Why I like fruit trees

I read an anecdote from Stephanie Alexander, where she had had a big day of speaking and was starving, so she wandered into Colesworth and grabbed a couple of apples to tide her over. She bit into one and was rewarded with a chalky, tasteless mass. It's not really colesworth's fault I guess, we've made it so we want stuff all year round, and cheap, so they have developed fruit that will store well for long periods of time and travel well, and look good in a pyramid. Taste just fell by the wayside.

This is why the first few mulberries make me incredibly happy. It's not really a supermarket fruit, considering it bruises from the tree to the kitchen. They taste great though and after a poor season last year this year looks like it is going to be a cracker. Buggered if I know why last year was poor. The fruit this year is already big and plump and there was about a bowlful ripe when I went scavenging at lunch time.

Mulberries make great pies and tarts but they rarely get further than a smoothie at Lantanaland. A bowlful of fruit, yoghurt, ice cream, ice and some fresh Lantanaland milk and you have a tasty nutritious lunch. I swapped out the ice cream and ice today for some strawberry sorbet I'd made the other day with a big batch of strawberries that mum had bought.

While they fruit it is pretty much my standard breakfast, with maybe a few almonds or oats thrown in for bulk. I can't wait till all my trees are in production and I have boom and bust for a whole range of fruit. Preserved lemons, marmalade, cider are all the fantastic things you can have when you are dealing with a surplus of fresh fruit.

In other news I have finally started cheese production again. I milked out 15L of milk over the weekend, all which went into a feta recipe a cheese maker on twitter put me on to. It is so satisfying to be making cheese again. I really need to get my cheese press made and have a crack at some harder cheeses.

One of my glaring weaknesses as a cheese maker is note taking and record keeping. In an attempt to rectify this I have started a very boring blog to keep track of the cheeses I make. I will label the cheese the herd share gets and they can go to that cheese and read the notes and give me feedback. I'm hoping it will keep me on the path of better record keeping. Because I want to be making a lot more cheese!

I am an idiot. No, I am a complete and utter idiot.

Sometimes on the farm, you have to suck it up and admit that the trade offs that you made were in the long run, just plain dumb. I had been letting the cows wander out into the unfenced grassy area, because my fenced paddocks were eaten down and I didn't want buy feed. I also feel like the cows eat more and are happier when they are out on the grass. It's very dry here at Lantanaland, I will have to buy water this week, there is just not much grass around.

At first, they came back every night readily enough. A few times I had to chase them down the hill but they mostly came back. The times they had to be chased was usually when they got two days out in a row and I thought I had cleverly solved that problem by locking Dolores up in the home paddock on the days where I didn't come home in the evening. It had the opposite effect, last Tuesday when I let them out they didn't come home.

In the following days the only happy campers at Lantanaland were The Boy and Tally the dog, who both got a good walk when I got home every day. Every day I explored another cow path down one side of the ridge or the other. Or both. I have a lovely criss cross pattern on my arms from the less cleared paths. Highlights included jumping full stretch into some lantana as one of my neighbours steers, with a beautiful four foot rack of horns charged back down the path at me when Tally spooked him and The Boy falling asleep as I slugged up the steepest track on the hill.

By the weekend I was getting a bit down and a bit worried. I usually really get concerned when the milk runs out. By Monday I was convinced that they were no longer in the big paddock. They'd got out somewhere and were either eating someone else's grass or had been picked up by the council or even worse, stolen. Everyone has seen those flyers out in suburbia, 'have you seen Misty the cat or Spot the dog?' Instead I posted thirty odd flyers in letter boxes in the streets either side of the hill with a picture of two cows and a phone number. Desperate times.

Of course as soon as I did this the cows came home. As I drove up the hill and automatically slowed on the bend that gave me the best view of the opposite hill I spotted the distinct black and white speckle of Dolores. I raced up the hill and coaxed them back, very slowly, with a loaf of bread. They had been on all you could eat grass smorgasbord and were not keen to go back to grassy hay. How I miss my fruit waste. The next worry was the calves. They were not with the cows, I wasn't too fazed, they often will hide themselves for a sleep, but after a week trekking after hidden cows, I would have rather had them home as well. I had to go pick up The Boy and collect his Grandma from the train and on the return trip I spotted the calves trotting along the ridge line towards home. I didn't even have to go and coax them home. The cows are now all grounded for the foreseeable future. It might cost me more in feed but it will free up time for other jobs, things that need doing. The rains will come, the grass will grow and I'll get another paddock fenced but till then I'll be keeping the girls close to home. I don't think I could face the shame of buying milk at the shops again.

A great weekend - first fathers day.

My mum is a nice lady. My folks were down for a week doing dental/optic/skin checks and she offered The Wife and I a child free lunch date. Which we gladly accepted. I put the word out for a good place to eat but quickly realised with it being Fathers Day weekend that most places would be booked or at least crowded. What we wanted was a lazy quiet feed, preferably in a dark corner so I could have a post lunch nap and no one would notice. Nowhere in SEQLD was going to fit that bill on that weekend.

