Gearing Up To Grow

Time for me to catch you all up on what I'm doing here. :)

Re: Snow Peas

I'd put up stakes around the raised box when I'd first sowed the combination of "Alderman" and "Mammoth Melting" peas wholesale. My reasoning was, well, this is an older packet of seeds and a new packet of seeds, so what grows, grows, what doesn't won't matter. The plants that are there now are about 12-18 inches high, and it helps that I tied bean netting to the stakes so they can climb on it. They are loving it.

Re: Nasturtiums and Calendula

All the nasturtiums and the one calendula plant I had planted in the garden box (with the peas) have over wintered splendidly, and I've got yellow flower heads already, and soon will have the orange, red and magenta blooms from the nasturtium. I've also started more calendula in the greenhouse, and more nasturtiums will follow. I'll attempt to sell the extra plants.

Re: Spinach and Silverbeet

The spinach is out of control. I don't have a row of spinach anymore, I have a freaking HEDGE. I'm going to let it go to seed, collect the seeds, and then grow more later.

The silverbeet has performed admirably for a plant that was strictly a volunteer. I'll be removing it though and growing it in rows instead, probably around the house.

Re: Garden Allotments

I am over run by weeds! Luckily, the ground is still soft, and they are relatively easy to pull. I think I'm going to do battle with the weeds by using black weed cloth to block them. Just weed the areas I want to cover, till them over with sheep poo or whatever, rake into mounds/rows, cover with the weed cloth and stake it down. Cut X's in wherever I want an opening for a plant, and away we go. Maybe cover with a bit of mulch.

Re: The seeds I planted before I left for holiday

They failed. Every single one. No chives, no chamomile, no red silverbeet. I was very disappointed. I am over it now, and plan to grown other stuff.

And, last but not least, I got more seeds!

Radish, Daikon-Miyashige
Silverbeet, Fordhook Giant
Silverbeet, Rainbow Chard
Capsicum, Purple Beauty
Chili, Hungarian Yellow Wax
Bush Bean, Borlotti
Bush Bean, Cherokee Wax
Runner Bean, Scarlet Emperor
Tomato, Hillbilly
Tomato, Cherokee Purple

I look forward to this new growing season. :)

Cheers!

How to Prune a Grapevine

My grapevine. It's about 25 years old, according to my husband, and as you can see, I haven't yet pruned it. Since it's still looking pretty dormant (no signs of swelling buds or other life) it's still safe for me to prune it back.

Pruning in the commercial sense basically "stresses" the vine, and encourages it to produce a larger yielding of fruit. Great if you are a vineyard owner, or wanting t

o make your own home wines.

Pruning in my case, though, means keeping the vine in a manageable state; grape vines especially are notorious for growing wildly in all directions in a huge mess, and since I am trying to train it on the fence to keep it tidy, this means I'm going to spend some time picking and choosing the direction I want it to grow in.

This requires clipping back last years growth.

 

As you can see here, this vine has grown in tandem with a honeysuckle, which, for the majority of it's years, was not to it's advantage. I cut the honeysuckle back severely about two years ago, and the vine has been doing much better. The honeysuckle seems to be doing just fine as well.

So! Here's what to look for when you're pruning.

The section of the trunk of the vine with all the stringy gray-brown bark is the older wood, usually two or more years old. Generally, this won't bear fruit, or even sprout much, though if you have a lot of grapes, you will encounter vines that throw out suckers like there is no tomorrow. Just scrape those off before they lignify (harden into proper fruit wood).

The brown lengths of stem are the fruiting wood. They are last years growth. Every nodule (seen as the slightly swollen "knuckles" along the length of the stem) is a bud. Now, I won't go into all the details about the buds, but what you really need to know is that if these are viable, they will sprout more greenery and stems.

You can control how the vine grows by choosing the buds you want to stay and cutting out the rest. This not only directs the vine, but gets rid of anything that would create much more tangled growth. (Another good idea is to have twine or green gardeners tape handy to secure the vine to your trellis/fence/stake and support it, while training it to grow in that particular direction).

 

 I'll use this section as an example.

What I have here is a forked section of old wood.

One section (seen growing off the bottom of the picture) peters out into a dead branch, has one small (less than a pencils thickness) stem which is sickly looking, and no other viable options.

