sourdough went well

2011-03-21T19:18:00.001+10:00

My first go at sourdough bread making was a success I'm happy to say! I am so impressed. It wasn't even that hard in the end. Sure what I have isn't perfect or something that a proper baker would roll out but it's still fantastic.

The bread has a nice malty flavour, its probably because I used spelt as the flour in the starter; but I also did add some honey at one point so that might have made a tiny flavour change. To make the starter more complex I'm going to feed it with some other grains and even dilute a tiny bit of malt in warm water for it's next feed.

Here's some pics of how it all went last night.

I decided the starter was definitely ready; it still had the banana-like smell, but also had a fairly strong tangy almost alcoholy smell.. So I decided to go straight to a full sourdough recipe (as opposed to a semi leaven recipe that has both a sourdough starter and some packet yeast to ensure success). I used the white sourdough recipe from sourdoughbaker.com.au

Resting after mixing all the ingredients; flour, water and sourdough starter.

The starter (left) doesn't look very bubbly, that's because I've whisked it back up and given it a fresh feed.. before I started it was reaaally bubbly :)

Kneeded, and rolled, ready for proofin

After salting it and giving it a quick knead - by the way, I didn't know how long to kneed it for, I got the impression that the salt does the hard work and not much kneading is needed? - I left it in this for proofing. Because I'm slack, I only did one proofing, and I just left it here to rise for SIX hours.

After that, just a quick 45-50min bake at 160C (fan forced); and voila! It's beautiful!

Starting a starter

2011-03-08T22:19:00.000+10:00

I've been wanting to learn how to make sourdough for ages now. The sourdough we buy at the bakery in town is lovely and just the whole process seems much more natural and old-style. I like old-style stuff, I mean, people were making bread with this process for thousands of years before big companies started creating packets of dried yeast, and that's cool :) What's more, the concept is really rad too, the starter is a living thing that you need to look after and feed, like a little pet that lives in the fridge, and it's nearly immortal too, lots of places sell starters that are over 20 years old, and I saw one that's 130+ years old for sale the other day!

So anyway, this week I found this awesome site, a master baker who's put sooooo much useful info on his site about sourdough making. Good on him! I'm using his 7 day starter recipe, with a few variations.

He suggests using wholemeal flowers to make the starter at first, but alas, my wholemeal spelt got little bugs all through it so I had to chuck it. Instead, I'm gonna give it a go with white spelt straight up. He reckons spelt is a little trickier and might take a couple of days longer too, but I'm ever hopeful that I'll manage it. Another little thing I did was gently heat a little honey and dilute it in to the tablespoon of water for the first part; I did this cuz honey has a low PH, and ol'mate reckons pineapple juice is great to use in the starter at first (sooooo I'm guessing its an acid too, and anyway I don't have any pineapple juice!) :D

It smells nice.. here it is after just half an hour or so.. and I've noticed that it already has a couple of bubbles, which is a good sign I'm guessing!!!

hmm... Here's to nice bread anyway! I'm going to take a pic each day and see how it all goes :)

Rad, we got a blue egg

2011-03-06T11:41:00.000+10:00

Just a quick one, I was coming back up to the house from the chook pen and noticed that one of the eggs has more of a blue pigment. They've all been green so far, so this is the first blue egg. It's pretty hard to see the difference between a light green one and this one, but under the sun and under the flash from the camera you can really notice the difference. I didn't fiddle with the saturation or colour in the picture at all.

Coooool! Chooks are rad.

Silly me..

2011-03-06T11:00:00.001+10:00

I've been sooking for a while about how hard it is to grow corn. But, I've really just been completely short-sighted. Problem finally solved. I was growing Maize the whole time. No wonder it tasted like chalky starchy crap haha. No wonder it was never "perfectly ripe" despite me breaking the cobs off at what I thought was supposed to be the "perfect time to harvest". ha.

The label did say "corn maize - red aztec" but I never really took heed of it, nor did I really understand what the difference was between Maize corn and sweet corn anyway. I should have known better!

It really all clicked yesterday, when I picked a cob off some corn, which happened to be the Hawaiian sweet corn variety. The cob was perfectly ripe and tasted great. (rolling my eyes).

