Rhubarb and Apple Crumble - without the crumble!

The Rhubarb's getting a bit overgrown at the moment, so I thought that it would be a great time to get some Crumble going. Only thing is that we're out of butter, so it's just straight Rhubarb for now!

I plan in some of my writings to include recipes for cooking, along with preservation techniques. The idea is that this isn't simply about the garden itself, it's suggestions of how to deal with the produce.

So tonight the Rhubarb.

This is a really easy recipe. You start with around 10-15 stalks of rhubarb, add a half cup of sugar, and two apples. I did it over a reasonably moderate heat as the rhubarb was almost cooked by the time I'd finished slicing the apple.


In this shot you can kind of see the rhubarb's cooked already. To make sure that the apple wasn't raw, I left it on the low heat, with the lid on, for the apple to continue cooking and soak up some of the juices. It worked pretty well, about 10-15 minutes all up.

You could then take this mix and put a mixture of sugar, oats, flour and butter on top to make the crumble. Ice cream worked just as well though. I did use brown sugar for this tonight, and I think that it's made it a bit browner overall - this photo kind of looks like a chocolate pudding!

Still, I think that the kids would be able to tell that it's a little bit more tart than chocolate.

The Garden is Growing!

Well, I've been a bit quiet logging onto the computer and putting an update in. Virtually all my free time is spent in the garden trying to make sure that I've got everything up and running for the summer growing season, and I think I'm almost there!

The weather's been perfect for planting out - lots of rain mixed with a fair bit of sunshine. We've only harvested minimal amounts so far - a few bunches of rhubarb, a broccoli, some strawberries and one raspberry. Just one, not one cup or one bucket. The chickens are growing well and are now outside. My wife is celebrating that the laundry has been reclaimed for the humans!

I've gone for a semi-no dig garden. I've not been to get the copious amounts of straw and manure to do a fully fledged no dig, but the rough principles are there. This first shot is my potato bed and it's a bit of an experiment itself. We were too late getting seed potatoes from the nursery, but we did have some sprouting potatoes in the pantry. Unable to eat them, they've gone into the patch to see what happens. If it doesn't work, we haven't lost much - next season I'll be prepared for the real thing!

There's two rows of tomatoes next to the potatoes (in the 'old' vegetable garden bed). One of Gross Lisse (for salads etc) and one of Roma (for sauces).

The next bed is roughly Brassica's - at the moment the last of some cabbages and the broccoli. I've planted in some climbing beans in between, and the wood shavings at the bottom are some carrots. Peter Cundall of Gardening Australia talks about how carrots don't always germinate if they dry out too much once you sow the seeds. I'd lost quite a few (out of about 2 metres/yards of seeds I'd had around 3 carrots germinate), so figured this was worth a shot. The seeds are at the bottom of a 'trench' about an inch deep, and then covered in wood shavings. So far so good!

At the back of this photo is the rhubarb, and a row of newer (Gross Lisse) tomatoes.

The next bed along is the corn and I'm growing Baby Corn along with Sweet Corn. I've grown the Baby Corn successfully a year or two ago and ended up getting close to 8 ears off each plant. Apparently if you let the cobs grow to full size you can use the corn as popcorn, so I might try that to see how the kids like that. The beans on the left are Borlotti and are great for drying out and using in soups, stews and possibly baked beans. On the right is a Cherry Tomato - this plant is extremely prolific already and we should have a few tomatoes to pick very soon.

The final bed in this section is for melons or cucurbits. We've got a couple of varieties of Pumpkin, some Cucumbers and some Zucchini (Squash). Hopefully with lots of eggs from the chickens and we'll have endless amounts of quiche over summer!

There's a bit more to the vege garden, but this is the main portion of it. Effectively this part is simply the original dirt garden, with some extensions of the no-dig portions of it. During next winter I'll grow green manure through most of it, and then I'll be able to properly divide the beds and have a proper rotation system happening.

For now the goal is simply to get as much in before the heat of summer kicks in, and then we can have a bumper harvest!

New Additions to the Farm

Since settlement went through a few weeks ago, we've been getting right into the garden and improving the vegetable garden and putting in fruit trees. Today though was the exciting addition of three new chicks to the farm.

