Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Spring Rain

I may not appreciate the spring extremes of super hot and cold rainy days but my garden sure does.  Everything is looking healthy and growing so fast I can barely keep up with pinching out sideways growth and training vines and tomatoes up stakes.
 
Kale, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Iceberg Lettuce, Spring Onions and Oregano - with old nesting box bedding as mulch.

My cucumbers, tomatoes and zucchinis all have tiny little fruit starting to form, seeds are striking  with very little encouragement and I'm sure that the white cabbage butterflies are being snapped up by the chickens before they can get to my tender young kale, broccoli and cauliflower.

  After taking my boys to the local doctors office this morning for a checkup and immunisations, then fueling up at the cafe with hot chocolates, we headed home to do some seed sowing.  I've set myself up a table in the corner of our carport to do my potting - which is an excellent spot out of the heavy spring rain.  Today I planted sunflower, zucchini, chives, lemongrass seeds and moved the marigolds that Mr 3 planted in my lettuce only poly-garden to my watering-can door stop.

Runner Beans reaching for the sky

Old watering can turned into a planting/door stop

This garden is the best I have every grown.  Beautiful sweet LIVE lettuces, copious amounts of spinach and spring onions and the occasional radish and Asian vegetables.  I'm loving it.  We're slowly spending less and less at the green grocer to reflect the increased productivity of the garden.  And even better, I know where everything has come from and it is all spray free.

Poly-gardens - the first one has been mostly harvested with new seeds planted this week - the second box is ready to go
 The chicks are growing at an amazing speed - they pretty much double in size each week.  Emmy Lou is doing a fantastic job and the chicks are wondering father and father from her side as they grow and gain confidence.  Loving our little bit of the good life.




Sunday, November 24, 2013

Cheap Cheap Yoghurt

We go through a kilogram of yoghurt pretty much every week.  It only costs us $2 for a 1 kilo batch of low fat natural style yoghurt - a kilo tub at the supermarket costs $7!

Each month I purchase one plain Ezy-Yo sachet for about $3.60 - this makes us 4 kilos of yoghurt.  I half fill my yoghurt jar with water and add 100g of skim milk powder (125g is if you're using standard milk powder).  Then add a quarter of the yoghurt sachet, that's about 35g.  Give it a good stir, top up with water and put in your yoghurt maker for 10 hours.  So easy, so cheap and so good for you.

The yoghurt sachets are pretty much milk powder with active cultures - the cultures multiply to fill the jar so it's still works out fine only using a portion of the sachet.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Pesto in the Garden

After a very hot weekend it was time for a very quick and simple dinner for me and my 3 hungry boys.  Pappa Bear got the BBQ going with home kill sausages while I chucked some pasta in a pot, bashed up some basil, parsley and pinenuts then grabbed lettuce, borage flowers and spring onion from the garden.

My window sill is under control and the pesto was delicious.  It would have much nicer with homemade pasta - but kneading pasta is not something I want to be doing when it's almost 27 degrees in the kitchen.

The breeze and evening sun in the garden was wonderful, so we ate alfresco with Emmy Lou and her chicks at our feet snaffling up anything our babies dropped.  Bliss.

Not the flashest meal, but when you're hungry and dinner only takes 20 minutes then it's perfect!

Pesto

Pinenuts
Olive Oil Fresh basil and parley
Parmesan (or just plain cheese like colby and a pinch of salt)

Put a drizzle of olive oil and a handful of pinenuts in a pan on medium heat.  Keep moving nuts around in the pan till they are nicely browned then remove from heat.   With mortar and pestle bash up four or five handfuls of basil/parley leaves till they almost form a paste.  Pour in the oil and pinenuts and stir to break them up (or totally pulverize them if you like your pesto smooth).  Lastly, stir in some grated Parmesan.  I didn't have any Parmesan in the fridge, so I just used Colby and added a good pinch of salt - all good.  Serve with bread, on pizza, stir trough pasta like we did with a little more extra virgin olive oil - there's loads of uses for it.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Time for Pesto?

I think my kitchen window sill is going to start attracting wildlife if I don't give it a trim.  Sweet Genovese Basil and Coriander in tin cans and a Giant Sunflower from the School Gala (which needs to be moved to the garden).  I'll think up something to go with Pesto in the next day or two and post the results.

My tin cans are not the flashest thing on this earth, but they do the job and were pretty much free.


Herman the German

My lovely sister-in-law gave me some of her Herman starter last week.  To be precise, Herman the German Friendship Cake.

