Knitting a Homespun Woolly Jumper

Since I have a mountain of coloured wool that was given to me, I thought it was about time I started knitting more than socks with it.  My self-taught spinning has reached a point where I'm a lot more satisfied with the evenness of my thread, although it's still not to a stage where I'd enter it in the A&P show.

I decided that Hubby needed a nice warm jersey.  He gets a bit snobby about handknit jerseys and would never consider one for "nice going out" wear, they're for home use only, but I can live with that.  There's no way he'd wear one in white or the silvery grey that I've got, so it had to be the dark brown.  I was quite curious to see how the colour would come out once it had been spun and knitted.  There is a mix of greys in with the brown and the gold coloured ends were intriguing.

The fleece before carding and spinning.

We had several discussions about how thick and heavy he wanted it.  I made the choice to make a 3-ply yarn for it.  Now when I say 3-ply, I'm not talking about anything close to commercial 3-ply.  A single of my spinning is probably similar in size to that.  I mean three of my singles plied together.  It's come out something similar to a commercial triple-knit or 12+ply.

A ball of my triple ply homespun.

The next issue I run into is seams.  I hate sewing seams on my knitting.  I have a fear that regardless of how well I pin it or mark it (unless there are stripes to match), I'll end up with puckers and stretching and uneven seams.  I also have a thing about measuring each side right.  Because just smoothing out a piece can change it's measurements, I'm rather paranoid that my sides won't truly match without a creatively uneven seam.

So this time, I chose to knit an entire jumper circular.  This took out any chance of uneven pieces and messy seams.  The only seams are at the top of the shoulders because there was no avoiding that no matter how hard I tried to come up with a solution.  I even knitted the sleeves circular.  I picked up stitches along the armholes and reduced down the length of the sleeve finishing with the wristband, rather than the other way around as is usually done.

At times, especially as I reduced down to the wristband, the sleeves were extremely challenging.  Having a long circular needle meant I had to get creative with where I pulled the excess and still be able to knit effectively.  Towards the end, I was needing to adjust it every 5 or 6 stitches, but it worked and worked well.

A sleeve almost at the wristband.

I used threads of different colours to mark the start point and halfway (or the other side).  Those threads continued down the sleeves to mark where I was reducing.

One of my markers.

Knitting an entire men's jersey this way certainly raised some interesting challenges, but I'd do it again, overall I found it far easier to do and work with.

I didn't work to a pattern as such.  I measured up his favourite but battered sweatshirt and worked to it's measurements.  I had to redo the sleeves as they ended up far too baggy and too long as this seems to be wider at the shoulder than his sweatshirt although both seem to have the same straight drop shoulder cut.

More Milk and Cheese!

Last week we finally separated Handsome the bull calf from Brownie my house cow.

We'd left him with her to keep him friendly and tame enough until he was castrated, but with one thing and another, we hadn't castrated him yet.  He was 'feeling his oats' and starting to challenge us at every opportunity.  Putting him into a pen at night (so that we could have milk in the morning) had become a dangerous two-person job.

The wonderful neighbour came down to put a ring on him when he was much younger.  At that time, we thought he was friendly enough that he could safely be pinned against the side of the pen by two people while the third did the job.  Unfortunately, while he was friendly for me, he was less familiar with hubby and didn't respond at all well to the neighbour climbing into his pen and managed to make a hole in the fence and ran around our garden.  We discussed running them down into the yards at the neighbours so that he could use the head crusher and do it safely.  But between him working and going away on holiday and us working and having other commitments, we never quite got it done.

Now he's 9 1/2 months old, far too old for a rubber ring and he's a stroppy little gobshite.  So the vet is coming this week to 'cut' him.  That was quite challenging working out when the vet was available, we were available and the neighbour was available to work his challenging crusher.  Meanwhile, I've had enough and we put him into the next paddock over from Brownie.  They spend a lot of time at the gate together.

For the past week we've been serenaded by him, first it was angry calls, then it was sad sounding.  Over the weekend, there were fewer but it just seems like "don't forget I'm here" bellows.

Now that we're not sharing Brownie's milk with him, we're getting twice the volume.  It may have been more but I've decided to stick with once a day milking.  We were getting more than we needed before, so doubling that has meant that I was keeping a bucket in the fridge for the excess once I'd filled the jugs for our use.  We have plenty in the freezer for when we dry her off - although we have to get her in calf again first for that - so there's no need for more to freeze.

I spent the weekend cheese making.  I've made cheese in greater quantities than previously and different varieties that I hadn't tried before.  Instead of my usual 4 litres of milk to make two blocks of feta, I used 8 litres and made four blocks.  Two have been given away to people who like my feta and two are currently in the fridge.

I was also given a lot of frozen cream.  Miss Nineteen's boyfriend works in a petrol station and brings home the cream that doesn't sell, which goes into my friend's freezer (Miss Nineteen boards with one of my friends).  She gave me a bag with about 8 litres of frozen cream in the usual 300ml and 600ml bottles.  I thawed some of the cream out and tried my hand at making cream cheese.

I don't know if it was because it had been frozen but the cream and milk mixture was a little grainy even before I added culture and rennet and the resulting cream cheese is a little grainy and not the smooth spread that you buy from the supermarket.  However it tastes great.  Next up, I'll be trying some of the flavoured cream cheeses that you can buy for cheese boards.

My grainy but tasty cream cheese.

I also made a real cheddar for the first time yesterday.  I've previously made a farmhouse cheddar which didn't involve the proper cheddaring procedures, so I wasn't really prepared for how labour intensive cheddar is and how long it takes to make.  I'd thought it would be like most cheeses, a couple of hours and it's in the press.  This required an hour of turning the cheese every ten minutes to condense it into a brick-like mass before cutting it into fingers.

