Ginger Champagne is GO

OK, so Eileen and I spent Saturday afternoon inpromptuly batching up 42 liters of ginger champagne. This is GOOD STUFF. Well, it will be in 9 months time......

There is another 25 litres of Kiwi Melomel doing a secondary ferment on the bookcase in front of my desk. I am waiting for this to slow down enough to bottle....Its a delicate balance.....too much fermenting left to do after bottling means exploding bottles and popping corks.....too little and the melomel is still, just enough and we have lovely spritzy bubbles! There is no science to this with wild fermentation - just gut. Trust your gut. Wait for the planets to align and for the creative tension in one's tummy to go still and clear and say "It is time"

All through the house I can here the gentle "glub..........glub......" from 4 different airlocks.

Enough already.

 I came across this interview with Vicki Robin of "You Money or Your Life" fame. Downloaded the book onto my magical Kindle......

Goodness. It has triggered a bit of serious soul searching and deep reflection. I know I am probably the LAST humanoid in the elegant frugality blogosphere to discover YMOYL but you know...better late than never!

Things I have discovered so far:

• I have some seriously $^@&ed up deeply held beliefs about money, work and what it is for.....ever as a free range chook. 
• I have enough. 

I REALLY do have enough stuff.

Anyhoo, I feel deeply inspired and almost giddy with anticipation. I feel like my eyes have been OPENED.





In other news, and in homage to all things wonderful and free, I started making Kiwi Vinegar today with some of the very last squishy kiwis. Its only been a few hours, but it is ALREADY smelling divine.

Recipe adapted from the pineapple skin recipe from WILD FERMENTATION by Sandor Ellix Katz.

Ingredients are:

• 1 liter rain water
• 60 gms sugar
• Squishy Kiwis
• 2 weeks.

How much does 1 liter of Boutique Organic Kiwi Vinegar cost to make?

However much 60 grams of white sugar costs.

Now that is elegant.

In other news, I am going to a Christmas in July well August celebration tomorrow night. In line with my new frugal elegance, I made 8 little jars of moisturizer to give out as presents.

Well, that's Friday and that is all.

Have decided not to spend any money this week. Given that I have ENOUGH and all. Except on food. And some unavoidable work travel expenses while I am in FNQ later this week.

Gook luck me!

Formic Acid and BAS statements

One of the down sides of being a free range chook is the requirement to produce a BAS each quarter. Here is Ziva helping me to sort my receipts out.......

In other news, ANTS discovered the Kiwi Melomel. Big long trail of ants climbing up and going in, no ants coming out, lots of ants floating on the top.

I fished as many as I could out.....and anyway it was time to get all the fruit out so I strained the whole lot into a new carboy....and capped it off with an air lock. Perhaps the judicious addition of some formic acid in the form of deceased ant carcases will only help....? who knows.

The crochet cardigan is going nicely thank you. The ducks have picked up their laying - YAY GO DUCKS.

I met the lovely Mr and Mrs Bredbo Valley View Farm at the farmers markets today. They had a little trailer fill of cute little show and tell piggies. SWOON.

Thats it for a Sunday.

Amen.

delicious

Two delicious things on this raining afternoon. Three if you count having a nap. Oh the life of a duck herding consultant!

Behold the Kiwi Melomel on day 3. The froth has gone. I think the froth was mostly pollen from the honey and a result of all the swishing and stirring to get the honey to dissolve on a mid winter day. 

And I have just ordered the yarn for a new project. How gorgeous is this crocheted cardigan! Gwynne from next door lent me the pattern. She has made the same thing but out of different wool. I fell in love with the colours as much as the pattern, so for once I am going to follow the pattern COMPLETELY and even use the SPECIFIED wool in the SPECIFIED colours! What fun to try a bit of compliance. How hard could it be?

everyone loves kiwi fruit

Enough already with the ranting. (sorry about that)

 We are on the last few buckets of this years kiwi fruit. I know I do go on about how perfect these vines are for ONCian regions......BUT THEY ARE! What else gives you fresh beautiful fruit in the DEAD of winter. Kiwi fruit are BEST when they are left on the vine until late June or July.  Of course, by this stage, EVERYONE in the neighborhood is after them.
 

Luckily bread trumps kiwi fruit, so it is easy enough to cajole the possums onto bread. But there was such a big crop this year there has been more than enough for everyone.

