August Garden

Time for another stroll through the vege patch.

The hardenbergia over the gate is looking just stunning...laden with flowers and with bees most of the time! The other one by the fruit cage isn't quite as magnificent....but still very pretty and a welcome bit of winter colour.

(L)Parsnips, carrots, rocket, onions, leeks, garlic, silverbeet - you can find it all in the impatience bed! (R) Garlic and snow peas in the fruit cage bed.

(L) Garlic, onions, shallots and some self seeded parsley. (R) The green manure crop is looking good too.

(L) Broad beans and a couple of turnip varieties. (R) brassicas (kale, cauli, cabbage, collards)

Pretty respectable for winter I think :)

Sometimes a simple thing makes you really stop and think

Jerry's just started doing some volunteer work with a refugee resettlement program run by Vinnies. Each family that arrives - as well as their DOCS and other caseworkers - is 'given' a group of 5 or 6 volunteers who help them settle in to life in Australia. The volunteers do all kinds of things - from driving people to appointments, taking them shopping, helping explain the way different things work (the rental market, schools, shoping, eletricity bills etc etc) as well as just dropping in and helping them practice their English.

Jerry's been placed with a group looking after a Bhutanese family. They've already been here a few months. On Sunday Jerry and I went to the 'big smoke' (well, the little-big smoke of Albury!) for a bit of a get together with the family and the other volunteers. This was the first time we met them. We drove the father and eldest boys (in their teens) to the meeting place and on the way there Jerry asked the eldest what was the one thing they liked most about Australia so far. With no hesitation at all he said "It's peaceful".

I'm still really struck and quite moved by this, and the though of what their life must have been like in the camps to make this the first and over-riding good thing about being here. Intellectually we know that we are lucky and have a good life here, but it does take something like that to make you stop, think and really appreciate just HOW lucky we really are.

If you want to know more about Bhutan and the refugee situation try this link http://www.bhutaneserefugees.com/index.php?id=1

If it's the weekend...

...it must have been time to work in the garden again! We did a bit more roofing work on the chicken coop as well- it's about 60% complete now.

I also relocated 3 rhubarb plants from the raised bed vege patch to the front garden. They really didn't need to be in those beds, and they were taking up valuable space that could better be used for other things. In the new 'rhubarb patch' they will have plenty of room to grow, and will look decorative as well. I picked just under a kilo of rhubarb from the plants before moving them.

We also planted out our new strawberry plants (10 Milewa and 10 Lowanna organic runners from the lovely folk at Cornucopia Seeds - I can higly recommend them for great service and fab range). The Milewa plants went into a long section of excess large drainpipe we were given by a neighbour. He had even pre-drilled drainage holes and cut the top out!

We've put this outside the greenhouse, set on some bricks that are resting in trays of water. Why? To try and stop the dreaded millipedes - scourge of every in-ground strawberry crop we have tried to grow. The 10 Lowanna plants I've put in pots in the greenhouse - again a millipede management strategy. I am DETERMINED to be enjoying home grown strawberries this summer!

And finally Jerry has been installing some solar powered LED lights that we bought (1/2 price!) in various useful places around the property - by the front door for those times we forget to leave a light on and can't see to put the key in the door, by the gate, and one on a tree on the path up to the house.

So this evening I just have to cook the rhubarb, bake the sourdough bread, make lasagne (sauce simmering on the stove as we speak), do some ironing...and then put my feet up!!!!!!

Enough about the bacon already!

Yep, it's time for me to rave on again about the joys of making your own bacon, particularly if you can get your hands on free-range rare breed pork belly. I picked up my 7kg or porky goodness from King Valley Free Range yesterday. Mmmmmmmm lovely. This is the best piece of belly I've had so far - this time it was from a pig that had been aged for bacon.

Assemble your ingredients........

Admire the belly. Mmmmmmm belly!

Slice the Belly into portion sizes, and prepare your dry cure. This time I'm making 2 sorts. A savoury bacon using Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's dry cure recipe, and a maple cured sweet bacon using a recipe from the book Charcuterie. The Dry cure mix is 1kg course salt, 200g brown sugar, 20 juniper berries crushed, 25g peppercorns crushed, 2-3 bay leaves crushed/chopped finely. Mix it all together with clean hands and you're ready to go

Then you need a non-reactive container (I use a plastic one). Rub all surfaces of each piece with the cure and stack. Every day for 5 days drain off any liquid and rub in more cure. Re-arrange the pieces so everyone gets a turn at the top/bottom. I go for the lighter cure as I freeze my bacon for later use.

The maple cure is a bit different - sugar (1/4 cup), salt (50g) and maple surup (1/4 cup). Mix together and then rub into belly pieces. Place in a zip-lock bag, seal and place this on a tray in the fridge. Each day turn the bag and 'massage' the cure into the pork (the cure and pork juices will form a liquid brine after a day or so. Do this for 7 days.

Stay tuned for the reveal in about a week!