Plans, plans and more plans

Well it’s now the start of October and we are still waiting to get our house plans into council. We changed some aspects of the house design which delayed things but now we are waiting on the engineer (who had previously been the snappy one) and the grey water system design guy and THEN we can submit them. I was hoping to have them in by the end of next week at the latest and if they are not ready by the end of this week – heads will roll!

We’ve also been working on some plans for the gardens. Right now the focus is on the white picket fence that will be running around most the main platform, the path and the gardens beside the path and the terraces directing below this, all now being referred to as The Westbank. Some planning is also going into the area beside The Westbank, now know as the Gazabo Strip (because that’s where the gazebo will be going – ok that’s a bad pun). The strawberry patch and care of the existing fruit trees is also high on the list. I have yellow note cards with lists and everything!

Bellow or two sketches of the proposed picket fence/path garden area. The square in the top left corner is the planned fort/castle/cubby house and sandpit, the curve on the right indicates the terrace where my gazebo will be and near that is the strawberry patch (the big rectangle down the bottom left represents the house).

This is a closer in view of the “Children’s Garden” area. Sandpit/Castle/Fort thing is the main feature here, with a trap down, ladder and slid plus arrow slits in the walls. The picket fence will run up to this area on two sides and the building itself will have walls to stop unwanted escapees. The planting on the terrace bellow is probably going to be trees and bushes, spaced apart so as to afford small army’s to creep up to the castle and some cover from arrow fire above. To feed the besieged villagers and knights inside the castle I’m planning on edging the fence with loads of edible pick-and-eat fruits (like orange berries, blueberries, thornless-non-spreading blackberries and anything else I can find that doesn’t grow taller then the fence or have prickles and thorns). I’m also hoping to create a few small garden beds for kids to plant their own edible delights like carrots, lettuce, beans and peas.

I’d like to make the area feel enclosed, without blocking the view from the house exactly. I really want this to be a space kids can disappear to, get up to all sorts of mischief without feeling like they are being constantly watched, but I can also feel that they are safe. Another thought that just occurred  to me is putting up a really small shed for them to store their own gardening tools, bows and arrows, swords etc in. The walls on the south and west sides will probably be lattice and I’ll install hooks and shelves for storing of various sandpit tools and whatever else the kids choose.

As you can probably tell, I’m really excited about this space and it’s potential for fun and creative imaginative play.

The strawberry patch will be tackled this week by Pip and myself (hopefully tomorrow if the weather stays fine). I’ve already netted the 3-4 meter area to help keep birds away from the strawberries that are currently growing. Tomorrow we need to really get into some weeding, checking the PH of the soil, fertalising and mulching the area as well as planting a bunch more strawberries. I’m hoping to plant a few different varieties with different growing times, spread out the growing season, yum I believe the ones that are there are probably summer ready and they don’t seem to send out runners.

Lots to do, it’s great to see daylight savings here and the warm welcoming weather.

Cheese Grommit

There’s been so much going on here of late that I’ve had little time for updates and record keeping. Between the usual ups and downs of raising a child (teething, sleeping, eating and so forth) and the general round of seasonal illnesses, we have managed to still do a lot in the kitchen.

We’ve recenlty  started to get a regular weekly delivery of raw milk (unpasturised, full cream, fresh from the cow). It’s gorgeous stuff and causes a great deal of excitment around these parts. We are now in full swing making yogurt (I had to buy a second yogurt thermus to keep up with demand), skimming the cream (there just isn’t anything as good as fresh cream with jam on scones – even scones that resemble rocks) and then there is the cheese. We’ve been making some very quick and easy cheeses. Labna a middle eastern yogurt cheese and the the easiest one I’ve come across, and Paneer, an indian cheese. Both cheeses are made with out cultures or rennet.

First thing I do when the milk arrives is to put on the kettle to boil, then I scoop about 2 tablespoons (tbs) of yogurt from the current tub in the fridge (the first batch of our homemade yogurt was produced from a starter from a delicious organic, tub set cream we purchased at the supermarket). I mix this starter with the milk, pop the lid on, file the thermus with boiling water and pop in the container, put on the lid and leave over night. The next day we have fresh yogurt for breakfast on soaked mueslie with preserved fruit or it get’s turned into labna.

To make the labna, you poor the yogurt into a bowl, grind in some salt (to taste and helps to preserve the cheese a little – like butter), stir together until well combined and smooth. Line a sieve with cheese cloth (or fine mesh fabric), place over an empty bowl, poor in yogurt slowly, place in the fridge and let it slowly drain overnight. In the morning you have a delicious “cream cheese” that tastes wonderful on fruit toast (I need to “refil” the same piece of toast for William about 4 times before he finally eats the bread and not just the cheese). They whey (liquid that’s left over in the bowl) is given to my friends chickens. The cheese itself just peels off the cloth. 1ltr of yogurt does about 300gms of cheese.

