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!

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

 Hooray. Today was a slothful devotional to the Lacuna Sabbath. I did manage to get out of my jammies by noon, but only barely. I did manage to finish a new crocheted beanie in delicious Noro Silk Garden yarn, a scrumptious indulgence.

Anyhoo, I know I have been tardy dear interwebs.........

So now for a quick update. Behold the first Austrian Oil Seed Pumpkin. Now, I am a FAN of the pepita......it is true and I was especially looking forward to seeing inside of this magical beast..........

On the PLUS side, these pepitas are HUGE and DELICIOUS. On the down side, many of them have already germinated........which is a bit weird. Any ideas? I did have the pumpkin showy-offily displayed on the warmth of the kitchen bench for a week or so....perhaps too much warmth?

 Another downer is that this is one TASTELESS pumpkin......but with really tough and bitter skin......the flesh is OK in an insipid overgrown squash hide it in a casserole or curry kind of way, but even me who is a signed up lover of pumpkin skin was pretty keen to steer clear of that yucki bitter stuff..........

Would I grow them again? That depends on whether the other pumpkins from this vine have better pepitas......fingers crossed.

I have discovered the delights and wonderfulness of GREEN SMOOTHIES.  Behold my breakfast, just before it gets whizzed........organic apple, pear and an assortment of greens from the garden. I love this stuff.

I am on the hunt for purslane......I am sure I have seen it growing in the garden and around the traps..... I am on a mission to identify and EAT as much as I can before the first frost........and have purchased some seeds from greenharvest so that if I grow it from scratch, I might better identify the stuff in the wild!

And I am thinking about chemicals. Dieldren to be exact, because I have a sneaky suspicion it is everywhere........Dieldren used to be sprayed around all over the place with gay abandon and strong government endorsement......just like DDT........anyhoo, Dieldren is something I regularly test compost for (mine and others) and let me tell you, even it you didn't put it in, it is there in the finished product, even if it is just a tiny whisper........it turns up in the most unlikely places..........

And if it was sprayed on your farm, or your garden, or your house, it is probably still there. In the soil. 


sheesh. Sometimes its better not to know these things!

kiwi cuttings - plants for FREE

OK, so I did a little research. Yes, I know, I am meant to be writing a report for someone....so naturally my attention turns to anything but........

Looks like Diggers WILL be selling Issai again later this year. Hooray!
But I am gunna make some for free.

These nice people here at The Walden Effect say it is FINE to take soft wood cuttings in Summer. Well, it is almost still summer.....so here we go. They say SURE you can stuff around with rooting powders, propagation trays, heat mats and misters, OR you can just whack them into jars of water and see how you go.

So this is what I have done. I did add some VRM XLR8 Bio (link downloads brochure) for good measure, to help out compete bad fungi and help with root establishment. I also added a little rooting gel...........



Will keep you posted.

Odds and Sods

This is cool. We have our first ever Actinidia Arguta "Issai" hardy (or "grape") kiwi fruit. Don't get too excited. It is really only half an inch long. This little vine had lots of flowers this year, but only one set. It is meant to be self fertile......but who knows. These little vines were available for just a very short time from Diggers a few years ago but I have not seen them since. If the little farm project comes off, I will need to take some cuttings from this little fella over winter, and a few of his friends......

There is a little back log of winter seedlings in the glass house waiting for space to become available down at the community garden. Now that sounds like we have a very productive thing going on down there, but that is not quite true. All that wonderful rain finished up the tomatoes who did not like having wet feet one bit at all. There is lots of cleaning up to do. I have discovered the autopots are super at getting seeds up. 

Here is something I haven't seen before on our Lisbon lemon tree - old and new season lemons all at once. Lisbons I think are good for our cold climate.....they do not really fruit all year, mostly in winter, but this year our lovely tree is proving us wrong. They make a biggish tree, and have big thorns, but it is a real old fashioned lemon on a cold hardy bush. This tree is looking a little yellow. I think I need to give her a big feed and add some Epsom salts for a good shot of magnesium.

