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.

Farmer's Markets

If you're at the Maitland Harvest Market tomorrow, do call in and say hello.

 This is us. We are easy to find!

We will have honey to sell

and chilli powder and flakes..

We also have a range of plants and some handmade children's clothing. All our products are from the farm.

My friend Jo joins me at the stall with her home made relish. Just delicious.

Please come along if you can. These local markets are so important for the local economy and we need local people to come along and support them. There's lovely coffee and things to eat. Come sit under the large tree and listen to some local Musos play their music. A great morning out.

Autumn Harvest

Do you have a similar scene of abundance at your place....pumpkins everywhere?

We grew Queensland Blues, Golden nuggets from a pumpkin gifted to me from Melissa, and Hubbards squash grown locally here in the Hunter. Our area has previously been renowned for its pumpkin growing. Our local football team is called, and has always been called The Pumpkin Pickers. But the area doesn't grow pumpkins in the volume it once did. There has been a little bit of a resurgence when the local hay grower was approached to grow food again and he has set aside a small portion of his land for food, but really it's a pittance compared to the food that was once grown in this area. What a shame for a city that grew food for Sydney.We have great potential for once again growing large scale produce.

 But anyway, here on our little farm we grew enough pumpkins for us and our CSA members to last for a while, at least until we all get sick of eating pumpkins, which brings me to asking you for a favour. Do you have a favourite pumpkin recipe apart from the usual, like soup, rissoto, scones,or pie that you would share with me, to pass onto my subscribers. If so maybe you could email me the recipe or attach a link to it in the comments. It would be very much appreciated. One of the biggest reasons for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscriber not to renew their subscription is because they can't handle the quantity of seasonal produce. For this reason I like to help them out with recipe ideas.

Cooking pumpkin in the solar oven

Thanks for your help! And don't forget to leave a comment on my last post to go in the draw for a visit to the farm.

CSA Weekly Share

The harsh summer has been really hard on us. Even though we didn't actually run out of water for the garden, all the irrigating we did was pretty ineffectual. The days were just so hot that it sucked the water out of the soil very nearly before it soaked in.The zucchini and cucumbers fruited well in the beginning. We had such abundance. But they shrivelled in the heat and we were left with very little to put into our boxes, not to mention the lack of surplus to preserve. But we knew that it would have to rain eventually so I kept propagating so that I would have the seedlings ready to plant whenever it did happen to rain.

Well of course the rain did come and we were ready. So in went the zucchinis, cucumbers, beans, and greens. Thankfully the rain came in good time while we still had weather warm enough for fruiting to occur. So once again we have a glut of zucchini and  cucumber with beans on the way. And the greens are looking lush. Such joy. I love being a farmer once again!

Today's  CSA share is typical of the one above. Although we endeavour to divide the harvest evenly some people will get a little of this and others may get something else instead. each box is dependent on the harvest of the day and as we pick twice a week there may be a little difference from the Monday to the Friday.

This Week In The Garden

We got over 145mls in two days and everything is look lush. The sun has come out and it has been very muggy today. We have been working hard in the garden (well Mark has anyway) trying to catch up with all the summer vegies. Up until now it has been just too dry to do very much.

We have harvested the last of the garlic and onions...

 Tomatoes in the front row and zuchinni in the following row, mulched with coffee bean bags...

.... and the next row prepped for cucumbers. Previous to this the ground had been so dry and hard that it just could not be worked.

 A few weeks back we planted this bed out to zucchinis. This bed is part of the mandala sequence and as such it receives more attention and water than those beds outside the circles. We are harvesting upwards of 25 zucchinis a week.

Potatoes are growing in those beds which are the least fertile and still needing extra work. They seem to like these beds and we are harvesting roughly 20kilos per bed.

In this bed beetroot is the main crop. As it has been growing we have harvested faster growing crops such as lettuce and asian greens. Once the beetroot reaches it's full size all other crops will have been removed giving them the space to flourish. This is known in permaculture  circles as stacking in time

Corn, beans and kidney beans flourishing after the rain...

Tomatoes and basil..

A view from the front of the garden with long beds at the front and the mandala garden behind them.

