"When peak oil comes, what else will there be to do but scythe dance?"

That's what Pearl said when we watched the incredibly earnest but incredibly sweet and inspiring DVD that accompanied our very own scythe.

Yes, a few months ago I got a really big, exciting present in the mail. It's taken us a while to fully get into the scything business, on account of all the house-building and garden making that's been going on for us, but believe me: we're making up for lost time.

I can't remember when exactly I decided that I wanted to scythe, but man am I pleased I made that decision. It is such a quiet, gentle exercise that results in a nice, not crazily overgrown orchard, and massive piles of mulch - perfect for mulching the fruit trees in said orchard, and providing a playground for the guinea pigs.

And a crappy day at work simply melts away to the gentle swish swish of the scythe.

The scythe itself was purchased from Scythes Australia - regenerative farming people, fermentation enthusiasts and importers of Austrian scythes which are hand-forged in a factory that's been making scythes since 1540. Excuse me if that's not cool.

It's an amazing piece of equipment, made all the more so, I think, by the ancient-ness of its design. Scythes have history, and they also have culture. They even have counter-culture, in that back to the land-er hippies like us, and a few other people around these parts, are extremely enthusiastic about scythes and what they can do and also what they represent.

We got a scythe starter kit, which has a multi-purpose blade - good for mowing but also good for slightly woodier weeds - in our case fleabane and purple top and small scotch thisles. When the scythe is sharp (which it usually is because I stop and sharpen it with the whetstone every 3-5 minutes) it doesn't take much to slice those buggers down. VERY satisfying.

Honing with the whetstone. The whetstone comes with a very fashionable copper holder that clips onto your belt. HOT.

The years-old over-the-knee kikuyu grass is a little more taxing, but I can tell you absolutely 100% it is still easier and quicker with the scythe than with the brushcutter, and you don't have to wear earplugs. And the cut grass doesn't end up all over the place! The scythe just puts it in this neat little windrow - without me even trying! You can see that in this super-cool video:

The scythe came with an awesome DVD, which was about a tiny-house-dwelling hippie family in Canada who make scythes and are generally enthused about the scythe-related lifestyle (low-impact, relaxed and quiet). As I watched it, I felt like I was being born-again into some kind of religion. I became an overnight scythe-zealot! Not that I'm pushing the scythe revolution necessarily, but I can assure you that when I come home from work (or when I wake up in the morning or if I just have a few spare moments...) scything the orchard is a fun and rewarding and relaxing and energising kind of thing to do for a few minutes or hours. No petrol, no stink, no hideous noise that scares ducks, chickens and children alike.

Oski honing his hoe with the whetstone. Never too young to hone, I say...

The Bega show: 'groing food' and other adventures

Errol and Olive

I've always been a fan of a small rural show. When I was a kid, we went every year to the Albion Park show. Occasionally we went to the Kiama show, but we mostly just went to Albion Park, and picked up ribbons in sections like "dog with the cleanest teeth". It was ace.

"groing food". Love it.

One of the things I love about being in major regional centre like Bega is the abundance of small rural shows. There's shows like Candelo - small and picturesque and pretty much all about the animals and handcrafts. The 'rides' are a small jumping castle and pony rides, and lunch is put on by the show society in the luncheon pavilion. It's been going for 126 years and when you're there, it kind of feels like not a lot has changed, except maybe for the addition of a tractor display. There's also a small hut selling watermelon slices for 50 cents each, and a 'kids korner' with painting and colouring in and potting up little plants and seeds to take home. It's super relaxing and very low key. The slogan for the show is 

"Share what you know, 

show what you grow, 

meet your friends at the Candelo show". 

We dig it.

And then there's the Bega Show - the Far South Coast National Show. It's bigger. There's a whole section that's all about the rides. There's a smash up derby, and there's fireworks. But it's still super fun and relaxing, especially if, like us, all you take in is the pavilion full of preserves and cakes and novelty heads made from pumpkins and other vegetables, and the woodchop (my personal favourite).

