a mystery

I was rooting around* under the apricot trees looking for overripe apricots to feed the chooks. It's like avian chocolate or something. Anyway it's a forest of butterbur under there and I looked up and saw:

an egg. A big brown egg sitting in the butterbur. After a moment of wild excitement that one of our brown chooks had faked her death and was living a new life on the wild side I remembered that we are very, very sure the brown chooks are dead. Foxes don't really do ambiguous. No need to call CSI even...

So where did the brown egg come from? Well, some of our neighbours have chooks too but I can't think of anyone with brown chooks...

I'm trying to work out how old it could be. Would an egg survive under snow? Wouldn't another animal eat it? It's a mystery. But I'm so happy that the escapee/ mystery/ wonder chook spent at least a little time in a really great chooky place to hangout- completely sheltered from prying eyes, lots of soft soil to scratch in and even the odd overripe apricot!

Meanwhile, Victoria can keep the legendary reclusive wild puma legend, I've got the mystery of the brown egg!

*Aussies- not rooting- rooting around. yeah, I know we get all giggly when someone says root but really, it's the perfect word for it. If you don't say root you're left with what? scrabble? hunt?

the weekend in pictures (again)

Too tired to write properly so it's a picture says a thousand words again:

We harvested the onions (brown and red) and garlic. Then we dried them in the back of the truck because a) it has a black mat in there and it's parked in full sun so it's a good place to dry stuff, b) it's easy to cover with a tarp in case of rain (and it did rain so well thought out us) and c) that's where they were when we got them home and we couldn't be bushed moving them!

We started harvesting our wheat. It's a big job- cut, bunch, tie, dry. Then we have to remove the wheat grains from the stems, then separate the wheat from the chaff (how often do you get to say that and mean it literally??) and then have it ground into flour. Phew... And what's Meg doing? She and Amy unravelled about 50m of the giant 800m roll of jute we were using and had a ball running around each other and getting tangled up. (The games are getting sillier and sillier. Note to self- need to get a new TV!!)

Rare bloggie sighting of K. He's trying to reel in the jute next to the drying wheat.

1/3 down, 2/3 to go....

Weirdly I've always wanted to do this. Make a garlic braid. And today I did. Although I think I'm probably lucky I married a Japanese guy and not an Italian one as it's pretty rough!

Little troopers. M and A were amazing today. We were out in the field by 10:00 and we didn't come in for dinner until after 7:00pm. We stopped for lunch and drove to two different farming shops but other than that they entertained themselves in the field all day. And at 7:00 when I called them for dinner they were squished into the same side of the swingset singing together. Ohhhh man you girls rock!

Dinner- beans and onions in tomatoes, pickled cabbage and cucumber, tuna/ corn/ mayonnaise, lettuce, soy pickled cucumber and miso pickled cucumber all served with rice. Lots of summertime staples for tea around here tonight!

Also did but didn't picture: hacked a path through the jungle beside the house, picked and jammed another kilo of raspberries, picked and jammed a kilo of apricots, got the trenches built and bought the materials to extend the chook cage and split and stacked some wood. Probably not that much of a mystery that we're both exhausted, hey?

Dear future grandchildren, it's true

I know I've blogged about this before but I really think we are giving the girls the kind of upbringing they will be able to use for many years worth of 'You think you've got it hard? When I was young...' ammunition on their children.

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So, future grandchildren:

Yes. It's true. You have it lucky. Your mummies really did used to spend their weekends as free child labour, weeding and hoeing and pulling garlic and onions:

in the dust and the heat- M has pulled her hat off to show off the sweat- without so much as a DS or PS or any other S to entertain them.

And some days, when they were finished hoeing and digging and tramping and harvesting, they were given a cup and told they could collect all the somethings they could find.

Not blueberries

or strawberries

or blackberries, or raspberries or mulberries.

Not peas or beans or okra or baby carrots.

Look closely.....:

That's right- caterpillars!

So, future grandchildren, mind you do as you're asked or you might be sent to stay at Granny Heather's for a 'holiday'. Plenty more caterpillars where they came from!

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We collected all the cabbage moth caterpillars off the cabbages and brought them home and fed them to the chooks. You know, cycle of life and all that...*

Don't you think Amy looks like she is trying out for Oliver Twist?

"Please sir, can I have some more? All m'lady gives me is caterpillars, and scant few at that."