Easy cheese number 2, or paneer, is simply made by heating the milk to around 80 °C. Remove from the heat and stire in 1 tbs for every ltr acid – lemon/lime juice or vinegar. Do this slowly, about 1 tsp at a time and stir the cheese. You will see it seperating as you go. Once you’ve put in all the acid leave the pot to cool down. While it cools line a sieve with cheese cloth and place it over a bowl. Once the liquid is cool, poor it into the cheese cloth. You will be left with only the curds (solids), gather up the sides of the cheese cloth and squeeze out more liquid. You can now either leave it to hang and drip, or place it in a mold (or if you don’t have anything, leave it in the cheese cloth tied up) and place a weight on top to force out the rest of the liquid. The more liquid you remove, the firmer the cheese. You can either have a sort of cream cheese or a firm cheese that can be used in place of meet or tofu in curries.

Out of the kitchen, we’ve managed to plant 100 tagasaste (Tree Lucern’s) on our block of land at Atamai. 

William even came along to help, mostly be behaving himself and having fun playing in his play-pen with the bamboo poles, tree guards and even on occassion his actual toys.

We also got a helping hand from Craig’s sister Fiona and her partner Nick who came to visit over Easter.

So things have been busy and fun

And summer turns to autumn

We’ve moved into our new, temporary, home across the road from our block of land at Atamai Eco-Village. The temperature in the mornings is turning chillier and chillier and evening meals are longer comfortable and refreshing out doors. Summer is fading fast, the trees are changing their colours and a new bread of cooking is taking place.

Last week we had tomatoes bubbling on the stove, roasting in the oven and cored and popped whole in the freezer. This week it will be peaches as bags arrive from my friends gardens. So far on the peach use wish list is peach pie filling (to freeze), peach cobbler (to eat warm with vanilla bean ice-cream) and preserved peaches in syrup (for breakfasts and quick desserts). Winter is starting to sound pretty tasty.

Gardening:
We need to start thinking about what to plant on our block while we await the rains. There will be trees, mostly Tree Lupins for now and also green manure crops, most likely in the form of broad beans and lupins. We aren’t sure if we will have the time to get an other vegetables planted, but we will see. Things that could still be planted include, lettuces and other leafy greens (spinach, silverbeat, chard, kale), broccoli, beetroot, cabbage, cauliflower, leeks, Pak Choi, Swedes, Turnips and Spring Onions. Hmmm, that list is making me realise even more how important that vegetable patch is at this time of year.

Steadily harvesting

We’ve been steadily harvesting food from the gardens, mostly tomatoes and zucchini’s but some greens as well, a few more potatoes, a few peas and beans. The first batch of corn has finished up and the second batch is starting to ripen as we speak. We had to buy-in more seedlings as our seed raising efforts came to naught really, we ended up with seedling trays of weeds for the most part. Part of the problem has been that our glass house has simply been too hot for the seeds to germinate, however, Craig’s parents were here last week (more on this later) and discovered that the glass house actually had roof vents. Ian has fixed them so that we can now open and close them at leisure so our next batch of seedlings should be much happier.

We planted some more silverbeet (Heritage Rainbow & NZ favorite), perpetual spinach, sprouting broccoli, cabbage palm (which I’d picked up by mistake meaning to get cauliflower), rocket and leeks. So our winter brassicas are off to a good start, just so long as we can remember to consecutively sew more of them to cover our winter needs.

But now to the craft

Buffie and I spent a lovely afternoon the other week dyeing some lemon yellow yarn I’d purchased lovely bright colours (pastel’s for Sprocket are a big no-no around these parts).  First we pre-soaked the yarn in cold water with a little soap so that it would absorb the dye more readily.

We used Ashford dyes made up to the instructions and painted them on to the yarn, making sure the dye went right through to the other side.

 Buffie’s rather the creative sort. 

I quite liked the effect of the “bleed” areas and hopped that the yarn would stay with that faded area, it didn’t really work that way though.

In this one there is black and green next to each other, unfortunately the green is REALLY dark and just looks black.

After painting we wrapped the yarn in glad-wrap:

Then we left them out in the hot sun to bake for the rest of the day (this was a little trick I learnt from my friend Rochana, much nicer then all the other boiling and microwave methods I’ve heard of, especially when you can’t use the microwave for food anymore).

