chapter 20: Eating your greens...reds, purples, yellows and oranges too.

Chapter 20:Eating your Greens...Reds, Purples, Yellows & Oranges too.

Taking (Chicken) Stock of Life and Death

A month ago we noticed Charlie (one of our remaining three chickens) had gone 'dickie'. We had noticed that she seemed a little out of sorts, but it wasn't until Gramps 'the chook whisperer' pointed it out in no uncertain terms for all to hear at a recent bbq "You've got a dickie chook there lovey". Joe smiled with discombobulation. Behind his polite smile, he was thinking 'what the hell does dickie mean?'

"well matey, it means her organs are systematically shutting down and she's only got about a week to live, you can tell by the frumpy tail and the colour has gone from her cone. You'd best put her in a box in a quiet corner or she'll be pecked to death by the others."
Joe had grown close to Charlie, particularly because she was named after his father...I could see him thinking 'surely it's not that bad. Jo's dad is prone to exaggeration. Perhaps Charlie is just having a bad day...too much porridge can cause bloating...?'

But dickie she was, and within the week Charlie passed away in a cardboard box on the back porch.

I called Joe to break the news..."can you pick up some milk on the way home, I haven't paid that bill yet,  and by the way Charlie's dead."

After letting Joe down lightly, I thought about the kids. How were they going to take it, they had grown so fond of the chickens, perhaps they are too young to understand. Later in the afternoon when Joe arrived home the whole family stood around the hole under the lemon tree. Joe shook Charlie out of the box and she landed with a stiff thud in the shallow grave, a moment of silence followed until Joe said with a sense of ceremony "would anyone like to say a few words?" After a brief pause our 4 year old (N), spoke up " um, well are we gonna pull her feathers out?" he said shrugging his shoulders. "Why sweety? " I replied.
"Well, we are having chicken soup for dinner; we may as well just add her to it."

Kids eh..Joe sent us all inside as he slumped on his shovel in a state of grief and disbelief at our sons carnivorous pragmatism.

But this was more than a month ago and with only two hens left and eggs at an all time low, Joe quickly recovered after we purchased 4 more hens, Thelma, Louise, Georgie and Noella.


Bean and gone


Talking of has beens we had our first major spring harvest last weekend. Our broad beans were ready for picking. Broad beans are not commonly found in the shops but are a delicious bean and very easy to grow. Plant them on St Patricks day (Autumn) and they will be ready for harvesting in early Spring. You can eat them straight from the shell or freeze them for later use as we decided to do. Alternatively you can leave the mature pods to dry for planting next season or adding the dried beans to next winter's dishes. Simply soak the dried beans overnight. The mature plants grow up to a metre in height and yield about 15 pods, each with 3-5 beans. We harvested enough to fill a wheelbarrow.

Shelling the beans was a fun family affair and is set to become a favourite annual tradition.

Another handy broad bean tip is that the roots draw nitrogen back into the soil. When harvesting, don't pull the plant out by the roots, simply cut off at ground level leaving the roots in, in time they will break down providing a rich source of nitrogen in your next crop. Follow a crop of tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkins or melons (heavy feeders) with a broad bean crop to replenish the soil.

Colourful crops

With spring well and truly in the air the garden is quite a buzz, literally. Our bottle brush trees are covered in bees from dawn to dusk and the other flowers throughout the garden are coming into bloom. The poppies, nasturtiums, roses, camellias, lavender, black-eyed Susie's, hibiscus and geraniums are all doing their colourful thing. But its not just the flowers being colourful in the garden. This month we've pulled up our purple dragon carrots, plucked our purple king beans, had our first ripened red, cherry tomatoes, red lettuce and budding beetroot stems and lets not forget the greens. Silverbeet, coriander, rocket, basil and beans all look great in green.

garlic

purple King Beans

we simply call this our handsome lettuce.

Kapow! Purple Dragon Carrots...

Seaweed in the mountains

Seaweed is a great fertilizer for the vegetable patch, but as we are in the mountains, we have been making the most of our trips to the coast when we visit Joe's family. On our last trip north, Joe and his sister filled the entire boot of the station wagon with garbage bags of seaweed from the local lakes.

After rinsing it in the rain, to wash off any salt, we added it to the pumpkins, tomatoes and potatoes. the potatoes and pumpkins are absolutely thriving! best of all it's free, and can even be used to make a liquid fertilizer, seaweed tea.

Straw and your strawberries
If there is one taste that defines spring, it simply has to be the home grown, hand picked, delicious taste of ripe red strawberries. the only problem is getting them before the snails do. Strawberries are a hardy plant to grow, but the strawberries themselves can fall victim to rotting if allowed to sit on the soil, and become easy targets for fat little snails.

Its worth padding some straw beneath the berries to elevate them from the ground. this reduces the likelihood of rot, and munching mollusc's. In fact, growing them in hanging baskets is a sure fire way to save your berries from the snails and slugs. this is definitely on our to do list, although we plan to leave some in the ground to grow runners and new plants for next season.

Possums in the patch
If you have ever visited the mountains, it’s quite possible that you have crossed paths with the semi-famous Possum Man. Known throughout the district for his cunning possum catching talent, The possum man can be called on his possum hotline (somewhat like ghost busters we imagine), will arrive in his hand painted possum-mobile and (for a fee) proceed to trap your furry possum fiend and then let it go again in your backyard, thanks to the Blue mountains City council’s policy on protecting those poor, poor little possums that wee all over our car, eat our garden and thunder across our roof at 3am in the morning.

one of our cheekiest possums

Since moving here possums have had a go at most things that we have tried to grow including our chilli bush, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs. They have dined on our entire lettuce crop and munched away our heirloom ‘lazy housewife beans’ down to the very last stalk. They even have the hide to do so right in front of us, causing Joe to fling into a wild frenzy of maniacal fist waving and chasing them around in the dark, before near breaking down in tears at the state of our helpless seedlings. It can just about break a man’s spirit.

possum solutions
The possums are here to stay but we have learnt how to live with them. We now cover most of what we grow with bird netting but we have also discovered some things that you can grow that the possums don’t seem to bother with and we feel obliged to share these with you.

Possums have not bothered the zucchinis that grew rambunctiously all over the yard last year. They don’t eat our leek, onions, garlic, shallots, coriander, rosemary, pumpkins or melons, perhaps because of their coarse leaves. Interestingly, with the onset of spring, the possums have become much less of a problem. In fact, we have been able to successfully grow leafy silverbeet, lettuce tomatoes and potatoes uncovered over the last month, and not one leaf has been munched.

The famous gardener, Jackie French, seems to believe that possums don’t like ‘foraging’ for food in dense vegetation, and we have tended to notice the same. This may also explain why the possums have left our sweet potato leaves, which grew abundantly all through last summer. Just don’t leave your harvested sweet potatoes out over night, as they will happily eat them for you.

Even flowers occasionally fall victim to hungry possums. They have eaten all of our beautiful geraniums down to the stalks but don’t touch the nasturtiums or lavender.

Although our grapes are still too small for the possums or birds to care about we plan to net each bunch with stocking as we lost at least 70% of our grapes last year to them. We are not sure if it will work but are going to give it a go.

Next blog we are going to mull over mulberries, talk lavender champagne and get cheesy making our own ricotta.

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.