rural life

Plant out!

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

100_4005 smIt’s Canterbury weekend here, and that means it’s time for all the vegetables to head to their prepared spots in the garden. In theory, the frost is over and summer is upon us!

The approach to plant out weekend is always a bit stressful. Plants are overly large for their pots, and there’s a temptation to plant out too early (and Murphy’s Law says that if you plant out before Canterbury Day, it WILL frost). It’s a mission just to keep the plants watered in the greenhouse. And with all the plants crammed together in one place, all it would take is one hungry possum discovering the greenhouse, and the entire garden would be destroyed for the year.

And then there’s the task of making sure all the garden beds are ready to receive those plants in time for plant out weekend. I start mapping out each weekend’s jobs in late September so that I’m not caught with half a dozen beds still full of weeds at plant out time.

This year, plant out went beautifully. The weather cooperated—it was cool and cloudy so the transplanted plants and I weren’t stressed by heat. The beds were all ready to go, and most of the plants were in good shape.

And now I get to rest, right?

Ha!

Now the early crops are desperate to be weeded, the berry beds are sprouting full of thistles, and I’m probably 10 days from being inundated by strawberries, gooseberries and currants.

Never a dull moment!

I can, can you?

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100_3986 cropsmFaced with 45 artichokes, there’s really only one thing to do—pull out the pressure canner, and bottle them up for later.

We thought long and hard before buying a pressure canner years ago—it was expensive, and signalled a whole new level of commitment to preserving than a simple water bath canner.

And then, of course, there are all the horror stories about exploding pressure canners. When the canner arrived, emblazoned with more warning stickers than a case of TNT, it didn’t alleviate my concerns.

But now I can’t imagine being without it. We can preserve so much more of what we grow, and not everything needs to be pickled to be preserved.

Pressure canning changes vegetables—the high pressure and temperature destroys their structure and basically turns them to mush. I wouldn’t want to subsist on pressure canned vegetables.

But our summer soup

LINK provides a burst of summer flavour, and wonderfully convenient instant meals through the winter. A few jars of canned green beans mean we can make our favourite Indian charcharis any time of the year. And canned artichokes add incredible flavour to pizzas, regardless of their texture. We could freeze these things, of course, but especially here where the power goes out with such frequency, having some of our preserved food not dependent on a continuous supply of electricity is a good idea. It also saves room in the freezer for those things that really don’t do well in the canner—berries, corn, peas, and of course the bread and baked goods from our baking days.

 

Compost Pile

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

100_3973 cropMy husband calls it Mt. Robinne, and sometimes it feels like I’ve heaved an entire mountain onto the compost pile. This is my first spring with the new compost bins. They constrain the spread of the pile, forcing it upward.

Today I put the last of the winter weeds on the pile. From here on out, I’ll leave most weeds lying in the garden paths to act as mulch. This is as tall as the compost pile will get this year.

Good thing, as it reached the height of the greenhouse this morning. The pile will sit there sintering for a few weeks. When I’ve recovered from the springtime garden preparation, and when all the plants are planted out, I will move the mountain again, turning and watering the pile so that it composts properly.

For now, though, I’ll enjoy the respite from mountain building.

Siren Call

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100_2141I fidget at the computer.

Perhaps the greenhouse needs watering.

 

I fling open the office door.

The smell of grass reminds me I need to mow.

 

I type a few words

Then delete them.

Do the goats need their hooves trimmed?

Maybe I should go have a look.

 

I check my e-mail.

I watch a pair of sparrows build their nest.

 

I should be working, but

You know, if I just did half an hour of weeding now

There would be less to do on the weekend.

 

Perhaps an early lunch.

I’ll sit in the sun, bare feet in the grass.

 

And then, perhaps…

 

I will give in, and follow the siren’s call

To the garden.

Dreaming Big

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

100_3861 cropDon’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.

And don’t count your apples before they’re in the basket.

But it’s lovely this time of year to think what you’re going to do with that fruit if ALL the flowers end up producing a fruit. All the fruit trees were flush with flowers this spring—apples, pears, peaches, cherries…

But it’s a long time between October and April. Anything could happen, and it usually does.

Some of those flowers won’t get pollinated and will drop from the tree once they’re done blooming.

A storm will blow some of the pollinated flowers off the tree.

The tree will naturally prune some of its own fruit, because it simply cannot support so many.

Birds will snatch the small fruits as they ripen, and possums will eat the larger fruits.

A hail storm will damage or destroy more fruit.

Before you know it, there will be, not bushels of apples, but maybe a few. Enough for a couple of pies, some apple crisp. Not the larder-filling bounty that spring promised.

That’s okay. I’ll still count my apples by the flowers each spring. I’ll imagine the applesauce and the pies, the crisp bites of tart flesh, and it will be just as if they were actually here.

Trench Warfare

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IMG_3951 smWe have precious few trees on our property, maybe a dozen in total, all clinging to the fence lines, out of the way.

Except that they’re not out of the way, really. Though they only cast brief shade on the vegetable garden, their roots encroach well into the garden. I know exactly where a tree has stretched its toes out by the swath of dead and dying vegetables, and the parched earth that accompanies them. Last year, I lost most of my zucchinis and an entire row of strawberries to the trees’ depredations.

I can pull some of the roots out when I’m weeding, but many invade deep in the soil.

So we resort to trench warfare to keep them out.

Every three or four years, we hire a trencher from the local equipment hire place (well, okay, my husband hires the trencher—I stay away from loud petrol-powered machines as much as possible), and dig a metre-deep trench all around the garden.