We have been wanting to have some chickens, but I thought that with two young children under 4, buying week old chicks would give us a few extra benefits. Although they were a similar cost to point of lay chickens (and so we've got to feed them for around 3 months until we start getting a return in terms of eggs), the chicks will grow while the kids are able to be around them.

This afternoon as soon as we got home the chicks were out running around on a rug with the kids watching. Once I put them away, our daughter ran to the table and started drawing pictures to show them! She can't get enough!

Tonight we went a step further too. Our daughter loves a PBS TV show "Sid The Science Kid" where the character learns about growth, charts, observations and heaps of other aspects of science. So, these chicks are now providing a science to our daughter. We weighed the chicks tonight (and will do so weekly) so that we can chart their growth, plus she sat down after and drew pictures of the chicks.
The picture needs a bit of an explanation. The head is on the left. The black mark on the top is a mark that this particular chick has (we're hoping it doesn't grow out as it helps identify it!). The red and purple bit on the left of the legs (in blue) is the container the chick is eating out of. The brown spot at the right at the opposite end of the head is... Well, I guess you will be able to work out what comes out of week old chicks from that end of their body.

It's Ours!

After months of planning and talking, the house is ours! Settlement went through yesterday, so now it's all official.

I've got my parents visiting this weekend, so there probably won't be much packing, moving or gardening this weekend. The removalist is booked for next weekend though, so we'll be heading into a very busy week or two.

Two weeks to go!

Two weeks to go and things are definitely getting ready to go! One of my big goals out of the whole move is that this will help set us up well financial, especially through reducing our grocery bills as we become more self-sufficient.

To help with that, the last few weeks have been preparing for the move and getting some more plants organised. I've written before about the strawberries and grapes, but we've given them a push along by purchasing some more fruit trees.

This will be our front lawn - 600m2 of lawn. It will be the kids play area, with deciduous fruit trees around the edge (apples, pears, peaches, apricots etc). We live in a cooler high rainfall area, so the grass doesn't need watering very much at all (around half a dozen times a year), puls the grass clippings will help with compost for the vege garden. I will work on a greywater system for a portion of the lawn, I'm leaning towards not watering at all for the most part of it, and then greywater for where we want the kids to play (and green lawn!).
Part of the backyard vegetable garden. On the left of the shed I'll be putting in a henhouse for some chickens. Free eggs and manure!!! Leading up to the shed & henhouse will be some plants that will be outside of the rotation system used for gardening in the main plot. Strawberries and potatoes at this stage, but likely to include peanuts and sweet potatoes as experiments later. Where the hedge is on the right will make way for raspberries and/or grapes. They'll then provide a productive border to the rest of the garden.

Finally, the top garden - where I'll grow the vegetables. This is from behind the garden shed, looking back towards where the other picture was taken (slightly to the left of this shot). The chickens will be near the hedges on the left, but I've still got around 100m2 within this area that will be our vegetable garden. Eventually I'll have six beds and employ a rotational system, but to start will I'll be dumping a stack of seedlings and seeds into this small garden bed which the current owners have used. It's not massive, but the soil under the grass is a heavy clay, so it's going to take a little while to build up.

I'll also put in a few citrus trees towards the back fence (left of the large trees at the back of this photo), so in a few years we should be (mostly) self-sufficient in fruit, vegetables and eggs. We'll need to buy in some groceries (we need a permit for the chickens from our shire council, so I don't imagine they'd look favourably on getting a milking goat or sheep!), but this will provide more than enough produce and we should be able to barter with some other residents around for additional produce that we can't grow ourselves.

So, we've notified our current landlord that we're ready to vacate, and will have removalists coming to shift our furniture in less than two weeks. Some of the plants have already started to make their way to the new place (we know the current owners quite well now!), and the orchards should be ready for the (Southern Hemisphere) summer growing season that's about to start.

Settlement Moving Forward!

Wow, what a couple of weeks it has been. Finance was approved, and then the building inspection came up OK (a few things to fix, but no surprises at least), so settlement was formally set for November.

I went to visit the couple we are buying the house from last week, and the place they wanted to move into was still on the market. I gave them a couple of tips to get their offer accepted (another guy had an offer on subject to finance which had been dragging on, I suggested that we could move our settlement forward to then let them put an unconditional offer on the place they wanted). As a result, we could potentially buy our new place in as little as 4 weeks!