My favourite of Olive's photos, entered into the under 10 colour photography section

This year, we all got into the spirit of things and entered some of our wares. Olive entered photos and a sculpture, a poster about 'groing food' and a bantam rooster. 

The sculpture was made from willow, bamboo and chook feathers

She cleaned up, getting second for her sculpture and poster, and highly commended for the rooster (it was Errol Flynn, and she's pretty keen to enter him in the upcoming regional poultry show, too. I think her favourite bit was giving him a lavender-scented bath the evening before the show, then delivering him into the pavilion amidst oohs and aahs from the old-timers). 

Champion stout

I got first for my stout (the one Oski and I bottled at our outside table!) and second for last season's apple jelly. 

Novice jellies

Pearl got first for her entry in the local food utilisation section - "Menu for a February lunch" and second for her blackberry jam, though was strangely robbed of a prize for her tomato sauce and peach jam. The tomato sauce was especially puzzling, given that the winning sauce was somewhat pale and seemed to have a layer of water on the top. Weird.

Jam in the foreground, next year's ribbon at rear

We're super excited about next year, and are already planning our entries. I've got my eyes on one of those felt ribbons they give out to the champions of each section (I'm thinking home brew), and Pearl's hungering for a ribbon for her tomato collection. 

Errol and Olive back home, recovering from an exciting couple of days in the poultry pavilion

News from the orchard

So it would seem that our duck and chook have been sitting in vain. When the 3 week point came (the time when chooky eggs are supposed to hatch), we waited eagerly for any sign that the eggs were hatching. Nothing. After a few days I started to worry. A week after the 'due' date, I'd pretty much given up, and was starting to feel bad for the chook, who was looking a bit worse for wear - she is one determined sitter! 

4 weeks sitting on a nest will do that to a bird...

The duck was a little less determined, and there were several times we thought she'd given up on her nest of eggs, taking extended swims in the dam and generally hanging out with her duck and chook pals. The chook, on the other hand, barely left her nest, even for food. She just sat there, fluffed out over her clutch of eggs, looking wearier and more pallid with each day that passed.

Then one day we arrived home and noticed that the chook had kicked one of her eggs out. When I cracked it, it was rotten, with no sign of an embryo having ever been present. I decided to crack another, with the same outcome. Next day, I got the chook out of her nest. She'd been sitting on 10 eggs, as I'd guessed, and none of them were (nor had they ever been) fertile. Weird given the extremely high rooster to chook ratio we've got going on. Poor chook. I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. All that dedication! Still, she wasn't too attached once I kicked her out, and soon joined in a scratching frenzy with her chooky pals. She seemed kind of relieved, though I may be projecting.

Next day, when the sitting duck was out and about, I inspected her nest too. Seems she'd been laying, while she was sitting, and her nest of eggs had gone from 2 to 5. But when I looked closely, they were all a yukky blue-grey colour: rotten.

She, too, seemed kind of relieved when I locked her back up in the orchard so she  couldn't get back to her nest and was very quick (like, 2 minutes) to get back into the swing of the extended chicken/duck flock.

A couple of our roosters. The one on the left is called John Howard, on account of his evil nature, cranky face, and bushy eyebrows. The one on the right is Errol Flynn.

And then I buried the eggs. It was all a bit of a disappointing climax, though I was happy to see the girls back out and about. 

So we have no babies of the avian variety in the orchard, but we do have some young guinea pigs running around the place which is... well... extremely cute.

The guinea pig in orchard came about a couple of years ago when I was reading an article by Jill Redwood. Now, I only know Jill through what I've read by/about her in magazines, but crikeys she strikes me as a totally amazing and inspiring woman. The kind of lady I want to be when I grow up. Anyways. Jill advocates having guinea pigs in the orchard for a couple of reasons. 1: they keep the grass down. Recent studies done by the owner of our local nursery (extremely lovely chap who helped us select our orchard trees so we'd have fruiting and cross pollination all year round) suggest that guinea pigs keep down about a square metre of grass per guinea pig per day. Handy! 2: guinea pigs, being small, scurrying rodents, attract birds of prey. In our case, that would be wedge-tailed eagles. While the wedgies are hanging around, so the story goes, you'll get less parrot action. Ergo, less fruit gets chomped on your tree. Hey: if it's good enough for Jill, it's good enough for me. And like I say - they're bloody cute, and not at all obtrusive and they do eat the grass down.

