Thorny thistles and beautiful berries

Beautiful Berries

As the weather warms up and you prematurely start to hum away at Christmas carols, the simple summer berry is never far away. Fruiting in the garden at the moment we have mellow mulberries, luscious loganberries, bountiful blackberries, sweet, sweet strawberries and last but not least, whimsical wild strawberries.

Last week we shared our very first loganberry, the taste was amazing. It is similar to a raspberry but with a punchy pomegranate-like after taste, a total wow factor. The berries grow on lazy weeping canes that need some support but their taste is sensational and definitely worth growing in your backyard, (we planted our loganberries last year).

our very first Loganberry

Our thornless blackberries, whilst not yet ripe, are plentiful. We will have net them very soon so as not to loose them to the birds who keep eyeing them off.

Last year we lost most of our strawberries to slugs with exceptional taste, however this year those slugs will be sorely disappointed. This year we have hung our strawberries up off the ground in Joe's very ingenious invention - the used milk carton hanger pot. It works too, we are claiming those delicious berries before any slugs...and the taste of home-grown strawberries, well just an experience that needs to be had by all.

Another little strawberry treat that has been popping up throughout the front garden are the wild strawberries. They are smaller and less tasty but still an exciting little treat for the kids to pop into their mouths as they find them in the garden.

wild strawberries

I would love to make a frozen berry cheesecake or mulberry smoothies for Christmas day, but most of our berries rarely make it through the door, there is something magical about popping a berry into your mouth whilst standing in the shade of the garden trees... ahh those beautiful berries.

Thistle wet your whistle! Thistle beer recipe.

Last week, I noticed a very healthy thistle popping up in one of our garden beds, which had sprung out of some old horse manure. Normally, I would get rid of these sort of weeds immediately, but then I remembered hearing of a recipe for nettle beer, and while this Scottish thistle wasn’t technically a nettle, it got me wondering whether or not a brew from thistles was a possibility. But one little thistle wouldn’t be enough for a brew, I thought, and put the idea in the back of my mind with the list of other crazy ideas I’d one day like to try.

And that’s where the idea stayed until this weekend, when Jo and I took the kids for a bush walk just a few minutes from where we live. As we entered the reserve, I noticed the tell tale purple flower of a Scottish thistle growing next to the track. “Careful kids, there’s a nasty thistle there” I said... and then, in one of those divine moments of enlightenment, I noticed that there were hundreds of thistles popping up everywhere. Suddenly, the beer idea came rushing back to the forefront of my mind again - ahem, and the need to preserve our wonderful bushland from this terrible noxious weed, and later that day, N and I took a large bucket, some gloves and big scissors, and returned to stoically do our bit for bushland preservation against these nasty weeds.

my trusty thistle picking wing man

After some Internet research, I found some interesting facts (?) about the humble thistle. Apart from being a medieval cure for baldness, thorns aside, it seems that all parts of the plant are edible. The young flowers can be eaten in the same fashion as a globe Artichoke.  It has been used to make tea’s for liver ailments, improve memory, make oil. the roots supposedly taste similar to Jerusalem artichoke, but beware, can cause massive bouts of gas.  

With such positive acclamations, it only seemed right that we craft the following (very experimental, and as far as I am aware, World's first)  THISTLE BEER RECIPE!!!!!!!!

Ingredients

250 grams of thistle leaves/flowers

12 litres of water

4 oranges

Cream of tartar

Brewers yeast (or baker’s yeast is ok)

1.5 kg of sugar

3 kilos of extreme optimism

Process

Remove leaves and buds from stems (around 250 grams) – use gloves and scissors.

Bring 12 litres of water to the boil in a large pot

Add thistle leaves and buds and simmer for 30 minutes (enough to fill the pot)

Strain through muslin  into a sterile brewing keg – the colour was that of tea, and a quick taste test had a similar taste to green tea...or was it grass... let’s say green tea for now.

Add 1 tbl spoon of cream of tartar, the juice of 4 oranges, and 1.5 kilo’s of sugar. Stir well until sugar is dissolved. You could also add other ingredients here such as ginger etc for flavor.

Allow to cool to blood temperature (this took hours), and then add the brewer’s yeast (15 grams) – I used baker’s yeast which is an adequate alternative.

