A bits and pieces week

We have had a busy week or so up at the farm, for once i am actually posting from the farm as the satelite service seems to be running extremely well for once. We will have to revise this service once we live here permanently.We have been watering constantly as it is so dry here at the moment, It has been a dry winter and the farm is looking pretty bare.When we want to water the lawn or gardens, Brian has to start up a big generator up the back which pumps the water up from our underground bore which is 300 foot below the ground. We can only do this for 10 minutes every hour, as we pump it dry. Once we live here we will install a solar pump which will eliminate the need for the big generator and it will be a constant but slower flow of water.
We are babysitting our daughters black lab  Josie, she is a cutie, Brian takes her for walks all over the property with our old blue cattle dog Tilly, but as soon as they return Josie always dives straight into the stock troughs and cools down, she is such a cutie.

Because the place is so dry, we had to reduce our sheep numbers drastically, so while we have been here this time we have butchered 5 sheep. Two were extremely old, so we decided to butcher them and completely bone out the meat and can up to  feed to the dogs as their  nightly feed. They absolutely love it.

We ended up with  approx. 38 pints of dog meat, we also did a canner load of lamb for our own consumption and a load of rump that we had bought cheap, as it wasn't a full load we topped up the canner with  some pints of  4 bean mix,( so easy, just a half cup of dried beans in a pint, fill with water  to within an inch of top, seal, and process the same time as meat) Brilliant for salads or to pop in soups and stews or to do refried beans.

With the bones from the  two old sheep we boned out I decided to also make some lamb stock. I had saved a pile of celery tops and had a few scraggy carrots that needed using up, and we have a tub full of spring onions growing out back, so used all those in the process. We ended up with a lovely rich stock, which i set overnight in the fridge to remove any fat and we managed to get 13 quarts to be canned.

The pantry has been well stocked this visit, I have done, rhubarb,meat for us,meat for dogs, lamb stock,olives, chick peas and 4 bean mix.

While we were here we took a trip to Dubbo the other day to meat up with one of our daughters and to see my mum, who was still recovering from foot surgery. While we were in Dubbo my Mum had a nasty fall and had to spend the afternoon in casualty. below is my husband and myself with our beautiful Grand daughter Claudia  and the other is a wonderful four generations photo taken about an hour before my mum ended up back at the hospital.

We had a lovely visit, even though it was a bad day in other ways. we will be seeing my mum again  this weekend to celebrate her 89th birthday, and to attend a dinner with her  which is an annual event to celebrate her being nominated and receiving an  OAM (The Order of Australia Medal) two years ago, for 50 years of service to the returned servicemans  organization (The RSL). We  were and are very proud of her.
So until we meet again, cheers from this hot and windy farm in Aus.
Jane.

Our Beautiful Ruby Rhubarb.

I have been a bit slack on the posts but with good reason.
Around the middle of September my elderly mum was admitted to hospital. She had woken up on the Sunday morning and the skin had literally fallen off the sole of her foot. (she is a diabetic and has no sensation in that leg). After several days  the doctors decided to air lift her to a major city hospital where they placed a stent in her leg  to aid circulation  and unfortunately ended up removeing all the toes on her right foot. She has now recovered well and is walking  again well,until the day before yesterday when she took a tumble getting into  the car after a doctors visit and has now broken her pubic bone. Thankgod no surgery required just  rest and pain killers.
Mum will be 89 on the weekend and all the family are gathering to celebrate.
So  with all the happenings we haven't been at the farm much. We have been here for the last week and have been really busy, and instead of one big blog encompassing everything I will break it up into smaller  stories.
When we  left the farm the last time nearly 2 months ago we  couldn't remember if we had left the watering system on the rhubarb bed or not, and if we hadn't would probably have lost the lot,so we were indeed pleased to arrive and find  the rhubarb bed green and lush and in need of picking.

