Happy Days

Today was one of the days that I love having.....most of the time I was in the kitchen! Our three helpers helped me make some cheeses - Mozzarella, Halumi and I still have quark hanging in the kitchen to drain. We made home made pizza for lunch with the mozzarella - 5.5 litres of milk for enough cheese for three pizzas.

Pizza with our chorizo,and the fresh mozzarella

Three lovely helpers - Gina, Marlene and Klara

Quark - we have two German girls so wanted to show them how nice my quark is.

I made a Herman the German carrot cake, which we had with fresh cream that I got yesterday from my dairy cows. Yum. Sour dough bread is still in progress.

I have racked my pineapple wine, but will do it again tomorrow, as there is still a little bit of sediment. It's very strong! More of a spirit than a wine I think, so it might have to be drunk with soda water.

The afternoon found us outside where we killed 9 roosters. Fortunately I'd put dinner on in the oven before we went out. I didn't plan things very well, because dinner was a casserole of chicken thighs - with onion, garlic, dried mushrooms and then I topped it with some of my tomato pasta sauce than I preserved a while ago. I don't normally eat the same meat that we kill on the same day. The chicken liver pate can wait until tomorrow I think.  Usually if I don't do it straight away, it doesn't get done, but I will get it done tomorrow.....along with the peanut butter I didn't get done today. Cheese making is quite time consuming!

Chicken Dinner - I did top this with tomato sauce. Everything in it was either home grown or purchased locally. The more of a locavore I become, the harder it is to buy food from further away!

Dessert was a quick thermie icecream - fresh cream, banana and strawberries.......did I mention that it was a happy day!!!!

Photos - some of the reasons I live where I live

This is a little patch of scrub that was left standing when the remainder of the paddocks was cleared. I'm so grateful the previous owners left it. It's a lovely quiet spot!

These two photos are taken down the Anabranch. An anabranch is a branch off a river - where it comes out and then goes back into the river. This is permanent water. The tyre tube was left there in the last flood.

I love bauhinia trees (above). They are a native to this area. The photo on the left was taken at the end of winter when it loses alot of it's leaves and goes a lovely brown/autumny colour. Then the leaves turn green and we get beautiful flowers. The stock love to eat this tree and it's also a lovely shade tree.

Lime bush. It's very prickly when small and doesn't normally have fruit on it, although this year they did. The taller tree on the left is a normal mature tree. They've been loaded with lovely fruit. Normally we have a lot of fruit fly in them, but not this year.

My kombucha on the left and kefir on the right. Ginger and Bush lime.

Wildflowers.

I like to eat our own meat, milk, cheese, yoghurt.

And of course mushrooms come most years in spring rain. This is my mushroom and rosemary salt.

Attitude of gratitude

I've had several blog topics going through my mind and I've been taking photos that fit, but I just don't seem to be finding time to actually post anything! In between farm work growing and preparing food, and  no backpackers, I get to the stage that sleep is more important. Today I'm driving with Edmund to biggenden. Well I'm obviously not driving at present, I'm just the passenger. I thought I'd write today about gratitude because at the moment we are feeling very grateful for some lovely rain we've had, and that western Queensland also got some, as did a lot of other places.

It's incredible the change in how we feel and think when there's some green grass around. It's almost as if we have new lenses in our glasses. I don't suffer depression, thank goodness, but I do get down. I get down with the amount of work that we seem to continually have in front of us, I get down when I can't seem to find time to do the things I love (gardening, cooking, writing,reading) but when there's green grass around that "down ness" turns into anticipation - what can I do next?

I'm grateful for the rain, for making it green and for bringing mushrooms! For the last four days I've picked mushrooms, I've dried mushrooms, I've frozen mushrooms and we've eaten mushrooms. My latest last night was making some mushroom and rosemary salt.

I've also done a few other foodie things. This week we killed roosters and then I boned them out for freezing. It's bush lime season too, so I should be picking them to do something with them. In past years I used to make bush lime cordial but that has too much sugar so that's out. I have tried some kefir and kombucha flavoured with them. So far the kefir is good, but kombucha isn't as nice with citrus, so I'm not sure how it will go. Bush limes are beautiful things. They are tiny, less than 1cm in diameter, but look just like a tiny lime. This year there's been a bumper crop too. There's some in the pig paddocks and the pigs eat them as they fall to the ground.

Some days I just think how lucky I am to have all this food around me - especially when it's wild food and I don't have to do anything except pick it! I really do love living where I do and living they way I do. I'm so very grateful that Kim shares this passion with me. Or maybe he just puts up with it! The other day I was helping him feed pigs when I got distracted picking mushrooms. I saw him drive off and I thought " oh dear, he's got the s--ts and taken off and left me to finish it off." When I asked him where he went and was he cranky cos I was off foraging. His response was "how long have we been married?"

So I'm just grateful!

I will post some photos in the next day or so.....

Intensive Farming

I'm currently reading my favourite book of all time - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. A good point was brought up in it about CAFO's which is the American term for feedlots, but covers intensive piggeries and poultry farms as well.

