Leisure Time

In between gardening, foraging in the tip shop and herding escapee cattle back into the paddocks, we like to spend some of our leisure time checking out the local attractions.  And we've managed to land ourselves right on the edge of a beautiful wine region.  Just like our previous home in the Perth Hills, we've lots of lovely wineries to explore.  Just as well we like wine huh!!

This weekend we had our very good friends M and N stay with us for a night. So we decided to take them for lunch at Green Door Wines.  Apart from doing some stonking good wines (their Chardonnay is a standout along with their Tempranillo) they also do amazing platters for lunch.  We ordered the Mile High which comes with our favourite, local soft cheese, Halls Suzette.  If you love soft rind cheeses, it's worth your while hunting out some Halls Suzette.  Lovely, delightfuly creamy and packed full of flavour.  Green Door use very local, high quality produce on their platters. They're worth going out of your way for.  Oh....and we tried the pastizzi this time. Small crispy pastry parcels of goodness.  Yum, yum, yum!!

Green Door Wines

Halls Family Dairy – Proudly Dairy Farming Since 1980

We were lucky to be blessed with a glorious, sunny day so we sat at one of their outside tables.  Check out the views.

Before we knew it, a good three or four hours of the day had completely disappeared.  But what a way to while away a few hours.

Another winery we've been keen to check out is Talisman Wines which has only recently opened it's cellar door.  Our very good friend G visited Talisman with us when he stayed a few weekends ago. Talisman makes many award-winning wines.  We like all of them but have a soft spot for their Shiraz and Chardonnay.  Oh, and if you think we're slightly barking going for Chardonnays, modern Chardonnays are nothing like the wines of the 80s.  If you've not tried one for a while, get out there and get tasting.  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Home - Talisman Wines

This is the view from the Talisman tasting room.  What's not to love.

The only problem with wine tasting, aside from getting tipsy, is that....it can be a wee bit expensive on the old hip pocket!!  Just saying. 

Out Bush

 We are lucky to be surrounded by beautiful bush in our little patch of paradise. In fact, there is a sizeable portion of state forest directly across the road from our house.  We love driving through it every day on the way to and from work.  The other thing we love doing is either walking in the forest or gathering wood for our fire. Of course, we stick to the rules and only take wood that is on the ground in designated collecting areas.  And that kind of decides which bits of forest we'll visit.

Most recently we visited a bit of the Wellington Forest called the Arcadia block. It is a truly beautiful bit of bush.  Although, the road in has not seen a grader for years it's seems. There is more corrugation than road.  But it's worth the bone rattling journey to while away an hour or so and spend some time sitting on a log just enjoying the peace and quiet.

Here are some pics.

Once again proving that I am not a photographer.  But hopefully you'll get some idea of how beautiful it is.  If you visit we'd love to take you out for a day in the bush. 

Tip Shop Find

Our local tip operates a tip shop.  Well, it is more tip than shop but every now and then we find a bargain.  Including two rusty old inner tubs from washing machines.  These were full of rust, full of possibility and cost us the grand total of $2.50 each.  They looked just the right size for some spuds we were planning to plant.  Given the cost of pots has risen astronomically of late, a pot of this size will set you back about $300, these seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.

They were covered with a lot of rust which R scrubbed off with a wire brush.

And they weren't the most attractive looking.

But after a quick spray with some rust converter and a couple of cans of enamel, wullah, they magically transformed into two, lovely, orange and marone garden beds for spuds.  For the grand total of about $30 each.

Orange and marone are two of my favourite colours.  They remin me of the lovely autumn leaves.  And the fading in of the red on the orange was inspired by the amazing work that T and S did on the letterbox for L and F.  S convinced me it was easier than it looks to do. So I gave it a go.  And I'm very happy with the end result.

The potatoes are growing away quite happily.  Let's hope they're productive.  I guess there'll be a post about that somem time anon.

Tomatoes, tomatoes and more tomatoes

One of my favourite things about Summer is a slice of buttered toast loaded up with thinly sliced, lightly salted, fresh tomato.  With this in mind we sowed a range of different tomato seeds in early September so that we could have well developed seedlings in the ground by Summer.  Our seed raising was really successful, so we had a bunch of plants to put in the ground.  We planted six in total (far too close together as mentioned in an earlier blog) and left the rest in the seed raising trays to do something with another time.   And then there were the volunteer tomatoes.  We whittled those down to a handful of the strongest plants.  The end result is that we had a veritable glut of tomatoes.  And there are only so many slices of tomato on toast a girl can eat!!

