My 1st Blog Anniversary.

I cannot believe how fast time has gone. Exactly  1 year ago today I decided to begin a small blog about our setting up of our off grid property ,food  preserving and  other bits and pieces along the way.
I have always loved taking photographs and this was a way for me to show them to people  if they happened to have a look, and I also used it as a sort of journal for us and the children and grand children  to look back on in the future. I really hope they will enjoy what they read about our life.
I have had a great time  doing the posts, time and  decent   internet service haven't  always been on my side but we have managed. I  hope  to continue  posting and as we finally make the permanent relocation to the farm I should have more new and exciting projects to write about and share with  you all.

last weekend I traveled down to  Wollongong again by train to visit my daughter and her family, I went down to help her  sand and re-paint  a room that will be the new baby's  room.We are very  excited about the new imminent arrival in a  few moths time.
I have to change trains at central station in Sydney and  sometimes the changeover is speedy to say the least and i have to run like the wind dragging my pull along bag and sometimes I have an hours wait as i did the other day on my return.

I love central, I love to grab a coffee and sit and watch the constant parade of people coming and going about their business. As it is a big open area there are always pigeons flying around everywhere trying to scrounge whatever crumbs they can get.
We have finally finished removing all the good soil that we had in four raised beds, and bagged it up to take to the farm to re-establish those same four beds up there.We raked the area flat and have thrown grass seed all around to hopefully cover the area back in again.

We pulled  all the beetroot crop that we were growing in two other raised beds and I cooked them and  canned them up as sliced pickled beetroots. We eatslots of it and unfortunately this year we didn't grow nearly enough beetroots and they certainly won't  last the year.

I also found apples at 99 cents per kilo so brought  about 15 kgs and made  and canned pie apple for use in pies and crumbles later on when the need arises. They also had loose chick peas and Great Northern beans, so grabbed a few kilos of those as well to can up at the farm.

The last of the basil was also picked, and I decided to just blitz the leaves up  with a little olive oil in the food processor and then store in small amounts in zip bags in the freezer for later use in recipes that require basil.

Next on the agenda was  to dehydrate some more of the Habanero chillies that have   been so over productive this year, I have now picked the bush 6 times with still more to come.
I sliced them finely(wearing Gloves) and spread out evenly over the dehydrator racks and dried overnight(out in the laundry,learned this lesson from past experience)

I then  ground the dried habaneros up in my spice grinder into a powder and stored them away in jars  in the pantry.

The bees have been very active over the last few weeks, probably trying to get a good store away before winter finally sets in. I was able to get some nice pics of them going about their business, they never even paid the slightest attention despite

the fact I was right in their faces with the camera.They were mainly on the tree dahlia blooms(above) and the perennial basil and the yellow daisy bushes.

This week we planted Australian purple Garlic into the bathtub garden bed that we grow the Habaneros in and they were already sprouting well after only 6 days from being planted.

After we had removed all the beetroots, we worked the garden a bit, added some more cow manure and went and purchased some seed potatoes  and planted them into rows  in the corrugated  metal raised beds.

This was a type of potatoes we have never tried before so we are hoping they will be good growers and produce well.

It's been a busy few weeks, juggling Brian's work roster with family visits,visitors, jobs here and about and a nice bout of coughs and colds,but all is well now and the list of to do jobs contines to grow at a rapid pace.We will eventually start to cross a few of those jobs off the list I hope.
I  trust that every one is well and happy,
So until we meet again,
Cheers,
Jane.

Another rushed but busy farm trip.

We headed off up to the farm again a couple of weeks ago, Loaded to the hilt as usual( I just don't know where we keep finding all this stuff)This time we took up our new dual wood heater/cooker that we are going to install, the new flat packed chicken coop and some of  the metal poles that we will build our outer chicken yard out of.

We were greeted by our  babies, they are always glad to see us arrive and rush to the shed because they know that Brian will give them a bale of hay just to  keep them friendly.

I had picked the Habaneros the morning we left(and saved some seed for next season) and on arrival got straight into making  up a batch of "Singapore Chilli Sauce" a recipe that I found in the "Ball Complete Book Of Home Preserving"

It turned out to be an extremely hot chilli sauce, I am not a huge chilli fan but the man  assures me that it is lovely.

That night when we went to have a shower we had no hot water as we keep the solar hot water system covered with shade cloth when we arn't there ,but  normally we still produce enough heat for a quick shower,but as we had  apparently had a week previous  of overcast skies, there was no heat. We sufficed with a kettle and a wash and the next morning Brian uncovered the system but just as an added bonus decided to light up the kitchen stove(which backs up the solar system0

Well, smoke went every where and very quickly filled the house. First fire light for the season and the flue was blocked, we opened the house   all up and got rid of the smoke and put the fire out. We found we had a big build up of  dry  tar type substance up in the flue. We cleaned it all up and it then  burnt and drew like a dream.
I got busy and painted some metal chairs that I started on the previous trip only to be attacked and stung 10 times by paper wasps that were living  in a nest under one of the chairs, they now look much better all freshly painted.It took me many weeks to fully get over those bites.

