A hot day - a quick dip (freezing)! This bathtub is what we use to water our garden. The water is collected from the roof of the house into a concrete watertank under the front porch. Simon then dug a trench and laid the hose in it that leads down to the tub that has a ballcock valve.

The kids making their way down in the rain to make a path through the newly delivered firewood.

We thought we'd get firewood delivered now in time for chopping and stacking under the house in time for winter. We then intend on getting a 2nd load delivered so the same can happen rather than get caught our like last winter with ordering in wood halfway through winter that happened to be really wet which = frustrating (and I'm sure not so good for the fireplace).

Another wee craft for Danielle's room that she will get for her birthday. I used scraps of felting that my nana had made (that I found in my fabric stash) along with a few scraps of fabric including a little pocket off one of her too-small dresses (the rest of the dress was turned into a winter skirt for her).

With the combination of heat and rain the garden has suddenly gone boom - I can see my zucchini, pumpkins and cucumbers *finally* growing. I bought a few packets of seedlings from the supermarket to pop into one of the newly composted raised garden beds. I have a couple of seed trays going with a heap more things and have some advanced plants already in the ground, so these ones are nicely in the middle and should provide a succession of food.

Another basket

I've finally been able to pick enough to fill my basket again.

I was surprised to see this lovely yellow courgette hiding under a leaf.

Here is one of many lurking out there in the undergrowth...

A big ole batch of tomatoes

Today I realised I'd accumulated quite a few tomatoes that gave me enough to cook down to freeze. It was hosing down outside, so was good to have a few inside domestic duties to get into which broke me from the hum-drum of washing, tidying and cleaning.

Last year I made them into a tomato fondue which I used for pizza sauce, pasta sauce in spaghetti bolognese etc - but since I've found myself all "cooked out" recently, decided to just cook them down plain and freeze into portion sizes that I can flavour up later.

I got about 4 cans worth from this batch.

And the kids enjoying some freshly cooked tomatoes...

And while I was in the mood I set another batch of beans to soak overnight to make up tomorrow. Yay, looking forward to easy lunches around here again for minimal cooking. Even though I have no store bought option at the moment due to the extra ingredients, if I were buying organic baked beans by the tin this works out at about the same cost while I am able to use my own home grown tomatoes.

We tasted our new batch of yoghurt today and I found it had a lovely tart taste which when done with a shorter culture time seems to not have so much. So, so far a success.

Summer Camping

For the past two years we've planned a few camping trips away with friends. Over the weekend we for a trip about 1/2 hr away and spent one day at the Organic River Festival. Last year we camped there, but this year we decided to stay nearby and just do a day trip.

Danielle was keen to chop up veges for our first night's dinner.

At the festival the next day...







The next day had torrential downpours, so we decided to head north to the next city 1/2 hr away. We'd been meaning to get up there some time over summer and check out the science museum.



By the time we got back to our tent for dinner the day had finally cleared up, but there was apparently more to come that night. So after dinner we pretty much packed up our entire tent into the car and just kept the sleeping gear in the tent just in case we needed to do an evacuation during the night. But fortunately, the wind died off about 4am and we woke to a beautiful sunny day. We headed off home early and had a relaxing day at home recovering.

Sunflowers!

Our first sunflower has fully opened. Can't wait for the rest to flower.

Harvesting Dinner

Well, I think we're getting there!

Bar the bbq meat (and ginger, butter and oil), tonight's dinner was entirely from our garden.

I had cabbage, cauliflower (unfortunately left a few days too long and started to go to seed), onions, garlic, beans*, potatoes and carrots to make a meal from.

I sauteed up the cabbage, cauli, beans and onion with garlic and ginger. The kids ate the carrots raw.

I then sliced up the potatoes, drizzled butter over them and baked till cooked.

Simple and yummy!

*The beans were a lovely wee surprise I discovered a few weeks back hiding in amongst my corn and pumpkins as part of the Three Sisters. It was just a small bushy plant, unlike my other scarlett runner beans. These are Borlotti Fire Tongue beans and I decided to harvest them quite young and still tender so they could be lightly cooked. If left to mature they will deepen in colour, plump up and become tough and more suitable for drying.

Getting a little bit Christmas-y...