Mostly we just eat these fresh - tones of them every day. They also feature heavily in the daily green smoothie affair. AND this year I am trying them in my very first batch of kiwi hooch melomel. Yessiree folks. Its time for some more WILD FERMENTATION.We are still working our way merrily through bottle after bottle of cherry melomel (locally known as "cherry sherry") , sparkling wild plum melomel and um, I think that's it.) How on earth could sparkly kiwi stuff not work?


Above you can see 20 odd liters of water, honey and mushed up kiwis. Will keep you posted.

Lacuna Sabbath

WELL that was a bit hopeless. While I did very much enjoy all the attention from you lovely things out there in the internets, and WELCOME all you new folks from Marla's gratuitous vacuous and obvious slow day at the farm gaping hole of content, it's not like you were very helpful in helping a decision to be made. Whoever says internet polling is the rising star of social research has rocks in their head. In the end we had 7 votes for green and 7 votes for pink/deer/zebras/birds and one mutinous vote with the cat for the status quo. (Thats YOU Jonesy)

So we go for PRICE, which then makes the decision very easy, because the Echino fabric is somehow 1/4 of the price of the Surface Art fabric. So I ordered it on Wednesday night and it arrived TODAY and it is more lovely than I could ever imagine and there is enough to make me a skirt or perhaps even a frock or a bag or something lovely because Ms Duck, one only apparently needs 2 1/2 meters to cover a chair, NOT FOUR.

And darling Rhonda, may I ASSURE you the deer and the bird are dear friends, and the bird is either:

a) a wee bit tired while traveling in the same direction as dear deer, so is buming a lift (thats FUNNY, get it?) and dear deer is just saying "of COURSE my dearest friend, hop on board"

or

b) The dear bird is busy eating fleas and lice straight off dear friend deer's derrière, for which he (lets call him Bambi) is truly grateful.

Thats my story and I'm stickin' to it.

In other news, the Wild Plum Melomel is kind out of control at the moment too. I came home from work yesterday a bit hot and frazzled but a buzzy sneaky peaky glass of this stuff soothed my ruffled feathers just nicely.

Its almost time to take the fruit out methinks.

Thank you so much for visiting my silly blog. It is a worry, because I was / am a middle child and well, am / was completely STARVED of attention growing up so ANY attention turns me into a monster and well, I is just tellin' ya.

Duckie xx

Thoughts on peace and the (r)evoluton

Last night we had walnut loaf for dinner. Everyone loves this recipe. You don't even need to be a big fat smelly hippy. I discovered this recipe after my dear friend Pickle North made it for us one time. Even Mr Duck the meat eater likes it and asks me to make it again often.

It is simple and cheap and apparently planet friendly and also delicious hot or cold but especially with home made relish.

The original recipe is from "Diet for a Small Planet" but Frances Moore Lappe. I haven't read the original book, though I am very familiar with its concepts. I like the general premise that it isnt a lack of food that causes hunger, its a lack of democracy.

The recipe is here, although I don't add the caraway seeds, and I don't use so much cheese, I just use 2 onions etc etc etc.

Anyhoo, cruising the internets for recipes of a similar ilk, I came across this:

7 principles for a climate friendly diet which kinda sums up how I like to eat in a neat little small blue green planet loving package. Here are the principles here - only slightly reconstituted by the duck.

1: EAT REAL FOOD (processed, packaged, GM foods are from the devil)

2: EAT PLANTS

3: FAVOUR ORGANIC FOODS (certified or otherwise)

4: FAVOUR LOCALLY GROWN FOODS (support local food production and local farmers)

5: GROW WHAT YOU CAN, BUY WHAT YOU NEED, COMPOST AND RETURN TO SOIL WHAT YOU DON"T USE. (Sending organic waste to landfill is the path of the devil)

6: REFUSE OVER PACKAGED FOODS OR PACKAGING THAT CAN"T BE COMPOSTED OR REUSED

7: GET YA ARSE BACK INTO THE KITCHEN (and the garden - learn to grow, cook and preserve food)

Anyway, I thought this was nice.

