There's a pig in the cold room

The pigs have more than doubled in size since I first showed you this photo, and today we butchered one of them.
I wish all of our pigs could be butchered here at the farm but the rules state that it's illegal to sell the meat from home butchered livestock. What a stupid rule, so many people would love to know that the pork they're eating has not only had a good life, but a stress free, quick and humane death as well, but there we are, those are the rules made by the big corporations in cahoots with a government department. Just another step to try to take away our freedom of eating pure unadulterated food.
The other two are off to the butcher on Monday and we have chosen a butcher who we trust to do the kill and processing with the least stress as possible to the pigs (and us). I've already told you in a previous blog about the way we train the pigs to walk (run) onto the trailer which makes the trip to the butcher much easier for all involved.
Home butchering is much quicker, no stress on the animals, is cleaner and is most empowering to take responsibility for our own food from start to end.
The process and the killing of an animal is never taken lightly. It has given its life so that we can eat for optimum nutrition, so we respect every part of that life.

The day started at first light and every large pot we own was filled with water and put onto every heating source we have available. Gas stove, wood stove, the old copper and the gas portable camp cooker. Lots of hot water is needed for scalding the pig in an old bath as soon as it has been killed.
This time we had the help of a young couple who are also growing their own pigs and are keen to learn to process a pig for themselves. We four made a great team and all went extremely well.

So this is the pig that we will eat for ourselves. It's hanging in our cold room for five days before we cut it up into chops, roasts and bellies for streaky bacon.
The fat will be rendered into lard for use in cooking and soap making.
The head and liver will be made into brawn and traditional Barossa white pudding.
The bellies will be soaked in salt and sugar brine for a week before cold smoking in Brian's home built smoker. This bacon contains no nitrates and it keeps best if cut into half kilo pieces before freezing, then slicing it as we use it.

The orders for pork are rolling in and we have only two pigs to sell!!  Impossible to honour all of the orders and we realise just how popular our lovely pork is.
This covers the cost of buying the piglets, the upkeep and the butchering fees, so the pork that we get to keep for our own use is free.
In the next blog I'll tell you how we make the brine for the bacon, and bacon bones for delicious winter soups.

Are you butchering your own pigs?  Do you have any tips for us or any methods you would like to share?

Zucchini Relish

 I've been trying to give away some zucchinis but all my friends run away as soon as I mention the Z word.  

Have you got too many zucchinis?

Here's a recipe that is so easy, a 12 year old could make it.  There will be delicious relish to "relish" throughout the year and have you being grateful that you spent a few minutes to do this.  We eat it with meats, hot or cold, on a cheese platter, in a sandwich etc etc.

It takes roughly 5 minutes to chop the ingredients before putting it onto the stove to cook for  approximately 40-60 minutes. Then it's another 5 minutes to pour into jars and seal.

** Addendum 28/1/2018**

I've just finished making another batch today and have altered the basic recipe to include coriander seeds and salt.  

Zucchini Relish 

1kg zucchini

1 large onion

1 small dried or fresh chillies (I use red for the colour) 

or 1 teaspoon chilli flakes will do if you don't have chillies on hand

Roughly chop before putting into a food processor taking care to chop for only a few seconds, leaving a few chunks. If you don't have one of those gadgets it will take slightly longer to chop finely by hand.

Put into a large pot.

Add;

350g sugar

2  teaspoon mustard powder

1 teaspoon turmeric

2 teaspoons coriander seeds

2 teaspoons salt

500ml of cider or white vinegar (or a mixture of both) 

* Hold back 1/8 cup of vinegar to mix with cornflour to make the paste later

Slowly bring to boil then turn down to simmer for approximately 40mins-1 hour. Stir frequently so it doesn't burn on the bottom.

When it is cooked to your liking, make a paste with 1 dessertspoon of Cornflour and 1/8 cup vinegar* that we held back.

Take the zucchini mixture off the heat while slowly pouring in the cornflour mixture and stirring constantly while stirring it in to avoid lumps.

Return pot to the heat and bring back to the simmer stirring frequently until it thickens. Approx five minutes.

Take off heat and, using a small jug, pour into clean jars, leaving only a very small head space. Screw lids on tight immediately whilst very hot. (They must be metal lids).