I was only a little bit miffed that they snubbed the very swish Frida Kahlo-inspired guinea pig house that Oski and I lovingly constructed for them, in favour of some burrows they made in the mulch around the apple tree. No worries.

Apple tree mulch burrows: Apparently far more attractive to guinea pigs than flash, Frida-coloured houses

Oski jumps at any opportunity to operate a power tool. Takes after me...

The harvest we almost didn't have

It takes a while for Summer to really hit in these parts. It's not 'til Christmas time that we find ourselves properly immersed in the heat of the Summertime. And it's about this time that we start to see blackberries everywhere, everywhere, everywhere growing fat on their brambles. Last Summer, our first summer here, was also our first excursion into the joys and pain of blackberry picking and preserving.  This Summer we spied the darkening and fattening berries with excited anticipation of true and immense deliciousness. We'd decided to embrace the handy tips in our new bible, The Weed Foragers Handbook to "... stomp down on the highest canes in your path using them to flatten to the ground all the canes beneath them. Do this with each step into the bushes' centre and you'll quickly triple your collecting area..." Ok so we were ready. Then the heat really hit. 45 degree days with hot North Westerly winds do not a happy blackberry make. Everywhere we looked we saw fried dried blackberries and yes, it was a little despondent making. 

Then one day Annie was wandering around our land, down low in the gully and spied a perfect vision across the fence. On the south facing slope hung a wall of blackberries, a veritable avalanche of berries cascading over to a sea of wild growing watercress. Wow. Thank you lush cool micro-climate for saving our blackberry 'harvest'. It is quite amazing how a little less sun and a bit more moisture can result in such a profound change in eco-system, such that the edibles are growing in wild abundance whereas literally a few metres away, it's all dried up and brown. 

wall of blackberries

sea of watercress

We didn't need our handy blackberry picking tip this year as these blackberries literally fall into our hands. We've been picking bowlfuls and jamming up a storm.

Oh the deep purple delight

I used the same recipe as last Summer but have learnt my lesson and now cook it for no longer than an hour. The result is less thick, but better. And yep, the kids love it...

Olive and jam

Huon, Oscar and jam

We've also invented a rather delicious dessert gozleme of blackberries, honey, mint and fetta. It is superb. 

And we've been eating a lot of blackberry breakfast pikelets with locally foraged peaches, Brett's passionfruit, yoghurt and maple syrup or honey. These are also superb and so easy to make. 

This seeming over-indulgence is what I love most about eating seasonally. For us now, it's all about tomatoes, zucchini, basil, corn, beans, greens, blackberries, blueberries and peaches. We're eating so much of it that I won't be sorry when this Summer bounty ends. In fact I will be relieved to move onto the pomme fruit, root veg and brassicas of the cooler months. Then just when I think I can't bear to eat another cabbage or cauliflower we will be in asparagus, pea, broad bean, artichoke and leafy green land and back on the brink of the Summer bounty. And by this time I know I will be seriously yearning for some tomato and basil action. For now we are really enjoying what we have, it feels like true abundance. 

Blackberry breakfast pikelets

(serves 4)

200g flour (I use whatever we have so sometimes it's all white, sometimes a halfy mix of some kind of wholemeal and white)

2 tspns of baking powder

1/2 cup rapadura sugar

2-3 eggs, beaten

400ml milk or buttermilk or a yoghurt milk combo

butter for cooking

Blackberries (also works super-well with other berries, especially foraged ones like native raspberries. They are just tastier when they're free)

Stir dry ingredients into a large bowl and make a well. Pour eggs into the well and then slowly add milk. Depending on the flour you use you might need less or more milk. You want a smooth, not too runny batter.

