Foodie Updates

I've been enjoying going to a regular weekly farmers market since we've been in Canberra. We started  going to the EPIC Farmers Market, but it's not really a true farmers market. It has a few local stall holders, but mostly resellers. We've been going to the Bungendore Farmers Market, which is a lovely little market. Only a few stalls and one is a community stall, so has bits and pieces from other suppliers. Right now is quite a prime time for vegetables by the look of it, and the produce has been really good. It's also lovely to be able to talk to the person who grows my food!

The last two weeks we've been going to a pick your own apple orchard, which also sells other local veg and the yummiest apple ice-cream! I preserved a few jars of diced apple, which will go nicely with porridge once it gets cold enough, as well as making some apple scrap vinegar. Well I haven't made the vinegar, that's quite a lengthy process, but I currently have the peels and cores of the apples sitting in some sweetened water. It's 1-4 weeks for this first process and then I strain the liquid and keep fermenting the liquid for another few weeks or months until it becomes vinegar. I'm following this method from Milkwood. I also bought some rhubarb which I stewed with some apples - yum!

I'd bought a previous batch of rhubarb, which I added to some plums and apples to make some jam. We had bought some jam at the markets which was too sweet for us so at least this way I can reduce the amount of sugar and have jam more suitable to our liking.

With the purpose of meeting people, I've been trying to get involved with the Canberra City Farm. We originally went along to a workshop about what to plant now for winter growing, which then led to going along to a working bee. We are now paid up members and will probably go along to a few more things. It's a lovely example of urban farming, and includes allotments for individual gardeners, as well as some communal areas and some completely separate enterprises.

Working bee attendance has the side benefit of getting some lovely organic veg as a thank you. This included potatoes, tomatoes, parsley and zucchini this week. I made a batch of zucchini pickle using my mums green tomato pickle recipe which tastes pretty good. And way nicer than the pickles I bought from the markets the other day.

One of the worst parts about making these preserves etc, is that I've had to buy jars! I've got boxes of jars at home, but that's not much good to me. Fortunately the local Vinnies had a few so I've been able to recycle and reuse - much better than buying new jars, which also cost more.

Apart from preserves, I've been making sourdough bread very regularly, and wow, have I got it going good! Ever since I had the opportunity for a lesson from Katie from Twofold Bakehouse in Daylesford last year, I've been making really good bread, also the starter from Jonai Farms has been a help I think. Read more about Katie and the Twofold Bakehouse here.  We miss out on so much in regional Queensland. Fancy having a CSA bakery to subscribe to! There's a vegetable CSA here, but I really like going to the markets so we haven't signed up for it yet.

Sourdough crackers is another thing I've been playing around with. I made some really nice cheesy ones the other day, and then more recently, some sesame seed ones. Although I think I prefer my regular seedy crackers. But it is a good way to use up starter when you have too much, which tends to happen when I feed my starter and leave it too long for bread making and have to re-feed it. That's the other thing I always do now, and that's the float test for starter. I think some of my failures in the past have been from using a starter that has gone too far. It's far better to feed it again and use a more active starter then to make bread with it.

This is a 70% hydration loaf shown half way through the  folding/proving process.  It's a very sticky dough and as such difficult to handle, but makes good bread! 

Cheesy starter discard crackers. I adapted this recipe by adding grated cheese to it. 

All in all, the last month has meant I've enjoyed myself by having access to local food and by having the time to cook with it. I'm certainly spending plenty of time in the kitchen and as that's my "happy place", then I'm happy :) 

Canberra

Well, we've moved. Although at the moment we are living in house in a Canberra and not yet on a farm. Hopefully that will change very soon, but for the time being, it is what it is and we are just enjoying spending time with our gorgeous little grand daughter.

We're also enjoying being in town for a short while. Movies last night was a treat and then last weekend we went to the zoo. I used to have mixed feelings about zoos and enclosing animals, but this zoo is quite well done and basically some species have been lost in the wild and zoos do keep them alive. And it is good to see such beautiful animals!

When we left Anabank less than two weeks ago, a wet season had just started. We'd had just over 100mm then, but now it's close to 300mm. Amazing!! It's been incredible how fast things have changed and we aren't there to see it! Chloe has been sending lots of photos so we know what we're missing out on. The place has gone from one extreme to another, but then that's Australia, the land of flooding rains and droughts!

