Water....always an issue

I know I have touched briefly on the subject of water before, but thought I would share a little more.
When we first bought the property back in 2003(Wow that time has flown) the only water we had was supplied by a couple of  metal tanks that collected the water off the house and  various out buildings. This just wasn"t enough to supply the needs of the house, garden and livestock, so we had to do something fairly quickly.
There had been an existing dam which at some time in the past had held water, it  now leaked badly and had become overgrown with pine trees and grass.

We talked to a few  people  who suggested it may be worth having the dam dug out  so we hired a  fellow to come and do that.

Unfortunately this didn't work as it then leaked like a sieve and was totally useless.
We made the decision to then use it as a rubbish tip as we demolished  and cleaned up the property we pushed and pulled all the  "stuff" into that big hole.

When  we had  filled it with all the rubbish, we then had our man come back with the bulldozer and fill it all in. It totally changed the look of that area . We suddenly had a much nice view to the west and a usable small paddock for our sheep(still no water but at least  grass.)

The previous owners  had also installed  an old above ground swimming pool to collect excess water and it probably was  also used for leisure during the hot  dry summer months as well by their children..As well as this storage, we had a smaller metal tank at the side of the house which collected  water off the house.We arrived up at the farm one day to find it had burst(it was old and rusty) and  we had lost 10,000 litres of water.

We removed  both lots of old rusty metal (and added it to the previous temporary rubbish hole) .

This left us a nice level platform to place a new  plastic  water tank (these are  special food grade for household water storage.) We ordered it through the local rural supplier and he delivered it out to our farm.

This tank holds 22,000 litres of water, which is collected off the roof of our house only and we then transfer it by  petrol pump up to  another storage tank behind the house .

Slowly as we have saved our money, we have  replaced  more of the antiquated water storage that was on the property. We then decided to sink our bore hole, which had to drill down 300ft to strike water , added all new  underground piping from the bore  to right up high behind  the house, where we got our bulldozer man back to push out a level pad for us to put another tank or two in time..

Brian added some nice compactable red dirt which we "borrowed " from an old quarry  down the road., He then laid these three thick sheets of  black rubber material to cusion the bottom of the tank from any small sharp stones that may be there.

Our same friendly rural supplier then  came with another tank, larger this time 27,000 litres.

Brian then did the connections to the old existing tank,virtually doubling our storage.(as the old one expires we will then twin the newer one as we can afford to ).

This photo shows the tanks. The  far left tank is our existing older metal rain water storage, the middle the newer plastic one (both these hold now the rainwater collected off  the  house and out buildings, and is then gravity fed back in the house. The green tank is what we pump the bore water up into and also then gravity feed back onto gardens. The system seems to work well but is  labour intensive with Brian having to lug pumps around a lot of the time. When we save a bit more money  we intend to set up a solar bore and a few electric pumps to ease the work load and have  the water supply a little more dependable and easier to work with .
There has been a lot of work and expense, but everything we do now is one less thing to do further  down the track.
Water will always be a priority, and without it we or anything else will cease to exist, so we value it greatly.
So until we meet again,
Cheers  to everyone,
Jane .

Cuppa Anyone ?.

Every year in a small  old town  about half an hour from where we live on the coast they hold a Tea Pot Festival.
I went to it many years ago with my lovely neighbour Rita and her daughter , sadly since then Rita has passed away, so her daughter and I make the pilgrimage every year up to the festival.
I thought I would show you a few of the displays of the weird,wacky and also some very beautiful tea pots and related bits and pieces.

The tea pots vary from the traditional, to the quirky to the totally ridiculous, but we have a lovely day wandering around the place. This was the first year that I have ever taken my camera to take some photos.They have many,many more than what i have  photographed, with beautiful traditional pots and sets as well. There  is something  to interest most people.

Morpeth, the town where the festival is held,dates back many years  and is on the hunter River and steam boats  in years gone by used to service the township to the coastal port of Newcastle.. There is a lot of history in the town, beautiful old buildings and a very good  town association which keeps events like these running every year. They do a tremendous job.
My companion  and I make the  day out so much more than the tea pots, we always have a lovely morning tea and then follow it up later with a nice lunch somewhere.