Heat a heavy based frypan and add butter. When the butter starts to bubble from the heat, drop in spoonfuls, when bubbles start to appear on uncooked side, drop blackberries onto them and flip over. Keep warm until all are cooked. 

The big one

Last night we had arroz con pollo (Spanish rice and chicken) for dinner. It was the final dinner in a week of delicious dinners with our most beautiful friends, Morag and Louisa and Huon, who had been camping on our land.

Arroz con pollo. Check out that super-long drumstick! And that little hand, belonging to a certain small person who was very eager to get a taste of "the big one".

The night before last night, Morag and I killed and prepared the rooster we used in the dinner. He'd just started to crow, so we knew it was time to eat him.

I've killed a few chickens before, but killing animals definitely doesn't come naturally to me. As a child, I spent my school holidays on my Oma and Opa's farm, and I knew they killed and prepared their own beef and pigs - I remember the very well stocked deep freeze, and have a vague recollection of a cow hanging in a tree, thought I don't know if this is real or imagined. On the other side of the coin though, my mum volunteered for Animal Welfare, and my Nana can't even watch an animal documentary in case she sees a lion killing and eating a zebra.

Pearl and I have both, at times, been vegetarian and vegan. In recent times, though, we've come to the conclusion that it's not humans eating meat per se that is the problem: it's the way our meat is 'produced', and the amount of meat we eat on account of the fact that we're totally divorced from the effort it takes to kill something and then prepare it for consumption. For the last few years we've become increasingly dedicated to finding ethical and sustainable (or even regenerative) sources of our food - meat and veg alike. For the most part this involves buying local and/or organic, buying direct from the producer, when we can, and growing as much of our own food as possible. We also don't eat a lot of meat. Maybe once a fortnight, and part of our holistic goal for living on/from the land is that we'll eventually produce all our own meat - grown, killed and processed right here.

First stop: chickens. 

The night before last night was an outrageously windy and rainy night. In all, not the best circumstances for killing and plucking a chook, but we'd committed to the home-grown arroz con pollo as the holiday's-end dinner with our friends, so we went through with it. Here's my thoughts/feelings about the experience:

1. It wasn't the best thing I've ever done. As I said - killing don't come natural to me - but I'm aware of the purely cultural relationship we have with life and the lives of the animals we live with, and I'm really up for challenging myself on this front. I'm also painfully aware of the disgustingly alienated relationship most people have with their 'meat'. It's too easy for us to ignore the life (the quality of their lived experience, and the events surrounding their death) of the animal when we're in the supermarket or butcher shop, and I know that if I am to eat meat, I need to reconnect with the lives and deaths of the animals I'm consuming.

2. In spite of all tis intellectualising and philosophising, immediately after killing the chook, Morag and I both thought we should probably become vegetarians.

3. Gutting the chook was very interesting, but we felt ashamed that we were so unaware of what all the 'bits' were. We've resolved to buy a book on it, so we can, in future, make better use of the whole animal.

4. That said, we did use the feet and unidentified giblets for stock. It was, without a doubt, the most insanely rich and fragrant stock I've ever experienced, albeit a little funny-lookin' to the uninitiated.

The stock. As I brushed the disembodied feet clean, in preparation for their addition to the stock, I  had the strange sensation that I was performing a really wrong kind of pedicure...

5. We need to get our knives sharpened.

6. I'm definitely not looking forward to the next time I kill one of our chooks, but I also know that the next time I eat a chook, I want it to be one we've raised ourselves. While the experience of killing/gutting/plucking etc is not awesome, the knowledge that we're following our ethics and taking responsibility for our food is. Last night's dinner solidified for me that this is what we need to be doing more of. I can guarantee most people would eat less meat if they were involved in the killing and preparation.

7. The last time I knocked off a chicken, I used an axe. But after having some discussions with various people who regularly kill animals of all kinds, I decided to give the broken neck approach a go. It's a little... intimate... and I think I'll be opting for the axe next time.

