I live in sunny Napier/Ahuriri, Aotearoa/New Zealand. I write about day to day life and occasionally, write speculative fiction.
My stories are reflective, character-focused, and richly detailed, exploring the nuances of memory, curiosity, and the subtle wonders within everyday life.
On the branch so high,
A grey sparrow and her mate
Flutter, joined as one.
Mating house sparrows are everywhere, this summer.
Chattering in twos and threes on the guttering of the house, romping on the grass, sipping tepid water from the bird bath, dusting themselves in small leafy hollows under the feijoa trees, dangling (joined) from slim, twiggy branches, coupling in flight (just about!).
At around 6.30 am, the tui announces the imminent dawn. This wakes up the sparrows, which then start up a loud chirruping and whistling chorus in surround-sound. The only direction the sound doesn’t seem to come from is under the house.
Do we have a sparrow problem? Perhaps, but I can’t be cross with these small grey bundles of feathers, as they are so endearing.
Sparrows eating corn
The sparrows are almost as well-trained as our hens. They fly in from all directions when the hens are called for wheat or a cob of corn, and they’ll fly down to the pellet feeder when one of the hens puts her foot on it to open the lid. Sometimes they fly out from the feeder when we’ve opened the lid to check on food levels. And we once found a dead sparrow in the feeder – a young one.
They also help out with keeping control of the caterpillars and grubs. A green caterpillar wriggling in a sparrow’s beak is a common sight – the avian equivalent of a pizza delivery. Fast food, but not fast enough!
Male house sparrow
House Sparrows were liberated in New Zealand in the 1860s and soon inhabited most localities apart from forests and mountain ranges. Moon, Lynette, Know Your New Zealand… Birds (2006), New Holland Publishers (NZ) Ltd.
Kawakawa Tea
Kawakawa growing in our garden
I decided to try kawakawa tea this afternoon. I picked a handful of kawakawa (Macropiper excelsum) leaves and simmered them for 10 minutes in enough water to make two cups.
The holes in the leaves are made by the caterpillar of the kawakawa looper moth(Cleora scriptaria) and interestingly, the leaves with holes are especially suitable for tea as they have the most concentrated medicinal properties.
Left to right: kawakawa leaves, kawakawa tea
The resulting tea was surprisingly enjoyable. I’m not really a herbal tea person, but the flavour was very refreshing and hard to define. The aroma of the hot tea was especially tempting, too.
Project for the future: Make a batch of soap using strong kawakawa tea.
Last Wednesday was a very warm day at South Head, becoming unbearably hot as the day progressed. After work at 1.00 pm I went outside to check on the state of the garden but didn’t last in the heat for long. I had taken some fresh water and a cup of pullet food to the new Orpingtons and then made my usual rounds.
Overgrown zucchinis, hiding in the vege patch
It clearly doesn’t pay to leave zucchinis unchecked for more than a couple of days as I found some monsters vying for space under one of the plants. When I brought them inside I discovered that the two largest weighed 1600 and 1200 grams respectively.
Sauteed zucchini with fresh ricotta
I am definitely getting to the stage of being ‘over’ zucchinis! We have pickled, grated, fried, sauteed and stuffed them. We’ve covered them in garlic, crispy sage, tomatoes, mushrooms, vinegars and spices. I’m getting fussy now and am loath to use them once they’ve grown too fat.
Zucchini Pickle
However, having said this, I did come across a really good zucchini pickle recipe which required 1 kg of diced zucchini. I made a batch on Sunday, as I also had some more gherkins to pickle. The other ingredients are chopped onions, turmeric, white vinegar, sugar, water and celery seeds and the result was a particularly yummy, sweet pickle, not unlike a sweet gherkin pickle, but (dare I say it) better.
I’ll definitely make this again and will type up the recipe at some point.
Freshly-picked peas
It’s great that our peas are have been coming along nicely, despite the paucity of rain. We’ve had two meals from them so far this week, and (of course) have eaten quite a few straight from the vine. That’s the only trouble with peas – having to resist the temptation to eat them straight from the plant – if you want to have enough left for a meal.
I’m glad now that I sowed another row a couple of weeks back.