The  two  tea pot sets above  have a distinctive Australian flavour with tradittional  aboriginal designs on them.Every year there is also a Tea Pot  Cosie competition, and they always have many weird and quirky designs among them.

This year they had a Golly display, they are either loved or disliked, but I decided to include them as they were there on the day.

They also had a display of early Australian electric Jugs(Kettles), they have become quite a collectors item these days and can fetch a good price.

Something I also found   hanging around was  a lot of wind chimes made from old,pots, and milk jugs and sugar bowls ect, they were quite effective, or at least I thought they were.

This painted cow was there too, so thought I would pop him in just for fun.

We have a fun day up at Morpeth tea pot festival  each year, and hope to keep going  for many years to come. It will be a good excuse for me to head back down this way each year to keep up the tradition.
So on that note, I may just put the kettle on and make myself a cuppa,
So until next time,
Cheers,
Jane

Rosemary drying

We grow a fair bit of Rosemary at the farm, mainly because it's one plant that survives the long periods that we are away without water, and it stays green all year round  and then produces lovely blue flowers for us,and gives us a herb that we use  constantly in the kitchen cooking our lamb.
We chose the "Tuscan Blue " variety  an upright ,hardy vigorous grower and it has done just that.We have to prune it regularly to keep it at a good and attractive height.

We have several areas in which we have planted  them.
We pruned this one  back about  two months ago and hung all the chopped off stems in an old curtain  up in the shed which remains  fairly dark and cool when we arn't there.

When we returned to the farm the next time   and checked it , it was all crunchy and dry , so I brought it inside to the kitchen and stripped of all the dried leaves....It made quite a mess as I am  really not a tidy or neat food preparer.

I ended up with  4 quarts of  dried leaves,loosely packed.
My husband reckoned  it was too coarse so he suggested that we blitz them in the processor, but I didn't have that up at the farm , so just gave them a hit with the stick blender to chop them up a bit finer.

I then placed the rosemary into 3 pint and 1 half pint Pre- washed  jars on a tray in the cold  oven and heated the jars and contents until the thermostat reached 200 Degrees Celsius, and then maintained that for about 10-15 minutes.

While the jars were heating in the oven, I simmered the jar lids in some water for a couple of minutes and when the rosemary was done, a jar at a time, dried the lids and sealed the jars with lids and rings to finger tight, and waited for them to ping, which they all did quite quickly.

I only had 2 pints  and a half pint left when I took the photos as I passed on one to my next door neighbour. We tend to swap and share a bit of everything we do.
This rosemary will keep us going for ages, as well as having the fresh.We often use the long rosemary  sprigs to skewer fish and chicken for BBQ's and just put sprigs on the BBQ when we are grilling our multitude of lamb chops.(We really do eat a lot of lamb!)
We also grow a fair bit of lavender as it is easy and hardy.
Next year once we relocate I hope to grow many more herbs and dry and store them, they are just so handy to have in the cupboard. One in particular is mint as I want to make mint sauce and jelly, and I also will grow,coriander, Italian parsley and basil,as they are the main  staple herbs that I use in cooking and salads.
We are having extreme heat here at the moment, for this time of year, we reached 38 Deg C (about 100 deg F) yesterday and we are told will be about the same today.(not bad for the middle of Spring) I hate to imagine what summer will bring this year.
So think I will hibernate this week until the cool change they are predicting hits us later in the week.
So cheers to everyone until we meet again,
Stay cool,
Jane.

A bits and pieces week

We have had a busy week or so up at the farm, for once i am actually posting from the farm as the satelite service seems to be running extremely well for once. We will have to revise this service once we live here permanently.We have been watering constantly as it is so dry here at the moment, It has been a dry winter and the farm is looking pretty bare.When we want to water the lawn or gardens, Brian has to start up a big generator up the back which pumps the water up from our underground bore which is 300 foot below the ground. We can only do this for 10 minutes every hour, as we pump it dry. Once we live here we will install a solar pump which will eliminate the need for the big generator and it will be a constant but slower flow of water.
We are babysitting our daughters black lab  Josie, she is a cutie, Brian takes her for walks all over the property with our old blue cattle dog Tilly, but as soon as they return Josie always dives straight into the stock troughs and cools down, she is such a cutie.

