Hi there! We had a bit of Summer on Monday and Tuesday. Today not so much!! Steady rain! As mentioned I had a weekend of soap markets and my stocks are decidedly low. I’ve made a couple more batches tonight to add to my ‘new seasons stock’ 🙂
Above is the demo batch I did at Sharons last workshop.
This was a fab loaf that I helped one of the students make… complete with some of Sharons little raspberry soaps on top!
Kirrily came along to this workshop and has already made her own batch at home and ordered supplies!
This was her groovy workshop effort
Another cousin also came along for the workshop… She did a variety of shapes (On the proper side, these are dinosaurs!!)
We used spirulina for the green but sadly its faded out, leaving only the red/pink
Some oats…
Love the yellow
I’d brought along a bunch of soap butterflies which one lady used to embed into her soap!
We did 10 batches of soap that day! Whew!
I’ve managed to make a couple of things lately… not sure if this big market/event will be on in March, but I’ll prepare anyway.
I’ve done two batches of the coconut/lime. The original batch I made totally sold out!
Then I finally used the black raspberry and vanilla fragrance and it is amazing!! Smells soooooo good! So happy with the colours here too… I did another similar batch yesterday but this one turned out better!
Tonight as well as doing the coconut/lime, I also did a lavender with a bit of peppermint as most of my stock is also gone. And so many people love lavender!
Okies… Thats where I am at with the soap!! Hope you are having a lovely week! Cheers
Hello! Quite the weekend of markets… feeling a bit tired now tonight, although I’ve perked up a bit with a bowl of fresh raspberries and ice cream! I went back to the Elliot Market on Saturday with Maureen… and Jeff came along and sold a couple of his necklaces! Overall that day was very slow trading wise but lovely and sunny and great to meet and catch up with people. Maureen messaged me that evening to tell me the local beach market was on so I took the plunge and booked in late and was back up again this morning to try again! Blah to having to be on site before 7am though… Was sooooo windy!! BUT, sales were excellent and I came home with a lot less soap this time.
A bigger bowl of raspberries! I am loving them!
The other day we made some good progress in the back veranda garden. Jeff gave the feverfew a severe trim and now we have a pathway again!
I got in and planted lettuce seedlings and netted this area to thwart rabbits or whatever had been sampling my salad veggies
I planted seeds in here too
I ended up taking out the lettuce that was going to seed… felt sad about that but too awkward with netting.
I still have the other bed to do, but I did take out the cape gooseberries, replanted one and put one in a big bucket to maybe give to a friend
They were just way too big for this area! I didn’t realise when I planted them… rookie haha
Ok…. remember this mess?? Oh dear.
Well it was a bundle of twitchy fun to dig up… not!!!
Can you believe it? I am not even finished. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t keen on being organic… (searches internet for low yield nuclear options…)
I had gone and gotten a scoop of dulverton in the trailer… a fabbo compost to top up the last gardens with now that I can’t get my beloved mushroom compost. I was keen to barrow some in and plant this plot but it was taking SO much longer than I supposed I found a lot of spring onions…
I should divide and replant into new homes…
Oh… I caved and pulled up a garlic!!! Monster!!
I still reckon they have a couple of weeks growing but I am madly impressed at myself with this effort haha Can’t wait for full harvest!
Smells amazing too!!
I think I have to go into town tomorrow and run about like a headless chook to sort out some kind of Christmas plan to post off to the nieces and nephew… 2020 was like molasses then WHAM… hello Christmas!! I can’t even tell you how not ready I am! Jeff and I have no plans… since the family can’t come over this year, we have vague ideas of picking a mountain to climb and packing a fancy picnic. Who knows!!
Well, I am full of raspberries and ice cream, dusk is falling and the chooks need shutting in for the night! Hope you’ve all had a great weekend! Cheers!