8. Preparing a chook takes a long time! This was definitely a result of our not-extremely-sharp knives, the rain, the wind, and the fact that we didn't really know what we were doing and hadn't really done it before. I'm hoping the whole thing get's quicker...

9. I don't know how I'd go killing a duck ( or any other animal, for that matter). They're very charming. I suppose chooks are charming too, in their own way, and I did have a hard time looking that rooster in the eye on the days leading up to his marriage with the rice, but ducks are something else. Why are some lives more 'valuable' than others? How are we taught to 'know' the value of one animal over another? How much does anthropomorphism come into it? 

10. The shape of a home-grown chook is pretty different to a shop-bought chook, who are often bred to be so lethargic they don't even move. They're also usually caged so that they couldn't move, even if they wanted to. Ours, on the other hand, had some pretty long drumsticks! We're thinking we'll probably invest in some chickens of a more meat-oriented breed, and maybe do a little pre-kill fattening next time.

Chicken-bits in the pan. The smell, at this stage, was something other-worldly, I assure you.

11. The taste? Super tasty! A few years ago my dad had an organic banana for the first time. For weeks afterwards he was telling anyone who'd listen that it tasted like "banana with banana essence poured on it". That was exactly what the chook was like. The whole dish - made with the chook, his giblets and feet, and all organic and/or home-grown veg - was goodness in a paella pan. We felt nourished to the max.

Tonight we're having zucchini soup, in an effort to get through the crazy number of zucchinis coming out of our garden at the moment. The recipe is from the Whole Larder Love book, with the addition of some fat hen. The stock is made from the bones from last night's dinner. So the cycle continues...

mountains of zucchini and tomatoes: the taste of summer...

peach preserves and the last of the pump sale

One of the awesome things about living in a rural area is the community's willingness to share the abundance from their gardens. Often at work emails come round offering "free raspberry canes at the back door", "lemons and limes in the kitchen" or, most recently, "peaches in customer service". The peaches came from a lovely young chap who recently purchased a property containing several very old and very laden peach trees. He doesn't know what to do with them all, so we scored 3 bags full, in exchange for a selection of our preserves. Yeah!

Pearlie happily pitting and packing peaches

They're super sweet and delicious white and yellow peaches, which are surprisingly juicy given the dry season we're having. The squishy ones we made into peach and vanilla jam, using our awesome new half-pint milk dipper (Christmas present from my Nana and Parps) for ladling into the jars - perfect! 

The firmer ones we preserved in a light sugar syrup in Vacola jars, using the boiling water bath to seal them. This is a really easy method, which gives a stunning-looking, delicious store of peaches for use in trifles and desserts over the cooler months. Peaches were pitted and sliced, then packed into the jars, and a light sugar syrup (we got t he recipe from Stephanie Alexander: 2 parts water to 1 part sugar) is poured in over the top, the jars are sealed with rings and clips, then the whole shebang boiled in the vacola unit for around 25 minutes.

The peach jam is making its way into christmas presents (yes I know... we're late) and the last of the package 4's (for the Pump up the Dam Sale), which is due to be sent out on monday. I'm also chucking in a bottle of our newly bottled kasundi. We made this using the recipe from the Whole Larder Love cookbook, which was one of my christmas gifts. I'm pretty into it, despite Rohan's kind of sexist and slightly homophobic undertones, and his total obsession with 'gear' and all the stuff you need to have in order to live a 'simple' life. Weird. But I love the tips on foraging and hunting, and I especially love many of the recipes, and I did read it cover to cover, which is very unusual for me, seeing as I'm not really a cook. But I digress...

The kasundi is delicious. I want to eat it with every meal, and I very frequently do. But I also like to share it with people, so was very happy to include it, along with some jam and a skirt and some hand-made cards and a cute little t-shirt for my very old friend Meg, who happily ordered a package 4 in support of our pump-buying endeavours. 

