inner pickle

sixth generation farmer

 

We had a cracker of a weekend, highlighted by an out-of-the-park record breaking market day yesterday. Out of the park. 

We're overwhelmed by the support we receive locally and further afield, and were humbled by the droves of people that showed up yesterday and bought our pork, and chicken, and honey, and egg custard and liver pâté and every single bikkie on the stall. It was amazing. 

If you were one of those people, thank you. Occasionally we wonder if off-farm jobs would be the ticket. We come close to hitting the wall and we panic and wonder what the hell we're doing messing around with chickens. And then we have a stellar day like yesterday and it all becomes clear and we sit around cooking up new horizons. We're pretty inspired over here today. Thank you. 

Because ultimately what we're attempting to do is to hand over this little farm, solvent, to the next generation. To not be the ones to pack it in altogether because the value of the land is worth so much more than the value of the food we can grow on it. 

Today we firmly believe that's possible. Thank you, fabulous people! 

xxx

what a goose

 

On Tuesday I posted a photo to Facebook. This one:

I rabbited on about how we love Joel Salatin but we don't love his poultry pens that he recommends for meat birds because they are too cage-like. I righteously noted that we'd developed a more chook-friendly design (a hoop house) and how wonderful our REALLY free range chooks were.

Obviously the damn sea hawks ARE ON FACEBOOK. How else did they know?? Having only lost the very occasional chicken to hawks and crows (once we learnt the hard way not to let the tiny weeny birds out till they were about four weeks old), we suddenly lost four over twenty-four hours. AARGH!

So yesterday I suggested geese. They apparently make pretty good guards for chickens. We lived next door to geese for over a year before we moved to the farm, and we're still very close to our neighbours. Adam rang our friend Martin and asked if we could borrow a goose. Sure, said Martin. Take two! Adam went up to Martin's, competently caught two geese and transported them safely home. He wondered about clipping a wing but we knew these geese and had never ever seen them fly. Ever. They're a big heavy breed. I assured him they'd be fine.

They seemed pretty happy in with the little meat birds. Hooray! Genius idea!

After letting them settle in I popped down the paddock to check on them mid-morning. As I rounded the corner I startled them and with divine syncronicity, they shot up in the air and soared over the hedge, over my neighbour's farm and all the way down the the golf course. 

Poop. Poop poop pooooop.

I took a container of feed, tied up Holly because she never liked geese anyway, and took off over my neighbour's farm down to the golf course. Luckily the farm manager from next door was there to see me running down the hill crying "goose goose goosey?!" shaking my container of feed. Any fiasco that's to be had, Michael's there to witness it. The geese had circled the golf course and come to rest next to the neighbour's dam and Michael said wonderingly, "Are they your geese?" and I said "not exactly" and he said, "I didn't know geese could fly like that!" Damn flying geese. 

Of course they discovered the dam. Of course the dam is enormous and has an island in the middle of it. Yep, they're going to be dead easy to recover. 

Needless to say they're still there. It was a big day of deliveries and orders today and we're not exactly sure how to retrieve them. They seem very happy. 

In other news we haven't lost any more meat birds to hawks. 

Here are the geese photographed when I lived next door to them in happier, less complicated days. 

I'm not sure how to tell Martin. 

Maybe I'll suggest an alpaca for the chickens. 

Maybe Adam will fire me. Can he fire me? I should fire myself. Goose.

xxx

 

Cake of Monday: Grandma's Sponge

 

We'll need a trip to Auntie Narelle and the return of my Dad to fact-check this, but I'm pretty certain this is it. This is the champion sponge. It's incredibly light, it's got flavour, and it's moist. It's everything you want in a sponge (if you take them as seriously as I do) and obviously I really need to get out more but heck this sponge is exciting. EXCITING. 

 

Thanks for all your input you lovely folk, particularly those who took the time to locate and email links. Auntie Narelle also located some of Grandma's recipes and copied and posted them to me, confirming the Fielder's Sponge suspicion. Does it really need a particular brand of cornflour? I don't know. I'll inevitably try it with a different brand because we buy in cornflour to make the Buena Vista Farm egg custard and it's not Fielder's. I went and bought the right stuff (our IGA stocked it) in honour of Grandma who was obviously brand loyal for a reason. (I hasten to say there is nothing at all sponsored about this post!! I'm not going to come over all Rolling's Reliable, I promise!! ... And if you get that reference we're soulmates for life you and I.) 

Anyway, it's delicious. As I made it, it rang bells. Oh YES. The triple sifting, I remember that. Actually, as I got to the end, I remembered why I stopped making sponge cakes in favour of other cakes all those years ago. It creates so many dishes! When you've got delightful butter cakes or orange cakes which have similar nuances and you've only got one bowl to wash up after, you've got to really really love the sponge to keep it on top of the list. 