After baking I washed out the excess dye and hung the skeins out to dry. It was just amazing to see the yarns spread out and finished like this. Buffie’s spotted one just looked so cool.

Then the final step was to pop the skeins on the swift and wind them back into balls ready to knit. Buffie’s 2 balls (the one on the left was the spots):

And mine:

 

The resulting dye colours were quite a bit darker then we had imagined and we certainly wouldn’t have called the colours “purple” or “turquoise”. We did discover that the “turquoise” and the “purple” when mixed (noted from bleed areas) make a lovely purple colour. I’m going to dye up another couple of balls with the remainder dye to match my first ball (the one on the right) and knit it into a lovely baby’s hoodie from a pattern called Nikau created by my friend Justin Turner (who makes lovely baby patterns) that you can purchase here at her website.

The Nikau

 

Nikau pattern

So far I’ve knitted most of the back

Back to life on the homestead

Firstly I’d like to share what Craig and I had for breakfast this morning:

 Everything is from our property. Lemon Grass tea, balckberries, peaches and plums. Yum, yum, yum!

Harvesting:
We dug out our first small potato bed and collected 10kg of potatoes.

On top of that (no photo sorry) we also gathered recently 300g of cherry tomatoes and 1.5kg of mixed money marker & heritage  tomatoes.

I made my first attempt at making cheese. Goat milk feta. The milk comes from our newest contacts who live up the road a ways and own the sweetest Saanen goats.

Craig has decided that all young ducklings are to be called “Beaker”. I would like to report that mum and her (10) ducklings are doing well out in the wilds once more and the Beakers are growing nice and big.

Fruit is really starting to come in now, a few more weeks and we should have a wonderful overabundance of blackberries, plums and kiwi fruit.
 

Further garden bed preparation is cruising along with two crops of seed potatoes now in, along with more tomatoes (roma/egg) and pink hopi corn.

Since this photo was taken the keep-out-chickens fence is also up and managing to keep the chickens out but not the cats.

The amaranth seems to be thriving well and we should soon have some glorious sunflowers opening their giant yellow flowers.

The joys of homesteading

I don’t know if we have simply been inspired by the TV show River Cottage, or because it’s Christmas and Craig has some time away from his desk, the beautiful summer weather or all of the above, but we are really enjoying ourselves the last few days and been really really busy.

Christmas day started with us cooking breakfast for 55 people! All in the common house of Earthsong. It was wonderful and a great way to stop from feeling homesick. There were croissants with filings including homemade preserves, ham, cheese, tomato, avocado, pineapple, strawberries and cream and waffles. Orange juice, bubbly, tea or coffee to wash it all down with and wonderful company. It was an absolute delight, everyone seemed well feed and happy and the compliments and words of thanks were greatly received. We then followed it up with a very small pot-luck lunch, very laid back and quiet.

At the end of the day I was left with the remainders of a half-leg of ham, 10 “chips” of strawberries and a big bowl of sliced tomatoes. Craig and I did our best with the ham yesterday and this morning, and then this afternoon I turned the remainder into a big pot of yummy pea & ham soup served with a zucchini bread (or cake, it was pretty sweet, next time I serve it as bread I’ll put a lot less sugar in it, but with all that sugar it would be a delicious dessert with yogurt).

  After leaving the ham & split peas to soak for 4 hours I turned the bowl of sliced tomatoes into soup, I added vegetable stock, 2 baked potatoes, thyme and bay leaves, cooked it all up and then put it through the blender. It tastes amazing and I’m so looking forward to having it tomorrow with some more of the zucchini bread for lunch.

While I was busy in the kitchen, Craig was out side trying out our new auger (you stick one end in the ground and then turn the big handle to dig holes for posts). He managed to dig enough holes and embed posts into them ready to make our new garden fencing (to keep the poultry out).

I forgot to mention that prior to this activity we started our morning off by making breakfast, feeding the animals and watering the glass house, followed by a plum picking expedition. We have a wonderful mound of plums.

Tomorrow morning I have another busy cooking day scheduled with a long list of things to preserves and piles of yummy fresh food from the garden.

I’ll be turning the left over strawberries into more strawberry jam, the plums into jam, sauce and some sort of chutney, then there is the bean chutney and the zucchini pickles, not to mention the guests we have coming for dinner, the probable beheading of a chicken for the pot, oh and I would also like to do some sort of lactic fermentation of at least 1 cabbage. I think I’ll let Craig see to the feeding and watering of animals and plants tomorrow.

