Consequences and Green Salsa

The consequence of a bigger garden ....

Is more food.....

Piles of it in fact! Everywhere I look!

Many people have asked us in the past why we chose to move the country? Our short answer is "that we wanted to grow more food" 

(Carrot weighed in at 1.2kg and was sweet and tender)

And the shearer hasn't failed me. 

More food takes more time for preserving and that's pretty much what we've been doing the past month since I saw you last.

(Blackberry picking down by the river)

And of course there is the associated time taken by the garden and harvesting itself.

But we are having a ball and nearly every jar is filled for the year ahead.

This is a new to me recipe this year and one I'll be making EVERY year if I get the opportunity with a glut of green tomatoes. It's "Green Tomato Salsa" and the recipe is from The Healthy Canning site here. You'll want to pin this one! It doesn't look real pretty but, oh my, the flavour AND what a brilliant way to use green tomatoes. It's delicious as an accompaniment to corn chips and sour cream or topping for nachos or as a pizza topping or part of a cheese board. Sensational!

And in the midst, the grandson turned three and had a Toy Story party. Can you believe it!

Where does the time go?

Callington Mill - Oatlands

The grounds of the famous Callington Mill were abuzz with activity for the heritage skills day. As you can see in the above photo, it began life in 1837 and after some major restoration over many, many months by a specialist from England a few years ago, it is a working mill today. It is a unique part of the town's skyline and a special part in its history.

The buildings are quite something and I really think the grant money used for the restorations was money well spent. If you visit Oatlands you can also take a guided tour.

Not as simple as it looks from the outside!

And of course lovingly hand packed cottage industry flours to purchase.

The Miller's Cottage

I've been soaking up plenty of garden inspiration too.

Blacksmith display.

This is the community garden also located on the grounds and over by the wall is a couple of the massive grinding stones from the mill.

The town is right on the shore of Lake Dulverton.

I'm falling in love with micro gravel paths, dry stone walls and formal box hedges.

Tomorrow I have someone very special to introduce you to. Be prepared for some serious "heritage porn" in the next post.

The Edible Perennial Beds

In just two short months we are already harvesting from the edible perennial beds. You could be too, it really doesn't take that much space and you could be eating fresh salad greens most of the year round.

Attractive landscaping can also be achieved using edible perennials and I have roughly mapped out a plan for the planting. I plan for the green beds to contain lots of lime coloured herbs and lettuces. Over towards the back I have transplanted my Tahitian lime tree to take advantage of the protected corner and the heat bank of brick paving. The red beds will contain, well, red themed plantings.

Red Beds

Bloody dock with it's spectacular veined leaves and a real favourite in our salads. Red rhubarb and red chard, strawberries, lettuce variety "trout back"and "red oak" and purple flowering oregano rosenkuppel.

Green Beds

Lettuce varieties "lollo bionde" and green oak, green stemmed rhubarb, chervil, salad burnett with it's fresh cucumber flavour, lovage for a celery flavour and parsley. My lime tree will be the piece de resistance but it will have to have a lot of seaweed foliar sprays over the summer to harden it for winters here in town. 

As the season progresses other herbs and leaf will probably come and go and the hollyhocks will provide height for the birdhouse that is situated in the middle. You could add an asparagus crown or two to your perennials. The advantage of growing the loose leaf lettuce varieties is that they can be picked and picked rather than the hearted varieties that reach maturity and then are gone.

So get cracking, you may not have room for a corn crop but you could be selecting gourmet salad in just a month or two and living like kings.

Footnote: The paths are made from convict bricks and the edges from salvaged stone, both come from the ruined cottage from the bottom of the paddock.

Hot, Hot Savings

.... in the vicinity of $700 in chilli products alone!

As you know from previous posts, we grow and preserve most of our food for year round eating right here on our ordinary suburban block. In addition to all the varieties this year, the Shearer planted 50 chilli bushes of more than 10 varieties. This might sound excessive, and indeed I thought it was, but when you preserve the harvest and do the sums, it's a very wise and fruitful thing for our household.

Louisiana Style Hot Sauce

recipe here

So far he has fermented more than 4kg of chillies into a Tabasco style sauce. This makes approx 9lt of sauce, some of which will be given as gifts but much will be gradually consumed over the next 12 months. 

Given that the commercial sauce sells for $6.60/100ml, that means ordinarily if we purchased 9lt it would cost us $594.00.

The total cost of the ingredients was about $12.

A saving for the year of $582.00

Pickled Chillies

try this recipe here

In addition to the sauce he also pickled 7 pint jars/ approx 500g each of jalapeno peppers with more to come. We use these on our pizzas every Friday night. The commercially canned ones sell for a unit price of $1.89/100g which works out so far to about $66.00. The cost to make these jars was a mere couple of dollars at most for ingredients and probably the same for rubber rings. So the savings have us way out in front. 

A saving so far for the year of $62.00

Fresh Chilli

Even if you were calculating savings for just harvesting and eating fresh chillies the savings are enormous given that they sell on average for $20-$25/kg. We have even been harvesting the jalapenoes at the mid stage and chopping them into chunks and eating them steamed alongside our other vegetables. They have a slight bite but still a fresh capsicum flavour.

A saving of let's say $25

And I have also made several jars of chilli paste too but I think you get the idea...

While chillies may not be everyone's cup of tea, if you were to add up all the chilli condiments you might purchase over a year you might be surprised.

At a conservative estimate we have saved ourselves $669.00 just in chillies alone. Perhaps the Shearer is not as mad as I thought him to be. By learning to preserve your harvest and value add to create product, you save hundreds with every crop variety that you grow.

Heritage Salad

There are a number of reasons to grow heritage vegetables; great for seed saving, climate/location specific, variety of flavour, colour and keeping/storing properties.

At the moment we are eating really interesting and tempting salads with heritage cut lettuce as the base. We are growing varieties like; Drunken Lady, Prize Head and Lollo Bionda. The contrasting colour of their leaves looks exciting and appetising and they taste buttery and fresh.

The season has been slow here and we have just started to harvest our broad beans. The potatoes are all self sown from plantings years ago and we enjoy a variety, our favourite for salads being Blue Sapphire. Not good for mashing as it looks like blueberry porridge but looks sensational very lightly boiled and cut into chunks for your salads. Add some cooked beetroot chunks too, a dollop of natural yoghurt and a top sprinkling of walnuts or pumpkin seeds.

When you can eat fresh from the garden and enjoy so much variety I'm afraid going out to dinner fails to live up to expectations for us 9 times out of 10.

Go on, DIY and PYO!