Kim and I have just started doing an online Permaculture Design Course, which we thought might give us something to do......although I'm struggling to find time to do some of the other things I want to do, like this blog and also finish of my recipe book, so I don't need to find more jobs! I'm nearly finished doing a recipe book that will just be a small ebook with some of my basic recipes. It's always been a dream of mine to write a recipe book and this is not my dream book, but just a starter to practice. I keep changing what my dream book will be like, so if you have any suggestions, don't hesitate to drop me a message.......that's something I'll be working on over the next twelve months I hope.

I know I've said it before, but I really want to post more often so hopefully I will.

Blog Birthday

I knew that I'd started this blog in January so I thought I'd go back and check how long ago it was. On the 3rd of January 2011, I wrote my first short blog.

The purpose of this blog is to share my food philosophy and to hopefully help people to understand better ways of farming, gardening, cooking and eating. I am confident that the leading cause of disease today is our food. We need to eat healthy nutritous food to lead healthy lives. One way to ensure that we are eating healthy food is to eat food that is produced without or with minimal chemicals. You either need to buy it or produce it yourself. I do produce a lot of our own food but I know that not everyone can. What I would like you to do though is to think about where the food you buy has come from. How was it produced? How far did it have to travel to your local shop? These are the two main questions you need to consider, however when you consider how it was produced, you need to think about so many things: organic, biodynamic, pasture fed, chemical free, hormone free, free range, and the list goes on. Hopefully through this blog you will get a better understanding of these two questions and can then make your own decisions. The food we grow on our farm at the moment includes: beef, chicken, duck, pork, vegetables, milk and eggs. We aren't self sufficient, and it would be difficult to be so as I enjoy cooking too much and need ingredients that I can't grow. I am passionate about food - from growing it, to cooking it, to eating it. I will share my adventures in these endeavours - from sharing recipes to just sharing my experiences.

Not much has changed, although the next couple of posts talked about the fact that we were flood bound, so that has certainly changed. We are currently facing the worst dry period that we've ever had in the almost 30 years that we've owned this property.

This is one of my favourite photos and was taken during that flood. 

This makes me happy and sad! I haven't got anything like that in the garden at the moment!

Anyway, I'm still committed to blogging and also updating my Lucy's Kitchen Facebook page. I am still passionate about food and farming and still want to share what we do in the hope that it may inspire someone somewhere to make changes in their own lives and look for food that is grown nutritiously and by farmers who farm regeneratively. That may mean growing your own or buying it in, but either way you will benefit. I haven't grown to much lately in my garden, we've been away to much to keep anything alive in this heat. The first thing I'll do when we move south is get a veggie garden planted. 

Yes, we're moving, and hopefully by the end of January/early February.

At this stage we aren't actually sure where we're moving to, but it will be on a small acreage outside Canberra. Kim and I will continue to own Anabank, however we will be leasing it out for the next little while as we see how things go with our change. So I'll keep you all posted where we end up.

I wish you all a Happy New Year and may it be a wetter year than last year. 

Drought, cell grazing and Chooks.

Recently a friend said “this cell grazing doesn’t work, it doesn’t stop droughts” and he’s right on one point it doesn’t stop droughts, but it does work.  If cell grazing is done right it can put you in a better position when a dry period turns into a drought. I’m not sure where we’d be today without cell grazing and leauceana.

We are in drought and have halved our stocking rate. If we hadn’t been lucky enough to get some rain we probably wouldn’t have any cattle left at all. When you do cell grazing properly, you keep what’s called a grazing chart. You record cattle numbers in each paddock, and for how many days they are in each paddock. As well as this you record rainfall. The calculations you make show your rainfall use or water use efficiency. When you use the information and calculations correctly (monitor) it allows you to plan how to manage it. In a good season it shows you when you can increase numbers and in a dry season it shows you when to decrease. And as the season gets dryer, you just keep decreasing numbers.

So we’re lucky that we’ve had a few storms and we’re also lucky that we have leauceana. It is an amazing plant and really comes into its own when there’s storms around. It’s doesn’t look like it has much feed on it, but it’s enough for a small mob to go around and hopefully we’ll finish them off for when the meatworks open in January.