I liked the thought of a port cheddar, but lacking port, I used the elderberry wine that I had in the barrel waiting for me to bottle.  It's sweet and smoky and has distinct port-like qualities so I've used that.

Elderberry wine cheddar.

One of the issues we've been running into is making Edam cheeses the way I usually do, I end up with a 1.2kg block and now there's only three of us at home, it takes forever to get through it all. Making it in smaller quantities meant that it didn't press as well and I was running out of blocks for my cheese press.  So instead I decided to make it in the same usual quantities, but just before the brining and drying part of the process, I would cut my cheese into smaller pieces.  Let them brine and dry that way and wax them separately.  I'm going to do this with the cheddar.

The added bonus to doing it that way is that a smaller wedge could make a nice gift too.

Changeable Spring Weather

About six weeks ago I was excited.  For the first time in a year, we'd gotten enough rainfall to actually have mud in the paddocks.  Not a lot of mud, but enough that in the places where my cattle congregate, they were squelching around and leaving their footprints behind.  I have never in my life been so excited about mud as I was then.  I never thought I'd ever be excited to have mud.

We still had puddles on the surface, but they were fewer and the ground around them was softening.

The paddocks have greened up and the grass has more than doubled in a week.

Then the gale force Nor'Westers started up.  For those unfamiliar with the Canterbury Nor'Wester - it's a foehn wind.  A hot dry wind that doesn't just dry up the land, it also causes all sorts of problems for people in it's path.  From migraines to increased suicide rates.

It got very hot very quickly.  What was supposed to be Spring gardening, became trying to find a shady spot that we could work in and still be following our plan.  Any work done out in the sun was in short bursts punctuated frequently by cold drink breaks and excuses to get in the shade.

Thanks to El Nino, we're forecast for another hot dry summer.  Local farmers are already getting nervous about paddock growth and making silage and hay as fast as they can.  Hay is becoming like gold.

For several weeks, we were seeing forecasts of a cold front and wet weather coming just a couple of days away.  Like last year though, that always seems to be a few days away and we just don't quite get it.

We had several days of 30 degrees Celsius.  All my gardening plans went out the window.  I shifted two wheelbarrow loads of stones and that was my limit.  I found myself almost making excuses to hide out inside.

The weather seemed to settle down and become consistently warmer with only the odd oppressively hot day.  I started to plant out the corn I'd started inside from seeds, I planted out my beans and I've planted out my potatoes.

Then I was excited about the rain this week.  We needed it and it was very welcome.

I wasn't half as excited about the snow that covered the mountain or the - 3 (Celsius) frost we got this morning.  So far my corn seems to be okay, but the beans are looking a bit sad.

At least the gales have stopped.

For now.

Trees!

Repeatedly, we've tried to plant more trees on our property.  We spent quite a bit of money on Tagasaste seedlings and planted them in bare shelter belts.  I went for tagasaste (tree lucerne) for it's wide range of uses - not only is it fairly quick growing shelter tree that won't destroy the paddocks around it like poplars do, but it is also a good tonic and fodder tree for livestock.

Unfortunately, naughty calves got into the shelter belt and ate them down to ground level.

Hubby spent $100 on pine seedlings and spent many hours working out where was the best place for them, digging the hard clay and rock soil, planting them with little stakes and seedling protectors and walking around regularly to water them.

They all died in a nasty hot summer anyway.

We bought several native plants of various sizes from Trade Me and from a garden centre.  We carefully planted them beside the creek, above the usual flood level, carefully staked them too. They got watered daily.

Then we got about two years worth of rainfall in a week.  This actually lifted the entire plants out of the soil and washed them away - I found a couple hanging precariously (with stakes and protectors still attached) on the edge of the bank.

I was given a small mountain of weeping willow switches by some friends who'd been trimming theirs.  I planted them all around the creek.  I watched them and tended them and they were doing well.

Then the same rainfall that took out the natives washed not just them but the land around them away down the creek and the few that survived were eaten by my naughty steers (at the time) who escaped from their paddock.

I have my moments when I truly despair trying to plant anything to hold the banks of the creek together and stop the erosion or provide shelter for my animals in extreme weather.  We've spent ridiculous amounts of money buying trees and taking the time and effort to treat them right and they die anyway.

I've taken cuttings, I've transplanted small trees, I've encouraged the odd crack willow that washes down the creek and takes root - even though I know them to be a pest in the waterways.  My thought is that it could work to stabilise part of the bank and allow me to plant other (better) things around it.  Even crack willows don't stay long enough to grow past a metre tall.

We do have plenty of wild plums and elder trees around the property though.  I've gotten to the point where I'm quite tempted to try encouraging their spread.

I've been told that gorse can work as an effective nursery plant.  It will shelter, feed and protect a young tree growing in it's midst and then when the tree is big enough, it tends to kill off the gorse.  Most of the elder is growing amidst gorse which is frustrating when I'm wanting to collect berries and flowers as I can't get to them, but also in that gorse and elder is honeysuckle, which strangles and buries everything.

We're going to try planting in amidst the gorse next.  I'm sprouting cuttings at the moment.  Wish me luck!

Lovely Spring Days and Garden Busyness

Today was the first day of daylight savings this year.  For all we'd been forecast for rain or overcast weather, it dawned bright and sunny and stayed that way.