Sparrow Zone
Sparrow Riviera in late Winter
Talking of surpluses, we had named the long edge of the garage roof closest to the house ‘Sparrow Riviera’ as there are always so many sparrow families nesting there. From just before dawn until well beyond dusk, the sound of sparrows going about their daily life is a constant. They seem to be continually building new nests and raising new batches of babies.
Baby sparrows peeping out from under the roof
The young ones are learning to fly at the moment and have amused us with their antics. We know that if we see a fledgling flying towards us, we need to move aside or duck, as they haven’t quite honed up their skills sufficiently to avoid an unexpected obstacle. They fly into windows and fall to the grass, temporarily stunned, or chirp plaintively from the roof, hoping a parent will come by and feed them.
Molly snoozing in the living room
If Molly has caught any of these new flyers, she must have devoured them completely as we haven’t seen any partially-eaten bodies.
Beetles and Moths
I’m always on the look-out for new bugs to identify.
Burnt pine longhorn beetle
Last Tuesday evening, when I went to take note of the solar power readings (I keep them on a spread-sheet) there was a Burnt Pine Longhorn Beetle (Arhopalus ferus) sitting on our back porch.
Left to right: Apple Looper moth; Cabbage Tree moth
I’ve also managed to photograph a couple of different moths – the tiny (15 mm wing-span) Apple Looper Moth(Phrissogonus laticostatus) and the endemic Cabbage Tree moth (Epiphryne verriculata)
Coffee Soap
For some time I’ve been meaning to mix up a new batch of soap. In particular, some soap suitable for our vegans. I finally found the time to doing this on Sunday.
I had already decided to try a Coffee Soap recipe that I’d come across thanks to being on David Fisher’s Candle and Soap-making mailing list. It seemed like this would be a nice change from the usual scented soaps I’ve experimented with, and I’d also read that coffee-scented soap was useful for cooks, as it helped remove the odours of garlic and fish.
Soap isn’t that difficult to make and and can either be made traditionally, using different fats (i.e. beef or mutton), or by using vegetable oils. The only ingredient you need to take care with when making soap, is lye, as this can be a very volatile and dangerous item to work with. Special attention must be paid when adding the lye to the water, and one should always don protective glasses and gloves, and work in an area with good air circulation. Lye is critical for soap making and soap cannot be made without it. It reacts with the oils to form soap and glycerin.
Left to right: Spicy Mandarin soap; Lemon Grass/Kaffir Lime soap
Soaps I’ve made in the past are rosemary, cranberry/oatmeal, lavender, spicy mandarin and lemon grass/kaffir lime. One batch makes quite a few individual soaps so I tend not to make soap too often.
Home-made soap has no preservatives and supposedly doesn’t last as long as commercial soaps, but some of our soaps are around 2-years old and still haven’t deteriorated noticeably. I keep them in a dark drawer.
Basic Soap-Making Process
The soap-making process involves the careful measuring of the proportions of all the ingredients. My basic vegan soap recipe includes water, canola oil, caster oil, olive oil, coconut oil and lye. There are very good calculators online that help you work out the exact proportion of lye to use, based on the fats/oils in your recipe.
Left to Right: Strong fresh coffee; Lye and coffee solution; Melted oils
The powdered lye is added carefully to the cold water (in this case to the coffee). Adding lye to water causes a chemical reaction that generates a great deal of heat, so this has to then cool down. Care must be taken not to inhale any fumes, too, and to avoid being burnt by the lye or the lye/water mixture.
While the lye/water mixture is cooling down, the oils are brought to within the 10 degrees of the same heat – you are aiming for between 90 and 110 F for both mixtures. Once they have reached this range, the lye/water mixture can be carefully stirred into the oils.
Left to Right: Coffee/Lye solution added to the oils; Mixture at trace consistency
The next step involves using a stick blender to stir the mixture until it reaches a thin pudding or gravy-like consistency (known as having ‘traced’). When it’s ready, the drippings will leave a pattern on the surface if you lift the blender out of the mixture. You could also use a whisk or a regular egg-beater, but thank goodness for technology as this would take ages!
Left to right: Soap poured into muffin tray; Finished soaps
I’ve been using a muffin tray as a soap mould as it’s easy to pop them out once they have set. Soaps made using this method have to be left for two days, after which they should be ready for turning out of their moulds or cutting into blocks, etc. The finished product should then be left to ‘cure’ for 3-4 weeks before use.
