Moving House Chicken Style

The sun was just coming through the autumn mist as I headed out to move one of the chook flocks. We are lucky that such mists seem to clear at Opportunity Farm before much of the surrounding area which provides beautiful views and misty vistas.

 

'The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'

It looked like the chook tractor was on the edge of a sunny island with a sea of fog below. Last night I went out with a torch and shut the door on the house so that all the chooks were trapped inside. Sometimes the rooster will sleep underneath but the increasing cool must have enticed him in to snuggle up to his ladies.

 

Ready to start with the fence still up

 

The first job was to pull up the fencing. It is 100m of electrified mesh with twenty posts that are meant to be pushed into the ground. The bottom wire of the mesh is not electrified so that the ground does not short out the fence, provided the grass is not too long.

 

To work effectively the fence needs to be a circuit so the two ends are clipped together to ensure the charge crosses the gap. Here the two ends are separated for removal. Each corner is kept taut by a string with a tent peg on the end. These I remove so that they do not tangle with the mesh as it is folded and so that they are handy when needed for reassembling. I collect up the posts folding the mesh in half until I get half way. Then I collect up the other side.

 

The photo below shows all the items needed for our mobile chook run: the folded mesh, a drum for the poultry feed, the solar charger, a steel picket for the charger to sit on, a metal pole for earthing the charger, the green poultry feeder, the automatic waterer and the ladder for the chooks to climb up into the chook house. 

 

All these items are loaded onto the ute, the tyre of the chook house pumped up and then the trailer is attached and dragged into Harley's paddock. He is off with Opal so the chooks can scratch up all the excess hay and horse poo in his shed.

 

 First the trailer is taken off and set up. I use the legs off an old round table to keep the trailer level. The food and water are set up and then I can start to put out the fence. I lay it out roughly and then work from the join  (seen here in the far corner) pushing the posts in as I go. It is easiest if the shape of the run is rectangular but any shape is possible provided you have enough string and pegs for each change in direction. If the ground is uneven then the bottom wire can be pegged down.

 

Once the fence is all set up then the charger and earth posts are banged in and the power connected up. All that remains to do is to open the hatch and watch the chooks explore their new run. By having such mobile chooks it saves on permanent fencing, allows the chooks to scratch up waste and worms from other animals, reduces compaction and gives the chooks a chance to get fresh green grass.  

Measuring the Weight of Pigs

We do not have a suitable set of scales for measuring pig weights. I reckon it would be challenging to keep a porker steady on a set anyway, even with a bucket of feed under its nose. Pigs are very curious and very active so unless they are satiating their immediate hunger they will come over to see what you are doing and snuffle around expectantly.
Our three piglets are getting bigger but they still have a way to go. They have grown on a diet of food sctraps from the local café, fallen apples and excess zucchinis. They would grow a lot faster in a feedlot or if they were only fed pig grower pellets but it seems better to use excess food to create our pork.
Today I wanted to know what size Blanche, Petunia and Maud had got to. To calculate their weight I have a special tape measure. It has cms on one side and a converter on the other. Once you measure around their midriff just behind their forefeet you take that measurement and compare with the converter that shows weight in kilograms. Our piglets were between 68 and 75cms with Blanche being the biggest and Maud the smallest.

 

This equates to 39 to 41kgs. As long as they were interested in feed it wasn't too hard to take the measurement. It was more of a challenge for my 6 year old photography assistant to take a snap that included the pig, the tape and the measurer.
The supply of apples and zucchinis is declining and the turnover of customers in the local café is dropping as the weather cools so we will have to use more pig pellets to get them to our required weight of about 60kgs. Pigs also eat more when it is cold so we will have to stock up. Hopefully four to five weeks will get us there.

Blanche at 41kgs

Guinea Pig Pups

 

Guinea pigs take just over two months to produce a litter of up to 4 pups. The pups are born with all their fur, sharp claws and within three hours they can run. If they live outside they will breed in the summer months but can increase their numbers rapidly if the weather is clement.