Leave to ferment for a few days and then bottle and leave for a further 2 weeks.

boil and bubble...



the strained thistle tea



Whilst we are hopeful of the final result, I suspect that it may be on par with our Mulberry wine. But on the off chance that it does work, it would make for a great way to control the spread of noxious weeds in our local flora, and help improve the liver function and and memory amongst beer drinkers worldwide... on the quiet, we may be about the revolutionise the beer industry and become ridiculously rich, but perhaps its best to keep it under your hat until the taste test.

The Thistle Beer Verdict
After  4 or 5 days in the keg, we bottled the batch adding a sugar drop (about a teaspoon of sugar) to each bottle to carbonate - make it fizzy. It only seemed right to try a quick little swig, albeit premature  from the barrel. The Aroma was sweet and citrusy, and the taste.... bitter, almost suck on a lemon bitter, almost enough to make me loose any interest in bushland preservation, altogether.

But there was a glimmer of hope. with the added sugar in each bottle, perhaps it might just pull through. After a few days in the bottle it was time for another taste test. Surprisingly, it was significantly better, with a zesty citrus flavor and refreshing bitter-sweet tang... my interest in bushland preservation was once again restored.



a modest 3 out of 5



With a few more weeks in the bottle, I expect the brew to improve further, and I am confident to say, that the thistle beer experiment was a success! If you are inclined to give it a try, make sure you are confident that the thistles are healthy and have not been sprayed with any herbicides. A trusty pair of gloves and scissors are also recommended.

Our next post will be out shortly, with all the details about the very first crop and swap...85 swappers and counting!

Chapter 7: Woo Hoo for home-brew!

Woo Hoo for Home Brew!
Welcome back our fine followers. It seems that the number of followers is becoming less exclusive by the week, increasing by a staggering 130% in seven days! Is cyber space big enough to fit all 7 of you... who can possibly tell. There you are, all hot and smelly after building your compost heaps, crammed together in that possibly unventilated cyber space you currently share... you must be thirsty. They say you can get it milkin' a cow... I wouldn't know, but i believe you can get it brushing your hair, or even sitting on a chair. Yep, you can get it any old how... matter'o'fact I'm getting one now... right out of the fridge... a home brewed beer!

There is something inexplicably satisfying about drinking beer that you have brewed yourself and best of all, its remarkably cheap and easy! We are by no means guru's at brewing. In fact, we are relatively new to it all. But if we are going to survive this F.F.F.C., a home-brew is most certainly required at the end of each day of the challenge. Currently we have only brewed about 10 batches of beer, and we have also dabbled with making our own wine from mulberries and grapes that we have grown on our yard.


What do I need to make home brew?
There are plenty of resources online about brewing, but if you want to keep it simple, you can buy all that you need to get started from K-Mart or a home-brew shop for around $100 - $120. We actually found most of what we needed on ebay for around $60. Your bare essentials include a carboy (that's a big plastic container), an air-lock (a squiggly tube that sticks in the top of your carboy - it lets gas out but stops air getting in), a bottle topper, a cleaning agent such as bleach (cheap), bottles, lids, and the yeast/malt/brewing sugar kit (about $20). Once you are set up, a batch of 65 beers or so will only cost you about $25. That's pretty good for 2 and a half cases. A brew will take about 1 week before you can bottle it, and another 2 weeks minimum before you can drink it. It is better to leave it longer (6 weeks or so).

Mmm is for Mulberries
In our yard we are lucky enough to have an established and very old mulberry tree. It is huge! We are also very lucky to have a grape vine which produced some lovely grapes, although most of them were eaten by the Rosella's. Throughout spring and early summer, Joe and the kids spent hours picking mulberries. They are truly delicious. If you have the room, a mulberry tree is a must. Very low maintenance, grow from cuttings and grow quickly. Just remember, they can get big, so plant them in the right spot.

By the end of spring, we had collected about 5 kg of mulberries and stored them in deep freeze. We also managed to save about 1kg of grapes from the birds. The mulberries are delicious in pancakes, or heated into a syrup to drizzle over ice cream, or in apple and mulberry pie. mmmmm.

Mulberry wine
Also as it turns out, they are not a bad fruit to make wine from. After some research and a visit to a brewing store, we mushed our grapes and mulberries in the blender, added water, sugar, lemon juice and some cinnamon sticks and of course some wine yeast, to make our very first home made batch of mulberry and grape wine. How exciting! That said, wine takes much longer than beer to mature, and ours is still in the carboy, so we have no idea how it will turn out. Fingers crossed it will be a wonderful summer wine that we can serve at our end of challenge dinner party.