Nashi Rompy Pompy

 We grow two types of Nashi- Hosui and Kosui. They are BEAUTIFUL. For the last 2 years, Hosui has been a bit sickly, and last year, I bought a replacement Hosui which was lucky because old Hosui finally succumbed.

 Anyway, new Hosui wintered well and has 7 flowers, which is good because Kosui needs Hosui for pollination, and visa vesra.



So I was a little worried when Hosui flowered a whole 5 days before Kosui. This is normal. But when we are only talking about 7 flowers....well, the odds of good pollination are a little longer.

Here is Kosui. She is flowering beautifully. The bees are working her very enthusiastically, but I have yet to see a bee on poor little Kosui.

Meanwhile Kosui's 7 little flowers become older and more bedraggled and as far as I can see, bee less.

Fingers crossed there was a little bit of Hosui / Kosui rompy pompy because I would be sad and sad and sad if there was a year without nashi.

Things are happening!

 Firstly, WELCOME Angel Peach flowers. Welcome.

And it is not just the Angel peach - everyone is getting into the act. Here we have the Duck Central orchard - well, part of it anyway. Like I always say, if you want a food forest, you don't need a lot of space, just a lot of trees! Just out of shot is a nectarine, three pears, then two flat peaches, then a peachcot, then another Angel peach, then an apricot, and then Mr Bacon.

  

So how IS Mr Bacon going? Well, lets just say that -8 frost was a little traumatic for him, but he is going to be OK! 

And look - we have wolf peach lift off. Ever since I found out that lycopersicum meant "wolf peach", I love them even more. Actually those front trays are eggplants....but anyway, this year I am growing:

Indeterminate:

• Marzano
• Black Russian
• Black Krim
• Wapsipicon Peach

Determinant:

•  Siberian
• Roma

Plus a few others from the Burkes Backyard winter tomato packet.

On the eggplant scence we have prosperosa and lunga - both from the Italian Gardener.
And in the capsicum department we have little topepo and  cherry time. These are both small, red, sweet ones that only get to about 5 cm.....which might work better in our short summer.

Down at the community garden I have something special - this is an elephant garlic that was given to me by my gardening buddy Anthony. It came from his nanna - Elizabeth Tibbet. She bought it with her when she moved to Australia from England many decades ago, and it has been divided every year and grown continuously since then. And now it is mine too!

Here is the rest of the garlic - this is all Glenlarge.

I like spring.

Winter Harvest - kiwifruit

June is all about kiwi and lemons. I know, every year I DO GO ON about how wonderful home grown kiwi fruit are. I know. I know. But they ARE. The best thing about home grown kiwifruit is that you can leave them on the vine until well into winter and they just get sweeter and sweeter and sweeter. They need GOOD HARD FROSTS to make them sweet I reckon. They don't ripen until you pick them - even then it can be days or weeks until they soften. But they are SWEET. Nothing like those tart sour yuckballs you buy in the super market. IMHO commercial kiwifruit are picked WAY too early.

How do you get the best out of your kiwis? Well, most of the Vitamin C is in the skin....so I reckon the best and easiest way to prepare them is to gently scrub all the fur off with a scourer - and then the skin is soft and not fury. And they are easy to cut up - not messy - or you can just eat them like an apple. How wonderful to be able to pick fresh, delicious fruit in the dead of winter.
  

From my desk, I can see cold spoilt chickens wanting to come in.


Kiwifruit. Get into it.

Nashi

The nashis on the "kosui" tree are ripe. And luscious. And beautiful. And juicy. And sweet. And full of nashi flavour. And crisp. And beautiful. And perfect. And they make me very very happy.

The last two years we have had beautiful fruit. When the trees were very young, we had some trouble with bud jump, but they seem to have outgrown that.