 

Our two breeding females so far are named Toffee and Red Eye. Toffee miscarried four pups in January while Red Eye had two live ones. Now the birthing cycle has started again.

Yesterday we had five Guinea Pigs. This afternoon we had two young visitors who wanted to have a look. There were squeals of delight (from the children at least) when they found that Red Eye had produced two black and chocolate pups and our numbers are up to seven.

 

Despite being only a few hours old they were alert and active yet responded well to being touched. I had begun to wonder the benefit of having guinea pigs when each morning I have to lug heavy cages about the lawn and rustle up some greenery to supplement their grass. Seeing the excitement and wonder on the faces of the children as they held these little babies made the effort seem more worthwhile. Animals don't have to be eaten to perform a useful purpose. These guinea pigs are pets and so one already has a name - Alex - while the other is still being debated. 

Using Water from the Well

Hidden amongst a grove a trees at the lowest part of the property is a well. When Opportunity Farm was first settled there was a house built just above where the headwaters of the Haydens Bog start. It is easy to tell where it was because of the bulbs that come up there each Spring and the old fruit trees that would have been in the garden. Having close access water would have been very important. There is no flowing water in the area so the only way to get clear fresh water was to dig for it.

The well is about 4m deep, circular and is lined with stones. There is no mortar which allows the water to seep in. For over two years we lived here and only had a vague idea that there had been a well on the property. When we were faced with running out of water one summer we asked a neighbour about this well and he pointed out the clump of trees. A closer investigation revealed the hole covered by rotting lengths of wood and buried by leaves so that it was hard to spot until we started to uncover it. Once we had cleared away the debris then the sides of the well had to be raised above ground level. This part we mortared and made a level top for a lid for the well.

 

The Well lid amongst the trees with the tank in the background

 

The well is close to where we have been fattening the piglets. The paddock near to the well is full of tussocks that the pigs dig up and slowly the piglet tractor is digging over and mulching this to improve the pasture. For one season we pulled water out of the well by bucket to fill the pig's water trough.

We bought a water testing kit online and it came up excellent in all areas except one. The result for pesticide residue was inconclusive. There is a hardwood plantation upstream of the well that is sprayed. We tested again with another kit. Same result. To be sure that the water is suitable for human use we may have to send a sample away for lab testing.

Meanwhile we have put a submersible pump in the well that is operated by two solar panels. The aim was to be able to gravity feed the pig's water from the tank and the tank would refill when it emptied  sufficiently to trigger the pump. This only works as far as that. The pump does not stop when the tank is full so the well water overflows out of the top of the tank. Today I needed to refill the tank so after connecting up the tank I had to make sure I went back about 30 minutes later to disconnect it. We will get the technology sorted in time - all new ideas take a little while to cut out the glitches. It certainly beats pulling a bucket out of the well or even refilling from the dam.  

 

The tank and panels with the hose heading for the pigs. 

Knowing when something is up

Life on a farm is full of routines. Some come round once a year such as pruning, harvesting or sowing seeds for summer plants. Some come round regularly such as the farrier's visit to trim the ponies hooves or refilling the water troughs. Others happen daily such as feeding the dogs or milking the cow.
Many of these routines are a chance to check that everything is ok - that animals are not sick or missing, fences breached or plants ripe. Sometimes routine tasks can take much longer than planned because some action is required for maintaining or repairing.
This afternoon when I approached one of the chook runs there wasn't a reception party stalking up and down the fence waiting for me. Usually the rooster and two of the older hens almost head out of the gate towards the waiting kelpie in their eagerness to announce their hunger. For the past few days the rooster has been keen to have a piece of me as I enter the run and head for the feed bin in the shed.
Two younger hens - a bantam and a crossbred hen always run clucking and calling, away from this fiercesome stranger bearing food, to the shelter of the regrowth on the far side of the pen.

