Fat fish, coffee beans, lots of lemons and lots of compost

Another weekend ended, another sense of achievement. 

Special thanks to our neighbour, Mitch who popped up on his tractor this morning to do some tractoring (his has a bucket, ours doesn't). Unfortunately he broke when he was helping unload the trailer and has hurt his back. Wishing you a speedy recovery Mitch.

But his handy work was well appreciated. He took out an unsuccessful garden bed to open up the patio outside the downstairs apartment. I'm going to drop some turf on this next weekend.

OK, first dilemma - fat fish. A few years ago I put about 30 fingerlings (the edible kind - sleepy cod, silver perch and eel tail catfish) into our water fountain pond. They were less than 5 cm long. They're now plate sized but, because of too many fish in the pond, general consensus is that they're over nitrogenised and potentially toxic to eat. So... what to do with the fishy wishys. Options are to drain the pond and try and catch them, then relocate them to a neighbours dam where they can live a long and happy life (Lord knows how, our driveway if very very steep). Negotiations will include fishing rights. If we do this, I'll be able to clean out the pond (read cattle trough) and start again with less, ornamental fish. Apart from begin a really nice focal point on our driveway, the bees love it and I'm more than happy to make the bees happy. I would love love love to have some bee hives but am very allergic to  stings.

Harvest time today for the turmeric. I got about 1-2 kilos and several rhizomes for replanting and sharing. That's more than $100 of turmeric. Seriously worth looking at planting, it's a lovely plant with really pretty flowers. We will chop it into 1cm chunks and freeze. 

A bit of planting... (actually, there was a lot of planting)

Some boasting (check out the size of one of my parsley)

And the gum trees are flowering (makes me think of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie - overseas visitors will need to Google this)

Oh, and Lots of Lemons they said... (tick), dwarf tree (not so apparent) 

All this gardening, of course, means excessive compost. Woo hoo!

Exciting news, out first harvest of coffee beans is nearly ready for harvesting. MOTH (man of the house) is very excited about this. Four more coffee trees being planted next weekend.

I previously posted about a couple of old baths that I mounted in old red bricks. The intention was to use them as strawberry beds (which is going really well and am expecting our first crop next season). Have also added some chilli bushes to the baths and, good news, they're going great. Never thought this companion planting combination would be so successful.

Next weekend, I'm harvesting our significant ginger crop (about 2m squared). Keen for ideas of how to preserve ginger.

And, the roses need a good pruning - they're out of control and very unattractive.

Another quiet weekend in the country - can't wait to get back to work tomorrow for a break.

More comings and goings @ Clear Mountain

I was watching TV on Friday night and flicked through my Facebook account. There was a post from a friend saying that she had just witnessed a bloke pull up outside her apartment at Redcliffe and let a dog out of the car and drive away. I was horrified. My friend rushed down to the busy road to find a very scared boxer trying not to get run over. She took him back up to apartment but knew she would have to take him to the pound in the morning. He was a sweet thing, very friendly and old.

I saw the photo of him and immediately asked MOTH if we could foster him. Surprisingly he said yes. She took him to the pound and he has no microchip and they were more than happy for me to take him as they well bulging at the seams with animals.

So long story short... Meet Jeff the Boxer.

He has fit in really well with the cats, dogues, chooker moles and donkeys. You should have seen Max's face when 3 red dogs walked into the house - who knew… cats can count! We went to the vet for a checkup and we agreed he is about 8 years old. Need a few more tests on his heart tomorrow but he is otherwise in good health, albeit very skinny (won't take long to fix that).

On the goings front, SirLoin has left our farm but he didn't make it to the butcher (I had to call and cancel). One of our neighbours has seriously fallen in love with him and so I agreed to sell him. He will have a long and happy life with his new BFF, Devon.

I also did a random walk around my poorly loved garden and found a few surprises. Tomatoes ready to be eaten (I haven't planted tomatoes for about a year), a couple of cute little capsicum, lemons (a little green but someone else has been picking them - me thinks of the animal kind) and some wild guava down at the dam (makes awesome chutney).

Am off now to don the latest fashions in whipper snipper and trim the electric fence line around the paddock. No doubt my two long eared friends will be there to help.

Oh, and my friend's premmie mini foal, Dumbledore, now has his own Facebook page - www.facebook.com/dumble1.

Fruits of my labour

OK, so it's the neighbours fruit (thanks Bitch and Mel)...

Bitch and Mel are our neighbours and they have a small orchard of prolificly producing citrus trees - limes, lemons, grapefruit, oranges and cumquats.

I got the call last weekend to come down and help myself. So today, off I went. The donkey's won't mind that I used their feed buckets to fill with citrus and Bitch and Mel just wanted some of it used before the cockatoos come in and strip the trees bare, which is what happened last year. There are literally kilos and kilos of fruit on the trees - awesome.

So, having learnt my lesson last year that one cannot drink several litres of home pressed grapefruit juice in a day without consequences, I held back this time. I think I picked about 15 - 20kg of assorted fruit.

Back to the kitchen and my budding photographer assistant has prepared a step by step collage of my afternoon.

Today I managed to pump out some lemon curd, cumquat jam and have prepared to soak overnight some cumquat marmalade, which will go into the jars tomorrow.

Bad news is I've run out of jars. Thank goodness for ebay - more jars ordered and will be posted first thing Monday.

Next weekend I have planned some 5 fruit marmalade and some - back by popular demand - Margarita marmalade (not for the kiddies).

Now I just need to work out what I'm going to do with about 5kg of limes... any suggestions?

Footnote: Gin and tonic is much much better with fresh lemon juice in it - aaahh