It all makes so much sense now. So, my plan is I'll continue to grow the Maize, mature it properly to a deep red colour, and use it for chook feed! When I grow corn next Spring, I'll grow proper Sweet Corn not Maize haha.

In the rest of the garden, the tomatoes have officially started; with the first few Black Cherries just ripening now. They're very nice indeed. I think I've picked em a few days early but they should ripen up to a darker hue on the kitchen bench. Now I just need more!

We're getting quite a lot of rain this weekend, so I took advantage of that and sowed a couple of small rows of Leek seeds - I love home grown Leek; it's usually too hot here to grow it all year round, but sowing now will mean they'll have our Autumn->Winter season to grow and should be quite nice.

Anyway that's all the gardening news for the moment. Must be nearly time to sow a big bed of carrot seeds for Saxon, I should buy a bag of mixed coloured carrots this time I think :)

Yay

Secret laughing

2011-03-05T21:27:00.000+10:00

psssssssst, we're secretly laughing at the letter collage Saxon did at school this week. I'm sure you can see why. HAHAHA. How... amusing!! I smile every time I see it. haha.

Autumn Tomatoes

2011-03-01T09:40:00.001+10:00

Well WELL! I have been quiet lately. Rather worn our from the goings-on at home, for nearly two weeks we've really only been home for dinner and sleep, leaving early in the morning and coming home just before dark. It's been tiring, but the building work is nearly done and soon, SOON, life will return to normalcy.

We've been having our house raised, restumped, and cemented underneath. It's really cool, the floor feels flat for once, the breeze is even better being higher up, and .. well, its just bloody awesome! Beams, posts, cementing, all done! Stairs, nearly done! Drive way, getting done today! More plumbing and building still to go though, but so close to being finished.

I've been keeping an eager eye on the tomato seedlings as often as I can spare them (my eyes that is). I've got some good and bad news in that department. The Sputnik variety hates something about my garden, and has barely grown and is already looking like it wants to die. I'm thinking, being a cold climate sort of tomato the tropics are just too hot and humid.. yeah, that would probably be it, I planted the seeds too early in Summer I'd say. Regardless, I probably won't try the variety again.

So, no Sputniks, I'll probably pull that variety out and grow something else there. The Black Cherries though, here's the good news, they're bloody amazing. They have the biggest truss that I've ever grown on any tomato variety at home; this truss actually forks out in to around 3 trusses, so there's about 16 tomatoes on just this stem!! YUM! The first ones are just changing colour this week, I'm really looking forward to hauling in these lovelies.

To bigger my late Autumn crop, I've planted a Black Russian and a Hillbilly seedling in a different bed. Hopefully they'll give me some awesomely big fruits and I can make delicious sauces and stuff again. Man its going to be great to have tomatoes again!

The rest of the garden is fairly dormant, I have a lot of dug up areas with cow manure just sitting; and once the weather changes a little bit more, I'll start sowing some carrots for Sax, and I'd like to try leeks again too; oh, and definitely some lettuce, I have missed having a lettuce crop on the go, it's pretty handy.

Talk again soon, R

Desert Music? .. and two peas in a pod.

2011-02-14T18:40:00.002+10:00

Hrmmmmm... just a quick but amusing note.

I'm having a little rum, the classic Mount Gay Extra Old; and as one does when there is rum sippage, I put on some classical music. Up rather loud I might add, as I like it when the sound travels through the floor boards to my feet (it's sort of like getting physical pleasure as well as auditory).

There's no better piece than Toccata and Fugue for flour board transfer of sound; so I popped it on and APPARENTLY - according to Saxon - it sounds like "YUCKY DESERT MUSIC" hahahhahaha

Had to share that one.

Anyway, I showed them a video so they can see the type of instrument that the piece is played on; Nina was impressed but Saxon was totally over it haha.

