Climate Change

Last week was so hot....most people would've heard about the dreadful bush fires in Queensland. Queensland doesn't have wild fires like that normally - totally unprecedented! We have wet summers so don't tend to get the wild fires like the South does. They have wet winters, so when summer comes everything is very dry, and then fires start. This recent episodes were sparked (pardon the pun) by the drought and the incredible heat. Fires in those conditions are so dangerous - you just hop out of the road!

Don't get me wrong, we do have fires, but they are usually manageable. I used to be totally against any sort of burning but recently Kim read "The Greatest Estate" by Bill Gamage (I think that's the name of the book). I knew that the Aborigines did burn, but I wasn't aware to the actual extent that they managed the landscape with fire. We need to start doing that again and that will go a long way to prevent future bush fires. The burning regime undertaken by the Aborigines was to prevent these crazy wildfires and to protect the land - it was part of their farming style, and there lives depended on it.

The reason I decided to write this blog was because in this awful heat, I realised how important trees are - well they are very important for many reasons, but this is just one that I was reminded of. They keep everything cool - the land, the grass and the animals. I had to go to another paddock to get my milkers in, as I'd "bushed" them last weekend so they don't overgraze their house paddock.  It was hot and then I drove into the anabranch paddock and it was cool - I thought it was just because I was driving along the actual annabranch with running water, but then I rode up on to the flat above and it was still cool. This area has trees, not a lot, but enough to keep the temperature down. The grass was green still too, especially right under the trees.

Where as, one of the paddocks near the house that has very few trees has really browned off. Our grass in the paddocks close to the house is quite short and because we've had good rain recently has been starting to grow and was quite green until a week of 40+ degrees heat.

So the moral in this story is, we need more trees! Trees have so many functions in our environment and this is only one. In saying that, too many trees can be a problem and that's another thing the Aboriginal burning did, it kept the tree thickening down, but that's probably another story for another time.

October Doings

This has been the mildest October we've ever had I think. We've recently had a few really hot days, but for most of the month, it's been quite pleasant with lots of storms around - albeit not lots of rain in those storms. Some rain has meant that our grass is greening up a bit.....as usual though, we need more. I shouldn't complain, we've had almost 60mm for October and still looking like more storms coming.

Bush Lime season again, so we picked heaps and made a huge batch of cordial. I did make a small batch in the thermomix first up and then Edmund decided that it was so good that he would pick more for a big batch. I made about 5 litres of cordial and have also frozen some limes to make more when that lot runs out. It does have a lot of sugar so I don't tend to drink it, but Edmund is young and works very hard, so I don't think it hurts him too much!

The bush lime tree. The limes themselves are very small - about the size of a pea.

After the first burst of rain, we did get a few mushrooms. I ended up picking about 3 basket fulls. Some we ate some fresh, but most of them were dried. I can add these to soups or stews or the ground powder can be added to just about anything for some extra flavour.

I've been buying lots of tomatoes lately from the markets so have made a huge batch of tomato sauce. I got this recipe of a friend and it has been my go to sauce recipe for many years. I do change it up occasionally and will give some options for that too. I've included the apples in the recipe, but I never do any more. I have used green mangoes when I have them - I think they are just a filler/thickener.

Tomato Sauce

6kg tomatoes

1kg green apples (optional)

1/2kg onions

1 litre vinegar

125g salt

1kg sugar

15g each cloves, ginger, allspice, white pepper

125g garlic

Pinch Chilli

Cut the vegetables up. Place all the ingredients int a large saucepan, stir well, especially the last hour. Boil for about 2.5 hours. Bottle and seal while hot.

N.B. As mentioned, I don't use the apples, so it may be a bit thin - either keep boiling until it thickens or thicken with a little flour mixed in vinegar. The original recipe said to strain. I don't, but if I had a stick blender, I would give it a good whiz to make the sauce smoother. I use the thermomix to cut the tomatoes and onions and because I don't have a stick blender, I do process them fairly fine. You could peel the tomatoes if you don't like the tomato skin. I couldn't be bothered with that. Reduce the amounts to make a smaller batch. Eg by doing a 1kg batch of tomatoes in the thermomix, just divide everything by 6.

Variations: swap the spices with coriander and cumin and increase the chilli for a spicy version. Or swap them for ginger for a different flavour. 