As I've just changed the days I work to give me Sunday morning off, Hubby and I had been discussing what needed doing the most and what we were going to do today and had not come up with any clear plan.  There's always plenty to do and not enough time to get it all done.  We always seem to have at least ten projects on the go and which gets worked on depends on dramas that may make them more urgent, weather, motivation or just what we feel like doing today.

While I was waiting for him to come outside, I popped into one of our vege patches and started weeding.  The recent rains had made the weeds take off, so it was needed.  He came out and joined me.

One bolted Brussels Sprout plant

I've never grown Brussels Sprouts before, so I looked at my plants unsure whether they were supposed to look like this, or if they had bolted.  Miss Nine (very nearly Ten!) had a friend come over and her Mum is a keen and knowledgeable gardener so I asked her while she was here.  No, she told me, they've bolted.  Bugger.  I left two in (one purple and one normal one) to go to seed and hopefully their babies will be more successful.  The rest I pulled up and gave to the cattle.  

Just in case we'd forgotten, the chooks reminded us why the vege patch has bird netting.

Our self-sown radishes were just starting to bolt, so I've left a few for seed and pulled up the rest.  I'm the only one who eats radishes, so I might have a go at making the rest into a pickle or chutney rather than let them go to waste.

We started on the next patch, which we got through quite quickly given how neglected it's been over the last few months.  Planted some green beans and two grafted tomato plants in there and it seems to be fairly full now, or rather it will be as soon as they all get bigger. 

At that point, we stopped for lunch and tried to decide what we were going to do for the afternoon.  My body was struggling with anything heavy so I suggested we go and work on the paths and whatnot that we're putting in front of the tyre wall garden.

Hubby has been getting stones from a workmate who has been doing some work at his place that involved getting rid of several tonnes of stones.  So far the estimate for what we've taken is at four tonnes and they've been sitting in the driveway waiting for us to get their final home sorted.  Yesterday while out shopping for other things, we bought several rolls of weedmat just for this, so I thought it would be a good idea to lay the weedmat and start shifting stones. 

I did the lighter work of laying the weedmat and tucking it around the tyres, while Hubby shovelled stones into the wheelbarrow and followed me along tipping it onto the weedmat.  Initially it was just enough to hold the weedmat in place, then it was dump and spread.

Once we got to that stage, I started weeding the tyres too.  We'd filled in underneath them with weeds and garden trimmings, so there's plenty of weeds growing up through them.  Less than half of the tyres are filled with any kind of soil or compost so far.  Those I have filled in the past, much of it has settled and sunk and needs topping up.  Although the strawberries I planted in a few of the tyres a couple of years ago are still going strong and even giving us babies on runners.

We've moved about a quarter of the stones now before deciding that was enough for today.  I'm proud of what we've managed to achieve in just one motivated Spring day.

Garlic

I've always grown garlic.  I love garlic and eat quite a bit of it.  I also love having garlic tied in plaits hanging somewhere in my kitchen.

My results in the past have been inconsistent though and it was only in the past year that I learned why.

I usually plant a few cloves of garlic around my roses.  It helps keep some of the bugs off them.  While they've always grown, looking back, there was a large proportion that didn't grow very big or were single bulbs.  Those single bulbs were a good size for a clove of garlic, but they hadn't separated into more usable garlic as we usually know it.

I grew some in it's own bed and they tended to stay small.  That was in town and our soil was mostly sand though.  I also put it down to having used garlic from the supermarket as my seed.

Last year, I was leafing through a gardening magazine at a friend's place and there was an article about growing better garlic.  It said there was a lot of urban 'wisdom' about garlic that was just incorrect and that people wanting to grow garlic more successfully should discard it and start treating garlic with more respect.

Firstly, garlic prefers to have it's own bed and be fairly well spaced - at least 30cm (12 inches) apart.  That was a new one for me, having always been told to plant it closer than that and around my roses.  Perhaps that idea was more for the roses' benefit than for the garlic?

Secondly, that garlic likes a heavily manured and very rich soil.  I had been told garlic would grow anywhere, in any conditions, and thrived like most herbs, in poor soil.

The last thing I remember from this article was that your garlic beds needed to be kept well-weeded.  Garlic in it's own bed doesn't like competition and a weed-free bed will grow better garlic.

Looking back at all of this, it does seem rather obvious from a gardening point of view.  Most plants I grow do better without competition from weeds and good soil always makes a difference.  I don't usually do a single crop in a bed or garden because companion planting has produced better results for me, but maybe, as I said earlier, garlic being a companion for something else is not an equal exchange where the garlic is concerned.

When we lived in town, we built some large planter boxes to grow veges in.  It was rather a necessity as any good soil that was added to the sand we had would lose all nutrients rather quickly and sink into the sandy soil and become sour within a season.  A built up and lined bed, filled with good quality bio-blend soil from a garden centre was a necessity for growing any veges (other than beans - they seemed to love the crappy soil and grew like triffids).

We took the boxes with us when we moved.  We never quite knew what we were going to do with them and they were moved several times before they found their current spot.  I think we've had too many choices and between everything else that has needed doing and water issues, they just sat there.

About a year ago, I laid a thick layer of pine needles in each of them to keep weeds down and covered that with flattened cardboard boxes.   Then the planter boxes became a default compost heap or more correctly, a dumping ground for organic stuff that we didn't really know where to put. They became filled with straw, sawdust and chook poo from cleaning out the chookhouses.  They got ash from the fireplace.  They got lawn clippings and some smaller tree branches.

I used some of the badly composted results last year when I was filling up the tyres that I grew potatoes in.  Otherwise, they just sat there like an accusation of laziness and grand ideas that hadn't been followed through.

