The Kitchen Garden...

There is an existing fenced vegetable patch not far from the house, about 8x12 metres, completely overgrown with weeds.

The first gardening task is to get it up and running as a kitchen garden with herbs and whatever vegetables I can plant in winter.

I have spent a few hours over a couple of days digging out the weeds with a mattock. It's pretty hard going for someone whose body has not been conditioned to heavy manual labour, but we're getting there....

A bit of a mess to begin with, that's the passionfruit vine along the north fence.

 The first few hours clearing uncovered trellises, a couple of drums for water and garden bed outlines...

The next lot of clearing, it's starting to look like something you might recognise as a garden bed. We planted 5 small rows of garlic in the northeast corner, we'll see how it goes, they might have been put in a bit late.

Even after all this, it might be a bit too shaded to grow vegetables, there are a some large gum trees which block the sun in the afternoon.

Like everything else here it will be a bit of an experiment at first!

Selling fruit

I have a ridiculous amount to learn about gardening and cannot even identify all of the fruit trees as it is almost winter and a lot of them are pretty bare, but so far this is what we know we have:

- Figs
- Granny Smith Apples
- Walnuts
- Hazelnuts
- Grapefruit
- Several types of Lemons
- Cumquats
- Mandarins
- Oranges
- Feijoas
- Kiwifruit
- Passionfruit (the regular Purple and an interesting variety with a soft orange skin and deep red pulp around the pips inside that Wiki thinks is Passiflora caerulea)

There are many others and I suspect we may also have:

- Peaches
- Nectarines
- Apricots
- Another variety of Apple
- Cherries
- Plums

I have called around trying to find someone who knowledgeable about fruit trees and is willing to provide a consultation, to identify what we have, to see what needs work (pruning/removal/grafting) and to teach me how to do all this. 

So far I have managed to line up a local tree expert, Leigh Stone, who is coming next week to see what we can do in the orchard.

We have been here for 3 weeks and have made a bit of progress. The first week I asked the local organic shop if they would be interested in purchasing our fruit for sale and to my delight they said yes, so we dropped off Granny Smith Apples, Grapefruit, Oranges, Lemons and Cumquats. About 2kg of each, which we had carefully picked, individually washed and packed. This earned us about $50 which I took to Heronswood and used to purchase MycoGold and Rockdust to prep the vegetable beds, a book to teach me about gardening, a moon planting calendar and a few freebie plants and seeds because I spent so much, including rhubarb, Algerian oaks and an old-fashioned rose. Needless to say I spent slightly more than our profits, but all in a good cause :)

I was wondering whether the shop would need/want any more of our fruit when I called on Friday to see how it had sold and happily, they wanted everything again and this time about 3 kg of each!

On Saturday, we were showing some friends who had come over for lunch the orchard and there were plenty of apples on the Granny Smith tree, but when I came to pick the fruit on Sunday the tree was almost bare! There were 4 apples left and one that looked a bit chewed. We were seriously perplexed, we couldn't imagine any person could have done this, not without a ladder at any rate. Everyone had told us that the birds would get the fruit if it wasn't netted and lo and behold, my husband found chewed bits of apple on the roof of the tank shed near the tree. And then we remembered how many king parrots we had seen that morning....

So they got a meal and we got a lesson...NET the fruit trees!

They had also had a good nibble at the unripe kiwifruit and feijoas, so after we dropped off our second lot of beautiful fruit to the local organic/health food shop, (oranges, lemons, grapefruit, cumquats and passionfruit), we headed to the local nursery and bought bird netting with the proceeds. 

We had a hilarious time trying to get a 4x4 net and two 4x5 nets over the kiwi fruit vine and feijoa tree. The kiwifruit vine is about 3 metres tall, about the same wide and incredibly easy to get nets tangled in, I had to give it a bit of a prune before we could even attempt to net it. Then we only managed it by loosely tying a corner of the net each to large poles to lift it up and over the plants, all the while my daughter was running amok with the secateurs, fun and games. 

The feijoa tree was easier but the net wasn't nearly big enough, so I had to peg it around the bottom as best I could and hope that this deters the birds.

We will have to wait and see...

Hapley Park

Home-grown organic fruit and veg here we come!

We are finally in the new place! A cosy 3 bedroom cottage on 11.5 acres in the beautiful South Gippsland hills! We have decided to call it Hapley Park and have envisioned using 2-3 acres for organic fruit and veg, 2-3 acres for a park around the house and formal gardens and the rest will become a small vineyard in time. There will also be an area dedicated to bee hives, a large chicken shed and hopefully we will be able to build a small cottage on the separate 2/3rds of an acre title for farmstays. 

That's the plan and though we don't have mountains of cash, we have plenty of time and energy to do it.

We're not starting from scratch though. Already on the property is the lovely house, which doesn't need any work, 5 water tanks (3x10,000 litre Poly tanks, a massive 30,000 litre concrete tank which is cracked and leaking and will cost about $3,500 to repair, and a small 3,000 corrugated iron tank in the orchard). There is also a dam at the bottom of one of the paddocks but the neighbour tells us it has never held water, so that will need attention before we can use it.