*Attention WWF/ RSPCA/Save the Children/ Matsumoto Child Welfare Centre: Amy lets at least half her caterpillars run away so it's pretty much the same odds as being eaten by a bird I think. And STC/ MCWC? We don't really use them as child labour- we just don't have a working TV and we told them gardening was fun...

RIP crook chook

Two days ago one of the hens got depressed. (Yes, I can tell, it's a chick thing. punny?)

Yesterday she was lethargic.

Today she was lopsided and getting walked all over. Literally.

So she came inside and spent the day in a box:

Next to my babysitting charge:

Yup, I'm babysitting the chick neighbour A found on the road and rescued. With my luck I spent the day feeding on peeping demand a baby crow or something. Who knows. I tried telling neighbour A that I don't think fancy department store bread soaked in milk is typical baby bird food and don't get her hopes up.

But totally crappy luck the bloody bird is still peeping away, is practising flying and entertaining the girls 'Mummy! it HOPPED!!!' and has eaten an entire slice of fancy bread.

And my poor beautiful chook? She didn't make it. I spent all my free time today (in between three classes in three different towns) mixing up magic chooky potion: hard boiled egg yolk, yoghurt, grated apple, oatmeal and a drop of honey and she was really looking better and then after dinner Amy was talking to her, well actually yelling at her 'Get better NOW please!' when she had a convulsion and just died. I think I get amazingly truthful mummy points for not telling A it was the yelling that did it. Passed up the opportunity for a quiet life in the name of honesty... Saint me now...

I have been reading about chook diseases all evening and it could be half a dozen dire diseases and then it could be nothing at all- just one of those things....

It's times like these I know I'm not a real farmer 'cause this stuff makes me sad...

RIP crook chook. Hope you're top of the pecking order and surrounded by all the scratchable weed filled ground your little heart could desire.

I'm as blue as a girl can be

Sorry, I love Cher and especially Walking in Memphis.

I've got about as much chance of ever being able to sing like that as I have of ever getting into the ribbons and fishnet "turn back time" outfit so this is about a different kind of blue:

Blueberries of course!

I'm kind of over jam at the moment, and I've bought so much sugar in the last month I'm sure the local supermarket is spreading the word that it's true- foreigners really do eat truckloads of sugar. Pah, whatever! Anyway, we are eating the blueberries fresh at the moment and I think I'll do blueberry muffins tomorrow.

The girls made berry rainbows in their drink bottles and were quite chuffed with themselves.

And just to prove that we don't just eat jam- cucumber pickles 5 ways: from the front: in miso, in soy sauce, in sweet vinegar with onion and pickling spices (thanks K!), in instant asatsuke pickling salt and in pickled plum juice. I am trying out a whole variety of pickle recipes as I love the sweet vinegar pickles but Ken is a salt or nothing kind of guy so we're trying to find common ground. Today's results? Hmmmm, maybe we agree on the soy pickles but back to the drawing board tomorrow. Lucky we're getting 6 or 7 cucumbers a day, hey?

in the red

We have a terrible problem at the moment.

We're really struggling.

It's not the economy.

Not the rainy season- although that is pretty gloom inducing.

Not our health- well not yet anyway.

We're drowning in raspberries.

The girls are loving it:

I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture but they're out there picking raspberries in the rain- and eating them straight off the vine.

When they do make it inside:

it's raspberries (and a few pilfered blueberries Amy...) for snack time.

raspberry jam (of course!)

And still more raspberries!

Meg and Amy don't weigh their loot but I've picked over 2 kilos so far and there's still so many more to pick...

So spare a thought for us in these hard times....

a brush with plummy death

I jammed the ripe ume and they were amazing. there must be a lot of natural pectin in them as the jam jelled quite quickly and set very firmly.

I was talking to some of my students and neighbours yesterday about why we don't see ripe plums in the fruit section and without exception the reaction was:

"Ehhhhhh????? You ate ume??????!!!!!"

Whether it's an old wives (and husband's) tale or not I don't know, but apparently it's not a good idea to eat ume. I heard again and again that you will give yourself the runs, become seriously ill, end up in hospital and everyone knew of (importantly they knew of rather than knew) someone who had died from eating ume.

Hmmm, not sure why adding copious amounts of salt and red perilla turns these deadly fruits into the ubiquitous pickled plums but hey, what do I know, I'm so silly I ate a mouthful of ripe plum!