After reading a fiction book that had a stables as part of the setting, there was a scene where one of the characters had to go and dig over what they called "shite mountain".  The manure from the stable was heaped into a big pile, covered with feed sacks and once a week, someone had to turn it over, poke a few holes in it, water it thoroughly and cover it up again.  The process was explained - the watering and covering killed off any grass seeds that may be in it, as well as created a humid environment that broke it all down.

This caught my imagination as I looked out over the paddock where my cow has been staying.  I'd been constantly raking up the old hay and her manure to try and keep her paddock fairly clean.  I'd had a few ideas about what I was going to do with it all, but nothing that had stood out.  While I wasn't planning to build a Shite mountain, I thought a planter box could work.

I filled one planter box with hay and cow poo.  As I went, I soaked it and covered it with feedsacks held down by tyres.  By the time I was about halfway, Hubby noticed and joined in.  We turned it over probably once a month and celebrated the big worms that were starting to appear.  The last time we turned it over, Hubby suggested adding chook poo and sawdust to lighten it up.

By this time, we'd filled the second planter box with old hay and manure.  We've left this one open.  No sacks on top.  Partly this was a case of we hadn't gotten around to it, partly running low on feed sacks and partly to see if the difference was noticeable.

This is the box that was left uncovered.

We couldn't decide whether to dig the chookhouse sweepings through, or leave it as a mulch layer on top.  The mulch layer has worked extremely well another vege garden.  So in the spirit of experimentation, we divided the box in half lengthways.  Half was dug through and half was left on top.  Widthways, half was covered again and half was left exposed.

The mulch side is at the bottom, dug through at the top.

This morning I planted garlic in this bed.  The mulch side had fewer weeds and was easier to plant in.  The other side seemed richer and more composted.

Left end was uncovered for the last few months and right covered.  Mulch bottom and dug through top.

I guess the proof will be in the garlic harvest.

Perseverance and Spinning Madly

I think I mentioned it elsewhere, I have been given a lot of unwashed fleeces from both sheep and alpacas.  When I started working on the alpaca fleece, I didn't realise it hadn't been washed until I'd carded the lot and then started spinning.  It was when my fingers turned black from working with it that I realised.

I still haven't gotten very far through the alpaca fleece. And I've only washed two or maybe three of the sheep fleeces I was given before the weather and drying conditions turned against me.  Meanwhile, I have a small mountain of washed fleece waiting to be spun, so I've been trying to get through it.

Washed sheep's fleeces waiting for carding and spinning.

One of the alpaca fleeces though caused a rather rare (for me) ragequit.  I actually took the bobbin off the spinning wheel and threw it.  The wool is short and soft, rather like persian cat hair.  It doesn't spin up nicely at all, regardless of how short my draft is and the thread breaks constantly.

Bloody awful alpaca fleece

This is how it spun up.

It sat in time out in my spare room while I rather resentfully pretended to ignore it and treated it as a betrayal of my trust, while I hoped it learned it's lesson.

I hate waste though.  I hate giving up on something.  I hate finding out I can't do something.  So it sat in the back of my mind while I tried to figure out how to win this battle.

Then it occurred to me to blend it with the much longer and sturdier texel fleece.  Slap forehead, D'oh.

It's terribly obvious as a solution really, but I hadn't been thinking like that. 

It also meant that Hubby could get his socks that aren't creamy white and stop being so obnoxious about the colour of his socks.  It's not like he wears shorts often enough that woolen socks would be visible anyway.

Blending it is fairly simple, I start with some of the texel fleece on my carding comb and add a rough layer of the alpaca fleece and card back and forth until there are no big obvious blobs of brown.  Once it's spun, the colour is uneven, but I think this is a funky feature and we all like it.

Texel fleece on carding comb.

Add some alpaca fleece.

Start carding back and forth to mix up the colours and fleeces.

Sufficiently blended for me.

A rolag ready to spin.

This is how it spins up - this is still a single and not plyed.

So far I've made three pairs of socks with this.  The alpaca fleece makes them warmer and snugglier.  I've had to start adding special stripes so we know whose is whose.

Same yarn knitted into a sock.

Two stripes is Miss Nine's sock.

Winter as a Time of Abundance?

Normally, I would think of Winter as being a time of scarcity.  The grass doesn't grow, the veges (mostly) don't grow and feed for ourselves and our animals is difficult.

While the grass is a fairly large problem this year because we're still in drought, it seems to be the only thing that is scarce for us.

We left our cull later than we should have - partly due to not having the funds to have the homekill man out and pay for the butchering of the cattlebeasts.  But suddenly, we seemed to have money thrown at us from all directions, so we got two steers, three pigs and three hoggets slaughtered.  I still did the butchering of the pigs and sheep and I'm still grateful that there was a two week gap between them as that was a lot of work to do on my own.  By the last sheep I was so over it that it got the barest minimum cuts made to still have meals worth having.

We bought a new chest freezer.  We dithered about it, we went back and forth between chest freezer and upright.  I know that while an upright freezer might officially be a certain size, you lose a fair bit of that in the shelves and drawers, but they are more user friendly.  We decided on the chest freezer in the end for it's capacity and it's now filled to that capacity.

I was a little disturbed by my hoggets.  They looked quite fat and healthy until their skins were off.  There was almost no fat on them at all.  All three were extremely lean.  It showed me that they were not eating as well as they seemed to have been.  Worms and parasites were not an issue on inspection.

I've been feeding out to my remaining sheep, especially as that's (hopefully) all pregnant ewes, but they don't seem to be interested in hay or balage.  They'll have a nibble at it and then go back to sticking their heads through fences to eat the shelter belts.  They all genuinely seem fat though and the neighbour thinks they're in good health.  There are just a few piles of hay still sitting in their paddock to be nibbled at now and then.

