Passion for fruit

One of the things we miss from Queensland is the abundant sprawling, crawling, hang off your every word if they could passionfruit vines. I've planted four or five since coming to Tasmania, but the graft always died over winter and the rotten root stock would take over and threaten to become an environmental weed. It also took a while to realise that they weren't much pleased by our highly acidic soils and a tweek or two to the pH was in order.

I'd almost given up when I came across the black Norfolk which wasn't a graft.  It was planted in the greenhouse where it is now  producing not just flowers but wee fruits too.

Passionfruit butter - here we come! Or is that counting my passionfruits before they hatch?

The DILLIGAF Diary

I've started a new blog, though it's more the start of a communication, a request for stories and ideas around how it is some people have come to the point where they fail to feel, care or do anything beyond  that which is in their own personal interest.

DILLIGAF - Does it look like I give a Fuck. It's a popular and recognisable acronym for a state of being.  Personally IGAF and I want to investigate how it is others can come to the conclusion not to.

This is an invitation to explore the concept with me

www.dilligafdiary.blogspot.com.au

Broad around the bean

There's something satisfying about your vegetables growing up. These broad beans have almost outgrown their grower. First feed already on the table. Wondering if we might have a go at making a flour from this year.

Season for Raspberries

Trev thinks I finally caved in about buying a deep freeze so he could store pigs in it. Really I want to be eating raspberries all year round. Jam is fine, but I'm not into eating toast, so my raspberry intake plummets out of season.

We have 3 rows approximately 15 metres long. It's going to be a lot of raspberries. They're currently flowering and it's frightening being inside as the bees dive bomb the white netting by the thousand. Definitely have my mouth closed when I'm in there.

Trev's been working on repairing the netted enclosure for a while. The raspberries were growing through the sides and we needed to put in extra wires to hold the sides out. Go your hardest blackbirds, I think we've got your number!

Trev's Olives

We had a community olive pick this year. A member of the community had 60 olive trees in full production but was not intending picking or processing them. Would the community like to come have a go?

Well, um, yes! Ours are still very young and the ducks decided they like them too and ate every last leaf, the poor things are struggling back and the ducks are looking ridiculously healthy (and ripe for the pot).

Over 30 of us descended one Saturday morning and Trev and I alone left with about 20 kilos of olives. We gave away half of these along with a recipe on how to preserve them. The rest we split with a sharp knife while drinking wine and nattering with friends who were, likewise, splitting theirs.

The process involves lots of soaking in brine for 24 hours before replacing the brine with a new batch and repeating this process for 8 days. This draws out the bitterness and preserves them. Trev has bottles and bottles of them and is eating them at much the same pace.

Soapmaking

Soapmaking only happens a couple of times a year. I think to make it only once but I tend to hand it out freely. This is lemon scented soap using a local organic essential oil.

I like to colour them and this is a plant based annatto seed colourant. We usually use it to colour cheese, but it works well for soap too.

I have lots of books on soap making but in the end I tend to just drop into Australian Soapmaker. They have a great calculator that you feed in the oils you propose to use and it calculates the amount of caustic soda, water (though I replace the water with goats milk) and essential oils.

While it could potentially be a dangerous sport, donning safety glasses, long sleeves and rubber gloves and having a clean, clear work space, no children and everything I need at hand it's easy. Kind of like making a super large batch of fudge.

The first time I made soap I just stirred it by hand (for an hour and a half) till I achieved what they call trace -  when you dribble it over the surface of the soap mix sits proud. The second time I used an egg beater (electric) and acheived it in 20 mins. The trick is not to get it to saponify too quickly, but also not to fall asleep over it either.

I use a shallow plastic tray about 50 centimetres by 25 for each batch. This was last weeks, this weeks is organic vanilla and cinnamon oil. I'll plonk in real cinnamon to give it a brownish colour. But first I'll take out a litre or so  of white soap first, put the vanilla oil in that and  mix it back in to make it  multicoloured like this batch.

Once cut up it will take a few months to cure.

The kind of bed that if you make it you don't have to lie in it

Every year we struggle at spring time to get control of the garden beds. We've planted green manure crops and while they're great there is a wonderful profusion of weeds along with it. This year, aware that my shoulders and neck can no longer handle being on the end of hoe or grubber, we decided to try do things a bit differently.

We have an enormous high quality black tarp we'd bought to cover up strawbales. We chopped it into three 10 metre long  4 metre wide strips. Whippersnipped the green manure crops and laid the tarps over top.

One of the big problems is the occasional 120km an hour wind we get around here, so lots of bricks are required to keep them on the ground and not 50 miles away. But the effort's been well worth it.

We lifted this tarp a week or so ago and the ground had eaten all the green manure crop without even having to dig it in.  A great sign of microbial activity. No weeds, still nice and  moist, lush and loamy and ready for potatoes.

Trev's dug four shallow ditches, lined them with a compost material he's made from our chicken poop, placed a thin layer of soil over that and then the potatoes.  This is one of the first years we've had to buy potatoes (a 10kg bag), ours liked the warmer climate in the house and made great efforts to grow legs and come join us in the lounge room. 

Definately have to find somewhere cooler this year.