"Balmoral Park" farm garden

There are lots of signs of spring in the garden at the moment despite the fact that the weather is still pretty cold. There was a big frost again this morning. The Asparagus started shooting a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday there was enough to pick for our dinner. It grows much more slowly at this time of the year and is really sweet and succulent. There should be enough for another meal by the weekend. I am looking forward to some steamed asparagus with a poached egg on top.  The almond trees are the first to have blossoms, they are very pretty. I hope we actually get some almonds this year. Last year I think it was just too wet and humid for them. A friend gave me these pretty little pots to put flowers in, the look beautiful with these Grevillias in them and just right on the old marble topped stand. We have seven lambs now and one more ewe to lamb.

Or rather a new young buck! His name is Blue, handsome isn't he.   When we got the girls everyone said not to get a buck as they are hard work and they stink. Well we took this advice and took the girls down to the goat farm  to get in kid, trouble is they  didn't. So our goat breeding program is six months behind. We got Blue from the same place as we got the girls, he has been hand raised and should make a good sire. He and Genevieve are in a paddock together and he got straight to work, so hopefully we will have some kids in about five months. We now are up to six lambs, two sets of twins and two singles, one more ewe looks like she will lamb soon and another is a bit further off. So far so good, although there is a crow hanging around today that we were worried about. Peter tried to shoot him but no luck. The lambs are quite strong though so I think they will be OK.

Our first lambs arrived yesterday. Twins! Aren't they beautiful! If they all have twins we'll have 19 sheep.

I have a savoury palate and enjoy sour and bitter flavours much more than sweet. I was reminded of this the other week when I absent mindedly ordered Jam on some Turkish toast at a cafe. It was OK but not to my taste which got me thinking about Marmalade. I do enjoy a good bitter marmalade, especially on Turkish or sour dough toast. We have a lot of citrus at the moment and for the first time a really good quantity of limes. Ttoday i have been making lime marmalade,  using this recipe http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/8219778/Lime-marmalade-recipe. and it worked beautifully. Sour bitter and tangy!  Well worth the effort. Cant wait for breakfast!

Part of my weekend is devoted to organising and cooking food for the week. As I have a pretty long work day now and don't get home until dinner time I find it well worth the time to get things in place on the weekend. At the moment as it is winter I am making a big batch of soup for lunches. Some sort of casserole for Sunday dinner and a midweek dinner and maybe cooking up a few staples, like rice or chick peas so I can quickly make something after work. Yesterday I made a nice slow cooked duck ragu to eat with fresh homemade pappardelle. A lovely Lentil, tomato and capsicum soup and a batch of rhubarb poached with orange juice and cinnamon, this is delicious on porridge for breakfast.   Dinner and lunch all sorted for the week.

I am hoping that being a weekend gardener for a while is going to be sufficient to keep things on track. Fortunately things are quite well established now and the season is quite good at the moment, plenty of rain and some good hard frosts. I think that these winter months will provide the greatest challenge as i am really barely here in the daylight hours, but I can feel the days starting to lengthen so hopefully in a couple of weeks there will be time to do a bit in the garden on some mornings and perhaps take Elle for a walk on the others. In the meantime Peter is doing lots of things in the garden, just not really into the food growing side of things but I am hoping that he will get into that soon. It is citrus time again and, despite the bumper of crop of mandarins that we were picking for months  last year, there is still a small crop of delicious mandarins, plenty for the two two of us. There are also lots of Oranges and the lemon tree has its usual bumpe...

Well it has been quite along absence and my life has changed considerably since my last post. I have had to return to full time work so am working Monday to Friday, 9-5 plus driving a bit over an hour each way. Not a lot of time left for anything else, especially in these short winter days. There are many things that I am not prepared to give up and perhaps this blog is one of them. This weekend is the first time I have felt like there is a bit of rhythm in my life and the first opportunity to pay a bit of attention to things around here. So perhaps I will become a weekend blogger for a while! The vegetable garden is a bit neglected but will come good in the spring. Peter is home full time so different things are getting done on the farm that will hopefully move us towards sustainability and our little farm stay. In the meantime I am still trying to keep up with cooking lots of good, slow cooked food on the weekend to get us through the week. I read an idea about baking pumpkin hal...