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. 

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.