So we have meat in abundance because of the cull.  I will probably not need to buy meat for the next year at least and this time, there is variety.

Brownie my housecow seems to have ramped up production of milk.  Where I was getting two litres a day from her which was ample for our needs, I'm now getting between three and six litres.  The calf is still with her and she hasn't weaned him.  I'm also getting more cream from it.  I'm currently out of cheese cultures and the place I usually get them from is out of stock on my cultures, so I've got every possible jug and bottle filled with milk and it's still not enough.  I'm freezing milk as often as I have plastic bottles and freezer space to put it in and I'm still worrying about wasting milk.

So I have milk in abundance.

For some reason, my chickens have also ramped up their laying.  My youngest hens would be coming up to three years old, well past their prime laying days and it's been a cold winter, but lately, the eggs have quadrupled.  At this time of year, I expect maybe four eggs on an average day, I'm currently getting an average of 16 eggs a day.  I still have all the different types of preserved eggs I did a while ago so there's not much point in adding more.  I've been giving eggs to anyone who stops in.

And I have eggs in abundance.

Putting the bird-netting around the vege gardens has worked to keep the chooks out of my garden so that plants can actually grow.  We planted some winter greens that are doing very well.  In one of them, we mulched quite heavily with chook poo and sawdust from cleaning out the henhouses and some torn up egg trays.  Those plants are about four times the size of others in another garden that were planted only two weeks later - and that was a couple of months ago.  This garden is doing so well that plants I'd thought the hens had destroyed have come back and are growing well.  Plants that aren't supposed to live during winter, but they've had hard frosts that didn't thaw for a week and a couple of dumpings of snow and they're still thriving.

Soon it seems we'll have those veges in abundance.

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving it, but I can't quite figure out what I've done right to get so much abundance in Winter.

Ham and Bacon

A lot of people have expressed surprise that I not only butcher my own pigs, but I also cure my own ham and bacon.

There seems to be this idea that it's a lot of hard work and that it always comes out too salty.

I brine both ham and bacon (with different mixes) and find that it's not a lot of work at all.  Once the brine is mixed to satisfaction, it's a matter of placing the cuts in the bucket and leaving them in the fridge for a week.  After a week, I check to be sure the cure has gone all the way through, rinse them (this can take time and lots of water) then slice them, bag them and freeze them.

Bags of sliced bacon

This time I hired a meat slicer for slicing up the bacon and ham.  It was probably not the best model and I don't believe it was worth what I paid for it for the weekend.  I may just buy one myself, even using it only twice a year means it's paid for itself in just over a year.

The bacon was challenging to slice (better once I'd let it airdry for about an hour), but since the ham is baked (to an internal temp of 68 C), it made slicing it far easier.

I got my Bacon Cure mix and Prague Powder from Oskarbutcher.

The recipes and processes are as follows:

Ham

3/4 C salt
1 C Brown Sugar
1/4 C Molasses
1/4 tsp ground cloves
3 tsp prague powder #1

Mix all in warm water.  The salination of the brine is right if a fresh egg floats.  If the egg doesn't float, add equal parts of brown sugar and salt until the egg does float.

Place pork to be cured in brine and ensure that it's completely submerged (a plate on top can help as the meat tends to float).

Place in the fridge for 1 day per kg of meat.

Check the cure has gone right through.  Rinse ham and let soak in clean water.
Cut a small piece, fry and taste to check for saltiness.  If the ham is still too salty, let it rinse some more.
Cook at 150C until an internal temperature of 68C is reached.

Notes: 

I've never found it clear whether it's per kg of total meat or for each individual cut.  Most recently, I had 7 kg of ham in 5 different pieces (two were legs on the bone).  I almost forgot about it, so it cured for 9 days and wasn't noticeably different from last time when it cured for 4 days.

When I'm rinsing the ham, I leave my bucket under the tap with the tap running at it's slowest without just dripping and check it hourly.

Baking the ham this way does not affect it's ability to soak in a tasty glaze if you freeze it and then cook it later.  We used a leg ham for Christmas dinner last year and the brown sugar and orange juice glaze I made still soaked right through and tasted great.

Because I'm using whole legs, I use a 15 litre food grade bucket.  I need at least 3C each of brown sugar and salt for this.

Bacon

1 part bacon cure
1 part salt (not iodised)
1/2 part brown sugar

Dissolve in water until a fresh egg floats.  Submerge meat in brine.  Keep in the fridge for 4 - 7 days.  Soak in fresh water for 1 hour and test for saltiness.

Notes:

This mix can also be used as a dry rub in the same proportions, rubbed thoroughly into the meat every 2 or 3 days and finished off in the same way.

French Vanilla Ice Cream

For some reason, we're suddenly getting lots and lots of milk from Brownie.  I have quite a few cheeses curing, several bottles in the freezer for when we dry her off (and I'm gradually adding to this, but not wanting to fill up the freezer just yet when we have 8 animals getting slaughtered for the freezer this week) and every available jug is full.

It occurred to me this morning that I have plenty of eggs and lots of milk and one of the best things I can do with the two together is make custard.  I remembered seeing someone on My Kitchen Rules making an ice cream that was essentially a frozen creme anglaise.  I found a recipe in one of my books for creme anglaise just recently and was surprised to discover that it was simply a custard sauce with no cornflour.

A few minutes spent on google this morning, showed me that creme anglaise ice cream is better known as french vanilla - my favourite flavour of ice cream!  Well, that made it an obvious choice to be making.  I also checked up on making ice cream without an ice cream machine.  It was pretty much as I expected, you just need to pull it out of the freezer every half an hour or so and beat it up again.

