A Joyful Keeper

I woke up this morning at 6.30 to a very cold house. The fire had gone out, and it was freezing! Outside, it was literally freezing. I pulled on my clothes and headed crunched out over the frosty grass to the woodshed, to cut some kindling and get some small bits of wood to get the heater going again. That warmed me up a bit!

I went back in and lit the heater, made myself a cup of tea, and hubby a “coffee to go” in his thermos mug thingo. Poor dh was in shock to see me up and about. I told him not to get used to it, it may never happen again! He chuckled.

Next to the heater and with cuppa in hand, I got my electronic water bottle (ie laptop computer) and started doing some visiting in blogland. It was so nice and quiet.

When the kids got up, Elizabeth headed out with the camera and took the above photo. She also had some fun doing her own “trick photography”. She excitedly showed me a mountain of snow in our front yard…..

 …. which in reality was the frost on top of the car. Got to give her points for creativity.

A little later my children’s tummies were in need of warmth, so I cooked up a pot of porridge.

Now the sun is shining and the frost is starting to melt. It is going to be a lovely day.

 

This is the day which the LORD hath made;

we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24 

I need a better camera. That is, if I wake up early and want to get a close up of the kangaroos in my back yard. And I can just imagine what the neighbors thought if they saw me out the back stalking kangaroos - in my nightie, with a shawl and big clumpy boots! Not a pretty sight! I took 10 photos, but only one turned out. If you click on the photo twice it will get bigger and you should be able to see the two ‘roos, on of them looking at me in wonder:

That is the road behind them, which they soon hopped over to get away from the paparazzi.

Ah the country life!

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this topic, I really didn’t grow much this summer because of limited water supplies. What I did grow, however, was a great help in keeping the grocery bills down a little. Having some extra to put away has also been a bonus.

I only grew one zucchini plant, because I know what happens when I plant too many - lol! I found that this was just enough for our family, with some to freeze for winter as well. To freeze it, I just grate the zucchini, skin and all, and then put it in freezer bags. I put about 1 1/2 cups of zucchini in each bag since that is what my winter recipes call for. Here are my bags in the bottom drawer of my upright freezer:

On the right you can see bags of frozen tomato puree. Since I only had two tomato plants which were mainly intended for salads, I bought two boxes of tomatoes to preserve. Mum helped me cook and puree them, and instead of bottling them this year, froze them. I have enough space in the freezer. I’ve already used some for making a Bolognaise sauce, and it is soooooo yummy!

Here is a picture of my four pumpkins:

They will probably end up being soup, oh, and served with roasts….. mmmm!

Now my garden is looking a bit weary as the frosts have come and most plants have died off. Autumn is really here with the leaves starting to change color and fall:

Yesterday I went out and picked the last of the harvest:

Now I am looking forward to pottering around in the greenhouse, seeing whether I can coax anything to grow in there during the winter months. And of course, sitting inside by the fire, quilting…..

While all my blogging friends in the Northern Hemisphere are enjoying Spring, those of us Down Under are watching the leaves change colors and bringing in what is left in our veggie plots.

Here on our little farm, I have been quite pleased with what I have harvested this year. We didn’t have much water, so I kept my planting to a bare minimum - only one zucchini plant, one Roma, one bigger tomato plant, two cucumber vines, a few capsicums, one eggplant, and some herbs. The only one plant I had lots of was the self seeding cherry tomato. That just pretty much grows itself, and I let it go wild. I had four pumpkin vines, two of which produced. One had three butternuts and the other had one big round green one. The latter was from seeds from a supermarket pumpkin that I just wacked in the ground. Next year I hope to grow the pumpkins down by the dam where they can just go wild.

Our fruit trees suffered from the frost and lack of water/care before we bought the property. Despite that, we got ONE PEACH (LOL), lots of plums, and heaps and heaps and heaps of apples! Just imagine what my little orchard could produce with some TLC.

Besides the plum cordial that I made, I also made jam. I have to admit that I cheat when I make jam. I use Jamsetta. That makes a perfect jam every time… except this time! The plum jam ended up quite thick. It still tastes lovely, but I was surprised that it ended up that thick. Usually I have more trouble with thin, runny jam - that’s why I use the Jamsetta. I guess the plums had a lot of pectin in them naturally. Anyway, I’ll know for next time.