Because the place is so dry, we had to reduce our sheep numbers drastically, so while we have been here this time we have butchered 5 sheep. Two were extremely old, so we decided to butcher them and completely bone out the meat and can up to  feed to the dogs as their  nightly feed. They absolutely love it.

We ended up with  approx. 38 pints of dog meat, we also did a canner load of lamb for our own consumption and a load of rump that we had bought cheap, as it wasn't a full load we topped up the canner with  some pints of  4 bean mix,( so easy, just a half cup of dried beans in a pint, fill with water  to within an inch of top, seal, and process the same time as meat) Brilliant for salads or to pop in soups and stews or to do refried beans.

With the bones from the  two old sheep we boned out I decided to also make some lamb stock. I had saved a pile of celery tops and had a few scraggy carrots that needed using up, and we have a tub full of spring onions growing out back, so used all those in the process. We ended up with a lovely rich stock, which i set overnight in the fridge to remove any fat and we managed to get 13 quarts to be canned.

The pantry has been well stocked this visit, I have done, rhubarb,meat for us,meat for dogs, lamb stock,olives, chick peas and 4 bean mix.

While we were here we took a trip to Dubbo the other day to meat up with one of our daughters and to see my mum, who was still recovering from foot surgery. While we were in Dubbo my Mum had a nasty fall and had to spend the afternoon in casualty. below is my husband and myself with our beautiful Grand daughter Claudia  and the other is a wonderful four generations photo taken about an hour before my mum ended up back at the hospital.

We had a lovely visit, even though it was a bad day in other ways. we will be seeing my mum again  this weekend to celebrate her 89th birthday, and to attend a dinner with her  which is an annual event to celebrate her being nominated and receiving an  OAM (The Order of Australia Medal) two years ago, for 50 years of service to the returned servicemans  organization (The RSL). We  were and are very proud of her.
So until we meet again, cheers from this hot and windy farm in Aus.
Jane.

Our Beautiful Ruby Rhubarb.

I have been a bit slack on the posts but with good reason.
Around the middle of September my elderly mum was admitted to hospital. She had woken up on the Sunday morning and the skin had literally fallen off the sole of her foot. (she is a diabetic and has no sensation in that leg). After several days  the doctors decided to air lift her to a major city hospital where they placed a stent in her leg  to aid circulation  and unfortunately ended up removeing all the toes on her right foot. She has now recovered well and is walking  again well,until the day before yesterday when she took a tumble getting into  the car after a doctors visit and has now broken her pubic bone. Thankgod no surgery required just  rest and pain killers.
Mum will be 89 on the weekend and all the family are gathering to celebrate.
So  with all the happenings we haven't been at the farm much. We have been here for the last week and have been really busy, and instead of one big blog encompassing everything I will break it up into smaller  stories.
When we  left the farm the last time nearly 2 months ago we  couldn't remember if we had left the watering system on the rhubarb bed or not, and if we hadn't would probably have lost the lot,so we were indeed pleased to arrive and find  the rhubarb bed green and lush and in need of picking.

We were  lucky to pick a huge bunch, our neighbours informed us that they too had been picking in our absence( an arrangement we have) and after removing all the leaves were left with quite a bit so i decided that i would preserve it  into jars.

I cut it up into roughly 1 inch sized pieces and put into a large stock pot with   about 2 cups of water and two cups of sugar. I then cooked over low heat until the rhubarb starts to breakdown, stirring and watching regularly to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot which it is  apt to do.

After it has reached the right consistency I then  fill my pre-prepared jars,  and place  lids on that have been simmered in hot water, and place rings on finger tight.

I then placed them into my electric water bath canner, and covered with  about two inches of water, which we were using outside hooked up   to a generator so not to drain our household battery system and brought them to a boil and water bathed for 15 minutes.

After  boiling for the required 15 minutes, I then turned off the canner, removed the lid and let the jars sit for about  5 minutes.I then removed the jars , and placed on a towel on my kitchen table and let  sit overnight. Next morning, I removed the rings, checked seals were intact , washed the jars  and rings, stored the rings away for future use, labeled the jars and stored in the pantry for lots and lots of future yummy pies, crumbles ,cakes,slices and other lucious desserts.

 So, do I recommend growing and canning rhubarb....you bet I do, !!!
We also canned chick peas this week, but that's another little story.
So until we meet again, cheers,
Jane from Aus.