There is an orchard of 25 fruit and nut trees, another 10 or so dotted around the house and park and several fruit vines, none of which have had any attention in about 3 years. There is a veggie patch which is completely overgrown with weeds and I'm not sure it even gets enough light to grow vegetables. There is also a lovely garden including a park area with lots of 20-30 year old European deciduous trees, which look just beautiful right now with their autumn foliage. 

There are things that need changing though, the trees and shrubs in the park have been planted in neat rows, which is not particularly appealing visually and doesn't make the space very usable, so at some stage we will look to re-position a couple of these to open it up in the middle a bit.

There are also lots of plants around the house, too close, that are too large, camellias, rhododendrons and azaleas mainly, with some miniature and full size rose bushes that never get enough sun. These will be moved to create a formal garden at the front of the house in the future.

As I mentioned, there is also a 2nd title of about 2/3rds of an acre at the far south of the property. At the moment there is a small stockyard there, but as we don't ever intend to keep significant numbers of stock, I would like to remove this and replace it with a small cottage (adobe, cob, straw-bale or mud-brick) for luxury farm-stay holidays.

There is a double garage with a concrete floor, brilliant work bench and power, which will be perfect for my furniture restoration, and a large hay shed that my husband has plans of turning into a blacksmithing studio.

We are so incredibly excited and looking forward to our organic adventure!

Coconut oil pulling for your teeth and gums

There are lots of different alternative health practices out there, I've tried a number of them over the past 6 months or so and there is one that I have begun to practice on a daily basis and seems to be doing me some good.

Oil pulling is something you can add easily to your dental hygiene routine. It is the practice of swishing oil around in your mouth 'pulling' the oil through your teeth and supposedly drawing out toxins.

I am not sure whether it really is able draw out toxins or to cure cavities but I can tell you that after oil pulling on a daily basis for 3 months I have noticed these effects:

- My teeth are whiter.
- My gums, particularly around sensitive teeth, are less inflamed.
- The brown stains on the inside of my bottom front teeth are gone.

Coconut oil is a natural antibacterial and this may be the reason for these effects.

Perhaps the action of swishing the oil so intensely can get it into places that flossing and brushing can't reach and, to my mind, it is preferable to mouthwash.

This is my routine in the morning;
- brush with fluoride-free toothpaste
- scoop out 2 teaspoons of coconut oil
- chew the oil until it is soft
- swish it around in my mouth for 15-20 minutes trying to pull the oil through my teeth with some force.
- spit it into the garbage (not down the sink, it will clog the pipes)

I use Spiral Brand Virgin/Expeller pressed organic coconut oil. A 300g jar is available from Woolworths for $6.99.

Hot Cross Buns for Easter :)

I always toyed with the idea of making Hot Cross Buns for Easter, but this year it was a necessity, I forgot to buy them and thought all the shops would be closed today. Reasoning that you can't possibly not have Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday, it looked like the time had come for homemade.

This is not an enormous hot cross bun shown in the picture, I also made a rye, linseed and sunflower seed loaf at the same time. Though, that's not a bad idea....




Ingredients:

Buns:
4 cups of plain strong white bread flour
2 sachets of dry yeast (14 grams)
1 teaspoon of salt
1/4 cup of soft brown sugar
300 grams of natural youghurt
1/4 cup of milk
2 tablespoons of butter
1 egg
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
1 cup of mixed dried fruit

Crosses & glaze:
1/2 cup of plain flour
1/3 cup of water
marmalade

* Place butter in a saucepan over low heat until melted, add yoghurt and milk and heat until just warm, do not heat past this point.

* Mix all other ingredients except the egg and the fruit in a large bowl.

* Add butter/yoghurt/milk mixture to the bowl.

* Lightly beat the egg and add that to the bowl.

* Mix until dough has just formed and then add the fruit.

* Knead until smooth and elastic (squash it with the palm of your hand, fold in half, turn a quarter turn clockwise and repeat- for about 10 minutes).

* Form a ball and place the dough in a greased bowl. Cover and allow to sit in a warm place until dough has doubled in size (about 1 hour).

* Punch fist into the centre of the dough and knead for only a minute, too much kneading at this point will make the dough tough and it won't rise as well.

* Divide in half and again until you have 16 equal portions.

* Without working them too much, form each portion into a rough ball.

* Grease a slice tin (approx 28cm long x 18cm wide x 3cm deep) with butter. Place portions in neat rows in the tin.

* Cover and set aside to rise again in a warm place for about another hour.

* Once the buns have doubled in size again, make the mixture for the crosses. Mix the flour and water together into a smooth paste (get rid of any lumps). Place in a piping bag fitted with a medium plain tube and slowly pipe the paste in long lines across the buns to form crosses.

* Bake for 20-30 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius, or until the tops have started to turn golden brown.

* Brush the tops with marmalade to make them glossy.

