This Day On The Farm

After 230mls of rain in just a couple of days the farm is looking lush and green, although a little soggy. We are hoping that as the water recedes we will have come out of it okay. The farm is on quite low lying land. The land to the south of us is swampy. We have worked to build our soil  up to sit above the water line but some parts especially on the southern side can be quite slow for the water to drain away. Last summer we lost a lot of tomatoes and capsicum due to this. we've got our fingers crossed that it won't be as bad this year.

The passion fruit vines have loved the extra water and are producing well. I grew these plants from seeds that I'd saved.

A couple of shots of two of the mandalas, one showing seedlings still in their pots where Mark was beaten by the heavy rain in the middle of planting out a bed. We'll need to let the garden dry out a bit to complete the job. All the paths in the garden were under water so you can see how well they've drained over night.

One of the pumpkin patches looking good and loving the extra water.

Both the irrigation ponds are full and overflowing.. good news for us if the weather heats up. The bees on the southern sides of the ponds allows for them to fly out towards the sun each morning and ensures that no one walks in their flight path. You can't see it in this photo but the bees were very active, like us enjoying the break in the rain.

We are gearing up to the start of our hectic program in February commencing with a preserving the harvest workshop. Prime preserving time just now with the abundance of summer. Are you coping with the amount of produce coming from your garden or do you need some help learning how to preserve? Come and join us on 6th February. Bookings essential and can be made through the website.

Zucchini Cake

At this time of year it can be a challenge to use all the produce in the CSA box, with such an abundance ofsummer vegies. At the moment the boxes are recieving 3 or more zucchini each and what do you do with them all?

We eat as many as we can in as many ways as we can and at the moment it's probably three times a day. But for us there is always an excess even with the amount going into boxes for our subscribers. 

We preserve them in mustard pickles which gives us a lovely condiment all year round.

And we make Zucchini chocolate cake which can be frozen thus preserving our zucchinis in a different way or eaten there and then....

Ingredients

1/2cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup milk
4 Tblsp. cocoa
2 1/2 cups SR flour
1 tsp. bicarb
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups shredded zucchini

Method

Cream butter and sugar
Beat in eggs
Add milk and vanilla and sifted dry ingredients
Stir in zucchini
Grease and flour a 23cm x 30cm tin ( I used a smaller ropund tin and a ring tin giving me two cakes. I found the lareger tin didn't cook evenly as it's such a moist cake).

Bake at 160 deg. C for 40 - 45 mins.

Making Passata

Last year we made about 20 bottles of passata. It didn't last long. We go through, on avarage, a bottle a week. It was fairly time consuming as, after heating the tomatoes, we only had a small sieve in which to strain out the skins and seeds.

So this year, knowing that we wanted to at least triple the amount of passata, I bought a passata machine....

I wanted something easy to use and easy to clean, stainless steel and didn't rely on electricity for power. This little hand powered machine fit the bill. A few days ago, while waiting for the machine to arrive, I hand strained a pot of tomatoes through the sieve. This machine is just so much quicker and less tiring.

So with a box of juicy, ripe red romas...

 

Mark and I spent half a day making passata. We cut the tomatoes into quarters and put them in a large heavy based pot and heat them through.

This just helps to get all the juice. From there straight into the machine. We put the pulp back through 3 more times to make sure we have as much liquid as possible. This goes back into the pot to be reheated so that it's nice and hot when it goes into the sterlized jars.



 

 

 

 We sterilize the jars in the oven so they are hot also. The lids are boiled on the stove top

 

 

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Once in the jars the lids are tightened and as it cools the lids pop and the jars are then sealed. If the lid doesn't pop then it can't be kept for an extended time, but can be kept in the fridge and used within the week.

We will be demonstrating this procedure as part of our Preserving The Harvest workshop on the 2nd February. More information  can be found on our  website.

Obtain a Yield and Catch and Store Energy

The tomatoes grew, caught and stored the energy from the sun, we harvested them.....

..Then preserved them as chopped tomatoes thereby storing energy for the winter.

This is 13 kilo of roma tomatoes, peeled and chopped. Preserved in a Fowlers Vacola water bath. Our customers get approx 20kilo of tomatoes a week, between them and we plan to preserve the rest. There's probably 20 kilo more in the fridge so far, and Mark's making tomato- sauce at the moment with less than perfect tomatoes.

This is the first year we have preserved in such earnestness. We are determined to make the most of all our produce, and set ourselves up for winter with summer produce. It is very new to us and a real learning experience. It has been very time consuming ( it took me most of yesterday to bottle the tomatoes) but I'm sure we'll get much more proficient at it, and I know it will be cheaper and healthier for us and will help to set us up for the'year without supermarkets' challenge that Tricia is running over at  little eco footprints. We are running a little behind Tricia, planning to start in February. But if it's anything like our year without buying anything new challenge that we set ourselves a few years back, it will become a habit and we'll just continue on indefinitely.

Hit the Ground Running

This is what happens when you take your eye off the ball....

Our mandala garden has turned into a jungle.

Mark and Chris, our WWOOFer have been working hard to clean it up.
We've had a lovely rest over the Christmas / New Year break. We both got books for Christmas and I didn't feel one bit guilty reading in the middle of the day, and I got some sewing done as well. But now it's time to get back in to work mode once again. We have been blessed with cool wet weather over the past few weeks and the garden has become quite overgrown. Thankfully a WWOOFer has turned up and he and Mark have been very busy taming the jungle, using all the weeds to make a compost heap.

There has also been a lot of activity in the kitchen preserving the summer bounty. Zucchini and duck eggs are very abundant at the moment so Mark has been making chocolate zucchini cakes to freeze...

....an abundance of Purple King beans....

..to freeze. Placed in boiling water for 1 minute (Blanched)...

..then immersed in iced water...

notice how they have changed colour from the hot water

...and placed in bags in meal sized portions for freezing...

I use a straw to suck the air out of the bag

And we got a couple of trays of organic mangoes for a good price and we spent a good part of a day preserving them using our Fowlers vacola bottling gear....

Peel the mango, slice and place in jar

Add syrup. we use a light syrup of 1 cup sugar to 3 cups water

Using a bamboo skewer  to remove air bubbles

Add the lid

and the clip

And place in the water bath. We were 3 jars short so preserved some berries at the same time.

The jars are covered with water and heated for 1 3/4 hrs.. We just had to taste some when they had cooled and they were delicious!

I am grateful that we are able to take WWOOFers( Willing Workers On Organic Farms) who can help Mark on the farm, as at this time of year I seem to spend more and more time in the kitchen preserving our produce and less and less time helping Mark in the garden.