Kosui's sister tree "Hosui" is struggling. If we were in a county that had fire blight, I would say that she had fire blight.......but we aren't so it isn't. Hosui is stunted and her leaves are dead, but with tiny new shoots trying to make a new start......and some weird flowers. They came from the same nursery about 4 or 5 years ago (Daley's) have exactly the same growing conditions. I need her to LIVE because she also has beautiful fruit, but more importantly, she is the pollinator for Kosui. Daley's is currently propagating more Hosui's. I may need to replace her......... poor darling.

Swings and round abouts in the food forest.

Precious Cargo

My what a big basket you have Queenie.

The truth is, I only really use the basket when I am going down to the community garden, or shopping, or to the farmer's market. It is attached to the nifty signature workcycles front carrier which is easily removable - it all just slides up and out. Less than a second.

The REALLY cool thing is that unlike every other front rack or basket I have ever seen, this one is mounted onto the down tube of the FRAME which means there is no connection between what ever ungainly weight might be in the basket, and the front wheel, the steering or the general stability of the bike. It is amazing. And, it is one of the MANY reasons I chose to IMPORT my beautiful, beloved, super useful, supremely ridable, ultra practical, joy inducing workcycles secret service bike, rather than some of the other almost as good but not quite as amazing city style bikes available in Australia.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love my bike?

So what is in the basket?

The first ever Vista Bella apples.

Precious cargo indeed.

So I et one.

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.

coming home

Thank you so much for all your warm fuzzies about Owlly. He really is so cute - I think I am going to make another - just for some more attention......

Just got back from two days in the Central West - Condobolin, West Whyalong and Temora. The Lachlan is in full swing. Everything is wet and lovely. We didn't get to go through Grenfell, because the roads are still flooded at Forbes, which means I didn't get to check on my FAVORITE wild peach tree, but from the looks of things there will be heaps of wild apples, peaches and nectarines this year......which means lots of wine and cyder. BRING IT ON.

On the way back we stopped in Murrumburrah, and in the Which Craft shop, which is a cool funky community owned cafe and craft place and I found THIS:

Happy Christmas to ME. I can't work out how it is made - sort of felted knitted, but somehow the layers are think or rolled, but it is so soft and luxurious, I need to work out how to do it in crochet........Anyway, while I work out how to replicate the effect, I can still use it as my new favorite tote bag.

In other news, these Sturmer apples are lookin' pretty sexy:

And did I mention how much I love Queenie?

Well, thats it for a Friday. Imagine having to WORK on a Friday. Unthinkable.

But I think I will get over it.

Must be time for a cuppa.

The end.

rain from the north

So like, it is raining again. I can not tell you how much I am enjoying this crazy wet spring. The tent is still out on the lawn from Mr Duck's big adventure. It is going to go MOULDY before it drys enough to put away. Just when it is dry enough to turn inside out, it rains again. How QUEENSLANDish. Not ONCian at all.

The season has moved on from cherries to mulberries to mulberries AND raspberries. Breakfast has never been so delightful. I am wondering if I need to turn the salad garden into an expanded raspberry garden because bloody hell they are yummy. Mr Duck and I have a bowlful each morning with yogurt, perhaps some banana (NOT from our backyard) and for little me with the delicate constitution, some nice whey powder to keep me beefed up.

I am enjoying watching the fruit on the trees expanding. Things are looking promising for the peaches and peachcots. There is a deep joy to be had from a maturing garden. Some of the trees and vines are into their 3rd and 4th and even 5th years, and it shows. We almost have the whole year covered for fruit - one tree ripening as another one finishes.

It starts with an early cherry (an amazing old huge and productive tree), then an slightly less early cherry, and then the mulberries, and then the raspberries. I can't remember who comes next, I think it is the apricots (only 2 this year), and then a flat peach......peach, peach-cot, nectarines....and then the wild plums should turn up, then plums from friends, then plums from the front garden. Late roadside peaches from Grenfell are next, then the nashis. Somewhere in there, for the first time, I should get some vista bella apples (very early). Later in the season should come the sturmer apples, and finally, in May, the kiwis. Lemons, mostly in winter with a few throughout the year. Then there is a little lean patch until the early cherry kicks in again.