Speaking of the kids. I was going to post just about them anyway, they both were appointed student councilors for their grade at school!!!! So we went to parade today and they were both called up, given a badge and certificate. How beautiful. How lucky we are to have such amazing kids, excellent genes I might say huh? haha : )

I'll put pictures up, for sure, but not now, gotta cook tea for the kids! UPDATED; AAAAAAAAAnnnd here's a pic of the lovelies:

awwwwwwww cute, like two peas in a pod

Bring on the tomatoes again

2011-02-11T10:04:00.001+10:00

Walking past the veggie garden yesterday I noticed that one of the tomato bushes is just starting to fruit. At last! I haven't had tomatoes all summer. These are black cherries, a variety I've never grown before but it seems to be off to a very strong start. The truss that caught my eye is actually three trusses all joined together!!

mmmmmmmmm

Next week the house is being raised, restumped, and cemented. So the corn and other tomatoes I was growing next to the house are about to be squashed into oblivion. Luckily, I've been raising some spares and have a Hillbilly and Black Russian ready to transplant somewhere in the yard. I wanna have an awesome tomato season again after not having any for months.

Unfortunately, I was growing a determinate variety called Sputnik but it seems to be not doing well at all; I think it's a write-off actually by the look of it, maybe it can't handle our heat and humidity. What a shame too, I was hoping to make some sauce from it's tomatoes.

The fence at the back will be FINISHED today. This means the chooks will be free at last; free at last. One escaped from the coop yesterday actually.. it looked SO happy, rolling in the dirt, running around, in to the neighbour's yard as well. I felt so sorry for the other two that I let them out as well since the dogs are being minded at the inlaws for 2 nights. It was nice to see them freely having the yard to them selves. Anyway; with their BIG pen they'll be really happy; and we'll also have a pen for the dogs as well so we can lock the dogs away to let the chooks out to the full yard on some days.

The only news I have apart from all that is Nina was appointed as grade 2 representative on the student council, which means she'll be going to MEETINGS once a month and have other responsibilities at school. Far out ay, imaging going to meetings that young, I hate meetings!! haha. Good on her though; she's a gem.

Mega busy

2011-02-09T15:21:00.000+10:00

Pst, I'm not bloggin or talking or doing much online at all at the moment, becaussssssssssse....... I'm busy organising; the bank, the builder, the electrician, the plumber, the fence contractor, and more! Within a fortnight we should be sitting a little bit higher, fully cemented under the house with new stumps etc; and the chooks will be happier, with their own fenced enclosure away from the dogs; and it'll be really cool! AND the dogs will no longer be able to escape through a crumbling old fence. hehe

talk soon

r

Organised Chaos

2011-01-31T20:27:00.001+10:00

Can chaos be organised, and managed? By it's definition I suppose not. But, as a clever pappa (chuckle), I've mastered the art of occasionally organising chaos from a certain point of view - the kids.

It's so hilarious to watch, and so cute too, there's total chaos, running, screaming, jumping, dancing, and they're having a great time. After 30-40min straight of this, the kids have been playing silently for a further 40min, and I bet they'll go to bed easily tonight haha.

Gotta love em.

Nina is particularly cute tonight, she was excited to have homework again from school, and part of the task was 10 minutes of reading, which she's actually changed in to 2.5hrs worth of reading so far haha. She started reading J.R.R. Tolkien's Tales from the Perilous Realm, which is a few short stories as well as some masterful poetry.

Oh, the news just in on the egg-front; got 4 lovely green eggs today, the most in one day yet! Some days we don't get any from the 3 ladies.

Outside time

2011-01-27T17:33:00.000+10:00

Ahh yes it's nice to have some outside time in the afternoons, the summer sun doesn't set 'till nearly 7pm and I've been trying to use a little bit of time every couple of days to restore the garden and try and get some good stuff growing. This is our 2nd week? with the chooks now, and we love having them, it's great fun.

The chooks are doing okay, I'm starting the fence building this weekend to give them a large area, but for the moment they're stuck in the hen house. It's not that bad, but I'd much prefer free range chooks and don't like to see them put away at all. Not long now, not long now. Fence building! The reason for the fence is that the dog would kill them in a second if they were out. Anyway, they're doing well, except one poor chook is getting pecked like hell and is missing feathers around its wings and bum. On average they've been laying 1 or 2 a day (for three chookies).

