"Balmoral Park" farm garden

My quest to eat seasonally and from our garden has brought some huge changes in the way that we eat. No more thoughtless following of popular recipes and food trends. If its not in season we don't have it. If there is food here that needs to be eaten we don't buy in other stuff. Now don't think we are in any way deprived by this, I would say we eat better than ever, our diet is very varied, my cooking is more creative, more driven by ideas and less by recipes and neither of us has had so much as a sniffle in the past twelve months. Having said that I must admit to be just a teeny bit over mandarins, (we've been eating them since July) Now there are so many berries the leftover citrus doesn't really rate a mention. The Mulberries are in full production and just look at these strawberries. Luxury! What I was  really thinking about when I started this post was the potatoes. We have never been huge potato eaters but I would have always had potatoes in the house...

After the disappointment of my Very Large Pumpkin turning to mush I decided I should start picking some of the other pumpkins in the garden. I am never quite sure when to start to pick them as the folk lore is to wait until the first frost, but we may not get a frost until late June and some of these look pretty much ready now. I decided to pick the one that seemed the most vulnerable to rotting because of its situation in the garden. It is a beauty. I don't know what the warty looking things on it are but think they look OK. I had carefully marked all my pumpkins so i would know what was what, but the markers have disappeared and the pumpkins are all intertwined so I don't know what variety this is. One of the heritage ones for sure. When I cut it open it looked fine. It has beautiful seeds that I am going to dry and roast as well. Normally I throw away pumpkin seeds and then buy some to put in bread etc. The Pumpkin was very nice in a red curry with beans and tofu. The gr...

I was feeling quite overwhelmed by this monster of a garden on Saturday. I have been away three days a week for the last few weeks and things are quite out of control again. The tomatoes are in urgent need of attention as are the pumpkins. Zucchini vines and pumpkins are covered in mildew and my giant pumpkin has dissolved into a rotting mess. Not to mention the lawns need mowing, the edges need trimming, the cat heads are flourishing. I had hoped for a tidy, orderly garden by the time Katie and Jemima arrived but it is not to be. At least it is a productive mess. I was considerably cheered up by the very first decent eggplants I have ever grown. Aren't they just beautiful. I don't know why they have failed to fruit in the past but this variety in particular is doing very well this year. The eggplants inspired me to make a sort of tasting plate for our dinner fresh from the garden. The beans have come good again so there were: beans with olive oil, garlic and preserved lemon...

It is still such a pleasant surprise to me to wake up to grey cloudy skies and a real rainy day. In the first four years we were here we did not have one rainy day. The thing is though that I don't factor rainy days into my thinking anymore. The idea of putting off things to do on a rainy day had become obsolete. So today I had planned to spend the afternoon in the garden, after I finished off some work. As I had a big day at work yesterday and was away from dawn to dark there would be many things that needed picking, pruning, weeding or otherwise attending to. However it is cool and very damp so a gardening day is not to be although I will need to venture out and pick the tomatoes and Zucchinis as they are in full swing and  really need to be picked every day. Last year my neighbour brought over a magnificent tomato that one of his mates had grown. It was huge and delicious. I saved the seeds and grew some. It has grown true to type and is producing amazing tomatoes. I thin...

I have had a run of entertaining over the last few days. A friend came over for lunch on Friday and then we had houseguests for the weekend. I've always enjoyed cooking for friends and family but the enjoyment is significantly magnified when I am cooking and serving almost all of our own produce. Friday lunch was a zucchini quiche, made with the little rond de Nice zucchinis that I sliced and fried with their flowers attached before adding them to the quiche, of course I used our own fresh eggs. The finished product, pretty and delicious, served with a potato salad, homemade mayonnaise and tomatoes. Saturday morning we went to the Orange Farmers Market and derived considerable pleasure from the things we no longer need to buy, fruit, preserves, bread and vegetables. It was interesting to see that there are now two stalls selling organic garlic, maybe I will have to think about if  growing this on a large scale is still a good idea, perhaps I was too slow! We really only needed t...

One of my New Years Resolutions is to have a dinner party once a month. A real dinner party, clean the silver, get out the serviettes, light the candles sort of dinner. We have all these things that we rarely use so i plan to use them and make a regular social occasion.  The plan is to invite about four people over. A dinner party for six. Having made the resolution I was then humming and haaing about it, so finally on Wednesday rang some neighbours and issued the invitation for Saturday night, last  night. On the menu was almost entirely food we have produced ourselves. Entree Fried Zucchini flowers served with a garlic aoili, sage leaves and Fried Haloumi ( only the haloumi not from our place)  Main Course Roast turkey, stuffed with bacon, peach chutney and sage served with gravy, roast new potatoes, parsnips and Zucchini and steamed beans (just the bacon not from our place) Dessert A sort of Eton Mess, in a long glass I layered a light creamy custard with Mul...

or should I say freckles? The fruit on the Apricot tree has lots of brownish, scabby freckles on much of it.  Caused by the wet weather and unusual humidity. Despite this we have had a good harvest. Eaten lots of lovely apricots, given some away, made jam and preserved some. The ones that are left are looking pretty sad. I thought I would take them all off the tree and feed them to the poultry ,they love them. But could not bring myself to throw them all out as they still taste delicious. I decided to scrape away the flesh from the spots and make some apricot puree.A bucket full yielded four jars of beautiful puree.The taste of summer put away for the winter. Also picked the last of the peaches this morning. They have lasted quite well but the late ones are not as good to eat as the earlier ones, they taste a bit watery. As I picked the fruit I gave the tree a bit of a prune and tidy up to try and have strong new growth for next years fruit. I will do the same to the apricot ...

The Farmers Market was on in Orange  Orange Farmers Market this morning. although it is quite a long drive, about an hour from here, they are our closest Farmers market and the only opportunity I have to buy, somewhat locally, the things we don't grow here.  Although it was only a small market today I had a successful shopping trip bringing home pork, bacon,  speck and chorizo from the Trunkey Creek Bacon people and a lamb shoulder  from  Wellington Lamb. It was interesting to notice the things I didn't need to buy as we already heave them, fresh vegetables, stone fruit, garlic, eggs and honey. There were two cheese stalls today. One selling goats cheese and other brie and Camembert made from Jersey cow milk. The Brie is excellent and I am looking forward to trying it.  I aspire to owning a jersey cow and making my own cheese in the not too distant future. I also bought some goats cheese to put with roasted beetroot from our garden. The goats cheese stall...

One of the attractions of this place was that it had some old established fruit trees. Two Oranges, two mandarins, a lemon, two pears, a fig, a mulberry and a passionfruit vine. The basis of our orchard. I have planted additional trees and vines to try and see if we can be self sufficient in fruit for a whole year. At the moment I feel this is within our reach. We have been eating mulberries from the three trees for about six weeks now, there are two very small new trees and one older trees that has been quite neglected. All of them provided loads of berries for eating fresh and preserving. I have put a lot in the freezer and made a small amount of jam. The Mulberries have been supplemented by strawberries, a few raspberries, some passssionfruit and rhubarb. If you look really hard you can still find a few mulberries on the trees although the little turkeys discovered they could fly up into the tree that is outside the yard and cleaned most of those up. Just as they are finishing the...