Busy as a bee

2:32 PM No Comments

Well, the bees have been busy, me, not so much.

One of the trees down to the chook yard is in full blossom and it sounds like a billion bee cacophony when you walk past.

Billion Bee Cacophony Tree

  It's full of Native and European bees, all doing their thing

Bee Business

The White Mulberry (White Shahtoot) Tree has burst forth with new foliage and what seems like a million fruit.

Immature White Mulberry fruit

up closer

The only issue with this fruit from this tree is that it is in the chook enclosure.  Some of the chook prefer to roost in this tree at night, their dropping end up all over the fruit, so you need to be wary where you pick them from.  Another month or so yet before they are ready.

Wandering over to the garden, I noticed even the stalks of the Spring Onion have native bees all over them, Toni wants to collect the seed, so we are letting some go to seed

Spring Onion flower with native bees

and I could not walk back to the cottage without stopping to admire the gorgeous flower of the Grevillia

Grevilla flower

The property is alive with the warmth of spring and even walking off the veranda, the subtle perfume of jasmine surrounds you

Jasmine flowers

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Sidetracked

8:47 PM No Comments

I actually wanted to head down to the garden to see what Toni was up to, on the way down, I noticed the Callistemon out the front of the garden played host to a plethora of Scarlet Honeyeaters, they were all over the spring flowers.  I raced back to get my camera, cam back, they had moved to the next tree along and have been joined by their compadres.  I counted at least 5 or 6, 4 of them the males, displaying their gorgeous scarlet colour.

Feeding, on the wing, ah la a Hummingbird

Lovin' that nectar

While I was there, Toni came out to see what all the excitement was about, she had been thinning out her purple carrots, a heirloom variety growing at the moment.  The small thinned out carrot were delicious, fresh from the ground !

Yummy purple carrots !

On the back to house, to drop the camera off, I was distracted once again by a gorgeous flower in bloom

after that, I forgot what I had even come outside for !

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Hail... mary ?

9:03 PM No Comments

Well, the small amount of hail the other day was simply a precursor for the doozy that followed it two days later !  We could here the storm coming from miles away, then rain, it poured, 45mm in about 30 mins, mixed with it a huge quantity of hail.  I am from North Qld and have never really seen hail before, my partner is from Victoria and she said this was the longest hail storm she had ever seen.  It kept coming, we were quite concerned about the netting over the orchard, chook yard and veggie garden.  Luckily it survived, just.  One of the poles in the corner of the chook yard was pulled out of the ground from the weight but we managed a quick repair as soon as the hail stopped and a complete repair the next day, that was the only real damage.  Piles of hail were still on the ground 48 hours later and we received light rain for the rest of the night, another 20mm to bring it to 65mm in total

Hail the next morning in the netting, about 50% melted

Hail around the base of an immature Avacado 

We have decided to cut a square out of the netting where the hail accumulated and "sew" in, with 0.7mm gauge wire, a 50cm x 50cm patch of chicken wire to let the accumulated hail fall through. I am sure after all that work we'll never get a hail storm again OR the hail will be so huge it simply blocks the holes !

Fruit has been bagged
We were caught out badly by fruit fly in the Nectarine and Peach trees last year.  On guard this year, Toni had prepared with plenty of bags sown from muslin purchased from a local shop and gauze netting she found  at an Op Shop as well as waxed paper isolation bags where appropriate .  We're hopeful this will stop the little buggers !

Fruit bagged on Peach Tree

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Busy in the garden

7:10 PM No Comments

Toni has been very busy in the garden, planting crops and getting beds ready for a spring planting.  The garden is looking pretty good

Garden looking gorgeous

The Snow Peas are prodigious producers

Snow peas (left), flowering Choy Sum (right) for seed collection

Broad Beans: grow baby, grow !

and the strawberries are starting to produce, yum !

Strawberries

A couple days ago we had the first hail storm I can remember, little hail (thank god) about the size of a pea

Hail stones on the front lawn

and not too much of it.  It came down with about 30mm of rain as well !

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Our Orchards morning delight

9:03 PM No Comments

Nature makes a much better statement then I can, from our orchard this morning.