I'll stop pursuing the sponge for now. Although I will make a trip to Auntie Narelle with one soon, and I'll make one for Dad when he gets back from tripping around the country. 

Maybe one day in the faraway future someone will turn up at my door with my Mum's passionfruit shortcake, a very long time after she'd last made it for me. Food is evocative. I'd cherish every bite. Because a cake is never just a cake, particularly when it's someone's signature. It's a sweet reminder of kitchen hours and bowl lickings and tea time treats. 

I hope you make this, and love it, and that someone else washes up. 

 

Grandma's Sponge (AKA Fielder's Famous Sponge Cake)

Ingredients 

3 eggs (separated) 

pinch salt 

¼ teaspoon vanilla essence 

½ cup castor sugar 

⅔ cup cornflour 

1 slightly rounded tablespoon plain flour 

1 level teaspoon baking powder 

Method 

Pre-heat oven to 190°C.  Grease, flour and line 2 x 20cm round cake tins with baking paper.

Beat egg whites with salt until soft peaks form. 

Gradually beat in sugar, a little at a time, then continue beating until stiff. 

Add egg yolks and vanilla essence, beat until combined. 

Sift together 3 times – cornflour, plain flour and baking powder, then add to egg mixture.  

Carefully and lightly fold mixture together using a wooden spoon or spatula. Do not stir. 

Divide batter evenly between two pans and bake 18-20 minutes. 

 

Notes: I didn't fill mine with cream as I had none handy, and just used jam. I was in a bit of a hurry to get out the door with Adam to pick up kids from school and continue onto Berry and Nowra to deliver boxes eggs to restaurants and pick up a hired ute to do the chicken run tomorrow (meat birds going to the abattoir). It's a racy script. The photo's were taken in a thirty second window and whacked into a container to placate hungry kids on the drive. I don't recall Grandma typically using fresh cream, and in the clipped-together recipes Auntie Narelle sent, there was a 'mock cream' recipe of 3oz butter + 3oz sugar + 1 tbsp hot water which is what I remember being her sponge filling.

I'll ask Dad, I'm sure he'll know. 

xxx

 

pretty little things

Our little lemon cakes packed and ready to go out the door to Greenbox customers tomorrow. 

The first of many, MANY cupcakes coming out of our kitchen this week for a Mother's Day order!

Happy Wednesday!

xxx

garlicky

 

How much do you love garlic? I love it in so many ways. Roasted whole. Sizzling in olive oil alongside onion. Rubbed on toasted sourdough. As the background kick in a delicious pesto. Garlic is so great. 

I grew it for the first time last year and learnt a lot. I discovered, as I waited and waited for the garlic scapes to appear, that there is a difference between hardneck and other varieties like the organic Australian purple I planted. No scapes from the Australian purple.

It's pretty hardy, the old garlic. I worried it was too dry because I didn't mulch (I wanted to see the weeds and any resident bugs this first time around.) I worried it would rot in the ground when we had days and days of rain. I peered at it as it got a nodule in the stalk and wondered what the heck that meant. But it was all good. And I harvested a heap of garlic from one large raised bed. Enough to plant out in the market garden this year. 

We split it all apart this weekend and I kept some for eating until this next crop is ready. How much garlic do we need for six months or so? More than I've got left I bet! I'm planting in a raised bed in the kitchen garden as well, not that I don't have faith in Adam's vegie growing prowess, but the kitchen garden is mine, and I can peer at it and mulch or not mulch and harvest when I run out, even if they're just fledglings. 

Grow, garlic, grow!

xxx

Other bits:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cake of Monday: In Search of Grandma's Sponge

My Grandma on my Dad's side was a champion sponge cake maker. Not a Royal Easter Show-type champion, but a Berry Show regular First. A sponge beloved by all who ate it. And remembered today, for heaven's sake. Is there likely to be anything you make that people will remember thirty years after you're gone? It's a sponge cake I really really really want to find.

I don't remember making the sponge with my Grandma. She wasn't really a cooking-with-kids lady. The cake itself I remember though, it was pale and very very light. Sprinkled with icing sugar, filled with jam.

We don't have Grandma's recipe book here, you know, the hand-written one everyone's Gran had. But I have some of her handwritten recipes in amongst Mum's recipes.

I love the way she always signed things "Grandma" in inverted commas, including books she gave me that I now read to my kids. Like "Grandma" was an identity she wore particularly lightly, being Gladys, always, at heart. She was Geoffry's Gladys particularly. My Grandfather died before I was born, and she always missed him.

 

This sponge recipe excited me for a second, but you can see it's not Grandma's writing, and not Mum's either. Mum usually attributed recipes when she wrote them in her book.

I got distracted when I found this one, that's Nan's handwriting! I haven't seen that spidery script for years now. Nan would have turned 100 last week. Scones, mmmm. And so I stopped in my investigation and made a batch.

