"Balmoral Park" farm garden

 So I have finished tidying up and filling in the spaces in the first of the back terraced beds. I feel this is going to be a lengthy process, but rewarding. There were a lot of spaces to fill in as this bed had been almost completely destroyed by the drought but fortunately there is also a resurgence of volunteer plants in the garden and some survivors that I haven't seen for a few years are making their way back as well. The Coriander has gone to seed several times and is rewarding me a with a veritable carpet of coriander, these volunteer plants seem to be so much hardier than those that I buy or the first crop from new seeds. I guess they have acclimatized. I will have coriander and lime ready for Easter so there will be some Asian inspired dishes on the menu.  There is also Italian Parsley coming up everywhere, its not as advanced as the coriander but will last much longer and the bees just love the flowers. It will fill a lot of spaces up. The Dill is not as prolific but...

 We have a pretty big garden here, I always say its two acres but I'm just guessing really! Nevertheless it is pretty big. Many times we have said we  wouldn't plant anything else but that doesn't happen at all. We have five large rose beds and many less formal areas as well as a big vegetable patch and a lot of fruit trees. It has been a labor of love and guided by  whim and opportunism rather than knowledge or science a lot of the time. Often it feels like a monster and in over the fifteen years we have been gardening here we have had two major droughts and  many life events that have impacted on its development and care. Last year when I finished work, our daughters gave me a consultation with a landscape gardener, this was extremely useful and gave us a path forward for the future. However our year was significantly impacted by covid as we had two of our grandchildren here for most of the winter and I was homeschooling as well as running a household with two youn...

When my youngest daughter was about six she told me one day that she didn't think she needed to go to school any more. I asked her how would she learn? Her reply, "I will just stay at home and do experiments." Recently when I finished working in a demanding full time role she emailed me to say, "Now you can stay at home and do experiments" and I have to say this is pretty much what I am doing. Experiments in the garden and experiments in the kitchen. This little baking business is an opportunity to experiment, develop skills, achieve perfection and enjoy the feeling of staying at home and playing while still feeling like I am learning and being useful. The kitchen is certainly my focus at the moment and I just love to be in my kitchen. From a pretty unprepossessing space when we bought this old house, it is now a beautiful sunny, light filled space. I have the stove of my dreams and lots of cooking toys to play with. There are beautiful views from every window, ...

Balmoral Park Farm Kitchen has really come into being because of the bread and my desire to achieve perfection in baking sourdough bread. I have filed in my memory bank a quote from someone I admired, I cant remember who it was!! who said they were going to devote their retirement to baking the perfect loaf of bread. I thought this was a pretty worthy goal and that I would emulate it! It quite quickly became apparent that in the pursuit of sourdough perfection we were going to end up with a lot of bread! Far too much bread for two people to eat. Added to that I found some beautiful local, stoneground  flour https://www.facebook.com/artisangrainsau/ and while it is a very reasonable price it adds considerably to the cost of my experimentation.  So I thought I would explore the possibility of selling some of the bread. Now I live in a fairly isolated, small, rural community, you can count the number of cars that go down our road each day on your fingers! Having just left a ...

Well it has been a very long while but I have decided to stay with this old Blog instead of creating a new one. The past few years have held many challenges for us, another drought, the summer from hell that all of Australia endured, a very busy working life, however here we are mid 2020! We have both left full time employment and are  now full time here on our little farm, which presents us with many new opportunities. The drought has broken for now, which brings renewed hope for our garden and farm. Our house is pretty much fully renovated, as much as an old place like this can ever be finished! Since finishing work at the end of February I have had the time and energy to create a little business out of my enduring passions for baking and baking sourdough bread. I thought I would see how it went selling via orders on Social Media and having people drive out here to collect their orders! Five weeks in and its going well.   I have been a passionate cook for as long as I c...

I am feeling inspired about social media connections and the possibilities of supportive online communities about all things farming. I often feel that my ideas about sustainable and organic farming are not well supported in the environment in which we live so go online to find ideas and resources and there are many. I have been playing around with Instagram and following lots of interesting blogs and podcasts about farming, organics, food, cooking and creativity in general so I thought I would give my blog a bit of an overhaul and try to get back in the habit of posting. What is uppermost in my farming mind at present is the state of our paddocks and soil. We had a really harsh autumn, the stock were not moved enough and as a result our paddocks became quite degraded and run down. We really should have started supplementary feeding months before we did. Now we have had a wet winter and an amazing start to spring, things are starting to recover but we have also decided to introduce ...

