PAY IT FORWARD......

Today I thought I would offer a couple of items for the "Pay it Forward". Remember, the deal is you get to watch them and then pass them on free of charge to others, its about the spirit of sharing, and the joys of looking after each other..

I loved the Victorian Farm, simplistic lifestyles, hard work and pleasure found in the most basic of activities. The farm is at the Acton Scott estate in Shropshire; a breath-takingly beautiful area which provides a glorious (and frequently very cold) backdrop to the agricultural action.

The Acton Scott working farm has preserved antique tools, buildings and machinery collected by the Acton family who have lived on the estate since the 12th century. The filming follows the team as they move into a Victorian smallholding which hasn't been used for 50 years, and turn it back into a working farm complete with rare breed pigs and sheep, a shire horse, dairy cows and free range fowl.

Throughout the year the team tackle the regular tasks of rural life - all without electricity or tractors, of course! They restore the cottage, thresh the wheat crop, sow a new crop, install a range for heat and cooking in the kitchen, fuel up with coal, make cider and preserves, learn how to shepherd livestock, build pigsties, tackles the four-day job that is hand-washed laundry, guides their ewes through pregnancy to lambing, fell wood to build fencing, catch rabbits for the pot, revel in the delights of ginger pigs, look after a lame horse, experience steam power, try beekeeping and bring in the harvest.

 

Not everything goes smoothly for the Victorian farmers and we learn alongside them - how to check if a ewe is pregnant, or making lip balm from mutton fat. All of it is fascinating!
 

Tales from the Green Valley follows five as they labour for a full agricultural year, getting to grips with period tools, skills, and technology from the age of the Stuarts, the reign of James I. Everything must be done by hand, from ploughing with a team of oxen using a replica period plough and thatching a cowshed using only authentic materials, to making their own washing liquid for laundry and harvesting the hay & wheat with scythes and sickles.

Each of the 12 half-hour programmes, made by Lion TV for BBC Wales, follows a month in the life of the farm situated on the Welsh borders. Far from being a reality series, these beautifully filmed programmes revel instead in the period’s rich history, the British countryside as it changes through the seasons, and of course food. Every episode features a dinner cooked up using period breeds and varieties of animals, fruits, and vegetables, according to 400 year old recipes extracted from housewives’ diaries, farming manuals etc.
The five specialists wear period clothing - because they’re practical, real working garments, with the men in breeches so the bottoms don’t get muddy and wet, and the women wearing long thick skirts which protect from brambles and keep them warm.
And when historian Stuart Peachey, costume and social customs specialist Ruth Goodman, and archaeologists Alex Langlands, Peter “Fonz” Ginn and Chloe Spencer don’t have the answers, they call in outside experts: a host of traditional British artisans - charcoal burner, butcher, hedge-layer, candlemaker, dry-stone waller, thatcher ... all working with period tools.

Because of the exhorbitant costs of postage in Aussie I am limiting this to Aussie entries only sorry.........Just leave your name and which DVD you would like and we will draw the names from the hat next Saturday.
 
You and yours have a super week-end:)

RAIN AND A DAY OFF....

Today the weather is cool and wet, just how I love it! To have a day off in addition suits me perfectly. The rain is filling the pond for us and helping all those poor heat stressed plants rejuvenate after a long summer.

The water chestnuts seem to have vanished somewhere in the pond, maybe they are ready and have died back, anyone know anything about them? Something I will have to investigate further....

Today I have onions and cabbage in the dehydrator, I tend to use a lot of them over the year so stocking up every chance I get is important. The bananas I dried have already depleted by about a third.....yes, I am the guilty party on that, they make wonderful snacks at my work desk when I am too busy to take a lunch break lol.

On one side of the pond you can see I have planted out a chocolate mint to travel across the rocks and provide a haven for the wee critters we often see near the edge. It has taken off, obviously loving the damp conditions, spreading itself here is not a problem, and I lovvvvvvvvvve painting the leaves with chocolate, letting it set overnight, peel the chocolate off, you have a pretty choc leaf that has a delicious fresh mint taste, great for decorating desserts etc. In addition to all that goodness for desserts and teas the bees love it.

