rude food

Duck Me

Cuddle Duck - not a table duck. 

I have a blister on my finger from plucking duck. The freezer is full and I have a mountain of cook books from the library, a duck soup in the belly, duck liver pate potted in the fridge and a pan of duck feet on the stove, bubbling in ginger and star anise, almost ready for their final sauce, and forty more of the beautiful creatures eating us out of house and home.

G-MAN - DUCK FATHER

GD has decided that ducks are much more user friendly to farm than cows. A duck won't decide it doesn't like you and try to knock you over if it feels cornered. It might, but you're not going to feel it. He;s spent three days on the new duck run and a small fortress for them to sleep in - snakes up here are big and can get into just about anything, as poor Oscar Wilde Duck found out the hard way, along with about 4 siblings of the ducks in the freezer. There's 200 acres out there - they can get their own dinner.

Muscovies are a cross between a goose and a duck, are very prolific layers and dogged determined clucky mothers. They are easily domesticated, reluctant flyers and their offspring are just about the most adorable baby animals in the vertibrate realm.

Table Ducks - not for cuddling

The lot in the fridge are our first cull of birds with no names. They have been raised for the table since the last couple of old drakes we killed (what we really mean when we say cull) failed to produce any fat! WTF? The whole point of ducks is duck fat - but I have since found that this breed, though producing less fat than others, are prized for their culinary properties. Apparently, chefs like them for their dark, gamey appearance and taste.

I have hung them for three days, and on Saturday plucked and gutted them. My sister came over to help. Thats the deal - help pluck and you take nome your own duck dinner.

Not what you could call fast food - 16 weeks to mature - they are in staged clutches. I nurse hatchlings in a brooder in my stove room then when they are downey enough, they move to the run with their big brothers and sisters. I have a colour code so I can tell with are the eldest

So - from here in in, it's duck recipes all the way down. Geoff is going to have a go a smoking as well.
 For now though, it's raining - finally, and time to plant some snow peas and cabbage to go with braised duck feet in three months time.

The new duck run - very excellent use of a very steep spot

November Garden Notes

Rain. Leaden November skies and Jacaranda blanketing everything. It is the anniversary of Joe's passing. Two years already. I swear, time is going faster the older I get.

Have begun planting out basil seedlings direct into bed 1. Should be ready to cut by the time the chooks go on.

Potted rosellas for a commercial planting,broccoli, Queensland Blue pumpkins, and pigeon pea to plant along fenceline.

Planted today, favourable moon for flowering annuals into punnets:
2 x Pumpkin - turkish turban clear patch at bottom of front garden for pumpkin.
2 x Green sprouting clabrese for spotting in chook beds
2 x Rockmelon bottom of garden north end.
2 x Lebanese Zucchini for spotting in chook beds
2 x rainbow chard for spotting in chook beds
2 x warpaint watermelon for bed 4 to replace bokchoy
3 x sunray bush bean for spotting in chook beds
2 x nero kale for spotting in chook beds

1 x silverbeet - previously failed to germinate
2 x button squash - previously failed to germinate

Geoff has repaired the seedhouse. It was falling down around my ears, but now it is sturdy.

I sooooo get the guy and his shed thing.

Garden Notes October

Spring this year has been completely weird. Initially, it began in early August when the front verandah jasmine burst into flower. But all the warm weather seeds I put in didn't sprout because either it has been so cool, or my seeds were too old. Only now has it begun to warm up enough to plant down here in the micro climate of our valley, so during this favourable moon, I've planted:

Seed house bed:  Carrots, spring onion, onion, leeks and beets, all appear to be sprouting into cloudy drizzly days. Perfect for germination and the first couple of cm growth

Bed 1: Cleared and planted out with chook fodder (mixed old seeds) and sunflowers for when chooks move on in Jan

Bed 2: Centre cleared of potatoes (Kipfler - nice crop) and planted with Sunflowers for the chooks. Edges still producing leaf for the chooks.

Sown into punnetts:

2 x kale, Red Russian
2 x lettuce Lollo Biondo
6 x bok choi
2 x lettuce, Red Coral
12 x pigeon pea
2 x endive
1 x lettuce, Freckles
2 x kohl rabi, Purple Vienna
2 x parsely
2 x celery
2 x silverbeet
13 x rosella
2 x button squash
2 x capsicum, Californian Wonder
1 x perennial capsicum
8 x green sprouting broccoli
2 x dwarf bean
12 x sweet basil
1 x turkish turban pumpkin
1 x zucchini
2 x thyme
1 x greek oregano
2 x rainbow chard

To do:

Bed 6: Plant out beetroot seedlings and spring onions etc when 15cm tall.