The other fork is a short spur with two nice looking stems (look for ones about as thick as a pencil or a little more; they are generally going to give good results).

One stem is right at the end of the spur (you can just about see the dead, dry remnants of last years pruning), but the other is in a bad spot: too close to the branch and growing back on itself.

 

 So, that one that's growing close to the fork? Just cut it off as close to the old wood as you can.

 And, because the other branch of the fork ended in dead material and had only a sickly looking stem, just cut that section off too.

Prune your chose stem them to give it two or three buds, and then secure the branch of the vine where you want it. Continue with this process all over the vine until it's all pruned.

 You now have a vine that will grow relatively neatly, and still put on quite a bit of fruit if the season is good. I'll get a kilo or two of grapes off this skinny old vine.

 The pile of grape cuttings, reading for grafting or sprouting as you see fit.

Because I want have more grapevines growing along the fence in future years, I'm going to attempt to plant some of the stronger stems and see if they will sprout. If they do, I'll plant them along the fence and train them as I do the old vine.

Happy pruning, and have a great weekend!

Safe and Sound At Home

Arrived home safely! Well, actually, we arrived home safely yesterday, getting in the house at about 3:30pm Thursday. The flights were much better; in all three planes we had the third seat to ourselves, so we had space to move about and put stuff, the planes were cooler, and I was actually able to get some sleep. All our baggage came through without much issue, just the usual charges for being overweight (you're only allowed 23kg of baggage total, and each bag we had was near or well over that limit; tis just a fact of moving house). I have more of my clothing now, my precious belongings, various cosmetics and, best yet, my jewelry! I can be blingin' once more. :D

First thing upon entering home that I notice is how skanky the house smells. I know we've been gone for three weeks, but that particular smell is one I associate closely with rotting vegetation. Sure enough, not one but TWO of the squashes I had stored in the kitchen cabinet had decided to liquify. The sheer audacity of them! :P I spent my first hour home cleaning up a huge mess, because they had liquified, and the watery stuff resulting of that had seeped underneath the bag of rice (thankfully it missed the paper flour and sugar bags), all along the front of the cabinet under the drinking glasses and mugs and plastic storage containers, and dripped out onto the floor. Good times! (A good excuse to look into buying flour and sugar canisters, instead of leaving them in their paper bags...)

I managed to stay awake long enough last night to eat and watch a show, and went to bed promptly at 8pm. I was asleep before hubs even made it to bed. So, this morning I get up first thing at 7am (the sky is so bright now at that time!) and go for a shower. I'm nude, standing in the cold morning air, in the shower cubicle, and I literally think "It'll be so nice to have a shower... WTF is wrong with the shower head?"

The washers had apparently dried out and shrunk enough over the last three weeks that they no longer were holding the shower head in the right position, so it just drooped sadly. I had to jury rig it (still naked, lol) so that me and hubs could shower without incident, lol. So, I went into town this morning to Charles St Hardware, bought a Fix-a-Tap universal shower washers kit, and fixed it. My name is Mrs. Plumber.

While in town I hit the library, and found several books in the returns section that appealed, and learned my library card had expired. :P That was an easy enough fix, at least. I got books on growing fruit, raising goats, first aid for horses, growing herbs in Australia and a cook and freeze recipe book. Which leads to the next piece of delightful news: We now have a stand alone mini freezer, which is going in right next to the washing machine, and will be the home of extra home grown produce, and any extra meat the fridge/freezer can't hold. It'll be especially useful if I decide to buy a 1/4 lamb carcass again, or help Zara cut up another steer. :P

Last but not least in this series of unfortunate and yet hilarious events (you can tell I'm in a damn good mood, lol), before we left for California, our washing machine stopped working. We just thought it was a loose connection somewhere, but we didn't have time to worry about it, so we had left it, and the full load of washing, until we got back. Well, we just got around to investigating it's issues, and have decided that our faithful old washing machine has croaked. Ian is doing our laundry at FILs house, and we'll go shopping for another machine tomorrow. Not bad for a machine that was already second hand (third hand?) when hubs got a hold of it.

