by Krista | Jul 24, 2015 | Winter
It’s a lovely cozy Friday night at home, rain falling on the roof, potato leek soup for dinner, last of the chocolate cake for dessert.
We had new friends visit this morning and it was so great to natter away like old friends as we perused gardens and orchards and swooned over the 8 baby goats tottering around so cutely.
After cuppas and promises to get together again soon, we waved good-bye and Bear and I headed outside to check on the newborns and feed the dogs. Then Bear disappeared into the shed for another medieval project and I got Luna and went for a wander through my gardens.
One of my favorite things about living in Queensland is that there’s always something blooming no matter how cold it gets, no matter how wild the weather.
Like these delicate rocket blossoms.
And these oh-so-cheery calendula flowers brightening up these dark winter days we’ve been having.
The rosemary is flowering and the tomatoes in my greenhouse, and this week my peas started blooming. Against all odds they’ve survived the frosts and bitterly cold winds and are tall and strong.
I wanted comfort food today, warming soup, hot buttered toast, and a stack of spelt crepes.
We love spelt flour in our house, and I’ve been experimenting for months to see how it works in rolls, bread, pancakes, scones, and cookies. Today I used it in crepes and we are smitten. With crispy edges and beautifully browned centers, they tasted so good stuffed with whipped goat’s cheese and drizzled with strawberry chilli sauce made by my friend Jackie from Frog and Swallow Cafe.
We had them again tonight with our soup, this time stuffed with roasted chicken, more whipped goat’s cheese, and sweet chili sauce. Scrumptious.
What is your favorite filling for crepes? xo
Spelt Crepes
Ingredients:
2 cups milk or coconut milk
1 tablespoon brown sugar sugar
1/4 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup spelt flour
1/4 cup white flour
3 duck eggs
Directions:
1. Place all ingredients in medium bowl, beat until smooth.
2. Cover and set on counter for 2-3 hours.
3. Heat griddle to medium-high heat, grease with vegetable oil or butter.
4. With 1/2 cup measuring cup, scoop batter into center of griddle, tilting pan so batter forms thin circle.
5. Cook until bubbles form on top, flip and cook another 30 seconds. Remove to platter and repeat until all batter is used.
Whipped Goat Cheese
Ingredients:
1/2 cup soft goat cheese
2 Tbsp milk
Directions:
1. Place cheese and milk in small bowl (if cheese isn’t soft, warm slightly until it softens) and beat together until smooth and fluffy.
2. Spoon 1 Tbsp of whipped goat cheese down middle of each crepe, fold in half, and roll up like a cigar.
3. Drizzle with syrup of your choice.
by Krista | Jul 22, 2015 | Winter
Is there anything better than a hot shower after a day spent working outside? Pure bliss, I say. It’s so good to be warm and cozy again after spending this winter day working in our orchards.
I started with a tiny harvest, our very first oranges. We honestly didn’t expect any harvest at all this year, so these five beauties are treasures indeed. They’re two different varieties, so Bear and I are going to have a taste-off tomorrow to see which one we like best.
Then I headed to the Big Orchard to check on all the cuttings I planted a few months ago. The poplars are amazingly tall and strong with good, deep roots. Our driveway is lined with poplars, but a few of them have been knocked over by fierce storms, so we planted about a dozen cuttings hoping a few would take so we could fill in the gaps. They ALL took! Now we have heaps of poplars to choose from, and will get to scatter them around the farm as well.
Then it was time to really knuckle down and work. I hauled load after load of rocks in a wheelbarrow, piling them near our fruit trees to create mini-versions of talus garland community, also known as stone mulch. It’s a brilliant idea for a dry, hot climate like ours. The rocks keep the ground cool and moist, and collect dew which trickles down to the tree roots. It’s a technique that’s been used for centuries, but we only started using it a few months ago. So far so good. The trees with rocks around them rarely need to be watered, but flourish just as well as their oft-watered counterparts.
After I got the rocks hauled and placed, Bear took a break from making a medieval shield to help me prune all three orchards. It is so great to see all the trees pruned, with plenty of space in and around the branches for light and air and optimal fruit production.
When that was done, he showed me how to use the pump spray and I mixed up the pest oil spray and made a good start in spraying all the trees before it got too dark. I will finish the rest tomorrow.
Although I’m a bit sore and tired tonight, I’m so happy to know our orchards are well on their way to becoming healthy, strong, and productive.
We also taste-tested our apple wine today – sweet and dry – and were delighted to find both of them delicious. We are excited to make it again in a couple of years with our own apples.
Do you have a favorite apple drink? xo
by Krista | Jul 20, 2015 | Winter
It’s been rather quiet around here as I continue to recover from the spider bite I received last week. After further research of symptoms we learned it was almost certainly a redback, and that I’m one of the “1 in 5 people” who get the full body symptoms – nausea, fever, aches, and exhaustion. It’s been hard, but I’m trying to just accept what is and look for ways to thrive in it. Farm life doesn’t stop for spider bites, so I’ve been trucking along with lots of breaks for naps and rests.
Today I set up a stool in the meadow so I could keep an eye on the goats while they grazed. Although the fields looked brown and dry without anything to eat, close to the ground was a veritable feast of green clover, herbs, weeds, and grasses that goats love. It did my heart good to see that Spring is indeed just around the corner.
It was so nice to be outside instead of huddled in bed shivering from cold and fever. The sunshine filtering down was lusciously warm and the fresh air wonderful. Wrapped up in Bear’s flannel jacket I spent a happy couple of hours reading “wild” by Cheryl Strayed as the goats wandered about noshing on the green undergrowth. (Nothing quite like reading about someone else’s miseries to make your own more bearable. :-))
Apollo, one of our Maremma dogs, kept coming up for cuddles, nosing under my book and wriggling into my lap before bounding off to bark protectively at “dangerous” trucks and horses across the road.