To start with, I didn't read the instructions in full - so thought all I had to do was mix and add ingredients every 5 days.  Turns out you're supposed to give Herman a good old beating every day - oops.  Any way, we reached day 10 yesterday (baking day).  I was too busy with Friday play group, chasing chickens and tending to the garden to bake so Herman was divided and baked this morning.

The idea is that you quarter Herman, bake with some and give away the rest - but that's something you cannot really do at 6am, on Saturday, in your PJs.  So with a monster batch of Herman starter and hungry kids I decided to keep quarter for another starter, make 2 cakes and whip up pancakes with the rest.  Let's just say the kids aren't hungry any more and I now have a good way to use up extra Herman starter.

The Herman cake calls for a lot of sugar and some cooking apples, which I don't have.  I replaced apples with ripe bananas from my fruit bowl and halved the sugar.

 
 Herman Pancakes

1/4 of a 10 Day Old Herman Starter
1 Giant Freaky Frida Egg (1 or 2 normal eggs would work too)
4 T Plain Flour
1t Baking Powder
Splash of Milk

Beat starter, egg, flour and baking powder together.  Add a splash or 2 of milk and stir again.  Keep adding milk till you get a pancake batter consistency (or leave slightly thicker and make pickelets).  Grease your frypan and cook on med-low heat as the sugar in the starter tends to burn if you cook too high.  Flip pancake over when bubbles appear on the surface.  Cook the other side for a minute or so.  We had our with Fig and Ginger conserve that I got from Peplers Fine Foods - just down the road.  Beautiful.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Seasonal

Living off one income has it's challenges, but by thinking carefully about what we buy, sticking to seasonal produce and putting a little time and effort into making plenty of homemade food and cleaning products we save heaps of money at the supermarket.

I was talking to a lady at our local farm supply shop yesterday (while I brought chicken food) about how I only go to the supermarket once a month with a budget of $360 dollars for a family of 4 (that's $90 a week) and a weekly fruit and vege shop which averages at $30 dollars.  She was amazed and couldn't understand how we get by on so little.  We don't just 'get by' though, we eat varied and interesting meals, which change with the seasons.

Eating seasonal is very important if you want to cut down on your shopping bills - heck, we never have capsicum when it's out of season - why would you?  They cost up to 5 dollars each in winter, which is madness, that same $5 can buy you something like 4 heads of broccoli, or 2 or 3 big pumpkins, or a truck load of carrots, even a fortnights worth of onions and potatoes!
The same goes for fruit, in season and fresh is always best, and cheaper - so don't buy sad looking oranges that have spent goodness knows how long shipping over from the US, grab a bag of fresh, kiwi grown pears, apples or kiwifruit for nearly half the price.

I generally stick to produce that is under $4 a kilo - so tomatoes are off the table for a good part of the year.  My husband loves them on sandwiches but at nearly $2 for an average sized tomato it's just silly, so we're agreed that for something moist and juicy in his lunches over winter we opt for tinned beetroot (which we by in bulk when it's on special).  A big tin for $1.80 will last him a week - that's if the kids and I don't get into it - the bank account and Pappa Bear are happy.

Most fruit and vege shops put ads in the local rag, so look over the specials and plan your meals around the fruit and vege you can load up on for a bargain.

I have lots of other things to share with you on budgeting, but washing is waiting in the machine and dishes are calling.  So till next time, take care and start getting seasonal.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

A week in our piece of paradise

It's been an awesome week.

We started our week with new arrivals, 8 little chicks.  They are all growing super fast and are sporty some small wing feathers.  Then we did our monthly shop so our larder is full to the brim - I stocked up on all the basics, flour, butter, oil, tinned tomatoes, wheat bix, milk powder and soap - and come in well under budget, bonus.  While I was in town I also popped into the green grocer for our weekly shop of fruit and vege - loving that asparagus and strawberries are in season - yum!

Sleepy Sunny Chiks
 On Thursday night I went out with my sister-in-law for a ladies night and AGM for our playgroup - and I was voted in as Treasurer for the executive committee. Exciting times, it's great that I can get involved with something to benifit my kids - and others.

We spent Saturday at the local school Gala - they haven't had one for 6 to 7 years, I hope we don't have to wait that long for the next one, it was awesome.  My baby bears and I wondered around buying plants, sweet treats and watched the firemen making fireballs with hot oil (don't ever put water on a oil/fat fire - BOOM!).  Mr 3 got his face painted as batman and had loads of fun running around in a semi-inflated hot-air balloon.  He is super chuffed with his fire engine poster on his bedroom wall, a real fireman gave it to him.  Then he spent the evening telling Pappa Bear all about the firemen rescuing someone from a crashed car with the jaws of life - I had to spend quite some time reminding him that it was just a show - he was worried the boy that got to be rescued was sick.  Cute little man.