Hen Update
The four new pullets have settled in well. We are thinking of opening the ‘door’ between the two parts of the run in about a week’s time.
Our red shavers are as mischievous as ever. They will slip inside the back door if we leave it open, making straight for Molly’s cat-food or milk. Once caught, they will meekly let us carry them back outside. Lottie and Lulu are the most common culprits.
Actually, it can be very annoying. Imagine a hot day with all the doors and windows open – I’ll be working away at some project and will hear the ‘tap, tap, tap’ of beak on plate, and will have to stop what I’m doing to chase the little biddy out.
Life has been busy over the past week or so. We have saved a nest of hatchlings (of the avian kind), we have purchased some black and white Orpington pullets, I have made a batch of feta cheese and we have discovered that the nearby lake is beautifully clear and warm for swimming in.
Baby Sparrows
It hadn’t been a particularly windy day but towards sunset last Wednesday, Ben discovered a rotund, bushy shape bathed in late afternoon light, lying on the grass beneath the Golden Totara. He picked it up to investigate and heard a faint ‘peeping’ coming from inside. Ben hasn’t always been too keen on birds, but has become more accustomed to them since we’ve had our own hens. However, he was holding the nest very gingerly when he brought it inside for me to check the contents.
My first view inside the nest.
The nest was deep with a small opening at the top, so I had to part this and open the nest out a bit before I could see anything. Inside, there were at least two yellow beaks in a tangle of soft grey baby-bird body parts – sparrow hatchlings. I could count three little ones, with a possible fourth.
I’d raised a hatchling to almost adulthood once before when I was 10 or 11 (with an unfortunate outcome associated with our pet cat), but these were very young babies, with not even the first tufts of feathers showing on their smooth little bodies, so I felt somewhat daunted at the prospect.
There is a good deal of advice on the internet about what to do with baby birds, including the advice that where possible, one should try to put the nest back in the tree, as the parents would invariably still be around, wondering where their little ones were. Apparently birds don’t have very strong sense of smell, so the fact that I’d touched the nest and poked around with the opening wouldn’t deter them from continuing to feed their babies.
With this in mind, Ben and I took the nest outside in the gathering dusk to where he’d found it, and looked up into the tall branches of the totara. It didn’t look promising. The stronger branches were positioned too far up the tree for us to be able to reach them, even with a ladder. And we couldn’t think of any way to attach the nest to the nearest branch, even if we could reach it. So, it was back to the drawing board.
A tiny sparrow chick in my hand
I mixed up some boiled egg yolk with a little milk (a recipe I’d found on the internet) and fed each chick in turn using a pipette. We could see now that there were four babies. One looked very poorly and could hardly open its mouth, but the other three were perky and squeaked and squawked with surprising loudness once I started to feed them. The two loudest jostled around trampling on their quieter siblings.
A fortuitous phone call from my daughter Immi reminded me that the Bird Rescue Centre, in Green Bay, Auckland, would take and raise these little orphans for us. She had rescued a young rock pigeon a few weeks back and had taken it there.
Founded in 1984, the NZ Bird Rescue Charitable Trust has bird rescue centres all over New Zealand, and will accept and care for any rescued birds, whether they are native, non-native or pet. They assist thousands of birds each year, many being the victims of cat attacks, road accidents, pollution (such as fishing line and nylon entanglements and botulism) or human cruelty. So we decided to think about taking the wee ones there. The centre is about 84 km from where we live, and Ben would have to divert to Green Bay on the way to work in Auckland the next day.
In the end, this is what happened. When I fed the chicks their last ‘meal’ for the night, the sickly one had died, which made me realise how difficult it would be to raise the remaining three successfully. Even if we did manage to get them to fledgling stage, there was the question of how to avoid them becoming too familiar with humans, and the fact that we have our cat, Molly… it just didn’t seem worth the risk.
Hens
On Saturday, we took a return trip of almost 400 km to collect four new pullets. Our current three hens (Leila, Lottie and Lulu) are Red Shavers, which are a relatively recent breed (related to Rhode Island Reds). In New Zealand, the red shaver is the breed that is predominately used in battery hen farming and they are the easiest hens to find if you wish to purchase point-of-lay hens for your farm or smaller property.