So, that's my update for now, letting everyone know that we're well and safe, and settling back in at home. :)

The Trials and Tribulations of the Tasmanian Clothesline

I don't know about you guys, but we only have a washing machine here, so we have to hang our clothes to dry. Now, there are numerous of reasons for hanging your clothes on the line: less electricity used by dryer appliances, the fresh clean smell of air dried laundry (and no need for expensive and overly perfumed dryer sheets), no static electricity involved, and the sun acts a natural disinfectant of a sort. I'm sure everyone has other reasons for choosing to line dry their clothes. Those are certainly mine. 

However, I live in Tasmania. Normally that would be a proud statement, but they have a saying here: "If you don't like the weather, wait 20 minutes".

For the line dryer, that's a MAJOR pain in the rear. 


I am forever looking at the sky thinking "Hm, clouds... do I risk the washing, or should I wait for it to clear?"


This can go one of several ways: 

-The sky stays cloudy, and I decide not to wash, and then the weather is bad for the rest of the week/end. 
-The sky clears, I do the washing, and the moment the machine starts the final spin cycle, the clouds come back and stay in for the day, extending their drying time. 
-It'll be breezy in the moment I decide to start the machine (the ideal condition) and then go utterly still by the time I get everything hung out, and be that way for the rest of the day, regardless of whether or not it's sunny.
-It'll be brilliantly sunny outside, I hang the washing, it stays brilliantly sunny for an hour, then the clouds blow in in an instant and it pours down rain, soaking my laundry if I don't catch it in time.


My world is filled with cries of frustration over the weather! Winter is simply the worst time to have to dry laundry, especially since we're trying to have key items clean, dry, folded and packed for our trip to California, coming up in a week.

I can't wait for summer; the best drying weather is when the sun is blazing, the wind blowing, and the paving stoves under the clothesline are baking hot and radiating that heat upwards into the clothes. They will usually dry in the few hours then.


Until then though, I will just have to persevere through the funky weather. :P

Processing Poultry: Where Your Chicken Comes From

Warning: This blog contains pictures of what some would consider a "graphic" nature. If you can't handle blood, guts, the learning of new skills and experience, self sufficiency, or just want to keep your head in the sand regarding the origins of your food, move along now. There's nothing to see here.

On Friday, July 20, I killed and processed two chickens for our freezer. I had never, until that point, dispatched an animal, though I have been present and watching closely while others did. Chickens were also a new type of animal processing for me; I had watched and assisted with deer, pigs and rabbits, but not poultry.

After much time spent studying and researching, I knew that my next step was to 'do'.

This is my processing area: A melamine topped board on two portable sawhorses, a gut bucket (red) with a hefty bag in it, and a scalding bucket, filled with water that's been heated to around 75C.

As you can tell by all the feathers, I had already scalded and plucked the birds.

Now for the birds themselves. I'm rather sorry I hadn't gotten a picture of the living animals, as they were very pretty birds, but that's the way of things.

The plucking was mostly easy, except for the pinion feathers at the wing tips. Those were quite hard, and I opted to cut the wing tips off one bird, while their owner, Monique, helped to pluck them from the other bird.

You may wonder how I dispatched the birds. It was a method I'd seen and heard described by various sources. I chose to hold them by their feet until they went still (they go to sleep if held upside down) and then snapped their necks with a quick jerk of my other hand. I then wrapped them in a raggy towel, held them over the gut bucket, and cut the veins in their necks to let them bleed out, which took a couple minutes. After their throes finished, I set them on the table, ready to scald.

Other methods include using a killing cone, a hatchet and a chopping block, and simply bleeding the chicken out before snapping it's neck, but I thought that these might be a little more messy and traumatic than I was willing to handle.

Bird #1: I know, not a brilliant plucking job, but I made it better later.

Bird #2: Better plucked than the last one.

The next step is the real processing.

I cut off the heads, removed the skin, esophagus, wind pipe and other associated parts of the neck until I had just the column of bone and muscle, removed the wingtips (of this bird) and cut off the feet at the ankles (those would be saved for later).

Now, of course, comes the job of gutting the bird. It's very hard to make me squeamish, but I wasn't sure how this would have me feeling. Turns out, it doesn't smell near as bad as people might have you believe. Yes, it's a bit smelly, and I can't really describe the smell (as Monique said, it smells like dead chicken), but if you don't work with the bird directly under your nose, you'll be just fine.

