The rain is here!

It's been an interesting summer, one that is forcing me to think about the plans for Lantanaland and how I manage the land. As I sit here and listen to the squalls pass through and drop their precious load over the farm, I can almost hear the soil let out a huge sigh of relief. It's been dry, very dry. Yet only two years ago we were all shovelling mud after some of the worst flooding to hit SEQLD. Australia hey!

The biggest costs have been water and feed. We had to buy three lots of water this season. The most we have ever bought before is one. Normally by now I'd be mowing the house lawn every week. The mower hasn't been touched in over a month. Half the grass seed we planted hasn't even sprouted and the rest is struggling. Laf has been let out on to the neighbours better pasture. All these costs have a flow on effect. I really wanted to get a digital fault finder this year so I could find and fix the breaks in the electric fence. If Laf gets out she will find and eat the whole barrel of pollard or the bales of hay. But the money for that have gone to water and feed. And this is running a hobby farm on a tiny scale, imagine the scale of those decisions on a real farm. A dry year might mean you can't buy a machine that makes you more efficient and makes you more money.

The one thing I have finally worked out is my chook runs. Originally I just put up the mesh fences thinking the cows would see them as a barrier. If they have tasty chook grain or soft juicy arrowroot they don't see them at all. So a period of trial and error has ensured as I test ways I can keep them out. Now I have electric down one side and bamboo rails along the top, bolted into star pickets on the other side. Along with my new gate and some bamboo protection for the plants on the inside I am confident to start planting again.

It is the perfect time to get a few things in while the rain falls and with Laf the destroyer out in the neighbours paddock I put in a lime, some rhubarb,, snow peas, wormwood and purple asparagus. I also planted cucumber, corn, rocket and beans from seed. It is day two of this constant rain, while I hope that no one suffers flood damage, this is perfect rain, constant and not too heavy. The type of rain that soaks in and fills up my nice clay soil like a huge storage tank. Lantanaland might finally start growing some grass.

I'm interested in seeing what the rain does to the fruit trees. I reckon that tank watering doesn't have the same effect as good rain. I've nursed them through the dry, so hopefully they will establish themselves a bit more now the wet season has arrived. I'd already side dressed them with some muck from the bales so now they should thrive. The cow bales with their bamboo and tarp shelter have not fared well in the strong winds, one of the bamboo struts snapped under the strain.

It really is time to redo the bales properly, do a bit of a more secure milking shed. Something a bit more solid with a nice raised floor and a proper roof. Be good to store all the feed out of the weather where the cows couldn't raid it as well. Another job on the long long list. Not for today though. Today I'm going to sit and listen to the rain, soaking in to ground, making the grass grow, filling the dam, bringing life back to Lantanaland.

Projects and a half arsed Lantanaland year in review.

I'm a guy that needs projects. Half formed ideas swirling around in my mind, theories on how I can improve Lantanaland and make use of the land that we have. Some of these never become more than pipe dreams. Some, like my rotating chook pens, get done and then done again when you come home from the family Xmas to find the cows have eaten your vegetable patch for their Xmas dinner. But the dreaming and thinking of projects yet to be keeps you interested while you do yet another day of fencing or shovelling cow shit around fruit trees.

All in all it's been a pretty good year on the farm. I haven't killed too many fruit trees and The Boy and I have enjoyed the afternoon potter around the farm, watering and feeding. It has been a bad year for rain, almost none in spring and early summer at all and most of the big storms have passed us by. The reserve tank is still empty. Which didn't help yesterday when I needed some gravity fed water when the power went out. Despite the cows destroying the two chook pens, that system is working pretty well. The finger limes have sprouted, the first time in seven years that I haven't killed one. I am so keen to have some of these fruit, many great cooking opportunities.

The cows have had a productive year, two calves, one planned and one unplanned and both within a week, exactly what you don't want as a smallholder. They kindly helped with my fitness and The Boy's knowledge of the surrounding area when they escaped into the surrounding hills. I spent two weeks traipsing up and down hills with a loaf of bread calling fruitlessly into the lantana. I wouldn't be surprised if The Boy's first words aren't 'here girls, up you come' or 'where are you, you #%*+*% cows'. I've made a heap of cheese and kept the herd share in reasonable supply, the ones I can get to anyway. Soon I'll have to get the boy calf cut and send Laf off for a romantic retreat. I have a bit of a project planned for the yards as well now I have the welder, so that the cows can go straight through and I can milk two cows if I want. Of course the real project for the cows is the hand pumped milker, which I know exists, there are some in India, but I need to hook up with a friendly engineer who can help me build one.

