Author Archives: hotnsticky

8 New Clay Tests

Posted on by

I have been using the warm weather. In-between rain storms. To dry out some of my new batches of single-stone porcelain clay test batches. The 50 litre batch of 12 month aged porcelain slip is now almost stiff enough. It should have been ready to lift off the drying bed a couple of days ago, but with this last series of rain storms, the atmosphere has been very humid lately, so we have slow drying weather. The mornings start with a heavy mist that doesn’t burn off until later in the morning when the sun get up.

I have used the plaster tubs to dry out some small batches and I now have 7 different new clays to test and throw. They are all just about the same on the wheel, not a great deal of difference. I have dug out a bag of special ‘vintage’ porcelain from my clay store. I don’t have a date on the bag, but reference to my clay-making diary tells me that it was made in 199o! This is the oldest clay in my cellar at 26 years of age. It has stiffened a bit too much to be throwable now, so I have to dampen it down a little. I’m amazed how well it throws. The reason that I put it away in the first place was because it was so short that it was unusable. Now after 25 years of ageing, it throws like a normal porcelain. It does have a slightly peculiar ‘grainy’ texture though. A little bit odd for such a finely milled clay. Some sort of bio-chemical change has taken place in the intervening years of ageing.

IMG_2085

I remember co-responding with Harry Davis back in the 80’s. He asked me if I had any experience with clays that went grainy after long periods of ageing. He had left clay in his clay store while he went away for 10 years and worked up in Izcuchaka in the Peruvian Andes on his and May’s private aid project. When he returned, all his clay had changed texture and become grainy. I hadn’t experienced anything like it at that time. I wasn’t old enough to have clay laid down for ten years at that time! Now I am, and I suspect that it is some sort of aggregation of the microscopic clay particles into larger flocs over extremely long periods of time. This happens in slip if left in a slightly acid condition. So, perhaps it’s possible in the plastic state as well?

Of these 7 different bodies, there are 7 different colours, from iron stained yellow, through to almost white. Of the bodies that I have made from my ‘bai tunze’ single-stone porcelain stone. There are variations in colour due to the fact that there are veins of iron running through the rock. I crush the stones through the large, primary jaw crusher  and then spend some time sorting and separating the iron-stained pieces from the white material, these are them processed separately to give yellow, cream and grey clay body mixes.

The iron stained bodies respond well to the wood firing by flashing to a mahogany red colour, where the paler coloured mixes flash in the wood kiln to a pale pink to crimson colour. All the milled stone body mixes grow a series of organic algae and/or fungus come moulds of some sort or another. The clear plastic bags that I store them in turn green and/or buff/brown where daylight can get to them. A little bit off-putting, but it seems to increase workability/plasticity rather than decrease it over longer periods of time. I’m not saying that the presence of algal growth increases plasticity, but the time spent ageing the clay increases the plasticity and the algal growth is a natural sign of this extended time taken.

IMG_2084

Because I don’t add anything to my milled local porcelain stone bodies, except a small amount of bentonite and the slightly acidic tanninised tank water. The whole thing is alive with all sorts of organic material from both the natural stone and the water. It’s a living thing! It doesn’t happen straight away, but over time stuff grows in there where-ever the conditions are right.

Commercial clay doesn’t do this. I recently opened a bag of commercially prepared paper clay to find that it smelled of ‘dettol’ antiseptic fluid. Nothing is going to grow in that! I’m an organic gardener and I am trying to live a simple, creative, organic life. If green algal mould is the result in the bags of clay, so be it. At least I know that it is alive, and not dead and even possibly toxic.

One of the batches of my ball milled baitunze, batch JV15db, was milled for a little longer than usual to get it extra fine. However, I seem to have milled it a bit too long this time, 16 hrs. I suspect that this was too long, because when I threw my first bowl out of it, it shrank and cracked in the base where it was thickest. This has happened once before. I will have to blend it with a coarse milled batch now to reduce the shrinkage a little.