Since introducing the red shavers to our family, I’d become interested in adding to our small clutch with one of the older, more traditional breeds. We decided on Orpingtons as (1) I wanted a breed that would lay white eggs to go with the brown eggs the red shavers produce, and (2) everything we read about Orpingtons mentions their docile nature and the fact that they make good good pets. They also look very cute. This breed is raised for eating as well as for their eggs, (but we would never consider eating our own hens!).
So we purchased two black and two white Orpingtons, as well as 20 kg of pullet food and brought them back to South Head.
Earlier in the day Ben had assembled our smaller hen-house and separated this from the other part of the run with a wire-netting fence. It was a very hot drive back home and we were worried about the babies’ state of health, but they survived the trip okay and at around 5.00 pm we introduced them to their new home.
Our new white Orpington pullets
There appears to be quite a difference in age between the two whites and the two blacks. The white pullets have long legs and are much taller, with a slimmed-down body. They’ve also been in a group of hens that have pecked each other, and one in particular has quite a few feathers missing and bare, raw patches.
The new black Orpington pullets
The two little dark pullets are like balls of fluff, with shorter, stumpier legs (in proportion) and a mop of black feathers with glints of iridescence. It would be so easy to love these two the best as they look so much cuter, but I’m sure I’ll love them all equally when they grow to the same size.
I don’t think these little chickens had ever been in an area with trees, shrubs, weeds, grasses and dry leaves, before. The little black girls immediately took to scratching around in the leaf mulch, peeping away happily. The white ones are a little more proprietorial – they seem to be looking out and about a lot, and are more aware of our older girls in the next door ‘pen’.
I was happy to see one of the white hens taking a dust bath yesterday. Happiness turned to horror when when the second white pullet started pecking quite hard at the bare patches at the base of the first one’s tail. This behaviour seemed to persist, so we separated the protagonist into the other side of the run, and shut the door so that Leila, Lottie and Lulu couldn’t come back in.
Ben purchased some Stockholm Tar on the way home from work today, and has applied this to the bare patches on the two white pullets to hopefully deter future pecking. The tar provides a healing coating on the skin and if the other bird pecks her again, she will get the tar stuck on her beak which will distract her from pecking her again – instead she’ll have to spend time trying to clean the tar off her own beak. Let’s hope it works!
Cheese Diary
Just to keep up with things on the cheese-making front, I made my first batch of cow’s milk feta cheese yesterday. On Saturday, we had purchased another 4 litres of fresh cow’s milk from the farm in Helensville, after which I pasteurised it and used it to make the cheese.
The feta curds after being cut up in the pan
I had a problem with finding moulds to rest the cheese in, once the curd had been cut up, then had the bright idea of using the basket from our lettuce spinner, as well as the small ricotta mould I already had. This is why my cheese pieces comprise of one little round cheese, and four ‘quarters’ of a larger round.
Feta cheese after it had rested overnight
After the curds had set and been transferred to a mould, I rested them overnight, and then added them to a 10-15% solution brine this afternoon. The 4 litres of milk produced 1089 grams of cheese.
The pieces have been sealed in an air-tight container in the brine and placed in the fridge. They will stay there for at least 10 days to mature. Ideally we should resist the temptation to eat the cheese until 21 days have passed, after which we can cube and store into jars of olive oil or (of course) eat. Full maturity will occur after 4 – 6 weeks.
We tasted a tiny sample tonight and it already tastes very good.
I also finished salting my Ricotta Salata, today, and this can now be stored in the fridge for at least 2 weeks, to mature.
Lake Ototoa
Lake Ototoa, South Head
Lake Ototoa is a dune lake, the correct Maori name for which being Lake Rototoa. According to the NZ Department of Conservation, it is the largest, most pristine freshwater lake in the Auckland region. The lake covers around 110 hectares and has a catchment of approximately 525 hectares. At 29 metres deep, it is also the deepest. Unfortunately, due to the introduction of exotic fish and weeds, the lake is now beginning to suffer.
A tui feeding on harakeke flowers
It differs from most other dune lakes in that it is formed by a depression in rock, rather than by the trapping of water behind sand dunes formed adjacent to the West coast. It is rich in local flora and fauna.
