Fishing Rods

The clump in the Japanese garden turned out to have both white and pink flowers. Still going strong on Christmas eve.

Sauerkraut

For once I have managed to grow some decent cabbages, but now in the height of summer the last thing I feel like eating is cabbage. 

The solution is to make some sauerkraut. Apparently fermented food has health benefits and tastes good as well.

 The process is very simple all that you need is a large plastic container, salt (3 tablespoons) and finely chopped cabbage. I added some caraway seed (2 tablespoons)  as a flavoring.  The cut salted cabbage is placed in the container with a plate and a weight to press it down. The cabbage releases a lot of liquid that covers the cabbage. The lacto-bacteria do there magic in the absence of oxygen so the weighted plate helps keeps the cabbage covered by liquid and the good stuff happening. 

 The fermenting cabbage is in the hall cupboard as it is the coolest place in the house at the moment. Apparently four to seven days is all that is needed until the kraut is ready to eat.  

Baa

Long drive today to pick up a couple of two tooth weathers. These will be paddock mates for Whistla now that the young horses have gone. 

The two weathers are a cross including some merino and the funny colour is supposedly part of their charm. Barbara has been researching training sheep on the internet so I guess these two can look forward to some serious bossing around.
They also mean a lot more work for me as I make the fences sheep proof to protect the garden. 

Calves Grown Up

The grass is  so long at they are hard to see especially if lying in the paddock.

The three white face calves are finished their childhood.They have eaten the last of their calf pellets, we have wrestled them to the ground and given them ear tags and today we put them in together with the 14 month heifers in the paddock across the stream.