It makes an enormous difference to the vegetables—I can almost hear them breathe a sigh of relief when the tree roots are cut. The roots grow back, eventually, but the trench gives us a few years to garden without competition.

 

Milk the goat

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DelilahmilkingI can’t believe I’ve been milking nearly three weeks now and haven’t blogged about it.

After her disastrous kidding, my goat Ixcacao was given an antibiotic to prevent infection of her much-invaded uterus. That meant that I had to throw out her milk until the withholding period was over. So, though I’ve been milking, we haven’t had goat milk until this week.

I milk in a sheltered spot behind our large shed, where a previous owner conveniently built a head-lock for his beef cattle. We added a platform, a feed tray, and a roof to create a sturdy milking stand protected from the worst of the weather.

I milk twice a day for the first half of the milking season. 5.30 am and 4 pm. There are usually a few days of awkwardness after kidding, when doe and kids don’t want to be separated, but once everyone is into the routine, milking runs smoothly.

I enjoy milking, especially the early morning milking, which happens in the dark for the early and late part of the season. There is something soothing and centring about milking.

When it goes well…

“Watching you milk is just scary,” said my husband the other day. “You’re so fast at it.”

Milking is not the stress-free experience for him as it is for me. I forget sometimes what a steep learning curve it was for me the first time I was faced with goats with udders tight as drums who had never been milked. There was a lot of cursing, and more than a few tears. And there was a lot of spilled milk.

But with practice, the goats and I got much better at it. As I got quicker, they had more patience with me. I learned how to tell when they were about to kick, and how to prevent them from stepping in the milk. I learned the particular foibles of each goat—how to get them to stand still, whether their milk squirted from the teat at an angle, how to work with small teats or teats with small holes, how to manage an udder that sagged almost to the ground.

Instead of a test of wills, milking became a partnership between me and each goat. And so it became almost effortless.

Almost.

I still lose a pot of milk to a misplaced foot now and again, and ‘breaking in’ a new goat is never a smooth process.

But usually, if something goes wrong, I can fall back on some advice I read when I was first learning how to milk—relax and just milk the damn goat. It’s good advice, whether you’re milking goats, or taking on any other challenge.

To Pasteurize or Not To Pasteurize

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100_3960 smThis is the question, when you have your own milk-producing livestock. Pasteurization is the process of heating the milk to reduce the number of pathogens and increase the milk’s shelf-life. There are many different techniques for doing this, but they all involve raising the milk to a certain temperature and holding it there for a specific length of time (the higher the temperature, the shorter the time).

I have a number of friends and acquaintances who produce their own milk—some pasteurize, some don’t. There are certainly some strong opinions out there on both sides of the question:

“People have been drinking unpasteurized milk for thousands of years.”

“Yes, but people have been dying of diseases in unpasteurized milk for just as long. Raw milk is the perfect growth medium for all sorts of diseases.”

“It ruins the flavour of the milk.”

“I can’t taste the difference.”

“Cheese from unpasteurized milk is better.”

“I enjoy cheese from pasteurized milk just as much.”

“Unpasteurized milk is more easily digested.”

“I have no problem digesting pasteurized milk.”

“Pasteurization kills all the good bacteria and destroys nutrients in the milk.”

“It also allows milk to be kept for longer, and kills bad bacteria, too.”

The arguments go on and on.

So, what’s the truth?

Truth is that both sides have some valid points, and some points on which they grossly exaggerate or mislead. Yes, you can drink unpasteurized milk your whole life and never get sick. You can also drink pasteurized milk your whole life and never get sick.

I pasteurize.

Why?

Because I know exactly how clean I’m able to keep my milk while I’m milking. I know, from what’s left on my filter afterwards, that a few hairs, a little dirt, some dried skin flakes, the odd bug falls into the milk while I’m milking. Would bacteria from those things make us sick? Probably not. Does the idea of that stuff in my milk make me sick? Yep. Does the idea of drinking something that is the modified sweat of an animal that doesn’t even groom itself make me a little queasy? Yep.

So I pasteurize. For my peace of mind. For my sense of cleanliness.

But I gladly accept some of my non-pasteurizing neighbour’s milk when she has excess, and if for some reason I’m not able to pasteurize, I still use the milk. I don’t fret about it. Life is far too short to worry about whether your milk is pasteurized or not.

Relax and enjoy the cheese!

Trellis Trials

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Trellis with jute

Trellis with jute

As a gardener, I’m always trying out new things, always trying to make my gardening easier and more productive.

Last year, I tried out a new trellis, and it worked pretty well. This year, I’m testing variations on last year’s trellis.

Trellis with fencing

Trellis with fencing

The trellis is a wood frame composed of two supports and a top and bottom bar. Holes in the top and bottom bar allow me to string the trellis with jute. Last year, the jute worked well for peas and beans, but wasn’t strong enough for tomatoes. It was also a bit of a pain to string and clean up at the end of the year.

Trellis with wire

Trellis with wire

So this year, I’ve strung some of them with jute again, but I’ve also stapled deer fencing to one of them, and strung the tomato trellis with high-tensile wire (both of which were left over from other projects). Neither fencing nor wire looks as nice as the jute, but I’m hoping they are stronger, and they have the bonus that they won’t need to be replaced every year, saving me time and money in future years.

Omelettes

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IMG_3731 smIt’s funny how quickly we can go from being desperate for eggs to having more than we know what to do with. My new chickens have all started laying now, and so this afternoon when I was looking for a quick dinner after getting home late, I found a fridge full of eggs.

Of course, that meant omelettes! Filled with cheese, mushrooms and herbs, they’re a delicious, quick-to-make, high protein meal that everyone loves. I served ours tonight with roast potatoes slathered in ketchup.