May 2nd, 2009 AndrewD
After 18 months and good rainfall the last two weeks of April (90 mls for the month) I decided to get a water gauge, and obviously to record how much rain we do receive her at One Green Acre. I plan to store this info in an online Google spreadsheet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs). Hopefully I will discover how to embed a spreadsheet here into the website.
Our location is higher than the actual main street of town, and sometimes it can be wet down there (only 2kms away, if that) and not a drop here, so there is probably differences in the rainfall that is recorded by the BOM. The location of mine is in the vege patch away from any trees and houses.
Of course the day we bought the rain gauge, the rain was ending and since then there has been nothing in it, not a single drop.
Rain Gauge
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April 18th, 2009 AndrewD
Yes Summer in Yass has now passed. The morning and evenings are cooler and of course the days shorter. The hottest day over the past two weeks being 24.
So how did the summer produce go. I would rate it a 6 out of 10. We did not get things in the ground early enough and we had no back up plants for the late frost that hit us.
What worked?
Tomatoes, approx 15 kg of tomatoes, mostly cheery and grape variety. Witha few kgs of Roma and less of the Amish. Also I really did not truss them up, definately next year I will truss them up and at least double them up. Of course we are still enoying some of the tomates as semi dried (in the oven) and bottled. And we also cooked a lot and froze them (no more of this).
Potatoes, had approx 15kg at the end, not enough. Probably under watered and under nourished and definitely need a lot more next year to plant.
Zucchinis, nothing else to say really, they get grated into evrything (including dog food) and when they become too large the kids can enter them in the Yass show.
Cucumbers OK, not great but enough, back to buying them. Pumkin. mmm Frost killed off teh first lot but we did get some butternuts and all going well we may have two Queensland blue (still growing).
Beans, foprget it. Besides all my beans for drying being killed off in the frost, I must be the only person in Australia not capable of growing beans.
Capsicums, forgot which capsicum I planted, but is of a small variety, still a few coming thru.
Egg Plant, Now there was a surprise – three plants and we may still get a few off before the first frost comes in. Definately more next year so we can bottle some.
Beetroot, were good as were the spring onions
Corn, well thast a 2 out of 10 and I say that because thats about as many good corn cobs we got. Not sure what went wrong there but most of the cobs did not fully develop. But the chickens still loved them.
Chickens, while not really a crop I recommend two – three birds for any family. Easy to look after, not expensive to feed and so far they are all healthy.
Watermelon, got this great little watermelon seeds and they produced these small fantastically sweet watermelons. After dinner these were the perfect size to cut into 4
Later I will add some pics as well.
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April 1st, 2009 Lee-Ann
just an update to say how the chooks love eating mice – they went mad over a couple of mice that ran into the pen when we were moving hay bales. i moved some bales today and saw 2 huge mice but the cats were too slow to get them. apparently a mice plague is building so i better get stuck into controlling these and not rely on my animals to do it. apart from mice traps any other ideas? we had the yass show on the weekend so will publish some photos later on.
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March 27th, 2009 Lee-Ann
Well it has been a year since we got our kitten Pixie, and it has been a rough year with this crazy cat but now she is finally come into her own as a great mouse catcher. every day she is bringing mice up to the deck and dropping them in her food bowl. The mice are breeding in the hay bales we used around the vege patches so she sits up there and waits. she doesn’t always get hungry enough to eat it all and yesterday she only ate the tail and left the rest in her bowl – disgusting!!!. So despite all my complaints about this cat to my girls who love her this cat has now grown on me.
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March 2nd, 2009 AndrewD
After reading about a few people making their own dog food and also wondering what is really in the ‘canned’ stuff. I decided to make my own variation.
Taking a few different recipes I used
- 1kg mince
- half butternt
- 1 carrot
- 3 potatoes
- 2 eggs
- quarter cup rice
- 1 tablespoon tomato sauce
- 1 tablespoon Vegemite
- breadcrumbs
- half zucchini grated
Basically I made a meat loaf! I figured if the dog did not like it we would eat it.
So cook rice and steam veges. Them mash pumkin. Mix meat, eggs, tomato sauce, vegemite, breadcrumbs, grated zucchini. Chop cooked potatoes and carrots to a small size. Add this into the meat mixture. Bake in oven apprx 180 for an hour
Dog food being made
Cooked dog food
We made two pan loads and it should last approx 2 weeks.