We were  lucky to pick a huge bunch, our neighbours informed us that they too had been picking in our absence( an arrangement we have) and after removing all the leaves were left with quite a bit so i decided that i would preserve it  into jars.

I cut it up into roughly 1 inch sized pieces and put into a large stock pot with   about 2 cups of water and two cups of sugar. I then cooked over low heat until the rhubarb starts to breakdown, stirring and watching regularly to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot which it is  apt to do.

After it has reached the right consistency I then  fill my pre-prepared jars,  and place  lids on that have been simmered in hot water, and place rings on finger tight.

I then placed them into my electric water bath canner, and covered with  about two inches of water, which we were using outside hooked up   to a generator so not to drain our household battery system and brought them to a boil and water bathed for 15 minutes.

After  boiling for the required 15 minutes, I then turned off the canner, removed the lid and let the jars sit for about  5 minutes.I then removed the jars , and placed on a towel on my kitchen table and let  sit overnight. Next morning, I removed the rings, checked seals were intact , washed the jars  and rings, stored the rings away for future use, labeled the jars and stored in the pantry for lots and lots of future yummy pies, crumbles ,cakes,slices and other lucious desserts.

 So, do I recommend growing and canning rhubarb....you bet I do, !!!
We also canned chick peas this week, but that's another little story.
So until we meet again, cheers,
Jane from Aus.

We love Olives,how can you not !!!

Without the beautiful olive, my entertaining  would be dull.
I can't seem to ever have Happy Hour  without at least a few olives, be they marinated  big green Spanish olives, or Kalamata or lovely green olives stuffed with feta or pimentos or the beautiful smaller black Spanish olives, whatever the olive of choice  the nibbles platter just wouldn't be the same  in their absence.
Recently Aldi had  the bargain of the century(or at least I thought it was), they had large jars(907grms) of big fat Spanish olives for $ 1.99.I forced myself to buy 20 jars.

As lovely as these are by themselves(they are a large very meaty good tasting olive) I prefer them to taste of other flavours rather than just of the brine solution that they are in.
So, what I decided to do was  to drain the brine off them, marinate in other flavours  and repack,reseal with water bath and enjoy them later.
So I gathered all my ingredients and equipment together and got started.
I drained all the brine off  and repacked the olives into mason quart jars, I had a little over 8 jars so was able to fill 1 pint as well.

I then made up a solution in a jug of white vinegar,red wine vinegar,white wine vinegar and water and set this aside.
To each quart jar I then added  about half a teaspoon of minced garlic,quarter teaspoon minced chilli,1 teaspoon of Italian herbs,half teaspoon salt, a squirt of lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil.
I then filled the jars with the vinegar solution.

I over filled the jars a little and will note next time to allow more head space.
I then de-bubbled the jars,simmered the lids, and wiped the jar  rims with paper towel dipped in white vinegar.

Next I placed the hot lids (at great personal pain to me,as I had left my magnetic wand up at the farm) onto the jars and screwed on the bands until they were finger tight.

After all were capped I then placed them into the big electric Water Bath preserver, covered them with tepid water,covered and waited for them to come to the boil.

On reaching boiling point I then started timing for 15 minutes. When the time was up, I turned off the preserver, removed the lid and allowed the jars to sit in the water for several minutes.
I then grabbed my trusty jar lifters and removed all the jars out onto a folded bath towel on my kitchen bench to cool.Shortly after removing the jars they all made that lovely "Ping" that we all wait with bated breath to hear.

So on the bench they will sit, for another 24 hours, after which I will remove the bands,check the seals are intact, wash  and label the jars and store  away in my pantry for future use down the track.
This is less than half of my bounty from Aldi, so I will probably repeat this activity tomorrow with the rest.
So ,until we meet again,
Cheers to all,
Jane from Aus.

Thanks Dad !!!

Our Blue Cattle Dog Tilly  and her mate Doug the Kelpie love to chase  a soccer ball. They will chase it all day every day all over the farm.They get to be a real nuisance at times pushing the ball into the middle of what ever project you happen to be doing at the time and expecting you to kick it or throw it for them..

