Oh and the Edam cheese

Complete disaster. But not if you like the taste of an old leathery shoe!!

                         

Perfect Saturday





Wild Mullien or Arrons Rod . Great as a tincture for respiratory problems.I'll see if I can dig some up and plant them in my herb garden.




Wild Cleavers. Good for skin problems, eczema,psoriasis etc.




A recently discovered little water hole.




These rocks are on the northern boundry and are wet so there must be underground water which feeds into the creek below.




A beautiful gum tree.




Looking westward. My blossom trees are blossoming. They should look gorgeous in a few years when they are much bigger.




Apparently this is Australian Indigo. It's very pretty with a delicate pink flower.

Need to find out if this has any medicinal properties



View from the north looking south.




Grahame out picking the noxious weed Fireweed.



Even the kangaroos were enjoying the day.







What a beautiful day it was here today. We spent most of it outside. Grahame and I both spent much of the day picking Fireweed which is a noxious weed . It's everywhere around here. Poisionous to cattle and horses and self seeds like crazy. We also finished fencing one of the small paddocks. For the past week we have had the neighbors pony. Today we made a temporary fence so he could graze on the long grass. But before we knew it he had knocked it down and bolted home up the road. So I put him back in his paddock and didn't bother bringing him back to our place again. The dogs also escaped up to another neighbors so I had to go and rescue them.
After watering the veggies and tidying up that area it was wine o'clock and time to listen to the third quarter of the Grand Final. Then I decided to get the camera out and take a few snaps of newly discovered plants and trees that looked lovely from where I was sitting. Which was in the grass near the creek with wine in hand and just admiring the beautiful scenery. Spoilt by the cursing from Grahame to the Collingwood players who he couldn't see mind you, but listening to the commentry on the radio.
Why does there have to be a loser? Couldn't both teams had won, they both played their hearts out, they both deserve to win. But no someone (team) has to be the winner and and the other go through the pain of being declared "The Loser". Messed up world we live in!
It would have been a good game to watch though. Now for the re-match next week to see who the loser really is.

School holidays are with us now. I loooove school holidays. Love not having to think about ironed uniforms, homework and what put in the lunch box. The boys will all go camping for a few days down near Eden. Camping is not compatible with my beliefs. My beliefs of comfort and not having to fumble with a tent door in the middle of the night whilst I look for a tree to squat behind. No siree I'll stay here with the porcelain bowl even though I have to flush it with a bucket .Have fun camping boys.

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of meeting up with a very old school friend. Not she's not old, infact she's as young as me and looks even younger than me, hard to believe I know! Dawn Scoltock and her gorgeous little girl Holly came for a visit. We haven't seen each other in over 20 odd years. It was so lovely to catch up after all those years.

I really love that I can find new things to look at here. Now that spring has sprung I'm discovering flowering shrubs and trees that I never knew were there before. And as we clear up the creek we find beautiful pockets of little rocks that have water trickling down them or little water holes. And also the wildlife and birds that come to visit.
Simple pleasures.



Curds & whey

Today I've been house bound with two of the boys unwell and not able to go to school. I was supposed to go horse riding but the day is very windy so that was cancelled anyway.
So what to do? Play with curds & whey by using up the rest of the milk. So on todays menu is Edam cheese, vanilla ice cream and chocolate icecream. After doing that I pasturised the rest of the milk to use for soap making. No more milk left now. Oh no there is still buttermilk and whey left! Have to think of something to do with that.



Chocolate and vanilla icecream





This will apparently turn into Edam cheese if I'm lucky.





Looking at the "Langkwai" room
(lol Kon & Gabi !!)



Your looking at my new walk in pantry, the walk in pantry I've longed for many years.


Ol' Jimmy and his sidekick have been busy putting framing up which oneday will eventually be lined by Grahame (and his sidekick-Me)
It's starting to look like a house inside but is a loooong way from being finished.
The earth movers are coming in soon to play in the clay and dig holes for cables and pipes to the house. Once thats done and re levelled I can probably start the mammoth task of a garden and lawn.
So much to do so little time for lattes!!



Haloumi cheese

Look what I made. Haloumi cheese, real haloumi cheese. It was a pretty easy process but lengthy. Not too messy either.
I tastes great, even squeaks like real haloumi does when you bite into it. The only thing I didn't do was add salt to it which would have made it more flavoursome.
Oh I wish I had some home grown tomatoes and fresh basil to go with it.

Lightly pan fried in a bit of olive oil.



Home made cultures for more cheese making. This fresh milk and buttermilk has had to sit out for nearly 48 hours. I hope it works. I'm also going to be trying to make Camenbert cheese. Will show you the results when finished.



Pioneer woman- hmmm not so sure

The making of butter.
Me in my infinite wisdom thought it would be a great idea to make my own butter you know with my new pioneer woman status since we moved to "the country".

I've been wanting to source some raw unpasturized, unhomogenized milk for a while now. Last week I found a source. So yesterday we packed up the kids in the car and drove over a hour to a beautiful dairy. Once we were there we all pitched in a helped as we learnt what to do on the spot. We fed the calves, Harry got to help round up the cows and feed the enourmous bull they had. Once the cows were up we went into the milking shed and learnt how to attatch the milking equipment and how to clean it all down after the process is finished.

For our reward we walked away with 30 litres of fresh raw milk.

Overnight of course the milk and cream were lefrt to seperate.Today I did my best to scoop out the cream and began beating and beating and beating. Thank god for the Kitchenaid.

This turned out to be a rather messy job.

After the seperation of solids which becomes the butter and liquid which is the buttermilk

we have the final product

The Butter handmade by ME!!!!

Now what to do with the other 25 litres or so?
It was a time consuming , and messy process  for little product. But it's as fresh as you can get with out any thing but fresh cream in it. The proof will be in the tasting. I'll let you know.
I'll make buttermilk pancakes with the buttermilk.
The taste of the raw milk is delicious. It's a magical taste, energetic somehow, akin to eating a snowpea straight of the vine or apple off the tree.
It's what we should be eating and drinking.
Did you know it's illegal to sell raw milk in Australia? That's why I can't reveal our source of milk. The farmers were very generous to allow us to buy some milk from them and we really apprciate there time and milk.

Progress

The begining of the celing being lined along with a fan & light that now turns on at a switch rather than plugging in the extension cord.

Upstairs rooms taking shape.

Plumber and sons.

Eggxactly what we've been waiting for.

Here she is. Finally after all this time and with 11 chooks we now have our very first egg.

Thank you chookies

Since moving here part of our frugal lifestyle is trying to make as much of our own things as we can. One of those is bread. We've been making lots of yummy bread. How do you say no to piping hot freshly baked bread with lashings of real butter and blackcurrant jam? Answer- you dont!!