Yarn From Dog Hair

 Just over a year ago, I was at a festival with some friends. Over a few drinks and amidst stories about keeping turkeys and peacock impersonations, one friend mentioned that when she brushes her Samoyed dog she gets enough hair off him to make another dog. 

There were a few laughs and the suggestion of spinning it.

I had mostly relegated that entire conversation into a 'fun times with friends' file and forgotten about it. 

Then in February, the friend I travelled to this festival with passed away. It was devastating for me. Totally unexpected and I was lost.

A parcel arrived on my doorstep from the friend who has the dog. It contained a lot of lovely white fibre. It was fine, soft and strong. I'd forgotten about our conversation and it was a bit painful to poke at the memories so it took me a few guesses before I realised what I had. 

Hubby was disgusted at first. He couldn't understand why someone would send me dog hair. But it made me laugh. It lightened my days and gave me something fun to do. 

I started spinning. At first it was lovely and clean, it spun a beautiful fine thread easily. Then as I got down through the bag, I reached the stuff with lots of dander.

By the time I finished, I was needing to stop every 10 minutes to wash my hands and blow my nose. I had a pile of doggy dandruff an inch deep beneath my spinning wheel. 

I did a lot of thinking while I was spinning. This tends to happen anyway. I wondered why yarn is always assumed to be sheep's wool, or lately alpaca or possum. Why aren't other fibres considered? I'm guessing it's mostly tradition. 

The yarn was plyed and washed. What am I going to do with this? I wanted to make something for the friend who'd given it to me and finally settled on gumboot socks. She's a dairy farmer and I'm sure good, warm gumboot socks would always be welcome. 

I worked on them while I was at the market. They made a great conversation starter, especially when crafters are comparing notes about some of the strange and wonderful things they've made. They knitted up so nicely, I'm currently working on a pair for myself and considering some mitts too. 

The knitted yarn feels so soft and warm that I'm excited to get mine finished. 

Getting Fruit on Fruit Trees

 I've got several fruit trees that had never produced fruit. 

Well, that's not entirely true. Our first Summer and Autumn there were apricots on the tree. One of the cats would climb the tree and play with the apricots like those dangly cat toys until he knocked them off and then the dog would carefully place them between his front paws and lick them down to the stone. All before they came ripe.

We didn't get any more fruit for the next six or seven years. 

There were lots of theories and wisdom offered as to why.

So one year, as I pruned it, I told the tree it was its last chance. If I didn't get any fruit next season, I'd be cutting it down. 

Next season and each season since, there have been plenty of apricots. 

So I tried the same thing on my feijoa trees this year. I've never had fruit on them in the eleven years we've been here. 

Until now.

It's very late in the season, and I'd given up on seeing anything on them a couple of months ago. 

Hubby and I were going past them on our way to ready the borrowed ram to go back home. As we were walking past the feijoas, Hubby said "what's that?" Pointing to a large feijoa on the ground. 

Looking up at the tree, we saw lots more in various sizes. On both trees.

There's certainly something to be said for threatening fruit trees. 

Zucchini Flour

 There's been a post doing the rounds detailing how to make and use zucchini flour. 

It says that it can be used to replace up to 1/3 of wheat flour in any recipe without any noticeable changes to taste or texture. It also recommends zucchini flour as a gravy thickener. 

It's easy. Cut a zucchini or a marrow is better, into thin strips. Dry it thoroughly, overdry is better than under. Run it through a food processor until finely ground and voila, zucchini flour.

Since I had found two large marrows and already had plenty grated in the freezer, I thought I'd give it a go. There is also the war in Ukraine and the unusual weather here and in Australia affecting crops. Maybe it would be a useful backup to have.

I used a potato peeler to cut my strips and it still took three days to get two whole marrows dried. 

I ran them through the food processor until I had a faintly green tinged dust rising from every little hole and opening in the bowl. 

I poured it through a sieve and the coarse stuff went back into the food processor. It wasn't enough, so I ground it in my mortar and pestle. 

A day of grinding and sieving and grinding some more. Of cleaning the dust from under my fingernails. Of redrying the powder in case it was still a little damp.

I have finished with maybe one cup of zucchini flour. 

I'm not convinced it was worth it. I don't use wheat flour much anyway. 

I tried a recipe for marrow soup today that was delicious. I think it will be a better use for my marrows.

Black Grapes

 For the last few years, I haven't gotten any grapes. They were growing just fine, quite abundantly in fact, however, the birds were eating them all before they'd even showed signs of ripening.

So last year, I decided to put up some bird netting.  It was quite the mission to net over and under the grapevines growing over the arch.

