A bit of a Catch Up

Well after a week of hot weather, which all of Australia got hit with – the last hurrah of summer, autumn has now well and truly hit with this week mornings dropping to single digits (the coldest being 3 degrees and the daily max temperatures all being under 20).

The thing about that last hurrah of heat was that the house eves provided very little in the way of shade onto the house as the angle of the earth had moved slightly (obviously for autumn) and the sun came directly onto the house heating it up – so we felt the full effect of the the 34+ heat. In summer with the sun being higher we shade the house pretty well.

Now with this cool weather I am guessing that the sweet corn won’t develop fully. It was put in late, but I will leave it another week before I pull up everything in Vege Patch #1 give it a shot of manure and plant some more in there.

Also we now have a new kitten called Pixie. This was picked up from one of Lynsey’s friends in Sydney when we went down to also watch the mighty Blue Bags (Newtown Jets).

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First Pickle – woohoo

With the excess of zucchini and having the zucchini soup, zucchinis in tomato sauce, on pizza and I am sure there was another dinner or two that had zucchini in there as well (and the zucchini cake is coming). We did out first pickle from our first real bountiful produce and guess what type?  It was a zucchini pickle, it tasted fantastic and no where near as hard as I thought it would be.

Making the pickle

And the final four bottles – and to think this was 1kg of zucchini

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Plastic Shopping Bags

With all the pieces in the press about plastic bags recently in the pressI have decided I must write about it. My issue is I don’t get it. Why can’t people stop using them? And why do they kick up a fuss when people start talking about a fee applied to them?

Prior to moving to Yass I lived in the inner Sydney suburb of St Peters and the closest shopping centre was Marrickville Metro, I guess the type of shopper was one that is environmentally aware and I would guess that 40% of people bought their own reusable bags. Here in Yass I have noticed that it is different and that when we are in either Woolworths or Franklins that we are usually the only people using reusable bags. Is it that country people don’t really care about the damage that bags do? Or is that they are just not aware of the issues?

As I look out my sliding door while I write this piece, I don’t notice the pollution as much as in Sydney, I don’t see the plastic bags blowing around in the street – is this the reason?

While on this subject and if there are people reading saying “I reuse my shopping bag, I use it as a bin liner” or “I could not survive without my plastic shopping bags” here are a few pointers on how I go about a full life without shopping bags.

1. Use canvas recyclable bags, I have approx 24 bags in a central place at home that we grab when we go shopping, even if we are just going into a small store we usually have at least one with us, just in case.
2. Place some boxes in the boot of your car then you can wheel the supermarket trolley to your car and place the items in the boxes.
3. Separating your waste at home – recycling in the recycling box, green waste in the compost/worm farm, and food scraps etc in a few layers of newspaper, placed in the bin – see no bin liner needed.

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Vege Patch 3

Well it has been a week between posts but here is a bit of a catch up, Lee Ann and I built vege patch #3 last week. It was constructed using a combination of sleepers (had a few left) and rock logs. This patch will be used for our garlic which I purchased from http://www.garlicfarmsales.com.au.

The garlic purchased was

• 6 bulbs – Fiery Punch
• 1 bulb – Rose Brown
• 1 bulb Silver Rose
• 1 bulb Shantung Purple

So I am planning to have them in the ground this coming weekend.

On vege patch 2 everything has sprouted except the cabbage, does this take longer to sprout? I will give it another week to see how it goes. with vege patch one MORE zucchini and it looks like we will get some corn before it gets too cold, some corn heads are developing – woohoo. The other big event this weekend is of course the Yass Show, we went last year so expect an update with photos after we go to it this weekend.

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Zucchini, Zucchini everywhere

Well our biggest success so far has been our zucchini’s and we only planted four seeds (and three came up). Over the past few weeks we have been incorporating zucchini in just about every meal, we have probably so far gone thru approx 15 of them. This week no one had picked any so I sent Lee-Ann out today armed with a knife to get some and she must have picked approx 20 (and flowers). So I would say three plants is plenty for a family of four.

From todays picking

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Last Week (24th Feb) – The Vege Patch #2

So last week I planted in veg Patch number 2 (The 1st of the rock log vege patches)

• Cauliflower – All Year Rounder
• Red Cabbage – Ruby Ball F1
• Broad Beans – Coles Early Dwarf
• Broccoli – Emperor F1

I will sneak in there some more parsley as well.

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Last Week – Canberra Show

Well last (weekend of the 23rd of Feb) week we went to the Royal Canberra Agriculture Show – a bit like the Show in Sydney at Easter time, but a lot smaller, but I believe more fun. All the same rides and show bags but less people and the entry fee is about half the price. Of course there was no horses on show due to last years equine flu but over all we had an enjoyable day.

Another reason for going is that at home we have been discussing what type of dog we should get and approx 3 months ago I found a breed which seems to have ticked all the boxes – and we had been in contact with a breeder of them, as luck would have it she was going to be at the show, so we met her and she introduced us to her dogs which we believe will be the perfect dog for us, so hopefully come April there will be one for us. For those that do not know here is a bit on the Swedish Vallhund from Wikipedia “The Swedish Vallhund is a breed of dog. It is believed that the Swedish Vallhund distinguished itself during the age of Vikings, more than 1,000 years ago. Known as the “Viking dog”, the Vallhund were bred to herd cattle, catch vermin (such as rats), and guard the home. The Vallhund were also referred to as “the little cattle dog of the Vikings”.

Lynsey on the cop motor bike

Alyssa and I on the ferris wheel

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