Now if that wasn’t enough activity for you, we also squeezed in a visit to a very cool kitchen shop called Milly’s Kitchen and spent a bucket load of money on new preserving jars (we already ran out of supplies with the last lot of preserving we did). This shop is full of wonderful kitchen goodies and I was in total heaven! I so need to find away to justify the sexy-as $300 copper jam pot… So shop visit, home, cooking, more holes & posts, dinner, a few minutes of archery practice (it’s been over a year since I’ve picked up my bow, and man do I suck, lol). Wondering around the gardens investigating the plants (yes the zucchini plants definitely have “rust” and some of the greenhouse tomatoes have blight), lots more plant maintenance was listed, noted and dealings with to come *sigh*. Now Craig is off in his workshed working on his workbench (I think?).

Sprocket has also been very active today too, it’s so bizarre to feel these little movements and huge reminder that I’m not alone in this body any more- how freaky does that sound!

In other news, in an attempt to protect our surprise second clutch of ducklings from the hungry Harrier Hawks, I built a dome for them.

 The dome consists of  12 meters of flexible pipe, 4 T connectors and some bird netting. Inside we’ve placed a shell pond for them to paddle away in with a little bridge to get in and out of the water. Mum and ducklings have been living in the dome for about a week now and seem pretty happy. The other poultry come and visit them throughout the day so we may actually get a good clutch surviving this time round.

It’s so nice to see so much happening around the home lately. Their are 2 types of onions hanging (brown and red), plus three bunches of bananas,  I’ve been feeling so great about cooking up a storm in the kitchen, to the point that I made a zucchini soufflé for the first time ever after just watching an episode of River Cottage a few days ago. It felt so decedent to sit down to a souffle for breakfast, made from the fruits of our own garden. I’m so hanging out for next weeks mail, I have starter cheese making kit arriving with all the necessary bits and pieces to make fetta and/or cottage cheese. 

I hope that the joys of our harvest continue to inspire and excite us in the future and never become hum-drum or “work”.

Busy, busy

Things have been plodding along nicely around the homestead. We’ve had a few ups and downs of late, the downs being that we are down to 1 duckling out of 11! Damn hawk! No chicks (not sure if I mentioned that they vanished after about day 3) and number 1 rooster killed number 2 rooster (number 1 rooster is now counting the days…). The ducks found that they really really like bean leaves so they have happily stripped all our bean plants of their leaves and flowers, at least they left us the beans *sigh* All those adorable little kiwi fruits I photographed a little while back have all vanished, most likely dropped off due to a sudden heat wave or something so we only have what is now starting to form on the slower second climber. I noticed some of the wild blackberries in surrounding areas have started to flower so I must remember to check our wild bushes around the property, I’d love to get a good blackberry stash this season, yum!

We have been enjoying our glut of beans and are now into zucchinis! They will join all the other bits of preserving we’ve been doing and become all sort of yummy delectable for future eating when there are no more in the garden. We’ve made some wonderful mixed berry jams (purchased ingredients I’m afraid), Lemon and Orange cordial (sooo yummy), amazing strawberry sauces (on purpose ones and the accidental jam not setting so now we have sauce), orange marmalade, beatroot chutney and in vinegar (ala slices for your burgers) and lastly some Scottish shortbread. 

Loads of new seeds and thus seedlings have been making the circuit through the green house to the garden beds, the main beds are SLOWLY but surely coming along and we’ve almost kept ahead of the planting. I’m very excited, B and I grew pink Hopi corn (great for grinding I’m told) last year and I just planted a massive quantity of the seed about 3 days ago and they are already starting to sprout, we thought that they might not do anything. So it will be great to have our normal sweet corn picked by the time the pink Hopi starting to mature (no cross contaminating of the DNA so we can save seed). If all goes well in the garden we should have a nice little supply of corn, amaranth and quinoa, all yummy grains that B can eat. It will be interesting to see how much we grow, and thus how much flour we can grind from them.

We’ve learnt a lot over the last few months since moving here, we now know not to let the poultry raise their own young, that ducks can do just as much (or more) damage in the vegetable patch as chickens, we seriously need to plant more peas, it really is worthwhile planting things in the greenhouse prior to warmer weather outside, our glass house and green house are way too small for our needs, and much more that I’m probably not even aware of right now.

Life for the most part is plodding along very nicely I must say. B’s been doing some sewing, Craig has been banging away in the wood shop and I’ve finally gotten around to buying some fiber dyes. Summer is a lovely time for being busy, watching everything grow and still having hours in the day for a good balance of work and play.

