Cheese

I was determined to make some cheese this weekend. My brother has been off work with a sore hand so has been making lots of cheese, so I've been very jealous. I made some haloumi and ricotta. I used 9 litres of milk for the haloumi and got 800g of cheese. I did one with mint as it's traditional with haloumi and I wanted to try it. Haloumi is cooked in the whey after it has been pressed, so I made the ricotta while the whey came to the right temperature. I am also making feta. I make a soft feta, so it sits all day and then is hooped at night. Then in the morning I will salt it, cut it and put it in oil with herbs.

Backpackers

We have recently had the pleasure of welcoming a French Backpacker to our farm. Seb arrived last week and we already feel like we have known him for ages. It's great to be able to have someone to help out with everything. Maitland is about to leave us so we thought we needed to get someone in to help with the pigs. Kim is on the mend with his broken arm, but still not able to do a lot of the heavier jobs.

The best part about Seb is having someone else who is as passionate about food as I am....maybe he is even more so. I never thought that would be possible. He has a huge desire to learn about everything to do with food and especially the whole paddock to plate concept. The second night he arrived he cooked dinner for us. It was absolutely delicious - roasted duck, stuffed with this fantastic combination of vegetables and herbs, including some of our latest mushrooms that arrived after the recent rain. There was too much stuffing for inside the duck, so the rest went underneath it and the whole lot was baked in the oven. YUM!

We had some nice rain recently so the grass has really freshened up - our spring is finally here. I find it strange when people talk about spring growth etc, as we don't get it until we get rain. We also get mushrooms when we get spring (or winter) rain.....they were everywhere and we didn't have time to pick them all! We (Kim) did pick a lot and we've packed them into bags in the freezer - great for taking out and adding to meals. They are a bit squishy, but fine for cooking.

Poddy Calves

It seems rather ironical that just a little while ago I was giving advice to another blogger about poddy calves. Well....last week one of my milkers had a calf, which died..... I couldn't find a poddy calf for about 4 days and then finally got onto one - a little bull calf from a dairy down near Monto. He was born the day I rang, so I was a little concerned as my cow didn't have much collostrum left. I was also concerned as the cow had taken poddies before, but always with her own calf alongside. I left them in the yards for the last few days and they have certainly bonded. The cow took it as hers from the day I introduced them, so it was a very good result. I'm still milking her out, as the calf can't take it all - the other animals on the place don't mind getting a bit of milk (pigs, chooks and dogs all love milk!)

Here are the two of them and you would never know that they weren't biological!

Update on the Ginger Ale and other ferments

The turmeric and ginger ale was okay, but the plain ginger one is really good. Looks like I better plant more ginger for next year. On a hot summers day, a glass mixed half and half with soda water is REALLY refreshing. I've also made some Beet Kvass - interesting and probably drunk best as a shot! Also some milk kefir - also interesting! I tried to drink it straight but it was a little too much and it's much nicer in smoothies (or even just with milo!).

Ginger (and Turmeric) Ale

I made some Ginger and Turmeric Ale today. I added the turmeric because I have so much and of course it's so good for you.....and the colour is pretty. I've used the recipe from Nourishing Traditions, although I didn't have enough limes, so subbed lemons - my neighbour gave me some yesterday.  It'll be interesting to see what it tastes like - It tasted okay fresh, so I hope it ferments a little bit!

My next big thing to try is Kombucha. I bought some ready made at the Real Food Festival in Maleny and it's really nice. They were also selling kits, but I missed out on one. I'm going to try and get one over the net - or at least the mushroom. I'll let you know how I get on!

We're always looking for a refreshing drink at lunch time. I have made bush lime cordial for years and try and keep some limes in the freezer, but we didn't get many last year, so I'm all out! I might make some lemon cordial with the rest of the lemons I have. I peeled the lemons that I squeezed for the ale, and have it soaking in vinegar. I want to make a nice smelling lemon vinegar, as I use vinegar to clean benches etc.

Life on the Farm

I'm home this week - have taken a few days leave. I've taken over the Pig Jobs so that Kim can focus on more fencing (I help when two people are needed). I love being a Pig Farmer! They are characters - some good and some bad!!! The pigs are breeding faster than we can keep paddocks up to them, and we are really getting anxious to move them onto fresh pasture. It's been very surprising just how much grass the pigs eat and as we're just finishing (hopefully) our dry season, there's not much feed left. We've started feeding the pigs hay, which they seem to enjoy.

We've got two litters of weaners at the moment - the coloured ones are the Large Black/Berkshire Cross over a Berkshire Boar and the white ones are straight Large White out of the Sow and Boar we recently purchased. The redish one is a ring-in. We bought some weaners to make up for some small litters we had.

We haven't had any rain for a couple of months and didn't really have much of a wet season this year. However, we have green pick coming through in all the paddocks. This is one reason that we want to move some of the pigs, as we don't want them hammering the young grass.

The cattle paddocks are going really well, as we rest them a bit more. Cell grazing is really the way to go, as the grass has time to recover between grazings and even without rain, the soil moisture that has been retained will encourage grass growth. We still have plenty of soil moisture. We had a grader her the other day and he said that it was nearly wet enough to get bogged!

I've put some more photos on the photo page..................

Tumeric, ginger, potatoes

I finally got around to digging my roots! The plants had died off, so I had to remember where I had planted them! The turmeric and ginger were volunteer plants from the bits I missed last year, the spuds were just organic potatoes that had started shooting. The potatoes were very dissapointing - I got a lot more last year from the same number of spuds, but I used seed potatoes then. I haven't weighed the spuds, but it would have been about 3kgs from about 1kg potatoes planted. Last night I decided to process some of the turmeric. The method is to scrub the turmeric and then boil for about half an hour. This morning I sliced it into thin slices and put in the dehydrator for the day. Then when it's dry, grind in a coffee grinder. I did a couple of batches, but I have a huge jar and will probably do another lot yet, so I will take it into my sister who has a Thermomix and she will do it in a fraction of the time! (I suppose I should ask her first!!) Last year I did this and got a huge jar of ground turmeric, unfortunately by about October it had all gone mouldy. This time I will freeze the ground stuff in small bags so that it keeps. I will also peel and wrap some of both the roots in alfoil and freeze. Then when I want to use it, I just grate it. I've done this with ginger before, but not turmeric. I'm sure it will be simillar though. Tomorrow I will make some ginger ale with the ginger - actually, I will probably make some turmeric and ginger ale. I have 3 times as much turmeric as ginger! I will weigh them both tomorrow - I should do this just for my records.