Saving the planet

From the Seventh Generation dish washing liquid bottle's label:

"If every household in the US replaced just 1 bottle of 25oz petroleum-based dish washing liquid with our plant-derived product, we could save

86 000 barrels of oil - enough to heat & cool 4 900 US homes for a year!"

Now if only we had a dish washing product that works as well as this one- MADE IN SA! Imagine the miles I'd save. Eh Bernhard?!

Fig pickles

My friendly neighbour gave me some green figs for jam- Granny is actually the jam & chutney queen- and I have made a pickle. It turned out so well, I thought others might like them too. I think this will go well with a cheeseboard.

Ingredients:
15 medium figs (chop in halves or quarters)
1 medium onion (sliced finely and then in half)
1/2 a chilli (I used a whole one and it was HOT)
about 200ml sugar but add it slowly to taste
a small handful of dried currants ( but I will try sultanas next time)
half a cup of naturally fermented grape vinegar
5 all spice berries
5 cloves smashed together with the all spice
a large pinch of salt
a splash of olive oil

lightly fry the onions in the olive oil, put the lid on and sweat them until soft. Add half the sugar and stir to melt. Add the vinegar, salt and spices. Mix, then add the figs and currants. I had to add half a cup of water now. Cook until the figs are nearly soft. Taste and add more sugar if you like. Cook it slowly until most of the liquid has evaporated and it is a soft and sticky pickle.

Even husband who doesn't like figs or spicy food, liked it.
Now for those prickly pears he gave me...

Linux and it's connections still evade me for photos.

In the meantime, I have learnt something new about hens. 1 of my 5 was not looking her normal perky self and another had a constantly dirty bottom. I cleaned and cut the bottom feathers on the dirty bottom and called the vet about the sad hen.
Syptoms: droopy tail, sitting and randomly walking alone, not staying with the flock around the farmyard
Vet's solution: anti-biotics and de-worming where you can't eat the eggs for 2 weeks (throw out 70 eggs)
Sue's solution: abdomen massage (in case of egg binding), crushed garlic in their food, diatomaceous earth in their food (worms) and more on their bodies (dusted between their feathers) and in their house (mites/ fleas), their food in a flat dish instead of on the grass (worm eggs) and more rigorous house cleaning.
Result: 2 very large eggs and 2 days later -clean bottoms and tail feathers up.

Phew! Thanks to the internet and lots of trolling to find all this info. The only thing I did not do and probably will still, is a few drops of apple cider vinegar in their water. Must get some organic apple cider from Lorraine Farm Trust- best stuff and still full of mother (the yeast that makes it vinegar).

34 degrees in the shade- in October!

What will it be like in January and February? The dogs are comatose on the cold concrete, the hens have been rolling in their dust bath (sand, DE & wood ash) since early this morning and the family is all resting. Max is wide awake but being very good and lying down. Difficult for a 4 year-old.

I think the sorbet I made with last spring's strawberries will be just the thing for a waking up snack.

We tried to work this morning but it was blowing a berg wind and 24 degrees at 7.30 already. A quick water of our newly planted tree saplings in the nursery and a rough cover up with some shade cloth is about all we managed. Hopefully, that wind means rain- and lots of it!

The roads trucks came to fix the seriously damaged servitude road into our farm- hopefully that rain won't wash it all away again.

Did I mention the owl sitting on 2 eggs? She's still there and I think it's a Scops Owl but not sure. Perhaps I can lure Mr Cape Nature out here to identify the pair.
He may want to come and see the fire damage in the mountain. Very scary with the wind blowing the ash and smoke into the house and a huge orange scar across the mountain at night. Thank goodness 2 days of helicopters and fire fighting brought it under control. Now bring that rain to help the fynbos recover!
(photos to follow when I have mastered this new Linux PC)

The Bull

It seems that trying to keep business going in "the city" and have the safe life of a farm, is a difficult balancing act. No-one believes you when you tell them your cell signal is random and they definitely don't believe that your land line goes awol with every high wind or rainstorm. Well, it is and it does.

Also, for us to fetch letters or parcels from the post office to make your shares worth anything, is 26kms there on winding hilly dusty roads and 26kms home. And when you lie and say you have sent something and we get there and you didn't, we are naturally a bit miffed. It takes at least a precious hour of daylight when we can be working our arses off doing something worthwhile. Like picking actual poo for the compost heaps instead of dealing with corporate bullshit.