For dinner we try yet another variation of ratatouille with todays pick of  French beans, we par-boil them, so that they are still crisp and then add them into the mix of ingredients from the garden. I partially BarBQ the egg plants and zucchinis while grilling some long yellow capsicums. Janine reduces a boiler full of very ripe tomatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil and basil. We finish it off in the flat flan-pan, then pop it under the grill and melt some grated cheese topping to a golden yellow/brown crispy finish.
This is what we have, so this is what we eat.
Best wishes from the algal greenie and his all greenie gal
Steve

Another day, another problem solved

Posted on by
Before my summer ‘time-off’ ends this week, I need to get a few more jobs done.
The washing machine had started to leak a few drips of water from somewhere underneath. I moved it out and took the back off, but couldn’t see anywhere that it was leaking. It was just such a small leak. I checked all the hoses as best I could with a torch, laying on my back, but no insights were gained in this or any other way. I put it all back together and waited for the leak to get worse, so that I could find it. Now, 6 months on, it’s worse and a small trickle of water is emanating from somewhere underneath now. I manoeuvre it out from its snug position. It’s a heavy thing. Removing the front and back panels now reveals that the leak is coming from the water pump and not a perished hose, as I had suspected. This machine is 23 years old now and has proven to be very reliable. As a front loader, it uses very little water, good choice for us here on tank water. We can also use our own hot water, which we source from the wood stove or the solar panels, and which we have plenty of.
The water pump is a sealed plastic unit, so I can’t see the leak directly, but it appears to be from where the steel shaft passes through the plastic casing. I don’t think that I can do much about this very easily, so will enquire about a new replacement part. 23 years is a good life span for a plastic pump, so I’m not too unhappy. As long as the cost isn’t too excessive. I’ll just buy a new one and swap it over.
I replace all the panels and put it all back together. It will last a few more weeks the way it is, while I see about the cost of a new part.
The next job on my long list of repairs and maintenance is the wood fired stove. Purchased 40 years ago 2nd hand. It has served us well. I have done all sorts of minor repairs on it over the years to keep it going. This time it’s the cast iron heat shield in the fire box that protects the oven from the direct heat of the wood fire. It has corroded through and split apart in the middle.
There is nothing that I can do with it. It’s done a tremendous job over the years, but now its life is over. I don’t have any access to cast iron, and this is a custom made part. The Northburn company was already out of business when we bought this stove back in the seventies. We couldn’t get part then, so there is no chance now. But this isn’t a problem. I think that I can make something up that will do  the job.
I decide to try using one of my home made, refractory kiln shelves. I’m sure that it won’t last 40 years, but it may last a few more before it cracks. Ceramics are very brittle and are sensitive to heat shock, and there is plenty of heat shock in a wood fired stove firebox.
The refractory mix that I have developed to make my kiln shelves is based on very good quality kaolin and high fired refractory grog that we made by recycling our high alumina wadding after each stoneware firing. This sort of material will last as long as any ceramic. But ceramic slabs like this don’t like to be heated unevenly from one edge only. So I anticipate that this will be just a stop-gap measure.
It may not work for very long, but it will probably work for a while. I have another 30 or 40 of these old home made kiln shelves that I no longer use, so if it lasts a year. I have a life time supply already in stock. If it doesn’t work. I might try a sheet of mild or even stainless steel in stead. Mild steel will rust through fairly quickly, ceramics will probably crack and shatter, Stainless, apart from being very expensive, expands and contracts excessively, so will be hard to locate with sufficient leeway to get it to fit snuggly and yet stay securely fixed.
So I decide to go with what I’ve got and give it a go. All I have to loose is an hours work.
I have the challenge of adapting the flat slab of ceramic to the same profile as the original cast plate. It is fairly easy to cut the edge to resemble the original, but the locating lug for the other ceramic brick that is interlocked with it needs some thought. I decide to bolt on a steel lug using a recessed stainless steel bolt.
It all goes to plan and the new heat shield is soon back in place. The original top brick is totally shattered and spalled away, so I decide that the easiest solution is to cast a new top edge out of castable refractory. Simply because I just happen to have a small amount in a bag in the barn that was left over from a repair job for someone else a while ago. It doesn’t take long to cast the new section in-situ, all we have to do now is wait for it to set and then dry. A week should do it.
It is important to wear rubber gloves when handling castable cement. The cement is highly alkaline when freshly mixed with water, so it is extremely caustic on the hands. The essential ingrediant being quick lime. Once set however, it is no longer caustic and safe to touch.
Not a bad day, all in all. We reward ourselves with our Australian version of Japanese pan fried okonomiyaki cabbage pancake, sans flour, just using egg.

