A little bit of Spring

A little bit of Spring bounty..

We've had some sickness in our tiny house lately. Weeks of it. Fluey, pneumonic kind of illness. Consequently, things have been slow in these parts as we've all been decrepit. Yet despite the decrepit, we have managed to observe and celebrate the advent of Spring. 

Cause for great celebration has been the big rain we've had. Joy oh joys. Bloody great. I laugh at myself a little now when I think about how obsessed I am with checking the rainfall. It never would have occurred to me when we lived in Sydney. Now I talk to everyone about it, which works fine when talking to people around town. But I must admit I do get a little self conscious when I catch myself recounting our rainfall in mm's to our Sydney friends. However when you've just planted 800 native trees and shrubs and you rely on tank water and you have year old fruit trees that you are hoping to see some serious growth on this Summer and you have vegetables to grow and Summer time garden beds to create, well rain does become all. 

One recent Sunday, before the big rain, we'd had a little rain (25mm in case you're curious). Our coughs were almost gone, the air was mild and the raindrops in the trees were glistening in the morning sun. It felt good. We'd just noticed the globe artichokes were coming on and the broad beans were standing to attention. Huzzah! Let the Spring eating begin. Excellent. We've probably talked about it before, but there is real joy to be found in eating seasonally. Not to get too ranty, but we just don't need tomatoes and watermelon in July. We just don't. They don't taste good, they'e come from far away and it's so weird, this concept that we can have what we want whenever we want. Not to get all Socialist mumma on you, but I can't help but feel that this devastating sense of entitlement will be our undoing. We've been eating a lot of kale, cabbage, root veg, chard, pumpkin (still working our way through our Autumn haul)and leek lately so the growth of the broad beans and artichokes is cause for some joy. New flavours, new recipes, new eating, new ideas, new conversations.... what could be better? 

Beautiful sight of the artichoke

Meatballs with broad beans and lemon

I had been waiting for the broad beans because I was wanting to cook the meatballs with broad beans and lemon from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Jerusalem. They suggest it makes a perfect Spring supper, and we'd have to agree. Truly truly delicious. This is my favourite kind of food. Food that is rooted in the seasons, real food with real flavour. It's easy to make with what's fresh in the garden and the spices in the cupboard. We will eat it many times this Spring but only while the broad beans and spring onions flourish in the garden and local lemons abound. 

There were about six globe artichokes ready for the picking. Just six. There are many more to come but as you'd probably know, you can't wait for the littlies to be ready because in that time the artichoke heart will turn to flower. Beautiful purply blue flower but heartless flower nonetheless. So while it felt a little ridiculous to be processing just six artichokes, preserve them I did. We'd been studying Preserving the Italian Way for pig recipes. Yes, pig. We bought a pig from a friend and made many wonderful things with it (yes this will be a post, soon) But of course preserving the Italian way is about more than just the pig, so we turned to it for artichoke inspiration. It's very simple really. You peel the artichokes back to their heart, leaving them in floury water (to stop them browning) while you peel the rest. Then boil them up for 5 or so minutes in a mix of water, white wine vinegar, lemon juice, cloves, bay leaves and garlic. Then leave to cool and drain for hours and hours. Then put in a jar with some olive oil. One jar is all we got, this time. But this week there'll be another seven artichokes and a few weeks later there'll be more and so on. By the time Summer hits, we may well have stocked up on several jars and they will provide some good eating on pizzas and in salads this Summer. 

The first jar

Apparently you can preserve scotch thistles in the same way as artichokes. Have you ever tried such a thing? Of course, they are related but little did I know you could eat an actual thistle. Apparently you need to catch the thistle just before it flowers. Annie and Olive and Oscar traversed the land in search of some scotch thistle at this very juncture in its life cycle. Strangely they only found a couple. I gave it a good try, carefully peeling back the prickly "leaves" but ended up with a thistle heart so small it made no sense to preserve it. I thought maybe we'd picked it too early? But any later and they'd be flowering. We've got some more thistles, on the brink, so maybe this week I'll give it another go.

in pursuit of the thistle

It feels as though we are a little behind in our summertime garden preparations. Weeks of coughing will do that to you. Weeks of coughing and pigs to process and pastured poultry enterprises to establish and lovely guests to host will all delay the Spring planting... Oh yes, there are plenty more stories to come...

Bit of a bitsa...

We've been having some lovely times with some lovely loved ones of late and while these times have been wonderful they're not so good for continuing the action-stations theme of this blog. Oh but you would have seen that Annie has still been churning out the P & E wares. Her productivity is second to none. We like to engage in a little bit of pathetic cultural stereotyping about this, attributing it to her German heritage. My experience of Germans is limited to Annie and her family and the 2005 Berlin film festival, all of which serve to heartily reinforce the stereotype (yes yes hardly a representative sample). Meanwhile my friend Drew assures me that he does indeed know some lazy Germans so whether Annie's productivity is cultural or genetic or learned or none of the above, the point is she is one productive lady and this is simultaneously inspiring and exhausting but certainly great when considering owner building straw bale dwellings and food forest creating on our 7 acres.

Ok, so we've had some fun summer times with some people we love. But now it feels that we must declare the summer fun over. Our first born just started school ( so far, so great) and well, it hasn't stopped raining for awhile now and there are flood warnings. So what better time to knuckle down and preserve tomatoes and start planning our April build.