I also especially liked this little quote from the same author:

Hope is not what we find in evidence. Hope is what we become in action

. Frances Moore Lappé

In other delicious lovely news Queenie and I set off at dusk last night to travel up river to pick wild plums. I have had my eye on this little copse of trees for some time, and they are just about perfect. I picked and picked and picked and then loaded up Queenie with about 20kg of plums. Really, I just had to stop because it was dark. The trees are laden and I suspect I may be the only urban hunter gatherer to know and love these particular trees. You do have to be a bike rider or avid runner, because bike path along the Molonglo River Corridor is the only way to get there. There, now you all know.

I gave special thanks to Queenie's ultra stable front rack, kickstand and steering stabilization spring as I set off by moonlight on the long dawdle home.

There are really only two things to do with such a wonderful harvest. Split the load in two. Put half into some melomel, and deliver the other half to the girls next door for value adding. I have no doubt I will be presented with an array of delicious and interesting concoctions in the coming days.

Thats about it.

Oh, I also found this little gem out there in the internets as well.

We must not believe in hope we must become hope, we must not believe in love we must become love, we must not believe in forgiveness we must become forgiveness, we must not believe in peace we must become peace...

Tony Angastiniotis Night Eagle

May there be peace on earth and may it begin with us. Amen.

Hooch Report

Things were getting a little crazy on the Cherry Melomel front.

It looked like it was getting on time to get all those cherries out. But first, I squished and crushed them so that all the juice and color could go into the melomel. After another day, I removed the cherries and drained everything into a new carboy, and closed it up and popped in an airlock. In total, the cherries were in the honey water for only 5 days.

There was still a lot of juiciness left in the cherries, so I squished them up some more in some fresh honey water, and got another 5 liters out. This didn't happen before they had sat around for another couple of days, so I have kept this lot separate in a 5 liter hooch bottle just in case it turns to cherry vinegar before we have had time to drink it. This lot we will drink first.

Both containers are bubbling away nicely, and noisily. Thats 30 liters of Cherry Melomel on its way.

Hot Nights, Wild Yeasts, Tame New Year & Yummy Peachcots

What a stinker it was today! There has been lots of microbial activity happening in the special projects room. Behold the bubbly wild yeast status of the cherry melomel this morning:

And this evening:

Go you little good things.

And here are the first and last peachcots of the season from our young tree. Yep, thats the entire crop. Lucky there were two - no fighting. They sort of tasted more apricotty than peachy.....and they look pretty apricotty too...except for the give away peach fuzz. Anyhoo, whatever they were /are - they were delicious.

Oh yeah, happy new year to y'all. Mr Duck and I rode the tandem up to the top of Duffy to watch the 9:00pm fireworks. My friend Eileen from the garden came too (not on the tandem) - we shared a bottle of my cyser from last year and munched on her homegrown silvan berries. Then it was down hill all the way home which was the really fun bit. Amen.

First Hooch of Summer - Cherry Melomel

Cherry Melomel - Duck Style

20 liters of rain water

12 liters of cherries

5 liters of honey (this equals 7 1/2 kg honey)

Hooch making is like life - there are some basic principles that are helpful, but really, you just make it up as you go along, using what you have at hand. My recipe today is, as usual, an adaptation from the beautiful "Wild Fermentation" bible of all things fermented and good.

The basic recipe is 1 cup of honey for every liter of water. In terms of fruit, try of at least 1 cup of fruit for every liter of water. If you are adding fruit juice (ie apple or pear juice for cyser or perri) I would go for not more than half juice half honey water - but thats just me, and REAL cider is just apple juice, not apple juice and honey water.

There is a lot of fruit in this batch.....so I might be able to dilute it with more honey water in a week or so once it is time to take the fruit out.

Where did all those cherries come from?

Mr Duck and I have just spent the last few days eating drinking and laughing with the Ukrainians at Orange. We stayed HERE at the Borrodell Winery / Orchard/ Trufflery in a little cottage hidden in the orchard overlooking a dam and within view of Mt Canobolas.

In case you are wondering, we didn't arrive by helicopter, and we didn't stay in those posh cider houses.....we always rent the Chardonnay Cottage because it is so cute and has such a lovely view.

Last time we stayed here it was winter, and the apples, cherries and grapes were bare. It was SNOWING.

All this rain means that the Cherries are all split. Our lovely hosts suggested we help our selves, so we did, and here they are, in a new vat of Cherry Melomel.

Thats the thing about making your own cider / wine / hooch / mead - its all those lovely words.