Being the 1st December, we put our tree up today. I awoke to Nathan asking me to get the decorations down. You would have thought it was Christmas itself! LOL

It's also the official first day of summer and it coincided with us finally having a garden ready for harvesting a lovely full basket of fresh produce.

I had promised myself last year to leave the potatoes alone until Christmas or when they had flowered and died back...but, I spotted a lone potato scratched up by the chickens and I really couldn't bring that up on it's own so dug around under the soil to find enough for a meal.

The basket was also full of peas, a few baby carrots, a head of lettuce, a broccoli (not in picture), a couple of eggs and a beetroot. We added these to the sausage* that Nathan chose and sheep's feta that we were given at the local market on Saturday as well as asparagus and avocado from our vege box delivery. The kids had the broccoli, carrots and peas while Simon and I had a salad.

* (I did cut it up to cook which is apparently the way to cook a Cumberland Sausage).

A wonderful New Years day

New Years' Day in New Zealand to me is symbolised by the gorgeous weather. It's time to get outside and enjoy the sun, enjoy nature and being amongst others doing the same thing. It's a day when things seem so much more settled after the up and down weather leading up to Christmas and feels like the start of the real summer holidays once all the hub bub of the celebrations are over.

So a relaxing late afternoon bike ride took us down to one of the estuaries for an impromptu paddle before heading home for dinner.

Summer meal #2

This afternoon after a browse of the fridge and wondering if I'd made the right decision to cancel the vege delivery box I had a burst of inspiration. The fridge was looking rather sad with only a few different things in it (more to the point, they weren't things I would usually use all together, so had to think a bit!). I've been making polenta pie for about 6mths now as a now-and-again meal, but thought I could make a tasty dinner from what we had.

Cook 1 cup polenta (cornmeal) in 3 cups of water, about 50gms butter and some salt/pepper and simmer for about 20mins (if it goes lumpy, do what I do and put the stick-whizz into it to get it smooth again).

I sauteed up halved cherry tomatoes, leek, courgette and silverbeet.

Once polenta is cooked, put it into a greased pie/flan dish (it kind of sets into a firm porridge type texture). Place the sauteed veges over the top, add some grated cheese or parmesan (or both!) and bake for 20mins.

The kids picked it over - but Simon and I enjoyed it.

There are many variations you can do for this - chopped up eggs, feta, pre-roasted cubed potatoes/pumpkin, mushrooms or whatever you have available!

Summer meals

Well, I feel that we've finally finished with any last winter-y type meals here. It took a while, but I can feel the switch has been made. I am finding it a little more challenging this summer coming up with enough options, since we are only eating meat once or twice a week (especially since there are heaps of our all year round meals we could still be eating - but quite honestly - I feel the need for a change anyway). Some dishes (which allow for a huge variation) we have so far been enjoying (both vegetarian and meat) include: pizza, taco's, polenta pie and bbq's (of course).

Tonight we had pizza - yum!

I made the pizza base using gluten free flour mix; made a tomato sauce with tinned tomatoes, thyme and garlic; roasted up available veges: potatoes and capsicum/sweet peppers (but often use eggplant, courgette/zucchini or whatever else is available to bulk it out); sauteed some silverbeet, spinach and leeks - threw it all on, added some jarred feta and sundried tomatoes we received in a gift box for Christmas and voila! Often I will make a pesto as well, but wasn't particularly in the mood tonight.

Down in the garden...

I seem to do a major gardening session one week and then have a few weeks off where I do zip. Works well for me. It means I don't need to worry about getting down there frequently to do chunks of work if I'm really not in the mood, or it's too hot, or we're busy doing other things or it's raining (ha!).

I was surprised to finally see some peapods growing yesterday, not sure how long they'll take to plump up, but hopefully the strange fungi/virus that the plants have won't affect the produce? The lower leaves have all turned white and transparent and quite thin - not too sure what it is though!

I harvested three baby beets the other day too, so looking forward to using them in some salads with my lettuces that have started to boom.

I've ceased growing seedlings, and sowing the seeds directly into the garden beds and they are booming - cuts the double handling which I was finding a bit of a drag earlier in spring.

I'm continuing to harvest new potatoes and one bed have reached a decent size.

The chickens seem to have cut back their laying, one of them was clucky for a few days I noticed and had to kick her out of the nest but she seems to be back to normal now.

Oh, and in the front garden my tallest sunflower has opened and currently about 6.5 feet high.