We finished the weekend with Nana and Poppa making a surprise visit from town.  Our baby bears spent the afternoon going up and down our drive with Nana, Poppa and their cousins while mummy and daddy worked.  My husband illustrates for a kids bi-monthly magazine, I help out by colouring in his cartoons using photoshop - we make a good team.  Nana and Poppa stayed for a BBQ hamburger dinner with home made burger buns and lettuce from the garden.

This week was started clearing out our basement - I had chicken feed everywhere along with hay and a collection of cardboard boxes.  Now my basement is clean and orgaisied - finally!  It's a job I've put off for ages.

One more thing before I go, I want to show you an egg from my 'Freaky' Frida.  She produces 2 yolks a day.  She is a New Zealand Shaver so has been bread to produce a lot of eggs, but this is crazy.  If she doesn't lay a double yolker in the morning she will randomly plop about a second 'softy' during the day.  A softy is our name for a an egg for a very thin, rubbery soft shell.


The pale egg is from our Langshan hen, it is about a size 6, it is quite skinny and long.  The dark brown is from our other shaver, Dixie, about a size 7, short and fat.  The last egg is Frida's, and it is huge!!  Long and very round and fat.  It has to be a double yolker.  The photo doesn't really do it justice - the Frida egg is at least twice as big as the pale Langshan egg, I can't close my fingers around it.

Freaky Frida

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Eight out of Eleven

We finished off yesterday with 9 chicks hatching, one of which died, and last 2 Eggs still showing no signs on life.  This morning Emmy Lou brought her now dry and very hungry 8 chicks out into her brood run.  She is showing them what's good to eat while sitting very close to the ground so they can pop underneath her for warmth.

 
Sadly she left the last 2 eggs to go cold.  I brought them inside and shone a light through them (called candling).  One was completely transparent, no embryo, so had not developed at all, I carefully put this one in the middle of our rubbish sack outside - it will stink if it cracks I'm sure.  I had a suspicion that one of the eggs had gone bad - for the last few days when I lifted Emmy Lou for exercise there was a very slight rotten egg smell in the nest.  The other was dark - I wondered if the chick had died from Emmy Lou leaving it to get cold?  I gently cracked open the stone cold egg and found a nearly fully developed chick, my uneducated guess would say it died about a week ago.  I think Emmy Lou knew these 2 eggs wouldn't hatch so she'd moved to her focus to the hungry mouths she has to feed.  Good girl.

6 Yellow Chicks and 1 Brown


Monday, November 11, 2013

Soda Bread

With Mr 3 going to daycare and no bread in the house I had to whip up something quick for lunches.  I decided to give soda bread a go.  It turned out really nice, I little heavier than our standard home made bread but still lovely, moist and crusty.


Soda Bread

2C Wholemeal Flour
2C Plain Flour
1t Salt
1t Baking Soda
425ml Buttermilk

Mix flours, salt and baking soda together.  Stir in buttermilk and bring together to a rough, sticky dough.  Turn onto floured bench and gently knead 4 or 5 times to bring together into a ball (do not over work!).  Shape into a ball then flatten a little into a disk and dust with flour.  Line a tray with baking paper and put on the dough.  Slash a nice deep cross in the top and bake for 30-40 minutes at 200C.  Easy.

The bread is only good for a day - perfect for sandwiches, with cheeses or for wiping up your soup bowl.  Any left overs can be turned into garlic bread, or, just toast it like you would bread for breakfast.

Butter Milk

I come across quite a few recipes needing buttermilk.  Its acidity helps activate rising agents, keeping baking moist and adds a delicious tang to buttermilk pancakes (I'll post recipe next time I make them).

Here's is how I make my buttermilk alternative, it only takes 5 minutes.  I use powdered milk and it still works fine.

Buttermilk

1T Lemon Juice or Vinegar
Almost 1C Milk

Put juice into measuring jug, top up with milk to measure 1 cup.  Leave at room temperature for 5-10 minutes.  You now have butter milk.

Look what Emmy Lou Did!

I took Emmy Lou off her nest to have a feed this morning (read up and I should continue the 20-30 minute exercise and eating routine).  She was ravenous!  But more importantly she has some new arrivals this morning.  I put a towel over the nest so it was warm and quiet while she ate.  There are four little chicks and more eggs are starting to hatch too.  Look closely at the photo and you'll see cracks in the eggs.  You can even see the egg tooth on the end of the chicks beaks.