We spent several months watching the grapes grow and ripen.  It was quite impressive just how many there were and the sizes the bunches were growing to. The odd thrush managed to make it's way inside the nets and usually had to be helped back out.

Miss Fifteen and I picked a bucketful and barely touched the grapes that were there.  

I washed and weighed some trying to decide how much would be Black Grape Wine. The thing is, the huge volume of wine I made four years ago has barely been touched.  I've used it more for cooking than I have for drinking.  More of it has been gifts.  I didn't want to make a heap that would just end up getting dusty in my wine rack.

So I used 6kg of grapes and made about 16 litres of wine.

That left about 6kg of grapes still from the first picking. I didn't want to waste them, so I decided to make raisins.  I've done this previously as an experiment.  Unfortunately, since my grapes aren't seedless, this is quite a labour intensive process.  I cut each grape open and remove the seeds before putting them into the dehydrator. 

So approximately 12kg of grapes has become 16l of wine and a 1.5l jar of raisins.  I still had at least four times the amount of grapes still on the vine.

Hubby suggested Grape juice.  I went Googling and found a recipe.  It started very similar to starting wine.  Wash and mash grapes but then it said to boil them vigorously for about 20 mins. Add sugar to taste and strain gently overnight.  It said that it didn't keep for too long and wasn't particularly nice if frozen.

I was talking to a friend before I had the opportunity to try it.  He told me his grandfather used to make the most amazing grape juice but he never boiled his.  It was a very long slow process and would keep for years.

I decided to try it.  I washed the grapes and filled my stock pot.  No water added except for where the grapes may have still been wet from washing. I turned my pot on very low and watched as the grapes gradually reduced to pulp, seeds and juice. I kept it going for hours and gently strained the juice out.  When I say gently strained, I mean that there was no squeezing or pressure.  I would put a few cupfuls into my muslin lined sieve and let it strain until it stopped dripping.  I would then return the pulp to the pot and do it again until there was no more liquid in my pot.

An 8 litre stock pot filled with fresh grapes became 1.5l of grape juice.  It's a little thick and syrupy but not unpleasantly so.  It didn't need any sugar added, it tastes wonderful as it is.

I looked at the colour in the pulp and wondered if I could still use it.  I know that it's the skins that give wine it's colour, so out of curiosity, I refilled my pot with water and the leftover pulp and heated it gently in much the same process.

It has come out just as dark as the grape juice, so we'll see how it goes as a dye.

Grape Juice

Washed grapes

Place the grapes in a large pot and heat very gently.  They will reduce by about half.

Strain without squeezing, sweeten if needed and bottle.

Elderberry Lozenges

Elderberry Lozenges

 

1.5 litres of water

Approximately 1.5kg elderberries

3 C sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp butter

1 tsp lemon juice

 

Combine water and berries in a large saucepan.  Bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.  Remove from heat, cover and let stand for approximately 30 minutes.

 

Strain, discarding berries and reserving the liquid.

 

Combine liquid, sugar and cream of tartar in a medium saucepan.  Slowly bring to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Cook, without stirring until mixture reaches 104˚C (220˚F).  Add butter, do not stir.

 

Continue cooking without stirring, until mixture reaches hard crack stage (150˚C - 300˚F).

Add lemon juice (do not stir) and gently shake the pan.

 

Pour syrup into buttered dish.  Allow to cool a little, until you can pinch off a piece without it being too sticky.  Roll into balls or spoon into moulds.  Cool until firm and wrap.

 

 

The original recipe said to mark in 1” squares and cut or break when completely cool.  I tried this the first time and ended up with a solid glass-like mass that would not break apart.  I had spent about an hour running the knife through to mark the squares and then couldn’t lift them out of the dish.  I had to reheat the entire batch and try again.  This is why I shape them into balls (which generally flatten) or pour into moulds.

 

If kept in the fridge, the lozenges do stick together a bit, but are easily pulled apart.  If stored in the pantry, they gradually meld together into a jar shaped mega-lozenge. I still have two jars of horehound candy waiting for me to reheat and reshape them.

 

I wrapped the most recent batch in gladwrap.  It made it a long and painstaking process, but they are magic for a sore throat so I feel it was worth it.

Any herb you may be wanting to use can be substituted in for elderberries.  

February Foragings

 

I had promised myself I would be doing plenty with my usual foraging fare this year.  Three times I made it around the farm picking plums, blackberries and elderberries before the rain hit.  The first two times, I was able to wash, weigh and bag the berries and put them in the fridge to wait for a bigger volume.  After I'd made eight jars of plum jam. The third time I had to throw it all away, I had just started to take the elderberries off the stalks when I got the news about my friend and wasn’t able to come back to them for over a week. 