Leave to cool and listen to the tops popping as they seal.

Try to wait two weeks before eating to allow the flavours to develop. (Good luck with that)

You may wish to adjust the sugar or the chilli level after tasting this first batch and before going ahead to make your next batch at double this quantity, as I do. 

This is the sweetness and chilli taste that we enjoy, but it's an individual taste.

The sealed unopened jars will keep for more than a year (or two) if kept in a dark cupboard, and the flavour really does improve with age.

                                                                                  

So, next time someone tries to give you some zucchinis, accept them and give this a try.

New Year 2015 - Pigs, Pups & Zucchinis

Happy New Year 2015
An update on the pigs. They're now four months old and are large enough to go onto the trailer without squeezing through the gaps.
When we raised our first two pigs way back when (I think six years ago from memory) we had so much to learn. I borrowed lots of books from the library and researched a lot of very useful information on the internet. There was lots of data on feed rations, grain mixes and commercial foods but I wanted to raise pigs the way our forbears did it; on excess milk, kitchen scraps, windfall fruit from the orchard, garden waste and whatever food we could scrounge.
Our first two pigs did so well on this and they grew...... and grew...... and grew. I knew nothing about fat ratios and to my untrained eye they just looked big and meaty. Neither did I know of the procedure for booking them in for butchering so, by the time we waited for a month in the queue they had grown even more!
The day of reckoning arrived. All we had to do was get the two huge pigs onto the trailer.
Ha! The best laid plans......
Brian put together a sturdy looking runway from galvanized iron to move them along to the trailer ramp. He had a large piece of board to push them along and in theory they should have walked nicely onto the trailer.
The pigs behave nothing like sheep. They had other ideas and weighed more than 120kgs each.
With super human strength, lots of sweat and very nearly with broken arms and legs (we humans that is, not the pigs) the pigs ended up on the trailer.
We learned a lot from that first effort and have improved our methods to produce quality pork with better safety and ease of handling.
Before we purchased our next batch of pigs the following year Brian built a strong ramp attached to the pig yard with a gate. This is closed until the pigs are large enough to be trained to walk onto the trailer that we keep in position permanently.
For  a few days we put their food trough onto the trailer so they have to walk on to get their food.   I scatter  a few slices of bread along the ramp until eventually (usually half a day)  hunger wins out and they find themselves on the trailer.
This method has a few benefits; obviously the main one being the stress free loading of the pigs on butchering day.
Raising the pigs is my domain here on our farm so I need to be mindful of these three large animals that love to play and nip at each other while I'm negotiating my way around their yard to feed them, clean the water containers and clean the yard. They enjoy including me in their play and whilst they don't appear to harm each other with their nips and bites I'd rather not be on the end of one of those playful bites!
At feeding time they run onto the trailer and I quickly slide the trailer gate shut, confining them while I do all of the feeding and whatever else needs doing in the pig yard.
I also discovered after a couple of years of pig raising that three pigs are just as easy to raise as two pigs. More pork for our own freezer and more pork to trade with friends.
We purchase the piglets at six weeks old in October each year and usually have them into the freezer in early April.

 

Early tomatoes in the glass house.

The kitchen garden where lawn used to grow. "Grow food not lawn".

In my quest to outwit the earwigs I held off planting until late October, instead of September, and sowed thickly with lots of different varieties of vegetables. The plan is to give them, the earwigs, so much choice of things to eat they will hopefully leave my cucumber and bean plants to grow.
 On one side of the trellis are thick plantings of climbing beans at one end and cucumbers at the other end. On the other side I scattered seeds of kale, chilli, rocket, silver beet, zucchini, lettuce and any seeds I had left over. As they are all planted closely the watering is concentrated in the one area. It seems to be working well, the beans have made it all the way to the top of the trellis and we will soon be picking lots of lovely greens that are growing like weeds.
Harvest time is upon us and almost daily another batch of jam, chutney or sauce is bubbling on the stove, recipes are being swapped and zucchinis are finding their way into everything.  Beware the zucchini. It's the only time of year we need to lock our car doors when in town to collect the mail. Someone is likely to leave a heap of zucchinis on the seat.

