I love a day in the garden!  Last Wednesday, it was overcast, with a chilly breeze and some drizzle so was the perfect day to clean up the summer tomatoes and prep for winter crops J.

The harvest:

Japnut self sown pumpkins (these are so super sweet); basil that broke off, hot Paprika capsicum/mild chilli; one cucumber (pulled that vine out); dried out red-flowering broad beans to save the seed; the very last of the tomatoes and rhubarb.  I picked the rhubarb mostly for the leaves so I had some green to compost:

That green layer had a bit of everything I could grab – what is abundant in the garden right now – so that would be self-sown dill, clover, dandelion and rhubarb leaves!  And some sort of amaranth weed looking thing…

I was in a bit of a lazy mood yesterday, so it is lasagne compost, but it will change to bolognaise when I turn it in a few weeks, eh? 

Oh, and I cooked up the rhubarb with apples and some unhappy plums – they added such a lovely pink colour to the fruit – hmmm, should have thought of that when I was making jam last time!  I call soft, semi-bruised fruit unhappy – because my go-to recipe for them is to make “Happy Fruit Crumble” – just take all your unhappy fruit and quickly stew it up, top with your crumble mix and bake for some very deliciousness J.  My crumble mix is a very simple brown sugar, butter and oats – with a little bit of muesli if there is some.

And finally, Mum and I were looking at the lavenders and saw there were plenty of flower heads on the Sugarberry Ruffle blossom – so we picked those and the perfume was divine!

And, I just looked up Stickleberry lavender on the internet (because that is the name I always think they are called – wrong me…) and the most gorgeous recipes for frozen yoghurt and a buttermilk sponge cake came up!   I am inspired!!  (NB - culinary lavender is probably different to my Stickleberry so I will be searching out some to grow too).

Chickens are coming and going around here:

Meet our new Silver Laced Wyandottes – 13 week old pullets (= girls!).

To replace chicken dinners...

Remember the one time when I said I had suspicions our first chookens were 6 out of 6 roosters?  Sadly, it is looking like I got it right…Fred, Twilight and Sunset all crowed.  At this stage only Midnight is getting the benefit of the doubt – she is the only one without saddle feathers, though she does have the longer neck feathers, sigh….!!!

Rosey Roger has a reprieve (because he is still gorgeous and still gentle – and I am on the hunt for some Brahma girls so some babies might happen).

(hmm, not his best side by the looks of this photo :-/)

Big Al has a reprieve so some baby Bantam Faverolles might happen, but then he will be re-homed because he is our earliest crow-er!!

And Peggy has a reprieve because (s)he is a Brahma and the breed is not common so I feel happier preserving it.  Peggy is yet to crow but those feathers are giving him away!

Now, where was I?  Ah, yes, thinking I would entertain you and myself with some photos of our recent happenings.

The garden bounty on Friday included some rhubarb – and I didn’t feel like pie (GASP!), so I made apple/pear and rhubarb jam instead.

You could see that our rhurbarb is very green instead of red?  Anyone know why?  Anyway, I realised that would make quite a green jam – which I am fine with – but as I was researching recipes on the ‘net, one mentioned adding red food colouring – so since I had some natural pink food colouring in the cupboard, I thought I would do a couple of jars – because I am thinking the kids will find that more ‘palatable’.  You can tell which ones, can’t you?

Oh, and maybe I can redeem myself for adding food colouring by saying that those 2 cups of sugar you see in the pot are actually a raw sugar/stevia mix – to ‘healthy it up a little bit’ ;-).

So I have been thinking about arrogance lately – I decided I had a problem with arrogant people – mostly myself!  Hmm, that was a bit of a shock so I looked up the definition of arrogance:

“offensive display of superiority or self-importance”.

The problem I had with myself was that I had an epiphany when I was putting plastic in the rubbish bag and I thought to myself “How arrogant you are to expect others to deal with your (unnecessary) waste!!”

So that was a bit of an eye-opener and has made me focus a bit again on being plastic-free.   Luckily I had a bit of an easy week to start my actioning - Michael was away so I could get-away-with very little food purchases, basically just enough fruit for the kids and I for the week and that was easy to choose from the loose piles and use my fabric bags.  Milk was use up what was left, then go to the UHT/powdered milk supplies; bread was keep on making our own – too easy; dinners were use up whatever was in the cupboard/fridge/freezer – no problems (we ate a lot of pasta ;-).

As soon as I planned to be plastic-free for the week I also had a bit of a think about being zero-waste.  Zero waste has a bit more of an all-encompassing ring to it I think – but when I thought about how I have read it is implemented as a life-style, a lot of it is making sure you recycle what you can – including plastics – so you have an absolute minimum in refuse.  Now plastics are getting easier to recycle – some supermarkets take back the plastic shopping bags and plastic food bags (did you know that – soft and crinkle plastics can be recycled?) – and our council has even implemented recycling of all ‘numbers’ of plastics into the recycling bins, so it really has got easier for us too.  But – and it is a big BUT to me – recycling plastics doesn’t stop you purchasing them in the first place now, does it?!!  So, for me, being plastic-free was actually a better way to think about being zero-waste than my interpretation of zero-waste.  Make sense – no? 