The Rooster and hens just mooching about

 

Today was different. No noise and no running away. The chooks were there but simply not interested in my approach. It didn't take long to work out why. The feed bin was on its side in the shed and while there was some feed still inside it, the chooks must have satiated themselves on the fallen feed.

Two Isa Brown hens not bothered by feed

 

It didn't take long to right it and try to work out a better way of arranging the bricks underneath to ensure it's steadiness. There was enough feed for the Sussex chickens in the next-door run who share the same feed bin but the routine was broken. More feed to purchase.
It wasn't much of a crisis but it reminded me how important it is to notice the subtle changes. Animals and plants may not have the gift of human speech but they can tell you a lot when they don't follow the expected. The more I notice what is happening on Opportunity Farm the better.

Autumn Harvest

Sunrise over the Mountain

 

The nights are getting much shorter and with Daylight Saving still in place it is very dark at 6am. Most of the summer crops are either madly producing at full capacity or beginning to die off. The tomatoes are all but finished, although until there is a significant frost there will still be a few hardy red orbs up high. The zucchinis are churning out as many fruits as they can while some of the upper leaves are browning at the edges. The capsicums are having a final push to turn red.

Zucchinis with browning leaves

 

The only stone fruits left are some clingstone peaches but this year they seem to rot almost as soon as they are picked. They are pleasant to eat but being clingy too much of a pain to process. There are plenty of Golden Delicious that are not quite ripe and a few Granny Smiths.
There are plenty of potatoes in the ground to be harvested but, apart from those where the white ants are keen on spuds, can stay there a little longer.
The pace can slow down a little in harvesting and it is time to put some garden beds to sleep with plenty of manure and to tidy up the excess high grass and weeds this wonderful warm and wet season has produced.
The does and ewes are mated with their selected males and apart from squealing guinea pigs and growing porkers the animals need less attention. Some of the older chooks are going off the lay as the daylight tells them to rest.
Autumn is a great time to be outside - not too hot and not too cold but there is always the looming sense of approaching cold. Time to fill the woodshed and find the hot water bottles.

Pumpkin Patch

A fine day for a visit

Today we had visitors - two couples that are friends of Michelle's from the choir. They both live on rural properties and appreciate fine food and drink. After some hours spent tidying the house from the ravages of day-to-day living with five children and a small dog it was time to prepare the meal.
With all the produce and processing we have been doing over the past few months it was a chance to show what Michelle and Opportunity Farm could serve up.
The main meal consisted of one of our meat chooks - an average sized one at 3kg. This was slow roasted in milk from Hailey the cow. It was served with recently dug potatoes and a dish made from silverbeet leaves handpicked just before cooking.
For dessert we had homemade icecream with milk and eggs from the farm and only sugar as an import. The icecream was accompanied by a coulis of homegrown raspberries and a meringue prepared with our eggs.
To drink we offered elderflower cordial for the non-drinkers and fizzy redcurrant wine for those who could indulge.   
The meal tasted excellent and everything was eaten up. The silverbeet dish was even eaten by most of the children.
A slow walk and talk around the farm while the ponies were taken out for a ride in the warm autumn sunshine rounded off a pleasant afternoon. One of the couples are keen to adopt some of our low-maintenance self-shedding Wiltshire Horn sheep to eat the grass on their property. We get to destock and they reduce their fire risk. 
A fine day for a visit.

