I have sauces, relishes, jams, puree and pastes to last for most of the year ahead.
I have several desserts made and frozen for occasions when I feel like them.
I have cordials and wine for health and enjoyment.
I have enough potatoes to last for many months.
I have winter veges planted, both for our food and for my animals.
Darla is due to have piglets any day now (doing the maths). She's looking heavily pregnant and her movement is getting slower - well, except at feeding time, she's still the first to meet me when I go out with the pig bucket.
In the next few weeks, the first of my cattle is going to become dinner. Not the one I'd thought though. Sirloyne was apparently not castrated in the normal fashion. He's a short scrotum bull instead of a steer. Research tells me this makes them infertile and more manageable than a bull, but that they grow more like a bull. The problem is that he's unruly and I feel unsafe in a paddock with him. As I do all of my work with them on foot and usually alone, if I don't feel safe, then I can't be in a paddock with him - and I have jumped a fence and walked back to the house along the road while he was running amok all along the fenceline following me. When the steers get out of their patch (again - too many electric fence issues) he tries to fight with them through a fence. All still have horns, and I'm starting to worry that they'll damage each other or pull a fence down and then do some serious damage to each other. So while he's only 14 months old and not really big enough that you'd normally consider calling out the home kill chaps, he's too dangerous for me to keep.
Things I've learned over the last few months
It doesn't pay to make any assumptions. We learned that a tree that features several times in our garden is in fact quite toxic to the cattle. It's on the fence line between garden and paddock and all the cattle that have been in that paddock have leaned over the fence and through holes in the windbreak to eat it. Several developed a cough which has gone since I ran a hotwire along that fenceline preventing them reaching it.
I had assumed that previous owners would have had more clues than I did. I assumed that since this plant was where it was, then it would have been safe for my animals. Why would anyone plant a toxic shrub where animals can reach it? I'm just lucky that I didn't lose any of my cattle to it. Photinia Red Robin converts to Hydrogen Cyanide and is extremely damaging to ruminants.
Do your preserving straight away. The sheer volume of blackberries I was picking became overwhelming. I had days when I was so sick of the sight of them that I wouldn't touch them for a day or two, in which time they started to go mouldy. I hated giving them to the pigs when I was still pulling their thorns out of my fingertips.
Some friends are worth their weight in gold. I had been worrying a little about winter feed for my animals. Our hot summer meant that much of the grass died and wasn't growing to the extent that it would last through winter. A friend called and offered me hay for free - initially it was last years hay that the neighbour was going to dump because his sheep wouldn't eat it, but then it turned into this years hay that had just been cut. I cannot express my gratitude adequately for the gift of 6 tonnes (8 large round bales) of hay that is currently sitting in my front paddock!
Don't give up on carrots when they appear to have died off. My carrots growing in the bathtub have had some irrigation issues and it seemed they'd all died. The leaves had browned off and started to come away. I was leaving them for the ones in flower to seed and save me buying more. Then we got rain. Suddenly, my "dead" carrots have sprung back to life. They've got new greenery, have lost the bitter taste and are growing bigger again. The same goes for red onions. which have done it too!
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