Now any cheaper? probably similar, but we had all our home grown veg, eggs and I make the breadcrumbs
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
February 6th, 2009 AndrewD
While we have not been struck with some of the temps of SA or Vic, we have been quite hot here – and the veges have been taking a beating.
So the temps here have been
- Thurs 29 Jan -38
- Fri 30 Jan – 38.2
- Sat 31 Jan – 38.6
- Sun 1 Feb – 35 (and how it felt so much cooler, seriously)
- Mon 2 Feb – 36
- Tues 3 Feb – 36
- Wed 4 Feb – 35
- Thurs 5 Feb – 38.5
- Fri 6 Feb – 39
Expected today Sat 7 – 40 and the same for Sunday – we will see what happens. While our house is insulated and the eaves do their part, the house still heats up. And as this block was a ‘blank’ canvas there are no mature trees, near the house. As you would see in previous posts I am building a deck, this will one day hold the grape vines providing shade in summer. And some of the plants that we have planted around the house will also provide more shade, but that is years away. Anyway two more days and then hopefully a cool change and maybe some rain.
Posted in Building, Climate change, Yass | No Comments »
February 1st, 2009 AndrewD
What have we been harvesting recently? Lots of tomatoes, cherry and Roma in particular and the Amish soon to turn red. We have been eating them and I have been supplying some to people in Sydney and at present we still have 2kg in a basket in the kitchen. We have approx 8 kg of potatoes and we still have 6 plants (Nicola) to harvest (probably next weekend).
The cucumbers and zuchini are coming on strong and we made our first zucchini pickle of summer (and probably not the last) 
We have been getting a few cobs of corn as well and of course beetroot, radish and lettuce. All the onion has now been pulled up and we did have about 35 (more purple than brown). Definately a lot more onion next time.
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January 25th, 2009 AndrewD
Due to a bit of a stuff up with the building of our place originally we plumb our tank water into all the pipes in the house – drinking, showers, toilets etc. And we also have a switch to cut over to town water. We have two tanks at 5000 litres each. If no rain then we can go for approx 3-4 weeks, that usually leaves 2000 litres left – at that point we usually cut over to town water.
So due to no rain since the last week December 08, and also having friends and family stay etc I had, last week cut over to the town water. Due to the massive downpour on Thursday and Friday our tanks were full again and so I had switched the house back to tank water.
Friday afternoon I notice a council vehicle dropping off something in the post boxes down our street, so I went and retrieved the paper from our letter box.
URGENT BOIL WATER NOTICE
Yes some disturbing levels of E. Coli have turned up in our section of Yass water.
As we have full tanks Yass water should have the problem fixed by mid Feburary (hopefully).
Posted in Yass | 2 Comments »
January 24th, 2009 AndrewD
During the week one of our friends here in Yass gave us a bag of peaches from their tree, what does one do with 1.5 kgs of peaches? make jam. This was our second attempt at jam, the first being a cherry jam (left over cherries from christmas) which refused to set, but eventually we got it to partly set.
So act 2, we try again, this time it has set and boy has it set, tougher than creamed honey, but it does taste fantastic. What does one do with peach jam that has set too hard? Make jam drop biscuits, the jam almost takes a lolly consistency and unlike store bought biscuits I know exactly what goes in them.
2 cups self raising flour, 2 eggs, 125 grams butter, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest, 1 cup desiccated coconut, firmly set jam,
Set oven to 160c, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and lemon zest and mix well. Roll mixture into walnut sized balls, roll them in the coconut and place them on a greased tray. Press the top of each ball with thumb, spreading them out a bit and making an indent for the jam. Fill the indent with the jam, bake in the oven for approx 15 minutes or until golden. We make approx 18-20 with this mixture.
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January 24th, 2009 AndrewD
Well while we have had salads from the garden and other odds and bods todays frittata is almost all home produced. The salad, tomatoes, spring onion and cucumber all from the vege patch and the frittata itself the eggs are from our chickens and the all the veges (potatoes, tomato, garlic, herbs) are home grown to.
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