we eat weeds

OK, So, we are still worshiping at the altar of green smoothies. Between the raised garden beds and the green house we have a pretty constant supply of lovely greens for smoothies and salads.

Two "weeds" that used to be problems in one of the raised garden beds are nettles and what I now know is CHICKWEED. Regular viewers will know that I have a long term love affair going on with COOKED nettles, so imagine how excited I got when I read somewhere that they go just fine in smoothies and that somehow magically whizzing them up gets rid of the stingyness. (where does it go?)

After a few cautious trials I can happily confirm this to be TRUE.

But onto the CHICKWEED. In winter, my raised garden bets get sozzled in THIS which I pull out and toss to the ducks who much it down happily (I should have known).

Turns out it is CHICKWEED. Which is also, it turns out, perfect for green smoothies.

So this morning's concoction was:

Flaxseeds
Chia Seeds
Bananas
Kiwi  (YES! OURS ARE FINALLY RIPE AND DELICIOUS)

And from the garden, freshly picked:

CHICKWEED
NETTLES
Corn Salad
Parsely
Lettuce
Baby Spinach


Yum yum.

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!

Ducks, Humans & Comfrey

From my desk where I am busily procrastinating, I can hear the ducks munching away on the comfrey. They love it. I love it too. I know some folks are a bit thing about eating it but I must admit I do whack whole leaves of the stuff into my green smoothies. The hysteria about comfrey being poisonous seems a little (lot) over blown to me. From what I have read, the leaves are PROFOUNDLY good for you, quite safe and no bad things have happened to anyone from eating them......

Anyway, I trust the ducks.


In other news, even though they are moulting, these girls are STILL laying their beautiful big fat orange yolked eggs.Thats 9 months straight - for 2 and 3 year old duckies. HAZZAH for ducks.

Must be the comfrey.

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.

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.

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!

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

Hoochi Mama x2

Today is a beautiful day. I have rediscovered all the nice things about getting up at dawn. Geeze you can really pack a lot into ya day. Anyhoo, we have been missed by TWO thunderstorms today and I think that just about exhausts our chances.....

First up (after a big mug of tea of course) I snuck up the road to gather some wild plums to make some more wine.
I went for a run today while it was still cool - this was more of a walk/trot as I am still nursing that torn hamstring a little.

I then went down to the community garden to water the veggies. It is so beautiful everywhere at the moment. Everything is green and fresh and jumping from the Christmas rain. We are so lucky.

There was even time for a nap.

I have eaten WAY too much Christmas cake - but what is a girl to do? Sue from next door made me a WHOLE chocolate and Drambuie Christmas fruit cake and I am the only one in the house who eats it.......

And then my sister popped in with a bucket of honey she didn't need so now I have everything I need to make a batch of Honey Plum Wine. This is a recipe from the "wild fermentation" book I talked about earlier. It uses WILD yeasts like a sourdough. The mix is just rain water, raw honey and whole plums. It just bubbles along for a week or so, then I syphon it into a DEMIJOHN and we all know how much I like those!

Total cost: ZERO. (apart from the demijohn of course)

On the Menu at Bruce's Restaurant.

Behold the winter magnolias.


I have a new word to describe the indescribable. And that word is Bruce. Bruce is "Nature, The car park Fairy, where I go when I meditate, the Divine, The unknowable, the mechanics behind serendipity and synchronicity, the thing or place I feel most connected to when I feel connected and the giver of presents (presence) when I feel more present.

SO it follows that my joyful commitment to growing our food and seeking out wild foods and being a seasonal eater is all about dining at Bruce's all you can eat, cook your own open all hours (and seasons) buffet restaurant. The next logical step would be that I am therefore continually out to lunch. And I am not sure that many folks would dispute this proposition.

Anyhoo, this all brings us to lunch. And what did we have for lunch today? Mr Duckherder had a freshly picked salad (three types of lettuce, baby English spinach, rocket, Italian parsley in a home grown garlic and lemon with local olive oil dressing) and a left over chop from a sheep that lived and died less than 2 hours down the road, while I had my famous SUPER SOUP. Again (see previous post) but this time made with freshly picked nettles and parsley instead of English Spinach. Oh, and a nice crunchy piece of toast.

