She'll be apples

We discovered three apple trees on our property when we first moved here. According to the property history there had always been a row of fruit trees on the original farmstead but I don't think these trees are those same trees. These are in reasonably good condition as far as my limited apple tree diagnosing skills go, but they were a little unloved.  They produced some fruit but the day I went to inspect them, every apple was gone.  I'm not sure if they fell off and the birds ate them, or a band of hessian bag carrying possums came in one night and collected the lot.  Who knows.  Anyway we pruned them back and are proud to see some early signs of some pretty handsome looking fruit so far.  And the grubs agree.  Grubs at our place take their life in their hands with an ever expanding chicken population that take their grub hunting skills very seriously.  Not being one to want to use any pesticide I've not done anything to prevent the mass migration of grubs into our apples.  Someone told me to spray apple cider vinegar but then someone else told me they drink that in the morning as a tonic. Very confusing.  So on the discovery of fruit producing apple trees, we got all excited about being fruit growers.  So like crazed addicts we just had to purchase more.  Most Tasmanian's know their apples. They grow more varieties than I have ever seen.  I suspect the subject is in the school curriculum.  That by Year 10 you must have passed at least three subjects on unheard of apple varieties.   So rather than pretend we knew the difference between our Lady in the Snows and our Cox Orange Pippins we spoke to our trusted Farmers' Market person of much apple knowledge.  She sells the bare rooted variety mid year.  So we arranged to meet.  We drove to the stated location which was a public ground on the outskirts of the city.  We saw her trailer.  Just behind the toilet block. There were others waiting.  It was cold.  Freezing in fact.  Like someone was throwing ice cubes at you the minute you stepped out of the vehicle.  People were milling around as one customer was sorted at a time.  It felt like we were buying cocaine.  In Tassie, it's who you know for apples.  Good ones.  So this year, for the new ones it's a bit early to tell.  But I will remain on full possum alert.  I might consider a stakeout from the upstairs bedroom window, ready with spot light to shine in their eyes, 'You.  Down There.  Put down your hessian sack and step slowly away from the tree'.   Busted.

Hooked on fishing

Sometimes we should just stick to what we know.  It usually starts with the backpack. For a little dog that means someone is going fishing.  Well not me of course.  But a backpack means a ham roll, a thermos of tea and probably some Jam Fancies if he's in luck.  He was very excited.  They took off early on a perfect morning.  I don't partake in these expeditions.  The whole fishing thing is not for me.  I just know I'd end up with a fish hook being lodged somewhere creative.  I'm ok on boats but prefer something bigger, with an Acapulco Lounge and a ten piece band to see you off. About 8am I sent a text to the crew, 'How's the fishing?'  Usually a report comes back from First Mate Bennie (pictured) about how many fish were biting and how they'd like to stay out a little longer.  Instead, on this day the report was a little different.  It read 'bit bumpy, caught a few then First Mate Bennie somehow got a hook in his nose.  Just at the vets now, he's all ok, but his fishing days are over.  Home soon'.  The First Mate had a first prize nose piercing.  The vet said it was pretty common but mostly it's in the lip.  The hook was cut following a minor anaesthetic and he was soon as right as rain.  But unfortunately from now on he will no longer be the little Gilligan on this SS Mishap.  I haven't told him yet. He didn't even get to stay out long enough for his ham roll.