Killing Goats and Preserving Skins

Caramel was standing in the paddock when the bullet came that ended his life. A second at point blank range made sure he didn't suffer more and that was it. At eighteen months this boy goat (he didn't keep the equipment needed to be a buck) had reached his one bad day.
It is always hard to watch the demise of an animal that has a name and with whom you have a personal connection. He was born on Opportunity Farm and spent his whole life here. The greatest stress he ever faced would probably have been being stalked and barked at by Archie, the frustrated sheep dog.
Now his carcass is on a hook in the hanging shed along with that of a young deer from one neighbour and a lamb from another. They will hang there for a couple of days until they can be butchered and delivered to their relevant freezers. No doubt in a while the children will ask who they are eating and Caramel will be the answer.
Once the meat is gone there is another way Caramel will be remembered - his skin. Michelle has been experimenting with tanning and liming skins for a while with some success. Some of the children have leather slippers. I have a pair of homemade and grown moccasins and there are several sheepskin rugs to stand on. She even made two matching leather aprons to protect us when we are spoon carving. One beautiful brown sheepskin is to be a rug for a friend to stand on to do her work.

The sheepskin rug ready for washing and the two aprons ready for use

 

Caramel's skin and that of the deer are first pegged out on a board. It is important that all the flaps and folds of the skins are pulled out so that all the skin is exposed. I used clouts to nail the edges of the skins wherever needed. Then I used about 300g of salt scattered over the two skins to draw out the moisture. The boards are raised at one end so the salt solution will drain off. These will sit in the shed (providing the dogs can be kept out) for a few weeks.

Caramel's and the deer skin pegged out.

Next the excess fat and flesh will be scraped off with a blunt chisel (as we don't have a proper scraper), and it comes off in strips not unlike jerky. Then the skins will be immersed in a barrel containing water and lots of wood chippings from a neighbour's mulcher. Wattle bark is one of the best for tannin but most native woods have enough to tan a hide. After a week in the barrel the skin is dried. You can't leave it in too long or the hair falls out. It may be cut to size, then washed and dried again. If the leather needs to be supple then it is rubbed over a specially designed piece of curved wood and neatsfoot oil applied. If the hair is to be removed then the skin is put into a barrel full of water and agricultural lime before the tanning process. When we first tried this we blasted the hair off with a high pressure hose once the skin came out of the lime barrel. We learnt that the hair does come off but it flies everywhere so we have to be more thoughtful about where we do the blasting. Having a smelly white back lawn is not a situation to be repeated.
It is good to honour our fallen animals by preserving their skins and tanning is one of the many almost forgotten farm activities that is both easy and rewarding.

Making Hard Cider

Cider making day arrives. The back of the ute is filled with seven boxes of apples, spare containers and our 30 litre barrel. We head down the road to a friend's house where all the equipment for apple juicing is set up. First we loosely chop the apples. The smaller the pieces the easier to crush. Some of the small apples from the roadside trees only need halving while the bigger Golden Delicious apples from our trees are halved and then each half quartered. Apparently the smaller roadside apples are excellent for cider as they are tarter and give a more distinct flavour.

 

Michelle chopping the apples and filling the 10 litre containers

 

Once we have two or three containers full then the fun starts. One person pedals while the other drops the chopped apples into the crusher. It stalls when there are too many apples but when they are cut small it is pretty quick and easy to operate and fill the bucket which is placed underneath the hopper.

The Crusher Blades

Pedal Power in Action

 

Once the bucket is full then some of its contents are poured into the press. This press has seen many seasons of use and the slats are getting a little worn. We opted for only part filling the press to reduce the pressure on the slats but with a newer press you could fill to the top. The press lid is placed in and the handle swung back up and secured in with the two black nuts on each side. The handle is turned round and round until the lid is attached and then the apples are slowly squeezed until the juice pours out of the bottom and into the plastic container on the ground. When the juice stops coming out we poured it through a sieve and then into the barrel.

The handle is then unwound to the top, the black nuts are undone so the handle can swing back, the lid is removed and the surprisingly dry apple pieces can be lifted off with the whole press and pushed out into a waiting box for taking back for the pigs' dinner. Then the process is repeated until more crushing or chopping is needed. 

The Press

We despatched five and a half boxes of apples to fill our barrel with juice. By the time we got home with the barrel wedged between legs in the passenger seat it was all ready for an air lock . It is now sitting in the kitchen filling the air with bubbling sounds and turning the juice into cider. Nothing has been added to make the cider - its just apple juice and time.