Speaking of the build, we thought it as all over red rover. Banks don't like owner builders. Apparently their disdain has increased since the GFC which is a little frustrating since the GFC was hardly caused by owner builders. We had a few tears, a bit of hand wringing, a lot of woe is me (which is, upon reflection, pretty embarrassing given how many billions of people go hungry each day) and now it seems we've found a way through and have a modest amount that should cover the costs of excavating of our house site and driveway, a new dam and swales for fruit trees, "little straw bale", a water tank, composting toilet and solar panels. Little straw bale is the 3x6 + loft studio cottage we'll be living in while we build "big straw bale", our actual house. Anyhoo, it's all back on. Hurray. Oh and best of all, the straw-bale builder we are working with, Frank Thomas, is German so well, you know, we're happy. Our free straw bale building workshop with Frank runs from 16-20 April so if you're busting a gut to learn how, let us know we may still have a spot left. But beware, Frank tells us that the workshop will run from 8am to 5pm for 5 days straight (again with the stereotype). We'll feed you and thank you and love you for participating.

As for the tomatoes you may recall some earlier discussion here about tomato preserving. And I am happy to say that tomatoes are now at their peak here in the south. I bottled my first batch today.

I decided to move on from the raw pack method of previous years, get a little more sophisticated and actually make a passata, of sorts, for bottling this year. Today's batch is the first of many. My rough calculations tell me that we will need at least 28 bottles to last us from April through to November, for these are the months that tomatoes are not available in these parts. However 28 bottles, only leaves us with, on average, a bottle a week, not much for this tomato loving family so I'm aiming for 35 bottles. Only 27 to go! In time I'm hoping the tomatoes we bottles will be grown on our land but I'm giving myself several years for that. Something to aspire to around the age of 42 methinks.

Following the plum bonanza of December, we've moved into full-on berry bonanza territory. Being a lifelong Sydney dweller, my experience of berries has been somewhat limited. I recently realised I'd never actually had a blackberry. Oh my! what absolute delight. Is there anything more delicious? Yep the picking is hazardous but so worth it. These gorgeous pestilents are everywhere in these parts, including across our land, and we've been scoffing up a storm. It's hard with berries, they taste so good and they're so small, it's easy to eat so many while picking. However I am determined that a few jars of blackberry jam should make it into the pantry before the end of the season.

Cue - gratuitous shot of a thistle

We have thistles aplenty across our land and while we think them quite beautiful there is no denying they are even more a pesty pestilent than blackberries, with significantly less culinary appeal. So while Gourmet Farmer hasn't totally changed our view of them, we were pretty excited to discover that the stamen of the thistle flower can be used as rennet! Ah nature, you are so wonderful. Trite but true. We'll let you know how we go in our goat cheese making endeavours.

It's busy time ahead as we finalise our bare rooted fruit tree order with a local nursery, equivocate over building materials, decide on our solar power needs, continue to research earthen/adobe floors, work through our mountain of anxiety about what our water tank should be made of and work out how we will cheaply but deliciously feed over 15 participants in our straw bale workshop for 5 days - breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner...

Ah so busy, so good...

There's nothing I love more than a Very Productive Weekend. People say to me "Dude, you should relax! Just sit down and chill out for a bit!" and I say to them "No way! Impossible! My genetic makeup dictates that I must be busy at all times!". And so I pretty much am, and that's fine, because I love getting shit done.

This weekend was fab because I hung the hammock between the fig and the mulberry, bottled my ginger beer, spent a morning chopping out thistles on the land, mowed the lawn at our house, made 2 tops, a bolero, and a skirt, went on a bike ride to the river with the kids and picked up an awesome 20 litre drum which will be perfect for watering the windbreak we're about to plant, and went for a swim at Nelson's Lagoon. Now it's sunday night, and I'm buggered, but man, am I feelin' gooood!

The tops are for Sally, as a thank you for all her help with my skirt sale.

The bolero is for Lilli of Frocks n Frou Frou, who requested a wattle/native flower-flavoured bolero for the springtime.

Any time someone requests a native flower theme, I call upon a souvenir from WA, as this is the wildflower state (and also the black swan state - awesome!) and the souvenirs are gorgeously reflective of this. I LOVE the linen tablecloth I used for this, and had actually cut out a skirt for myself from it, but never got around to swing it together. So I chopped it up for a bolero for Lilli. And super-excitingly, and totally by fluke (or course, because I am disorganised and planning is not a strong suit of mine) the fringed Lily is on the front! Lilli, I hope you dig fringes...

The skirt is a repeat for Kelsey, in Seattle, who was comin' back for second helpings of Australiana. That's what I like to see.

The beer is my inaugural Bega batch! I got my home brew kit for christmas a few years ago and it was seriously one of the best presents ever, because I LOVE beer and I LOVE making stuff. If you've ever thought of making your own beer, just do it. It's not at all difficult, it's super-fun, makes a nice gift for your man friends if you're a bit man-craft challenged like me and it's awesome for ye olde planet because you get to reuse your beer bottles over and over and it's not transported from lands far far away. Also looks very nice sitting on the kitchen bench with afternoon sun filtering through it.

Also good if you're a beer snob like me, but the We're Actually Building A House budget is prohibiting the purchase of gourmet microbrewed 6packs valued at $20 each, then home brew is the way to go. Once you get good at it, you can even experiment with fancy schmancy ingredients like chocolate malted barley. Woooooooo. But for summer, I'm giving ginger beer a burl, with the intention of having a bit of a dark and stormy summer.

But the thistles... That was hard one. I think that thistles are beautiful. I love having them around. So much so that I actually have quite a large tattoo of one.

But they are a weed! And they are not child friendly! So they must go. Chop chop. Gave me an excuse to traverse the land, looking at plants, so not really a dreadful experience.