The trick though is to make an opening big enough to get your hand inside, because you have to scoop around with your fingers to sever the thin transparent membranes that hold all the organs and fat in place. Remember to also loosen the trachea and esophagus from the neck hole, so you can pull the lot out when you've got it free.

I must admit I was probably very slow at this step, as I was afraid to accidentally cut the the guts, which would spill their contents and contaminate the meat and make, generally, a nasty mess. Turns out I need not have worried too much, as they proved tougher than I thought.

Once you've freed the innards, cut free the anus and remove the lot.

As you can also see, I am wearing latex gloves. This made the ick factor much, much less, and went a long way to making me feel more comfortable with this process. I used three pairs, one pair for the dispatching and bleeding, one pair for the scalding and plucking, and one pair for the gutting. I highly recommend them for first timers.

As you can see here, these are the chicken innards. I tried to respect the animals as much as possible by using as much of it as I could, so I saved the hearts, livers, gizzards and feet (seen the background).

To process chicken feet: Pour scalding water (I used freshly boiled) over the feet, and let sit a moment or two. When you can peel the yellow outer skin off, they're ready. Peel off the skin, give the toenails a twist (they come right off) and rinse well in cold water. Use to make chicken stock (I'm told it makes a great stock that, when cold, can actually be sliced; that's how much gelatin the feet impart to the stock).

Also note that these animals were very healthy indeed. Just look at those livers! Not a scrap of fat on them. Monique told me they were free range, grass fed (you could tell by the contents in their crops), and were given the occasional handful of wheat, as well as some oats they've eaten out of her guinea pig feed, and perhaps a few seeds from here and there.

In contrast, corn fed chickens (as many often are) usually have grossly swollen and anemic looking livers coated with fat, as well as a huge amount of body fat. Ew. :/

Because these chickens are male (roosters) these are their testicles. We remarked on them, because we hadn't realized they were so far up in the body cavity. We had both heard of capons, which are neutered roosters, and we figured that you had to come in from the side to remove the testicles.

I've heard it said that done right, you'd have a capon, done wrong, you'd have dinner.

You can see the vas deferens tubes there by my fingers (the thin white lines).

We are still puzzling over why we couldn't find the kidneys or lungs. After further study, i realized that what I was previously thinking of chest wall was really the backs of the lungs. It's a simple matter to scoop them out with your fingers. They are light, fluffy, pink organs, and are deeply grooved to fit the ribs. The kidneys are also located tight to the back as well, on either side of the back bone. left in, they become that yummy dark, rich meat you get in the store bought roast chickens. I chose to leave them in, because I love those.

This is the gizzard. It's basically a large muscle, and great for use in stocks. The chicken will swallow small hard objects (I say objects, because it could be anything it thinks suitable, including pebbles, pieces of plastic, and even bits of safety glass!) and stores those objects in it's gizzard. When they eat, the food enters the gizzard, the organ contracts, and uses those items to grind and crush their food. It's a good way to see what the birds have been eating: in this case, there was some well ground grass and perhaps a sunflower seed or two.

The gizzard has a yellow lining. If you want to use the gizzard for cooking, once you've sliced it open, all you have to do is peel the thin membrane away from the muscled part, and discard it. Then rinse the organ well and use immediately, or freeze it. As you can see here: the peeled gizzard, and the yellow lining (and a couple testicles too).

The processed carcasses. They aren't the prettiest looking jobs, but I cleaned them up a bit, and they look good. One of my books said that poultry should be chilled in the fridge for at least 12 hours to ensure maximum tenderness, so these (this was taken last night) are going straight into the fridge.

When I had finished gutting them and everything, I had taken them in and rinsed them well with cold water, and removed the last stubborn feathers, the thin hairs, and any remaining congealed blood.

One thing you will notice about these birds that's different from the pictures of the store bought chicken I cut up later in the album, is these birds are very yellow. They have yellow skin, they have rich yellow fat, and, in my opinion, this is how chickens should look. It's perfectly natural and normal.

You'll also notice that these birds have very little breast meat, and very large legs. They were free range animals, not barn raised or factory farmed, and not pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. Suits me fine anyway; I'll always choose the leg over the breast.

So, overall, that experience wasn't nearly as bad as I might have thought it would be. I'm glad that I got to learn something new. And now, tonight? Chicken is on the menu.