The 30 litres of apple juice ready to head back to Opportunity Farm

Essentials for Getting Started with Homesteading

In October 1998 I purchased 300 acres of bush in a remote beautiful valley surrounded by thousands of square kilometres of state forest and national park. I knew almost nothing about growing food and little about land management. I had a basic interest in carpentry, permaculture and green issues and a desire to build my own house that had travelled with me when I emigrated from England eighteen months earlier.
The papers were exchanged and I was the proud owner of a slice of East Gippsland. Where to start? After wandering the property for some time to see its possibilities I decided that I couldn't start without three essential pieces of equipment.

1. A Trailer.
I bought a 7x4 box trailer. It has hauled building materials, firewood, rubbish, gravel and just about anything needed to set up a house, garden and orchards in a place where delivery is unheard of. It took a little while to learn how to park and reverse with it but that trailer has tailed my cars more often than not. There's always something to move with it.
I bought one with a gate at either end which makes it so much easier to lay long items flat in the tray without sticking too far out of the back. A long bar from the front of the trailer to the tow ball makes it easier to maneuver. I later had a jockey wheel welded to the front and can't imagine not having one.  
Trailer electrics are always a pain to keep working and it has been a long-running battle to stay legal. It has received a few dents and a new coat of paint but seventeen years later it was still tailing me up the mountain this morning with a load of firewood.

The Box trailer and the Chainsaw

 

2. A Chainsaw.
If your property has lots of trees and you wish to build with poles and collect firewood owning and mastering a chainsaw is a must. I have been great at the first but have struggled with the mastery. I enjoy what the chainsaw can do when it is working and despite a couple of close shaves have avoided the major catastrophes of which such a dangerous tool operated alone in a remote place can do. For a long time I found starting the saw a challenge and getting the sort of sharp edge needed escaped me.
It would have been worth investing in a chainsaw course as long as it covered maintenance and sharpening as well as technique. A recent purchase of an angled file has greatly improved my sharpening expertise.
I bought a Stihl and although somewhat battered from seventeen years of service it is still going strong. It was definitely worth the initial outlay and almost every town has a parts distributor. The length of the bar varies with the work to be undertaken. My choice of a 500mm bar allows a middle ground of reasonable sized trees with a flexibility and weight to undertake some finer work when using the saw to cut more accurately.

The black water tank collecting water from the Loft shed

 

3. A Water Tank
You can't grow food without water. When I hauled my new tank on my new trailer up onto the block I knew that wherever I put the tank down would become the heart of my property. I built a shed next to the tank to collect water for it and the garden and house had to be close to the tank and downhill. While this tank has been superceded by a much bigger tank in terms of daily use it is still part of the watering system that helps the caged vegetable garden survive in the hot summer months.
I chose a plastic tank as the lightest and safest to drink from. Plastic tanks are not so useful in bushfires but will survive as long as they are fairly full. This tank is smooth sided whereas most of the tanks I have bought since have been made of corrugated plastic which is stronger and gives more surface area.

There are many other items that may be vital to setting up a place to live and grow food from scratch but for me those three would be hard to live without.

Naughty little Kids

We have seven little kids from last spring. They are in our original goat paddock along with one doe who had a very late buck kid in November. They have a great shed, good access to water, some rocks/bricks to smooth off their hooves and a two strand electric fence attached inside the original boundary fence.
For the past few years we have kept goats in this paddock. It is split in two so that we can rest one side for a while. We have also put chickens in to scratch up the dung and eat the worms.
After a fantastic season with plenty of grass it is finally browning off and the rate of growth is slowing. The kids have been getting hungry. I feed them sheep nuts but it doesn't go far amongst eight eager mouths.
The grass around the perimeter has been getting longer and has begun to short out the fence. Now two of the kids have worked out that if they push quickly through the fence they can reach more grass and the kick from the fence is not enough to put them off.

