Cuppa Anyone ?.

Every year in a small  old town  about half an hour from where we live on the coast they hold a Tea Pot Festival.
I went to it many years ago with my lovely neighbour Rita and her daughter , sadly since then Rita has passed away, so her daughter and I make the pilgrimage every year up to the festival.
I thought I would show you a few of the displays of the weird,wacky and also some very beautiful tea pots and related bits and pieces.

The tea pots vary from the traditional, to the quirky to the totally ridiculous, but we have a lovely day wandering around the place. This was the first year that I have ever taken my camera to take some photos.They have many,many more than what i have  photographed, with beautiful traditional pots and sets as well. There  is something  to interest most people.

Morpeth, the town where the festival is held,dates back many years  and is on the hunter River and steam boats  in years gone by used to service the township to the coastal port of Newcastle.. There is a lot of history in the town, beautiful old buildings and a very good  town association which keeps events like these running every year. They do a tremendous job.
My companion  and I make the  day out so much more than the tea pots, we always have a lovely morning tea and then follow it up later with a nice lunch somewhere.

The  two  tea pot sets above  have a distinctive Australian flavour with tradittional  aboriginal designs on them.Every year there is also a Tea Pot  Cosie competition, and they always have many weird and quirky designs among them.

This year they had a Golly display, they are either loved or disliked, but I decided to include them as they were there on the day.

They also had a display of early Australian electric Jugs(Kettles), they have become quite a collectors item these days and can fetch a good price.

Something I also found   hanging around was  a lot of wind chimes made from old,pots, and milk jugs and sugar bowls ect, they were quite effective, or at least I thought they were.

This painted cow was there too, so thought I would pop him in just for fun.

We have a fun day up at Morpeth tea pot festival  each year, and hope to keep going  for many years to come. It will be a good excuse for me to head back down this way each year to keep up the tradition.
So on that note, I may just put the kettle on and make myself a cuppa,
So until next time,
Cheers,
Jane

Busy,Busy,Busy...now taking a breather.!

We have just had a really busy full on 10 days, Our  youngest daughter had to go to Adelaide for a few days and hubby had to work so we offered to take little miss Holly,now three up to the farm for a week or so.
We picked her up down near Wollongong(about 3 hours south  and then drove back to Newcastle and then after picking up the trailer fully loaded with stuff for the farm and the two dogs we set off for the four hour drive out west  to the farm
Immediately upon arrival she bolted out of the car and was amazed at the sheep,she just couldn't take her eyes off them.

It was freezing cold when we arrived late in the afternoon so we got the fires going and unpacked the car.(The farm is a new experience for Holly as she had only been there overnight once before when she was much younger).
The next morning my husband  had to assemble a small motorbike(now christened Motor Mike) for ever more.We had bought it cheaply on ebay just so that my husband could save his legs a little rounding up the sheep and other jobs around the place.

We have found it to be wonderful, It is a little on the small size, but has a 125 cc engine, so gets along quite well.
Holly was given the responsibility of feeding the dry biscuits to the dogs, a job she took very seriously.Anytime we would  wonder where she was, we just had to look for the dogs, because they were always together.

She just loves the dogs, has done since she was a little baby.
She owns the black labrador, her name is Josie, she calls her Josie Jo..
Brian  went to clean out one of the stock troughs and Holly and the dogs just had to help him empty it and refill with clean water. She was cute, got soaking wet and was covered in mud and slime,she told me she was being Peppa Pig and was "jumping in Muddy Puddles".The Kelpie belongs to our oldest daughter.

Our oldest daughter also came to the farm to visit  while we were there too and brought her baby girl Claudia with here. We had a lovely time with the little girls together and also some more cousins from in town came out to visit  as well, it was like we were running a day care centre.

We had hair braiding, chocolate cup cake making(and Bowl Licking), and a first photo of Nanny and Poppy with both of their grand daughters. holly also got to do some other exciting things, like sitting up on Poppy's  big blue tractor, and feeding the little pony  at the next door neighbours,Going to the playground in town, cutting and pasting pictures and playing with play dough.( what more could a little girl want.)

While we were there Brian went up the hill with his trusty old blue tractor and cut a load of good wood, while he was up there I took little Miss for a big walk "Up the Mountain" and we gathered many pockets full of pretty  stones along the track.

Our little "feed" block that we had shut off from the sheep had progressed quite well so we let the

sheep onto it for an extra bit of feed for them, they thoroughly enjoyed it. Elsewhere around the garden spring  is rapidly creeping up on us, the apricot tree was bursting into blossom and the hardenberger"native Sarsparella' was in flower, all is looking good.Brian also weeded the rhubarb and set up an old bathtub to make a new garden the next time we are up.
We had a day with the sheep while we were there too,We keep some of our sheep on Brian's brothers bigger block of land. All the new lambs needed tailing,tagging and marking, The adult sheep all needed drenching and checking over and the alpaca(which belongs to my Brother in law) needed drenching and his toenails trimmed.Holly just adored all the baby lambs, and had a wonderful morning followed by a picnic with the sheep(which was just a cuppa in the paddock)

On our final day, we travelled to Dubbo to catch up with my elderly mum and my sister(who just happened to be visiting our Mum also. We had a lovely catch up, lunch out and a bit of grocery shopping for great Nanny.My mum is nearly 89 and doing very well.It was lovely she got to have the day with her Great grand daughter.

We had a huge week, feel like we never stopped, we are totally exhausted, but in the best possible way. Hopefully my next posts will be more farm related, but I just had to share our wonderful week with everyone. We travelled home the day following the Dubbo excursion, and never heard a peep from our little princess, Holly's Mum had loaned us her portable DVD player, and she watched Pepper Pig and Wiggles all the way home,(with a lunch break in the middle). The dogs happily sat either side  of her.

So until next time, best wishes to all,
and cheers from Jane in Aus.

Our first time canning corn.

 We try to grow vegetables at both the Newcastle  place and  up the bush, but things  seem to do so much better here on the coast with the higher rainfall and we arn't up the bush enough to keep the extra water required up to everything. We have a few timers set  that we run off 1000 litre tanks on a few things that we really need to keep alive. Back in February we picked our corn cobs from our garden in Newcastle and ended up getting roughly 100 cobs.
I then  cut some up to make smaller cobs and froze those,to use here in Newcastle as we needed them (I have a nearly 3 year old grand daughter who just has to have a corn cob every meal.)So I need to have lots. The rest of the cobs I then stripped the kernels off and froze until we went up the bush next time (That's were I keep the pressure canner)So then, on our next trip up, out came the canner and I got busy, I canned the niblets into half pints as that's just a convenient size for the two of us, and that seems to have worked out well.Also in the photo was some other canning I did that day, some  Bullhorn peppers,Dilled carrot sticks(which were really lovely for nibblies with drinks on the verandah) and also a few half pints of 3 fruit marmalade that hadn't sealed from some earlier canning.


I definately would recommend growing and canning corn, it has already been excellent value to us.
Sorry if these photos  arn't in order as I just can't seem to work out how to manually change them,
Cheers everyone,
Jane