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.

 

 

Fairy fishing rods

The flowers are white. From first seeing the flower spikes until they opened has taken several weeks. 

I quite like how a single flower opens each day or so which means they should last in flower for about a month. The fishing rods are almost 2 meters tall and sway very nicely in the wind. I have not been able to make a photo that does them justice but you will get the general idea. 

Growth

The three heifers we purchased in September have done what they were purchased to do. They have grown bigger!

We don't have scales big enough to know for sure, but they look to have at least doubled in size in the three months we've had them.

Vege Garden

The Potatoes are going for it. This season I have planted Agria's again. Last year it was Rua's and a red skined variety. They went well but just didn't have that lovely floury consistency when roasted, boiled or baked.

The Broad beans are being harvested meal by meal. I think i agree with Hugh that they are the best vegetable. We are having them in a cabonara style pasta and with avocado and new potatoes in salad I'm also going to fry some with crispy bacon pieces and enjoy on toast when I next cook for myself and don't have to cater to the vegetarian.

This year we are only growing sweet 100 style tomatoes and they will be staked, mulched and have their laterals removed regularly. To much of our previous crops have been rotting on the ground covered with rampant uncontrolled growth of out of control tomato plants.