The reason for this is the size of the ice crystals that form.  If I just put it straight into the freezer as it was, there would be fairly large ice crystals.  They don't change the flavour of the ice cream, but they do affect the mouth feel of it.  Beating it while it's freezing breaks up those large ice crystals and gives a smoother texture.

Thanks to Nigella, I know that after separating my eggs, I can freeze the egg whites and they'll be fine for pavlova or meringues.  So I place the egg whites in ziplock bags - 6 egg whites in each bag (which is the quantity I tend to use when I make pavlova) and there is no waste.

I have seen recipes that talked about adding the scalded milk tablespoon by tablespoon to temper the eggs.  In my first attempt, I just poured it all in and it came out fine.  

The original recipe was for 1/4 of the amount I have made, but I didn't think it was worth making ice cream 500ml at a time.  This came to approx 3 litres, possibly more.

2 containers of Creme Anglaise for French Vanilla Ice Cream

Creme Anglaise

2 litres of scalded milk
24 egg yolks
3 Cups of sugar
1 tsp of vanilla essence

Whisk egg yolks and sugar together until thick and pale.
Slowly add scalded milk, stirring constantly.
Heat on double boiler, still stirring constantly until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Remove from heat and stir in vanilla essence.

In my case, since I'm making this into ice cream, I let it cool, poured it into ice cream containers and put them in the freezer.  They'll be getting stirred every half an hour until completely frozen.

Yummy.

Read More:
New Ice Cream Recipe with Variations

Winter is Certainly Here

We woke up this morning to frost on the inside of the windows.  I'm confident we only got the predicted -5 degrees Celsius overnight and we're still not a patch on Lake Pukaki's -20 from yesterday.  That isn't much comfort however, especially as tonight -7 is predicted.

From MetService.com

As I'm sick with the flu, my darling Hubby has been starting work late and coming home early.  He's been out in the icy mornings getting Miss Nine off to the school bus and milking the cow before he goes to work.  He drags Miss Nine along with him in the evening to feed out the animals and get them settled for the night.

Next week, the homekill man is coming and there will be 8 less animals to worry about.  2 steers, 3 hoggets and 3 pigs are going into the freezer.  This will take some of the strain off the meagre feed resources after a drought-laden Summer and poor growing season.  We've already had to buy in more hay.  I'm a little cranky at how much more we paid for it as there are big chunks of wood throughout the bales - they're big enough that I'm putting them in the wood shed for firewood.

For some reason though, my hens have started to lay more.  They're all older birds so I don't expect an egg a day from them all, most moulted last month (with one changing colour as her new feathers came in) and it's been cold.  But somehow, my daily collection of eggs has doubled in the last week.  *Shrugs* I'm not complaining, I just find it a little odd.

Taken at 11am.

For now, we're keeping the fires burning, wearing thermals, feeding out the animals and I'm keeping an eye on the spots that don't thaw out at all during the day.

Some Thoughts on Cheese Making

Again today, I'm in the process of making cheese.  This time I'm having a go at Edam - it's currently setting after the addition of the rennet.

It struck me today that the really hard part about trying new cheeses is that they take months to cure.  I like to know the success or taste of a cheese before I attempt to make another one.  If the recipe I've used is not right, or something was lost in translation (translation from cheese-making jargon to what I understand).  I'd prefer to know about it before I charge on in potentially making the same mistakes over and over and having a shelf full of cheeses (this represents hours and hours of work and plenty of milk) that are only good for the pigs.

My last batch of Camembert was a disaster.  I'd been getting rather hard crumbly Camemberts but they were still completely edible, you could slice it and eat it just fine on a cracker.  I did some research and wondered if I'd been a bit rough with my curd.  So for the last batch I was extremely gentle.  The curds didn't look like cottage cheese this time, they held their mostly cube shapes.  But it was harder than ever.  you can't safely slice this batch.  I've taken to grating it with a lemon zester and using it in potato bakes where I might have used parmesan.  It's worked okay, but it is frustrating.

Camembert only cures for a month!  Today's Edam will need to wait for two months before I know if it's any good.

I've been making different types of hard cheeses so I'll have a variety to try and decide whether or not to make again.  Currently curing is Gouda and a Farm Cheddar.  Actually, I think they're both up for tasting in the next couple of weeks.

Another thought is that many of the recipes available are not really designed for the home cheesemaker.  The smallest quantity of milk I've found in these recipes is 4 litres.  Most are approximately 10 litres and I've found a few that are 20+.  Four litres is manageable.  Ten litres is easy to work out reduced amounts and conversions.

Ten litres isn't entirely practical unless you go and buy special equipment for cheesemaking.  I've taken to sterilising a large bucket and using that.  Otherwise I have one large stockpot that will only barely hold ten litres and a large bowl that isn't really big enough for all the whey.

A further thought is that it really is quite incredible how a small difference in process can make such a different cheese.  I've made feta, minas, camembert, gouda, edam, cheddar, mozzarella and ricotta.  With the exception of mozzarella and ricotta, most of the cheesemaking process has only small variations in what you do to create such vastly different cheeses.  They use the same cultures (I only have two cultures) and the same volume of rennet.  Camembert has Penicillum Candidum added.  The time left to set, whether or not it's then heated in whey and whether it's pressed are the main differences and then how long it's left to age.

It's a journey anyway and one I'm having fun with.

Simple Cough Syrup

Every year, I make a very simple cough syrup for my family.  It contains no drugs so there isn't a need to measure or worry about how much the children might be taking.