Fruit Pickers required

Nature doesn't work like a supermarket.  Obviously.  However I do have a new respect for berry pickers as we enter the season of fruit picking.  Our neighbour's cherry orchard has many bright orange bins strategically placed on the ground in between the trees for the yearly collection of travellers who come to help pick.  Some come back every year and the good ones are always in demand.  It's hard going as I soon learnt as our generous neighbour allowed us last year to go into the orchard and pick as much as we liked following the end of the exporting and picking period.  As they don't all ripen at once, the ones left on the trees were left behind as they weren't ready in time.  We have a similar problem with our blueberry.  Yes.  Singular.  It ripened before the others.  I've got the team of backpackers on standby but the blueberry still has a way to go. As I now appreciate, these berries unlike grapes will not ripen by the bunch but by the individual.  So when said berry ripens into its purple powdered coating, I can be ready.  That's why blueberries are so expensive.  Not because they think they are all individual little snowflakes blossoming into ripeness in their own special way, but because you can't pick them by the bunch.  I now stand in wonder at supermarket displays of punnets of unknown location blueberries and appreciate the work put in to fill a display case.  Let me now just correct that.  Not so much display as more take the lid off the crate and put up a big price point sign.  Our local fruit store makes a special note of what fruit is local.  It uses the latest technology to display the weekly specials by putting a sign on top of a broken down ute outside an unoccupied (for years) property on the corner of the busy roundabout.  I kinda like this approach. When the fruit is local it places in capitals LOCAL BLUEBERRIES so the locals can read it as they whizz around at full pelt towing boat or trailer.  Boat being the preferred towing apparatus at this time of year.  So I'll keep you posted on the berry picking. Just the one of course. 

Today's weather forecast...just look under the trees

I, like many other people who were not born in Tasmania, wrongly thought a hot Tassie day meant just reducing your usual three layers of Kathmandu clothing down to two.  This weekend proved that wrong.  We've had a few days of pretty warm weather for this neck of the woods.  Whilst our country home generates a breeze in itself, (read that as a bloody great draught in winter) we found ourselves all a little bit slower and seeking the cool spots of the house.  Similarly our animals did likewise but were a little more prepared than us.  They seem to be better at predicting the day's weather and generally find themselves a suitable shady spot under a tree well before we've cottoned onto the effects of blistering hot or windy day.  The chickens whilst usually found roaming in packs throughout the property retire to shaded shrubs and branches, or set up camp in the old shed.  Our two goats Billy and Harry (Harry pictured, who used to be called Donald, but we had to change his name because he complained) settle down for a quiet day sleeping close together in a shady spot.  The goats love to be where we are.  We returned to indoors one night last week to start dinner and only later realised that they had removed their tethered leads and jumped the rock wall to come into the back garden.  We found them just in time and poking around the clothes line having left a trail of vacuum sucked branches that were once our rose bushes.  They hoovered their way around the garden and turned a flourishing green and leafy Virginia Creeper into a single twig left poking out of a few remaining rocks that didn't collapse with the break in.  Back to the pen they went.  So rather than looking up my weather App in future, maybe I'll just go outside and see what the farm is up to.  That way I'll know what's coming.  'Harry, I know you're wearing a touch of cashmere but will I need the Katmandu or not?'

Nanna didn't do bottling...just bottles

Ahh...preserving.  Just like nanna used to do.  Well not my nanna actually, she was more the Stout drinking, Camel cigarette smoking kind of nanna but that's not the point.  Regardless of your nanna's preferences, finding ways of using the abundance of summer produce here in Tassie is a well regarded tradition.  Even the man at the roadside stall standing at the back of his ute selling kilo bags of locally grown apricots knew we'd want the small ones for preserving.  Not usually the kind of culinary knowledge you would expect from someone sporting a well worn blue singlet and some highly descriptive tattoos.  Wars have been won and lost here over lesser fruits.  Having recently attended a preserving class, I came away only slightly the wiser on the mysteries of stuffing fruit in a bottle and stuffing the bottles in a bigger contraption to boil the buggery out of them to call them preserved.   I found myself somewhat out of my depth as the other class participants swapped stories about preserving from home grown fruit I'd never even heard of, and probably extinct by now anyway.  The only fruit trees I recall growing up with were nectarine trees.  Unfortunately they were blamed for producing the first huntsman spider of the summer and as a result were immediately chopped down.  Just to be safe.  So last night we commenced our very first attempt at preserving, and when I say we, I don't mean me.  You see not coming from the right nanna family, I merely observed the operations from my nearby apprentice stool with my fellow, observe-only colleagues, Minnie and Bennie.  We watched on and listened to the official preserving music from the Rolling Stones (well they are preserved in a way, and there are stones...). As for the jars, I assume you leave them on the shelf until the trees, and cupboards are bare; and in your last gasps of starvation in the midst of a deathly winter, there will always be apricots.  But just no Stout.