The leauceana doesn't have a lot of green left on it, but every shower of rain helps to keep it going.

We only have a small mob on the leauceana paddocks to eat the leaf before the heat burns it off!

We moved these cattle into this paddock. This end of the property did get a bit more rain.

The cattle are doing okay, just.

You can see the yellow colour of the grass - this paddock has managed to keep growing grass, because we removed the stock after a grazing. This is the only way that you can make the most of the small falls of rain that we do get.

We've had a lot of "pasture dieback" in our buffle grass country. This photo shows the dead buffle grass with weeds starting to grow. Weeds are an early succession plant and hopefully the next thing to grow will be pasture grasses - hopefully some natives might come back.

We have 3 dams on the place and they are dry or all but dry. Luckily we have an annabranch of the Dawson River running through our place. Although it too has almost stopped running as the river has gotten too low. 

We've started a rotation for our chooks too. Fortunately we can water this small area to give them good green grass. They were so happy to be moved the other day. We used to have one really big chook yard, however it was starting to fall down, so we thought we'd just divide it up with gates left over from our pig farming days. 

It's really hard to stay positive when you go out to the paddocks and it's so dry and when storms build up and they go around! Although I do wonder if they are mostly dry storms. I haven't heard that many people have had good rain. Well, looking at the positives, we still have some grass, the cattle are holding and we don't have bush fires anywhere near us. (touch wood)

Mindful Milking

Last year I did an online program called Mindful in May. It was really good and well worth doing if you are new to mindfulness or would like more knowledge the subject.

One thing it taught me was the difference between meditation and mindfulness and that mindfulness is actually a form of meditation. It's about doing things (anything) mindfully. You can be mindful anywhere and anytime. You can be mindful while walking, having a cuppa, sitting in the garden, gardening etc. So in the past I used to think that milking for me was sometimes a meditative practice but it's not really true meditation because you do have to be aware of whats happening around you and you actually have to be physically doing something - milking the cow. I now call it mindful milking.

Now, you can't mindfully milk just any old cow. You don't want a fidgety cow, a cow that swishes her tail in your face, a cow that puts her foot in your bucket or one that tries to kick the bucket. You don't want one that poos or pees in the milking bale, you just want a nice quiet calm cow that you can lean your head against and just get into a nice smooth rhythm of milking......ahh so peaceful and relaxing and especially calming!

My view while mindfully milking.

I am currently milking two cows. Romano is an AIS X (Australian Illawarra Shorthorn) and is lovely and quiet, milks well (+10L per day), lets her milk down easily, stands quietly while being milked and is generally happy for me to mindfully milk. She is probably my favourite cow of all time. Although in saying that I have had many cows over the years that I remember very fondly.

Romano and her heifer calf

Then we have Fontina, a Jersey X. She is not my favourite cow and is quite a way down the list, and in fact almost the opposite to Romano. She's cranky, bossy and has been known to fidget, swish her tail and pee while being milked. And she doesn't always let her milk down, so I often have to let the calf have a suck for a bit to her to let it down. I then remove the calf and can get more milk. She can be so bossy and forthright that even my cowgirl daughter admitted to being a little scared of her!

Well, I have a funny little story from this mornings milking. I was mindfully milking Romano, and it was going very well as I was completely off with the fairies, until I was startled back to the real world by the pressure of a horn in the back of my neck. I let out a little yelp and Fontina got a bigger fright and backed off. Unbeknown to me, she had been standing right behind me and I think she may have been in a mindful state too, and you know how you totter a bit when you're in that state, well I think she must have tottered a little too and just given me a little nudge. She must have been there for a little while because I noticed afterwards that the back of my shirt was quite wet from her dribble.

Fontina after we were both startled out of mindfulness!

Actually as I write this, I can remember that her mother (lovely old thing that she was) used to stand up close behind me while I milked the other cows.

