Fine & dandy

We've been a-weeding all weekend, working hard to make room for new winter beds. But it hasn't all been give and no take - we've been rewarded with lots of good things to harvest from the soil. There have been delicious grass-grubs for the chooks to gorge on and for those of us without feathers, heaps and heaps of dandelion. Dandelion (from the French Dente-de-Leon, or lion's teeth) is such a fantastic plant. Its jaggedy leaves are good in salads and all other places you might like a fresh green, but its roots are very edible too and make a delicious "coffee". Of course calling a it a coffee substitute does no justice to the delicious sweet-and-earthy taste of a roasted dandelion root, so I prefer to think of it as a special evening-time beverage that can stand up on its own. And with the time it takes to prepare it actually was evening by the time we were supping on the stuff! But if you've got some dandy-roots and time spare, here's how you do it:

Step one: Identify your dandelions and dig them up. Dandelion is very often confused with cat's ear - a very similar looking plant which is also edible, so its not too much of a hoo-ha if you get them confused. Where dandelion has jaggedy leaves (lion's teeth remember), cat's ear has softer curved leaves with a pleasant furry feel. The flowers of both are almost identical, but dandelion's come up on a hollow russet coloured stem, while cat's ear flowers are on a thin, not-hollow, green one.

Step two: scrub off dandelion roots with a scourer as best you can. You won't get all the dirt off - just think of it as adding to the flavour!

Step three: Slice roots thinly and place on a baking sheet. Put them in the oven for 60 minutes on 50 degrees with the fan on, or in a dehydrator of your choice (the sun is a good one) until they start to pucker up.

Step four: Roast on 200 degrees for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Step five: Grind roots in a coffee/grain mill - the aim is not for a powder, but for a fine chunky meal, about the consistency of cous cous.

Step six: Re-roast roots for 5 minutes in a hot oven.

Step seven: Place 1.5 dessert spoons of roasted root mixture with 2 cups of water and bring to a simmer. Turn down the heat and cook for another 5 minutes. Strain and serve. This stuff is so good it even gets a little golden 'crema' on top, just like espresso coffee! A little honey accentuates the natural sweetness of dandelion root, and you can also add milk to taste.

Enjoy!

Little houses, on the hillside...

Old Italian workers cottage

We've been doing a lot of thinking about creating some sort of habitable place on our block lately. Our needs are not many and our aspirations are not lofty. The top prerequisites will be that it is a) warm b) dry and c) tiny. Yes, that's right, we want a tiny, tiny, tiny house. After working on the foundations for a huge mud-brick house as WWOOFers in NZ last year we're well aware of the effort (and blisters) involved in executing a Grand Design. We've also recently devoured this fabulous book and other local histories that describe the rough and ready early building techniques in the Gippsland area where bushfire was a very real risk and investing too much in your abode simply didn't make sense if it might just go up in cinders come summertime.
So small, and simple is where we're heading, which does sound weird to many locals who think of their home in terms of square meterage, matching colour schemes and double car garages.
On a recent trip to a farm nearby we were lucky enough to happen a most remarkable building which has further fuelled our imaginations. "Is that your old chook house?" Neil asked Ray, our host as we wandered past the cute little shelter.
"No," said Ray. "That's where the Italian workers used to live when this place grew spuds and peas."
Ray managed to rattle the old door open and give us a look inside. A tiny fireplace was discernable beyond the rabble of Ray's junk stuffed into the little room for storage. Ray pointed out where the bed would have been, and explained that the workers would eat meals up at the "big house" together with the family, and return to the tiny cottage to sleep at night. They certainly didn't hang out in it during the day, because they were too busy outside working, he explained. The cottage is over 100 years old and the tin used to build the roof still has stamps of the Queen's head on it, meaning it was bought out to Australia on "the ships" as Ray called them.
"They had everything you could need in there," Ray continued, somewhat proudly. "A warm fire, somewhere to sleep, a place to share food up the road."
And we couldn't agree more with him.

Foraged feast

bad apples!

N picking apples

We were pleased to notice that the roadsides around South Gippsland are dotted with ripening spots of red and gold from December through March. Wild plums come first, just on Christmas, then sprays of apples - literally in their hundreds - light up the roadside as summer turns into autumn. Well, said we: we aren't going to let them go to waste! And, so, a few weeks ago we picked a few bags full of apples, from two different trees to test. The first lot were good eating, crisp and sweet and just so right. But the second lot were dry, floury and pucker-your-mouth-up sour. Even the chooks turned their beaks up! But all was not lost because there is one thing sour apples are good for, and that is something very good: apple cider! We used this classic NZ recipe, and found that in the unseasonable March heat we've had in Australia, the fermentation went right off.

Bubbly apples!

Kiwi Apple Cider:

- 1.5kg of sour, wild apples- 5 litres water- 750g raw sugar- juice & zest of 2 large lemons

Wash and chop apples (cores and all) and blend in a food processor until they're blitzed into tiny pieces. Place apple pulp and water in a large crock (we use a Harsch crock), and cover with a tea-towel. Stir with a sterile long-armed spoon (we use a brewers spoon). Leave the mixture for a week, stirring once in the morning and once a night with your sterilised implement. It will get bubbly and smell amazing. After a week, strain the apple pulp mix through a clean tea towel (squeeze out all the apple goodness!), and return the strained juice to the crock with sugar and lemon juice/zest. Stir well. Leave to ferment for another 48 hours (enough time to make a batch of rhubarb fizz if you're so inclined!) Using a funnel pour mixture into cleaned PET soft drink bottles. Don't do what we did and bottle them in glass bottles. That is a recipe for disaster, as we can tell you, after half of our first batch exploded in the kitchen last week (luckily we weren't in the kitchen at the time!)