 and then a Provenḉal inspired egg plant parmigiana for dinner, all from our abundant summer garden. BBQ’d egg plant and zucchini simmered in Janine’s fresh tomato sugo, made with lots of chilli in this batch and then finished under the grill with a bit of parmigano grated on top.

It’s a gas stove delight while our wood burning stove is out of action.
Another day, another problem solved, This is self-reliance.
Best wishes from the frugality twins.

Sour Dough Clay

Posted on by

We try to allow ourselves a little time ‘off’ over the summer from the usual on-going procession of jobs. This year we had two lots of relatives visiting, so that was a good excuse to not do any other work for a week or two. Then I taught a Master Class in fine throwing and turning techniques up in Sydney for a week. So now it’s back to work. The very real work of essential property maintenance and more clay making while the weather is hot.

I have been spending time over the summer to prepare ‘clay’ for the coming year. When I say ‘clay’, what I mean by ‘clay’ and what other potters understand from that term are completely different things. I have been crushing and grinding my local porcelain stone down to a fine powder and then ball milling it into a fine impalpable stone paste with a little bentonite to make my native bai-tunze porcelain body. It isn’t plastic and sticky like most potters clay. This wet rock dust is just that. Wet rock dust. It needs a long time weathering and souring to develop any sense of cohesiveness and plasticity. The 15% of illite clay mineral that is present in the stone, gives it some similarities to the weathered ’sericite’ mica bodies of the orient. Illite is closely linked to fine weathered mica minerals, so it does give it some plastic qualities after a few years of ageing.
IMG_2011
I’m constantly trying new ways to see if I can improve the workability of my local stone somewhat, but there isn’t much that you can do with non-plastic rock dust. Other than to add some kaolin and bentonite, which is what I already do and what I saw them doing in the porcelain clay factory in Arita.
Same problem, same solution!
IMG_2015
This last year I experimented with another approach to plasticising my rock dust. This time last year, I set aside one 50 litre batch of ball milled porcelain stone slip, and instead of stiffening it on the drying bed, then setting it aside to ‘age’ in a plastic state. I have tried to leave it to settle, flocculate and ‘age’ in the slip state. This produced a very interesting result. The slip developed some sort of ’skin’ on its surface, but below the clear water that appeared above the slip as it settled. This ‘growth’ of skin must be some sort of living material like algae or something similar? I’ve never seen anything like it before. It was quite strong, as I was able to depress a bulge down into it to get the bucket into the barrel to drain off the water from the top. The skin didn’t break and allowed me to recover all the surface water without disturbing the clay below. It even held together well as I lifted it up off the surface of the slip underneath. There was some greenish algae-like growth around the edges of the bucket, where light could get in. This isn’t unusual, as I get loads of green algal-like growth in my clay bags that are set aside to ‘age’. I make my bodies from natural stone powders that I grind myself and I use mostly naturally acidic tannin infused water from the water tanks connected to the pottery roof. Tannin is well documented to be beneficial to plasticising clay materials, as is maintaining an acid pH to counter the natural release of alkalis from the broken down stone fragments as they are ball milled. The overall effect of these natural ingredients is that there is no chlorinated water used in its production and no sterilisation of the powders or any heat treatment of any kind, so the clay is still alive with whatever organics there where in it in the first place.
I’ve kept the ’skin’ to investigate further. I may be able to use it like a sour-dough starter to inoculate the next experimental batch of porcelain body?
When I started to mix the settled and aged slip, it was very viscous and then when I poured it out onto the drying bed and scraped out the bucket, my fingers started to stick together with the extreme viscosity of the slip. I haven’t felt anything quite like this from porcelain slip before. I once had a bucket of porcelain glaze that I kept for special purposes, and then didn’t use for a few years. When I open the bucket and stirred it up. It had set to a stiff gel and took a bit of effort to stir. My fingers stuck together with the viscosity of the glaze at this time too. Ageing has this plasticising effect and is a good thing to do if you can afford the time. I’m 64, so I don’t have a lot of time to do these kinds of experiments over the very long term. I’m keen to see how this specially aged liquid slip batch of porcelain body develops and throws this time next year.
Only time will tell.
Summer is also a time of fresh garden salads and veggie BBQs. We have a lot of tomatoes, zucchini, aubergines and basil at the moment, so every meal is some sort of variation on ratatouille. Baked, poached, pan-fried, BBQ’d and/or grilled. I’m trying to keep it varied and interesting in lots of different ways.
IMG_1847