Have a great evening folks!

A Little Update

Went to the beekeeping meeting last night. We're getting pretty close to crunch time I think. The beekeeping thing may not work out this year. We'd only have the rest of June and all of July to get our gear and hives together before ordering our bees in September or so, and because I'll be gone most of August, that cuts into our prep time severely. Things will start to speed up too once the solstice passes us by. Apparently the bees know when the days are getting longer, and the queen will start laying eggs. I don't think we have enough time to manage this for this year.
 

As disappointing as that is, I think I've got Z interested in going to the meetings. The next one is July 16, so we've marked our calenders, I've put my name down to get some info on those who may be selling gear, bees or both, and I hope that maybe we can go on some of the field days with the more expert beekeepers. I've also sent Z on a mission: she's going to ask her Dad about his beekeeping days, and what he knows may help us even more, though she suspects he's sold off all his own equipment years ago. Still, any help is good help.

It gives us time to save up as well, especially if we end up paying for Langstroth type hives. Or any hives really I guess. We'd still have to get the plans and build from scratch the top bar hives, and I personally would like to try out the Warre hives too (somewhere down the line; I think different hives for caparison would be good). Especially as it seems like everybody here pretty much sticks to a form of the Langstroth hive, which as you may already know, I don't necessarily like the idea of (it's more work!)

I'm going to go start a money jar now.

Home Preserving with Fowlers-Vacola

I've been living here for almost two years now, and have had two excellent go-'rounds with the garden. The best thing that ever happened to me was those allotments, I think. 

Well, as I did last year, I had managed to grow and obscene amount of tomatoes. Unfortunately, our summer was a little strange, and a many of the last ones did get to ripen, so I had a ton of green tomatoes. Well, I still had green tomato chutney from LAST year, so I wasn't too crazy to make more of it. I had enough red fruit left, however, to make spaghetti sauce (mm, sauce). 

So I just threw all the tomatoes (red, green, the whole lot) into the stock pot, and cooked them down. They were sieved, and the pulpy juice was strained again for extra smoothness, and I cooked up some onions, garlic, and home grown herbs, and added the sauce back in. It bubbled away, infusing happily, and when I finally got around to bottling it, I used those stainless steel lids the MIL had gifted me with at Christmas.

Delicious red sauce. Mm, so fragrant.

There's the pot! And I raise thee six jars, lids, rings and clips to store it all in:

The stainless stock pot, six rubber rings, six preserving clips, six stainless steel lids, and six washed No. 14 Fowlers jars, being kept hot with boiling water.

Last year I only had enough sauce to fill four of the small jars, so I washed sure how many I'd fill this time. I had extras ready just in case. Turns out, I'd guessed perfectly. I almost thought I wouldn't have the room, but I squeaked by with the bare minimum of head space for each jar, as you'll observe in the next picture:

Filled jars with seals in place

 
Now, I grew up knowing the Ball canning method, but instead of a flat metal lid with sealant and a metal ring, you have a rubber seal ring, a metal lid, and a clip the hold the lot together when you go to process them.

After you understand the process is pretty much the same as far as sealing goes, it's a breeze, as you can see in the following photos:
  

Stainless steel lids, because you need them for very acidic things like tomato sauce.

Lids have been firmly secured with the clips.

Close up of the lid and clip. It just snaps right onto the lip of the jar, no hassles.

To process the jars you just place them in a pan (I use a metal roasting pan, and place a folded paper towel in the bottom), place the jars in the tray, fill with hot water, and place in an oven about 170C. Let it run for an hour, shut the lot down and let it cool. Then remove and label. 

Jars placed in the pan, waiting for hot water and the oven.

Ready for processing!

Now, this processing method is okay when you have no other choice. The jars seal, I've experienced no incidents with failure or breakage (yet), and my own real cautionary statement is beware: the stainless steel lids I have are quite sharp around the edges, and I managed to slice my finger on it. Other than that, they're fine. However, the Fowlers-Vacola system has an expensive start up cost, unless you can find a lot of cast off jars, lids and other supplies in the city missions, as I have managed (for some, at least). I also cannot vouch for them when it comes to pressure canning, when you are wanting to bottle low acid foods. Other than that, it seems to work well enough for the time being. And I now have sauce!