So we got busy in the kitchen.  Firstly, we turned about 5 kilos of tomatoes into tomato sauce.  I used Matt Preston's recipe which you can find on Delicious.com if you're interested in giving it a go.  It's very tasty but heavy on the sugar. I guess that's why it keeps though.  I did reduce the sugar and it seems to be keeping just fine.

Six kilos of tomatoes cooking in the pan.

Next, we preserved about the same number of tomatoes for use during winter. I used the Vacola method.  Chop the tomatoes, or leave them whole if they're small, and pack as many as you can into a sterilized jar.  Top with two teaspoons of lemon juice and a teaspoon of salt, or a tablespoon of lemon juice if you prefer, and water. After you've put the rings, lids and clips on in the normal way, load the bottles into your preserver. Then fill with water until it reaches about three quarters of the way up the jars, and slowly bring it up to 92 degrees Celsius.  Maintain that temperature for between 30 and 60 minutes (depending which instructions you follow). 

Five kilos of tomatoes waiting to be processed.

Chopping some heirloom tomatoes.

Tomatoes in the jar

There is sure a huge amount of work involved in making sauce and preserving tomatoes.  It seemed like we'd never get to the end of chopping and R developed some new muscles pushing the tomatoes through the sieve to remove the seeds and skins for the sauce.  But it was all worth it. Look at the end result!!

Oh, and we dried several kilos in the dehydrator as well.  Or, semi-dried them at least.  They've been portioned into usable amounts and are sitting in the freezer, waiting to be added to something delicious. 

We are a little over tomatoes now.  And there are still plenty on the vines to deal with.  But we did enjoy making the most of our harvest, including giving loads away.  I'm sure by next Summer we'll be ready to do it all over again.  Assuming we have an equally successful crop. 

Autumn

One of the things we've loved most about moving to our patch of paradise is the opportunity to plant more trees.  Our previous half acre was a wee bit limiting in that respect. Although, we did squeeze in as many trees as we could.  Nearly eight acres has meant that we can plant trees to our hearts content.  Well, sort of.  We've not put many in the paddocks because it's pretty likely the steers would just eat them.  Which reminds me, those crazy steers have pulled the plastic pegs out of the isolaters on the electric fence (which is currently off due to something or other going bung) and eaten those!!  Seriously.

Back to the trees.  We both love autumn colours and I've always wanted to plant a Manchurian Pear.  Not only does this tree put on a fantastic show of flowers but the leaves also turn a lovely vibrant red in autumn.   We were lucky enough to get one from Boreham Valley Nursery, a specialist tree nursery in Lowden. If you're after some heritage fruit trees, check these guys out.  They have a great range at reasonable prices.

  

Getting the tree was one thing.  Choosing the right spot for it was another.  Manchurian pears can grow up to 7 meters tall and 3 to 5 meters wide. They need a decent amount of room.  And we wanted to put it in view of the house.  Luckily for us there was a lovely bare patch of ground, near the olives and not too far from the house, that was just begging to have a tree plonked right in the middle of it.  

So, we did just that, plonked the pear right in the middle of the bare patch.  And then we nurtured it carefully through its first summer.  And this Autumn we were rewarded with a beautiful display of red leaves.  Much to our delight, we can see the display from the house.  

It might be just a glimpse now, but as the tree grows we're going to be enjoying that display more and more.  Can't wait.

Other People's Garden's

R's Mum celebrated her birthday a wee while ago.  J wanted some new plants for her garden.  So, for her present, we took her to a nursery where we all whiled away a very pleasant hour or so selecting a range of different plants which will (hopefully) thrive in her garden.  Then to finish off the gift R and I spent a couple of hours weeding and improving the soil and helping J put the plants in.  And we both discovered that it is just as much fun pottering in other people's gardens as it is in one's own.  Not that we're volunteering to that on a regular basis, mind.  We've more than enough pruning, planting and digging in our garden to keep us busy.

J's garden is just the right size to make the place cheery without being a massive amount of work.  J chose a fabulous range of plants.   Once they grow they should fill the space out nicely.  And hopefully crowd out those pesky weeds.

Here's what she chose.  

  

   

  

While we were on a roll, we also gave J's paving a hose down.  So now she has a lovely place to sit in the sun and enjoy the new garden she has created. 

Hopefully J is going to enjoy some time in the sun this weekend.   Happy birthday J.