 

Once they have a taste for escape they can be pretty persistent and will teach all the others. If I don't stop them now I could have a paddock that is useless for keeping in goats and a whole bunch of kids wandering around in the wrong places. Curly will probably get wind of them and then we may have problems with kid kidding too young.

We don't have enough hinge-joint fencing to block off the whole side where the kids have been escaping so I try to fool them with a temporary section that covers their initial escape route. It may fool them for a while but more money will be needed for fencing wire and supplementary feed to ensure that the problem is solved.

Two hours later the kids are out again. They are small enough to force their way through the holes in the hinge-joint mesh. A combination of keen kelpie and angry farmer might have chased them back again but another strategy is needed!

Keeping Apples

We have been collecting apples for a couple of months. The first were fallers from our orchard at Opportunity Farm. A branch snapped off under the weight of burgeoning fruit so they were collected. Many have been fed to the pigs - they prefer them ripe and soft so anything with a bit of rot has headed down the pig pen.
Then there were the fallers knocked off by the parrots as they took swipes at the fruit - again long before they were ripe. Those chewed or damaged were eaten and those unscathed were kept. The two Gravenstein trees yielded a good crop. They are not keepers but they taste good dried. The two Golden Delicious and the Granny Smith's are laden. Some of the ripest we have been eating and some are stored in the pantry. The rest will be picked on our next visit to the orchard.

This week we will juice apples. A friend has a pedal-powered crusher and a press so we will take the apples to her house and make a day of it. We are planning to make cider and pasteurized juice. The remaining unblemished apples will stay on shelves in the dark, stalks on and up, not touching. They will be checked regularly and any change or rot will send them to the pigs. The term 'one bad apple' refers to the fact that if one apple rots it will cause the others to rot. It will be an experiment to see how long we can store these apples and still have them edible by fussy small children.

Escaping pigs

Some animal broke into my broccoli cage last night. One chewed hole in and one out as well as the door forced open. Too small to be a wombat, too sharp-toothed to be a rabbit - probably a rat or a small dog (such as our Chihuahua cross Mini Fox terrier 'Precious' see photo). The holes can be fixed easily enough and the cabbage white season is almost over but that's not the point. A neat and effective cage will need to be patched.

After noticing the damage I went to feed the guinea pigs. As I lifted the cage to move it I could not see the black and white baby. As I was looking into the cage to see where it was a two-tone bundle of fur raced off under the trees. The dogs were off and headed my way. Believing that I was about to witness a fatal guinea pig attack I called for my eldest to tie up the dogs while I concentrated on locating and capturing the runaway. It huddled under a lavender bush and despite some serious squealing was captured and returned unhurt to the cage. The wire holes on the bottom are just too wide to prevent a determined young guinea pig from escaping but life expectancy for such escapees is short. This time a successful outcome but keeping guinea pigs and big dogs apart is a challenge.
Heading down to the pigs with some tools and food I reached the gate to the goat paddock and greeting me with excited grunts were Blanche, Petunia and Maud. How long they had been out I don't know but with their electric wire shorted and limited feed in their enclosure they had simply leaned on the mesh and the tiewire had given way.
Enticed by their breakfast the three little pigs were easy to guide back to the pen, though the kelpie's attempts at helping certainly did not. Hopefully they haven't gained a taste for freedom or their one bad day might have to come sooner than planned.

The piglets back in their cage - but for how long?

 

After three not-so-good events I went to the tip and a considerate user had left a box with 35 assorted Vacola jars, lids, clips and rings. A fine score - I shouldn't need any more for a long time.

