One Cold Morning

One Friday we went out bush to gather some wood for the fire.  There are designated areas we can collect wood off the ground from.  The good wood near the road tends to disappear quite quickly in the season. So we were well pleased to find a few good logs only 50 metres or so from the road.  We duly spent several hours sawing and carting the wood and managed to get a good ute load.  But there was still at least another ute load to be had.  So we decided to come back early the following morning, because we knew it would be weeks before we'd get another opportunity.    We had plans already for the Saturday so we got up very, very early.  Well, very early for us at least.  The sun was only just coming up, it was 3 degrees (almost) when we set off and 8 when we got home.  Just as well we like the cold.

The lovely thing about those cold, crisp mornings in our part of the world is that we get the most delightful mists.  Here are some pics of mists across the valley's we drove through on our way to the designated wood collection area.  Such a beautiful sight. We just had to stop and enjoy it for a while. 

We love going out bush to gather wood, or just for a picnic for that matter.  We work really hard not to disturb the bush around the fallen trees that we're gathering.  It is tricky dodging stuff you don't want to tread on when your arms are loaded up with wood and you're concentrating on staying upright.  So we generally find a path first.  One that doesn't have any small or new plants and no rocks or other trip hazards.  This visit was trickier than most because there were orchids emerging all over the place, plus a bunch of fungi and other small plants growing close to the ground. 

I don't know what this little red plant is but it is everywhere.  

There were dozens and dozens of orchids coming up.  They can be hard to see in amongst all the leaf litter, particularly when it's misty.  But we managed to weave a path around them.  We're going to head back out to this patch of bush in a month or so to see what kind they are,

There was plenty of fungi to avoid.  I think the round black balls are fungi at least.  Maybe the wee red plant in the earlier picture is too?

 

 

There were also lots of ant mounds to avoid.  Apart from not wanting to have a hoard of angry ants running up our legs, we really didn't want to damage all of their hard work in buidling such an interesting home for themselves. 

The cobwebs were definitely harder to see.  There is one in this photograph I promise. Once the mist lifted and the sun hit the dew drops on them they were easy to spot and magical to look at.  

This one is a little easier to see.

The bush is so beautiful.  We always make time to just sit and enjoy it when we're out getting wood.

This little beauty was growing on the edge of the track and very easy to spot. What a stunner.

We did have a wee laugh when we stopped to photograph this bush.  We'd been to see Bob Downe at the Regal earlier and the year. He'd done a skit about "you know you're getting old when.....you start admiring the bushes in people's garden".  Ha!! Guess we're getting old then. 

This is what happens

This is what happens when you say to one of your best friends, "Of course you can give it a go."  He mows the whole lawn for you.   

What a legend.  Now we just need to line up a bunch more jobs and find some equipment for him to try out.  Just kidding. 

Chestnuts

This year our chestnut trees were loaded.  We're not sure how, but we managed to beat the parrots to the nuts and bravely picked several kilos. I say bravely because we did have to glove up with our thickest leather gloves before venturing forth to pick the chestnuts.  If you've ever seen a chestnut on a tree - or on the ground in our case - you'll know they are covered in serious spikes.  Those spikes will penetrate the thickest gloves we have. It's fair to say, even gloved up, we picked those suckers up very, very carefully.

In Australia, the chestnuts fall to the ground once they're ripe. I'm kinda thankful we don't need to pick them from the tree. But picking them from the ground has its own challenges. R learnt very quickly that, if you wear thongs when you go chestnut picking, you'd better be really good at hopping when you lose one of them.  Either way, these nuts need careful handling to reap the reward of the smooth, brown kernel that is hidden inside.

This pic will give you an idea of how spiky the husk is.  Inside one husk there is generally at least two and sometimes four nuts.  Just as well. If each nut was wrapped in its own husk, I'm pretty sure we'd let the parrots have them.

I suspect most of you have heard the ever-popular tune, The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).  It always conjures up images of snow, mulled wine and roaring fires for me.  Chestnut season in our part of the world is at the end of Summer, in March.  Definitely not the season for roaring fires.  Lucky for us we have a good friend who loves chestnuts.  She told us that she boils and peels them for eating.  So that's what we did.  Before boiling, a small cross needs to be cut in each nut.  Apart from the spiky husk, chestnuts have a tough outer brown skin and a softer inner skin.  That's a lot of skins that need to be removed and, unless you're roasting or boiling the chestnuts (or a parrot) you're not getting those nuts clean. 

The nuts need to be peeled while they're hot.  The skins harden up once they cool down.  Seriously, we'd never tried chestnuts before we embarked on picking these.  We had no idea how much danger of injury was involved.  Between us we managed to peel about half a kilo and of course, we munched on several along the way.  They're surprisingly sweet.  I guess we expected them to be savoury cos they're, well, nuts.  I bet they'd be amazing over an open fire.  Next year, if we get brave enough to pick again, we'll stick some in the freezer so we can experience them roasted.

These pictures show the processing of boiled nuts.

I did some research to see what I could do with the chestnuts that didn't involve adding chocolate. Not that I'm against chocolate mind. I quite like it. But I was hoping for something a little main meal.  And I found a recipe for pumpkin, sage and chestnut risotto.  Which is kind of handy.  Because we just picked a pumpkin from our veg patch. Guess that's tomorrow's tea sorted. 

Oh, and if any of you love chestnuts, you're more than welcome to share ours.  Just as long as you come and pick them yourselves.

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.