by Krista | Jun 29, 2015 | Winter
After a balmy morning, clouds rolled in, temperatures dropped, and icy winds began to blow. But there were adventures to be had, so I bundled up against the cold and headed to Oma’s house with a bag of limes for her and her family.
A while ago Oma planted heaps of garlic in her paddock, both one-cloved Russian garlic and regular garlic. They are now strapping seedlings and she invited me over to gather her garlic bounty to plant in my garden. I was thrilled!!
Bear and I love garlic. Roasted, fried, tucked into nearly every savory dish we eat, it is definitely a favorite around here and we never seem to have enough.
Oma’s grandchildren, Katie and Alex, went out there with us, digging down into the black soil Southern Queensland is famous for. The bulbs smelled absolutely amazing, and we were delighted to find that even the ground smelled like garlic.
Everyone piled their pickings into my hands and I now have about 100 garlic seedlings ready to tuck into place in my garden.
Then we went over to Oma’s orchard where she pointed out the sweetest little bird’s nest perched in the branches of one of her fruit trees.
One of her quince trees has new shoots sprouting up around it, and Oma and Katie hacked and dug and pulled one out for me to grow at home. I’m so excited. Last year Oma gave me quinces off her tree and I made the most luscious liqueur with it. Once my own tree starts producing, I’m looking forward to making more liqueur and several jars of quince paste to go with our current favorite cheese, triple cream brie.
After the work was done, we went for a wander around the farm, stopping to look at the fat and gorgeous chickens before heading to the pig pen to see Oma’s three beauties. Who could resist those adorable faces?
Later this week Oma and Katie are coming over to tackle part two of making apple wine. We taste-tested today and it is mighty potent stuff with a marvelous fragrance. A bit more sugar syrup for sweetness and time to age and it’s going to be a mighty fine brew.
I’m so grateful for kind and generous friends who share their knowledge and fruits of their labors. It’s so much fun to learn and work together.
What projects are you tackling this week? xo
by Krista | Jun 24, 2015 | Winter
Yesterday I woke to find the sky filled with clouds and the internet down. Unable to do any online work, I took a much-needed break and luxuriated in an entire day off grid.
Donning my trusty gum boots I headed outside and got my dog Luna to hang out with me. We had such a good day together. She trotted alongside as I hauled plants and seedlings, sniffed happily around the garden as I made new beds, dug in a load of goat manure, and planted silverbeet, kale, coriander, carrots, basil mint, feverfew, yarrow, red cabbage, thyme, and Brussels sprouts.
My two favorite additions are a big strawberry bed and a rock garden with flowers. Sometimes you need to plant things for pure happiness and pleasure.
When I wasn’t gardening I was in the kitchen, baking and cooking things, tossing Luna bits to nibble on from her sun-drenched napping spot on the floor. I made sweet potatoes spiced with coriander and sesame, spelt quinoa muffins with raisins, and slow-cooked beef with roasted tomatoes and caramelized onions. It was so nice to cook for pleasure without any pressure or time limits.
I loved having time to read through cookbooks and watch old River Cottage episodes with Bear, to linger over coffees and indulge in vanilla ice cream topped with boozy cranberries. It was just what I needed to recharge after a busy week.
Today I’ve been making medieval remedies and photographing them, getting all the details together to complete my manuscript. I’m so excited to see these recipes I’ve carried in my head be in one collection with pictures and details so anyone can make them or be inspired to experiment on their own to find out what works for them.
Now I’m hunkering in for the evening with my little stash of triple-salted black licorice and nail-biting old school “24” episodes.
What simple things are bringing you pleasure this week? xo
by Krista | Jun 22, 2015 | Winter
Life in rural Queensland has been a delightful string of interesting encounters for me, and this weekend was no different.
My friend Lina, who moved to Australia from her home in Mauritius, had Bear and I over for an absolutely scrumptious Mauritian feast. I absolutely swooned over dal fritters, warm flat bread, chicken potato curry, spicy tomato dip, green mango pickle, lime pickle, and spiced pumpkin. Soon we’ll have her out to our place and introduce her to Danish food. It’s so lovely to share our cultures with each other and talk for hours as we swapped stories and experiences of life in our adopted homeland.
Saturday morning introduced me to more lovely people as I attended my first garden swap in the town of Clifton.
It is a wonderful event hosted by my friend Kathy, and the premise is simple: bring what you grow, make, bake and swap it with what others bring.
How I loved it!
Tables were laden with beautiful produce – carrots, cabbages, apples, onions, lemons, and herbs – as well as plants, baked goods, and homemade preserves – passionfruit curd, pickled chilies, and preserved limes.
It was so fun to peruse the offerings, sniffing fragrant herbs like rosemary, coriander, and yarrow, and debating whether to choose bags of sheep manure for my gardens or gorgeous little quails.
I brought wood-burned items and loaves of homemade spelt bread to swap. In exchange I received all sorts of good things: fresh and preserved limes, Polish red cabbage sauerkraut, sugar sweet carrots, and seedlings for silverbeet, Vietnamese mint, lavender, and feverfew. So fun!!
Here’s one of my loaves of spelt bread cooling on the veranda.
The best part of the gathering was meeting so many lovely people as we clustered around sharing a potluck lunch.
We dined on orange and fennel salad, quiche vivid with turmeric, curried eggs, and coconut cake drenched with lime syrup.
I brought a lemony quinoa salad studded with baby green peas and feta cheese and tasted my way through the delicious things brought by the others.