The DelegateShow

Saturday started early - milking and feeding before getting the trailer ready to load two reluctant ponies, a heap of horse gear, tables, chairs, marquee, excited children, loads of cupcakes and leaflets. We were running about 10 minutes late - last year the horse events started 90 minutes late but this year they were on time. A race to unload Opal and Harley, fit bridles and head into the arena. My two horse riders just joined the end of the line for the first event - under 11 handler. The other seven riders were clad in white shirts, a tie and jackets. The other riders had ponies or horses that trotted carefully alongside, not being dragged along like ours. All good experience. The morning was spent in a blur of 'Novice Pony Hack under 13 hands' and 'Girl Rider under 7', Barrel racing in which the parent did more racing than the pony and finally 'Bounce Pony' races. A lot was learned and ribbons proudly gained.
Meanwhile our oldest was selling cupcakes to raise money for her Scout Jamboree fee and Michelle was spruiking for members for the NSW Lones Scouts and the Vic State Emergency Service wearing a combination of both uniforms. The day was sunny and the showgrounds were buzzing. Small boys were running around with plastic guns and girls with cuddly toys from the showbags. The magician was forced to vanish one gun that was repeatedly aimed at him during his act. Sheep were coloured with spray paint, bulls weighed and new tractors admired.
I finally made it into the pavilion after a late lunch to check out my entries. Sixteen Firsts, Seven seconds. While few classes had more than three or four entries and a number of my wins were unopposed it was still pleasing to see a comparison with other growers. Not only had I won the $25 prize for the Best Collection of Vegetables but I won the rosette for the Champion Vegetable Exhibitor.

Along with prizes won by the children for almost all they entered we came home with a Junior Miss Showgirl 6-10, plenty of spare cupcakes, a broken lead rope and a plastic machine gun. It was a long day but an excellent chance to belong as a family to a local community.
 

Sheep Antics

Today we had to sort out sheep. There where four that needed to be transported by stock-crate to another paddock. To get the grass down and get fattened up. Easy job. Open up the yards. Get some sheep nuts in a ice-cream container and call them in, " Sheeeeeeep! Sheeeeeep! Then a little 'argy bargy' as we sorted the four lucky travellers. It took a fair bit of coercion to convince the sheep to get onto the trailer. Some clever manoeuvring and we were done.

It was as the trailer with its passengers was slowly moving away, that the unhelpful event happened. The back gate bounced out of its fastening device  and was swinging open. Despite yells and waving frantic arms from the observers, the sheep jumped out, in the wrong paddock with the wrong sheep.

So the next step was to get this flock into the yards. Again encouraged by some sheep nuts, this flock also came into the yards. Here also was an opportunity to drench the young rams. So again the sheep were sorted. Those requiring drenching were drenched and the four travellers were again encouraged to get onto the trailer. This time we tied the door shut with baling twine.

Shorty (in the yards last year) is off to a greener pasture.

Woolly is also off. 

