Fowlers Jars

While I'd love to show a photo of preserved food all in colourful rows, I have yet to try canning, although I intend to! What I do have is too-many-to-count Fowlers jars, and because most of them are from clearing sales, they aren't all suitable for food use. Many have cracks and chips in them.. and I had been wondering what I was going to do with them all.

Some have been very useful for things like..

Keeping Kang Kong over winter. They're tropical, and HATE frost or cold weather of any description, and even though our kitchen isn't tropical by any means, it's usually hovers around 15°C (59°F) all winter. I think the Kang Kong tolerate it, but only just.

There are avocado seeds in the other jars on the kitchen shelf.
Also a sweet potato that sprouted too late in the season last year, also happier in tropical climates.

The shoots of sweet potato have been hanging in there all winter, and I put four of them outside in a new garden bed. Fowlers jars to the rescue again, they're covering the shoots in hopes of keeping the cold off them until next month or so. It's an experiment to see how early I can get these babies into the ground this season. The longer the better, as it might give them a chance to establish a bit before the 30°- 40° plus (86° - 104° plus) temperatures arrive (it happens fast in my experience).

Perhaps this season is the one when I'll use Fowlers jars (and Ball Mason jars) for preserving food. You can bet there'll be photos if I do!

Winter Solstice 2016

The cooler weather has been nice, but it's the wet weather that is keeping us from doing too much exciting around here lately. The shed progress has halted, with tarp covering one of the frames, we'll wait for drier times to continue.

We went to the last Permie Day at Richard's place, and came home with an orphaned lemon tree. Poor little thing! There's one great thing about wet weather though - it's very easy to dig holes for trees. The tree is all tucked-in for the winter, and hopefully it recovers. There is a lot of compost in that soil, as well as a generous amount of worm juice and poultry manure (in pellet form from the bag, since we can't really collect our own chook manure the way they're set up now).

There's been a lot of sitting by the fire, keeping warm.

We keep any wood with holes in them for the garden, somewhere for the bugs, spiders and skinks to call home. Some make good garden edging, and others are huge and I'll garden around them. Gardening is a very slow process in Winter, which is a little frustrating, but I can't complain too much. Most everything is still alive, just hanging out for the warmer days. I've kept 3 jars of Kang Kong in the kitchen - with roots this year - just waiting for Spring, there's a sweet potato that sprouted too late last season, but might not live to see the Spring, and avocado seeds with toothpicks too.

We had trouble with the Red Legged Earth Mite again this year, and while I don't like chemicals, I did try a home made white oil recipe out - just kitchen oil, water, and a drop or two of dishwashing liquid. That worked well, but I waited too long to spray, and the silverbeet are still in recovery mode (which is taking a long time being Winter), so next time I'll be ready for them. That means no more silverbeet though, and other than a few herbs, there isn't much being harvested from the garden. Thankfully the farmer's market traders are better at this than I am, and we are eating excellent food anyway. :)

The fruit trees received a little love, we pruned the fig trees (just underneath them, taking out the suckers and dead stuff, not very dramatic this year), the almond trees got a very light prune, (just branches that were crossing over others and dead ones) and this year I've added mulch and some chicken manure around the bases. They didn't produce any almonds last year, so we're hoping they go crazy this year. Almonds are $36 per kilo at the moment! I don't imagine we'll get enough for our own needs, let alone selling them.

There are plenty of things on the to-do list, but there's no hurry. Often, the longer things take, the better they turn out. Plans have time to evolve, change and sometimes the things that seemed so important before are off the list entirely after some time. Some days we don't do anything at all, and that's perfectly ok with me. :)

When the rain comes

We've had some glorious rain lately! 54mm (just over 2 inches) over a couple of days, filling the tanks, making even the most overgrazed paddocks around us look green, encouraging frogs galore and of course, FUNGI!

The native area on the top of our hill has "environmental significance" and we're suppose to protect and enhance it. Well, that's not a problem. It's absolutely beautiful, and we love nothing more than wandering around up there leaving only footprints and taking only photographs. :)

We've had to start shutting our main gate lately due to our land being too much of a temptation to other people's sheep. The fences are being tested and found lacking too, which has required quite a few hours repairing them. I do feel sorry for the poor sheep surrounding our property, but no, they can't come over for lunch! Because it's been at least 4 years since this property has seen stock, the local native trees are starting to grow back (especially around the edges) and much of the ground is covered by mulch and beginning to look healthy once again.