In the garden, I had trouble germinating seeds in December and early January, and the wet season water-logged a lot of my stuff as well; but I'm totally sold now about sowing by moon cycles - when it was full moon (middle of this month), seeds all over the yard germinated, and now I've got corn and sunflowers coming up in three places! So from now on I'm definitely going to just stick to sowing seeds around full moon, when the moisture is pulled to the surface!

Even though it was difficult, I did get the odd seed raised here n there a couple of months back, some of the sunflowers are flowering now and I managed to get a half a dozen cobs of corn a few weeks back. None of which were ripened properly. It's so difficult to pick corn at the right time I reckon. I've read it all, but nothing seems to be 100%... The kernels are always too chalky and over-ripe, or too under ripe and not developed properly. I'm sure I'll nail it one day (yeah, in a million years! ha)

Over-ripe Red Aztec Corn. Sigh. It goes red once it's past it's prime.

And the strawbs are still going along, slowly! These are the first berries we've had for weeks

In the rest of the yard, various things are happening - the coffee is having a second flush of flowers while the little berries grow from pre-christmas flowering; and I also planted this awesome Lychee tree, which was a pressie from one of Kez's friends at work! How rad is that. I've always wanted Lycheeeeees!

I have a couple of melon vines at the moment, they're struggling though due to tiny bugs in great numbers under all the leaves. I washed the leaves by hand hosing and scraping them away a few days back, hopefully the vines recover because I'm dying for some home grown watermelon or crenshaw melon. Especially since I didn't get to eat the only crenshaw melon I grew last year (yeah, thanks dogs).
hah

I've got great tomato vibes coming, with little tomato seedlings starting to come up - I think my autumn crop will be awesome. I'm really looking forward to the Sputnik variety, and I suppose the black cherries as well. I miss having home grown tomatoes, growing them in summer is hard though due to all the pests we get in the wet season.

Anyway, I better get to it, now I've been blabbing for half an hour and the house work awaits!

First things first

2011-01-27T17:02:00.001+10:00

Woah, it's been ages since I've posted, it's been a tad busy around here. I've had a lot on my mind, from Saxon's first day at school to gardening, chooks, house and yard plans, and getting back in to the swing of working and so on.

First things first though! Saxy, is now a school boy!

What's extra cool? Nina the sweet big sister has collected him every lunch break this week and taken him to spend the break in the Library (Nina's favourite haunt). How cute is that.. seriously!

Another funny one was on Wednesday morning, the public holiday for Australia day - Saxon comes in and wakes me up at 6:30am, completely dressed for school; shirt tucked in, hat on, and said "Dad, I'm ready for school now". Heh heh heh.. he then got disappointed when I told him there was no school that day!

On his first day, he asked the teacher if he could be "Student of the week!" haha.

What a cute love.

Saxon the big boy

2011-01-18T09:55:00.002+10:00

Just a little note to say Saxon had a lovely bday on the weekend. What a crazy weekend, so much happened, Saxy's birthday party, then his birthday the next day, our cousin's wife's birthday party as well, plus getting the chooks.. Saxy got a few big lego boxes and I think by the end of the weekend his brain was frizzled from building the stuff. I finished off his last and biggest one so he could just start playing with it!

We finished the weekend all 5 of us, staying up late watching the original Disney's Peter Pan. Haha what a classic, I couldn't remember it, so that was enjoyable.

With all the festivities, Oscar stayed up till 11:30pm every night this weekend, running around and then suddenly crashing out on the floor. Crazy! Now, I think we should take the rest of the week off just to have some sleep and rest catchup haha.

anyway, it was a great weekend, and the lovely Sax man had a great Bday! He's off to school soon too.. smile.

The morning of his birthday, when he got his pressie from us : )

See, he even looks tired in this pic, too much lego building for one day!

Saxy's first shave, part of a bday pressie, made him feel like a big boy

Crazy madman, go to bed earlier!

The big pirate ship cake Auntie Rox made : )

Chooks at last

2011-01-18T09:43:00.000+10:00

Hoorayyy, we got some chooks at last! A friend from work is moving and wanted to give away his chooks, so I got a coop as quickly as possible and next thing, here we are with 3 Araucanas.