Lake Rototoa is situated about 6 km from where we live. The lake supplies water to many of the properties in the area, including our own. Ben and I had visited it a few times since we moved to South Head, and although we had heard you could swim there, we hadn’t really investigated this.
Yesterday we decided to take a walk along the pathway that leads around the left of the lake from the road. The path is narrow and follows the contours of the lake edge. At times it is a little steep and there is prickly wild gorse to contend with, but it’s not a difficult walk. As well, it was calm and overcast, and warm enough to make the water look increasingly inviting.
First swim in Lake Rototoa
When we came upon a small sandy crescent of a beach, we knew we’d have to hop in. The water has a sandy, silty bottom and after about 10 metres, drops sharply.
The water was warm and very clear. There were a few other people on the water – swimming and kayaking at a bay a little further along. The noise of loud laughing and splashing affected the beauty of the scene somewhat, but we could see that if it wasn’t the weekend, it would be the most beautiful place to spend a few hours on a hot summer’s afternoon.
It’s radiantly sunny again today, but we did have a couple of hours of rain for part of Sunday. It fell heavily which was a welcome boost to our water tank, as well as providing much needed moisture to the various gardens.
Left to Right: Plum Chutney, Corn Relish (Southern), Beetroot Chutney, Cilantro Corn Relish, Plum Sauce, Pickled Gherkins, Pickled Zucchini
I was very busy preserving more surplus food over the weekend, including beetroot, zucchini, corn, cucumber and gherkins.
For the beetroots I tried out a Nigella Lawson recipe for Beetroot Chutney. The resulting chutney set very well due to having apples included in the recipe. It is very sweet and spicy and was pretty yummy straight from the pan, but will also improve with age.
I also experimented with a new Corn Relish recipe from a Southern Foods website. This recipe included tomatoes, green pepper and cucumber, as well as the corn, but I ended up adding a wheat flour paste (1/2 cup flour / 1/2 cup water) to thicken it.
Ricotta Salata, day 2 of salting process.
On Sunday I made a batch of ricotta cheese, which I have pressed into a mould and am now resting on a rack in the fridge for a week, lightly salting the outside each day, with the aim of turning it into a cow’s milk version of a Ricotta Salata. After the salting period, the cheese will need to be aged further in the refrigerator (for approximately 2 – 4 weeks).
Freshly-made soy ricotta.
This set me thinking about the vegans in our family and whether I could do the same with a litre of soy milk. So using the same method, I made a batch of soy ricotta last night.
It actually turned out very well, considering that it was an experiment. The soy milk I used was Soy Milky as this is our favourite drinking soy milk, but I think that the added sugars and flavours have had an impact on the flavour of the soy cheese.
1/2 cup dried soy beans soaking in 2 cups water.
So, today, I’m soaking some soy beans to see if I can make some soy milk from scratch, and then use this to make the soy ricotta.
It would be great if I could go on to convert this to a soy version of the ‘Ricotta Salata’, as a harder cheese is so much more versatile. The soy cheeses available from specialty vegan shops are very expensive so I’d love to make an edible version of my own.
Bay tree in our garden.
I suspect that the addition of a bay leaf to the milk during the heating process would provide an interesting dimension to the flavour – especially as bay leaves can enhance both savoury and sweet recipes. Our two bay trees (Laurus nobilis) are very valuable members of our home garden.
Two juvenile turkeys sneaking through our property.
Finally, when I was working this morning I kept hearing an unusual chirping sound – when I went into the living room to see if I could identify which bird was making this sound, I saw two young turkeys walking across our front lawn in the direction of the pumpkin patch. I only just manage to take a photo before they disappeared out of sight.
Today started out clear, sunny and calm, but it clouded over as the day progressed. It’s clearer now, but there is a storm traveling up from the South Island, and although it’s unlikely to travel this far north, we have been experiencing very strong South-Westerly winds, as can be seen by the cloud patterns to the west.
Our planned excursion to Helensville this morning was aborted half way there, as the road was closed due to a truck having rolled on one of the corners. Rather than wait around for an hour or more for the tow truck to arrive and sort things out, we decided to head back home.
I spent some time this afternoon cutting back the ratty leaves on my tomatoes. I spotted a couple of cabbage looper caterpillars, Trichoplusia ni, and picked them off. I’ve posted images of these on the Nature Watch NZ site. I love this site as it’s helped me to identify many of the unfamiliar bugs and plants I’ve come across since we’ve lived at South Head.