The pears are the newest additions to the family - I don't expect them to fruit for a couple of years yet.

Thats my fruit forest. You don't need a lot of room. You just need a lot of plants. And most of these can grow on top of one another, in a forest, even with more than one tree in each hole (duo planting).

If you are just starting out, or adapting an existing garden, Jackie French has a similar approach with her "Wilderness" garden.

food forest is go

The Cherry tree out the front is going great this year - not a big crop, but enough for a handful of cherries each day. The REAL buzz is coming from the mulberries. Above is a photo of the White Shatoot. This is a dwarfish mulberry - with amazingly long super sweet white berries. They are so yummi. And below is the more conventional black shatoot. These are more mulberry flavor, but not as sweet. But still huge and fat and yum.

Both trees are still a bit frost sensitive - not sure why. They have lots of dead branches, but where they grow back, the fruit is excellent.

Notes from a winter duck palace.

I never have much luck with strawberries. So this year I am trying something new. That's $60 worth of new strawberry runners (30 plants) from Diggers in $40 worth of hanging pots! Now, if a punnet of strawberries costs $5 (organic) then these little babies need to produce 20 punnets before I break even. Thats 2/3rds of a punnet per plant, so it really is quite possible. They are ugly, but I hope they are productive!

After the girls had a little moult in autumn we noticed the shells on their eggs getting a bit thin and brittle. Normally I would whack some dolomite into their feed but was inspired to try the "breakfast bar" approach to providing supplements to animals who are clever enough to know what they need. The idea is based on Pat Colbey's stock lick, but instead of mixing everything up together, the ingredients are kept separate.

For cows, you might use 20 litre drums cut in half but for chookies, an old ice cube tray works a treat. Sure enough, the next day one of the chooks laid a super wrinkly thick strong egg, and then after that they were all normal but very strong and thick. The ingredients are dolomite, seaweed meal, copper and sulphur. Sometimes there are little peck marks in the dolomite especially where a little girl had as a little beak full!

I haven't worked out how to set something up for the bastard ducks they they can't fill with water.....but I'm working on it!

In other news, here are some leek and onion seedlings from the glass house.

Kiwis finally ready!

that is all.

Raspberry Kisses

As spring turns into summer, our attention shifts from the cherries on the front nature strip (hmmm, delicious but all gone now ) to the raspberries up the back. (hmmmmm, delicious JAAYSUS theres HEAPS).


It is a particulary good crop this year.



There is something so opulent and decadent about bowls of raspberries for breakfast, a few more for afternoon tea and just one more handful on your way past to lock up the chooks at night.

There are some secrets to happy raspberries.

• They like to be kept moist.
• They don't mind a bit of shade.
• They don't like hot dry winds.
  
• They like a good dressing of rich compost, blood and bone and perhaps even mulch in late winter or early spring.
• They are precious and special - they don't like competition or weeds.
• They like to grow in a patch rather than strapped to trellis. This lets them get thick enough to shade out weeds and to keep the soil around the roots moist.
• And lock those bloody chickens out! They have shallow roots.

The trick I reckon is when you first plant them, gather the first years canes together and tie them in bunches. Raspberries fruit on last years canes.

The annual maintenance is this: Each winter, removed any canes that are tied up in bunches. (These are the ones that would have fruited that year) Once the old canes are gone, gather up that years new canes and tie into bunches. These are the canes that should fruit the following spring. With the old canes gone, and the new canes bunched, this is the time to spread a layer of compost, manure, mulch whatever. The topdressing will help protect the roots from frost and cold.

The good thing about this system is that in winter when everything looks dead and it is hard to tell what fruited and what is new growth to fruit next year, what ever is tied goes, and what ever is left gets tied up so that the canes are supported by each other and the fruiting happens in big bunches rather than spread across the whole patch.

This works for my spring fruiting raspberries. I am not sure if the same system would work for autumn ones.......


but my gollygosh they are yummi.