We're back!

Well. That was the biggest break from blogging I've had since I started the blog some years back. There have been times in the last 6 weeks where I've wondered if I was going to come back to it. But hey: this thing is a record of our adventures, and the adventuring ain't stopping here. It's a place for us to rant about the things we're passionate about, and we're passionate about a lot. It's a place for us to share stuff and (hopefully) teach or inspire people, and there's a lot to learn. So we're back.

What have we been up to since the canceled party debacle?

Heaps of stuff! And also heaps of relaxing!

We have a little break from chicken farming over the summer because we find the chickens really struggle with the hot weather. Also, chicken farming is bloody exhausting, especially after the year we've had, so we need a break!

Life without chickens is roomy and free and relaxing. There's space for new friends, foraging (blackberries! plums! raspberries! oh my!), baking, crocheting, quilting Australiana-themed baby-quilts, reading, swimming, eating, old friends, bee-swarm-catching, a trip to the big-smoke for circus shows and visiting, and general merry-making.

After processing our last batch of chickens for the year and (happily) providing delicious chicken Christmas dinners to the people of the Bega Valley (and one lady who comes all the way from the Snowy Mountains for our chicken!) we headed out to the coast for a luxurious 2 week holiday with some of our nearest and dearest. It. Was. Amazing. Eating, swimming, reading, crocheting. Repeat. Oh, and we harvested a bucketload of native wild raspberries, which we dumped onto a baked ricotta for New Year's dinner. 

Not a bad spot for an afternoon of foraging

There are no words to describe the deliciousness, but here's a picture...

When we came home to the farm the garden was ridiculously overgrown, but we didn't mind. We harvested and made merry.

Our neighbour called to say there was a late swarm of bees at his place, so we caught it in an esky and installed it in our top-bar hive. We've been waiting for a swarm for 2 years since our last lot of bees got hive beetle and evacuated, so that was a happy day.

Me in my "crazy person" beekeeping 'suit' and Gunnar in his proper suit.

The roadside plums came on, and we had a harvest-and-preserve party with some new lovely friends.

I finished a custom baby-quilt order for an Australiana fan in Sydney. Love this quilting bizzo...

The blackberries have come on, so we're harvesting and freezing daily. When the season's over and we've got our haul, we'll have a massive jam cook up. In the meantime, we pick and pick and eat our fill.

Locavore dinner parties with friends, including plum cakes with Jersey cream!

And in between it all we've been working at our off-farm jobs. I've started a new job at the local wholefoods co-op, which is AWESOME, and of course we've been running and working at our little abattoir, which continues to process for small-scale chicken and duck farmers and backyard growers around the traps. Sometimes, the abattoir cleaning (not processing!!) is a family affair. 

The kids don't mind at all (it's an excuse for us all to hang out together playing with high-pressure hoses, after all), and we feel it's important for them to see us (and share in) working hard for the things we believe in.

Oh and I've been thoroughly enjoying exploring the instagram world. Never thought I would, but there you go. Life's full of surprises, right? 

On the immediate horizon we have another little break and then we dive head first into building and chook-enterprise-expansion and abattoir overhauling and school and uni and show season and roadside-apple-and-peach season and all the other busy-ness that comes with this life we're living. I'm excited.

Blessings on the helpers

When I was having chemo, part of my healing-through-gratitude regime involved making plans and daydreaming about the massive thank you feast we would throw for all the people who helped us out during that supremely crappy time. I felt that even though things were not that awesome for us during those months of treatment, I still had so much to be grateful for, and I still felt super lucky. Maybe even more lucky than I feel normally. It's true I did have cancer, and I did have one of my boobs removed, and I did go through chemo, which was gross. But I have an incredible, strong, kind, compassionate and loving partner, and 2 beautiful kids. I have an extended family who love me. I had an amazing day-bed out the front of our beautiful little house on which to rest, overlooking a sweet little valley farm which I love. I live in a country with (kind of) free health care, which meant I was able to have the treatment I needed to give myself the best chance of survival. I have access to an abundance of all kinds of nutritious foods to heal body and spirit. 

And I found myself among a community of people who helped out in all kinds of ways. There were people who came and helped Pearl move the chicken houses, and to help load chickens on processing day. There were the people who brought us meals. There were the people who put money into our bank account to pay for herbs and vitamins and medical bills. There were the people who processed our chickens the night I had to unexpectedly go to hospital with neutropenia. There were people who bought us massages. There were people who knitted things for me. There were people who gave me Reiki, and people who gave me acupuncture. There were people who brought us firewood. There were people who lent us their showers and spare bedrooms. Awesome, right?

The party planning started off with me emailing one of my favourite artists, Phoebe Wahl, to see if I could buy one of her images to use for the invite. What I love about Phoebe's art is it's warmth and vigour and heart - all the things I wanted for our party. Because she's lovely, she happily obliged.