But I digress. Last summer these caterpillars wrought havoc on my tomatoes – not only did they eat the leaves, which isn’t too much of a problem in itself, but they also like to tunnel into the actual tomatoes and many were spoiled. From what I’ve read, I suspect that my tomato plants are becoming vulnerable due to there not having been any rainfall since Christmas. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, but if not, we’ll have to give our garden a decent watering.
Our hens like to eat the caterpillars, so it is with some satisfaction that I feed them any that I find.
Garlic
The photo above shows how little garlic we have left! But the garlic we harvested around this time in 2013 has lasted all year so we haven’t had to purchase any.
Our garlic plants aren’t looking that amazing … again, the soil has become very dry. We did dig in a decent amount of compost during the year, but with our light soil, it just seems to become absorbed really quickly. And of course, I’ve been lazy about weeding. The garlic bulbs will be ready to lift and dry when the foliage dries off and turns brown.
Leaf Mulch
The tawny leaves that can be seen lying on the the soil amongst the plants are from the huge Lilly Pilly trees that line our back fence. There doesn’t seem to be one time of the year that they don’t shed their leaves. At first this used to drive me mad, but I’m accustomed to them now. Every so often I make the effort to sweep them all up and add them to our compost heap.
We’d also started a bag of leaves for leaf mulch – but I must admit that although I started out really keen to keep the leaves separate, I lost interest within a few days of starting the bag.
Lemon Grass
Another garden task we tackled today was the removal of an overgrown lemon grass plant. I must admit that when we purchased it as a precious, tiny plant three years ago, I thought that a spot in the vegetable garden would be just fine, but it’s grown out of proportion to what I’d expected. And I worry when it’s seeding (as it has been for the last several weeks).
I use lemon grass from time to time when marinating prawns or cooking up something Asian, but I don’t tend to use it often enough to allow it free reign in my garden.
So, Ben had the task of digging up this unfortunate plant and we’ll buy a new one at some point and decide on a more appropriate place somewhere else on the property.
Seed-Sowing
Other than that, I’ve had a pretty lazy day. Ben had pulled out a row of bolting celery a couple of days ago, so we’ve sowed the following seeds in the space freed up by its removal: –
Carrot ‘Touchon’ (Daucus carota var sativa) , Mesclun Lettuce Mix (Lactuca sativa), Radish ‘Easter Egg’ (Raphanus sativus), Pea ‘Easy Peasy’ (Pisum sativum) and Organic Rocket (Eruca sativa).
For those not familiar with botanical names, you’ll notice the use of the word ‘sativa’ or versions of this in the names of all the seeds. Sativum, Sativus, and Sativa are Latin botanical adjectives meaning ‘cultivated’, applied to certain seed-grown domestic crops.
What a hot day it’s been! One of my plans for today was to find a use for the remaining plums along with some of the strawberries, now that latter are ripening up nicely.
I had been reading about rum pots, also known as rumtopf and romkrukke. This seemed like a really cool way to preserve some of our fruits as they come to fruition on our trees. I’ve mostly missed the boat re the plums, but starting now, I should be able to use our strawberries, pears, tamarillo and feijoa. I also collected a few Cape gooseberries, as these grow like weeds around our property.
The ideal container for a rum pot is a ceramic container or a dark jar, as the fruit should be protected from bright light. I was also looking for something that would hold a decent amount of fruit. In the end, the best containers I could find were some tall, glass spaghetti jars, enclosed in a metal sleeve, with a wee window on one side. Into these I layered the fruit with 1/2 their weight in white sugar, then topped them up with dark rum until the fruit was just covered.
Sad Cherry Tale
Some years ago, my daughter Amiria had brought me back a small bucket of export quality lapin cherries from Summerfruit Orchards in Central Otago, where she had been employed fruit-picking. I saved a few of the finest specimens, added them to a sturdy glass jar and covered them with brandy. I kept this jar of cherries for 3 to 4 months, having placed it in a shady place at the corner of my kitchen bench – I’d rotate the jar regularly to keep the alcohol circulated through the fruit.
