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Baking ~ Pretty and Vintage Things

Aug 27th, 2011 by

I’ve been having a bit of a bake up this week.. the banana loaves are very popular with everyone here & disappear quickly.  They are very handy for the boys lunches.  In case you are wondering how I have such a big supply of overripe bananas… I buy bags of salad bananas when they are cheap & freeze them whole (skin off)  to use as required.

As I was cooking the other night, I considered the pretty & vintage items I was using & how much more enjoyable they make the baking experience.

My father made the rimu recipe box for my birthday as my old recipe book had given way at the seams (due to overloading!)   I crocheted the dishcloth.. actually I’ve made a lot of dishcloths and other crochet items this year but they will be the subject of a new blog soon.  If you’d like to see some I’m selling do have a look at my listings on Trade Me 

I love the pretty rainbow colours of our chookie eggs….

The hens are producing well now the days are getting longer and generally warmer.  We’ve had some wonderful spring like days this week.  I have several broody banties already and set some eggs under one of them today.  Hopefully we’ll have our first chickens of the season in 3 weeks :) 

And, even though its rather late in the season, we have decided to let Lulu goat visit a man .. she has been quite insistent this weekend ;-)  We checked her udder today as I noticed it was looking fuller. There is some milk there so, if the one night stand doesn’t work out, hopefully we’ll get milk anyway.

 

Posted in cooking, Crafts, Goats, Poultry | No Comments »

New Garden Cloche

Aug 24th, 2011 by

You may recall I posted recently about my dear little bantams ‘helping” me in the garden.  Well, they can be quite useful for keeping bugs away & scratching out a few weeds but they were actually decimating the vegetables; eating all the silverbeet & even the carrot tops & parsley!  So I got handy hubby on the job & he built me this wonderful cloche to completely enclose one of our raised beds.  It is so toasty & warm under there, even after frosts.  The covered swede seeds popped up quickly when I havent seen the uncloched carrots emerge yet (yes they are covered but just with netting).  I planted more carrots under the cloche last week, as per the moon calendar for root crops.  We’ll see how they do in comparison.  As usual this cloche was built with recycled materials.  

If you are a local & would like a cloche for your garden hubby could rustle you one up too!

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Posted in Poultry, Vegetable Growing | 2 Comments »

Banana Chocolate Loaf

Aug 24th, 2011 by

I just had to post about this yummy yummy loaf I made this morning.  The recipe is on the  NZ Womans Weekly site.  I cut it while it was warm, because I simply couldnt wait, & it was so cake like.  Now that it’s cooled it is just a lovely soft & moist loaf.  Only thing I’d alter next time is to add some walnuts & a bit of mixed spice.

Banana Chocolate Loaf

Posted in cooking, Recipes | 1 Comment »

Lamb Rescue

Aug 2nd, 2011 by

Once a week hubby works as groundsman at a factory near home.  They have a few sheep which graze the land around the factory and every year hubby has to pick up dead lambs due to the lack of care from staff.  It really upsets him but there was a bright spot a few years ago when we rescued a newborn ewe who was very hypothermic.  She made a full recovery and was rehomed to a loving lifestyle family.  

We had a super frost here this morning and hubby found another cold newborn ewe whose mother had neglected her.  I rushed to collect her in a basket laden with blankets and a hot water bottle.  I felt like an ambulance officer on an emergency mission. :)   She was so sweet.  A romney x with the cute furry face and legs that seemed very short compared to my Gotlands.

Lambie was placed by our fire to warm up and our dachshund, who had mothered the last sick lamb and a baby piglet before that, licked lambies face.   It seemed to perk her up.  I have frozen goat collostrum which I mixed with a little Ketol and I got 20ml down her with a syringe.  After more dog licks and a few cuddles all seemed well.  She was making adorable little lamb bleats. I left her to rest.  Sadly however, next time I checked on her she had just passed away, quietly in her sleep.

I just dont get used to this part of farming.  It’s why I dont have lambs very often myself.  Here I was crying over a lamb that wasnt mine and I’d only known for 3 hours!  I really dont think it would matter if I had 200 sheep..  9 years and many deaths has not hardened me much at all.  The great thing about farming though is that there are also many wonderful moments with the animals to make up for the lows.  And I wouldnt trade that.

Like many before her, lambie was buried beneath a new tree.  A Viburnum I grew from a cutting.

 

Posted in Sheep | 2 Comments »

Planting By The Moon

Jul 31st, 2011 by

This season I’ve decided I’m going to follow the moon calendar with my plantings & see how it works out.  I started on July 20 by planting some root vegetables.. swedes and carrots.  I have got handy hubby on the job of making me a plastic covered cloche to keep them warm… and.. to keep my dear wee bantams off!  I thought it was lovely gardening with them scratching around my feet but as soon as my back was turned the little sweeties were up on the raised bed & scratching up my newly sown row.  I quickly made a make-shift netting cover as you can see in the picture but since that photo was taken the chooks have completely decimated the lettuce & beetroot. I pulled it all out yesterday.. the goats benefited & now have pink, beetroot stained noses.

Swedes Planted & Covered!

In case you were wondering about the goats, I haven’t had a buck in this year.  After the summer drought our paddocks havent really recovered and we just dont have enough grass to feed more mouths.  I’m reeeaaallly hoping that lovely Lulu will come into milk again without giving birth.. just as she did last year.  Kinda defeats the purpose of having milking goats otherwise doesn’t it?  