The powers that be, would have you believe that we need to farm intensively to feed the world. While, it is probably correct that it is a more inexpensive way of feeding the world their protein, it really isn't necessary. I personally believe that the bigger issue with world starvation is political and not because of trouble with the production of food. If more regional centres were encouraged to develop their own local food economy, by growing and processing food locally, there would be less reliance on feedlots. For example, Rockhampton is our local centre (in Central Queensland) and we have two abattoirs that predominantly processes grassfed and finished beef and yet it is very difficult to buy any of that beef in Rockhampton butcher shops. (Or that is labelled as such)

Anyway, not to get into that argument now, needless to say, the general assumption is that we need to have intensively farmed animals as it is an efficient way of producing cheap protein. The following are three of the impacts or concerns that I have with intensive farming.

1. The ethical treatment of animals - feedlots and sheds have animals confined in small spaces. Those animals in sheds see no sunlight but are protected from the elements of bad weather - feedlot cattle see plenty of sunlight, but also have to put up with the wet season, which will see them standing knee deep in mud! They are packed fairly tightly which is a breeding ground for pathogens so they need to be fed antibiotics - this is beneficial for two reasons - protection from disease and illness, and it also helps with weight gain. Animals were bred to live outdoors, that is why they have feather, fur or hair. They find their own protection from weather in woodlands.
2. Pollution. Having this many animals in small places creates pollution. Run off from the farms effluent washes into water systems creating problems locally and eventually when it hits the oceans. In contrast, animals on pasture are cleaner, as their effluent enriches the soil. Most soils in Australia are low in fertility so encouraging good animal management on farms will improve soil fertility and therefore increase farm viability.
3. Health. Animals raised on healthy pastures provide healthy food for humans. They have less chance of carrying pathogens and will have a higher vitamin and mineral content. Cattle and sheep are not designed to eat grain. Pigs and Poultry can eat grain, but they eat an awful lot of grass too. Not all grazing management is created equal though. To receive maximum benefit from the excess nutrients from the animals, pasture needs to be maintained in the paddocks. Bare paddocks are no better than a shed in terms of run-off. Where there is actively growing grass, it has the added benefit of storing carbon in the soil. (another topic for another post).

Which kind of farming do you want to see?

If you would like to read more about ethical Food and Farming, this is a great blog to read. Tammi Jones Food Ethics.

Busy Days

Wow, it's been a month since I've posted. So much for my self imposed goal to post something each day!! Life is just busy! I'm stealing  a little time now, waiting for Kim and Edmund to get back from unloading cattle. I've been showing our french backpackers how to make pasta - they've made the sauce (creamy prawns), and they've also made some "little pillows" which is a deep fried  pasta basically, sprinkled with sugar for desert. And smokos for the next week! Dinner is going to be a carb overload, but I suppose we don't do it very often so hopefully I'll survive!

So what have I been up to in the last month? Apart from working on the pig farm - less backpackers has meant a little more work for me, which makes life a tad busier. Office work, marketing, cleaning, cooking......still needs to be done. Fortunately I love cooking so I prioritize that (sometimes that's not such a good idea!)

I finally dug my turmeric and processed that. I peeled,boiled it and then sliced and dried it, before finally grinding it. My yield was not very good this year, so I don't think I'll have enough to last until next year.

I've dug my potatoes - I don't think I'll give up pigs to become a potato farmer! I can't remember how much money I spent on seed potatoes, but I only got about 5-7kgs so at a guess, they are about $5/kg. Not happy at all! Although they taste pretty damn good.

I have done quite a few other food things: the usual suspects  (weekly)like fetta, yoghurt, sourdough, herman the german friendship cake, and some other things like bacon (not smoked, just cured), halumi, beetroot relish, tomatoes preserved in vacola jars, tomato sauce (pasta sauce to freeze and "ketchup"), mulberry jam and passionfruit wine. The wine is umm....interesting. I'm hoping it will mature!

My garden is looking impressive! I spent some time today wipper snipping. The snakes have been plague proportion almost, and after seeing one in the garden, I think I need to tidy up. We've seen 4 browns and one tiapan, so you can't afford to have too much long grass around. I suppose when you have grain, you have mice and then you have snakes. I just wish they were the carpet snakes and not the deadly ones!

I'm eating spinach, silver beat, NZ spinach, tomatoes, eggplants, cabbage, pumpkin, pawpaw, potatoes, passionfruit and lots of herbs and I've planted more lettuce, spinach, beans, tomatoes and carrots.

Anyway, Kim has returned we've had dinner and surely it's now time to go to bed! I think that that's my favourite time of day.

Tired!

I sometimes worry that there's something wrong with me because I'm tired all the time! I've been pondering this and have decided that maybe it's just because I'm always doing something!
Last weekend was the markets and yesterday we had a 20 hour round trip delivering pigs to the abattoir and then driving to Kingaroy to pick up a new boar and a ram.

And because I like to cook I do things after dinner instead of sitting and watching TV!

Tonight I pickled some beetroot, bottled my kefir, bottled kombucha, cooked sausages and tomatoes for breakfast, put some sourdough in the bread machine, pickled a piece of belly pork for bacon.

Dinner tonight was pulled pork with homemade tortillas.

Ummmm, I feel tired just thinking of all that! Lucky for all of us that Tanya made a lemon meringue pie for desert. I don't do desert, but I ate it so that she didn't think I was rude! (Sorry no photos I'm on my phone tonight).

I think I'll enjoy my beauty sleep tonight!