I've been doing quite a bit of preserving of foods lately, including a batch of tomato pasatta, which I was inspired to do after reading the Milkwood Book. I'll have to do another post about some of my other preserves that I've done in the last little while. This is a very old Fowlers Vacola Preserving pot, which I was given by my Aunt. I've misplaced some of the bits that go with it, including the thermometer that goes down the outside of the pot in the slot you can see. I've bought new lids and seals in recent years, but the jars are original. I've got a lot of jars, that I don't use, but I really would love to do more of this type of preserving. Time.......

Fortuna

I’ve always loved going out west and spending time on Fortuna. This property, near Aramac in Central Western Queensland, belongs to Kim's brother and his family and has for over 30 years now. I have seen it change over this time and especially in the last ten years or so that they have been grazing the cattle and managing the land in a more regenerative way. It is quite brittle country and responds a lot slower than country in our area. 

Alot of damage was done by early settlers and sheep. Land managers back then and many still to this day have a very European style management system. Europe is quite fertile and the land very stable and robust. Australia is a very old, weathered land and before white settlement was obviously a lot more fertile than it is now.  When I say fertile, I mean that it had been managed for thousands of years in a sustainable way. Our ancestors came along and saw all this grass and thought wow this is amazing we can run vast herds of sheep and cattle.....and they could for a short period of time. Lack of transport options made it difficult to move stock when they needed to, so over the following 100 odd years (from settlement) land slowly degraded to a point that people thought it was normal. What some land managers are now proving, though, is that it can come back - over time.

When trees or branches fall, it provides protection from the kangaroos for the grass and it gets an opportunity to grow.

There's still a lot of bare dirt, so plenty of room for improvement still.

Getting better.

Around our place, people hate indian couch as they see it as an invasive species, a weed. My view is that it shows that you are not doing something right. Out west, indian couch is a good sign - any grass cover is good. It's an early succession species and once the soil improves, other better quality grasses will come. Natives as well as non-natives.

Life is different out West - I feel the change come over me as I cross The Great Dividing Range and smell the western air. It's like a weight has lifted.In the early years I think it was my pioneering nature that made me want to live out there (which we very nearly did) and now I don’t think that I want to live there but I still love coming out. 

It’s one place I can relax. There is no work that I need to do. I can just chill. I can take the time to sit and be mindful. It’s easy just to be in the moment. There’s no rush to get one job done so that I can move onto the next job. There is none of the small jobs that scream at me when I take a small moment of time out at home. There’s time to be mindful. There’s always time for another cup of tea. There’s time to chat. There’s time to go for a walk just for the Pleasure of going for a walk. There’s time to just sit and cuddle the dog. There’s time to just Be. We are human beings and not human doings so I need to learn to “be” a bit more. Be in the moment. Be at peace. Be calm. Be happy. Be relaxed. Be mindful. Be loving. Be me.

 I took many walks and these are just some of the pictures I took

Sometimes it rains cats and dogs, and sometimes it just rains fish!

It’s been a lovely couple of days. Mostly doing nothing. I love the laid back attitude of everyone out this way. Monday morning we went to visit the neighbours for morning tea - only half an hour drive through Fortuna to get there. Typical country hospitality where you just stop work and share a cuppa. Then a quick walk through the garden for me, Kim went with the men to check out the new shed. But Lindy is a keen gardener so I wanted to look around and I scored some bean seeds. Some of “Ned’s beans” which I think I’ll rename to Lindy’s beans as she’s been growing them for nearly 20 years These are also called foot long bean and they look a little like a snake bean. And a new one to me, New Guinea bean seeds which I’ve never heard of and are much larger. This photo shows a dried, fully grown one but apparently they are best eaten about at less than an inch in diameter. Both are climbers so I’ll have to find a spot to put them.

New Guinea Bean - some info on this link.

This is called Ned's bean. I was given some bean seeds a couple of years ago (from Jane) and never had any luck, but I think they were a small black bean - related maybe.

The challenge for me is to take some of this peace and calmness and integrate it into my life at home. I’m sure I could get all my jobs done more efficiently if I can do this.

The West can also be a lonely and harsh life for the humans! George was a caretaker on Fortuna in the 50's. He also happened to be an alcoholic. One wet season, he ran out of food and grog, so headed out to visit the neighbours - about 20 minutes drive away today. It's unknown if he was on foot or in a car, but he got stuck on the way somehow and perished. Very sad to die alone and like that.