Farm Update

In typical Kim and Lucy House fashion, we have changed the plan! After finishing the free range pig business, we fully intended to go on a long road trip/holiday. We got as far as Canberra to visit the grandchild and then came home. Why....many reasons and too numerous to try and make sense of, but nevertheless, we came back to Baralaba and haven't left. Our life is a little complicated and the main reason for this is, that we actually don't "live" on our property Anabank anymore. I'm not going into the reason for this on this post, basically I feel I need to mention this as it makes it easier to talk about our farm life if you dear reader are aware of that fact. We continue to run cattle, goats and sheep (and a few other odds and ends) on the property and I had originally thought I wouldn't be able to keep a garden going, but I am going to give it a red hot try. Not living on the property was one of the reasons that we had planned on being away for so long, but things changed and at the moment we're staying put. We live on another property near by and just come over to Anabank to work the farm.

When we got back from our trip, which is only a bit more than a month ago, I immediately planted some things into the garden - not even knowing whether I would be around to harvest them. Since then I've gradually added a few more seedlings and have even planted some seeds into seedling pots while I continue to work on getting some ground ready to plant. It's been incredible to note how many seedlings are surviving, as my usual death rate is pretty high. Amazing what having the time to water often makes to the chances of survival. My usual, is to plant seedlings and then remember to water them a few days later!

Tomato plants, one starting to flower. Tomato seedling's planted a month ago and garlic coming up after planting a week ago. I thought it was too late for garlic, but I've got heaps and it's all shooting, so I thought I'd give it a go - I can always cut them as garlic leaks if it warms up too much for them to form heads.

Silverbeet and spinach seedlings planted a week ago and all still alive.

I've been doing some tidying up and planting out some plants that we'd had in pots as that was going to be easier to keep alive while we were away. We also found 4 banana suckers that needed to come off the main trunk as it's got a bunch on it and 2 other palms (?) that are too big to remove. We've planted these around the drain from the laundry and kitchen, although that doesn't see a lot of water these days, but it's a trench that we can fill when needed to keep them well watered.

Once the banana bunch stops forming, it's time to cut the flower off. I thought about cooking with it and I might, but there's a far bit of work involved in making it edible and I'm not really sure I'm that invested in the idea. It's not wasted if the chooks eat it, is it?

This bed had about 5 purple snake bean plants self seeded, so I've just tidied it up a bit and then decided to leave it unmulched until we see if anything else comes up - I think I see some little pansies. I also planted out Sam's pineapple and a galangal that have been in pots for ages.

The Farm

When we finished with the pigs, we pulled out their electric fencing, but still have quite a few ringlock paddocks, which we keep the sheep and the goats in. We did get rid of a lot of goats too, but some were too small to be saleable, or nannies too close to kidding. We've got lots of kids on the ground but only a few lambs. Just about every nanny had twins and we've only had one lot of twin poddies so thats been a good thing. Poddy goats are cute, but very annoying in the house yard.

And of course we still have cattle. We've only had half our annual rainfall in our running 12 month total, so things are not so good grass wise. We're doing okay as we've been lightly stocked for several years due to the long term dryer conditions, but we will have to keep selling off as we can. Being organic, there really is only one market and that's fats, so if we have to sell stores, these would most likely go into the conventional market, so hopefully we'll continue to get little bits of rain and the weather will continue to stay warmish and we might just make it through until the end of winter. We're very lucky that we have quite a bit of leauceana and this has responded reasonably well to the recent small falls of rain. The grass is browned off, but does have a green pick when you look into it.

We have chickens for eggs this time and not meat.

And yes, we got pigs again - only 4 for our own personal use.

All in all life for us is at a much slower pace than it used to be and I've enjoyed having the time to do more in the kitchen and the garden. My goal for the garden is to grow most of my own vegetables and that combined with our own dairy products, eggs and meat, makes me very happy.

Preserving - Drying

A few years ago, when my son was giving up smoking and just had the munchies constantly. He worked out that the best two foods to eat when he had cravings was jerky and dried mango. That was my first attempt at making jerky and he went out and shot a roo for us to make roo jerky. Recently I've had another friend giving up so I made a batch of beef jerky. Only a small one, as I didn't have a lot of beef - topside is the best to use apparently. I marinated it in a mix of sauces (Worcestershire, soy and fish sauce) plus chilli, garlic and some dried veggie/herb seasoning.