 It has been a real pleasure working in the gardens since the rain. The soil is much easier to work now that it is moist and friable. How about you, did you get the rain? Are you managing to get your summer vegies in? We still have many seedlings waiting for us to plant. More beds to prepare first though. 

Happy gardening to you all.

Succession Planting

Here are the snow peas we planted in April. We started harvesting them in early June. From this bed and another smaller one we are able to give our CSA customers 100g each a week, (that would be worth $3.30 in the organic shop). 

This is what that bed looks like now. We will leave it to  develop our seeds for next year before removing them to plant tomatoes. The tomatoes will love the extra nutrients provide by the nutrient-rich peas.

  

The pea is swelling and the skin is becoming clear. Once it's dry, it's ready to pick and store away for next year.

Here are more snow peas that we planted a month after the first lot. There's another similar bed and, with these two beds, we are harvesting as much as we need for the boxes and ourselves and other family members.

And when their harvesting time comes to an end, we have another bed of peas ready to take their place which were planted a month later. These should take us up to the harvesting of the beans.

Through successive plantings, we are able to maximise our harvests. The most often asked questions at our gardening-related workshops are to do with what and how many vegetables to plant. The what part of the question depends a lot on what people like to eat, but what they really want to know is at what time of year should each veggie be planted and that's mainly to do with our limited knowledge of seasonality. So we help them out with a generalised guide to what grows when in our local area.

To answer how many, I suggest that they make a list of the vegies they and their family like to eat and then think about the amount of each that they eat in a week. I suggest they plant four or five varieties of things like lettuce that can have the outside leaves plucked while leaving the rest to continue to grow. For others, make successive plantings every three to four weeks. For example, if you eat one cabbage a week, plant four in your first planting and then, four weeks later, put in another four. Likewise with beans, cauliflower, cucumber, peas, sweetcorn and tomatoes. Once again, this is only a guide as all  families are different. I suggest that they make a start and keep good records of what they planted, when they planted and how much they were able to harvest. Then next year they can adjust their plantings to better suit.

Here we are using the chooks to prepare beds for sweetcorn on the outside edges of the mandala gardens. The chooks scratch and fertilise the beds and every two weeks the dome will be moved on and 40 sweetcorn seedlings will be planted in the prepared ground.

Today we are featured over on Liz's blog Eight Acres. Liz interviewed us about our house cow in her  series, Getting started with homestead dairy. Please pop over and take a look at the interview and while you're at it take a look at what she's doing in her neck of the woods. Some pretty inspiring stuff!

What's Growing In Your Garden?

I often get asked this question at this time of year. It can be hard for some people to come to terms with seasonality in a winter garden. Those that are used to eating whatever they like throughout the year find winter fare a little limiting. Another question I get asked is "What do you put in your CSA boxes at this time of year? Aren't they down in quantity over winter? "

 

 

So what is growing in our garden? The answer is a lot of greens- silverbeet, spinach, tatsoi, bokchoy, cabbage, parsley, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, snowpeas and mustard greens. We are still producing salad mixes and mizuna and endive. We have just finished harvesting tomatoes, pumpkins and grammas. We can still grow beetroot, not as big as in the warmer months but still worthwhile. We have celery, potatoes and carrots and oranges. And our new hens are laying like crazy, so there's plenty of eggs. But mainly there are greens. I'm a strong believer in seasonal food being the food that our bodies need during that particular season. During winter I believe we need extra iron and iron is plentiful in fresh greens.



 

 

 

 And the answer to the second question is no. The quantity is not down. We are filling our boxes with a wide range of produce twice a week.

We had a phone call last night from one of our new CSA members. He was in the middle of cooking his dinner and wanted to let us know what he was cooking. He was delighted with his box of food and proceeded to tell me, in detail, what vegies from the farm he was using in the meal. It brought tears to my eyes I can tell you. That he was so grateful for the fresh vegies that it moved him to give me a call. Awww!