Preparing for the Show

Our nearest town has had a show for the past 107 years. While the town has seen a pretty drastic decline in population - particularly of those who live and work on the land - the show is still a very important date in the calendar. The schoolchildren madly paint, the gardeners preen their flowers, the amateur photographers take their snaps and the farmers train their dogs. The mainstay of the show is the horse events which are part of a group of shows whose points are collected together. To be a real champion you need to attend all of them.
Last year I wandered the vegetable and fruit sections and was surprised at the paucity of entries and the limited quality of much of the produce. It was a poor season dominated by ferocious and extensive bushfires but despite that there was plenty in my garden and orchard that would complement the show.
So this year I picked up my show booklet and thumbed through to Sections K and L- 'Fruit' and
'Vegetables and Dairy Products'. 66 classes of entry.
In the fruit section I could offer four classes of apples - Gravenstein, Delicious and Granny Smith and a collection of all three. Though the Gravensteins have finished they keep well enough for some healthy looking specimens to be selected.
I found out after picking that stems have to be kept on. Some of mine have and some haven't but I'll remember next year. I also entered some aging plums and some underripe nectarines.
In the Vegetables and Dairy Section there is only one dairy class - 500g of homemade butter. I would love make some butter but the 1.5 litres of Hayley's milk a day is not really enough.
Eggs, Potatoes (white), Marrow, Pumpkins and Squash I could find. Though what is a winter squash?
I had several summer squash plants but I was not sure what a winter one was? I called the steward. He didn't seem too clear either. I googled it. That wasn't much clearer and seemed to define pumpkin and winter squash as the same thing. Not a butternut but a Jap or Queensland Blue. I entered a pumpkin in this section but I suspect it will be disqualified. More research before next year if I am to crack that one.
The tomato section should be a more successful one as the tomatoes grown at the bush block enjoy a much more Mediterranean climate that up here on the Monaro. I have some tommy Toes and some Grosse Lisse that look OK. There is a class for green tomatoes (more a colour found on the Monaro in March) so I put in some Costoluto Genovese. This tomato I recently discovered was the very first variety of tomato introduced into Europe from South America. All other modern tomatoes are derived from this variety. My collection of tomatoes contains my favourites - a yellow variety called Jeune Flamme, the Speckled Roman and Tommy Toes.
There are three classes of Roma tomatoes but for the first time in a decade I didn't plant any so that will have to wait for another year. I entered zucchinis, red and white onions, beetroots, carrots (short), Silver beet and Rhubarb. All my peas and beans have finished or were never planted.
My coveted goal is to win the C.R.Jamieson Memorial Prize for a General Collection of Vegetables.
I pondered for a while on which 6 varieties to choose - they had to be as distinct as possible. I settled on Capsicums and Eggplant as they don't grow too well in Delegate, Potatoes, Zucchini and Tomatoes as I have a lot to choose from and pumpkins as I have a good looking pair of buttercups.
The kids have grown enormous marrows and selected some unusual vegetables - a purple potato, a Jerusalem artichoke and an enormous Spanish Round Radish.

Some of the entries on their way to the Show Pavilion

Stomping on the Grapes

 

The grapes from our three Merlot grapevines are ready. The grapes taste sweet and while there are a few green grapes some others are bursting and beginning to droop. A half-hour of clipping with the secateurs and two large boxes are full.

The first job is to sterilize the buckets. A wipe of bleach and plenty of water and the buckets are ready for rinsing the bunches. This clears off any leaves and most of the grapes past their prime will float off.

 

The first tub of grapes being washed. 

 

Once the grapes are rinsed then the fun begins. Clean feet slowly stomping. After a while the feet break through into liquid and you can feel the grapes burst between your toes. Ten minutes of stomping is about enough to get pretty near all of the grapes. 

Squashing the Grapes the fun way!

 





I then poured the juice into a barrel through a colander and squeezed out the musk - all the skins, stalks and seeds - by hand to maximise the juice. The first bucket yielded 6.5 litres of juice. The second produced 7.5 litres. Most of the musk I set aside for the pigs but the top quarter of each bucket I kept.  This portion had the least amount of seeds because they sink to the bottom. I picked out the stalks.  This musk I added to the barrel which raised the level to about 17.5 litres in total.

 

Barrel with buckets of musk

 

 

Lid on and air lock in and the wild yeasts in the musk should set fermentation. No added ingredients at all. Can't be much more natural than that. 

A Surprise in the Grapes

Check this out!

 

As I was picking the grapes this morning I got quite a fright. A long green insect with two big eyes was staring at me. Momentarily I didn't know what it was and dropped the bunch of grapes quickly into the box.

After a while it started to move about and it looked more like a mini elephant trunk as it felt its way about the stems. Nature is very adaptive and looking scary is definitely a good defence strategy if you are slow and soft and just the right size for most birds to enjoy. I do find it remarkable how a whole species can develop these advantages. To look the same are all of these caterpillars descended from each single mutation that gave it an improved chance of survival or does living in the same habitat mean all of these insects develop the same strategy over time? I don't know  but I am quite happy to just marvel over the surprise and the chance to stop and look closely at a small piece in the evolutionary jigsaw.