Absolutely the best fresh from the oven with butter, enjoy and Happy Easter!

Lectric Soda

We are selling our house, which means that areas which haven't been cleaned in a long time are now getting some much needed attention!

I wasn't too keen on purchasing an arsenal of toxic cleaning products from the supermarket to get the job done, I hate the smell of them and I know that they are not healthy.

The search for a better option led to the discovery of another wonderful product with multiple uses- Lectric Soda.



This wonderful water softener is a completely natural product that contains no dyes or phosphates and is so safe to use that you can add it to the water you cook your vegetables in or your dish-washing water.

It has so many other, varied uses too; cleaning and deodorizing wood (tables, chopping boards, benches), cleaning silverware and even treating roses for blackspot in the garden.

However, my two favourite uses are these:

It is an AMAZING degreaser! Mixing 1/4 cup of crystals in very hot water will get the horrible kitchen grease off just about anything! Soak rangehood screens or exhaust fan covers or wipe down the walls and watch the grease come off incredibly easily.

Anyone else have venetian blinds? Cleaning them is not something I was looking forward to, but I took them down and put about half a cupful of Lectric Soda in hot water in the bath and soaked each blind individually. The accumulated grease and dust wiped off immediately, making an annoying task less painful.

The best use?

Relax your weary limbs after all that cleaning and put half a cupful in a bath for yourself at the end of the day with a few drops of your favourite essential oil. Ahhhhhhh.....!

Amazing Beetroot Relish

This recipe was born of necessity really. Being the sort of person who enjoys the process of making food from scratch (jams, preserves, sauces, etc), I am often given fresh produce with the intention that I make it into something delicious.

In this case, it was fresh beetroot pulled up from my Aunt's vegetable garden and apples plucked from my Grandfather's apple tree, given to me within the space of an afternoon, that prompted me to develop a recipe to use both. 

Beetroot Relish isn't something that people generally drool over, but I have tweaked and tasted this recipe to within an inch of its life. I first served it when friends came over for a midsummer barbeque, with wafer crackers and a delicious Greek sheep's feta. We were sitting outside, at a table under a huge shady tree, and I was deep in conversation when I heard the exclamation, "THAT.is.INCREDIBLE!!!!". Someone had just tried the relish. 

"You'll have to give me the recipe for that!", "Oh my god!", "I don't even like beetroot, but that is delicious". 

Since the first batch I have given away many jars and received numerous requests for the recipe. I love hearing appreciative stories of how it impressed the in-laws at a family gathering or how much someone enjoyed making it, or which farmer's market had the best beetroot. 

To me, it encapsulates everything I love about food, the fact that the fresh ingredients were grown in family gardens, the willingness to share an abundance, the magic of turning beautiful fresh produce into something delectable. 

With so much low quality, processed, 'convenience' food readily available, this is the sort of food that gets people thinking and talking about how important and enjoyable it is to eat fresh, quality food, preferably grown for free in your own backyard.


Ingredients:

1kg of fresh beetroot (about 5 large ones).

600g of Granny Smith apples (about 6)

2 large brown onions

400ml good white wine vinegar

100ml apple cider vinegar

2 cups of water

1 and a quarter cups (packed) of soft brown sugar

3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice

3 teaspoons of salt

a small bunch of fresh thyme

Method:

* Peel the beetroot and grate into a large saucepan (or use a food processor). I use a coarse grater. Wear gloves if you don't fancy having lovely purple hands.

* Peel and core the apples and grate them into the saucepan.

* Peel the onions and grate them into the saucepan.

* Add the vinegar, sugar, salt, lemon juice and water. Stir well to ensure all ingredients are evenly mixed.

* Rub the small bunch of thyme between your hands over the saucepan so that just the little leaves fall off (or strip them off if you're patient). If any little stalks fall into the mixture, pull them out.

* Place the saucepan on medium heat until all of the sugar has dissolved (about 5 minutes) then stir, put a lid on the saucepan and turn the heat up to high. 

* The mixture should be boiling for about half an hour or until the beetroot is very soft and there is only a little liquid at the bottom, which should be quite thick and syrupy. Stir often to ensure the mixture doesn't stick to the bottom of the saucepan.

* Place about 6 clean, medium to large jars on a baking tray and put them in the oven for approximately 20 minutes at 150 degrees Celsius (without the lids).

* When the relish is ready, bring the jars out of the oven and, using an oven mitt, spoon the mixture into the jars whilst it is still hot. 

* Screw the lids on firmly and turn the jars upside down for a few minutes, then stand them the right way up again and leave to cool. This process heats the lid and allows the jar to seal properly.

* When cool, wash the jars off. Label and date them. 

* It is best to leave the relish in a cool dark place for about a month to allow the flavours to develop, but it is delicious even if you eat it straight away. 

* Serve on crackers with a good quality blue cheese, on hamburgers instead of traditional beetroot slices or blend equal parts beetroot relish with cashews and sheep's feta for totally more-ish dip!

* Enjoy!