Guess what?? The raspberries have started to ripen! Excited much? I hadn’t been down there and looked properly in a number of days. Its rained a lot so I didn’t need to go down to water Jeff casually mentioned I had raspberries ready to pick! Pardon, what?? Awesome
Do down I trot with a bowl to collect the first of this seasons fruit.
I ate them all last night. I saved the strawberries tho… I want to make ice cream when I have enough
In other splendid news… the white garlic is bulbing up well!! They look like they are going to be BIG
They have got rust on the leaves though … hmmm. Going to have to look into that issue so other plants don’t ‘catch’ it
Too lazy to lift the netting for a photo, but the zucchini are really zooming along
And the carrots are doing better now that rabbits aren’t coming in to sample them
Those weeds have grown way too quickly. Its been rubbish weather this last week so I haven’t been out there to tidy up the plots.
Despite the wind, some of the snow peas are hanging on and also producing some flowers!
The corn is up… it also needs weeding
I think I should go out and shove some more seeds in the ground ASAP where they’ve failed to germinate… happily thats not too many of them.
A sea of potatoes! They are looking really good! Hoping to start bandicooting new potatoes soon!
The liliums are slightly past their best but they are a delight to walk past daily
I’ll have to look in the front garden to see if any others are about to bloom
And I am super happy to see that my borage has indeed happily self seeded and is now re flowering.
Hope you are all having a good week so far! Jeff and I have finally gotten into the swing of daily hikes again and are back at Oldina doing 9km hikes up and over the logging tracks (in the rain) (Oh my legs!! haha)
Hello! Long day today – Workshop at Sharons with nine people! So we made 10 batches of soap today!! (I did a demo batch at the end for those people still left 🙂 )
I made this loaf the other day so we could cut it in class – its nice to give the participants something tangible to do (before making their soap) – and cutting soap is soooooo satisfying!!
This one is Anjou Pear and Lemon Zest. Loved the way it turned out!
I am actually getting low on soap!! I had fantastic sales at the church market the other weekend… sorry I can’t now remember if I told you! Over $400 worth sold! Plus I’ve had orders via a friend and a few via my gardening page (haha) so I’ve been wrapping and posting all week. Trying to gather the last of what I have for what will be my final market this year, back at Elliot. Nothing else will be ready now before Christmas.
So… I have a plan. If covid19 doesn’t make a crazy re appearance here, I’d really like to have a market stall up at Sheffield in March where they hold Steam Fest every year. (Link to a post here) Its a three day event and very popular – and I roughly estimate I would need at least 600 bars of soap. eek?
Obviously they need time to cure so now is the time to get myself cracking and onto it. I plan to do several batches of the same kind of soap so its easier to control than my crazy mishmash of experiments. And if all the same type of soap is kept in the same box, restocking will be easier during the event.
Anyway… thats my grand plan.
Hope you’ve all had a fabulous weekend. Time for me to fall into bed!! Cheers
Yep… of course summer arrives, heat wave across Australia and somewhere in Tasmania it snows!! I don’t have the fire on tonight but we have had it on the last few evenings! (Much to Pips delight)
Sharons husband Paul was kind enough to come around last week and cut that huge tree leftover into nice big slabs. Our chainsaw is not nearly big enough to deal with that size. From there Jeff was able to split and stack the wood. We’ve also got a couple of nice slices we’d like to ‘do something’ with!
I got to and emptied the trailer of the last of the soil I picked up from Sharons place too… so lovely when sifted
This garden bed was the next on my list
I mixed in some mushroom compost and sorted it out. Moved the tomatoes out but left the lettuce in (which the rabbits have found so… another net to be put up hopefully tomorrow!!)
I want to put more lettuce in… both seeds and seedlings as well as some baby spinach etc. Will wait until netting sorted.
Didn’t have the heart to pull out the couple of lettuce that were going to seed so nicely.
I didn’t know what this was until it flowered! So… chucking out random calendula seeds DID work!!
I think the feverfew needs a bit of a trim. The pathway is a bit tricky at the moment.
Excited to see that my borage self seeded… and lovely new flowers are appearing
How good is the rocket??