These are just a few of the apples we got from our trees this year:

Because we had so many, the ones that had lots of bruises and funny bits in them went to the chooks. I also gave boxes and bags of the apples away to friends and family. Most of them I sorted out and the kids just ate… are still eating! I put as many as I could in the two bottom drawers of our fridge, and the rest in a big bucket in the kitchen. The kids just grabbed one whenever they felt like it. We still have lots and it has been a great saving in our grocery budget.

Since the kids were enjoying the apples fresh, I decided not to make applesauce this year. My mum made some for us though, from some that we gave them, and that has gone straight into the freezer.

All the children are up now and I’ve just made a big pot of porridge. I’d better finish this post and keep going tomorrow. Thanks for dropping in and it is lovely to be back.

We had a good start to the school day with all of us watching “The Story of Stuff”. It dealt with a lot of the issues I have been trying to teach the children and myself. Last week I started a Frugal Friday post, but didn’t finish it in time. Looking at this 20 min video confirmed to me what I was trying to put into writing (and hopefully will finish writing and be ready to post this Friday).

As we get back into the school year, and settling into our homestead, there are lots of issues to deal with. First of all we have to get used to actually doing school at home, instead of on the road, on an airplane, in between moves, at other people’s houses, etc, etc, etc. Secondly, we have to deal with doing school at the kitchen table, in a small house, without enough space to have all our school stuff out. Both are a challenge. The first one will happen eventually… slowly. The second one needs a lot of work!

I have decided to pack away a lot of the school books that sit on the shelf “in case we need them” during the year. It hurts to do this, because I love to just get up in the middle of something we are studying and say - “Hey, let’s look up some more about that in this book!” I have a LOT of old National Geographics that I got from the op shop or from friends, for example. But I don’t have the space to put them out. I am going to pack them away…. but then a voice says to me… Why are you doing that?! Once they are packed away, will I really ever look at them again?! Probably not. I guess I am thinking that one day we might build a school room in the shed, and then I’ll have lots of space to put them all up on bookshelves… and in the meantime they can just sit in the huge shed we have. The main thing is that I need to get as much as possible out of the house so that it is easy to maintain, clean, do school, etc.

I am really not that bad at getting rid of stuff. I do it all the time. We never have garage sales or sell stuff. We give it away. The Lord has blessed us by receiving free things, and we bless others in the same way. It’s just that we have moved into a house that is half the size of our old one, and I need to make tough choices.

Back to the video “The Story of Stuff” . It generated a great discussion with the kids. They talked about toys and stuff they had that had been cheap and broke the first day they had it. They talked about things that they have had for a long time, and that they thought was worth the money they spent and worth keeping. One of these things was Lego. We still have the Lego I played with over 30 years ago. They agreed that a big thing was to stop spending, even though this is very hard to do. Daniel initially gave the example of the Playstation as a good buy…. then when I made him think about it a bit more, he sheepishly agreed that we were on Playstaition number two, and the controls had this wrong with them and that wrong with them…. I think he started to get the picture.

We talked about growing things ourselves to avoid packaging. We looked at how many things were “needed” to sell meat in the shop - the styrophome tray, the plastic/paper thingo to absorb blood & liquid, the glad wrap, the labels, the ink on the labels and the glue on the labels. Compare this to one plastic bag when we kill our own meat. I could hear the gears turning around in the kids’ brains!

It’s not easy for any of us to change our lifestyle - whether it is us as adults or the children who have to do what their parents are doing. We have moved to the country deliberately. The price paid is the highest for my dh, who has to commute every day, for almost a total of 5 hours. We want to teach the children why we are doing this - why we grow veggies, why we want to grow meat, why we want to reduce our waste… This little video was a real eye opener for all of us. For me, it confirmed that we are on the right track. For the children it explained a lot of things they had no idea about.

Steps to simple living, sustainable living, homesteading…. all of these things are part of a journey we are on. It will take time to learn, but I am glad we have made the first steps.

I asked for one thing for my birthday…. chooks! Part of that request was fixing the chook yard. A cow had got stuck in it, panicked and headed out the side of the yard, leaving a big gap in the wire! So on the weekend dh and the kids worked hard at fixing and painting it. I enjoyed watching and taking photos..

We didn’t quite manage to buy the chooks on my birthday, but dh had yesterday off as well, so we visited “George the Bird Man” and came home with 8 hens and a rooster! I was so excited! So were the kids. We were even more excited when they laid two eggs today!

I got to pick the ones I wanted. I asked for a few that were already laying, and some pullets. They are all different breeds, which is a bit of fun. I particularly wanted to have chooks that will go clucky and sit on eggs, none of these new breeds that have their broodiness bred out of them. I think I’ve done well…. I’m sure I will have too many girls wanting to sit on eggs in this little group of chooks!