The kids absolutely love them, especially Nina who keeps going down to see them and spend time with them every half our or so (she's still on school holidays). We have to finalise the area down the back to make it more suitable, get the fence finished and stuff and then they can have a rather large and comfortable area to play in - without the threat of our dogs trying to kill them.

The first egg was layed on Saxon's bday, and he found it too, so he thought it was sort of like a birthday present which was really cute. I can't remember what he said but it was something along the lines of 'how nice of Bok (that particular chook's name), it's my bday today'. hehe

How cool anyway. It's nice to hear them chatting amongst themselves when we're down the back late in the afternoon. Might even have to get some more after we've finished the fencing.. some Marans maybe for chocolate brown coloured eggs, and maybe a gold Campine cuz they look pretty.

The kids are so happy about it they want eggs for breakfast tomorrow! haha :D

Yum yum.

Grocery Store Wars -Organic Farming, Factory Farming

2011-01-12T17:15:00.003+10:00

Thanks dad for sending me this hilarious link.. Enjoy everyone. Hilarious if you're also a star wars fan, like me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVrIyEu6h_E

Let there be coffee (beebees)... and wine.

2011-01-07T19:03:00.000+10:00

We're still getting twice the average rainfall at the moment, no where near as much as December though which was INSANE - so the yard has started to dry up and I've finally started to be able to do things outside. I've got such a to-do list out there, the grass is long and the fence lines need poisoning before the grass is a mile high.

This arvo, I dug out some 5ft tall grass with my new shovel, and noticed that my much loved Arabica tree (red cherry, K7 varietal) has made beebees for me. Nina, Saxy and I snuggled them a little then I decided to transplant them. Now, I've never had any success transplanting Arabica seedlings so this time I just dug out a big chunk of soil and carefully split it up so that the little beebees didn't get any root stress hopefully.

So yeah, I've popped a few beebee Arabicas around the place, fingers crossed huh? If you've never smelt Arabica flowers think of jasmin and frangipani... lovely smell, shame it only lasts a few days. The largest native Australian bee loves the flowers too, it makes a visit every year when the trees flower, the Great Carpenter Bee.

I'm topping the afternoon off with the last of my lovely Tyrrells Vat 47. Smooooooth and fruity. My fav is Vat 1 (a semillon) but this Chardy is prolly the best I've had ay. I love Tyrrells wine, it's bbbbbbbbbeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaauuuuutiful!

Sorry Rox, I drank it all with out you, urhh, lets get a Vat 1 to share huh. Heh HEH HAaahhh : D

Photo of the day, for me.

2011-01-04T10:18:00.001+10:00

haha, when I saw this photo, I couldn't help but laugh affectionately, this is the entrance to our town at the moment (usually a round-about with three roads joining it) - the picture taken from the air by the local paper The Morning Bulletin.

Yessss, well, part of the town is indeed on a flood plain, I think most of us are quite used to the fact that it floods once in a while. Fortunately most of the town is built on high ground, including us, but there are still quite a lot of people who are flood-effected so I'm not being insensitive - I just think that the picture has an ironic sort of comical value. Welcome to the lovely, urhhh, or, not so lovely at the moment, Rocky.

hehe.

Anyway, luckily for most of us, the road to the east (the beach) is not cut off, so yesterday we went to visit Mum and go for a quick swim at the beach. The water was a beautiful temp, warm! But ohhh man, because of the floods it was pretty grubby, there was even rubbish and stuff in it (and we were also a bit paranoid about crocodiles). So we sorta just had a quick dip and then hopped out. Got some nice pics of the kids playing too.

The kids were excited, and ran straight to the water!

Well, Oscar wasn't excited. He's actually TERRIFIED of the ocean and cried the entire time.

Ahhh, nice.

Today is my first day back at work after having a short but lovely break. Ahh another year begins. Psst, tell you a secret. I'd much rather be at home, and NEVER working hahaha! Well it sounds nice in theory but unless you had a farm you'd probaby get mega bored being at home all the time and not going to work.

Anyway, better get back to it. Talk soon
r