Bed 3: Centre cleared of Turnips. Will plant out with Basil advanced seelings. Plenty of leaf for chooks.

Bed 4: Currently bearing prolifically and harvesting: lettuce, zucchini, 

Good soaking rain the last couple of days but not too much; just enough to keep everything moist and out of direct sun thanks to cloud cover. I also have up two hail guards which are shade cloth and can be dragged into position over newly planted beds if necessary. Thank you Geoffrey!

New season paths are laid and the newly dug rock-filled drains ready for this year's deluge. Geoff has also built a bund along the front edge near the gate to deflect flow around the garden gate and down along the side so it doesn't enter to flow down through the path and take all the bark with it. The paths are there to prevent me from slipping in the greasy clay beneath.


Chooks are now permanently housed in the back garden now - no more manhandling them across the great divide of the house to the front. That garden is now covered in several tonnes of rubble. It will be in the first instance a planting of green manure cover - mung beans, sunflowers, weeds, grasses etc to get a cover happening, then begin to sheet compost the area to make topsoil. Eventually, it will be an orchard, but until I can get some fertility happening, it is just a bit of a red, rocky desert at the moment.

Also on the cards is a renovation of the seedhouse. It suffered a bit (well, a lot) of rot from the inundation last season and all the shelves have given up the ghost along with it listing to the left. It is empty of all my gear so that Geoff can fix it structurally, part of which is going to take up that idea of putting guttering along the outside of a house. In this instance, he's going to use old guttering, about three layers deep, in which I can place punnets of seedlings. They can also more easily be covered and sealed off from rodents. We'll see.

Harvesting:
Potatoes, about 2 kg Kipflers
many bunches of parsley, silver beet, kale and coriander
several kg of beans, endless lettuce- several varieties including a new endive - very soft and frilly.
spring onions and leeks
buckets of zucchini and zucchini flowers

Coming On: 

aubergine, capsicum, Lebanese cucumber, basil, second flowering of strawberries

Pests in October:
Stink bugs on the citrus. Very annoying, but a daily preen seems to keep them down and actually, they don't do a bad job of pruning the excess fruit.
First grubs on kale. Noticed lacy leaves yesterday

Trees:
Good flower on citrus this year. Villa Franca lemon tree loaded with baby fruit, as is blood orange, mandarin, lemonade and navel. Lime not so, as I pruned it hard last year and there is only a couple of branches of old wood. Same for Dad's navel and the back garden mandarin which suffered a broken limb last year. The self seeded Bush Lemon is going like the clappers. Will graft onto it from my blood orange.

Lost the front Black Genoa fig to the rubble, so have its children in pots and have planted one on the front northern corner of the garden and one in the front central lilly garden out front of the house. Also purchased a new variety, Brown Turkey and planted along side that.

In addition, two new trees - a tropical apple and peach where I can keep an eye on them from the front verandah

Suburban solution

Great idea for suburban gardeners. And no, it's not hydroponic. The verticle garden uses ordinary soil with some slow release fertiliser mixed in. I'd use worm castings or compost, but if you don't have a muck heap, this is the go. Great for winter - use the sunniest side of the house, or a balcony.

You can get old guttering from demolition yards.

Mysterious beans

These turned up in the garden. Unfortunately, I have no idea what they are, whether they are edible or not. It is a climber with big broad leaves. The plant is robust and just one covered the entire fence.  Any ideas as to what they might be?

Trouble with beans is you put the wrong kind in and before you know it, theres a cascade of giants, geese and golden eggs raining down on you from above.

RAIN 5/10/07

Very pleased to say that thanks to Bangar, I've managed to find a whole bunch of stuff on the Google cashe. Very pleasing, so slowly I'll load them back in.

This one is from 5/10/07

It`s raining, good heavy solid lead-clouded rain.

Please don`t stop till the aquifers are full, till the creeks are swollen, till the spillways are waterfalls, till the springs bubble from the hillsides.

Please saturate the air with moisture, turn the clay to sludge, wash bridges away, flood and swirl and dump new topsoil on the plain.

Hope.

Not much different to prayer, for want of one little three letter word.