Spinach Varieties

I'm currently away for a couple of days (well I have been, but go home tomorrow) and seeing as that seems to be the only time I get to blog post, I thought I'd write about the spinach varieties I grow.

This time of year is a very difficult time to grow anything in the garden in Central Queensland. It's just so hot and it's all about getting something in the ground as soon after winter as possible so that plants are well established before the heat really kicks in. I haven't done too bad this year, as we had had a pretty pleasant spring, although just before Christmas it got very hot and dry. We've just had some lovely rain, so that will really help things along, that were starting to struggle.

Lettuce is very difficult to grow as it just bolts to seed, my kale went for a fair while, but eventually succumbed to the heat, so to ensure that I do have some green stuff for salads and stir fries, I grow a variety of tropically adapted spinach plants. I decided that it's not much point fighting nature. We live in the tropics so I need to find more plants that like it here, instead of trying to grow things that just want to die.

This is Ceylon Spinach - it's a climber, so make sure you have something for it to climb on. It readily self seeds, so once you have it, you will always have it. The leaves can be used in cooking, but I prefer the smaller leaves for salads. The small leaves are very similar to baby spinach.

Brazilian Spinach is a perennial and while it does spread a bit, it doesn't seem to take up much room. Well it doesn't in my garden anyway. I need to keep it covered, because the chooks love it and the bugs seem to prefer it too.  It's a little crispier than Ceylon so I prefer it in salads.

I planted this one for the first time last year, Egyptian Spinach. It grows into quite a tall shrub and readily self seeds. I use it in salads or cooking, once again using the smaller leaves for salads and the bigger for cooking.

This does grow wild in some of our paddocks, along the creek. It goes by the name of New Zealand Spinach, but I like to call it Warrigal Greens. I've had it in the garden for years as it self seeds easily as well. I do use it in salads but sparingly, as I'm not a huge fan of it raw. I should be cooked because of the oxalic acid. 

This is a pretty poor example of perennial spinach. I don't have a lot of success growing it, but keep buying seedlings when I can. It should grow a bit more like silverbeet I think. Maybe it's just too hot in our climate.

This one is not really a spinach, but it is a perennial. Kang Kong is an Asian green, which loves to be kept very wet. I grow it in a styrofoam box with holes in, which sits inside another styrofoam box without holes (I forgot to take a picture and I'm not currently at home!) The stalks are hollow and you just cut the plant off and cook the whole lot. Great stir-fried.

A salad using a mix of spinach and herbs.

I do try and grow some silverbeet each year, but have never had much success with spinach or baby spinach. Do you know of any other strange spinachy type plants? Or any suggestions as to other tropical and preferably perennial plants that I could grow? 

Romano and Frie d'Or

A few months ago I bought two young Guernsey heifers. I don't know a lot about guernsey's but I think that one might have more guernsey in her than the other. If you'd seen my dairy herd, you would wonder why I would want more milkers, especially as I don't actually have a dairy. I do however like to milk cows and my existing milkers don't have a lot of volume. For example these two new heifers are milking more than my previous three cows. Time is money they say!

I've bred most of my own milkers for the last few years and breaking the heifers in hasn't been too hard. I milked their mothers so they have been familiar with me and the yards and so when it came time to milk them, for the most part they were fairly easy to break in. I would feed them in the yard, in the milking bale for them to get used to how things work. I would occasionally have to rope them and drag them in, but not with a great deal of difficulty.

These two were a little different and needed a little more encouragement. They haven't spent much time around the yards or me and I didn't really have the time to encourage them either. Kim and Edmund and I have all worked with these and tomorrow when I milk I am pretty sure they will come into the bale without to much trouble, but it might still take three people to get them there. Me on my own will just encourage them to run around the yard and not go into the bale. Luckily they are pretty quiet, even though they aren't people friendly.

I've started a habit of naming my cows after cheeses. Frie d'Or is a cheese that comes from the Guernsey Dairy and is translated as "Meadow of Gold" or "Golden Meadow". I think that's an appropriate  name for my yellow cow. But I will shorten it to Freda. The red cow is Romano - she is my new favourite milker - absolutely soft as to milk and lots of it.

The other good news is that one of the calves is a heifer - another milker for me!

Romano's milk.

And they seemed to give a lot more cream than my other cows......yum....guernsey cream!