 

Best wishes from all-natural, sour-dough, clay-boy

East Meets West, West Eats Meat

Posted on by

Having not eaten any meat for 4 months, we have suddenly gone from sublime to ridiculous, famine to feast, from sashimi to steak.

Xmas has come and gone and we spent a quiet day together, as our son is the sous chef at Biota dining. The only 2 hat restaurant in the Southern Highlands. He did Xmas lunch for 160, so started at dawn and finally finished at 9pm.

We had our family get-together Xmas lunch on Boxing Day. We envisaged a small meal of vegetables from our organic garden with a little meat, almost as a side dish, cooked in the outside wood fired oven and enjoyed outside, under the shade of the grape vines. This wasn’t to be, as our son turned up with a barron of beef and half a pig, which he set about butchering into sections of ribs and pork belly.

He made a rolled pork belly roast stuffed with trimmings and herbs from the garden, with loads of roasted garlic and we roasted this slowly during the day at the back of the oven.

Geordie slowly roasted the 5 point rack of 90 day aged beef, very gently over an extended period. This became our lunch along with our usual BBQ’d garden vegetables.

The rolled roast and ribs, along with half a dozen pizzas, went to the village musicians who turned up later in the evening.

DSC01712DSC01708DSC01709

We braised the full rack of pork ribs in a mix of last summers preserved tomato sugo, red wine, cloves and star anise, onions, with garden herbs and bay leaves. This was simmered in the lightly stoked oven for a long time until very tender and then the sauce was drained and strained, and then added back to the pan with the addition of a few spoons fun of our fruit jelly to sweeten it and gell it up. This was poured back over the ribs to finish them to a sweet, fragrant, tender, sticky perfection. Yum!

I’ve never cooked a full side of pork ribs before, as there are only two of us here, there isn’t much need and we don’t usually eat so much meat. But it’s Xmas, the season of excess, and tonight we have the Village Musicians meeting here for their extended ‘session’. We hosted them here last month as well and they seemed to like it, so we invited them back. It just turns out to be the night of boxing day. So I stoke up the oven when they arrive and we sit under the grape vines and listen to their songs, while I bake 6 pizzas and finish off the ribs.

Now it’s time for a day ‘off’ and a little snooze.

No Meat for 4 months

Posted on by

Through the cooler months of the year we plan to eat some red meat about once a month, but after I returned from China in May, where I had meat in everything. It seemed that every meal I chose seemed to contain some small amount of meat or more probably offal. I got a bit over it, so I thought that I’d skip meat for a while. Then when I was working in Japan in August. I seemed to get invited to a lot of BBQ’s or  ‘celebration’ meals that involved red meat. This was quite an eye opener for me, as I remember when I first went to study in Japan in the early 80’s, I hardly saw any meat for sale, never mind eating any. Now, 5 trips and 35 years later. The supermarket fridge displays are loaded with just as much red meat as there is fish. How things have changed.

Since I have returned, I haven’t been to the butchers at all. It’s now 4 months since I had any meat. I just haven’t felt like I needed any. I’m NOT a vegetarian. I eat what my body tells me that I feel like eating. That is mostly fish and fresh vegetables.