We have a grey water pit at  the farm into which all out kitchen,bathroom and laundry grey water flows into. We then hook up a small petrol pump and pump the water from the pit  out onto the lawn and trees. It passes through a rudimentary grease trap before running into the pit.
The pit is quite deep, my husband can nearly stand up in it.
Well recently when Brian was pumping it out, the dogs were racing around crazy with their ball and it just happened to fall into the pit.I just love the following images, they were just too cute.

And then it was like...."Hey Tilly the ball has  fallen in, come and look"

And then...."oh dear what will we do"
I think they thought that if they watched hard enough and really willed it to happen, that the ball would just magically appear again.

I think it was about then that they realized that Dad was there and they began asking him to save it for them

 

So good old Dad came to the rescue and pulled out that dirty smelly old soccer ball out  of the grey water pit.

So there were two happy dogs ,once again playing with their old soccer ball.

Another time when Brian had just started  pumping it out, Doug the Kelpie was racing around chasing the ball and then he just disappeared. Suddenly Brian realized that he had fallen into the pit and had to quickly rescue him as the water level was quite high. It certainly scared him and he was very wary of it that day.
For safety reasons we always keep a heavy concrete lid on it, the only time it is removed is when it is being pumped out. Because we don't live there full time it doesn't have to be emptied as often as it will when we become full timers.
 Today is the end of Winter, with Spring just around the corner with the promise of new growth and colour, all we need is that ever evasive rain.
Until next time,
Cheers,
Jane.

Builders,we are not.!

My husband and I are not builders, we may have other talents, I love to can and take photographs..(.not necessarily talented at either of those activities) and my husband is a mechanical whizz, can just about fix anything. But builders,we are not.
We have brilliant ideas and plans in our heads of what we want, but it's just bringing those plans to fruition that is the problem.
There is so much up the farm that needs attention, and  as there is not  a lot of spare money around we decided  to bite the bullet and have a go at a few simple less important jobs ourselves.

We have a shed up the back of our house, long and rectangular,which houses the solar panels on the roof which powers our home, the power room is located in one end of this shed, the other end we wish to covert to my new laundry room(my old internal laundry room will become my new canning pantry( yay !!!).At the far left hand end of this shed is another  small external storage room and    an  internal extra toilet and basin. What we decided we would like to do was turn that little extra shed at the left hand side of the photo into an extra  outdoor shower room connected internally to that toilet and basin.This will be the very first stage, and I will follow up later on as the project progresses.

We have some wonderful friends who regularly come up to the farm and give their time  and effort to help us out and with hopefully four heads together, problem solving may be a liitle easier, and anyway the old saying "Many hands....."
The first job was to remove the exterior siding from the outside around the original door, then remove the back wall of the shed to create the new internal opening to the bathroom.

Next the siding that was the original internal wall was replaced as the new external wall if you get what I mean.

So far so good, the siding is old and caused numerous problems as it had to fit neatly into special shaped corner strips and many times it required all our hands to hold and balance while things were secured.
We are happy with the job so far, this was to just create the new external shell ready for the plumbing and lining stage which should follow before too long.The photo below, shows the wall finished and the view inside of the new shower room to be.

We have already purchased a tankless gas hot water service to  supply hot water to the shower and the new laundry, also have purchased a white 1.2mtx1.mt fiberglass shower  base to go on the floor and most of the plumbing supplies required. All we need is the time and manpower to complete the job.
This is never intended to be a five star bathroom facility, it is just an outdoor back up and as we have a lot of caravaning and camping guests, we thought it would be even better if they had their own basic bathroom facilities to use, and that it would then take a bit of pressure off the facilities in the house.
I will  update the progress with another  entry as we finally get onto the job and hopefully complete it.
So until we meet again,
take care everyone,
Cheers,
Jane .