So, let me introduce you to our latest additions! They don’t all have names yet, but we are working on them. First of all, the patriarch and protector, Little Red (He is a miniature Rhode Island Red):

Here is my all time favorite - a Silkie Bantam, with the oh so imaginative name of “Silky”:

Isn’t she just too cute?! Elizabeth and I just want to pick her up and cuddle her! I would like to get a Silkie rooster one day and breed from her. There were roosters there, but they were her brothers, so I need to go somewhere else to avoid interbreeding.

Here are the “twins”, Freckles and Speckles. Elizabeth can tell the difference, don’t ask me!! They are pullets and should be laying soon. I think they must have some Wyandotte in them:

The rest are a bit of a mix, not sure what breed, probably crossbred by the looks of them:

So there you go…. I have chooks again! I am soooooo excited! I just love to watch them peck and scratch around, and listen to them cluck - it is very therapeutic! I’m also pleased to be able to feed them our scraps and gather eggs. What a fantastic birthday pressie!

It’s well past time to let you see how my veggie garden is going. I ate some of my first “fruits” the other day - a teeny, tiny cucumber, sliced thinly with cheese and mayo on bread… yum!

So, let’s take a peak at what else is growing in my veggie patch……

As you walk in the gate, on your right you will see a big patch of overgrown rhubarb (send your recipes in now, please!):

A bit further up there is an even bigger patch of asparagus, gone to seed, which is how it gets fed for re-growing next year:

Back at the little gate, on your right, you would see a few of my cherry tomato plants. There are lots of flowers and a few tomatoes starting to grow:

Moving right along… there is some lettuce gone to seed, and some parsley, and then.. one zucchini plant. I only planted one because I always get waaaaay too many! This one is a Lebanese Zucchini, which produces a small, light green veggie:

Next to the zucchini, in the corner, I have a little medley: one eggplant, three capsicum plants (green peppers), oregano & Italian parsley which I grew from seed, and two cucumber vines:

Here’s a closer look at the cucumbers,.. yep, I already sampled one and it was yummy! It’s a bit hard to see, but there are two little cucumbers growing there:

In the rest of the garden I’ve put four pumpkin plants. Since we don’t have a lot of water, they get to go wild, which is what they are good at:

The above pumpkin is growing right into the asparagus. I’m not sure whether there are any pumpkins forming under there, but I’m sure I’ll find out once it all dies down. But there is at least one teeeeeny, tiny pumpkin growing where I can see it…. can you?!

Well, that’s a short tour! It is not much, but quite enough for me this year! I will get enough harvested for us to eat during the summer and some to freeze for the winter.

Part of homesteading is preserving the harvest that I have, or that others might give me. As I said in my last post, two bags of plums have started off my bottling for 2008!

Since my children aren’t keen on stewed plums or plum jam, I thought I would give cordial a go. I tried this recipe many years ago, and it was quite nice, so I thought I’d try it again. It is a recipe from one of the old copies of Above Rubies.

Plum Cordial

Day 1

Dissolve 70g tartaric acid in 4 cups of cold water. Pour over 2.2kg of plums and leave for 24 hours. Strain. Add 3 cups of sugar to each 2 cups of juice. Stir to dissolve and bottle. Keeps for years.

Day 2

Dissolve 56g tartaric acid in 4 cups of cold water. Pour over the same fruit and leave for 24 hours. Strain and add 2 1/2 cups of sugar to each 2 cups of juice. Stir to dissolve and bottle. Keeps 6 months.

Day 3

Dissolve 28g tartaric acid in 4 cups BOILING water. Pour over the same fruit and leave for 24 hours. Strain and add 2 1/2 cups of sugar to each 2 cups of juice. Dissolve and bottle. Keeps 3 months.

To make up: Pour approx 1 inch of cordial in glass and top up with water.

(Above Rubies September 1991 No. 37)

Now the first time I made this, I had no idea what it meant to “bottle”! I just put it in plastic bottles and had my dh freaking out that it would ferment and I would make my 2 year old tipsy! This time I heated the juice and sugar up till it was almost boiling, poured the syrup in hot, sterilized bottles, and put on the lids tightly. You know the bottles have sealed well when you are drinking a cup of tea and you hear… “pop”…. “pop”….!