Many of our subscribers have been with us from the beginning. 7 years ago we began our Community Supported Agriculture. It was a slow beginning but continues to grow , with a waiting list for prospective customers. We have moved from weekly payments to quarterly up front payments, now that subscribers are confident in our ability to deliver. We now have a consistent income which is not affected by our customers going on holidays, and it's not affected by any adverse conditions we may suffer on the farm such as drought or hail. Our customers benefit from gluts in production but support us if there is scarcity. A recent misfortune we experienced was when some wild ducks flew in and ate all the greens from some of the beds. We were still able to fill the boxes but were down a little on diversity.

We are really blessed with our climate and what we are able to grow in this area. And now we are getting ready for spring. The first of our tomatoes have germinated on the under heater Mark made from a water bed heater. They will be potted up in the next week and by the time the frosts are finished they will be around 30 cm high and producing by Christmas.

Are you planning your spring garden yet?

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PS While cleaning out the ex WWOOFER caravan preparing it for it's new purpose I came across some books that I had collected for our worker's to read. They have been sorted through and those that are no longer wanted have found their way to the decluttering box. They will go to the op shop along with the other items at the end of the month.

 

Joining in with Rhonda for a decluttering challenge.

Autumn Celebrations.

 

 

No fear be near when vapours rise,

Mist Dragon preys to weaken.

Let iron force through blood stream course,

Courageous autumn meeting!

What a beautiful Autumnal evening we had for our festival. Our friends were greeted with a beutiful display of our summer harvest, with a basket of goodies for each of the band members.

 Remember back here I talked about my musings over our topsy turvy festivals. We got together with some dear friends and organised an evening that suited us all in our search for more meaning to our festivals.

Here we are readying ourselves for Eurythmy

We started with Eurythmy which is a creative artistic interpretation, created by Rudolf Steiner, relating to the sounds and rhythms of speech. For our celebration we enjoyed participating in an interpretation of the above verse.

As the nature forces draw back into the earth in autumn, the picture of light and dark, Michael and the Dragon presents itself. During autumn our darker side, (intolerance, irritability, crankiness etc.) our dragons so to speak, can surface. We can enlist the help of Michael, to draw on our courage, to subdue these dragons.

After our performance I took those who were interested along with me on my evening rounds of the farm. We fed animals and collected eggs, locking away any of the livestock who may be bothered by foxes. The children were particularly eager to participate in this activity.

We gathered once again as the sun was setting to enjoy the evening meal with contributions of food lovingly prepared and brought along by all. We even had Dragon bread.Thanks Diana.

Luckily the head was still left next morning so that I could get a photo!

As the night got darker we lit the fires and lanterns and danced to the music of Ozamigos. Evan loved the music and danced and danced and danced.  Notice the beautiful jumper he is wearing, lovingly knitted by his Aunty Meghann for his 1st birthday.

 

 

Here's one of Evan dancing with his Pop. They actually had to stop so I could get the photo but you get the picture! Evan can't take his eyes of the band and verbally complained whenever they dared to take a break. He obviously enjoyed his meal  judging by the amount that is still around his mouth. It was dark after all.

 

It was a great night and for me, a lovely way to bring myself into the Autumn.

 

 

 



Mulberry Harvest

We have quite a large Mulberry Tree in our house yard. There are a few bantams that live under there. They love it . It is a deciduous tree so in winter the sun shines in and the hens are nice and warm.  In spring the tree quickly grows leaves and provides some shade for those hotter days. When the fruit starts to mature the branches get very heavy and hang down to the ground so that on really hot days the hens are really well protected form the heat.

And when the fruit is mature we are harvesting everyday.....

and there's still plenty that fall to the ground for the hens, ducks and geese.

I've been freezing them, making  syrup, and baking with them...

mulberry muffins

As soon as I get the time I'll make some Jam. But at the moment we are flat out. We ran a workshop for a neighbouring council on Natural Pest Control and Companion Planning. It was a great group who really picked up on why we choose not to kill anything either with natural products or chemicals. Quite often when we do these workshops all the participants want to do is kill and they don't hear anything else.

On Monday we start our Permaculture Design Course. It runs for 12 days straight with participants staying here for that time. It is very intensive and I may not get the chance to Blog. I apologise to you all in advance and look forward to catching up in a few weeks.