Instant Chickens, just add water

We thought we had a lot of chickens.  They grow up so fast you know.  Now we've got a shit load.  Every now and again a hen would disappear only to reappear about a month later with a fluffy dozen of her best.  The last lot had taken residence in the front garden prompting us to consider putting a sign in the driveway, 'Chickens Crossing'.  Our neighbour said he drove past the other day and the driveway moved.  And then this morning, another fresh batch arrived with proud mother presenting us with her new bakers dozen.  Inghams would be feeling a little nervous right now except for the fact we're committed to not eating our family.  When I first moved to Tasmania it puzzled me why so many roosters were roadside wandering the highways in gangs of two or three.  I only later found out that these roadside gangs are the result of too many roosters from too many chickens which is exactly our problem.  Whilst the rooster road gangs don't pose any immediate problem, I mean they're not holding up wagon trains or anything, but the dumping of any animal isn't ideal.  Unfortunately the other alternative I'm told is to donate them to the zoo.  Where they are a gift for the tigers.  And I imagine the tigers aren't exactly wanting them to play chess with either.  The difficult thing is that even if we did find a solution for the too many roosters problem, they aren't exactly born in pink and blue.  Meaning we don't know who is a rooster until we've heard cock a doodle doo.  And by then they may have already embarked on full time rooster duties. So the rooster dilemma remains without an obvious coq au vin answer.  In the meantime, if anyone is looking for some lovely little chickens....

Clueless Cooking

Summer.  A time of eating great produce.  We're not serious growers but we enjoy eating what's come out of our small if chaotic veggie plots.  It's simple food that makes me smile, made from simple home ingredients. Over Christmas I took time to consult the various food magazines that promote baking extravaganzas that are as easy as following the 127 simple steps.  Or worse, following the simple 5 steps and wondering why it didn't turn out because they failed to mention the other 122.  I've had baking mishaps that can be described as monumental of late.  Pastry that would only come together if I pulled out a glue gun and stick it to the bench, moussaka making that took an entire day to produce something that looked like a major tidal tsunami of ingredients moving in slow motion across the plate, and scones that could withstand participation in a game of backyard cricket.  And I blame the writers.  I've come across recipes that listed ingredients that failed to make the final cut in the method section.  Where did they go? Did someone just take them off the team?  Then I've had items not listed in the ingredients but making a starring appearance in the mixing.  Is nobody proof reading recipes anymore?  Aside from the odd typographical error, and I'm guilty of many myself, the list of ingredients in today's latest mags are definitely getting longer and more complex.  The ingredients often require a google search because the local store would just look at you a bit strange, and when you do find them listed under rare or indigenous species you are left wondering if parsley would suffice.  Simple is being replaced with complex guilt.  No longer can we be proud of a home made left over ham and pickle roll, we have to have made the bloody roll ourselves.  The ham must be a specific rare breed and from single origin (or is that coffee?) and the pickles must contain at least one item only found in the jungles of Borneo.  Dessert ingredients, the origins of left over grown fruits and ice cream are now replaced with dessert trolley masterpieces with sprinkles of goji berry dust or some such time consuming piffle.  Restaurants yes. Home kitchens, no.  No time and no team of workers dedicated to grinding berries.  I feel ill at the thought of the money I have spent on ingredients for recipe disasters.  I've kept economies strong and kept my local supermarket executives in bonus town for many years.  I've paid high prices for punnets, bunches and bags of premium produce only to result in being hurled into the bin (some are so bad I'm ashamed to give them to the goats).   I'm not a clueless cook and neither are you.  We've been persuaded to purchase more than we need by fancy photographs of equally fancy food that took at team to prepare and a stylist to print.  So in future, my simple is the new black.  And my berries are not for grinding.