We sipped coffee and visited for ages, sharing stories of our lives on various farms and homesteads in the area. I met sheep farmers and veggie growers, chicken-raisers and succulent devotees, fermented vegetable masters and great folks who can’t grow a thing but love supporting those who do.
I returned home inspired and excited, renewed in my love of growing and making and, most of all, connecting with lovely human beings.
What would you like to bring home from a garden swap? xo
*new post* A Garden Swap and Lemony Quinoa Salad https://www.ramblingtart.com/2015/06/22/a-garden-swap-and-lemony-quinoa-salad/
Lemony Quinoa Salad
Ingredients:
2 cups cooked tri-color quinoa, cooled
1 cup baby green peas
1/2 cup grated Feta cheese
fresh parsley, chopped
1 large lime, juiced
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp Dijon mustard
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Combine first four ingredients in medium bowl.
In small bowl, whisk together lime juice, olive oil, mustard, salt, and pepper until emulsified.
Pour dressing over ingredients and toss gently to coat.
Serve cold or at room temperature.
by Krista | Jun 18, 2015 | Winter
After waiting and hoping for rain, it finally arrived yesterday and it was wonderful.
It was just mist at first, then drizzle, then full on rain drenching everything in sight, dripping down through the trees and turning the hard-packed earth into squishy mud.
I couldn’t let such beauty go unappreciated, so I pulled over to the park while out on errands and walked through puddles and piles of leaves and stood under raindrop-gilded pine trees, loving every second of it.
It’s been a good week, time for Bear and me to reflect on our past four years together, time to take stock and look toward the future.
This week I was featured in the newspaper, which was scary, fun, and ultimately just what I needed to spur me on in this dream of ours. But the truth is, none of this life would even be possible without my Bear.
He’s the one who worked and saved to buy this land and pay it off completely so we could start this dream with a clean slate. He built the fences so our animals would be safe, installed a bore so we would always have water, and brought in sheds and outbuildings so we’d have places to store everything and work on projects.
He’s the collector of every piece of equipment and machinery, the fixer of everything that breaks, the inventor of tools and processes that make life work around here.
Bear has also taught me nearly everything I know about farm life.
He taught me to drive a tractor and dig fence posts, showed me how to use drills, saws, hammers, and belt sanders, explained how to deal with snakes and why I didn’t need to be afraid of chickens.
Perhaps the best thing he’s ever done is give me free reign to learn, experiment, fail, try again, and figure things out.
I’m deeply thankful to Bear for giving me a chance to do all this, and for supporting me in all my pie-in-the-sky dreams of self-sufficiency, publishing, and one day, an agri-tourism business of our own. He’s the best partner and cheerer-on-er I could ever have hoped for.
Now it’s time to turn off computers and phones and cozy in for a movie night.
Cheering you on in every dream you’re cherishing in your heart. xo
by Krista | Jun 17, 2015 | Winter
The fog was so thick I could barely see a few meters in front of me as Bear and I drove to Toowoomba in the early hours of yesterday morning. I was heading for a meeting with the Toowoomba Backscratchers, a great group of local businessmen who meet regularly for breakfast, an inspiring speaker, and good chats who invited me to join in. It was so fun to meet them and hear about their work and passions and what they love about this region.
After the meeting, Bear and I had all sorts of errands to run and decided to make a morning of it.
We picked up canvas to make an extension for one of our medieval tents, fabric for a sewing project, and a few other bits and pieces.
Once all the vital stuff was done, we made a beeline for Toni’s Continental Butchery and Smallgoods, a fantastic Slovenian shop our Croatian friends told us we MUST visit.
They were right! My little Europhile heart was fairly bursting with joy as I stepped inside and gazed in delight at ropes of air-dried salamis, loaves of wood-fire baked sourdough bread, and display cases full of things like Danish frikkadellar, something I’ve never seen outside my kitchen and the kitchens of my Danish relatives.
We visited with the proprietor and stocked up on favorites, pledging to return soon and often.
Then, feeling a bit peckish, we headed next door to Deli Delicious, a combination cafe and gourmet food market.
We ordered coffees – long black for him and flat white for me – and three different cakes to share, just so we could decide which was best. It was hard to choose, I tell ya. Moist Carrot Cake or the multi-layered coffee confection or the utterly luscious Chocolate Hazelnut Torte. They were all marvelous, and just the thing to lift the spirits on a very dark, foggy, and drizzling day.
We had such fun dreaming and planning as we sipped and nibbled. We’d been greatly inspired by the interview and newspaper article I told you about in my last post (Click Here to see the full article), and it felt so good to sit down and talk about the next phase of our plans: what to build, what to organize, what to look for.
All too soon the cakes were gone, coffees finished, and it was time to head home. I picked up a few special things for us – triple creme brie and a little pot of triple salted black licorice – and drove home in the rain.
Nary a drop had fallen on our farm, but this morning we’ve got the lightest drizzle misting everything, and we’ll take it. Even a little bit of moisture is cause for rejoicing around here.
Our finds from yesterday have also put big smiles on our faces. Breakfast this morning was pure bliss: toasted sourdough ciabatta topped with triple creme brie and garnet plum paste with a side of garlicky salami and a big cup of strong coffee.
Now it’s time to knuckle down and get to work. I have to build a campfire and make a series of campfire desserts to photograph and write about for an article. This is the kind of work I was born to do.
What little things are putting a smile on your face this week? xo