We  had  three days at the farm and then we traveled to Parkes to visit our oldest daughter and celebrate our youngest granddaughter's first birthday. On the way not far from our place we noticed these fellows grazing in a roadside paddock. We have seen them before and last year they had a calf. I think they are Bison, but we always just refer to them as "The Buffalo's"

We had a lovely weekend with our two daughters and two granddaughters, we had  lunch  to celebrate the granddaughters' first birthday, and she had a beautiful  caterpillar  birthday cake.  I was able to get a pic of the two gorgeous girls, but it was hard to get them to  sit still long enough.

We returned to the farm for a few more days, Brian got stuck into enriching  our raised  vegetable garden beds.
He dug out some of the soil, then placed a layer of hay biscuits or slices, then put the soil back  on top, and then topped it off with some more soil that we had brought up in bags  from our now shut down gardens on the coast.Hopefully it will all decompose and make some wonderful soil for us to plant in.

We cut some wood, and mowed lawns and replaced the front tyres on the lawn mower, pumped water, cleaned ,weeded and general tidy up.
We  wandered the property close to home, deliberating on where to place our new chicken coop that we brought as a flat pack.

We finally decided on a lovely spot out the back under the shade of some larger trees for protection in the hot summers, but in front of the big rock ridge that will offer protection from the cold southerly winds. We will remove some of the smaller saplings and build a larger high meshed yard into which we will place the smaller coop. The coop is roughly 3 metres by 2 mtrs x 2 mtrs..

We think this will be an ideal spot for the chickens.Hopefully work will start on it soon.
There are some pretty spots on the farm( or at least they are to me)...Below are are a few pics of the rock  ridge and caves and   a couple of other areas that I like.

It was a busy, disjointed visit but we still accomplished a lot, every thing we do now is one less job later. I really miss the  farm when we are not there, and can hardly wait to get back. It was so lovely and green this visit with feed everywhere for the sheep. The house yard was lovely and green too.
On our return trip, unusually we traveled three quarters of the way back  in  thick

fog. We often get some but not to this extent. The only time we came out of it was as we  peaked each  range between the valleys. The photo above. shows the fog over the township of Coolah which would normally be visible.
So now we are back on the coast, working ,saving, gathering supplies  and waiting  for  the next opportunity to get away again .
So until we meet up again,
Take care,
Cheers.
Jane.

Sauce with a kick !

About a week ago, I noticed that the Habanero bush was producing much more than I could realistically use up in "Habanero Gold"(sweet pepper jelly), so I decided I would make up a batch of  spicy Tomato/Habanero sauce.
So I picked  a decent amount of them, sorted the ripe ones to do the sauce and retained the others to cook with and to give to a friend that wanted some green ones..

For the recipe I  used 14 cups of peeled,cored and chopped Tomatoes..
5 Cups white vinegar
3 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons ginger(minced)
2 tablespoons Garlic(minced)
1 teaspoon all spice
2 teaspoons mustard powder
3 bay leaves
2-3 cups, seeded chopped  red/orange Habaneros
4 largewhite or brown onions(chopped)
1x 500 ml bottle of tomato pasta sauce.
I added all of this together into a stock pot and boiled for about 30 minutes.

After this I removed from the heat, fished out the bay leaves and blended the entire contents of the pot. I then placed it back on the heat and boiled for another 20-30 minutes to reduce and reach the desired thickness., keeping an eye not to stick to the bottom.

I then made my self a funnel out of an old drink bottle and filled my bottles that had been keeping hot in a sink full of hot water.
After this I wiped the rims clean with paper towel soaked in white vinegar, placed the caps on(which I buy new each season) and placed all the bottles into my electric  boiling water bath preserver.

After bringing up to boiling point, I then processed the jars for 15 minutes, after which I turned off the processor ,removed the lid and allowed the bottles to sit for a further 5 minutes before removing them onto a towel covered bench to cool.When they were cooled I labeled them and stored away 9some to stay on the coast and some to go up to the farm.

I ended up with 12  x 500 ml bottles, which I was really happy with.
I had a small amount over(about a half pint) which we used some of on our dinner that night.

 It was so tasty, I am very pleased with the result, just a lovely tomato sauce with a good kick of chilli.I was extremely happy with dinner that night because apart from some of the sauce  every bit of that food on the plate we had produced ourselves. The lamb was from the farm, the chokos fresh from the garden, corn frozen when we harvested our crop, and canned carrots and beans from our garden as well.Even the tomatoes had been our own(I used previously canned tomatoes)
I certainly will be making this again, I think it will prove to be a popular condiment in this household in the future.Most of us like a bit of chilli.
So until we meet again,
take care all of you  and stay safe,
Cheers
Jane.