And last but not least… scratching about for dinner! Sadly one of the potatoes was glassy but the others were fine. Still a bit of time before I can bandicoot the official 2020 potato patch… Waiting waiting!! Hope you are all having a wonderful week!
It always feels nice when the lawns are done. It grows so quickly in spring.
Its the first day of December (how did that happen??) and its pouring with rain. The garden is getting a nice drink and I’ve made a half hearted attempt at some housework.
I actually did most of the mowing while Jeff followed behind with the whippersnipper tidying up the edges. Even with me pinching more of the yard with gardens, its still a big place to get around.
Our three Isa Browns were prize pests the whole time. They are not daunted by anything and I was afraid of minced chook or at the very least one of them being hit by flying debris!
The liliums have come out – this little patch just does its own thing. I had to pop some stakes and tie them back as they just were flopping all over the place with the recent wind
Going into the veggie patch – sprung!! Someone not supposed to be there!!
Pulled all the nets off so we could mow and edge properly
While the nets were off I took the opportunity to weed.
I also popped in a few more seeds where the rabbit ate some and from the lot that didn’t have a very good germination rate.
Snow peas hanging on
I wanted to take the covers off the zucchini and mulch but no point until netted because of the blackbirds and occasional naughty rabbit
Nice and easy with the rebar and polypipe
Snug, safe and sound (I hope) The newly planted tomatoes got a bit droopy… but have perked up well. I think a possum or rabbit nibbled a couple the other day!! Sigh. So I netted them as well
Beetroot going well… didn’t need too much weeding
Still a few garden plots out there that need sorting out!!
Rocket gone mad…
The blueberries in the duck yard garden were NOT looking happy. In hindsight we should have left the netting on. So I added more soil around the bases (pretty sure my darling chooks have been digging them up) and mulched with what was on hand (straw) and re netted.
Pretty dodgy hey?
It was an exercise and a half doing this by myself with a bunch of excitable chickens who were kicking the straw and dirt out as fast as I was trying to bring it in… I kept piffing the chooks over the fence and it took them about 40 seconds to run about and get back in!! Annoying but funny
Flossie Veloci finally removed from the blueberries. Not happy!
Back to digging up everything else!!
Also mulched the blueberries that are in the main patch
Popped some cookie cutters around the basil that the blackbirds insisted on digging up So far they are helping…
And in a feat of self restraint, I saved enough strawberries to make a couple of jars of jam!
Hope your weekend was awesome and your week has started well!! Cheers!
We put another rather large day in the garden today… those photos on hold until tomorrow These were from the day before yesterday.
I did some soil sieving of the soil I got from Sharons… It was heading to top up a plot for tomato plants so I wanted all the debris out
Saved!! No worm mincemeat…
There is something really pleasing and satisfying about this!!!
A couple of barrow loads of that and some home made compost and I was able to transplant some self seeded tomatoes into their new home.
The corn!! Finally got to the corn!
Weeding the ever persistent twitch And found these:
Honestly… how can you dig a patch a million times and STILL find stuff like this?? Those bolts aren’t small!!
Anyway, in goes the corn. And a good watering followed
Loving the potato patch and cant wait to be feasting daily on new potatoes again
On to the hothouse!
Seedlings need a home
These were some of the self seeded tomatoes that I planted in the new plot.
I really wanted my chillies in the soil
And I am retrying the luffa so I can use it in my soapmaking.
(I’ve left the snow peas in… they will die off as the luffa grow. I’ve also mixed in my compost to help them along.)
And then to tackle Tentacular!!
I didn’t prune him at the end of last season as the season went so long… now out of control! So I started hauling off vines and chopping into him. He was full of snails!! Also too much vine… the fruit was small so far and lots of branches stunted and squashed.
I’d taken out three massive armfuls of vines and ripping out some more when I see a black form slithering up into the last bit of the foliage left in the corner!!
TIGER SNAKE!!