I'll make sure I remove hay in the nest next time it's open, don't want the chicks getting tangled

I set up her brooder box/run with some chick food - which will be moved under the cover thingy so that only chicks can eat it once they know what to do with it, Emmy Lou shouldn't really eat it for long - not the right food for a layer hen.  I also set up a water bowl with rocks in it (so the chicks won't drown), wheat for mumma and some greens.  It's not The Ritz or anything, but I'm sure we'll manage.

The new meat run is nearly complete, Emmy Lou will spend a week with her babies in the brooder while they get strong and know what food to eat, then they'll all move to the run.  We'll shift the brooder every other day or so, then there will be fresh grass to eat and bugs to find.




Sunday, November 10, 2013

There's Cracks in Them Thar Eggs!

I didn't get Emmy Lou out of the brooder box today for her walk around the garden - her chicks are due very soon so I didn't want to take her away from her babies (I've heard her talking to them for a day or 2, they mustn't be far away).  As dusk was setting in I thought I'd give her a quick look over and offer her food.  After she turned up her nose at her food bowl I went to put her back on her eggs - and there are CRACKS!  Yay, some little babies should emerge by the morning.  So exciting!

Pappa Bear came home with chick raising food today so I'll put some in the run so they have tucker if they come out of the box in the morning.  I've also left some radicchio leaves and barley for Emmy Lou, I'm sure she'll be ready for a feast when she can leave the nest for longer.

I'll be keeping an ear out for peeps in the morning.

I mustn't get too excited or attached though, these birds are destined for the table.

Sorry Emmy Lou - we're gonna eat your (adopted) babies.

Garden Pesto and Eat Your Weeds

Pizza night!

While Mr 1 is having a nap - he's doing some serious growing at the moment - Mr 3 and I spent the afternoon kneading dough, collecting greens from the garden and constructing our pizzas.  He was super excited about bringing veges inside that he helped me pick from the garden, spring-onions, spinach, silverbeet, borage leaves and flowers, herbs and foraged weeds.  We whipped up a pesto and chopped up everything leftover to spread on our pizzas.

Mr 3 selected everything to go on his pizza, even olives, wicked!

You can add what ever you like to pesto really, once I made it mainly with spinach, garlic and a few nastersian leaves.  When it was cooked on our pizzas it tasted and looked like cooked avocado - the strangest thing, but super yummy!

This pesto is just a bit peppery from the nastersian and bitter cress.  We didn't even need the ham tonight with all our tasty toppings, I fished it out of the freezer because it needed using.



Garden Pesto

2 big handfuls of Borage Leaves
Handful each of Borage Flowers, Parsley (stalks and all), Nastersian Leaves and Bitter Cress (Edible Weed Cardamine hirsuta, part of the mustard family)
A Few Sage and Tarraon Leaves
4 Cloves Garlic
A Few Slugs of Olive Oil

Give garlic cloves a quick chop and chuck into a blender with the other greens (I use a magic bullet, making paste, smoothies and mush is the only it's good food - chopping, dicing, yeah right!).
Add a slug of oil and blend.  Adding a one slug of oil at a time till you get a good spreadable consistancy.  Add salt and pepper if you like.  Extra can be frozen.

If you want to upgrade it to 'posh' pesto, pulse in a handful of pinenuts and grated Parmesan - doesn't freeze so well with nuts and cheese, they go rancid a lot faster than the greens/herbs.


Go Go Poly-Garden

The little poly-garden is working out fantastic.  Only 5 weeks after the seeds were sown and a dose of chicken-poo tea last week and we have salad ready to harvest.  The Gourmet Mix leaves can be taken from the outside of the plants but I'm going to leave the Tom Thumb to form hearts.

Water, sun and chicken-poo tea

10 Days ago, seedlings looking good and more sown in second box

The seeds sown in the second box are coming along nicely too, by the time our first box starts to look a little tired there will be more salad greens ready to go.  Our kitchen is right by the front door, so we can easily grab a few leaves for sandwiches and salads.

Bacon and Eggs for Lunch

On Saturday my husband was putting up fencing for another chicken run.  We're hoping to have a few little fluffy chicks this week, so are making a new area for them.  The initial plan is to keep the laying girls in their run for the morning while they lay and let the meat birds have the yard, then opposite for the afternoon.  We plan on doing this because of their different diet requirements.  Young and meat birds need more protein and layers more calcium.



