"Balmoral Park" farm garden

I have been home for a whole month now, no trips away for work and despite lots of days spent travelling to and from the hospital while Peter was sick, i have spent most of my time in the garden and looking after the poultry. When I wake up every day it feels like i am following multiple stories and need to quickly find out what is happening today. There is the Poultry Story, to check out, how are all the chickens going, what has gone broody today, are the hens still sitting on the eggs, are any eggs hatched, how is the incubator going, and later in the day, how many eggs of what variety, and finally are all the chooks, turkeys and ducks away for today? The interesting things today are that the shared parenting arrangment with the silkies is going fantastically well, one still sitting on the unhatched eggs and one looking after the chicks. there are three chicks, very cute, one looks like it is sort of reddish grey, the other two look like pure Plymouth Rocks, Rocky  the rooster i...

This spring almost all of our poultry has gone broody. I suppose because  it is such a lush season. We are new to the business of breeding poultry so our efforts to date have been a bit hit and miss. Recently we hatched turkeys in an incubator and of the thirteen that hatched, eleven survived and are doing well. One of the black turkey hens has just hatched seven chicks and they seem to be healthy and strong and I have another two turkeys sitting on eggs. We have five little silkie bantams who live in a moveable cage in our garden, they are generally under the fruit trees and their job is to clean up fallen fruit and generally scratrch around and fertilize the area. We  used to have a rooster called Russel, but Peter dispatched him due to his loud and incessant crowing! Despite the lack of fertilised eggs the silkie hens regularly go broody and they are great mothers. After the dissapointment of one of the larger hens abanding her eggs after the first two hatched I decided to...

I have been thinking about the nature of wealth of late and the things that really make me feel rich. Not suprisingly after things like family,  friends and health comes food and flowers. A mark of wealth is to go to an expensive restaurant and order whatever you want regardless of cost, or go to the florist and buy extravagent flowers, just for their beauty. I have learnt that i am not an expensive restaurant type of person, they annoy me a bit and i am often thinking how much more lovely food I could have prepared with that much money, my most memorable meals have been on the less expensive side and often quite simple but things I dont know how to cook. I do like to fill my house with flowers. So at the moment I am feeling quite extraordinarliy wealthy  the garden is bursting with luxury items, strawberries, mulberries and passionfruit, artichokes, snow peas, lettuce, beetroot, broadbeans, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli and leeks. The garden is more than a supermaket, ...

For some reason I woke up yesterday thinking about rose petal jam. Maybe because the roses are in full bloom and absolutely beautiful and the forcast rain would ruin them a bit. A google search revealed some very simply sounding recipes. I settled on two, one for Jam and one for Jelly. The Jam required twelve cups of rose petals that have had the white part trimmed from the base, a bit time consuming but trimming fragrant rose petals is a nice occupation! then simply boil the rose petals with four cups of sugar and two tablespoons of lemon juice. This is the end result. I actually think this recipe is flawed, although is appears many times and think it needs the addition of four cups of water as well. The resulting jam is very sticky and oversweet although the rose flavour is very nice. However I wouldnt bother with it again as the Jelly is fantastic. Interesting and easy to make as well. the method is to simmer one litre of rose petals with one litre of water for fifteen minutes....

The garden is a feast for all senses at the moment, despite the messiness there is an abundance of colour, lots of different textures to brush against but it is the frangrance that almost makes you dizzy. As you come in the back gate the lavender and rosemary hedge is now quite tall and dense, the lavender is in full bloom and smells delicous. On a warm day you can also catch a whiff of the wormwood groundcovers that are now quite extensive and add a sharper note to the florals of the lavender. The citrus are in full bloom and absolutely loaded with blossoms, they are the predominant perfume for most of the day. I planted a native frangipani so we could enjoy the scent and have it waft towards the house. It has grown really well and is flwoering now as well. It has a smaller flower than the frangipani's you see in Sydney and on the coast but hte same delightful fragrance. It is a bit of a shame it is flowering at the same time as the citrus as they tend to overshadow i...

I have been thinking about what it means to eat seasonal food of late. Lots of food magazines, restaruarant reviews etc. pay homage to the idea of local seasonal produce, then, when you read the menu or list of ingredients there are things that could not possibly grow in the same season and location. As we are trying to grow most of our own food and the so called "fresh" food we have access to is of such poor quality, seaonal food is becoming our daily reality. It is a real challenge to me as like most people today I am used to eating whatever it is that I feel like eating. Example, the other day we needed some fruit and there is not much in the garden at the moment except the lemons and some out of season passionfruit that somehow decided to set fruit over the winter, so Peter bought some oranges. They look quite nice, in fact, two weeks later they still look nice, but they are inedible. They are still sitting in the kitchen as I cant decide what to do with them. There must ...

In light of the recent rain I felt it appropriate to update my blog template with this new rainy day look. It gives a bit of an idea of how it looks from the back door. Very hard to believe I know for all those who have only seen "Balmoral Park" in its parched sunburnt state. The roses are going to be spectacular this year. They are already looking fabulous, if at times a little hard to see because of the lush growth of the weeds, especailly the Pattersons Curse which is just every where. However they are grwoing really well and at this point not an aphid in sight. This is the predominantly pink and yellow garden in front of the veranda. One of the climbing roses, growing on the ladder structure that Peter built. Cant wait until they cover it all up. This is a little white old fashioned bush rose. These should grow quite large, like a hedge and be a bit of a wind break as well as a habitat for little birds. And little pink ones the same as above Just Joey's, plant...