What I had noticed though, on my trips up and down the hills chasing cows was a fantastic little flat area underneath a lone pine tree right at the top of the grassed paddock. It looked like a great picnic spot, all it needed was ten minutes with a shovel to remove the evedince that it was also a favourite spot for the cows to picnic. The thought of a few hours up there eating good food and drinking some bubbles seemed pretty appealing. No designated driver, no travel, just a walk up a steep hill.

That meant some good picnic food. I thought a pear and blue cheese tart would travel well, but be decadent enough to make lunch seem a bit special. Layers of filo pastry and butter, slices of pear and blue cheese and a few pistachio nuts to finish off. It certainly looked good.

There was a bit of a cool breeze walking straight up the slope but for once the lantana did something useful, providing an effective windbreak in our chosen spot. Bubbles were poured, tart demolished, much to the dogs disgust, all with this amazing vista in front of us. For atmosphere, I doubt many restaurants could match it. In Brisbane or anywhere.

A bubbles induced nap followed and we marveled that we'd lived at Lantanaland for five years and never been up here. For serenity, it was hard to match. Kid and cow chasing beckoned and Tally and I ran off down the hill to see if we could rustle up some missing cows. No luck on that side and despite being a bit puffed, the old dog came down the other side for a look. No luck there either but the folks and the family were in the spa so I joined them to soothe the stings of choosing the wrong fork in a cow track.

Sunday was my first Fathers Day. I usually push back against commercial holidays and events but I'll admit, I was looking forward to my first celebration as a dad. The Wife, being the beautiful lady that she is, made pancakes with bacon, strawberries, ice cream and the real deal maple syrup that the folks had brought home from Canada.

"Curtis" also got me a canvas of one of my favourite pictures of him, the little Buddha at sunset. The Wife takes some amazing photos, not only on the proper camera, but she really knows how to get the most out of the iPhone as a camera and uses all the software in it, as well as the little lens kit I got her to full effect.

The day finished off with more cow chasing, this time I ran all the way down the hill to the back fence, Tally scrambling madly to keep up. Letting the cows out is doing wonders for my fitness. If all my fathers day weekends are as good as this one, I'll be a happy man.

A walk down some hills.

After the disappointment of Candy the Dexter giving me only a few litres of milk a day, the 5-7L that Dolores was giving up was causing me great pleasure. Feta had been made, yoghurt and brie planned and the cheese press plans back in full effect. Not all was rosy though. Laf was losing weight, very, very quickly. The calf was taking so much she was burning more energy than she could produce. Simply, she wasn't getting enough food. I upped her hay, but the fenced paddocks just didn't have enough. There was no choice but to let her out into my untended paddock and by extension the neighbours as well. Not that they mind but there is a lot of space for a cow to wander, and all hilly.

For a week things were going fine, the girls would wander down in the afternoon and be put away for the night and Laf quickly gained back the weight she had lost and was no longer looking like Skeletor's pet cow. On Wednesday night I went straight to training from work and didn't get home till nine. They hadn't wandered down the hill and the next morning I was gone before there was enough light to call them in. The next afternoon my mum and dad were here so when they didn't show up I wasn't that fazed, they were probably down the hill and I could go and get them on Friday.

On Friday some old friends from the inner city living days dropped in. They had come down my way to buy a tractor, naturally. They were keen to see a bit more of Lantanaland so we went cow searching. Every other time they have wondered off they stay down on a great bit of grass near Jamie's yards, just behind my back fence. Off we trekked, but at the end, no cows. I was a little more worried, but again was thinking that they were just up the next hill near Jamie's sheds. We didn't have time to go further so I left it for Saturday.

Saturday was double Di party day. It was my neighbours 50th and they were having a street party as well as my mother in laws birthday as well, which we celebrating at night. In between kid wrangling, beers, cake making and beers, I armed myself with the machete and some bread to coax the girls back and ran off down the hill. I went through the back gate and off up the other hill, calling for the girls, plenty of cows but none with big white patches and lots of milk. I even followed the cow path that goes along the right hand side of valley home, in case they were up on the grass there. Nada, no cows. That meant they'd gone....over the other side of the mountain. I'd never gone that way before and had no idea what I'd find. Lantana was a pretty safe bet. The plan was to gear up after breakfast and go looking.

At Di's party I'd mentioned to Cliff, the old guy who had owned our whole street originally that I'd lost the cows. Just as I was getting ready to go, protected for ten foot high lantana, he came over to tell me that they were at the back fence of a farm down the other side and he'd give us a lift down so we could walk them back. The little buggers followed me and my bread quite readily back up the steep climb to Cliffs, then round the hill to Lantanaland. I locked Dolores up for a quick afternoon milk and fed them both lots, just to remind them that they didn't need to walk quite as far for a feed next time.

Lantanaland has achieved.....butter.

Ok so it's not winning an Olympic gold medal or landing a souped up Toyota Hilux on the surface on mars but in the history of Lantanaland dairying, it ranks up there with the best Brie I have made.

The book that really kicked me into thinking about living this life was 'A Year of Slow Food', by David and Gerda Foster. Brutally honest about the pros and cons of running a small holding, it nevertheless talked about butter as an annoying by product of owning a dairy cow, of having to dump it to reclaim freezer space, trawling through recipe books for butter heavy recipes and making tons of shortbread.