Morning dew on peach tree blossoms

Anna apple blossoms

Anna Apple flower buds

Morning dew on apricot blossoms

Spiders web amongst the apricot buds 

Morning dew on the Dorset Apple flowers

Morning dew on the Dorset Apple flower buds

Glistening dew droplet on olive leaf

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Wood for winter.. Pumpkin & Sultana Cake ! ...and more

8:36 PM No Comments

Only a small update today...

We have started laying in green wood for NEXT winter, to give it time to cure

Staring next years Woodpile !

and managed to get around to adding a step to the front veranda, the original was a wooden block that had rotted

New Step !

It's just rock from the nearby river and some concrete.  It looks a little "prettier" since I took the photo

The garden has had some work done on it by the ever hardworking Toni, a new batch of Marmalade and Persimmon Jam has been done !

The chooks have started to lay again and we're getting about 8 - 10 eggs a day, so custard and bacon & egg pie a-plenty.

and the Internet Installer came out the other week to replace the Satellite module that was full of water

Sat. Tech doing repairs

Pumpkin & Sultana Cake

Toni has been baking a few of these lately and they have gone down a treat.  Surprisingly to me, I also enjoy them, it's especially odd as I don't like Pumpkin ... go figure !!!  We don't grow Pumpkins, we have been given a few so this is a good use for them, Toni also makes herself soup with the excess Pumpkin .  We get a huge supply of Sweet Potatoes, so next year when they are in season, she plans to substitute Sweet Potato for Pumpkin, we'll see how it goes and report back next year.

The recipe came from a Chef friend of Toni's, Mark (currently in Perth).  Here it is

Pumpkin and Sultana Cake Recipe

Cream:

250gm butter

1 cup caster sugar

1 tsp orange rind

Alternately add a little of each of the following until it's all mixed with the above:

3 eggs

½ cup milk

2 cups SR flour

Add:

¼ cup of orange juice

½ cup sultanas

¾ cup mashed pumpkin

Pour into a lined cake tin and bake for 1 hour at 180c

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Food 'n Weather

5:39 PM No Comments

Weather
Well, Autumn is over it seemed incredibly short as it was quite cool,

Autumn leaves taking an early winter swim

 making it seem that Winter had come early.   A cold Autumn has continued into Winter.  The fire place is getting heavy use, so we are chewing into the wood pile.  I have started the woodpile for next year, mostly spotted gum, it needs 12 - 18 months to cure for use in the fireplace.

Food
One of the reasons to be here is to make use of the home grown produce and to live more reminiscent of a time when this way of living was predominant.  So lots of baking and cooking gets done, lucky me, Toni does most of the work in that department.  I, on the other hand have been out building Mountain Bike Trails and clearing lantana.


Pictures speaking louder them words, here's a few

Home made bread, proving on the fire before baking.

Lemon Meringue; home grown lemons, and eggs used

Recently collected Persimmons for Jam and various citrus for marmalade,
glass jars washed and waiting to be sanitised in the Oven.

Home made Chicken Stock, carcass removed

This is a good book for those interested in venturing into Jams, Preserves etc.

The author, Sally Wise is a stalwart of ABC radio

A few odds and sods
The garden has winter veggies in, and doing a maintenance to the gardens as well, always work to be done in there

Chickens helping weed

A couple of beds have become over grown with weeds, so we put a temporary fence around the bed, bird netting over the top and placed a few chooks in there to do the hard work for us!  Go girls!

Most people living rurally will be on Satellite for their Internet.  We recently had a huge amount of rain over the space of 6 days and I was up on the roof the day after, spotting the water ingress into the membrane cover at the end of the Satellite Dish horn.  The membrane is also deteriorating badly in the harsh Australian Sun, which is why the water is getting in.

Soggy Satellite !

Checking with our ISP this is a common design fault with the Sat Dish and should be fixed by IPSTAR themselves.  I would suggest anyone who has a Satellite Dish for their Internet check theirs as well, and contact thier ISP if they have an issue, make sure you take photos as well, as the water slowly evaporates after a couple days but water inside will eventually destroy the components.

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