I'd planted out some seedlings in our current home a few weeks ago (cauliflower, broccoli and spinach) but now it looks like we won't be around long enough for them to properly grow out!
My wife's also been renovating a kitchen! Well, one for the kids anyway... She's taken two old small chest of drawers (about 40 years old, they were my parents originally) and converted to an oven and fridge, then a piece of MDF board to be the bench in the middle. Four black coasters for the stove, and a stainless steel mixing bowl for the sink, and viola! A new kitchen!

Finance Approved!

After a few months of trying to sort out a few things financially, the bank has finally approved our loan to buy our new home. Yay! Our dream of living on a big block of land is only a short while off.

We have agreed for the current owners to remain in the property after the settlement has gone through, although this was only because we've brought privately (direct from the owners) who are an elderly couple wanting to downsize. They weren't expecting to sell for another 2 years, so haven't found somewhere yet. Now that we've got finance approved though, I suspect that they will want to move into a new property themselves fairly soon.

Part of the original plan was to sell our other home in Perth to free up some cash. Unfortunately we couldn't get a good price, so plan B is to rent that one out, and then live in this new home (we've been renting here in the meantime). Financially it will only cost around $100 a week more (worst case scenario in 30 years we'll own it outright), but it is really about the non-financial reasons that we're buying (big garden, we can do what we like to the house, settling down permanently in Victoria).

On the gardening front, it's also the first time that I've been able to plan a garden quite like this one. Our other gardens have been more a default setting - either the previous owners had it set up one way, or we didn't have the space to have much choice. This time we've got a stack of options, so can really consider many more aspects.

I'll post something shortly to show some past gardens that we've had, and I'll post another time to explain the set up of our new garden.

While we won't be handing over the cash any time soon (or rather, borrowing from the bank), it will be a stretch on our budget compared to what we've been able to do in recent years, so for now it's about settling into a routine and budget that we'll be having to live to shortly. And as part of that routine, I'm off to plant some seedlings out into our winter vege garden here!

Budget (Home Made) Pizza

Time for a confession - I'm a definite pizza fanatic. One of my first jobs was delivering pizzas, and through that I got to learn the pizza making process. If was also a money saver. During our first years of marriage, I was working part time, and with my wife's low income position (Office Junior) our combined income was around $20k per year. Pizza's that weren't fit for customer's consumption became a staple in our house for free meals!

Since that time, things have improved (thankfully)! Whenever we've travelled, sampling local pizza has always been a priority to me - along with other foods of course. A highlight was a few years ago when I was in Chicago and got to experience Chicago-style pizza at Pizzeria Due on the North Side. It's a deep pan pizza, but can not compare to Australian deep pan pizza.

I've previously come across a recipe for a Chicago-style pizza dough, and have made it before with moderate levels of success. Today I thought that I'd give it another go. From a budget perspective, I made two pizzas for maybe around $4 using the following ingredients.Plus added water...

I deviated from the recipe a little, but basically started with activating the yeast by adding to warm water and sugar. If you do that a few minutes before combining with the flour, salt and cornflour, then you end up with a a foamy mix of water and yeast.


By gradually adding the liquid ingredients to the mix, you end up with your dough. It's still not perfectly mixed, but a few minutes of kneading the dough helps with that process. Then you simply roll into a ball and leave for an hour approximately until the dough ball is roughly double in size.
Strictly, this recipe makes one base, but for the sake of spreading the dough a little further, it is more than satisfactory if you half the dough and make two bases. They still ended up almost a centimetre (a third of an inch) thick. After splitting in half, roll the doughs out to slightly larger than the pan, as they will shrink a little. I also pinch the edges, which helps form a great crust (poke the base with a fork a bit so that it doesn't rise or bubble too much also).
Parbake the bases for around 5 minutes in a hot (220C) oven, and then you can get the toppings on. True Chicago-style pizza toppings would be easiest to describe as being and upside down pizza on a pie - it's literally like the cheese and toppings are on the base, then the sauce (which is like a napolitana sauce on the top. While the sauce is quite "wet" compared to regular pizza sauce, it really combines well with the pizza dough soaking up the moisture. If I haven't done it justice in this description - you'll have to go to Chicago to experience it yourself!