Ben was washing dishes one day and thought the jar of cherries something old to be discarded, so he tipped them into my compost bucket. I didn’t notice that they were missing until it was too late. I’m sure I’d have scooped them out of the compost bucket if I’d known straight away!
I still wonder about those cherries – what they would have tasted like… But it’s a lesson on letting people know about the strange concoctions we have in our kitchens.
Asparagus
It’s time to allow our asparagus plants to produce their ferny foliage so that they can grow strong and healthy for our Spring 2014 crop. These plants have been in place for 4 years now, and this year we were eating spears continually from the end of September through to the end of December. We had put in some plants of the regular green variety as well as having sown seeds of the purple, Asparagus Sweet Purple.
Freshly-picked asparagus, lightly steamed and served with melted butter is one of the special flavours of a spring garden.
Sweet Corn
It’s been a busy time for Ben, collecting as much sweet corn as he can, before he runs out of energy. Over the past 2 days, he’s harvested around 150 ears and has spent a good proportion of the day scraping off the kernels and freezing them free-flow for winter use. It’s a time-consuming task and not much fun when it’s so hot outside, but well worth it. He’s also frozen some of our runner beans.
I mixed up a batch of corn fritters for lunch – couldn’t resist it! They were yummy!
Other Garden Tasks
Other garden tasks undertaken today included cutting back the spent sweet peas from the back fence of our main vegetable garden.
Around February last year I collected seeds from a patch of sweet peas I had sown the previous Winter. We sowed these this year to see how they would turn out. The blooms haven’t been as strong, nor as fragrant, and are in a very narrow range of colours: scarlet, vermillion and shades of pink, none of them particularly vivid.
This was disappointing on a couple of levels as (1) I’m not a pink or a red kind of a girl, and (2) I prefer my flowers to have a fragrance.
The same can’t be said for our gardenia which has been flowering very well this year compared with last year. We saved this shrub from our previous property in Titirangi, where it struggled with the paucity of sunlight. I do love the beautiful waxy flowers with their creamy, honeysuckle fragrance.
Another plant currently providing brilliant colour to the garden is the bougainvillea, Scarlet O’Hara. This is another plant we saved from Titirangi. There, it barely produced a single new shoot, and failed utterly to produce the beautiful crimson bracts.
Hibiscus Golden Oriel
We also recently planted a very garish looking hibiscus, Hibiscus Golden Oriel, a Hawaiian hybrid. I couldn’t resist it, but usually don’t like flowers that combine the colour yellow with red!
Other tasks for today have involved checking on how the vegetables are progressing. I have a habit of walking around my garden at least once a day, but often go back again in the late afternoon, mainly to check on what needs pruning or cutting back, or which vegetables are ready for harvest, which need to be pulled out, etc. To be honest, there is not enough hours in the day, so I tend to just do the things that interest me at the time.
Buttercup & Butternut Squash
Today I was especially pleased with the progress of my squashes, Burgess Buttercup and Butternut Chieftain. I’ve grown these two as I particularly like the taste of their flesh. Also, they are extremely prolific, which means we’ll be provided with many individual squashes of a perfect size for two people.
Thelma Saunders Sweet Potato
I’ve also grown a new pumpkin this year, Thelma Saunders Sweet Potato. According to information I have read, this is the sweetest of the heirloom acorn squashes and is named after Thelma Sanders of Adair County, Missouri. It is renowned for its cooking qualities and has won many a harvest bake-off competition in the USA.
It doesn’t seem to be producing as many pumpkins as I’d hoped, but there is still plenty of time until the end of the season.
I obtained seed for both the pumpkin and the squashes from Kings Seeds.
The passion fruit, macadamia nuts and pears are developing as expected. I really need to somehow get to the top of the pear tree to thin the pears… ideally there should only be 2 – 3 fruit per bunch to allow them to grow properly.
The passion fruit are very fat and healthy looking, and the macadamia nuts look to be producing a good crop this year.
The tomatoes are fine, although they seem to be a bit slower to ripen than at the same time last year. I have grown several varieties from seed: Mortgage Lifter, Cherokee Purple, Bloody Butcher, Black from Tula, Black Krim and Sun Cherry. I especially like the ‘black’ tomatoes, but am always interested in trying new varieties.
The lettuces are bolting and I’ll have to compost them soon. The basil is slow to grow, too. I’m thinking this is to do with the lack of rain prior to Christmas, but they should put on good growth now that the weather has settled.