Melomel.

Demijohn.

Perri

need I go on.

Anyway I had forgotten how beautiful and fragrant hooch making is. All I need to do now is remember to stir and coo over these two big carboys for the next 5 days or so, waiting for the wild yeasts in the air and on the fruit to really get things going. Then I take the fruit out, put the lid on and pop in an airlock and just leave everything to ferment away for a few weeks. At some stage, once a bit of sedimentation has happened, it might be good to transfer the melomel to a new carboy and leave the lees behind. This produces a clearer wine, and prevents any funny taste that might eventuate because of the sediment. And at some stage, when fermentation has slowed, its time to bottle and get those little babies under the house.

Even after just one night I can see little white bubbles forming on the surface. And the SMELL - it is so lovely.

In other news, yesterday was our first hot day - perhaps 32 degrees? The girls on the front deck were hanging out on their own front porch after a hard day.

Finally it is warm enough to get in there and see how the honey situation is going. I will keep you posted.

That is all.

wild apples

Traveling back from Condobolin I came across some perfect wild apples near Binalong and another lot near the back road to Wee Jasper. Honestly nothing gives me greater joy!

The Binalong ones have a bit of an acid bite so off they go into a vat of cyser. This one I'm calling "Binalong Coddling Moth Cyser" which is a bit unfair as really there was only ONE apple in the whole lot that looked like it might have some coddling moth damage.


But the back road to Yass ones - WELL, they look like gravestines, and are just lovely. Sweet with no bite. Not sure where these will end up. In our tummies, or bottles or in the cyser after all.





In other news, how cool is this Turkish turban pumpkin?
And in other other news, a box of pomegranate trees (wonderful), kiwi vines (Kramer) and some Passion fruit vines arrived safely from the dear folks at sunraysia this week. yipp!

That is all.

The Truest Love

I know we did have folks over for dinner last night but no, these are not from that. True love is a sweet love who drops by the recycling centre on the off chance there are some champagne bottles there...............................motherload!

Autumn Edition Hoochy Mama

The cycle of hooch making is moving with the seasons. Honey & Plum wine is making way for cyser. The nice man at Number 10 Beltana Rd got very excited when the girls next door asked for a box of seconds for cider making - quickly returning with a whole box of cider apples. $25 bucks for the lot. Mix this with a $22 bucket of honey, some rain water, invite some wild roaming yeasts and off we go again! While using wild plums and peaches is definitely cheaper, you can't really argue with $2 a litre for good old fashioned no chemicals no sulfate cyser.

Today Sue and I racked this one into a new carboy. In retrospect I was glad we decided to do this on the back deck.......We still have to top it up with honey water and apple juice.

Top right of this little photo of the office/special projects/cat couch -but no bikes room is what we are calling the "Wax Moth and Fruit Fly" batch. This one is on its second ferment.

Ingredients include the honey from the wax from my last honey harvest, some wild apples, a few late plums(I think) and wild peaches. Total cost $5 for 500ml of extra honey. It took me a while to get around to making this lot - time enough for the fruit fly larvae in the peaches to hatch. And I can not guarantee it does not include wax moth eggs.......It is tasting very yummy. The wild peaches pack an almost unnatural flavour that is just exquisite. I have great hopes for this little batch.

Word around town is that the very meaty splendour like plums from the front yard make a somewhat cloying wine. The taste seems to be improving with time, so the remaining 9 bottles are under the house until further notice.

The original batches of hanging over fences lane way plum wine is improving with age also - it just gets better and better.

And finally, I crawled under the house to confirm that the demijohn (there's that beautiful word again) of ginger champagne is fermenting along nicely. The airlock is still in place and the seal is good. Fingers crossed she will continue a slow ferment all winter ready to be bottled around October.


That's it on the hooch front.

Upcoming projects include quince wine and perri (pear and honey cider). Unfortunately the fruit bats which have recently descended upon the ONC ate all the pears at Pialigo so I will have to search further afield for organic pears..............

All about the bees

Hi Folks. Last week I harvested another box of honey. Much less eventful than the first. I can not tell you how delightful it is to herd bees that don't want to kill you. Queen Malina is a sweetie. No one got hurt. Bloody amazing.


Can you believe I have a bucket of this stuff in the shed. Indeed.