A skirt for Meg, made from original 70s curtains that came out of the nurses quarters at Temorah hospital

I have known Meg for many many years. We used to hang out when I was 'Annie the tattooed nanny' for a couple of super-sweet little girls. Her girls were the same age, so we'd spend our days going to the park, hanging out at play groups, and eating sushi in the shopping centre. She supported some of my earliest commercial sewing ventures, and she cooked for our wedding and, even though I haven't seen her in years, and her kids are now teenagers (!), she reads our blog. 

A set of 10 cards, plus 5 little gift tags made from recycled cereal boxes and vintage kids' books

I was really touched when she got in contact asking for some clothes, and had fun sewing for her again, after all these years. Meg decided to swap her package 4 bolero for a tshirt, which was fine by me because it gave me an excuse to use some of this gorgeous babushka fabric, sent to me by another gorgeous old friend who also supported our pump sale. 

Meg's babushka-sleeved tshirt

Rochelle was the happy recipient of this wrap-n-go.

 I was a bit keen on it myself... but I know she'll love it, and wear  it with style, coz she's a stylish kinda lady.

The pump itself is now happily installed on our lower dam's wall, and after a number of false starts and some consultation with Brett, and a visit from Baz, local purveyor of pumps, is moving the water where we need it. It's a pretty ace bit of infrastructure, and has definitely been reassuring and helpful during these exceedingly dry, fire-prone times we're having around these parts.

Craigie wading out into our dam, installing the foot valve for sucking water into our brand spankin' new pump

doilies and blankets

Last week Olive stayed up after Oski went to sleep, to do a little photography, her new favourite hobby, which we are completely in favour of. The series was called "Things That Are Special About Our House" and included this great photo of the stairs leading up to our loft.

When we were building, we had a vision of a gorgeous, handmade, recycled hardwood ladder, kind of like a ship's ladder. But then time and money got away from us, and several months after we moved in, we still only had a crappy, and pretty ugly, aluminium ladder. What to do when something that is absolutely necessary to your daily life is pretty bloody ugly and definitely not blending with the rest of your interior decor (which in our case jut means crazy amounts of colour and soft furnishings)?

Wrap it in a blanket, of course!

I've always been very in favour of yarn bombing, but had never actually tried it myself: I can't knit very well or very quickly, and any blankets that come home from the op-shop are too beautiful to chop up and wrap around a tree. But then our new friend Vanessa showed me this awesome video, Keeping the Chairs Warm, and I got completely inspired to give it a burl. 

The hunt for scarves and blankets began, and before long I had some to go on with. It's super easy to do, obviously, and very satisfying, in that it's pretty quick and totally transformative, and the ladder, thanks to the blankets and scarves, now 'matches' our decor perfectly!

Crocheted ladder in the early morning sun

Another item that needed a little bit of work at our place was our light shade. I've re-covered lamp shades from the op shop before, but this time I wanted to have a go at making one out of doilies, like this.

This, like the blankets, was super easy, and very satisfying, though we had a few false starts, I think on account of the fact that we used a bowl, rather than a ballon, so the semi-spherical shape wasn't as supportive of itself as a spherical shape would be, and was prone to, shall we say, 'softening'. A bit of fencing wire fixed that, though, and now we bask in the glow of the doily light each night. Though I do have a big balloon on order, because I still really want to try to make a giant round one...

And then in the morning, we wake up and eat a breakfast like this: 

A perfect summertime garden abundance user-upperer, consisting of green eggs and cherry tomatoes with basil. Here's how.

Halve your cherry tomatoes, and toss with some chopped basil, salt and olive oil (not too much!).

In another bowl, crack your eggs (we usually do 2 for each person). Then go for a stroll around your garden to see what greens you can gather.  If you don't have a veggie patch, walk down the street and see if you kind find some weeds! We used fat hen (our new, daily multivitamin), garlic chives, shallots, and parsley. 

While your toast is toasting, whisk up the eggs and your finely chopped herbs/weeds/greens with some salt and pepper, then pour into a pan of hot olive oil and scramble at will. It's sooooooo tasty....