Birth Announcement

Well it seems that our broody hen actually did know what she was doing and we are very pleased to announce the birth of two new chicks somewhere between yesterday evening and this morning. Yay! We know nothing about raising baby chicks and had no idea we would actually get any this year so we’ve been a little taken by surprise. We’ve arranged to pick up a rabbit hutch from a friend which we will have to convert tomorrow to accommodate our new mummy and her babies (and the eggs she is still sitting on). We’ve got a little information on what to feed the babies (basically ground of feed). They will be on grass and we hope that mum will teach them to free range properly. We really need to start thinking a little about forage plants for the chooks. Tree Lucern (tagasaste) is the most highly recommended. I also want to look into a few more water food plants for the pond (for the ducks and geese).

This are so exciting in the garden at the moment. We just enjoyed a yummy lunch including our own fresh peas, beans and lettuces. Have you ever picked a pea pod off the vine, snapped it open and tasted those little green peas? Well I hadn’t until this morning and they tasted like sweet little lollies.

We also have some broccoli starting to head:

 

More of the fruit trees are in the process of feeding us too. Here is a persimmon.

The olives I mentioned last time:

Our single blue berry bush 

Look at the itty bitty kiwi fruits, they are born hairy!

 (oh and the photo from my other post that I said I wasn’t sure what those little pods where are actually more kiwi fruit, that’s the stage just before they become flowers).

What’s growing

Here’s another photo heavy post, (oh who am I kidding my posts are always photo heavy lol), of everything that is currently growing, flowering and budding in our world of food.

First up we have some zucchinis.

Here’s another photo heavy post, (oh who am I kidding my posts are always photo heavy lol), of everything that is currently growing, flowering and budding in our world of food. First up we have some zucchinis.

“A banana” (must be said aloud as per Fozzie Bear)

 

(we have one bunch of banana’s in a dark cupboard slowing maturing)

In the green house (I think I previously mentioned how we had recovered the large green house)

The first tomato 

Corn

The peas, corn and zucchini’s are in a “three sisters guild” arrangement which I’ve mentioned before when we were at Earthsong. It’s so far the only “guild” planting we’ve done and it works well I think.

Back out in the orchards we have:

Peaches

LOTS of grapes (lets hope they are a yummy variety)

Now one of these is kiwi fruit flowers and one is another fruit which I can’t remember the name of right now (banana passion-fruit maybe).

The other one

We also have fejoa flowers and itty bitty olives, not sure if the figs have started to produce yet though.

We have a huge variety of beans including dwarf beans, borlotti, cannelloni, and slenderett.

We are self sufficient currently in all our leafy greens which has been very exciting, and the roast vegetables with dinner the other night included our own beetroot. The potato crop is going exceptionally well so we are looking forward to a good harvest there.

Craig and Buffie also harvested some of broad beans from our patches at Earthsong and we have 2 sandwich bags of beans in the freezer along with some baby leeks and a variety of herbs.

Rotational Garden Beds

It’s been a while, I know, I plead illness for my part at not updating here in a while. However, while I’ve been under the weather Craig and Buffie have (as usual) been racing along. This is bound to be a photo heavy post as we’ve lots to show off. In fact I think I’ll have to divide things into a few posts.

 I’ll start with the main vegetable production plot. We designed a garden plot that was made up of 4 plots with 8 beds. This is to be a 4 plot rotation garden where one plot lays empty each year while the others produce on rotation (potatoes in plat A this year, then into plot B next year, plot C gets to rest this year and plot D will rest next cycle and so on). The first stage of this process was of course to get the ground ready. It took a long long time for our clay soil to dry out after our extra wet winter so nothing could be done during the first few months of spring.

The first step was to improve the soil, as per recommendations by Kay Baxter we had some pumice sand and compost delivered. The guys at the landscape supplies mixed the materials together prior to delivery for us at no extra charge.

Craig then proceeded to use his manly (cough, splutter) skills to wheelbarrow down load after load, after load of the mix to the garden area.

 

(those little brown dots individual loads of dirt)

Our original plan was to buy pigs and have them turn over the ground for us, this proved beyond our abilities to organise this year and so instead shared the hire of a rotary hoe with our friends Rochana and Morgan. 

This is the best photo of the entire area I could take.

 

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3170/3000954849_dd0dbdbc5b.jpg

 It took Craig and Buffie an entire day to turn over all the ground.

 

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3019/3001760396_b4f0f9b79f.jpg

The next move is to either double dig the beds to remove any further weeds or to sheet mulch, I believe this discussion is still ongoing, personally I’d like to see a bit of both just to compare the end results.

The chickens have thought the digging to be a fine plan and have left eating our cabbages to be social and help deweed and debug the turned over soil.

Thats all chickens except our broody black hen who has been sitting on about 10 eggs for several weeks now. We are pretty certain they aren’t going to hatch but she (along with one of the white ducks and her clutch) are happy to sit on them anyways.