Now anyone who has eaten my food knows that I am a butter freak. Margarine does not cross my threshold and is viewed in the same category that Campbell Newman is at the headquarters of the public sector union. The day i made my first hollandaise is celebrated every year. So the thought of endless mountains of butter was a touch appealing. The first cow I milked was disappointing, I tried every different way possible, I consulted with dairy people on twitter, I prayed to the milk gods but I could not make butter.

The second cow I milked was not much better, as she never let me milk her out, always saving some for the calf. (for non dairy peeps, the cream is all at the end of milking, so if you just get the top bit, it is pretty much skim milk). Now however, my favorite cow, Dolores is in the milking bale. Placid and adoring, Dolores sits there quite happily till I milk her out. And cream? The first time I milked her I think there was more cream than milk! I couldn't ask for better raw product.

The final piece of the puzzle might be the blender I bought for making The Boy's meals. It hasn't been used at all for that, the stem blender has worked fine but it killed it making the butter. Yesterday I skimmed the cream off tastetrekkers milk and my bottle, placed it in a jar with a scoop of yoghurt and let it culture for a day. Then back in the fridge to chill and the into the blender. Immediately I could tell it was working, I could hear the motor working as the cream thickened then see the butterfat separate from the milk. I was left with about 300g of butter and a bottle of buttermilk, which means pancakes for breakfast Saturday.

The sense of pride was palpable. I had finally cracked the butter code. But what to celebrate with? Eggs benedict, smothered in hollandaise? Simple boiled spuds smothered in butter? Some brioche? I think I'll just make them all!

Catch up

It has been a long time since I've written anything about Lantanaland, not from lack of interesting things, more the opposite. Mostly the time has been going to The Boy. At seven and a bit months he is good fun, lots of cheeky smiles and little milestones. However the momentum for this blog came from the fantastic Mr Flinthart, who writes his as a rambling record for his kids to read one day if they want. History is important and stuff has been happening and thoughts have been percolating that need to be recorded if I am to provide even an incomplete picture of how the farm grew up around us.

Curtis has not just been sitting around playing with his toys. He is quite used to being strapped in and coming to feed the cows and the chooks, water the fruit trees and do the other many small jobs that need doing around the farm. He has even spent a few afternoons in the backpack while I have been fencing. Fencing! How it haunts my nights and causes gnashing of the teeth. More about that a bit later.

The big changes have been the addition and subtraction of the cows. I had to sell Candy, the dexter. Lovely as she was, especially in the milking bales, I could never convince her to give up all her milk without using the calf. The cows are not pets and I haven't made cheese or yoghurt for the herd share since I started milking. Feed is also scarce, and I can't warrant buying feed for a cow giving 2L a day. I also have more mouths to feed. Both Laf and Dolores have calved. Laf had a little bull calf, somewhat surprising as I didn't know she was even in calf and she did so before Dolores! Dolores eventually followed up with a little girl a week later. So I have enough cows at the moment.

Despite having two cows I could be milking I'm getting none. This is because of cash and optimism. I tried to do a day pen for the chooks in electric fencing because I can't afford the mesh for a big run at the moment. It didn't work and a side issue was in all the fiddling round I also rendered the fence I use to separate the calf off at night impotent. So I haven't milked Laf yet because the calf has beaten me to her every morning. You'd think getting up at 430am would be early enough but no, no milk for us. Dolores is in quarantine, having had a shot of antibiotic to clear up some post birth swelling.

I am looking forward to milking Dolores. She is so tame that I swears he has a bit of Golden Retriever in her, she even lets the other calves have a drink. The latest fencing is a small yard around the bales. Of course $1000 and some proper yard fence panels would solve the problem in ten minutes. Mostly I love being innovative and making something out of scarce resources, but right now I want 6L of milk a day and some cheese.

One positive is letting the chooks out to irregularly range has seen an upturn in egg production. Chooks that get a big range have better tasting eggs as well and eggs means some of my favourite foods, aolli, fresh pasta and boiled eggs. The other big sucess has been homemade harissa, using my little ornamental chillies and tomatoes semi dried in the oven then cold smoked in the washing machine smoker. Fantastic depth of tastiness and I can't wait till I have my own yoghurt again.

The next big thing is going to be a decent summer veg production. I really do suck at vegetable growing, but I want enough tomatoes this year to do some bottling and freezing and smoking. Also I'm keen to supply most of the houses fresh greens. We will see, but right now I have to go and check on an electric fence, again.

Content creation

One of the common bits of myth is that tablet computers can't do content creation. We went on holidays last week and I had a really cool picture of The Boy and one of our mates little girl. I wanted to do something with it so I busted out the app Comic Life.

At the same time I wanted to do a shirt with a picture of The Boy on it for my best mate who is going overseas for six months. He really is an uncle to The Boy, Ryno comes round twice a week for dinner and Curtis just lights up when he walks in. I had so much fun with the first comic I decided to do a comic for the shirt instead of a picture.