"Balmoral Park" farm garden

Everything in the garden is glorious at the moment, so beautiful it almost hurts your eyes. One of the things I am proud of this year is that my orchids have flowered beautifully for the first time since we have been there. They are in the corner of the veranda outside the kitchen window so we can really enjoy them.

Just three weeks ago when I was walking around our boundary fence I notices a dead wallaby, not an uncommon sight around here as there are a lot of Wallabies and Kangaroos. I am not averse to shooting kangaroos as they are in plague proportions but I do think if you shoot them you should use them. We or Peter, shoot one from time to time that we eat. We don't shoot the wallabies though. Anyway I digress, something made me look more closely at the dead wallaby and I noticed there was a Joey in her pouch. I pulled it out and created a dilemma for myself, having found her I needed to either look after her or put her out of her misery. Unable to do the latter I carried her home. She looked quite healthy but small, she had all her hair. Peter agreed we should try and raise her and then release her when she was independent so the raising of Millie began. I was fortunate that when I went to the vet to buy some lactose free milk for her that there was a visiting vet there who knew a lot ...

I was in Sydney working last week so thought I would make the most of the opportunity to try some great food. Sometimes I feel a bit deprived of the multi cultural cuisine of Sydney living out here. Sunday night I stayed with Zoe and we went to a Mexican place in Newtown, it was OK, but a bit odd. We both were keen to try the Tamales but they didn't have any! We had a dip that tasted good but was pretty greasy and a toasted sandwich sort of affair that had very good ham in it. We shared a Chicken Mole that was quite good but a bit heavy handed on the sauce I thought. We asked for a desert menu and were told that there was none..Funny place. Monday I headed out to Parramatta where I was working. Monday night was an excellent hot soup at Pho Pasteur, Vietnamese obviously, great flavour, good price and you feel perfectly comfortable there on your own. Tuesday I headed to a Saute Thai after much looking around and indecision. It was not a good choice. They sat me next to the toilets ...

The Rhubarb is going great guns this spring, we pick it on and off all year really, whenever there is a lull of fruit for Peter's yogurt and fruit morning teas and desserts. We don't have a fruit lull at the moment but the rhubarb really needed a big pick so I decided to pick it all and freeze some. There was quite a lot and only a few days since I last picked. I had big plans of entering a lot of stuff in our local show which is on next weekend but as luck would have it the show coincided with my trip to Sydney for work so I wont be able to do much. I thought I might leave Peter in charge of picking and entering some fruit and veg and  maybe some eggs though. I think we would be able to pick an excellent bunch of rhubarb. The other day I saw a recipe for a rhubarb souffle, I think I'll make that on the weekend. It looked very pretty and elegant, I'll keep you posted!

I just love lucerne hay. I'm sure it is the reason our garden had done as well as it has. In the height of the drought we were paying up to $12 for a bale of mulch quality lucerne. Still it was worth it. It both feeds and mulches. On Friday Peter got 100 bales of mulch lucerne for $1 a bale. It is really still quite good quality, some of it good enough to feed to the goats. What a luxury, I now have a haystack   and am mulching with great abandon, thick, thick mulch, to cover the weeds and protect the soil. Mulch to encourage the worms and keep in the moisture. Last year I grew potatoes directly onto some Kikuyu and mulched heavily, this successfully reclaimed an area from the Kikuyu and is now my garlic patch, So I made another potato garden. Mulched all the veggies Mulched all the rose gardens. This is Jemima's garden, it has grown as she has. It will be lovely this summer and is already very pretty with the Lavender and Euphorbia. Looking at this picture makes me ...

Lately I seem to have so many things to do that the blog doesn't always get a look in. Especially as the days are getting longer and warmer, more time to spend in the garden. I feel under pressure to have things well organised as I will be in England for nearly a month in November when Katie has her baby. I'm also going to Sydney next week to work, running my workshops for the last time! Quite a big milestone really. I have loads to blog about but think I will go with short posts and hopefully get into a new daily habit again. On Sunday night I cooked slow roasted goat shoulder. It was Fathers day and i thought I should do something special for dinner. We have got into a bit of a bad habit of just letting days of celebration go by as none of our family is near by but I am trying to make more effort. So a special dinner was in order. I marinated two goat shoulders in white wine, olive oil, rosemary, garlic. salt and pepper for the morning. Then cranked the oven up as high as...