Coast in Queensland has had to have the sand pit for the crocodiles heated.  I must tell you that the Gold Coast  used to advertise itself as "Beautiful one day, perfect the next". 

 

Brian reckons his Father told him when he was a lad that the weather in the South West goes through a 22 year cycle, and that what happens in London in, for example, Summer, will happen in Warrnambool next Summer.  So we have an avid interest in Wimbledon.  The meterologists can't seem to get it right here, even in the dead of Winter.  Yesterday was supposed to be fine, but it kept raining on and off.   A decade or so ago, you could actually get a percentage of likely precipitation, but I don't think they're game to forecast like that anymore.  The met. guys can't explain what's going on as we are supposed to have finished with El Nino. Ha!  They are asking the Aborigines, who can't explain it either, because they have either not been able to take into account how much we have messed around with our climate (pollution etc) and that doesn't fit in with a weather pattern that has been reasonably cyclical over a few thousand years, or the poor beggars have lost track of what their ancestors would have known because of the way we have treated them.  Like the American Indian, we have a Stolen Generation, where children, particularly half-caste, were taken from their Aboriginal parents and farmed out to Missions and white families where they often worked as virtual bond slaves a lot of the time.  This was done supposedly for their good, as short a time ago as the 1960s.  Absolutely disgusting, in most cases.  Absolutely unnecessary, in most cases.

 

From my, admittedly biased, point of view, the experts should be consulting with farmers, especially third generation farmers.  They've seen it all before.  The droughts, the floods, the bushfire seasons, everything.

 

Brian is still working on the ute.  We now believe, given the almost use-by date of the vehicles currently on the road, that another ute would be the best option.  If I could get a clone of the one that we have now, but in better condition, I would be a happy little vegemite.  A four door automatic, dual fuel, with air conditioning, power steering, no rust and great fuel economy, and you'd hear the heels click no matter where you are!

 

All of the animals are in very good condition, but I made sure that the guinea pigs had porridge with banana and honey the other day, just for a winter warmer.  Muppet still looks and acts like a teenager, with his "Don't hug me, it's not cool" attitude, his bellowing and desire to thrash the living daylights out of the other bull calves.  I just went out to give them all a bit of attention, and was licked, probably not because they are mooches, but in the vague hopes that I would feed them more bread.  Funnily enough, getting licked on the face by a member of the bovine species is not something one readily forgets.  Aside from the base "Ugh!" reaction, they have very rough tongues, smelly breath (although they probably think the same of us!), and dribble a lot.  Even politicians can't claim all of that!

 

The dreaded head cold that has afflicted me has been hanging around still like a bad smell, so I haven't managed to get much of anything done.  I have bursts of energy and then just want to sleep.  As was said of the MG, "This, too, will pass."  I think I just have to outlive the blessed thing.

 

I am very grateful for International Trade Relations.  We have been eating US cherries from the local supermarket, and they are very nice.  I was listening to a tape yesterday from the book An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, by Elizabeth David, who actually wrote around forty years ago.  One of the questions she brings up is, "What did we do before tomatoes?"  I knew that they were actually regarded with suspicion when first introduced, being, as you probably know, related to Deadly Nightshade, but what I didn't realise was that until the 19thCentury, tomatoes were actually used as a sweet.  Tomato soup had lots of sugar in it, which only became savoury when one company in the US marketed a canned variety which had a warning label on it, to say that it was savoury and that virtually everyone who tried it preferred it that way.

 

Another interesting point David makes is that labelling wars have been going on for a century or more.  The French had perfected a method of canning sardines, and then everyone from the Dutch to the Americans were calling other fish 'sardines', even though they were only a part of the sardine family and not true sardines.  The French took all of the various parties to Court, and won.