When I harvest honey I use the "crush and drain"method. This leaves a mushy mass of crushed wax with a bit of honey in it. With the overconfidence of one who has made 3 batches of honey plum saba without failure, it was time to EXPERIMENT. I added some water to the crushed comb and heated it up until the wax melted. Using a big slotted spoon I scooped it off the top leaving the honey dissolved in the water. And what is the base ingredient of saba...honey water!


The wax I can use later.

But, back to the saba. last week I was in Condobolin which meant I got to visit my secret favourite patch of wild peaches and bloody hell they are beautiful this year. One tree in particular was full of huge peaches as big as grannysmiths. Well. We got right into those. Of course, they had to wait a few days in a box for me to be able to do something with them, which gave the fruit flies a bit of time to hatch but mostly they are OK.

And the week before I was coming back through Bungendore and Robin gave me a bag of plums that were on their last legs.......

And Sue from next door got me some fresh organic apples from Pialigo........

And anyhoo, now there is a batch of honey plum peach apple saba fermenting away.


And while we are on the subject, I managed to rack honey and plum saba number 3 and serendipitously, there was some left over, and well we got stuck strait into that as well.


This batch used the gorgeous dark splendour like plums from out the front. Isn't it an amazing colour. And it tastes pretty good too. Believe me. I know. *hick*

In other news, Mr & Mrs BVVF came and picked up their widdle ducks and some for Em too - hope they are all settlin' in ok! So I have three left - two girls and a boy. I have to decide whether to keep any of the girls......tricky. Better have another glass of saba and think about it.

tally ho!
Giddy up!

crap friends

So like, I really need some more champagne bottles but my besties are letting me down. I have a back log of saba that needs bottlin' and a back log of wild fruit that needs startin' and only 6 bottles. I am half way through a sparkling white shiraz because I need the bottle.......

Carolyn who can usually be depended upon in desperate times of need such as these has gone away for the weekend. I rummaged through her wheelie bin - NOTHING - beer bottles, wine bottles, no champagne.


Come ON ladies!

Bee Pee - tasting Notes

Father in Law was so inspired he wrote some tasting notes for the Bee Pee aka Honey and Plum Saba.

Bee Pee

A 2010 red by the name of Bee Pee
Was a well balanced wine
Nicely presented, a professional job
All agreed it tasted fine

Has great colour and very nice legs
Subtle aromas emerge from the glass
Light structure but full-bodied fruit
This wine is definitely first class

A revelation on the palate
With a personality real cute
Plum coloured with a crimson glint
It really tastes quite beaut

A taste of honey floats in the air
And massages the nose
Subtle flavours everywhere
And just a hint of rose

The plums came from a neighbour’s tree T
he honey from the hive
This wine is not a Vienna Waltz
More Rock ‘n Roll or Jive

Don’t tell your friends about this drop
Just keep it to yourself
‘Cause if the public discovers it
It will vanish from the shelf

Bee Wee Three

So like, there has been quite a bit of saba drinking happening. It is a happening thing.

Here is the latest batch, with the splendour plums, after one week of wild fermentation. This lot has been safely strained and bundled up into a demijohn for further fermentation. I kept the plums and am thinking of making a cake with them tomorrow. yum yum double yum. This stuff is good.

Father in law has christened it "bee wee". The general Ukrainian consensus is that it is good stuff. And that is high praise coming from a bunch of vodka brewing Ukrainians.

gotta love that life thing

Its been an interesting time with the humans lately. For example, one of them pinched the Mountain Man's honey truck from our front yard on Friday night. And then this morning at the farmers market everyone I bought anything off seemed to be just radiating joy. The olive oil man was happy, the bread girl was happy and the honey man wants my recipe for saba. We talked, or at least I listened while he told me about everywhere he takes his bees and which trees flower where at which time during the year. I think he enjoyed having a listener (and customer) who appreciated the incredibly hard work and heavy lifting in being a commercial beekeeper.

And I had a moment at the recycling depot while happily scrummaging around in the skips for empty champagne bottles to put my saba in. It would appear folks on this side of town drink 397 beers for every bottle of (cheap and nasty) champagne.

I realised I have crossed a line between relatively normal and completely loopy when a car pulled in and instead of thinking "oh, how embarrassing, these people are going to see me rummaging about in the bins" I immediately thought "oh, goodie, I wonder if these people have any champagne bottles"



I am the cat lady. and I am only 39.


