pests and pestilence

You really have to keep an eye on the spitfire caterpillars at the moment...they have been chowing down on some young calistemons, an illawarra flame tree and the prickly lime. I had an afternoon of spitfire squashing today. By the way I took the pic from Google images - I can't claim any credit for the image. They are beautiful if destructive little beasts.

I've also been puzzled by what had been eating a grape vine planted near the garage. I hadn't realised that it had most of its leaves chewed off by a rat. I had been noticing that what I suspectd to be a rat had been chewing on my butternut pumpkins and my cherry tomatoes but hadn't realised that it had also been making dolmades as well.

But all was revealed today when Steve cleaned out the garage and discovered a rat's nest similar to that below with mummy rat and about 10 rat pups, together with more than a dozen of my cherry tomatoes. Steve dealt with the rats himself! He's such a farmer these days that he'll probably be up to castrating lambs with his teeth next.

A bit of baking over the weekend

At th gentle insistence of our friend, Warwick from Melbourne, we bought a bread maker via Peter of Kensington's online catalogue. We'd had it for a few weeks but hadn't got around to buying the bread mixes until last Friday. We made our first bread on Saturday, and while it's a tad heavy, it's not too bad at all.

I got caught up in the baking mood and bunged in a banana and passionfruit yogurt cake late on Sunday afternoon. I make it a bit 'wetter' so that the consistency is more pudding like than cake..yummo

A matter of scale

Scale is important when you have a bit of land (OK, so 16 acres isn't much to most farmers but to two boys from Newcastle, it's a fair bit). We are yet to get our heads around how we will manage our big paddocks such as the one above (which is about 7 acres in area) and we find ourselves working at very different scales....from this macro scale trying to develop a land management system for the entire property that will enable us to manage weeds, revegetate and (probably) run some cattle to....

the almost micro scale where we germinate seeds to grow into seedlings for planting out in the vege and herb gardens. Sometimes you just don't think such small scale interventions are important in the bigger picture but they are.

Thank god it's Friday (afternoon)

It's 6.00pm Friday and I'm relaxing in the vege garden cultuvating the soil and digging up weeds before planting some zucchini seedlings that Ed and Baptiste had germinated for me.

It's a very nice way to wind down after work. After Steve had picked me up at about 4.20 we headed over to the Rural Buying Service to buy a belt for Rita the Rideon, slipped in next door to the Tender Centre to lay a few bids on stuff we really don't need, and then home. Changed out of my uni clothes, into my work clothes and my mongrels (boots I bought in Kyogle) and then into the vege garden with my hoe and rake. Bliss.

A quirky shot of the girls

Ed took this shot (especially for you, Kerri :-) Martina is closest to camera, then KD, Gertrude and The Freak is at the back. I think it's a great pic, don't you? We get between 6 and 8 eggs a day these days.

A few more shots of Ed and Batiste

Shane (our grounds curator) and Farmer Ed on Rita the Ride-On. Rita came in handy carting huge piles of Hydrangea cuttings on to the compost heap.

Baptiste and Ed standing in front of the gushing Tooloom Falls, about 90 minutes north-west of Kyogle.

Baptiste, me and Steve at Tooloom Falls

Baptiste, Ed and Rita in front of the ever-growing compost heap.

OK, so I can't help myself...

We found this gorgeous carpet python sunning itself by the side of the road just outside Tooloom National Park on Sunday. We had very heavy rains the previous 48 hrs but on Sunday it was warm and sunny - perfect conditions for recharging your energy levels if you are a carpet python!

From my office window....

OK, so these shots (taken today, Tuesday 17 February) weren't taken at Maryville, but from my office window at Southern Cross University. They were taken by my colleague, Mieke Witsel, who, when I pointed the koala out to her, sensibly rushed over and borrowed the School's digi camera and took these shots. How nice to have a koala outside your window.

Cooking with Baptiste: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cooking is a very serious activity, as can be seen by Baptiste's facial expression. He has mixed the dry ingredients with one egg and 80gms of butter and is now diligently kneading the mixture.

Carefully crafted blobs of mixture have been spread precisely 5cms apart from each. Into a moderate oven for 12-13 minutes. Don't overcook otherwise they will be brittle and not chewy.

A job well done, Baptiste can now enjoy a delicious, straight out of the oven, chocolate chip cookie.

Eating cookies is also a serious activity for Edouard, who savours the moment before placing the cookie into his mouth. Bon appetite!

Creek starting to rise

While we've been copping a fair bit of rain, the upper reaches of the Leycester Creek catchment would have been getting much more, and so the creek has started rising and swelling quite a bit.

Steve inspects our bridge crossing while Baptiste and Ed model the latest in wet-weather gear imported direct from Paris. If it keeps raining we might be flooded in for a while.

You can get a bit of an idea of the force of the current from this pic.

The creek has risen about 45cm above its normal height.

Rains have arrived

We've had a fair bit of rain over the last couple of days, about 2inches in the past 18 hours with more on the way. The locals cope in various ways. This is the mum wallaby and her bub whose pic I posted a couple of weeks ago. The wallabies seem to enjoy the rain and stay grazing while ever it is raining or misty.

Hecklenjeckle and his mates, however, appear less than impressed and have taken to spending most of the day just perched rather forelornly on the verandahs.

The green tree frogs, however, like the wet conditions rather a lot.