I am sure my interpretation of zero-waste was/is too simplistic and I probably missed the bit about it being plastic-free in the first place.   I think the intent in zero-waste is to purchase as ZERO waste, not just to switch your purchases to be “recyclable” waste.  That makes a lot more sense!!  Maybe the recycling bit is just to get people to take account of their waste – and then they can see what they purchase as waste – recyclable or not – and get it down to ZERO!  Wow, another epiphany folks – yay!   Ok, I need to think about this some more – what do we tend to buy that feels ok because it is in recyclable waste?  Are there any things that can be switched to zero-waste for these products?  

From my quick thinking, it would actually take a change in my cooking to change our “staple dinners” that I buy as recyclable waste.  Yes, I can buy zero-waste pasta from the bulk bins (ok, could probably even make my own – been meaning to give that a go), but buying pasta sauce is recyclable waste (glass jar) and non-recyclable lid (except for home re-use)!  Yes, I can and do make my own pasta sauce from our home-grown tomatoes – but this doesn’t last long (ie, at the end of summer we now only have 4 jars left) – we eat a lot of pasta - and we are not even Italian!  To zero-waste the pasta sauce situation – that would actually take finding someone else who would sell me masses of their home-made passata, or making up a year’s supply by purchasing in toms (and probably equipment) and having a passata day (this idea has merit! – maybe except for the bit about storing approx. 150 jars of pasta sauce – hooley dooley!) – or changing our menu!!  Arrgh – more thinking required!!

And this now brings me to my tangent of “Of course, traditional cultures are zero-waste because they eat locally sourced (wild) fresh food – and save on the washing up by cooking and eating from leaves!”  I think I will save that tangent for another time!!!

PS – I roasted up what will be close to our final batch of tomatoes on Friday – made another few jars of pasta sauce ;-)

So I am back again again :-)!

The back to school rush has kept us busy, and that won’t stop anytime soon with back to uni/extra work commitments/extra volunteer roles/kids activities all resumed or resuming this coming week.

We have visited family :-) so that was a lovely weekend away.

And I have made more cheese – the mascarpone made some lovely orange and mascarpone icecream and the wonderful Freddy made a tiramisu – yum!

The feta unfortunately I am calling a ‘learning opportunity’ (= failure :-().  It came out ok but the brine was way, way, way too salty (I did actually follow the recipe quantities…) and it was very smooth on the outside, not dryish like I am used to – so next time I will use the loose weave muslin and see if that makes a difference – and I will be very ginger on the salt for the brine!

Rosy Roger has been joined in the rooster crowing brigade by Big Al (our bantam Favarolle rooster) – and by Fred (one of the Black mottled Wyandottes) – who we are still hoping is a girl!!  But I fear it is looking like we might have another 4 roosters "-( - all the Wyandottes are looking like they have the long feathers developing on the necks…watch this space, if you see a few chicken dinners…well you will know why….

Here are Roger, and Midnight and Fred - what do we reckon???

We had some hot weather a week or so ago – the strawbales did their job nicely :-).

And I have been Kon Mari-ing the house :-).  It is working well for me – soooo much stuff has left this house!  The linen cupboard was the last to get a make-over.

Before and After.

I like it so much better now.

And finally, for your viewing pleasure - black gold my friends, this here is black gold!

My very own home-made compost – l.o.v.e. IT!

It has been a busy week of preserving here J. 

I took the hard way to preserve the tomatoes and made paste instead of my usual pasta sauce.

 

      

 

It was all going great until I popped into the shops and the edges burnt…still there was plenty to save and I do hope it has the intense tomato flavour I am looking for – will let you know.

Then there was the cucumber overload – turned into pickles.  First time I have ever made them, so I used this recipe:

I do like the thought of eating these in a week or so when they are ready.  And I liked going down to our local health store and buying all organic spices – I figured if I was going to preserve our organically grown cucumbers, I might as well do the right thing.

I also crushed this weeks’ dried egg shells for our girls.

And we had fun opening the gate so the chooks can explore their new run – first across the line are Midnight and Sunset J but it didn’t take the others long to follow.  They especially seem to love sitting under that wattle on the left.

Our beautiful rooster starting crowing this week too - quietly is how he does it – which could well be all he does as the Brahmas are known for being quiet chookens.  Let’s hope so or decisions will have to be made…and we all love Rosey Roger!

And yesterday, I made ricotta – my very first cheese J.

It was very easy and tastes yum!  Will be trying mascarpone next, then feta (the one I really want to make!).  And like all good cheese makers, I need to find a use for all that whey…

A few random photos of our recent days:

Our Italian helper cooked us pizza!  YUM.  We have never made or had ‘pizza blanca’ but that zucchini and yellow cherry tomatoes was absolutely delish.

I wasn’t entirely impressed at our youngest leaving her teddies outside – but she stacked them cutely in the wash basket – so that kinda made up for it ;-)

Trick question now – what don’t you see in this photo?

Answer – this huge pile of leaves!  And since it is raining today (yes summer rain, water our plants and fill our tank some, summer rain J), this will be on its way to composting down J.  But major bonus of course is that it is a major step in bushfire fuel reduction under our Marris.

The other major progress, with helpers, has been the chook run extension with cemented poles and buried scrap tiles and tin for foxy prevention.  The girls will be loving this when it is finished very soon J.  Michael is hoping to get the strainer wires on today, then it will be time to get the meshing on.

And our best fun was yesterday’s Sausage Dogs South West Bushfire Fundraiser.  There is no doubting the hilarity of 16 snaggy dogs running loose (in a fenced park of course).   Pepper was in doggy play heaven with friends to run with, and run with and run with!  She was a bit of a natural leader in the cheekiness stakes - and she won the ‘Running of the Weiners’ race too J.