When the sun set today, we had generated a very respectable 14.59 KWh. Not bad for our 11 panel / 2 KW system. There is something so very satisfying about generating our own power from the sun. I’ll never take this for granted!
To 1 cup of fresh corn kernels, add 1 tsp finely chopped oregano (or marjoram) and one fresh farm egg. Mix these together with a fork.
corn, egg & oregano
Then add the flour, baking powder, salt, pepper and cumin and stir these in with the fork.
Add dry ingredients
To this mixture add enough soy milk to make a smooth batter. This recipe is light on batter and heavy on corn, so don’t make the mixture too runny.
Add soy milk to make a batter
Heat a pan to medium to hot heat, and add a small amount of sunflower oil and butter – just enough to prevent the fritters from sticking. Add mixture in approximately 1/4 cup portions – this will make 5 small fritters.
Fritters cooking in the pan
Turn fritters when they have browned on one side and serve when cooked through and nicely browned on the other side.
Notes
Using equal amounts of both oil and butter allows the pan to heat without the butter burning, yet retains the flavour butter provides.
The backdrop to the photos on this page is a colourful hand-sewn fabric rug from Nalauwaki village, Fiji Islands.
The beautiful vermillion-flowering gum, Corymbia ficifolia is in full bloom along our fence-line. Every time I catch sight of it I am amazed by the blaze of colour it produces.
Christmas and New Year
The days leading in to Christmas and the New Year were filled with all the tasks associated with having 13 family members arrive for Christmas dinner. This involved a large amount of cooking and tidying up, right from when we knocked off work on December 20th. It’s only now that I feel I can relax a little and enjoy the remaining 5 days of my summer holidays.
The early Summer weather has been extremely changeable – very warm and humid, with summer showers on most days. Not the gentle kind, but rather, heavy downpours that move on as quickly as they have arrived. This time last year we were experiencing the beginnings of a drought that…
Wash and chop plums coarsely. Peel and chop onions.
Add both the plums and the onions to a large cooking pan, along with the 1/4 cup of water. Cook gently until soft.
Tie the cloves, allspice, peppercorns, cinnamon stick, root ginger and mustard seeds in a muslin bag using a length of string. Place the spice bag in the pan so that it is submerged in the plum/onion mixture and tie the end to the handle for easy removal. Add the brown sugar, salt and malt vinegar.
Cook uncovered, until mushy, then push through a colander or sieve.
Return the sieved pulp to a saucepan and simmer until it has reached the thickness of sauce required.
Bottle using your usual method in hot sterilised jars. Seal and store.
Additional Notes
The easiest way to remove the skin from root ginger is by scraping gently with the curved edge of a small spoon.
This time round I used around 2/3 red-fleshed and 1/3 yellow-fleshed plums. Both had dark red skins.
I used the water bath method, heating the filled jars at 90C for 20 minutes.
This recipe makes around 600 – 800 mls, depending on how thorough you are with pushing the pulp through the sieve.
The sauce itself lasts a year and possibly longer. We tend to use it all before more than a year has elapsed.
As it ages it takes on a very rich dark colour, with a notable improvement in flavour.
Thinly slice the zucchinis using a sharp knife or a mandolin. Place these in a bowl with the finely-chopped onion and sprinkle with the salt. Cover with ice-cold water, stir to dissolve the salt, and leave for 1 hour. Drain the zucchini well and pat dry using a clean tea towel.
While the zucchini are soaking, add the vinegar, sugar, mustard powder, mustard seeds, celery seeds, habanero and ground turmeric to a preserving pan and bring to a simmer. Allow to bubble for 3 minutes, stirring to ensure the sugar is dissolved, then allow to cool until just warm. Add the zucchinis and stir.
Add the pickle to sterilised jars. I then used the water bath method to finish off this recipe.
Notes
This will make approximately 1 litre of the pickle. For this recipe I used the zucchini, Costasta Romanesco as it’s the only zucchini I grow these days. Not only does it produce the huge male flowers useful for stuffing and deep frying, but the texture and flavour of the flesh is far superior to that of regular zucchini.
Adapted from the ‘Crunchy Courgette Pickle’ recipe, posted on the BBC Good Food website.
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