I certainly will take the simplicity of farm life and work over my previous life. At least this is honest work. Got to become completely self-sustaining so as to avoid these irritations.

What do I Write?

I have been struggling to post new entries here as I just don't what would interest you about farm living. I am going to guess you either know us and want to see what we are up to. or you may want to be a fellow refugee to a more gentle life. And so, if you are reading this you are stuck with what I want to tell you!

We have been very busy out here in the sticks. It's Spring you see and lots of good things happen in Spring on a farm. Hens start laying eggs every day with a lot of fanfare in some cases. Mostly our 5 have been good girls and have laid them in their house. Someone has decided not to for the last 2 days and so we have been hunting eggs all over. These girls get around too. They follow us all over the yard and even down to the veggie garden. We haven't found them but the dogs may have beaten us to them.

Can you see how big the 80g egg is? Eish- now wonder all the squawking! And we are so sick of eggs. At least I have a great cake which uses 8 at a time. We will never go hungry out here.

We have also been preparing a new field in mounds so I can plant the seeds I have been collecting for so long. I have 8 differnt types of tomatoes in trays already and I think I still have 4 more to go. That's besides all the other things from lime basil to pineapple tops to watercress to purple carrots. Hopefully I will have a really nice spread to show you soon.

I have a  mantra too- when at a loss, make compost. The oak tree has dropped lots of leaves so I collected these today to go into a long-term compost heap. Oak are not the best leaves for quick growth until they are well rotted. All the chicken house straw and scrapings go in this pile to chase it along.

As well as all the digging (ouch I can't get out of bed) and carting compost, manure and lime, we have been cleaning up the water furrow behind our house. There was a downed tree there over the furrow and it took quite a bit of chainsaw cutting and clearing to get it sorted.

It's a very pretty spot so we decided to make a nice path and throw out lots of flower seeds along the edges. Of course in clearing we found some new friends- a meduim-sized puff adder and a 40cm night adder. We were so chuffed with the the night adder as it was our first and such a pretty snake. We found them new homes and got on with our work.
All the cleared material we shredded and put onto the path and it really is looking nice. After a bit of rain, it will be such a great spot to sit and read.

Granny has been a super-gran- working in the veggie garden every day, pulling out wattle trees in the new picnic area and just generally helping everywhere. Not bad for a 70 year old lady! She is as tough as old boots and I hope I'll be just like her at 70.

We may be supplying seed to a small seed company and so we went off to harvest some stinging nettles- with Jan's welding gloves! Those buggers sting and I managed to flick plants back into my chin several times. A lot of blue air was hanging around! BTW, Max took this photo. He is growing up so fast now. Those first 2 years dragged but now he is a lot of fun- if 2 handfuls!

July Pruning

I have finally done all the pruning of the fruit trees. July is very late I know but other things got in the way of doing it in June. Below are a couple of pics with before and after, of the biggest trees which are plum- I think.

These trees have been really neglected and have colonies of ants farming aphids. There is a ton of sooty mould on the leaves from this. The downside of farming without chemicals is that things like this may take a little longer to sort out. I am using all the left over bottles of muti from the previous owners. So far they have had Nitrosol and Biottrossol from Biogrow. I have also fed them worm wee tea and sprayed with an anti-bug concoctions of my own (a garlic chilli comfrey mix). Today will be the Tansy wild garlic mix too. Hopefully this will help the trees get stronger and fight off some bugs. I will keep going with more composting,  feeding and spraying until the end of August and then re-assess what I must do if these measures have not worked.

Almond blossoms

 

 

 

 

 

I am raking up all the leaf litter from under the beefwoods to put on our paths. These trees are both a problem and a potential long-term crop. They make very good wind breaks and grow in marginal soil but they consume so much from that soil and travel far to find nutrients. The wood is a very useful one and boy can those leaves start a fire! They have some sort of "component" which suppresses growth of competitive plants and in their case that is any other plant including their own kind. Hence them being good on paths. As path material, it drains well and is soft for granny to walk on too. We are still deabting if we'll plant more.

Our hens have finally begun laying eggs. So far, we have had 7 from our biggest, fattest hen- Hope- and yesterday Pearl laid her first too. I am not a protein person and eggs are a push for me to eat. These eggs are delicious and the color of a sunflower! How is this dinner we had last night? 90% from the farm. We are getting closer to being self-sufficient but still have a long way to go.
 

Our next challenge will be to remove the colony of bats who moved into our ceiling recently without getting bitten by the boomslang sleeping below them who thinks they are his larder !