Now I just happened to be visiting one of my favourite sites when I came across this recipe for Fresh Organic Choc Mint Icecream:

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups whole organic milk
3 1/2 cups fresh organic chocolate mint
5 large organic egg yolks
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup organic heavy cream

Method:
In a medium saucepan, combine milk and fresh chocolate mint. Bring mixture to a gentle boil, cover and remove pan from heat. Steep mixture for 30 minutes. Strain mixture, reserve milk and discard solids.
Combine egg yolks and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat on medium-high speed until very thick and pale yellow, for about 3-5 minutes. Return milk to a simmer.
Prep an ice water bath. Place ice cubes in a bowl and fill half with water.
Temper the egg yolks by slowly adding half of the warm milk mixture to the egg yolk mixture while stirring constantly until blended. Add new mixture to sauce pan with remaining milk. Stir consistently over low heat until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.
Remove saucepan from heat and immediately stir in cream. Place an empty bowl over the ice water bath. Strain mixture through a fine mesh strainer into empty bowl and chill for at least 3 hours to overnight in the refrigerator.
Freeze custard in ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. Store in an airtight container in freezer until ready to eat.

**I dont have an ice cream maker, so I will be putting into freezer and stiring through every 30 mins until set.

***Nev, just for you, see, I do enjoy chocolate at times :P

The yellow Cherry Guavas are fruiting. I can't wait to try these, they are supposed to be sweeter than all other guavas........personally I think they would have to be heavenly to beat the strawberry ones I also have!

Guavas are an amazing fruit. They have an incredibly high content of vitamin C.  In fact, one guava fruit contains four times more vitamin C than an average-sized orange; and ten times more vitamin A than a lemon!
They also are an excellent source of fibre, almost 70 times more fibre than can be found in an orange! Other key nutrients are vitamins B2 and E, calcium, copper, folate, iron, manganese, phosphorus and potassium. Get planting people, you cannot go wrong with these hardy and delicious little shrubs!

Here's to a delightful day, take care of you and yours:)

STORAGE AND OTHER GOODIES.....

I know that many of you that come to read and comment have already organised much of your storage needs, and some are slowly getting there as time and finances allow, so I thought I would touch base again on how we are going here in our little homestead.

With ours I started with the list I found a couple of years ago..."100 things to vanish" if the "SHTF". Choosing from there for our family needs made storage much easier initially, less intimidating when there was such a mammoth task ahead. Be aware that not everything on that list will be what you require, just take from it as you will, add a few extras that you feel you wont want but would be good to trade:)

From there I moved to foods. This weekend was spent doing what I call nibblies - those good for you, and delicious little items you can munch on when hunger strikes.......bananas and apples this time, next weekend I am planning on doing a few others.

Drying the fruit preserves it so that it can be stored in airtight containers year-round, the process brings out the sugars and flavors while keeping most (not all) of the nutritional benefits of the fruit. You will notice I haven't dipped my bananas, some do, I prefer them natural, the brownish colour doesn't bother me or have any effect on the flavour.

There is some controversy over just how good dried foods are for you when many of the water soluble vitamins and minerals vanish in the drying process (Vit B, C and potassium for example), however I would argue that if you are nibbling on fruit that is out of season, you are at least getting some vit/min content and some great fibre/roughage! Eat it fresh when it is in season and its a win/win :)

In addition of course, they have a shelf life of up to a year and take up little shelf space in your cabinets. The photo above is dozens upon dozens of bananas. When you're ready to eat them, it's as simple as taking the lid off the jar/tin/and enjoying them straight from the container, far better than that great slab of chocolate cake or bag of lollies:)

Many times I wonder if you and I will ever see the "SHTF" time, or if it will happen in our childrens or grandchildren's time. Do you have the same thoughts? After much consideration I have decided that it nothing happens in our time we will have an easy retirement and have left a hell of a lot of goodies for the kids, either way it's a win/win don't you think?

The garden is in Winter mode, nothing much happening other than planting, mainly out in the front garden, which has had little done to it other than killing off the lawn as soon as we got here lol. Lots of natives and cottage garden plants means it will be low maintenance and water friendly.

