While I was away, Janine had been ‘at’ the council to make the tree safe, as it is out on the foot path and is not on our property. We can’t legally touch their trees. There are rules! We could get fined.

So now the tree loppers are here and have pruned the tree back to a stubby trunk. They leave all the loppings at the base of the tree, so that we can collect it for fire wood. If we hadn’t asked, they would have shredded it all down to wood chips in their huge shredder. So the current, pressing job, is to collect the wood. I have a load of other things on my list, but priorities change day to day as we respond to each situation.

As soon as the tree loppers go we are out there. I know from bitter experience that some particular neighbours will take it from under our noises if we don’t act quickly.

A few years ago,property I helped our direct next-door neighbour to chop up a tree that had fallen on his property down by the back lane. I couldn’t take it all away at the time, but cut it all up into small slabs, so that I could handle it and clear access to his drive way. Before I could get back to it, a distant neighbour stole it all. I’ve learnt my lesson. Act quickly!

This time I get it all up onto my truck with the assistance of my very good friend Len, who just happens to call in to visit. No such thing as a free lunch Len.

I also go to the barn and install my hydraulic crane onto the truck. I use this to lift the largest blocks up onto the truck. They must weight more than hundred kilos each, when they are freshly cut and full of water-based kinos and sap. The longest pieces will be used to fire the wood kiln, the shorter pieces will be used in the hose in the kitchen stove.

Over the hotter months, we collect all our garden prunings and pile them up, saving them up for a time like this that is cool, and damp after a good fall of rain. We had just over 25mm of rain the other day. The weather is just right for us to do a hazard reduction burn. We wait until the evening, for the temperature to fall and the humidity to rise. It only takes 20 mins for it all to reduce to ashes and a few embers. However the core of the ember pile keeps on glowing through the evening and into night. We make regular trip to the pile to check on it. Hosing water all around the site to make the ground very damp.

We have two piles to burn. One pile at each end of our 7 acre block of land. One each night, After the fire dies down and all the hard work is done we share a beer!

I get to drink my home-made, home-brew beer from a porcelain cup that was given to me by my Korean friend Hae Jin.

We are still able to pick ripe tomatoes now in June. Only just a bowl full each week now, but they are still lingering on. I’m so amazed. This is the latest that we have been able to continuously pick tomatoes. We haven’t had a frost yet. Such a strange time. We have lived here on this piece of land for over 40 years. In the 1970s we had severe frosts in May that burnt off every plant that was tender. Now we are now in June and it’s still warmish. 5 oC over-night at this time. No-where near a frost. Global warming. What global warming? Or as the Guardian Newspaper has started stating it. Climate crisis! What Climate Crisis?

Wake up everyone! Choose to only buy green power. Put solar panels on your roof if you can. Insulate your ceiling instead of turning on the air con. Wear a jumper in cooler weather. Choose energy efficient appliances when they need replacing. Many small things make a difference.

The lead article in today’s Guardian Newspaper; 12/6/19

One of the jobs on my very long list of jobs now that I’m back, is to make a batch of porcelain clay from my Australian materials. I have all the materials ready to go and I use the ancient one arm dough mixer that I bought 2nd hand 40 years ago. This dry-mix method is only appropriate if you have all the materials prepared in a pre-powdered state. I blend them all thoroughly for some time and then add in some suitable acidic water from the old galvanised water tank, that collects its water off the pottery roof. This water is enhanced by the addition of rotted gum tree leaves from the gutters. This composted, highly acidic material lowers the pH of the water quite a lot. This flora and fauna creates a thriving micro biome. It all helps the clay that I’m making become a little bit more plastic and slightly better to work with. And it’s free and totally natural.

When I use a blend of wet-mixed slip added to dry-mixed clay like this, I get the advantage of speed, without sacrificing too much in the way of plasticity. I am due to lay this ‘quick and dirty’ sericite blended porcelain body down to ‘age’ for a while, to get it to ‘sour’. All clays, no-matter how they are made and from what, will benefit from a relaxed period of ageing in a damp, dark, cool place for what ever time you can spare. I have a few packs of very old, hand made, single stone, porcelain that I have been mollycoddling for over a decade. What started out as wet sand, is now a quite plastic throwing body. If only you could buy time! Or make it.

I have built a new pug mill table out of my spare off-cuts of gal RHS and stainless steel sheeting from the kiln factory. I have designed it so that the pug can be extruded out over the end of the table onto the extended table, I can then fold it away again after the pugging. I set it up with a diagonal retractable brass brace that hooks into place to hold the extension horizontal when needed.

It’s a beautiful thing.

It’s hard working, reliable, rough, but acceptable. A bit like me!

Another thing that I have done since my return, is to take my crippled lap top to bits and install a new 1Tb solid state drive into the old hard drive space. It starts to work again like a new one. It’s 6 years old and by any ordinary reckoning should be pretty much dead by now. This new digital ‘heart transplant’ should give it new lease of life. It certainly seems to have.

It’s not too technically difficult, even I can manage it! But it does take me about 4 hours. Most of this time was spent in duplicating all the old hard drive data onto the new drive.

Everything that is worth doing takes time, or so it seems.

It’s not just ageing clay that takes time!

I started pickling olives before I went away. Soaking them in water, changing it every day, rinsing and changing once or twice a day for two weeks. I also cut a couple of slits into each olive, to speed up the de-bittering, by allowing the water to penetrate into the flesh easier.

Olives have a very bitter taste when harvested. This bitterness needs to be rinsed out over a couple of weeks. I taste them every few days to check how they are going. It reduces slowly, but they never seem to get past a certain level of bitterness. The next step is to start adding salt to the water to make a brine. I add 1 cup of salt to 10 cups of water. This is just enough to cover the olives, with a dinner plate on top to press them down. I change the brine everyday as well, just as with the first two weeks of water. They get salty now and still a bit bitter.

As I was going to be away for a month. I added a couple of cups of vinegar to the brine on the last change before leaving. I don’t want them to ‘go off’ while I’m away.

When I returned, one of the first things I did was to go back to rinsing the olives each night in plain water. This change of concentration draws out more of the remaining bitterness due to osmosis, from acidic/salty to clear water. It works nicely. I change the water each day for a few more days and when they taste about right, I pickle them in a brine of;

 1/2 cup salt

 1/2 cup sugar

 2 cups vinegar

 6 cups water

I heat the glass jars in the oven and simmer the lids. I make up the brine and add slices of lemon, garlic, fresh herbs from the garden, bay leaves, chillies and pepper corns and let it cool down to just warm, then pack everything into the jars and pour over the warm spiced brine. They taste all right sweet, salty, bitter, spicy, and fresh and slightly lemony, with a chewy texture.