Food planning involved the procurement, fattening, killing and processing of a lamb, which our friend David took care of for us, other than the boerwurst sausage-making, which was a team effort.
We bought veggies and salad greens from all our friends with market gardens. I, with the help of 2 very special ladies, made 25 litres of rhubarb and strawberry champagne.

For party favours, I lino-cut a 'thank you' stamp and stamped it onto serviettes I'd made, for people to use at the party then take home and use over and over.

My mum and her partner made a dessert, my nana made her signature custard kisses and a 'thank you' fruitcake, and Pearl's mum made brownies.

Everything was set.

And then it started to rain.

Plan B for Bad weather was to move the party to the incredibly beautiful Quaama Hall. Ain't no way 60 people were fitting in the tiny house.

Saturday morning, the hall was booked, as it seemed like the rain would never let up. And it didn't. In fact, by sunday morning, the day of the party, we, along with food enough for 70 people, got flooded in as the river broke it's bank and covered our main road to town with over 2 metres of fast-flowing water.

The give way sign at the bottom of our road, on the morning of the party

Not really the kind of development you want on the day you've been planning for months.

So we sent out texts and facebook messages telling people the party was off. Ironically, sunday turned into a beautiful sunny day, and we cheered ourselves by cracking jokes about it being a beautiful day for a party. My brother, who was visiting from WA got to spend some quality, flooded-in time with the kids. Some also-flooded-in-neighbours dropped by, and we had roast lamb for dinner.

Nice day for a party. Shame that 'lake' is covering the road to party-town

The next day we made 'Canceled Party Pickle' with all the zucchinis, squash and capsicums we'd bought. We preserved most of the harissa we'd made and froze the marinades.

We breakfasted on harissa and labne and cucumber and lettuce and asparagus and roast beetroot for days. It was actually divine.

Luckily, no food went to waste, between the freezing, the preserving, the eating and giving things away to all and sundry. And Oscar was thrilled to have Thank You fruitcake in his lunchbox today.

So what's the moral of this rather long-winded post? There're probably a few. One moral is that flooding waits for no man, and the river and rain don't give a crap about your plans for thanking people.
Another is that a jar of Canceled Party Pickle and a lovingly hand-made serviette, while not the same as an awesome party, is also quite a nice way to say thank you. And yet another is that all exercises in feeling grateful, whether the plans eventuate or not, are good for the soul. Even though we were sad our party didn't happen, we still feel grateful for all our friends, and the things they do for us. One day, that party's gonna happen, and we'll all be glad.

Ah pâté... Ain't nobody don't like pâté...

I'm not sure when I first ate pâté, but I must have been young. I seem to have many childhood memories of devouring a lot of pâté. I don't know if they're real imaginings or as frequent as I recall, but I can still taste that deliciously unique creamy richness. As a child I piled the crackers high with big chunks of the stuff and this is the way I eat it now. Nothing delicate here. 

Truth be told, I didn't eat pâté for years and years. That stuff with jellied peppercorns atop it in plastic packaging has never really appealed and eating liver from an animal of dubious sources freaks me out. It feels like pâté is pretty much bad fashion on a plate these days, which means we are either very much behind the times or very much cutting edge here because we have been eating A LOT of pâté here at Autumn Farm. And why not? We have access to some pretty delectable pasture raised chicken's livers these days. And to make this story even more feel good, it is said that liver is the most nutritionally dense food you can eat. A-mazing. 

When people buy our whole chickens they can also get hearts, livers, feet, gizzards, necks by the kilo. While lots of the bits end up as pet food, the orders started coming in for the livers with people telling me, 'I'm going to have a go at making some pâté..." Pâté?! Oh wow, that taste of my childhood returned to me and I got a little bit pâté curious. Then I read this lovely post and my return to pâté was confirmed. My childhood pâté memories centre around my parent's dinner parties and family lunches, and then there was that brioche and pâté extravaganza at my mum's 40th birthday party... Annie's childhood pâté memories are of a more Germanic variety. At her Oma and Opa's she ate a lot of liverwurst on black rye with radish or mustard. At home, she ate it on white with pickles. How we both eat it now is entirely influenced by those formative experiences.  

My preferred mode - on toasty sourdough with leaves and tomatoes from the garden

Annie's preference is with homemade pickles

I'm still amazed that something so luxuriously delicious could be so cheap and easy to make. Sadly I think my amazement just reveals how out of touch with eating simply and well we have become in the west. We are supremely lucky in that we have a ready supply of chicken livers we feel very comfortable consuming. Annie's work at the abattoir has confirmed for us just how good our livers are. Our chickens have livers of deep deep red and they smell sweet. Some other chickens that have consumed a different diet and lived a different life have livers that appear, well, sick and pale browny coloured, and they smell yuck. I know I know, some of you may be wondering where you can get these sweet smelling livers from? If you don't live in the Bega valley then I cannot really say. You need to find yourselves a butcher who can guarantee the provenance of the meat they're selling you. If you're in Sydney, you would want to try these fine fellas. 