The pizzas I made today were fairly straight forward. One bacon and pineapple for the kids, and one with bacon, chicken, onion and avocado for the parents. A fantastic meal, and there's leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Plus, it was only $4, not $12-15 per pizza that we would have paid tonight in town.

Growing the Strawberry Collection

As we prepare for our move to our new home, one thing that I'd love to grow more of are strawberries. Our kids go crazy for them, and can easily eat around 200grams (1/2 pound) a day if allowed. While I've grown a few plants in our current home, these don't provide much of a harvest. In keeping with the simple/affordable living focus of this blog, I've decided to grow more plants off the runners. As a result, we now have almost 30 plants.

I started with the original plants in small pots, and then lined up window boxes for the runners to grow into. These were filled with premium potting mix to encourage the runners to grow roots quickly. The runners are the reddish/brownish lengths of plant between the plants in the photo below.The first step is to simply cut the runners off. While you could do this a lot earlier than I have, leaving them a bit longer allows the roots to establish quite well. Otherwise, you may find that the plant doesn't survive.


Next you lift the individual plants out. In this case I'm using some old pots that I've still got around, but some other plants I've transplanted this year I've used milk pots. These pots I'm using this time around aren't ideal, but I figure that this is temporary until I can establish a permanent strawberry bed in our new home.
With the ten plants that I replanted today, I've now got 27 plants (off the initial 3). I'm pretty happy with that many (great starting point for next summer, although some plants look like they're fruiting already), but I'll probably buy a few more plants next summer to work as replacement stock and keep that supply going! From a budget perspective, the plants cost around $2 each initially, so now my unit cost is down to around 25c!

Grape Propagation

Our family has just bought a new home and although initially it will be a rental property it is likely that we will eventually live in it. The land is around 1/3 of an acre (1500 m2 approx), so not only will there be a little grass, a play area for the children and an outdoor entertaining area, we will be able to afford to (finally) have a properly organized vegetable garden, fruit orchard and a chicken run.

From a sustainability perspective, I don’t think that we’ll be entirely self sufficient, but I do think that we can substantially reduce our need to purchase quite as much fresh produce from the supermarket. Plus, I will probably be able to experiment a little more than I have been able to previously. When you’ve only got minimal space, you need to go with what works. On this new property, I’ll be able to try out a few different things just for the fun of it.

First up will be a bit of a trial vineyard. And by vineyard I mean growing a few grape vines! I know a guy locally who runs quite a successful winery, so I’ve been able to get hold of a few different varieties of wine grapes, and will have a go at being able to propagate them.

In all, he’s given me 5 varieties: Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Merlot. While I’ve got four cuttings of each, I’m really not sure what number will actually take successfully. I’ve got in mind one area in the new home that I will probably grow them, but I’ve decided to start the propagation process now. That way if and when we move in, I’ll know how many vines I’m dealing with.

To propagate grapes is pretty easy and straightforward. I’ve taken some cuttings from the pruning that the vineyard goes through at this time of year. Every vine needs to be cut back, so it provides plenty of opportunity to get cuttings.

The cuttings need to be trimmed to where the buds grow from. The two or three buds planted under the soil will grow roots, while leaves and vines will grow from the buds above ground. Or at least that’s the theory. I've used a fairly basic store bought potting mix this time around, purely to make my job a bit easier!

While I’d prefer for the garden to have little non-organic input as much as possible, because I only have a four of each variety, I have used a powder that is supposed to help the cuttings take root. If I was growing off my own vines, I’d just plant a truckload more and be happy with a lower success rate.

I’ve then put the pots (labeled with their variety as I would never be able to tell what is what variety) beside a north-facing wall (which gets most of the winter (Southern Hemisphere) sun. It’s a bit of a micro-climate that seems to be providing a bit of warmth to our strawberries, so it should provide a bit more protection to the new vines.

I doubt I’ll ever get enough grape juice to actually make wine, but I figure when we move in that I’ll probably have a few table grapes as well, so hopefully these will complement those grape vines. Failing that, I know our old chooks loved eating grapes so they can always be chicken food!