 

Last weekend, I went for a big forage, hoping that I hadn’t missed too much.  Because of all the rain, the creek is still running, which is pretty much unheard of in February.  So I went out with Hubby’s waders on.  I wasn’t wearing a belt to hook the side straps up to, but I thought since they reached mid-thigh, I should be right.

 

The blackberry pick was impressive.  In two hours, splashing through the creek to reach them, I picked nearly 3kg.  I only stopped when I misjudged a deep part of the creek and filled up one wader.

 

I’d already filled a bucket with elderberries from three young trees that have turned up on the fence line.  There are more berries than leaves on two of them, and the majority are still not quite ripe.

 

I spent a morning sorting, washing and stripping the berries. 3kg of blackberries has turned into something partway between jam and jelly.  I used a jam recipe but ran it through the mouli to remove all the seeds. It’s not set as well as I would like, but it’s set enough and there are 10 jars of blackberry jam in the pantry.

 

I spent a day adapting a horehound candy recipe to make elderberry lozenges.  They haven’t quite set as well as I’d like, but I wrapped them and keep them in the fridge so they’ll do.

 

I’ve started a batch of elderberry wine, with whatever blackberries I had leftover in too.  I have been making elderberry wine for eleven years now, I’m sure this is the first one that started bubbling almost as soon as I put the bubbler into the barrel.

 

All the summer rain has made the mushrooms grow well.  Not that I can find them easily.  After the last few years of drought, I made the decision that we had too many animals and the paddocks needed some resting.  I’m now down to two cows (from five last year) and ten adult sheep (it was more than twenty). With all the rain, the paddocks I’m resting are growing like I’ve never seen before.  I almost have too much feed.  It's more good luck than anything else spotting field mushrooms in knee-high grass.

 

However, the stocks of frozen fried mushrooms are being replenished.

 

So while it feels like the rest of the world has gone mad with a pandemic, protests and potential war in Europe, I feel like my little corner of the world is doing ok.

Late February in My Vege Garden

 

After a fairly hellish month, my vege garden is a jungle.  Two weeks of heavy rain, one tropical cyclone, the unexpected passing of my closest friend, a covid scare with isolation and my garden is a place best described as survival of the fittest.

The pumpkins seem to be making a run for the title of ruler of this jungle.  They are smothering most of the competition, all of the paths and also managing to grow some big fat healthy looking pumpkins.

 

The beans don’t think much of this and are climbing the sunflowers to escape.

 

My single courgette plant seems determined to join the uprising and is trying to reach the ground to either take on the pumpkins or join them.

 

The beetroot is still bravely growing under and over the sneaky tendrils, although a rather large pumpkin has managed to jam their transportation.

 

The first lot of peas I planted along the net on the edge of the tunnel house keep trying and frequently show new growth, but they have gotten fairly dismal on the whole. But the second sowing has taken off to be taller than me and growing masses of fat pods with juicy peas.  It’s unclear what they think of the attempted pumpkin coup, but perhaps they haven’t noticed because they’re somewhat removed from it.

 

Most of the tomatoes, cucumber and chillies just don’t seem to care.  The cherry tomatoes are possibly making a run of their own and aiming to close the borders.

 

The carrots in the water trough were drowned in the rain and have surrendered peacefully. Or so it seems, I don’t know if they’re going to just rot or try for a more hydroponic lifestyle. Who can tell?

 

It seems my garden heard my idea of it being a surprise around every corner and took it to heart.

January in My Vege Garden

 Happy New Year everyone. I hope you've had a lovely holiday. 

We never seem to do relaxing. After all the windows and weatherboards were replaced last summer, this year has been about all the preparation and painting. Hubby is determined that we do a very good job so that it will last for years. 

I've been hard at work in my garden. The weeds are an ongoing battle, but not as bad as previous years when I hadn't mulched.

The beans and sunflowers that I'd been lamenting have finally grown. Only three sunflowers, but I'll take it. 

I fixed the drainage problem in the carrot trough. I keep seeing videos showing people putting inverted soft drink bottles with an end cut off into plant pots as a way to water plants. It occurred to me that it could also work the other way.  This bottle has holes drilled in it all around and up and down the length of the bottle. 

The day I put it in, I scooped out the excess water as the bottle filled. I took out at least 5 litres. I also pulled out a lot of rotting carrots. I guess that's one way of thinning them. 

Everything seems to growing rampant. We're starting to pick and eat from the garden. Last night was our first entirely grown at home meal for the year.