We will have stock of our own some day, but in a controlled, and hopefully well managed way with electric fences and rotational grazing. But in the meantime, it's wonderful to see an increase in diversity and health of our little slice of The Hills.

The fly trap

I wanted to give some credit in this post to the humble fly trap.

We had a terrible time with flies this season. It actually got to the point where we purchased some nets for over our hats so we could be outside and use both hands.. You know, carrying stuff, hammering, repairing.. etc. The nets were sold out in town, and we went back a week later and we got the last two in stock! Clearly it wasn't just us.

I did some research about ways to combat the problem, and came across raving reviews of the Gordys Fly Trap from New Zealand. Hmm, does that mean the flies get just as bad over there?

We have been using it all summer, and once we found the perfect location and the most disgusting smell, it's been collecting flies by the bucket load ever since. Infact, I've put a bigger bucket under it now. This bucket once held 15kg (33 pounds) of popcorn butter I think. Now it's more than half full of flies, and more are desperately trying to get in all the time.

There has been a couple of dung beetles hanging around, but their flight is a lot more clumsy, and they haven't figured out how to get in, so thankfully they go find something else to bury.

It's drastically reduced the number of flies landing on us, making it a lot more enjoyable outside again. The trap is far enough away that it doesn't smell in the garden. It's well worth experimenting with the location to get it just right. The Willy Wagtail's love it too, and can be seen hanging around it looking very fat. They raised 3 chicks recently!

Ah yes, and we've used other fly traps here. We started with the little yellow lidded ones (which work ok, but on more a suburban-scale), moved up to Effecto, but it didn't work that much better than the little ones. I'm just so impressed with the Gordys that I thought I'd let others know that it's out there, and it really really really works!

Unexpected progress

What a crazy month it's been! The cooler weather means we've been working a bit harder than usual to get some things done. All that came to a halt when a few mice found their way inside the cottage. Absolutely unacceptable! Haha, we did the same thing in the Old Miners Cottage, ripping apart things because of mice, and here is no exception. We took off the skirting board where the mouse hole was located..

And plastered it all up in lime before re-attaching the board.

It's been so long since we plastered, I had to look up the recipe again (our old blog came in handy)!
Problem solved, and no mice since. Phew.

Another unexpected priority was the wood rack. We knocked one up using old star pickets and a welder. I think we're finally getting the hang of this stuff! It was unexpected because we suddenly found ourselves needing the extra space under "the structure" (the car-port type thing we made) for a chance buy at a clearing sale recently...

I still can't believe I won the little Kubota with a front end loader and backhoe! Swales, earth works and pads for water tanks here we come!! Well.. right after we give her the old grease and oil change, and fix the hydraulic leak in one of the spreader arms. Sounds so simple. Ha. :) Anyway, the wood rack held all the wood that was sitting where the Kubota tractor is now. Given our "beginner" status as welders, I'm really surprised that it's holding up so well.

The new shed/workshop is making progress thanks to our good friend Anthony from the Permie group. This is gunna be great!!

We were given a lesson in mud from another Permie group friend, Dick. The mix needs a bit more sand, but the idea is there! It just goes to show how much clay content our local soil has! It shouldn't be too difficult to do the rest of the house.. it's just a matter of time now.

Yesterday we made a mud mix for the chimney tops, and did our yearly maintenance. The mud up there looked pretty good, but it got a top-up anyway. We've given the caps a lime wash so hopefully they cope with the weather even better than last year. The chimney's are clear and ready for another winter.

There was a bit of mud left over after fixing the chimney caps, so I filled in some holes on the North wall of the cottage, and also made a start on the cob walls of the tool shed. One layer down, many many more to go!

I added more straw and made a cob mix, and it's very strong with no cracks. It's a cute little project, but not a priority.

Next jobs include adding more storage capacity to the wood rack, working on / fixing the Kubota, and continuing the workshop construction. Unless something else unexpected comes up, and that happens a lot around here.