So, at the weekend I was over at the Village Hall, where I am one of the trustees. We were there for the Village Xmas Party. At some point I casually mentioned to my neighbour John, that this fund-raising sausage sandwich was the first ‘supposedly’ red meat that I’d had in months. I’m giving the local butcher the benefit of the doubt here in crediting him with actually putting some small quantity of meat in his sausages, although from the pale creamy/yellow colour of them. I can only imagine what else might be in there, and I’m pretty certain that it isn’t meat. At the butchers, I notice that those pale anemic things are called sausages, while the red meat filled intestine tubes all have other exotic names like ‘bratwurst and salsiccia’.  I asked why and was told that it is illegal to call anything with that much meat in it a sausage. The laws governing ‘sausages’ are strict and you can’t put very much meat in them. I didn’t dare ask what is actually in them, but I suppose that it is mostly fat, gristle and bread crumbs?

Anyway, My neighbour John was shocked, appalled and quite taken aback at this fact and looked at me after my ‘confession’ with that pitying look that said “You poor, hapless, tragic bastard”! He was polite in not actually saying that to my face. But his face said it all. He asked me, “What do you eat when you aren’t eating raw vegetables then”? I told him that I fast 2 days a week!

His eyes rolled back in his head!

He said. “Come to dinner tomorrow night and I’ll feed you up”!

We duly turned up with our bottle of red wine. A very nice one in fact, and were treated to an exceptionally nice meal of medium rare, fillet steak in pepper cream sauce, served with a side of diced peppers and mushrooms stir fried in butter and mash potato made with lashings of salt, butter and parsley. It was sensational! John knows his steak. He also knows how to ‘read’ me. He knows I don’t often eat red meat and along with that he guessed I rarely buy cream, I never use salt and hardly ever use much butter. And he is right. So he decided to slam dunk me with the full trifecta.

And I’m glad he did. It was delicious.

In our turn, we invited them over for a nice salad and a glass of rain water, or maybe a few slices of sashimi and a bowl of green tea!

Best wishes from the now, very well fed, poor, hapless, tragic bastard.

IMG_1751

Finally, the rain comes

Posted on by

We have had a week of swelteringly hot days, all up in the high 30s. Yesterday was 39oC way too hot to work out side, so we got up very early and got started working by 6am. We gave up and came inside at 11.00 am. It was just too hot. We have been watering the vegetables morning and night, but they are still suffering. Many of the plants like beans, celery and  cucumbers have dead, dried patches on their leaves.

IMG_1740IMG_1737

But at least they are still alive, so that is success. I gave the sweet basil its first hair cut. I tip pruned all the florets that were trying to flower and filled a large basket with the leaves. I like to make a kind of pesto-like paste. to go into the freezer, so that there will always be basil to add to sauces later in the year. We also make real pesto with garlic, pine nuts and parmigiano cheese, but what I’m making here now is just basil, garlic, a little salt and olive oil paste. It freezes well and keeps all year, so that when I need some basil flavouring in winter, I can open the freezer and take out the tub of this frozen basil paste, tap it upside down to drop it out of the container and then slice off a block of almost fresh basil concentrate. Beautifully green and flavourful. The rest is returned to the freezer for later.

I’ve been known to make up to six or seven of these half litre containers during the summer. As long as I never let the basil flower and keep pinching out the growing tips, the plants seem to thicken up and keep producing more leaves. Once you let them set flowers, they stop growing.

This stuff is fantastic. I love it. It’s one of there few things that we keep in our small freezer section of our fridge. Because it isn’t cooked, we can’t preserve it any other way, other than drying the leaves, which I have also done, but dried leaves are different. This stuff is magic. So intense. The little bit of garlic and salt really brings it to life. And it is surprisingly easy to slice from the block when frozen. Having very little water content and being mostly oil, it doesn’t set hard like ice, but more sort of leathery?

All the mid season peaches are now gone. We only have one tree of late peaches yet to come on. It is netted and we wait for them to ripen. All the berries are now over with over 20 kilos picked this year and safely all preserved, vacuum sealed and stored in the pantry. This recent heat wave has brought on the plums and they are just wonderful, sweet and tangy with that fabulous combination of acid and sugar that make your mouth water. We eat the first of them straight from the tree. Such a great taste, warmed by the sun, the juice trickles down our chins. They are mouth waveringly good. There are too many ripening all at once, so Janine has been stewing them and we have them for breakfast with a little yoghurt.