Eight week old Kelpie, Meg joined us in December and was soon best buddies with grumpy old Max. The joys of having a puppy are so many. Yes, she digs holes, runs away with our shoes, and has energy to burn, but it was instant love that will continue to grow and endure throughout our long life together.

Her training is coming along well, such a clever little girl she is, but I could be just a bit biased.

Cheers and thanks for dropping by to the blog.

Honey biscuits because it's Christmas in the Barossa

At this time of year every good Barossa Hausfrau has made honey biscuits.
Well, this is what I was told many years ago as a child growing up here in the Barossa and since I returned to live here after many years absence I made the decision to embrace the culture in many small ways and this is one of them.
And with unlimited supplies of honey from Brian's hives there's no avoiding the task.
Chris Doecke is the honey biscuit queen, and as I sat watching her rolling out dough on her kitchen bench last week I gained another hint to achieving the crisp thin honey biscuit that many love, including Brian and I. Thanks Chris, I was taking it all in.
I've never heard Chris complain about anything and when I had a little whinge about the tediousness of icing them all she had the cheek to say she actually enjoys it! So, today I iced my thin and crispy honey biscuits with a whole new attitude. I'm going to enjoy it, and enjoy it I did.

                            Nothing fancy, just a bit of colour and a touch of added sweetness.

On the stall for the next few days are Honey Biscuits and freshly made Apricot Jam as well as all of the usual honey and jams.
It's been a big jam making week as the trees have yielded buckets full of the gorgeous juicy fruits that we so love. Not one to waste a thing, we've got jam and preserves "from here to next Christmas"!

I wish all of my friends here on the blog a wonderful Christmas that is all you want it to be. I hope you get to spend time with the people you love most, enjoy some special food and have plenty of belly laughs.

Our brief this Christmas is to give a gift that is either hand made, found, or purchased from a charity shop (op-shop) to the value of less than $10.  All of us have so much and so many have so little, so we've agreed to donate our Christmas money to The Fred Hollows Foundation  again this year.
We've also made a donation to one of our dearest friends who is being treated for breast cancer and is supplementing her conventional medical treatment with alternate therapies which are so very expensive. 
The boys have had fun wandering the op-shops and using their imaginations to come up with suitable gifts. Being no stranger to op-shops, I wonder if I may have opened up a new world of shopping to them. I hope so.
So that leaves me still pondering what I will find for gifts early next week. Oh dear, looks like I'll be wandering the op-shops. (Heaven!!)

Can you ever have too many tomato plants?

 

How are your tomato plants coming along?

This is how we gardening folk are greeting each other at this time of year.  Have you got your plants in?  Have you pruned them yet?

I handed over the tomato growing to Brian last year and it was a learning experience to watch his meticulous pruning. The tomato crop was  a bumper one during a year when most people I spoke to were having a bad tomato season.

Now he's got the job permanently whilst I grow the other veges.

As the cellar is still groaning full of jars of tomato sauce, chutney and preserves, we thought we'd keep our crop a bit smaller this year. Only fifty plants.....!!!  

Well, one can never have too many tomatoes. Can one??  It's addictive. 

I'll make more preserves, we'll enjoy lots of fresh tomato juice and share some with family and friends. 

Brian grew the plants from seeds that he planted in punnets in August and got them started in the glass house.  In late September he planted them out into the garden. This is the time to plant tomatoes here in the Barossa Valley, but the times vary depending on where you are and your local conditions.  Now they are big enough to trellis the plants and to do the first pruning.

I'm not going to explain about pruning the plants, there are lots of instructions for doing that elsewhere in gardening books and sites on line. 

However, if you want Brian to describe the process, I'll ask him to post a blog on here.

                                                            Before pruning and trellising.

                                                   After pruning and tying onto the trellis.

   

This is how the pruned tomato plant should look.

 Brian pruned off some of  the lateral shoots, leaving two main growing stems.

                  Now I'm going to make new plants from the bits he cut off.

 

I learned how to do this a few years ago and have done it ever since. Frugality at its best.

Take the laterals that you have pruned off the bushes and trim them.

 

 

Trim some of the leaves and stems so the plant will put its energy into putting out new roots rather than lush green leaves.

 

This is how they should look after trimming. Cut off half of the larger leaves. Leaving half leaves.

Place cuttings in a jar of water, rain water is best, and stand near a north facing window.