I had a bacon and egg pie in mind for our lunch after spending the morning in the garden but time got away on us, with only 40 minutes till noon I opted for an easy quiche instead.  After a rummage in the garden I found spring onion and spinach.  With the eggs, feta and bacon already in the house I chopped everything up, covered with the eggy mix and put it in the oven.  Just as Mr 3 came in to ask for 'dinner' (his name for every meal), it was ready.  We chomped it down with salad and had left overs for dinner, it was super tasty.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Broody hens and our First Strawberries

After having Dolly our Buff Barnevelder go broody and spending a day in a box I found another hen in our compost and cuttings pile.  She was one very angry hen!  It was kind of scary to see our quietest most laid-back chicken go crazy.  Squawking and screaming at me with most of her breast feathers plucked out.


When I went to visit her for the second time, without my dog, she was much quieter.  She even left her nest to see if I had food.  I manged to get hold of her and put her in the box that Dolly had just vacated.  Once she had laid an egg in there, out of the comfort of her nest, she forgot about being broody.  It's not something I relish doing, but hens are not free to keep and we have hens for eggs.  If they start sitting they stop laying.  I don't mind having one sitting at a time (to get some meat birds started for us), but three sitting at once, no way!

 

We also found our first strawberries this week.  I have have 6 suckers from my sister in law growing on the front steps.  They weren't super sweet but very tasty, I'm sure they'll get better as the weather gets warmer.  Maybe I'll get enough to make a little pot of jam.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Snail Hunt

I had been eagerly awaiting Spring.  Warmer days, seeds sprouting with very little encouragement and adventures in the garden with my boys - which we have been enjoying.  The one thing I had forgotten about is the nasty little invaders that awake and begin munch on unprotected seedlings as soon as darkness falls.


I was even silly enough to think my seedlings and poly-garden on my front steps would be safe.  Why would slugs and snails venture up onto a deck?  Well they did, and in 2 nights they wiped out a dozen smalls basil plants I had in a small trough, right down to the potting mix, then started on a smaller pot of basil - then the poly-garden!  Time to wage war.

Last night I ventured out into the garden by the cover of darkness and found them in masses.  I must have dispathced over 40 huge snails and twice as many slugs in the main garden.  The biggest and fattest snail I found was on the now empty trough on my front steps - it even smelt of basil when I squashed it.  Little bugger.

This is a cheap and very effective method of control and I have a tip for you, when the heat of the day has passed give the area around your garden a light sprinkle with a hose - this will invite the slugs and snails out sooner becuase they don't have to wait for the evening due to fall to ease their journey into your beloved garden.

Our Emmy Lou is still sitting on her eggs.  Every day I open her brood box and gently lift her off her precious eggs, I think she welcomes my visits now too, she doesn't growl, hiss or try to leap out of my arms.  I check her for lice and mites, stroke her head until she awakes from her nesting slumber then let her have a feed and scratch around in the garden.  There is a strict time limit of 30 minutes so her eggs don't go cold.  It's funny to see how she's changed while she sits on her eggs, Emmy Lou holds her tail very wide and upright (like a male turkey).  When our dog goes near her or the box she goes bananas, squawking and fluffing up her feather.  I think she's going to make a good mumma.


I very gently lifted each of her 11 eggs this morning.  The all feel quite light except for 2 - which I suspect will be duds.  We shall see in about 8 days time - very exciting.

We've had another hen go broody, but it is too close to Christmas to let her sit (we would like to spend a few weekends at the beach), so I have removed her from the nesting box and she going to be seeing out the next 2 days in a box under a tree.  The theory is that if she has nowhere to sit and make a nest she should stop being broody - we shall see.  She is very angry hormonal hen at the moment - I hope she'll forgive me.  She can have a turn in the brooding box after Christmas.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Foot Frustration

I planted some zucchini and pumpkin seeds about a month ago and they outgrew their paper pots within a couple of weeks.  I've had an addition to the vege garden planned for them but with a foot injury I haven't been able to dig the new garden - very frustrating.  My lovely husband spent a good hour of his only day of this week digging it for me.  This morning Mr 3 and I finished digging in compost and lime then planted out zucchini, pumpkins, spring onion and silver beet.  We also put some spinach in another garden to replace the bucketful we brought inside with us for dinner.  I think I'll make my cheats risotto with leftover sausages and the spinach.

New plot along the right fence line - can't wait to have zucchini on the BBQ

I have discovered something lurking on my grapevines, the leaves are blistered with white fluff on the underside.  With thoughts and chopping down and burning, pinching off all the infected leaves or nasty sprays I was glad to find it is a harmless leaf mite - which won't hurt grape production, only looks.  Phew!!

Leaf mite blisters on the grape vine

Pappa Bear also put up a swing at the weekend which has been the source of a lot of fun today, along with bubbles which had Mr 1 squealing with delight.