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.