Why don't you give it a try? The whole beer thing is dead easy. Okay, you may not have a grape vine, but why not take a trip to the hunter and snip yourself a few cuttings before next spring? (because its illegal). Alternatively you could visit your local nursery or Bunnings and see what vines they have in stock. A grape vine costs about $10. Surprisingly, you can make wine out of lots of other fruits, including just about any berry, even kiwi fruits and bananas!

I know, its a big step... but we have already inspired you to have chooks, right? Not to mention a compost heap and a veggie garden, and your neighbours already think your a hippie. Hell, what does it matter if they call you an alco too. How awesome would it be to invite friends around for a dinner party and pop out a bottle of 2011 uniquely home made wine. And if it tastes really bad, don't despair, give it away as a Christmas present, someone will drink it.

What's growing in the Garden
OK, enough about the home brew, back to the garden. In preparation for the funky front yard challenge we have decided to expand out vegetable garden. With the onset of Autumn, we have planted several new crops, including Papa's broad beans, beetroot, pak-choy, bok-choy, swedes, more all season carrots, garlic, shallots, lazy-housewife beans, red kidney beans, chick peas, silver beat and radishes. Spinach, strawberries, turnips and leek are also good to plant now.

Hot Potatoes

Most exciting of all is our potato experiment. Some months ago, a friend mentioned the mysterious method of growing potatoes in sacks in order to increase the yield. The general idea is as follows. A sack or porous bag, such as an old potato sack is rolled down so that it is only about 20cm deep. Add soil and 2 or 3 potatoes (eyes facing up). As the potato plant grows, unravel the bag by 10cm or so and add more soil, leaving the top of the potato plant exposed. Continue this process until the bag is full. Throughout the process the potato plant is tricked into growing new tubers, growing far more potatoes than usual.

We thought we would give it a try. If it works well, we can start a potato bag or two every month and work out how many we would need to grow. Potatoes take about 120 days to mature, and can be grown almost all year round in temperate conditions. Traditionally they are planted from about July through to December, although this will vary depending on your climate.

Potatoes are super easy to grow, but it is recommended that you don't plant them in the same soil again for 3 years to prevent diseases building up in the soil. This is another benefit of planting in bags. The soil can be tipped out and used elsewhere. Potatoes are good companions for cabbage/corn/peas/beans. Garlic and French marigolds are good at preventing pests and diseases with potatoes, and nasturtiums help improve their growth.

We took a trip to one of those hippie organic produce shops in Katoomba last weekend, and did our best to blend in with the tie-die and long, naturally greying heads of hair cleaned only with blossom oil and herb extracts. To their benefit, and ours, they had a wonderful range of organic fruit and vege and dried beans and grains. The purpose of our visit was to select seeds, and vegies to plant for the winter. We left with some lovely Dutch cream, Kipfler and Pontiac potatoes which we have used in our potato bags. You might be wondering why you would bother growing your own potatoes when you can buy them relatively cheaply from the shop? Just wait til you try your own home-grown ones, oven-roasted, drizzled in olive oil, cracked pepper and sea salt, totally more delicious than anything you have ever bought. Home-grown potatoes store for much longer than those you buy as well.

Bags of poo

Joe and Noah also took a trip down into the Richmond farming district in search of horse manure for the garden. If you live near any farms its worth doing a poo-patrol. The occasional farm will sell their manure for about $2 a bag. Big, heavy, 30kg bags of poo. For 20 dollars, you can fill your entire car with 300kg of poo for the garden and drive home with the windows open and a satisfied smile on your face. If you live near the Richmond district. Our top poo stops are on Londondary road and The Driftway. Use well rotted manure in your compost, or dig it into your garden beds before planting hungry vegetables such as pumpkins and tomatoes. For the brave hearted, make a potent poo-tea and use to fertilise the garden every week or two.

There you go. You have no excuse to pay extortionist prices for beer or poo ever again.

Next week, we will give you a tour of our funky frontyard garden, and look at some crops in more detail, such as the our super spicey chillies, purple carrots, and blueberries which are all wonderfully high in anti-oxidants. We might even share with you where to buy such rare heirloom vegetables right here from your very own computer.