Piglet makes a fleeting visit

Piglet (Michael) came up for a very quick visit this week. We picked him up from Kyogle Station at 4.12am Thursday morning and we put him back on the train Friday morning. This is his second visit to Maryville.

Baptiste, Piglet and Eduard on the back verandah

Piglet enjoying a sleep on the daybed after we put him to work on the property.

Moon rising over Billen Cliffs (Cliff Richard)

As we ate dinner from the back verandah tonight we watched as an almost full-moon rose over the Billen Cliffs, Cliff Richard to be precise. It was a lovely night here, very different to the inferno that is blazing across Victoria.

Ed, Baptiste and Steve in the Creek

We have two very nice French guys from Quebec City and Montreal staying with us for 10 days through Help-X which is an organisation that enables people like Ed and Baptiste who would like to stay with people and help out in exchange for a place to stay and meals as a way of experiencing Australia. They arrived on the coach from Sydney last Friday morning at 7am and will stay with us for 10 days. After a hot day of weeding our vege garden we walked down our property to Leycester Creek which forms part of our boundary and had a refreshing swim. Very nice way to end the day.

New hatchlings

The two viable eggs laid by two of my pygmy mulga goannas hatched over the past few weeks after about 12 weeks incubating in a home made incubator consisting of a commercial reptile heat pad inside a standard foam esky which I placed down in our basement where the temperature is a constant 21 degrees. Inside the esky was a nice 29-30 degrees, just right for creating baby goannas out of egg. They are both eating tiny crickets and chicken mince and the occasional money spider.

Visit from E and Bert

Dad, mum and Steve

Dad, mum and me

My parents visited us last week for four days and had an enjoyable time. We visited Kyogle for the farmers' market and big breakfast, Nimbin cos mum wanted an ounce of the finest..oops no she didn't, we just drove through on our way to Mavis' Kitchen at Uki (yes we are becoming regulars). Then on the Sunday we did the Lismore car boot market, Bangalow, Byron Bay, lunch at Lennox Head and to Ballina to show them the school Stevie works at and then back home. Dad kindly mowed some of our lawn while mum did some weeding on their last full day here and then it was back home for them via Armidale and the New England Highway.

Cooking with Kelley: Risotto

As promised from January 1st's posting, Kelley's recipe for his delicious risotto:

“Everything but the Kitchen Sink (and Sometimes Even That)” Risotto

There are many different risotto recipes with different ingredients, but they are all based on rice of an appropriate variety cooked in a standard procedure. Risotto can be made using many kinds of vegetable, meat, fish, seafood and legumes, and different types of wine (and cheese) may be used.

So, first for the basic building blocks:
· 100 grams per person (e.g. 4 people = 400 grams) of Arborio rice
· 100+ grams per person (e.g. 4 people = 400+ grams) of a primary ingredient
meat (chicken, ham, salami, etc)or vegetarian (mushrooms, pumpkin, eggplant, etc)
· 50 grams per person (e.g. 4 people = 200 grams) of 2-3 staple vegetables
onion, capsicum, celery, carrot, etc
· 25 grams per person (e.g. 4 people = 100 grams) of a strongly flavoured vegetable
sundried tomatoes, olives, artichoke hearts, etc
· 250+ millilitres per person (e.g. 4 people = 1+ litre) of stock
· 100 millilitres of wine (red or white ... optional)

Now, if you imagine that we’re making a specific risotto, such as ... chicken with carrots, capsicum, onion & sundried tomato ...

Begin by sautéing the chicken in a little olive oil. After about 5 minutes, add the hardest of your staple vegetables (in this case, carrots) and continue to stir. 2-3 minutes later, add your 2nd hardest staple vegetable (capsicum) stirring regularly. And again, if you’ve decided to have a 3rd staple vegetable, (onion for this example) add that in 2-3 minutes later and stir, stir, stir.

Now, hopefully you’ll still have a little bit of residual oil left in your mixture, because here is where the “method” comes into play ... turn down the heat and add the rice to coat each grain in the oil, this is called “tostatura” (or ‘sealing the rice’ in plain ol’ English). After all the rice grains are coated, wine can be added (if you like) and has to be absorbed by the grains. Once the wine has evaporated (if you’ve used it), the stock is gradually added in small amounts while stirring gently and almost constantly. Stirring loosens the starch molecules from the outside of the rice grains into the surrounding liquid, creating a smooth creamy-textured liquid. This is the point when you can add things like herbs and spices if you’re that way inclined. I usually add some garlic, maybe a little ginger and also a herb or two (particular favourites are oregano, basil and sage).

Tasting helps to indicate when the risotto is ready; but as a guide, a total time of somewhere between 20 – 30 minutes from when the wine evaporated (if ya used it ... nudge, nudge, wink, wink). At the point when you think it’s about 10 minutes away from being ready to serve ... that’s the time you stir in your strongly-flavoured vegetable ... more to warm it up to the temperature of the rest of the ingredients than to actually cook it.

Properly cooked risotto is rich and creamy but still with some resistance or bite: “al dente”, and with separate grains. Put out some parmesan cheese for your guests and enjoy!

Rainbow over Billen Cliffs

I took this last week from our back verandah. Pretty nice hey

Meet Heckle'nJeckle

We have a family group of about 4-6 pied butcherbirds that live on and around our property. Because they all look alike they have a collective name: Heckle'n'Jeckle. There are a couple of teenagers getting about now and they are just as cheeky as their parents. They will often perch on the railings of the back verandah and serenade us with their whistling in case we might relent and throw them a morsel or two.