After a good lunch and long rest, I bundled up again and went out to the goat yard to see how our babies were doing. I found this fellow newly born, snoozing contentedly in the sunshine. I don’t know where he got his light coloring, but he sure is cuddly and cute.
The two sets of twins born over the weekend are doing well, learning to jump and always finding the sunniest spot to curl up for their naps. I can’t get enough of their cuteness.
Now it’s time for me to head to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a big day as we spend it in our orchards pruning trees, harvesting the last of our citrus, and planning where to plant our cider trees that arrived last week. I love their names – Improved Foxwhelp, Brown Snout, and Tremlett’s Bitter – and can’t wait for them to start producing well in a couple of years.
What project are you looking forward to tackling this week? xo
by Krista | Jul 17, 2015 | Winter
It is wickedly cold here in Southern Queensland. So cold that even with the heater on I’m dressed in three layers with a wool hat, scarf, slippers, and blanket and still shivering. Only 40 minutes south of us, they are under a blanket of snow. Snow!! In Queensland!! I can scarcely imagine it. We’ve had a bit of rain at our house, but no snow yet. Fingers crossed, though!
In spite of this amazing cold snap, my gardens continue to soldier on, giving me all sorts of good things each day. Like these oh-so-sweet yellow cherry tomatoes. It doesn’t matter if we get frost or ferocious winds, every couple of days there are new ripe tomatoes for us to eat.
Our Muscovy ducks, who usually stop laying over winter, have been laying like crazy! Every day I collect a bowl full of eggs, and I’m not complaining one bit. Keep going, duckies!!
Much to my surprise and delight, my lilly pilly is flourishing. Last year this one got well and truly frosted, but this year I have her in a sheltered spot and she’s rewarded me with heaps of gorgeous little berries.
For two years I’ve been trying to get lemons to grow on the trees in my kitchen garden, but caterpillars kept ravaging them. Grrr. This year, however, I’ve been vigilant about picking the critters off, and now I’m finally getting lemons. Woohoo!!! Just a wee bit excited about that.
I first heard of black radishes while doing research for the book I wrote on the history of Freestone (a small town near us). So I searched and searched until I found seeds and this week I finally got to see and taste them. Aren’t they interesting? They may look as though they’ve been dipped in black ink, but they taste great.
My purple beauties are doing well too, and I’m looking forward to roasting a big batch tomorrow with sea salt and thyme.
Now it’s time to cozy in with big cups of tea and a steaming Beef Burgundy Pie for dinner. They oughtta warm our frigid bones a bit.
What is your favorite cold weather food? xo
by Krista | Jul 14, 2015 | Winter
We are home at last from our grand medieval adventures at the fabulous Abbey Medieval Festival.
Bear is aching all over from having a marvelous time engaged in medieval combat with Vikings, Templars, Varangians, and assorted knights, and I’m aching all over thanks to a venomous spider bite that made me keel over, sick as a dog, and had me hustled off to the hospital by ambulance. Ugh. I’ve heard about Australian spider bites and how painful they are, but I’ve never been bitten before, and I will be heartily glad to never get bitten again. It will take some time for the venom to get out of my system and the symptoms to dissipate, so in the meantime I’m drinking heaps of water and resting.
Thankfully the bite didn’t happen until Saturday night, so I got two and a half days of jolly times before the miseries set in.
We had such a great time catching up with dear old friends, hugging each other tight and nattering away as if no time had passed between visits.
We chatted around campfires, over shared bottles of beer and cups of spiced wine, and in leisurely conversations over scrumptious meals seasoned with smoke.
We also met new friends, great people from around Australia with fascinating stories to share.
And we worked, boy, did we work hard setting up medieval tents and cooking accouterments, making beds, organizing tables, chairs, dishes, and food, starting fires, hauling water, and getting our demonstration areas arranged and spiffed up. We fell into bed exhausted but happy each night, sleeping like logs after all that physical labor. But it was pure fun, seeing our little medieval world come to life.
I got my medieval medicine and wood-burning area set up first thing. I always start early because all those fiddly bits take time to sort and get into place. Medicines and spices, dried herbs and fresh, baskets of wood-burned rolling pins, stacks of wood-burned cutting boards, and a pile of pristine copies of my book: “herb & spice: a little book of medieval remedies.”
Even though I’ve set this up so many times, it’s always exciting to see it come together: bottles of medieval anesthetic, pots of medieval salves, balms, and ointments, and innumerable jars and boxes of spices and herbs from poppy seeds, mace, and rose hips to licorice root, fenugreek seeds, and raw honey in the comb.
I like simmering a pot of rosemary leaves and pine needles (the vapors are great for clearing sinuses) and arranging the adorable quail eggs in their bowl (the egg whites make an excellent bandage if you cut yourself and happen to have an egg but no bandaids). I smile as I set out the bone implements hand-carved for me by my friend Stacey, and happily sniff the heady scent of nutmeg paste (so good for helping blemished skin to heal).
When everything is ready I relax, brew myself a cup of tea or coffee, and settle into my sheepskin-lined chair to read more about medieval medicine. It doesn’t matter how much I learn, there’s always so much more to discover.
Soon the gates of Abbey open and I take my place behind my booth, ready to spend an entire day talking about the medieval things I love most: medicine, food, and daily life.
Now it’s time to get my aching self off to bed and dream of happy medieval things.
What is your favorite moment from your weekend? xo