Fan-bloody-tastic!! How long have I blithely been working with this creature??? With no gloves and dodgy shoes?? (Crocs haha)
Bring Jeff in to join the fun. Poking about with stick. Snakey keeping pretty quiet up there. My working speed dropped off considerably as I cut Tentacular back a lot more than intended.
I guess that explains the drop in the mouse population.
(Turns out its living in there. Saw it today through the plastic as I was mowing. Slithered off the table down and out the door and under the pallets in the wood pile area. It probably thinks its my buddy. I reckon its been there a good long while. Not too big (yet) less than a metre I’d say)
Sooo… we did a lot more cleaning up of debris and chopping stuff back
The side garden has gone from this (above) to this (below)
Of course with moving all the weeds etc the gates were open a bit so the opportunistic chooks had a lovely time escaping out of their end of the yard!
So… bit by bit we are getting through the yard and the gardens!! Have a lovely day everyone! Cheers
Hmmmm Seems I have an overload of gardening photos… might break everything up into a couple of posts so I don’t bore the socks off you all 🙂
So many things overdue to be done in the garden. Oh well… In the words of our beloved Ruby “Don’t break your heart over it”
Time for the raspberries to be weeded and netted etc
Already showing fruit so thats pretty positive!
Jeff mowed… got it all down pretty low
We weeded with expert chook help for as long as our aging backs would allow us. The buttercup has really gotten in and spread and its a nightmare to get out. The roots have octopus tentacles that hang on
We got a fair way through weeding… then got the netting back up. Good use for some of those macrocarpa scrap lengths of timber that were leftover from the guy doing the milling. They are holding the netting down pretty well.
Once I finish the weeding, I’ll give them a good feed and mulch them.
I’ve hooked up the bore again and been giving the whole area daily soakings. I didn’t realise how dry it has been.
Sigh. Another job adding to my list of unfinished jobs!!
Now that I netted the beetroot patch and stopped the birds digging it up, the beetroot have had a chance to pop up! I didn’t net the carrots since they were so small… I wish I had. I’ve lost about a third as I think it was a bunny that came in and nibbled most of the small tops off! Must replant. 🙁 Its also netted now.
The zucchini are really zooming along in size… even bigger than this today… I took these snaps two days ago. I don’t dare take their ice cream containers off at night yet… just in case. Will net this patch too.
And the garlic… swoon
The white garlic looks fabulous. No sign of the bulbs forming but in recent years, seems the last month or so is what makes the difference. Probably looking to harvest end of Dec at this rate or even January…
The purple garlic is really looking a but scrappy this year… but the bulbs are forming up nicely so it won’t be too bad.
And excitement reigns in the hothouse… tomatoes have started!!
The last of the snow peas I am letting dry out to save them for next season
The self seeded plants are coming up and thriving. I really don’t know why I bother mucking about trying to grow tomatoes from seed…
I wanted to top up the soil in here but lots of things are popping up everywhere!
Even a fancy lettuce! And tomatoes galore…
The pear tree has a really lovely lot of fruit forming. I think if I want the other trees down the back to do anything they need fencing off from the possums that have savaged our two young plums. So far the cherry trees look good, even a few cherries forming. Going to have to think of a defensive strategy for them soon.
Oh and the rocket. The beautiful lush rocket! Picked the first leaves for salads yesterday. So happy to have it again nice and young. It grows so fast!!
Anyway, tomorrow I will regale you of the surprise snake when I continue the gardening chronicles! Hope your week has started fantastically Cheers
Bit bummed I don’t have photos… so you are going to have to let your imaginations run wild.
Little Moo is gone. 🙁 He’s been gone a while. Before he left he really gave the rickety old fence between our properties a bit of a towelling. Its not a fence that I’d call secure for animals anyway.
So… next door got a sheep. A black sheep that sounds like what a sheep would sound like if it had smoked three packs a day. (Weird Baaaaa) Clearly lonely. Always comes and shouts at us when we are in the yard and tries to climb the fence. Is also a bit head-butty.