The pâté recipe I have been using is a little fusion of what we have at home + Emily's + Matthew Evans + a little bit of internet searching... and it goes a little something like this - 

250g butter (Bega butter of course!)

2-3 brown onions, finely chopped

3-4 garlic cloves, crushed

5 sprigs of thyme

2 sprigs rosemary

a small sprig of sage

500g chicken livers

a splash of red or white wine or port

Slowly cook onions in the butter until onion is soft but not brown. Add the herbs and garlic and cook a little longer. Add the livers and cook for 15 minutes until livers are cooked through. Add a splash of wine or port and cook for a few minutes more. Add a little salt and pepper to taste. Then blend in a food processor until smooth. 

How easy is that?!

I read somewhere that it freezes and thaws really really well. I ask you, can this story get any better?

Basically we have had a continuous supply of pâté the past four months and we're so not sick of it yet. We've had many visitors from Sydney and I've fed them all pâté. I like to think of it as a little something special we can offer our friends from the big smoke. It's true, we don't have fine theatre or cinema or very much hustle bustle but we do have very fine pâté. And we also have very fine beaches and what could be finer beach food than pâté on sourdough, with a little home grown cherry tomato chaser? Seriously good stuff, the kind of stuff that makes my heart sing.   

Eating pate' while gazing upon this feels pretty good

"Is this meat?"

We've been doing a bit of meat processing of late - pigs, lambs and, of course, chickens. The kids have been with us all the way, interested and enthralled by the process, and it's prompted them to become quite engaged with the question of what meat actually is. Oscar in particular went through a process of trying to discern what else in his life might be considered a meat possibility. Pointing at the dog: "Is this meat?" Pointing to his cheek: "Is this meat?" The answer to his question, of course, is that what can be considered 'meat' is completely subjective and socially determined.

Slow-cooked Spanish style wild rabbit stew, made using home-cured chilli pancetta, served with soft polenta. A 'normal' kind of 'meat', but why?

Oscar,  having not been at all socialised to reject certain kinds of meat potentials, is all for considering the possibilities. For this reason, he was the only person in our family to try the lamb's tongue. He loved it! Gulping it down from a little yellow tea cup while watching Gourmet Farmer on DVD.

Oscar enjoying his cup o' tongue

He was also the one who prompted me to consider the meat potential of chicken necks, which I regularly bring home from the abattoir for making stock, which we use in everything, but most deliciously, in congee. 

One day, after the stock was done and packaged and safely deposited into the freezer, Oscar came upon the colander of chicken necks, onions and celery tops. "What's this? A sausage?" he asked, holding up one of the necks. "Yeah, kind of." I replied, at which point he started chomping on it. The upside to his adventurousness is that he now has a super-nutritious snack of 'neck sausages' every time I make stock, and I discovered that necks actually have heaps of meat on them. So now, when I make the stock, I spend 10 minutes or so afterwards stripping the necks into a neat little parcel of beautiful, cooked chicken meat for sandwiches or soup or whatever. Yum!

When we recently processed our lamb, I was keen to make use of the lamb's head, which I knew would contain quite a bit  of meat - too much to discard, for sure.

The lamb's head. Most of the meat came from the cheek areas

The answer came in the form of a Iranian breakfast soup called Kaleh Pacheh, which is traditionally made with the head and the hoofs of the lamb. For some reason the hoofs were fed to the dogs, so I just used the head. I used the recipe in the link above, though I added some apple cider vinegar to help get the goodies out of the bones. We cooked it (overnight!) in our pizza oven, so it was a nice long, slow cook. Next day, I stripped the skull of all its meat and stirred it through the broth.

Kaleh Pacheh - served with a squeeze of lemon and a freshly-cooked home-made flatbread

The resulting soup was a gorgeous green colour, not too chunky, herby, and quite rich. It's got an interesting flavour, and though I don't mind having things like congee with poached eggs for breakfast, I don't know that I'll be rushing to have Kaleh Pacheh first thing in the morning, though it made a delicious light lunch.

Leftover congee with poached eggs - possibly my favourite breakfast

Despite my attempts to challenge my "is this meat?" socialisation, I didn't taste the tongue, and I didn't put the eyeballs in the soup. Which made me realise how strong and pervasive this socialisation is. Here I am, philosophically and ethically completely in favour of eating all bits, and I still had insurmountable "ew" about the eyeballs and tongue. Interesting.

Next stop on our "is this meat?" adventure is my Oma's braun, which we are making from the head of our pig, which is safely waiting in the freezer. I'm excited - I know it will be delicious - but also apprehensive about overcoming my 'ew' enough to use and eat the tongue, to get all the hair off the pig's head, clean out the ear wax etc... But I'm up for it. We have to be, because we all waste so much, and a socialised 'ew' to perfectly good, readily available, local food is something worth challenging.