Sticks and Stones

It’s not my holiday but belongs to a very special firend of mine.  They bought a camper trailer a little while ago and try to use it as much as they can.  While I know the clip wasn’t made specifically for me I feel so lucky that they put the shearing shed in!  Great clip if you have a few minutes to spend looking at great Australian Outback scenes and some really cute boys “shearing” each other!!  Go here.

I was reading Belinda’s post here today and it made me start thinking, once again, about the quantities of food we use a year.  It’s kind of mind boggling and I find it hard to realy work out but I want to so I can “prepare” food as I grow it over summer.

Do you remember the peaches I bottled?  Well, we have just started eating them – only used one jar – as I was so worried we’d run out and want more that weren’t available….silly really!  The kids love them – so do I – and they really do taste of summer.  I think long term I’d like to be able to open a jar a week of home preserved peaches!

Today’s pondering has been on tomatoes.  I have been very diligent in not buying “fresh” out of season ones as they have very little flavour and feel like the plastic wrapper you get on Kraft Singles but we use lots of tinned “whole” tomatoes and lots of Pete’s Mum’s home made sauce (ie for pasta, not the BBQ kind).  So I figure that I need to be able to preserve a minimum of 104 jar of whole tomatoes (2 a week) and 104 jars of Sauce (again 2 a week).  Then I figured that the kids love relish so we need about 26 jars for the year (I love to put it in stews/casseroles) and I would like to try my hand at the BBQ tomato sauce variety – if the family liked that we’d need about 12 bottles a year (we don’t use much bought Tomato Sauce but I think we’d use more home made stuff as I’d probably offer it to them more).  We love home made sundried tomatoes and would eat more if we had more available so I think about 1 jar a month and, I have never made it, tomato paste is in lots of things I cook and is a great ingredient when cooking from scratch – maybe 12 jars?

So here is what I figure:

Tomatoes:

120-150 jars of whole tomatoes

120-150 jars of sauce for pastas, casseroles, soups etc

26 jars of relish

12 jars of sauce

12 jars of sundried tomatoes

12 jars tomato paste

To hopefully achieve this I am planning on planting 6 Tigerella’s, 12 Amish paste, 4 Reisentraube & 4 Tommy Toes – this should give us plenty to bottle & eat fresh…..

Any thoughts?

By the way – thanks to 2 lots of advise I have followed by lettuce with onions this time round!

I have come to learn that the snow at Mt Hotham is not great for my kids!  While it was thick and white and powdery Sophie and Sam just thought it was “too cold Mummy”:

There was an attempt by us (the wise Parents) to have a little fun:

But playing indoors at our friends Chalet was more like it:

Next time (maybe in a year or two) we’ll go to the Family Mountain – Mt Buffalo!

There has not been much knitting or spinning going on here lately due to two little (BIG) messes I have to deal with.  This was 2 balls of cotton that I bought on special last time I went to Spotlight.  They were meant to be gifts for my friend Tan and niece Claudia…

The red is now untngled after 2 weeks of working on it every day but the orange is still a mess!  My little monsters also pulled my precious Lorna’s Lace sock yarn that Nat gave me out of my kntting chest, out of it’s special bag, and have done the same with that.  Not happy!

I found some Charity Knitting Inspiration a while ago – have a look at this, isn’t she wonderful – I think I am going to knit Chemo Caps too.  I am off to Spotlight on Friday with the hope that they still have yarns on speical…

I have finished Pete’s socks – finally – and have cast on another pair. I think I may have the sock bug but only a small dose. I bought both balls of yarn at a Spotlight sale some time ago and I paid about $3 per ball so it makes for pretty cheap socks (obviously discounting my time which when it’s all said and told wasn’t all that much). I used the pattern on the back of the ball band for the first pair – obtained gauge with the stated needle – and pretty much liked it however I could have used a tighter gauge for my liking.

Magic Stripe socks for Pete

Pattern: Lion Brand Magic Stripes Basic Socks
Yarn: 1 skein Lion Brand Magic Stripes (75% wool/25% nylon)
Needles: 3.25mm DPN
Project started: 16th July 2008
Project completed: 23rd August 2008

Notes: Knitted them EXACTLY as the pattern stated. Next time I will knit them at a tighter gauge as I prefer the look of tighter knit socks. Nice yarn to work with and a quick knit.

Despite earlier reservations about the colour Pete loves them so I now have a very happy recipient of hand knit socks to knit for all Summer!

Hi all you vegetable gardeners out there, can you please tell me what should follow lettuce?  I have no idea and I can’t seem to find the answer through a Google search….

We have 3 cute little chicks – still not fully fluffed up – and another egg cheaping away.  Last night when I went to bed – feeling terrible (and I’ll tell you why soon but you may not like me anymore when you read it) – there were 2 little black chicks lying among the eggs recovering from there journey out of the shells.  One had taken about 6 hours (ashamed to say with help before I realised that they actually can birth themselves) and the other just over 12 hours from hole formation. When I woke up this morning my first words to Pete were “I have to go and see if any of the chicks are alive” and he repsonded by telling me that there was a lot of noise at 4am and it sounded like more than 2 chicks.  He was right as racing around the incubator was a partially fluffy yellow chick which was doing it’s best to annoy it’s older, smaller siblings.

Confession time – Yesterday I was like a child waiting for these chicks to hatch and it was all I could do to keep my fingers out of there and after the second chick took so long (in acutal fact they can take up to 24 hours without problems) I decided that the rest of the eggs were no longer viable.  I raised each one and listened carefully – not tapping, no cheaping – so I took them outside and broke them open.  The first 2 were non viable – just runny egg yolks – 1 had not grown past about day 10 and the last 2 were fully gown babies.  I felt sick – they would have hatched if I’d left them be.  I put them back in the incubator but the damage was done.  I can’t tell you how bad I felt last night – I found it hard to eat.

Lesson learnt – LET NATURE TAKE IT’S COURSE and leave the eggs alone until they hatch themselves.  My heat may not be even and the eggs are all different sizes so with the next batch that is due on Monday I will leave them for a week after their due date before disposing of them (over kill in time but I don’t care).  Luckily for my lovely yellow chick I missed that egg last night.

Pictures soon when they are fluffy – don’t want to shock them before they have recovered from the ordeal of hatching!

We have movement in the first batch of eggs that came from my chooks…there is definite cheaping from inside and one has made a small hole…will keep you posted!  I think there are about 6 due today and 24 due in another 3 days then another 14 due in about 11 days….I feel very very excited – like a child at Christmas!

There is other news but I can’t share that for another 30-45 days when documents are signed sealed and delivered!  I have a head ache today thanks to the bottle of Champagne Matt & Jane bought us – you guys are the best, I wish our chicks had hatched for you yesterday!