Boo Hiss to Work

It is such a shame we have to go to work because there is so much to do in the garden.  I'm not wishing my life away but, roll on retirement.  I can't wait to have enough time to do what I want in the garden without cramming it into the weekend or a half hour snatched here or there from our evenings.  I'm pretty sure that R feels the same.  Especially when the garden has got away from us a wee bit.  As it has this year.

Just as well it's still the beginning of the year.  That gives us plenty of time to catch up with all that needs doing in the garden.  With that in mind, one Sunday not that long ago, when we had a fine day and some spare time on our hands, we managed to spend a good four hours in the garden.   We'd have preferred not to garden in 30-degree heat but, we slept in (oops) and the raspberry canes were starting to take over the shade house.  Something had to be done and we were the only ones around to do it.  

The previous owner of property grew vegetables in a very extensive hydroponic set up in the shade house.  He also grew the most amazing tasting raspberries and left us some canes so that we could keep on enjoying them.  That generous gift resulted in a great amount of excitement and a good deal of trepidation.  We've never grown raspberries and are basically, well, clueless.  I guess that's where the internet and reference books come in right.  We managed to glean enough knowledge to figure out how to prune the raspberries and divide them.  While we lost some of the original canes we successfully transplanted more and got some to grow from cuttings.  We doubled the number of canes.  Oh, well not quite doubled.  Some blackberries managed to sneak into the mix.  We'll be digging those out and planting them somewhere else.  In due course. 

Some of the raspberries, or perhaps the blackberries (it's difficult to tell) have made good headway to the edge of the shade house.  Alarmingly, a few had tunneled underneath and made good their escape. 

Others were making their way across the shade house.  No walking in bare feet for us.  Even sandals were risky! 

Things were getting out of hand.  They're supposed to grow up.  Not across. Of course, they do actually need something to grow up.  So, we gloved up and got stuck in. 

Like all good farmers, the previous owner used lots of blue baling twine on the property.  We've been gathering it up from all over the place.  Following M's example, this is what we used to create something for the raspberries to climb up.  My job was to unknot the string (which was in a right knotty mess as only baling twine can get) and R's was to tie it from a wire that was strung between two poles. Phew, that took a good hour alone.  Then it was a matter of twining the vines around the twine.  This is the end result.  Raspberries (or blackberries) growing in the right direction.  Up!

They are a little late ripening this year, but our hard work has been rewarded with some freshly picked raspberries.  Yum.

While we were stringing the raspberries, we kept hearing a scratchy scrabbling sound.  It took us a little while to figure out that it was coming from some of the hydroponic pipes which are stored on the ground.  This is what we found, not one but two blue tongue lizards. Stuck in the pipes.

Neither of the bobtails seemed particularly keen to get out of the pipes.  And they were clearly struggling to get any purchase on the slippery plastic.  It was such a hot day, and we were worried they'd die of heat stroke.  So, we tipped the pipes up and shook the bobtails out.  No mean feat given the pipes are 12 metres long and weigh several kilos.  But out they came.  And they didn't look at all appreciative.  I guess it's the bobtails that have been eating our strawberries and tomatoes.  Cheeky blighters.  It's lucky we don't mind sharing. Oh, and the pipes aren't on the ground anymore.

Speaking of tomatoes, I think we might have planted our seedlings too close together.  What we've ended up with is a veritable mess of tomato vines, several different types, all intertwined.   I was going to prune them all back, so the individual plants were more accessible for picking.  But I just couldn't do it.  They all had tomatoes happily ripening away on them.  So now what we do is shift the vines about the place so we can pick all the ripe tomatoes, including the ones hidden away.   They've only just started ripening in the last week or two, despite being planted in late Spring, but we've managed to pick six or seven kilos so far.  And, this is THE most amazing part of the story, R - committed disliker of raw tomato - has been eating them, straight from the vine.  Far out!!

Apart from tomatoes, we've been picking chilies, egg plants, lettuce, spring onions, capsicums (the second crop hasn't been eaten, thankfully) and the last of the cucumbers. Oh, and basil. 

Chilies and capsicums

Onions and basil

This is the flower of the eggplant.  Pretty huh.  The plants are now chest height and don't need any propping up despite the weight of the fruit.

  

We also picked the last of our summer fruit, a couple of dozen Golden Queen peaches.  I almost didn't get any photos of these.  We pretty much picked and ate the fruit straight from the tree (apart from a small number that Mum got to eat) as soon as it got ripe.  Those peaches were seriously yum.  

Overall we've been very happy with the produce from our summer garden.  It was such a relief to pick fruit and veg after we didn't pick a thing from our winter veg patch.  All that hard slog making garden beds in sticky clay has paid off.  Yay.