The chickens have kicked back into gear, I hatched out some fertile eggs from the wonderful Kath and there are guinea fowl and duck eggs in the incubator. I have some geese coming. With the welder I can now build pens as I need them, a very handy thing. I should have some roosters to eat in the autumn. Having your own eggs and milk and cheese means that a tasty meal is not that hard to rustle up if you are too lazy to go to the shops on the way home. Just keep a chorizo and bacon on hand at all time. Or some cold smoked salmon.

It's been a bit of quiet year in the kitchen, I've done a few little things like make my own harissa and a few preserves. I really enjoyed getting a good crop of guavas, they are a weed at Lantanaland and making some jam and the most awesome relish. After five years of ignoring them I'm now eyeing off the developing fruit for some good relish this year. In preparation I've planted about ten different types of chilli which if I can keep the cows away from them should give some nice preserve options.

The less said about fencing the better.

However, for the first time Lantanaland is fully fenced and my awesome neighbour Jamie will come back in the new year and cut a road up the hill and rip out some more lantana with the dozer. If I can afford it, I might even get a bit of terracing in. The grass seed on the open ground has taken nicely and my slow pasture improvement keeps rolling on. Doubt we will have the resources to do pigs this year, that remains another one of those things that keeps you going for another year.

My project in my head, just percolating away is mulberry brandy. I've been thinking, when I get the other three mulberry trees going (cows love them, they pushed into one of the chook pens to eat one), I am going to have a lot of fruit. I already make an awesome syrup that I store and mix through yoghurt as a fantastic snack but what about some wine. Distill it, stick in a barrel and see what happens? Brandy is a really useful cooking ingredient if nothing else, but the thought of lucking out and making a really nice drink is appealing to my suck it and see ethic. Lantanaland is a bit that way, I do some planning, but I listen to the land, it tells me what works and what doesn't, when I've got a hole in the snake proof chook pen and when a fence is down. There is a few other things on the boil for next year which hopefully comes through but to all those that came down and helped or had a feed, many thanks and ill see you next year.

Herd Dynamics (and The Boy turns 1 hooray)

The Boy turned one yesterday. I'm not a 'we have to have a clown, jumping castle and pony' parent but I really wanted to have a bit of a celebration for him. (Ponies are useless anyway, can't really eat them or milk them.) It was more so he could get passed round to all the folk that have a place in his life for a bit of cuddle and some love. I rate other things higher than elaborate parties obviously, space and a relationship with the food that he eats. There was a moment during the afternoon that made me think that Lantanaland should not be taken for granted.

One of The Wife's old school mates came with her beautiful son and daughter. We had moved the silkies up to the pen I use for chick raising so they could all have a pet and one of them had laid a little silkie egg. He got it out and brought it up to show me. "You can keep that mate" I told him, as I tell all the kids who come and visit the chooks. I wish I could bottle that look on his face, the sheer joy of getting a fresh egg from a chook you could actually see. I gave him an egg carton to keep it safe and I never saw him without it clutched in his hands for the rest of the afternoon.

You need moments like these to balance out the days of sheer frustration. I'm milking Dolores at the moment and she has my whole block to roam in. Laf was off in the neighbours vastly bigger paddock getting fatter after a close moment where the calf was drinking more than she could cope with. The problem with that is that Dolores doesn't like coming up to the top paddock. So if I want milk I have to go and coax her with food and halter, back up the bloody steep hill. The moment where she wrenched me back down the hill and re injured my back was just a touch irritating. I had to sit down and think it out, because this wasn't working.

I've got enough grass now to support both cows and the solution was to bring Laf back. She is a lead cow born, you call, she comes and the rest follow like, well, a herd of cows. So the last two days I've called her up, Dolores has followed and I lock them both away. In the morning I milk Laf for a few litres then turn her out and milk Dolores. The amazing thing is that milking Laf seems to make Dolores let her milk down. I would've got 7L out of her both days easy. Today I got 9L combined.

It's good to get Laf back in the habit of being milked. I can take a bit more on the mornings I want to make cheese or need a big lot for the herd share. Buggered if I know what I'll do when Laf goes on holiday to get 'in the family way'. That's a problem for another day.