I took a few photos…. here is some of the fruit I started with sitting in the sink being washed and the yukky bits being cut out:

This is what they looked like after they were subjected to three days of tartaric acid and water, poor things:

And finally, the finished product:

Beautiful bottles all in a row… The bottles on the left are from Day One, the ones on the right placemat are from Day Two. I haven’t taken a photo of the Day Three ones yet. I doubled the recipe, since I had so many plums, and I got lots of bottles of cordial. I must count them. I also have to label them before they get mixed up!

There is something so rewarding to see all those bottles……. it is worth the squished plums under my shoes, the sticky spots on the stove, cupboard, bench top and floor…. the burnt fingers (and tongue from too much taste testing), the yelling at children “No, you CAN’T help me right now - get out of the kitchen before you get red sticky stuff all over you too!” - oh, and not to mention the purple candle falling INTO the pan of plum juice and splashing red spots all over the kitchen wall……… Yes, it is worth it! And it is yummy. I know, because I tried it!

The birds woke me up at 5.00 this morning. Instead of going back to sleep I decided to get up and enjoy the quiet in the house. I sat at my kitchen table and caught up on a few of my favorite blogs while I glanced regularly out the kitchen window to see the sun rise. Then I had a lovely chat with a friend from South Africa, on google talk….

When I do manage to get up early, I really enjoy it. I love to spend time reading the Bible and praying while everything is quiet. As my veggie garden grows, I know I will be out there in the early mornings before the heat of the sun, to do some weeding and picking. I used to do this on our other plots of land all the time. It is the best time to harvest veggies. And when we have chooks… well, I remember the first things I got from our last little homestead back in 2003:

Some lettuce, parsley, chives, strawberries and our first egg! I was so excited that I took a photo! Now I can’t wait till I can do this again here, at our new home….

After the early morning start, we had a very productive day. Imagine, I had an extra couple of hours in my day! Robyn had kindly agreed to have the children while I did some Christmas shopping. Elizabeth helped her decorate the cupcakes she made. Don’t they look great?! (And doesn’t Elizabeth look worn out?! LOL!)

I was able to get all the kids’ pressies at one shop - very painless! I had money to spend on them from their grandparents, which is what I did today. I already had a few presents for them, from us, that I picked up on specials throughout the year. It is a blessing since we don’t have a lot of extra money right now, just having bought this house. It is also wonderful to have my main Christmas shopping done so early in the month.

Tiany is hosting a Holiday Open House this week and I will be participating in that later in the week. I’ve also got a surprise planned for everyone this holiday season, so keep coming back here to see what it is! I won’t keep you in suspense for too long….

Off to bed now…. it’s been a long day! But such a lovely one. I wonder if I can get up as early tomorrow….!

Yesterday we went and visited our farm-to-be. We wanted to meet the owner and ask him a few things about the property. Dh wanted to know about the electricity in the shed, the water pipes, and other such important things. I wanted to know what
the fruit trees were, and how to look after the asparagus that was growing in the veggie garden!

The orchard is just wonderful! There are heaps of apple trees, plums, cherries, apricots, nectarines, …… a nashi tree, lemon tree, and… I think that is it! Some of them are looking a bit sick and need attention. Also, the frost got a lot of the blossoms, so I’m not sure how much fruit we’ll get this year. The drought hasn’t been kind to the trees either. I am hoping that once we get some water tanks going, and with some TLC, one day we will reap a good harvest.I asked advice about the asparagus. I’ve always wanted to grow it, but since it takes about 5 years after planting from seed to harvest it, I’ve never bothered (because we’ve never been in one place for that long!). So this is a special gift from God - asparagus in my veggie garden, ready to eat. The previous owner told us he got so much asparagus that he got sick of it and was giving it away! Then he cut me some to take home. I was so excited! Here it is:

I boiled it in water today, and used some of it to make these Asparagus Vol-au-vents. Oh, they were yummy! Even dh thought so! And I used one of the packets of white sauce mix that I froze during the week!

In three weeks time we will do the handover and get the keys. I can’t wait! I feel like we are so blessed. God is good.

 

Joy’s Asparagus Vol-au-vonts

fresh asparagus, boiled and cut into small pieces

one portion white sauce mix

three rashers of bacon, chopped and fried crispy

grated cheese, keep some aside to sprinkle on top

vol-au-vonts (I used small ones)

Add 1 cup of water to the portion of white sauce mix. Bring to the boil until it is thick and add the other ingredients. Spoon into vol-au-vont cases and sprinkle with some of the grated cheese. Put in a moderate oven until the cheese on top is melted and golden.

Enjoy!