Hope your weekend is a good one!

MY HEART BREAKS.....

....as I look at the pictures of the Gulf oil spill. I can genuinely say that I would forgo every oil related product tomorrow to prevent this ever happening  again. We have become so unashamedly greedy in our desire to have everything so easy we have forgotten we share this magical planet with others.........or do we just not care as long as we are comfortable?  Can one of us look in the mirror and not feel guilt at our contribution to the state of our planet and the horrors we visit daily upon the creatures that share it with us?
(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

E-WASTE AND OUR ENVIRONMENT.....

There is a built-in obsolescence to electronic goods, but e-waste contains hazardous materials.

In Australia, more than 17 million televisions, computers and other electronic products are thrown away every year.

The desire to keep up with the latest technologies means current models are ending up on the scrapheap in ever increasing numbers, and what is going into landfill contains dangerous toxins.

A recycling scheme was proposed a year ago to deal with this potential crisis in what is called e-waste, but it is nowhere near being implemented.

Meanwhile, Jane Castle from the Total Environment Centre says Australian landfills are busting at the seams.

"We are buying more and more every year and we're dumping more and more every year," she said.

"We have over 250 million toxic products either in landfill or on their way there every year, and there are many millions going into landfill every year."

There is a built-in obsolescence to electronic goods; they can quickly break or go out of style.

E-waste contains hazardous materials, such as lead, airborne mercury and plastics with flame retardants. The goods end up in landfill or, more rarely, go to dedicated facilities.  FULL STORY HERE

Planet Ark's recycling program manager, Brad Gray, said that e-waste is emerging as one of the biggest issues in recycling.

"Compared to clothing or curbside recycling, e-waste recycling is decades behind. 75 per cent of newspapers and 70 per cent of aluminium cans are recycled. Currently nothing like that figure is being achieved in any of the e-waste areas," he said.

"The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) estimates e-waste in Australia is growing at more than three times the rate of general municipal waste," Gray said.

Resource conservation campaigner at the Total Environment Centre (TEC) Jane Castle said Australia is way behind the rest of the world in combating e-waste.

"Europe, Canada, the US, Japan and many other countries have mandated extended producer responsibility which requires computer producers to collect and recycle, but Australia has stalled for a decade. FULL STORY HERE

The ABS reports that around 92.5 million electronic items are held in Australian homes, an average of 22 per household. It estimates Australians will replace 9 million computers, 5 million printers, and 2 million scanners within the next two years.
 
One place I have found that may be the answer for some of us is HERE, and no, I don't get paid for promoting them lol.
 
For those in the West, hope you are enjoying your long week-end:)

PLANTING FOR JULY.....

It has been relatively quiet around here for the last few weeks. This time of the year here it is really a case of sitting back and watching things grow. Because we let our chooks roam free around the garden there is rarely any weeding to do.

At present the focus is getting the base ready for the water tank. I cannot wait until we have that gorgeous fresh water to put through our filter for drinking. Long term I want a few more tanks, with the idea of having our own water supply rather than mains.....will take some time though, those tanks are horrendous in price, each one (23,000 litres) around $3,500!

Planting for our region (Temperate):
Broad beans

(also Fava bean) Sow in garden. Harvesting from September - December

Cabbage Grow in seed trays, and plant out in 4-6 weeks. Harvesting from August - October

Garlic Plant cloves. Harvesting from October - December

Kale
(also Borecole) Grow in seed trays, and plant out in 4-6 weeks. Harvesting from August - September

Lettuce Sow in garden, or start in seed trays and plant out in 4-6 weeks.. Harvesting from August - September

Mustard greens
(also gai choy) Sow in garden. Harvest from August.

Onion Grow in seed trays, and plant out in 4-6 weeks. Harvesting from December - February

Peas Sow in garden. Harvest from September.

Radish Sow in garden. Harvest from August.

Shallots
(also Eschalots) Plant small bulblets, with stem just showing above ground. Harvesting from September - October

Snow Peas
(also Sugar Peas, Mangetout, Chinese Peas)

Hope your week is going well:)