"Balmoral Park" farm garden

This morning I found our beautiful young white turkey gobbler dead in the pen! We suspect a snake as the eggs have also disappeared, even those that the hens were sitting on. This afternoon i found five baby turkeys hatched in the chook tractor, we didn't really know when these might hatch so it was a nice suprise. Funny it was on the same day.

Despite the small amount of time I now have to spend in the garden it is still amazingly productive. Thanks to all the previous work and lots of perennial crops, we are once again getting most of our fruit and vegetables from the garden. There are still oranges, lemons and limes on the trees and the mulberries have started. In the vegetable garden the asparagus is the star, we have been getting lots of fat, juicy, sweet stalks for about six weeks now. It is lovely to eat. We have had a few meals of late that are pretty much all from our place. A warm duck salad with snow peas and asparagus and a little blood orange and beetroot salad a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday a warm potato and asparagus salad with homemade mayonnaise, delicious. I hadn't planned to use any of our potatoes yet but the horrible twenty eight spotted lady beetles have made a real mess of some of them so  I decided to pull them out, the tiny potatoes are really nice to eat so all was not lost.  ...

I wish you could smell my garden, it is divine. Citrus blossoms, Frangipani and lavender are the predominant perfumes. Last night it was a little warmer than it has been and when I walked in the back gate the perfume of the garden enveloped me. You could just stand and breathe in the wonder of it all. This spring the garden is full of little birds, darting between the bushes and larger birds feasting on the grevillias. The bees are humming loudly most of the time as well. The roses are just starting to bloom, so far they are looking quite spectacular.   We had a good show or orchids despite the neglect or some suggest because of it. Not quite as good as last year though so I plan to look after them a bit better this year.   The yellow broom is looking lovely as well.  This is a new geranium, quite spectacular I think.  These orange poppies come up everyyear and put on quite a show. The citrus trees still have quite a lot of fruit on ...

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!