Keep the water topped up because we want to encourage roots to grow up along the stem.

 As soon as they have roots I'll plant them in the ground. These plants will be our second crop which will bear fruit right through until the first frosts in late Autumn.

If you are buying your tomato plants you could buy just one punnet or even just one plant, take cuttings and triple your crop for very little cost.

                                         

The pigness of the pig

These are the new addition to the farm this week. Three little piggies.
Every year we get our pigs from Peggy and John Stewart from Saddleworth. Peggy loves all animals and her pigs are no exception. I'm proud to grow pigs for the table in a sustainable and ethical way, and Peggy is the perfect pig breeder for my kind of farming. Her sows are NOT confined to sow stalls where they can't turn or move. Her sows farrow (give birth) in lovely roomy accommodation where she might occasionally squash one of her piglets, but that's natures way.
We've all seen pictures in the media of the horrible conditions in the commercial piggeries, but did we know that there are still a few breeders out there who show much more compassion to the animals and operate their farms accordingly?
All of Peggy's pigs are allowed access to paddocks to allow them to be pigs and do pig things like wallow in muddy puddles, dig up dirt, eat grass, play and socialize.

Peggy's breeding pigs are celebrating the "pigness" of the pig.
It was a hot day and they were having the loveliest wallow in their mud puddle. The enclosures are always clean and there is never even a hint of that awful stale piggery smell that whacks you if you drive past a commercial piggery.

Our pigs are five weeks old and just weaned. Inside the shelter is pea straw for them to burrow under and keep warm during the night when it's still quite cool at this time of year.
They will be confined to this yard for the first couple of weeks and then allowed access to the large yard.
I'll feed them pig "weaner pellets" as their main ration whilst introducing small amounts of table scraps and vegetable peelings for the first few weeks. Their little bellies are very fragile and any sudden change to their diet can cause stomach problems and even death. They will gradually get used to eating a varied diet of scraps, fruit, milk etc.
Clean water is available in a heavy container that has been cemented into the ground to prevent the pigs tipping it over.
The pig enclosure has been left empty since the last pigs were processed in March this year.  Brian rotary hoed and we planted a crop of oats to freshen the ground and remove any sourness that may have been present.  As the pigs ingest some of the dirt, doing what pigs do, we need to be sure it's clean and parasite free.

                            Two strands of electric wire to prevent digging under the fence.

Our unit wasn't fully charged when we put the pigs in their yard yesterday but we thought they would be OK overnight until the sun charged it up today.  While enjoying a much deserved glass of wine on the verandah before dinner, we were joined by our new little friends exploring the garden. Ooops!
Careful herding had them back in their yard and while I kept an eye on them Brian zipped off to borrow a unit from friends overnight.

                         This is the solar electric fence unit we use for the pig enclosure.

We enjoy eating pork but couldn't do that with a clear conscience until we started raising our own pigs. Well, we were in for a huge treat when we got our first pig to the table. Unbelievable flavour!
Imagine our delight when we met Peggy. The pigs we eat have a great life from beginning to end.

                                             A pig's eye view from the pig enclosure.
 

From the kitchen today

Lately the weather has been too hot to have the stall outside so customers are invited into the  kitchen to make their purchases. As our dear friend Jules says, "You must take us as you find us".
You never know what you'll find here in my kitchen, but today the stall is still in the kitchen, even though the day is delightfully cool.
After a few hours spent helping Brian do some fencing this morning, I lit the wood stove and whipped up a batch of Honey Anzac Biscuits. What haven't fitted into the biscuit jar have gone into a couple of packets to put on the stall. So this is how you'll find the stall if you visit today.
"Jembella Farm" assorted jams and Plum Sauce, Honey and Biscuits.

                                           Wood Oven Baked Anzac Honey Biscuits 200g  $5

I had a most humbling experience yesterday of having the great pleasure to meet a reader of the blog. A stranger!  Anna, you made my day. Thank you for speaking to me in the shopping street in Angaston and I hope to see you some day here at my little stall.

I hope everyone who reads this is having a wonderful weekend. The much needed rain appears to have skirted around us and we got just a few drops, maybe you got more than we did.

For those in USA, a translation. Biscuits are what we Aussies call cookies.

Cheers!