So, today we are working in the side garden by the paddock, trying to clear it out so it is not a snake haven.
You might be able to see the dodgy fence in the background.
Anyway, we are working away and sheep comes over to BAAAA at us huskily and get our attention. Jeff gives it attention as he can’t resist an animal. Its trying to head butt him and climbing its little cloven hooves onto the fence.
The inevitable happens… I turn around and there is Sheep IN MY GARDEN. Oh good. Its got horns too.
Jeff is posted to keep Sheep amused because A. I don’t want it eating and trampling my gardens. B. I don’t want it running onto the highway. C. I don’t fancy being head butted with those horns. So I trot (braless)(who wants to get dressed properly these days anyway?) up to the neighbours house to get them to come and fetch their sheep!
Only Granny is home. Oh, my son will be home about 4pm (chatter chatter)(I am edging away as I felt I should go back and help Jeff) I get the low down on the slightly dangerous sheep and to watch out for him as he has been head butting her son – who had to smack him with a plank once!!! She was in full Granny chit chat mode but I escaped, got back to the yard and couldn’t see Jeff… got a rope, was calling out, heard him but couldn’t see him! Ummm
Oh, thats because he was lying on the ground with the sheep pinned beneath him!!! Poor sheep very stressed and panting like a freight train (and kindly provided me with some sheep poo for the garden… clearly VERY stressed) We got a rope around him as safely as we could then using his horns as a steering wheel we’ve got him up and guided him down the back to the only place we could think he’d be safe and secure… the chicken coop!
We are in the coop but before releasing Mr Head Butt, I have to evict two chooks out of the coop. One no problems… she’d just have to find another place to pop out an egg… but the other one… more problematic. She is broody and super cranky and bitey. I used some shade cloth to get her out without being savaged too badly and we were finally able to get out of the pen and let Sheep calm down. I went back in to get the rope but he was fine with me. No butting.
Not long after that, son from next door arrives with collar and rope so I go down to help so now he can lead the (by this stage) the very unhappy sheep home. We explain about the fence – really they should have inspected the fences before putting more animals in there – so Sheep will go somewhere else.
We get up to the back door and Granny has arrived in her gumboots after walking down the highway ARMED WITH A LEAD PIPE!!!
She thought it might be needed for the dangerous sheep! Wide eyed I am looking at her saying “I think if you used that, you’d find yourselves having lamb chops before you were ready!!!” She’s quite sweet really but said she’s too old to be knocked about by boisterous animals. (I am totally dying by this point)
More chit chat and eventually Granny and her lead pipe equalizer trotted back up the highway to her house.
I think after that we really lost our motivation for weeding! Jeff had to head into town to pick some stuff up and I am like Wait!! Had to pick sheeps wool out of his goatee!! Not a good look haha
So… Was anybodys elses day more interesting?? Life… not often boring!
Hi! Just a quick note from me tonight. So behind in sorting photos!! Fiona and I got together yesterday morning (proper morning)(not a Lisa Morning) and went and did a long overdue loop of Anniversary Bay… What a gorgeous day. We saw a heap of animals (A bandicoot, wallaby, two snakes, black cockatoos, various lizards and best of all an echidna) Glorious weather!
We did huff and puff a bit since we are out of shape, but hey… still loved it!
Graduating from handfuls of strawberries to bowls. Have plans for these and the ones I got today to make a tiny batch of jam.
My sister Rosemary suggested a while back frying up sage leaves in butter with salt and pepper until crispy and stirring through pasta… Today I added oregano, parsley and the garlic scapes. I also added a bit of my fav. Japanese mayo, (Kewpie) and voila! Perfect side dish.
And a little bit of sky drama as I went out to lock the chooks up tonight! Tomorrow Jeff and I will make some plans to ‘do stuff’ haha He has about a month off work (yay!) which will take us up to and possibly past Christmas. The days are longer, the weather nicer so endless possibilities!