Marinating the meat

drying the meat in my dehydrator

Jerky

I mentioned my dried veggie seasoning in my last post. This is great to do when you have excess veg. I like to use whatever veg I have growing, or am not likely to use up, and will usually add some herbs from the garden as well. I've used kale, new guinea bean, snake beans, chilli, garlic, pumpkin, mooring, capsicum, celery, zucchini. Basically you want a nice tasty dried veggie stock powder that you can use to season meals or even just to make a simple cup of soup with either hot water or bone broth. I do this in the dehydrator, and yes, I know I should be sun drying, but I just haven't gotten around to that, and I do wonder how it would go as it's always so dusty around here. Sun drying would be the most environmental way of preserving foods.

Veggie stock powder

When we stayed in Daylseford, the Permie Love Shack had a lovely bouquet in a vase - a bouquet of Bay leaves. Meg said that I was welcome to take them if I wanted to, so I did. I put them in a bag and hung them until dry. I did the same in Canberra when I bought curry leaves (they come in a lot bigger portion than we needed). I hung them in a paper bag until dry. Herbs are much easier to dry in bags and hang up than any other way. I like them in a bag as you don't lose any bits that would otherwise end up on the floor and the bag also keeps the dust out. Rosemary is one herb that I struggle to grow here, so whenever I get an opportunity to steal harvest someone else's, I dry it and then that gets processed into a powder. I think rosemary is one herb that doesn't spoil by drying, it seems to hold it's flavour well. Moringa is something you'll occasionally get from the markets (in the tropical regions) and this is considered a "super food" by some. I think it's fiddly to cook as it has really small leaves, so I've only ever dried it - this is best done in a bag.

I love to dry mushrooms when we get a bountiful wild crop. We only eat the common field mushroom and I must caution you, to make sure you know what you're doing when eating wild mushrooms. I know what we can eat and that's all I do eat. I got excited when we were away because I thought I'd found pine mushrooms, but after checking with a wild food facebook group they said not to eat them. I like to keep it safe. We walk around the paddocks having competitions to see who picks the most. Our mushrooms are usually very dirty so I get them home, brush them off and even wash some if they are really bad. I then place them gill side down on the dryer trays and because they aren't really fleshy like the bought ones, they dry pretty quickly. I do make sure they are VERY dry as I don't like moldy mushies! Then they are processed to a powder. Even after drying, there is often a bit of grit still in the mushrooms, but not nearly as much as when you cook them fresh.

Dried tomatoes are another favourite. I like to use the small ones for drying - just cut in half and if I think of it, I sprinkle with salt first. I fully dry them, rather than semi dried because that's how I like them. Also, you can keep jars full of dried tomatoes in the cupboard and then just marinate them as you want, which saves fridge space and they last longer.

My method for marinating is this:
Place the dried tomatoes in a bowl, then cover with a mix of half hot water and half vinegar. Allow to soak until cool. Drain off the liquid and add chopped herbs and garlic. Toss around and then place into a jar with olive oil. A trick I've discovered is to add a little sunflower oil with the olive oil and this prevents it from going cloudy in the fridge - you only need a tablespoon or two of sunflower oil. I know that sunflower oil is a seed oil but at least it's not genetically modified and I also think it's okay because it was a traditional oil (of the American Indians).

When you grow New Guinea Beans, Snake Beans or Zucchini, you will often have an abundance! These veg are best preserved by drying. Dried and packed into jars they will keep for a very long time in the pantry. The last lot of New Guinea Beans we did, we sprinkled salt on them and they were a nice little beer snack.

A little while ago I made Gomasio with foraged seaweed - I need another trip to the beach as I've eaten all this one. I posted about it here.

I did hang this to dry and it only took a couple of days.

Mango is a delicious dried snack. Yes, I know, mango is delicious no matter what you do with it! We have one common mango tree, which is otherwise called a cooking mango - great for chutney but once dried, you can't tell the difference between a dry common mango and a dry bowen mango. I'll dry banana's too when I have a home grown bunch. You get a massive bunch and they all ripen at once, so freezing or drying is what I do. Mostly frozen as it's great for making nice cream. Most fruits can be dried - just slice about 1/2 cm thick and usually takes between 12 and 24 hours to dry.

I like drying as a storage/preservation method for a few reasons:

1. drying reduces the volume so takes less room in storage
2. dried foods keep in glass jars at room temperature
3. not needing to freeze leaves more room for other things to go into the freezer
4. if sun-drying, it's very eco friendly. 

What do you like to dry?