We finished off the weekend with a street Xmas party. It was good to meet some of the neighbours that I hadn't met before. I drank a few beers, scored a massage, an experimental buffalo fly trap and 5 geese. The Wife is up there kicking on while I came home and put my beautiful boy to bed. I hope he grows up with the same joy that little boy had getting his tiny silkie egg.

Don't Gnocch It Till You Try It

Anyone who knows me knows that I love potatoes, love with a passion that should be reserved for first born children and The Wife. I love them in any form and it has been bugging me that I can't make gnocchi. In fact I am keen to break out my pasta skills a bit more as I have an abundance of eggs at the moment, including the holy grail of pasta makers, duck eggs.

I have the long skinny forms of fresh pasta down pat and was keen to get into some shapes. As per usual, twitter gave me some great responses, including one awesome page on a heap of different fresh pastas from @manusmenucom. As I was scrolling through and wiping drool off the iPad, I noticed the gnocchi. The recipe looked simple enough. I was determined to give it a go.

Of course I didn't follow the recipe to the letter. I just used two potatoes, boiled and skinned and mashed with a fork. I stirred in a little fine flour and then the duck egg and kept adding flour until it achieved the correct consistency. I failed miserably in using the fork to make little scroll shaped gnocchi, so I stuck to the pillows.

I just made a really simple sauce of fried speck, onion, mushrooms, red wine and sugo simmered gently for a while. The gnocchi came out beautifully, soft and pillowy, the gnocchi of my dreams. On the weekend I will have a go at some shells, my love for potato is almost matched by that of fresh pasta and if they are all as successful as tonight I'll be a happy man.

Going a little fruity. #agtalks

Back in my great grandmothers day, everybody kept chooks or knew someone that did and grew a bit of veg and had at least one fruit tree in the back yard. It wasn't because they were tree hugging greenies or new age hipsters, it was just what you did. In the hard times it was probably the best way to ensure that everyone got fed.

I realise that those days are mostly gone, not everyone has the time or the energy to keep chooks or grow veg. Hell I love home grown veg and suck at keeping them alive. But fruit trees, once established, require minimum work. They give you great pleasure and have no food miles. Yet no government encourages anyone to grow them. With all the carbon and climate change talk does anyone realise how many miles a lemon or apple does to get to your door (especially if it is from overseas).

Is it because they think food is best left to farmers and Colesworth and not for people at home? I know I get great pride every time I drive past one of my old share houses and see the beautiful lime tree in the front yard. They might only use them for their corona on a Friday night but that's better than one from the states at $1.50 a pop.

My orchard is a few years away from being productive but I look forward to the day when I will supply all my fruit needs and some of my mates and neighbours as well.

Making Cheese- Halloumi and waiting too long to make it.

It's funny how you can lose confidence in something. The last batch of halloumi I made didn't work. At the cooking stage it just melted away. Halloumi isn't a brie level of investment of time, but its still dispiriting when you spend hours, from milking the cow to all the process of cheese making just to dump the end result.

I'd been making a heap of feta and not much else though, so I really felt I should do something else with the weekend milk. Dolores had got out and scoffed a heap of pollard as well as the bit of green grass around the house, so I got an awesome 8.5L of milk to work with. I followed the recipe to the letter and was rewarded with four good sized chunks of cheese.

It was so successful I repeated the dose today. When I cooked up a sample of Saturdays effort I mentally kicked myself for waiting to have another go. Fresh halloumi has the flavour, but is softer, creamier, like super halloumi. Time to add it to the list of cheeses I can make without checking the book.

Rain and Bones

I've always loved the rain. One of our share housing criteria back in the day was a tin roof so you could lie in bed and listen to the patter of the rain. (The other ones were a deck, gas cooktop and a wooden toilet seat) I've also always had an appreciation for water usage. I grew up on tank water, particularly at The Island where you had a very finite amount to use for each stay, so the lessons of water conservation are pretty ground in to my brain.

When we moved to Lantanaland, the water situation is even more real. Waste water and you end up with a bill for a truck to come up the hill. Then we got the cows and I got a little bit obsessive. I started to feel like the soil was part of my body and as it dried out and the grass dwindled I could feel the dryness in me. The last two months as I've been wandering around chasing the cows I can feel the hardness, the dryness of the soil coming up through my boots.

Last night as the first drops hit the roof in what I hoped would be a day of rain to come, the part of me inside that is Lantanaland relaxed a little. Today I can feel the soil slowly rehydrating, the grass waking up, the tank slowly filling. It feels good.