IMG_1719

We are in direct competition with all the birds at this time of year. The Lovely and hard working Janine has been moving the nets around and bagging some of the fruit, keeping one step ahead of the birds, while I have been so busy with orders. It’s a lot of work, but worth it. Having beautiful fresh, organic, clean food that we have grown ourselves, is a major part of our enterprise here.

We work outside very early and then again in the late afternoon and evening. Working inside during the heat of the day. Janine has mown the stone fruit orchard and I have mown the citrus grove and vegetable garden. Everything is looking good and now the heat is over for the time being with a cool change arriving and bringing with it some beautiful, cooling rain. I emptied the rain gauge this morning and we have had 33 mm. Just enough to flow down and top up the dam for a few more weeks of hand watering. The combination of cooler temperatures and soaking rain will bring all the plants back to life and put on a growth spurt.

IMG_1722

I bought a kilo of live mussels from the fish-truck man, so we are having mussel and vegetable soup for lunch. I usually just do the simple favourite, mussels in white wine, but as we have so many beautiful vegetables at the moment, I make a combination of green peppers, green and yellow zucchinis, red shallots and fresh sweet basil sauce. I bring it all to life with a jar of our preserved tomato passata concentrate from March. This batch was made with tiny yellow tomatoes, onions, capsicum, garlic and olive oil.

I cook it off and add the mussels to the boiling broth. It fills the kitchen with its steamy fragrance. It’s a great indulgence, but we  have earned it. Everything except the mussels from our own labours in the garden.

IMG_1721IMG_1724

IMG_1732

The First Tomatoes of the Year, Ratatouille

Posted on by

Yesterday, we harvested the first ripe tomatoes of the year. This is only the second time that we have managed to get ripe tomatoes before Xmas. The only other time was last year. Global warming, What global warming?

We also made our first pickings of our large green capsicums and smaller yellow banana capsicums, added to the sweet basil and yellow and green zucchinis, we have the makings of the first ratatouille of the summer. The egg plants bushes oblige us with the first few small aubergines and suddenly, there is our dinner in a basket.

The weather is very hot now 39 0C during the day. Our friends in Adelaide have had 4 days in a row of  41,42,43 and 41 oC. Way too hot to be able to work effectively outside. I make clay while the sun shines, inside under cover of a roof, but still sweltering. Porcelain slip dries very well on the drying bed in this weather. It’s a good time to make single-stone porcelain.

In the evening we sit outside and cook our produce, Ratatouille with the addition of a small jar of last years concentrated tomato, onion and basil ‘sugo’. I lightly brown our new-season onions in olive oil and then add in our crushed garlic. The roughly diced vegetables are added and turned in the oil a few times to coat them, then the sugo is added and the lid placed on to allow it all to simmer and soften for a few minutes.

We sit and chat into the cool of the evening. A nice chilled glass of rosé goes very well with this simple, fresh and very delicious Post Modern Peasants repast. The flavour of summer!

We have really earned this meal. We started making this meal three months ago, when we spread the compost and planted the seedlings. Now it’s payback time. It explodes in our mouths and takes us back to last summer. I can feel myself starting to relax into the idea of taking a little time off over the solstice break. This is a well earned, beautiful moment.

I am grateful!

 

Approaching the Solstice

Posted on by

As we approach the solstice the weather has turned hot and we are getting days in the mid thirties oC. Everything becomes desiccated very quickly if we don’t water morning and night. As the longest day will soon be here, it’s time to lift the onions and the early potatoes.