I haven't prattled on about the joys of nettles this year, because my garden hasn't produced them in the same quantities as last year. This is both good and bad. Good because a profusion of nettle is generally associated with soil that has a bit of "indigestion" from too much raw or uncomposted organic matter. SO this year, my soil balance is a little better than last year. Bad because I miss out on my favourite winter green. Good because luckily, Anne and Robs plot has a PROFUSION of nettles and I am sure they wont mind me pinching some. (Ok, well lots)

Last words:

"This is what Nature (Bruce) is serving now, so now is the time to eat it" Quote from an old man out gathering wild foods in a French winter, taken from Eliot Colemans "Four Season Harvest.

That is all.

lacuna sabbath

'sbin a while between posts.

It was lovely to have four days off over Easter, and even better to have a three day week and MOST EXCELLENT to celebrate the lacuna sabbath again today.

s'wats bin 'apning?

Well, I have been TIRED and GRUMPY. But this morning Mr Duck Herder made me get in the car and drive to Black Mountain for a run. Because my beloved is VERY FAST, we usually go our separate ways and meet up at the end for a coffee in the botanic gardens. As we parted, my beloved said "make sure you turn that frown up side down by the time I see you again" which made me laugh at my silliness right away and in no time I was in love with life again.

The marvelous hunt for wild food autumn harvest continues. I have been keeping an eye on some apple trees on the back road between Tarago and Goulburn. Wednesday afternoon in all that crazy wind and dust netted these little beauties.

All perfect. No coddling moths no blemishes no nothin. I love that I get to travel for work. Ten years of working in a 300km radius around ONC has resulted in a mental mud map marking the locations of roadside apple, plum, nectarine and peach trees as well as the best roadside stalls, farms selling local produce and functional coffee machines.

How cool is this. The two apples on the left are from two different roadside trees. The one on the right is from Robin's beautiful ancient old apple tree near Bungendore. This old giant is higher than her house, is a definite biennial fruiter but even this year which should be an off year, there is still about 30kg of fruit. Last year, well, it produced an embarrassment of riches - more than could ever be imagined.

After looking at the Woodbridge website, the one of the left looks a bit like a Pomme de Neige (also known as snow apple, lady in the snow, fameuse or chimney apple). The fruit is very red, flat and smallish. The flavour is lovely. The texture is a bit thick.

The middle one looks a little like a Lord Lambourne or a Blenheim Orange. Of course, they are almost definitely seedlings, so who knows.

I have just bottled what I am calling the "Pookie Hill Apples". I have decided that number 31 vacola jars are the new black. Why did I ever bother with little 3" openings?

And in other news, we have opened our home to two little teenage mothers who were dumped outside the RSPCA with 9 kittens between them. A few months ago we lost our most spoilt beloved little poppet and while I still miss her dreadfully, we also missed having that lovely pussy cat energy in the house. So here we are - Chu-Chu and Ziva. It is hard to get good photos of them - they are still a bit scatty and timid, but very sweet. They are best friends, probably sisters and little Ziva who is the naughtiest is also very very shy and seems to need Chu-Chu for confidence.

Chu-Chu

Ziva

wild apples

Mr Duck herder and I headed up to the mountains this weekend for a party in Jindi and a sleep over with Ma and Pa Kettle (aka Mr and Mrs Cougar or Mountain Man and Mrs Mountain Man) at the Windy Ridge. On the way back we stopped to pick apples. Between the ACT/NSW border and Michaelago there are some old apple trees growing alongside a dry creek bed and the old railway.

Apples - free and wild - my favourite kind!

Any guesses as to the varieties? The larger ones are from a HUGE old tree with the thickest trunk I have ever seen.

Lets hope they taste as good as they look. Thank you wild apple trees.

home again

Big week last week. Three days in Condobolin. Weather weirdly cool - which was nice - I was dreading working out on the landfill in 45 plus heat! Came back exhausted. Those 5 hour road trips after 4 hour meetings really take it out of me. But it was a good trip and I am so lucky to work with such wonderful folks.

On the way home the biggest hippy and I stopped to pick roadside peaches near Grenfell. These I bottled yesterday. Today I bottled blackberries! And made some blackberry and peach jam out of the leftovers.

Anyhoo, the garden was still there when I got back. Above is my little harvest from this morning. And below, how lovely are all these heirloom tomatoes. I love the black krims - mostly because they are Ukrainian - same as Mr Duck Herder.

I think I need a new label to capture the whole free wild food thing in homage to the blackberries and wild peaches.