Mostly, I believe, the honey is the thing.  It coats a tickly throat and allows you to sleep.

This will help ease an annoying cough.  It should not be relied upon in place of medical treatment if you have a nasty hacking cough or an infection of some sort.

I use rosehips for their immune boosting properties.  Be sure to use rosehips from the dog rose as other varieties of rose don't always have the same vitamin C content or may have been sprayed.

I use thyme for it's antibacterial properties.  If your throat is slightly inflamed, there is an opportunity for bacteria to take hold and cause an infection.  Thyme also thins and breaks down mucous.

If you can get Manuka honey, it also adds a wonderful boost to this syrup.

I don't use specific quantities because I don't think they really make a difference.  My Herbs tutor always did units of measure as "some" or "a quantity".  As long as you have some of each in your syrup, the only real difference will be the taste.  Although, 100ml of decoction to 4 tbsp honey is a good consistency for a syrup.

Cough Syrup

A handful of chopped rosehips - fresh or dried.
A handful of thyme - fresh or dried.
Water
Honey

Simmer rosehips and thyme in water for ten minutes.
Strain, squeezing out as much liquid as you can.

Add honey to liquid and heat gently to dissolve honey.
Bottle, label and store in the refrigerator.

NOTE:  Do not boil the liquid as this can destroy any benefit you may get from the herbs.
Anything with sugar (honey) has the potential to ferment.

This recipe can also be made with Oatstraw to promote sweating (which is part of your bodies own defensive system), support the nervous system and lift the spirits.

Four Year Anniversary

This weekend marks four years for us on our little farm.  Changing our lifestyle, changing our priorities and learning to enjoy a simpler life.

We came here with grand plans and big ideas.  We were realistic with them for the most part but four years have taught us that we weren't quite realistic enough for some of it.

We've had our share of successes and failures.  We've had panics and frightening times.  We've had joys and pleasant surprises.

Our goal was to become as self-sufficient as possible.  We were bearing in mind that there are things we can't provide for ourselves no matter what we do but some of the things we are providing for ourselves have been more successful than imagined.

We've managed several meals where everything on the plate was grown here.  Although that hasn't been as many as we'd have liked.  One year was a complete potato failure and last year the spuds went well - we are still using them - but all the other veges were a waste of time.

We've only bought two bottles of milk in the last four months.  I'm waiting on cheeses to ripen before I can cut them out of the grocery bill too.  I haven't bought eggs in a year and our excess is well received by friends and family.  Even though I have 30-odd freeloaders most of the time.  Nearly 40 hens and maybe 5 eggs a day at the moment, although every so often I find a hidden stash before the dog does.  He loves them and will even scoff down the bad ones - I hear a crunch, wonder what he's doing and then the smell hits me.

Our neighbours have stopped making jokes about Green Acres and the townies with big ideas and started treating us less condescendingly - although to be fair, it was never a nasty sort of condescension, it was kind and helpful.

Hubby regularly watches Country Calendar (including the old reruns from the 70s) and will get researching for himself when something gets his attention.  His ongoing battle with gorse took a new turn when he saw one farmer comment that it's good to get the animals to do some of the work.  He was finding that cutting it when the grass had grown up around it could be problematic as the grass would wrap around the shaft and bind up the blade of his scrub-cutter.  So he'll now cut some of it away, let the cattle in who eat the grass down around the base of the plants (depending on low-lying branches) and make his job a lot easier.  He's also found that letting it sit for a while after cutting grows better grass underneath.  Last time he was shifting some that he'd cut months ago, he had two cows and two calves on his heels the whole time, cleaning up the grass as he shifted gorse.

It's easy to forget some of the things we've done.  It takes someone to comment or to have a look at some old photos to remind us that there were fence lines we couldn't walk around or paddocks that were completely blocked from view.  We had paddocks that were more gorse than grass and over half of our little farm unfenced. 

Hubby used to make a point of getting rid of all the crap that was around.  Every so often, he'd have a big clear out and make a couple of trips to the dump.  We don't do that very often anymore.  The amount of times the crap we've found has ended up being useful for a project or works for a short term fix has taught us the wisdom in not wasting a potential resource.  The milking shed was built entirely out of recycled bits of rubbish. 

Even the gorse has been useful.  Last winter, most of our firewood was from the big thick branches of gorse that had been killed off previously and were lying around hidden under massive stands of younger, healthier gorse.  I'm talking about wood that is four inches in diameter.  It makes a great firewood, it burns hot, fairly slowly and actually consumes some of the ash in the fireplace - we end up with less ash than we started with.

The house is a constant project of improvement.  Many of the drafts have been fixed, one tube of Selley's No More Gaps on one corner made a ridiculous difference to the kitchen.  The rotten lounge floor has now been replaced, although that ended up needed new beams and joists too.  That cost us half a cattle beast and a pig.  Where one of the add-on rooms had been clad in tin that looked like weatherboards, Hubby and Dad spent a couple of weekends replacing this with timber weatherboards, insulating it and lining it with building paper.  This winter, we've noticed a record difference in heat retention inside, getting up to 15 degrees C difference compared to outside.

I used to think of myself as quite a good knitter and all round crafty person.  I've since come to realise that I could knit and crochet, but now I'd consider myself a bit more accomplished.  I could do the basics before, but now I can tackle more difficult projects with confidence and achieve some lovely results.  These days, I have standing orders from people around me for socks, mitts and jerseys.

You'd think Miss (now) Nine had been born to this life.  The homekill man was trying to be discrete when she was around but I think he was both surprised and delighted by her fascination with the insides of the animals and how they all go together.  I'll never forget her demanding to see the heart followed by "Eww, gross.  Can I touch it?"