 

I was inspired by a recipe David described, and did a bit of fiddling around when I came home.  Here is the recipe for Mushroom Soup that resulted.  It tastes like nothing you have ever had, but, be brave, and give it a try:

 

Leonie's Mushroom Soup

 

Slice 5-6 medium sized, good quality, closed cap mushrooms.  In a frypan, put in some olive oil and butter.  Peel and slice a large garlic clove.  Add to the frypan.  After it is cooked through, add the mushrooms. Pull apart a good fist full of parsley, discarding as much as possible all of the stalks.  Add to frypan, stir around.  Now here is the strange bit, and it would probably be better to wait until the next ingredient is at its peak of season: crush the segments of 4 mandarines, pass through a sieve so that you only have the juice left, and add the zest of one mandarine.  To make mandarine zest, wash the mandarine, peel, scrape off the pith using a bread and butter knife.  You will find it almost impossible to zest a mandarine the way you would an orange or lemon, as the skin is too giving.  Put the mixture in the frypan, stir around.  Add half a small tub of cream cheese, light if you prefer.  Grind some pepper into the mix, stir well.  When the cream cheese has melted through (don't have it on too high a heat, you'll destroy the cheese), add some water as you may not have the runny consistency you are familiar with with soup.  Use warm to hot water.  Put into a blender, pulse until ingredients are blended thoroughly, a matter of a few seconds.  Serve with hot bread, preferably a Vienna loaf that has been torn apart.

 

As i said earlier, I haven't been able to get much done lately, so I am still reading, in amongst everything else I browse through, John Seymour's classic The Fat of the Land.  On page 81, John writes on pigs:

 

"We learn every year, and what we shall do this year is this.  We shall buy three weaners as soon as we come back from a pony and cart trip that we intend to make in September.  We shall rear these up at first on a certain amount of bought food with skimmed milk and scraps - and then turn them loose on a quarter of an acre of artichokes that we have established.  Before Christmas we shall kill one of them as a "porker" (i.e. not big enough for a "baconer") and him we shall eat fresh as pork and can the surplus.  Eat what we can and can what we can't.  We will not cure any of him as bacon, although we might put some down in pickle.  But he will ensure fresh pork over Christmas, and a good supply of canned pork.

 

" The other two we will kill, one by one, some time after Christmas - the third one probably in the spring - but just before it gets too hot for the meat to keep nicely.  Of the meat of these two we will eat what we are able to fresh, of course, and make ham and bacon and pickled pork of the rest - possibly canning a little, possibly none at all.  For it is the canning that is the hard work: bacon curing is simple."

 

P 83: "Pigs pay, either to kill yourself or to sell (but not, as he states later, if you are an urban farmer, that is, a part-time farmer), provided that you can grow at least some of their food, and provided that none of them get ill...they will not (John's italics) get ill, practically ever, if they are looked after in a certain way... Pigs must not be put on the same ground that pigs have been on before - until that ground has had a rest and several crops on it.  They must be kept in the open - kept as rough as you like - made to root up most of their own food... so that they leave behind them their parasites.  As for housing - the most successful pig-keeper I know houses his in shelters made by leaning two sheets of corrugated iron up together.  In the summer the ends of these little huts are left open - in the winter sacks are hung over them.  He feeds his pigs hardly anything at all beyond the grass they pick up in the summer and the artichokes in the winter and a little protein.  But he keeps them on the move all the time.  The various worms and parasites that inhabit pigs never have a chance to complete their life cycles."

 

P. 78, On scraping the bristles off the carcass: " Last year we tried a new method.  We hung the pigs up in the usual way (hauled up to a beam by a block-and-tackle) but poured methylated spirits on them which we lit. (I do tend to wonder if the bristles could be saved and used for brushes if you are really keen.  Toothbrushes were originally made of hogs hair.)  We reinforced this by burning wads of old cloth soaked the meth on the ends of sticks, and then we scraped the bristles as the pigs hung up.  This method I can thoroughly recommend. We did the job cleanly, it was easy, and the bacon has kept well.  It is the method that we shall continue to use."

 

Finally bought my own Bay Tree.  A Nursery had advertised a special of 8 plants (tube size) for $20.  Went to all of the edibles, including some herbs.  And my Bay Tree.  Brian keeps telling me to just go down the street to the School, where one is growing hugely over the fence, but I feel a bit worried about the pollution. It is the main street after all, and the trucks and cars idle there, fuming up the atmosphere.

 

Caution and Mowgli killed a couple of chooks that were in the backyard, but Brian excused them by saying that it was the dogs' territory, so thankfully the dogs have a reprieve.  They were given a severe talking to, however, and sent to Coventry for awhile.

 

Weather

 

The leafy sea dragon soars

no longer caught in ocean currents

Fire is scattered from whispy breath

 

In my mind, I soar with you

In my mind, you are my steed

the freedom of the sky is mine

 

Sunset is gone

and so are we

our Earth recaims us

 

 

Dominus tecum

Leonie