In other news, I made another batch of honey plum saba. This one using big fat purple plums from the prune (splendour I think) in the front yard. These are beautiful meaty plums, probably the best I have tasted for eating fresh and I hesitated to put the last bucket full into the saba, but then, lets face it, its really value adding and thats a good thing right?



The saba continues to impress the neighbourhood. A bottle was consumed with the girls next door yesterday afternoon, and well, we all had to have naps afterwards. It packs a punch. Two glasses helped greatly to ease away the surprise that someone would take the gorgeous little old 4WD ute I was in the process of buying. I mean if Bruce doesnt want me to have the truck of my dreams, at a great price then who am I to argue? Luckily it was still insured.


And for those with an interest in the feathered goings on - Big Fella is definitely embracing the whole gender spectrum. She has gone clucky but gets off the nest in the morning to pretend to crow then gets back on the nest to try and make babies. *sign*

And finally, I got off my but and bottle some tomatoes today. They are coming in thick and fast now. Some of the tomatoes are so big (the black krims especially) that one tomato almost fills a No20 jar. Soon it will be time to start making relish. yum yum.

Carolyn and Hugh from across the road have invited us over for drinks this afternoon. They promised they had lots of empty champagne bottles for me - yippee. saves me going through their recycling bin when it goes out tonight.

I am lucky to have such beautiful alcoholic ( celebrative) neighbours.


that is all.

Lacuna Sabbath

where we stayed in Freemantle

Dear Mr Weekend Farmer was wondering what this whole Lacuna Sabbath thing is and it is this. "Lacuna" is like a gap, a missing bit, an extended silence, and Sabbath is of course, a special day of rest and prayer generally celebrated once a week. So my Lacuna Sabbath is my gift to me - to try ever so hard to dedicate Fridays as a day of rest, contemplation, tending the garden and conversing with ducks. A special space in the life of a busy duck indulged in with wanton love and joy, and fiercely protected and defended. It kinda comes from a Leunig character - Mr Curly who lives on the shores of Lake Lacuna. Originally it was my way of saying NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! STOP! to crazy work hours and too much overtime but now it is part of my life and it is just delicious and wonderful.

So anyway, what did I do on this Lacuna Sabbath? Well Mr Duck Herder and I have been in Perth since last weekend so after lots of travel and a wedding and eating and drinking and general conviviality, today was pretty calm. We stayed in Freemantle which is a City I just love.

This morning was spent reconnecting with the garden after a crazy hot week. This afternoon I "racked" the honey and plum saba. And now I am completely sozzled in a delicious way. I think I am not the best at using the syphon yet, and have had to consume FAR too much wine in proportion to what ended up in the demijohns. It is delicious. *hick*



One batch has the most luminous ruby colour. The other is cloudier and more orange. But they are both delicious.

And they both turned very dark once I had racked them. I have kept the sediment to use in muffins etc. It is deliciously sweet and buzzy.


In other news, the widdle ducklings are HUMONGOUS. One is very little. Some have naughty white bits on their throats which is cute but not really proper for a Kahki Campbell.


that is all!

Hooch City

Fact: One of the nice things about blogging is that the 'puter is very close to Queen Malina's hive (as the bee flies - there is a wall between us) and when the window is open the sweet scent of ripening honey wafts past me into the house.

Fact: I am not sure there is a lovelier smell.

Unless of course we include the yummi smell of wildly fermenting honey and plum wine......




Technically this recipe is a T'ej which is Ethiopian for ....honey wine. There are lots of kinds of T'ej and apparently one kind is called "Saba T'ej" in reference to the Queen of Sheeba (Saba) who apparently shared a cuppla bottles with that old fox King Solomon once a long time ago.

Anyhoo, I really like the word "Saba" and have decided that my honey and plum wine will be called "Saba".

Fact: Even at 4 days old, Saba is DELICIOUS! The sweetness is being replaced by a nice tangy fizz which I like very much.

This whole Saba adventure is so much fun that I invested in a larger fermenting bucket and made another batch. Meet Honey and Plum Saba - Batch #2




Fact: you meet some nice people picking overhanging laneway plums just post dawn.


For more information about wild fermentation see here" Wild Fermentation