We've learned to make both long and short term goals, to celebrate our small wins, to be kinder to ourselves and that there is no such thing as a "free weekend".

We frequently have discussions based around whether we're improving or maintaining and that some things come under both headings.

We've learned the value of water and not to take anything for granted.  We've learned respect for the land, respect for the weather, respect for all our animals and respect for ourselves.

Fencing and Sheep

In our four years on our little block, we've learned a lot about containing animals and that nothing is as simple as it seems.  We used to think fencing was easy - where there was a barrier, animals were contained.

We've since learned that cattle will go over the top of fences when they really want to.  Either straight over and you're left scratching your head wondering if you have magic teleporting paddocks or they'll lean over the top to get feed on the other side and slowly destroy the fence.

Pigs will go under most things - the amount of strength they have in their noses is astounding.  The only thing I've found to contain determined pigs is corrugated iron and electric fencing.

Sheep, however, have been the most destructive force to our fences.  They go under, they go through and they mark their successes for next time with all the wool wrapped around two strands of fence pushed together.

We got Nibbles and her lambs knowing they were escape artists.  They were escaping through five strand cattle fencing so, we were assured, our sheep netting and deer fencing would be fine for keeping them in.

It was for a while.  Then there were the paddocks where some of the fences had already had some stress from two dexter calves being weaned.  Then the sheep would get into the shelter belts and from there they had their run of four different paddocks.  Trying to convince them to clean up one paddock before moving them to the next was a joke.  They were keeping four paddocks down.  Nibbles was rather fat when time came for her to have her lambs.

Bottom strand of fence twisted up to leave a gap for cunning sheep.

I know the big sheep station down the road culls the serial escapers.  As they pointed out, there might be one in a paddock, but it doesn't take long for that one to teach ten others and they'll teach a hundred.  Suddenly, you've got stock you can't keep under control.

At the time when I heard that, I had two sheep.  Both escape artists and one heavily pregnant.  Culling them was really not an option for us.  We had to make our fences sheep tight so they couldn't escape and when their lambs were born, they weren't taught the secrets because there would be no escaping.

A wool wrapped escape point into the shelter belt.

I've heard theories and tips from a number of people.  Some more practical than others.  One told me to wind a strand of wire through the bottom strand of the netting, run it all along the fence and strain it up tight.  Threading it through and around each netting block was challenging but straining it tight enough to stop them didn't happen.  The wire broke - high tensile fencing wire by the way.

Our next idea was to stake the bottom of the fence down.  Rods like tent pegs don't really work.  They pulled up again just with us testing them.  In the end, Hubby cut down several of the flat bar warratah stakes that we had lying around.  He drilled a hole near the top end.  We hammered them in, tied them to the bottom strand of the fence and then he hammered them to below the surface of the ground.  This is a very long and slow and painstaking process (pun not intended) but it seems to work.

Stake tied to bottom strand

Stake hammered to ground level.

It's not helped by the way the fences have been stapled to the posts.  We were told by the guy we bought the place off that the deer fenced paddocks were put up for ostriches.  Ostriches don't need the bottom foot or so fenced, so he'd had to go through and drop all the fences down to ground level.  Except he didn't drop them to the ground, or rather he didn't drop all of them to ground level.  In some places there was more than 20cm (8 inches) between the bottom strand of the fence and the ground.

The gap between the bottom of the fence and the ground.

So our first job in each paddock we're making sheep strong is to drop the height of the fence.  Then we go along staking down the bottom.  In some places a single stake between fence posts is sufficient, in others two is needed.  We've run out of warratahs and flat stake standards so Hubby bought 30mm x 6mm flat bar in 6m lengths and just cut and drilled them from there.

Three paddocks down, two to go!

Knitting Needle and Crochet Hook Conversion Charts

A while back I wrote about inheriting boxes filled with Grandma's craft stuff.  I have more knitting needles and crochet hooks now than I think any one sane person should own, but I can't quite make myself give any away or sell the clearly vintage hooks.

This isn't all of them.

The challenge comes from trying to understand exactly what size some of them are.  This gets worse with some of the hooks when their marked with a 5 and seem to be about 5mm.  Actually, they're a UK size 5 hook which is really 5.5mm.

Fortunately for me, I also got this wee gadget that is especially helpful with sock needles that have no markings whatsoever.

Metric side

UK side

For everything else, there are these charts below.  I thought them worth sharing because sometimes I can't remember if it's a 10 or 11 needle I need right now and it's difficult to tell the difference with the naked eye.

Knitting Needle Conversion Chart

Metric (mm)	US	UK & Canadian
2.0	0	14
2.25	1	13
2.75	2	12
3.0	-	11
3.25	3	10
3.5	4	-
3.75	5	9
4.0	6	8
4.5	7	7
5.0	8	6
5.5	9	5
6.0	10	4
6.5	10 1/2	3
7.0	-	2
7.5	-	1
8.0	11	0
9.0	13	00
10.0	15	000
12.0	17	-
16.0	19	-
19.0	35	-
25.0	50	-

Crochet Hook Conversion Chart

Metric (mm)	US	UK & Canadian
2.0	-	14
2.25	B/1	13
2.5	-	12
2.75	C/2	-
3.0	-	11
3.25	D/3	10
3.5	E/4	9
3.75	F/5	-
4.0	G/6	8
4.5	7	7
5.0	H/8	6
5.5	I/9	5
6.0	J/10	4
6.5	K/10 1/2	3
7.0	-	2
8.0	L/11	0
9.0	M/13	00
10.0	N/15	000