We plant most of the onions around the shortest day at the winter solstice and harvest near the summer solstice. So that is now. We aren’t very good gardeners, as we try to do too much, so there isn’t always time to do things ‘properly’, but we manage our time as best we can and everything that needs to get done usually does. We don’t plan things out meticulously and then follow through on the plan with Germanic precision. Rather we kind of lurch from crisis to crisis, doing what really needs to be done NOW and can’t wait any longer. I remember that I planted two packets of brown onion seed in late June,  but only a smattering of seeds germinated. I don’t know why. So I planted another packet in late July, when I realised that I wasn’t going to get any more strike from that first germination. The second attempt was also very patchy. As it takes a few weeks to realise that things haven’t worked out as you planned, there isn’t always time left to get the next planting done and germinated in time. So it was very late, at the beginning of August. The last day before I left for Japan, that I sprinkled two more packs of onion seed, a different brand this time, and then flew out for a month or so. When I returned, the unattended seeds had all struck, but were a bit crowded. I was so busy catching up with everything else on my return, I left them to get on with it. They are now ready to lift, but rather small, as they didn’t get enough cold weather to grow out well. I’m calling them salad onions now, small but juicy and sweet. I’m not too sure how they will keep.

The garden girl has been lifting the early potatoes, Nicola and Maris Piper. We don’t get huge crops, using only compost and some chicken manure to fertilise them. But the soil is soft and fibrous, and rich with worms. It looks and smells great, so I’m happy with that. We get about 8 potatoes for every one that we plant, maybe 1 kg per spud. I’m told that commercially, they get 8 to 10 kgs per plant? I’m not too concerned. We do everything organically with a view to growing just enough to support ourselves. This isn’t a business. It’s real life, a life where we aim to be as sustainable as possible. We get more than enough spuds to keep us going all year, more then we need actually. So the ones that get a bit shrivelled and start to get long sprouts on them after storage for a long time, just simply get replanted, back into the garden. They become the winter crop, down in the frost free area of  the Pantry Field.

All the young berries have finished now, as have the raspberries, there are just a few boysenberries left under netting. We picked over 20 kilos of berries this year. We ate a lot of them, but most of them were sterilised and went into vacuum sealed jars for use later in the year.

We have a good crop of cabbages coming along, so we are developing recipes for using cabbage. Finely sliced and cooked in okonomiyaki, shredded in a salad with mint and vinegar dressing, or served with shiso, rocket, mizuma and roasted nor paper strips and dressed with a sesame oil, mirin, rice wine vinegar, sake and soy.

Annabelle Sloujettè called in and introduced us to a commercial brand of pre-fried Chinese noodles in a plastic pack. Not the sort of thing that we would normally think of buying. She made a cabbage salad with these crunchy noodles and a lovely tangy home made dressing. We were very impressed. It was really delicious. She stayed over and we talked late into the night. In the morning we had coffee with her before she left.

She likes a big coffee to start the day.

IMG_1672

Friday on my mind

Posted on by

Two weeks ago on Friday I delivered a kiln to Sturt Pottery and then spent the next week welding up another order and delivered it to the Galvanisers on the next Friday. That was last Friday. I spent this week welding up the next kiln order and delivered it to the galvanisers today – this Friday!

Kiln4 (11)Kiln6 (13)

While I was up there, I picked up last weeks kiln, that had been dropped off and dipped this time last week, all in the same trip. It’s good when things work out like that. After all, it’s a 3 or 4 hour round trip up to Sydney and back, so I like to make it pay.

IMG_1599IMG_1613

I swap this weeks black mild steel frame for last weeks shiny, newly galvanised one in the factory. I’m getting a head start on next years orders, so there won’t be any delay, as I know that I’m going to be very busy next year, with a lot of projects planned. So getting in early with all this intense work, is a way of banking time. So now I can take it a bit easier over Xmas and the new year, when we have a lot of guests planned to visit.

IMG_1644

In the mean time, I also picked up a trade-back kiln. One of my kilns that has not had a lot of use, so I will do it up and offer it for sale as a 2nd hand kiln, but with a 12 months, as-new, new kiln warranty. I’d really like two get this job done before Xmas too, if I can squeeze it in.

IMG_3893 IMG_3895

I’m starting to feel a bit tired after all this intense work. I need a couple of days in the garden to ground me and get the vegetables back up to scratch.

It’s been so hot recently, up in the high 30’s recently. We have had to water morning and night to keep everything looking pert. It’s all I can do with all this welding to keep things alive. All the grass has dried-off and started to turn brown now. We have been lucky to have had a green vista for so long. In past years, during the dry times. The grass was all burnt off dry brown and crunchy in late spring.