Tastes so good it must be wrong...

nom nom nom

take that you blackguards!

Here at Rumpty D. we are in the midst of a sinful blackberry glut. All the tell-tale signs are there - pink stained fingers, scratches & tears in all the right places. While we were somewhat horrified to find that parts of the creek bed are home to thickets of Rubus Fruticosis (in part conjured by bad Wwoofing memories that include the plant in question and a goat) we have decided to stay positive and focus on the fact that blackberries are delicious. And in a way, what plant rewards you for so little work with so much yumminess? While it would be unpleasant if R. Fruticosis spread much further than the bounds of their current stronghold, would it be so bad if we spent a day each summer grubbing out the new shoots and taking our fill of berries, thought we? It seems blackberries hold a special dark cavern in the depths of every committed organic gardener's heart. They are the one plant it seems people are willing to do the S word for - that is - spray. The CSIRO's information page on blackberry makes for grim reading too - the plant infests approximately 8.8 million hectares of temperate Australia - an area larger than Tasmania. So it was with heavy hearts that we set to work with our grubbers today, taking a good chunk out of the blackberries, and a large hunk of berry goodness back in our bellies (and buckets). It will take us many years of vigilant grubbing (and perhaps even a goat or two) before we'll see the back of the blackberry, but the spoils in berry terms should at least make it worth it!

Summer time ... and fermenting is easy!

finally fermented fizz!

Our kitchen has been a veritable hot-bed of bubbling fermentation bliss the last few weeks. And that's because summer is the perfect time to start growing some serious bacteria! The weather, humidity and glut of public holidays are all very conducive to making ferments, so if you've never tried your hand at preserving food with the power of bacteria, there is no better time.
We've had milk kefir, water kefir, sourdough and (my favourite) rhubarb fizz on the go... and I have to admit I absolutely adore coming home to a warm house full of the heady scents of yeasty fermentation!
Rhubarb fizz has been particularly popular due to the warmer days - a not-too-sweet soda pop with a musky rhubarb flavour - and who could go past the fact that it turns out prettiest pink? We've been making it is small batches because it ferments quickly and if you leave it too long it will keep right on fermenting to the point where it has been known to explode!

fizz, ready to ferment!

Rhubarb Fizz

You will need...

2 fat stalks rhubarb
1 cup raw sugar
2.25 litres water
1 lemon
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
5 grolsch bottles

Method...

Chop rhubarb and lemon (peel and all!) into rough chunks. Place in a large, sterilised liddable pot or basin with all other ingredients. Stir a few times, cover with lid and leave to soak for 48 hours. Strain the mixture using a sieve, and fill sterilised bottles, leaving a 4cm gap at the top of each bottle.
Store bottles at room temperature for 4 days. Its now ready to drink - but don't wait too long to polish your batch off because this stuff gets fizzier daily and bottles have been known to explode.

Death & the Maiden

Valentines day is coming up soon and nothing quite says "I love you" like a giant scythe for cutting hay. I got one for N as an early valentines/late chrissy gift and just as well too because for the last month or so we've been stuck with a big paddock full of shoulder-high grass that has set our nerves on edge with thoughts of snakes and grassfires every time we set foot there.

N has set to work studying up on scything techniques on Youtube (I can highly recommend: braid-haired topless Austrian men cutting their way through fields of hay anyone?) In buying the implement it had been my great hope that the years N has devoted to perfecting his golf swing would mean he is quite the dab hand with the scyther, and after much cursing he did come good and "find" his technique. In fact he almost got through an acre of grass before the farmer next door thought he'd help us out and cut the grass for us with his tractor while we were away! Oh well - it'll have to be next year that our dreams of hand-cut hay are realised, and in the mean time there is plenty of blackberry to get our hands stuck into, rather literally.

If you'd like to buy a scythe your true love too then I can say that we bought ours from here.

So here it is...

So here it is. Our new paddock. And our first post on this blog, Rumpty Doo, where we hope to chronicle our adventures as newly signed up members of the agricultural set.

A few people have been asking us lately why it is that we have decided to make the move to the country. And that is a good question, to which there are many, many answers. But here's just a few:

Firstly, we wanted to give ourselves an occupation with meaning - namely, feeding ourselves and others. And we wanted the space to do all the other things that we enjoy – making gadgets, growing things, pickling things and generally making a wonderful mess.

Secondly, we recently Wwoofed round New Zealand and were enamoured with their culture of regionalisation – where thriving country towns are the norm and most people don't live in the big smoke. It seems much more sensible to us – we see big cities like Melbourne growing so fast and the implications for long term sustainability of this way of living is something that keeps us awake at night.

And thirdly, of course, Neil wanted a shed.

So, if you think that sounds like fun then this will be the place we post our projects & adventures: low-tech gadgets, chicken escapades, garden stuff and many recipes for things that are pickled.

We hope you stay in touch, follow the blog, come and stay...

But right now, we've got some packing to do - the hills await!