In August, as we loomed closer towards lambing the second mob of merino ewes, and weaning the two six month old calves, it was becoming more apparent that we wouldn't get our week at the beach in the caravan.  The previous three weeks had been wet, not complaining about that, but definitely was not conducive to a relaxing time at the beach wrangling two wet dogs in a teeny tiny Avan.  Then the weather cleared, we made plans to go, and the entire state of SA went into a week of lock-down. Thanks Covid. When the lock-down was over our ewes had begun lambing and when Brian sugge ..read more

  It's been awhile since I wrote. The format on Blogger has changed, so I'm negotiating my way around this with my very limited computer knowledge. But challenges are good for us, so they say. Hello again, after a whole year of no writing it's time to get back here. Well... actually the prompting from well meaning friends is giving me the impetus to push through this pain barrier. Laptop on the kitchen table, the wood stove is cooking a leg of lamb from the sheep processing we did last week, and our state is going into lock-down again this evening. There's no excuse that I don't have tim ..read more

The hay shed catches the first rays of sun in the mornings when I fork out enough hay to fill the cow's hay rack. Just a short walk to the rack on the other side of the fence, but it takes quite a few trips, so I often think I've done the equivalent of a morning walk after the exertion that warms me to the bone. The past few mornings have been frosty with temps of -2C degrees at sunrise; two pairs of gloves are required to keep the fingers from seizing up. Some rain last week accompanied by this rainbow in the late afternoon. Pekin bantam shenanigans in the house garden.  I cou ..read more

Hello Friends, It's the end of May and the last of the Glory Vine surrounding the house verandah has been pruned and mulched. Brian did the pruning in less than an hour. Before I could offer to assist it was all on the ground.!  That man! He certainly gets on with things without a minute's hesitation. He is truly motivation on steroids. "Leave the cuttings on the ground." I said.  "I want to go through them and make a wreath."  The least I could do was pick up the mess on the ground, and I needed to find a valid excuse so that he didn't rush to do it all, and leave me feeling ..read more

I haven't been baking many sourdough loaves lately, but I need to feed my "Mother" occasionally to keep her alive and healthy.  As you know, I never like to waste a thing, so there's a jar of discard (flour and water sourdough)  in the fridge that needs to be used. When I'm baking sourdough loaves regularly I don't accumulate any discard at all. Here  is the blog post that explains how to NOT waste flour. Last time I made Crackers using some of the discard and this morning I felt like making small cakes (or muffins) to put into the Farmgate stall. As usual, I have adapted ..read more

I hear a lot of sourdough bakers mention the waste of flour during the sourdough mother feeding process, but there's absolutely no reason to waste any flour at all.  When I'm baking loaves regularly (four days a week) there's never any waste to deal with because I'm feeding and using the sourdough mother with each bake. You can read about my method of sourdough baking here and here  At the moment though, I'm not baking loaves for selling in the Farm-gate stall, so I'm baking just a couple of loaves each week. There is discard, but not waste. Our supply of shop bought crackers ..read more

A reader (Kathy) asked for my ice-cream recipe.  I have a few that I use depending on various factors;  - the type of cream on hand,  (shop cream, cream from our own cows, very thick, or thin cream) - the amount of eggs I have on hand. (are the hens laying or are they having a spell?) - do I want to use the ice-cream churn or not? The ice-cream that I made this week is the original recipe from the instruction booklet supplied with my cheap ice-cream churn purchased approximately eight years ago.   The freezer bowl of this churn lives in the freezer until I'm ready to use it. This is a qui ..read more

but without Landline (ABC TV)  at lunchtime. We are well into week three of self isolation and every day is like Sunday. With no structure to my weeks, library volunteering, visiting elderly friends, shopping, meeting friends for coffee, and visitors, each day flows into the next. As a self confessed introvert I'm rather enjoying it. We're both busy with our work here on the farm,  and never before in my sixty four years have I valued our lifestyle, growing our food, as we do right now.  Brian is finding isolation more difficult than I am, which is to be expected.  Just three months int ..read more

Hello friends, As summer draws to an end and the hectic pressure of summer is easing, there's time now to take a look back on the past few months since I last wrote here. It's always a very busy season here on our place and I'm not going to bore you with all the details, so here's a pictorial snapshot of our summer. The original apricot tree, already past its prime when we moved here fifteen years ago, and kept alive with lots of TLC,  this was it's final harvest. The apricots were not suitable for jam making or preserves, so the wildlife carers in the family made good use of the fruit for t ..read more

It's always a nervous time when waiting for a new heifer to deliver her first calf. Baby Asher made her way into the world without a hitch on the night that a bush-fire had caused havoc, just over the hill from us, earlier in the day. It was a tense day. Brian had gone with his fire unit to assist in dousing the flames while I actioned our fire preparation plan at home. We were exhausted after the day, running on fear and adrenaline, and needed sleep more than anything.  It was during our evening rounds, locking up the poultry into their night sheds, when we noticed Poppy was in her early stag ..read more