Here’s a picture of my banties after they moved on to the calendula patch.  I actually planted swede and parsnip seed there in autumn but without any success and the calendulas took over. Which is fine. They are an eye pleasing, bright addition in winter plus I use the petals to make calendula oil for my hand and healing creams (that will be another post one day).  The petals are lovely in a salad too!

Pekin Bantams Foraging in the Vege Garden

Back to the moon calendar.. I will be planting peas and broad beans this week.. 3-11 August apparently.  I also want to get some early potatoes into the tunnel house.  Dad tells me it is Spud Monday tomorrow.  I saved some potatoes from last season and they have sprouted happily in the shed so will be ready to go in.

I’d better go and make the most of this gorgeous sunny day and get my soil prepared.

 

 

 

Posted in Goats, Poultry, Vegetable Growing | 3 Comments »

What a lot of… Compost

Jul 27th, 2011 by

I thought you might find it interesting how we make compost here.

 Hubby is a gardener so he ‘brings home his work’.  We have a tractor mounted chipper & every weekend he shreds the weeks work.  Any that is guaranteed non-poisonous is used as animal bedding.. in shelters & chook houses.  Later of course that is cleaned out with the ‘animal matter’ and used in the garden.  The real woody chips are used to line our paths through the chook area & orchard.. fantastic in winter!  The green & leafy mulch is spread on the ornamental garden (and is then usually spread around by the banties)  but, in peak season, we have so much we dump it in, what used to be, the stock yard.  The big chooks get in there and scratch away happily, looking for bugs and worms.  This ‘turns’ the pile for us and in no time at all we have lovely rich dark soil to go back in our raised beds or use for potting up plants.

I wont complain about the sun shining too brightly in my pictures, but it has made them a little overexposed (you can click on them to see larger size) …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hubby has also made a couple of smaller compost bins from recycled pallets.  These live in the vegetable garden and get some grass clippings, animal manure and anything that cant be eaten by the animals.. like rhubarb leaves and potato tops.

 

Recycled Timber Compost Bin

 

Posted in Flower Garden, Orchard, Poultry, Vegetable Growing | No Comments »

Yay Frost!

Jul 1st, 2011 by

ok.. I guess its a little weird to be excited about a frost and I have been loving the long autumn with the warm days, but I am really pleased that we are having frosts this week because I know its killing some bugs that we dont want overwintering.  Plus.. its makes for some really pretty pictures I can share with you!

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Posted in Flower Garden | 2 Comments »

My Sisters Cranberry Farm

May 25th, 2011 by

My sister has just sent me pictures of the delicious gourmet goodies she has been making with the cranberries she grows on their cranberry farm in Greymouth.

You can find the recipes for these and lots more cranberry yummies on her website.  Her farm is front page news  in the June issue of Lifestyle Block magazine!

New Zealand Cranberrys (Chilean Guava) & Crabapples ready for the pot

I harvested my own New Zealand cranberries recently.  They are quite different from the ‘real’ cranberries my sister grows. In fact, even though I regularly see my variety sold as cranberries in nurseries, they are actually a guava (correct name is myrtus ugni) and grow in a totally different way to the ‘real’ cranberries.. which I havent had much success with here in Nelson.

Anyway, I mixed my NZ Cranberries with crabapples and made a  jelly that hubby loves even more than my grape jelly.
Jellies seem to have been my ‘thing’ this season ;-)

Posted in cooking, Orchard, Recipes | No Comments »

Grape and Crab Apple Jelly

May 13th, 2011 by

This is THE best preserve I have EVER made!  Its really hard not to keep dipping your spoon into the jar & eating it like some sort of sweet.  Labour intensive.. yes.. but so worth it.

I used the same recipe I have for my crab apple jelly but used 50% crabapples & 50% sweet, late season, black grapes…. mmm

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Feijoa Muffins

May 13th, 2011 by

We have had lots of rain here the last couple of weeks.. after many weeks of dry.  In fact, as I sit here typing it is absolutely pouring down outside with thunder & lightening.

Anyway, the rain has helped swell our feijoas nicely & today I made the most devine, light & moist muffins with them. 

Here’s the recipe if you also have a glut of feijoas, or a friendly neighbour with some.  They seem to be so common in gardens these days.  We are having no luck selling our surplus. even at just $2 a kilo.  2 years ago we were getting $4-5.  They are a great shrub; evergreen, easy to grow with or without water, & the fruit is not attacked by bugs or birds, at least not here.

This recipe is a slightly altered version of Jo Seagars Quick & Easy Feijoa CAKE.. which I made last feijoa season.. works just as beautifully in muffin tins.  There is a very similar recipe at Kiwi wiki.

1 cup chopped feijoa flesh
75 gm butter (softened)
2 eggs  (3 bantam eggs in my case)
1/2 cup milk (kiwi wiki says you can replace some with lemon or orange juice)
1 cup white sugar  (Jo says 1 1/4  cups Kiwi wiki says 3/4 so take your pick)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour

I iced mine with a lemon icing but I have seen a similar recipe suggesting the following topping instead

1 tsp cinnamon 
1 Tblspn sugar
  • cut feijoas in half and scoop out flesh with a spoon and overfill a cup
  • put feijoa flesh,butter, eggs & sugar into food processor bowl & mix until smooth
  • add dry ingredients & pulse until just mixed
  • spoon into muffin pans
  • If using: mix cinnamon and sugar topping and sprinkle over muffins

Bake in 200° for 10 to 15 minutes.

Feijoa Muffins

Posted in cooking, Orchard, Recipes | 3 Comments »

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