It seems like once you have a Border Collie for a pet any other dog breed just seems unacceptable. Our first Border Collie "Steffi", adopted us, we didn't have her very long but fell in love with her energy and intelligence. Then we got Patch, he was a great dog, family pet, weather forecaster, he was frightened of thunderstorms so if we were all away from home he would turn up at the neighbours hours before a storm! They came to know that a visit from patch meant a thunderstorm was headed their way. We had patch for 9 years and were bereft when he was hit by a car and died. We said at that point that having dogs was too sad and that we wouldn't get another one. Within the year we had Angus, such a beautiful boy. Angus is the dog in the banner above. He helped raise Zoe and was broken hearted when the girls left home and again when we moved to the farm here, He stuck with us until the end though, a good friend and  companion. I decided to get Elle as Angus ...

Its been a long time between posts but after a few weeks of having all of the family here at the farm I thought it would be nice to start posting regularly about what we are doing here to keep people up to date in between visits. 2015 was a busy and challenging year in many respects as I continue to work full time and mostly away from home, I am away a couple of days each week. The garden has certainly suffered as I have has to be realistic about what I can manage. Nevertheless it was a pleasant surprise when everyone was here to realise how much of our food still came from the farm, meat from the goats and sheep, eggs, lots of fruit and a few vegies, lots of herbs, it provides motivation to keep on with it all. During 2015 Peter finally built the long awaited Pizza oven. As with everything he does it is a masterpiece and has worked perfectly since the first day we lit it. We are still figuring out how to cook in it but so far we feel we have mastered the art of pizza, done some sl...

Our goats have been very prolific, almost all multiple births! Genevieve had triplets two months ago and Brie had twins today. Reluctantly we have to sell some of the young does that we cant use. Haloumi, Daphenoise, Ricotta and Curds, I wish I could keep them all, they are beautiful girls. Daphenoise is my favourite, or maybe Haloumi who was born out of season in a blistering hot summer and I really thought she wouldn't survive. Daphenoise is the really colourful goat and Haloumi the closest to the right. Below is baby quark, just born today.

Well its been a long while between posts but thought I would post about my favourite breakfast of the moment, Purple Sticky rice and Quinoa Porridge. I think I started making this before it was on all the cafe menus but maybe not! The other day in the supermarket I saw a packet of rice and quinoa already mixed! What I do is cook one cup of purple sticky rice, or any sticky colourful rice would do, red or black, by absorption method and just replace half the water with coconut milk and throw in a cinnamon stick, ten minutes before its done stir through 1/3 rd cup of quinoa, I used a mixed one today, also add a tablespoon of coconut oil. When its nice and sticky and chewy stir through a bit more coconut milk and some grated palm sugar or coconut sugar  if you want. While this is happening toast off some almond flakes until they are a nice colour. Serve with yogurt and fruit. I had rhubarb today but segmented orange is very good as well. Enjoy. 

Our roses are spectacular this spring! Mind you they don't bear too much scrutiny they are covered in aphids and there is quite a bit of black spot but the overall pictures is amazing. I don't worry about the aphids too much as pretty soon the good bugs build up and take care of them. I would like to find an answer for the black spot thought. Jemima's Garden       We have some chickens just hatched out in the incubator, we really need some new hens so hopefully some of these are, we also have some very cute silkies just hatched. Chickens We have a great crop of broad bean this year, broad bean hummus it the way to eat it! Broad Beans Peter is putting in the new pool, so far he has built this lovely retaining wall.

Last night for dinner we had a slow cooked lamb shoulder, ( our lamb), seasonal vegetables form the garden and vanilla ice cream with meringues and mulberries. Almost everything from the farm!

Kim asked yesterday how my goats are going, the answer is really well. We have four mature Does now and a buck. Genevieve kidded in the middle of the summer heatwave and poor little Haloumi got off to a rough start, she soon made up for it though and is a lovely little kid. The others all had multiple births, two sets of twins and one of triplets. So now we have Curds, Whey, Ricotta and Daphinoise as well as three boys, all Cheddars as they are destined for the table. The girls we plan to sell with kids once they are about eighteen months old as trained milking goats. We have some interesting colour combinations and they are all very friendly. Peter has been milking Brie and occasionally Feta, we have let Elisabet be as she is quite old and feeding twins. Brie and her twins The Triplets Haloumi

Well I'm on a roll, two posts in two days! We were sitting on the verandah eating our breakfast and admiring the view this morning and Peter said he had found a photo of the front garden when we first moved here. from this to this It is amazing what we have created in six years if i do say so myself, those years have included three of drought, a couple of major illnesses and generally working full time. It is a joy to see the progress.  

Well it has been a while but I wanted to share these lovely pictures of spring in my garden! Orchids View from the verandah What shall we do with all these mandarins? Banksia Rose Iris flowering gum Promise of Olives! Rose Guinea fowl in the garden Back Pathway Bird in the grevillea Great crop of Dill Lovely Lillies Maybe one day we will just sit and enjoy!