Yesterday, it was so hot, that I fuelled-up and commissioned the ‘house’ fire-fighting pump for the first time this summer, and used it to wet the roof of the house with rain water to cool the house down. It works like a charm and drops the temperature by 5 degrees inside the house within minutes. Nearly all the water is collected in the roof gutters and runs back into the water tank. It is a productive way to test out the fire fighting system early in the season, and get everything back up to scratch, before it is needed in an emergency, when there is no time to waste.

For dinner I steamed a fillet of taylor and served it with freshly harvested kipfler potatoes and multi-coloured zucchinis, green, black and yellow. This was accompanied with a Japanese inspired green salad of red and green Mizuma leaves, rocket, shiso, red coral lettuce and green spring onion. Dressed with a finely sliced, filaments of roasted nori paper and a shiso dressing. I also salted some sliced cucumber and after draining, dressed it with sesame oil and some lightly roasted sesame seeds.

IMG_1634 IMG_1635

It is all lightly aromatic, crunchy and goes well with freshly picked red French radishes. A multicultural Australian meal, perfect for summer.

All these ingredients fresh from the garden, except the fish and the nori paper. It’s a wonderful reward for our efforts.

It’s a Busy Time of Year

Posted on by

I have only just delivered the last kiln off the factory floor and now I’m back in there welding up the next one. I want to get into and out of the galvanisers before Xmas, so that I can work on it over the summer break, so as to get a head start on next years orders. The galvanisers shut down for a month over the summer as does the local steel supply yard, and many other businesses as well.

IMG_1600

I have the next frame all tacked up already. I can cut the sections and start to weld the bones of it together while the old faithful automatic hacksaw does it’s job, slowly and relentlessly.

IMG_1598

When I made my first kiln. I cut all the steel out with a hacksaw blade by hand. It took two days. I don’t think that I’ve been so bored in all my life. When that initial kiln was sold, the first thing that I did was to spend my profits on a 4″ angle grinder and this wonderful old ‘chug-a-lug’ cast iron automatic hacksaw. It has been the most important thing that I have ever bought, with the possible exception of my home. It has worked continuously and reliably for 35 years. All I have ever had to replace are the blades, about once a year. It is such a fantastic invention. It cuts while I weld. and the angle grinder cleans up the edges.

I don’t want to get caught with no options, so I’m getting in early, as early as I can and doing all the welding and ordering of parts now. Then I will have the luxury of setting my own agenda of work and relaxation over the summer. We have relatives visiting from inter state and also from overseas, so we’ll be busy relaxing as well as working.

There a lot of veggies starting to bolt in the sudden heat, so we are try to eat them as fast as we can. i made a risotto last night with lots of garden produce. I used leeks instead of onions because that is what we have plenty of just now, and loads of fresh veggies, so much so that the result wasn’t really a risotto, as it only contained half cup of carnaroli rice, but a large bowlful of carrots, zucchinis and some mushrooms.

Veggieotto, with a little rice added. Cooked in fish stock from the bones of our dinner from a few nights ago.

IMG_1583 IMG_1586IMG_1590

We are now picking from our 3rd tree of peaces. Well protected by plastic bird netting. We get all the fruit form these trees. they are the newer low chill varieties that we have been forced to grow now. These are the third generation of peach trees that we have grown here now over the 40 years of our Post Modern Peasant Enterprise. Modern varieties of peach trees seem to have a productive life here of 15 years. The Lovely decides to make a peach cobbler for desert to follow our veggieotto.

IMG_1576

IMG_1587

We have also made our first large pick of young berries. Up until now, we have been eating what we picked each day, but the season is suddenly in full swing now, so we get up very early and go out to do the harvesting before it gets too hot. We spend 3/4 of an hour and pick 7 kgs in one go. They are really coming on. The lovely Lady of Household Management, Ms Janine Beeton, can’t be beat’n when it comes to household frugality. She has them all sorted, cleaned, steamed and bottled by mid morning, while I’m cutting steel. The vector of post modern peasantry and petit-capitalism.

IMG_1573

IMG_1574

IMG_1579

It’s a busy time of year.