A batch that was inhaled by family and visiting friends so quickly that no photographic evidence of their existence remains. Pity. They were pretty. 

Then I found this. At the bottom of a scone recipe that wasn't Nan's which makes it likely to be Grandma's. Mum's handwriting, and she thinks this might be The Sponge. Oh my goodness the HOT WATER in the recipe. Yes, I remember the hot water! But it uses self-raising flour and my Auntie Narelle has always said that Grandma's recipe was based on cornflour. Still. I also looked up the Gerringong Mayflower Cookbook sponge - it's quite possible they asked Grandma for her recipe, hers was the best known at the time of publishing. It uses self-raising flour too! And hot water! This might be it!

And so I baked the one we think is Grandma's recipe. We gobbled it up over a couple of days. We agreed it was good, although it wasn't pale or incredibly light. It was actually pretty close to this one, previously blogged. 

I rang Auntie Narelle. She said she would remember it by taste and that she was virtually certain Grandma used the recipe from the side of the Fielder's cornflour box, if they still print a sponge recipe there? 

I said I'd find out, make a selection of sponges and bring them over for her to taste test. I think I better take Dad too. 

To be continued. 

POSSIBLY GRANDMA'S SPONGE

Ingredients:

4 eggs

6oz sugar

6 oz SR flour + half a tsp baking powder

3 tbls water

vanilla

Method (directly transcribed):

Beat whites, add sugar, beat in yolks. Add hot water to round sides of basin, then flour using plastic knife, slowly. 350-400°  15 mins. (I assume you add a tsp of vanilla at the end. Mum was obviously told this recipe without specific instructions? Or perhaps wrote it down assuming she'd never make it, much like I don't make her shortcake? Ah whatever. It's delicious fun figuring this out.)

xxx

 

weekendiness

This weekend I

talked to the chickens

made biscuits that weren't for sale (my apologies if you looked for us at Berry Markets, we'll be back next month)

got a babysitter and went out for dinner

saw friends

drank tea

found a new patch of stinging nettles, due for the teapot!

admired Adam's magnificent compost pile

entertained an almost three year old (ours) who was grrrrumpy, all weekend

played with the kids on the swings

watched the kids do crazy dangerous tricks on the flying fox, eek

went to the movies with two favourite girls and saw a cool, unexpected film called "The Angel's Share", have you seen it? It's wonderful.

sat on the front step in the sun with Adam and pulled apart all the garlic for planting

made a batch of brownies and gave them away

made a sponge cake and didn't give it away (more on that tomorrow!)

made a second loaf of sourdough that rose and rose and tasted delicious

learnt that I'd missed a step in the online pigpass registration which meant Adam couldn't take four pigs to the abattoir this afternoon

farewelled Mum and Dad who are off in their van for a fortnight

re-planted a bed of sugar snap peas that our dog Holly had dug a gigantic hole in the middle of... what was she looking for I wonder??

very sadly finished reading "Greenhorns", a book I didn't want to get to the end of that I think I might have to start again immediately. 

recharged

rebooted

Did you? It never really happens here, amongst kids and markets and stuff. I'm grateful when it does. 

Hope you had a moment to do something you enjoyed? 

xxx

 

this moment

 

Not being overwhelmed by waist-high weeds in the future market garden paddock. Not being overwhelmed at all.

(And no Roundup in sight. Never, ever to be mentioned again.)

Joining in with Soulemama. 

xxx

today was a great day

I mentioned earlier this year on Australia Day, that my Dad was awarded an OAM, an Order of Australia Medal for his community service in the Rural Fire Service over fifty years. 

Today was the day the medal was awarded at Government House, Sydney. 

Dad could take three guests and two of his four children were (conveniently) out of the country so there were no fights. And I got to go. 

It was all very formal with Ma'ams and Sirs and Her Excellency Governor Marie Bashir. Dad couldn't help making friends and we met some lovely people and saw some pretty amazing awards being awarded. There were some OAMs, some awards for bravery, lots of impressive community service and there was one guy who (among other serious achievements) had been a Santa for his local town for a hundred years. Or something.

It was cool. Dad had a bit of a tear in his eye and I think Mum and my sister Suze and I just about burst with the awesomeness of it. 

And after: there were canapes! Really, really good canapes! With champagne and white wine on the colonnade, as you do, and photos and handshakes and smiles all round. 

 

Chicken, leek and tarragon pies. Am SO copying these. Delicious. 

And tonight, after we stopped for a lovely celebratory lunch and dropped Suze home, we got home too late for me to make the celebratory roast beef which was up on the menu board, and instead I improvised and threw together quick plates of nachos. Dad brought out a wine. 

I couldn't believe we were going to drink such a red with something as pedestrian as nachos for heavens sake, but actually Dad loves nachos and we'll enjoy a slow cooked roast tomorrow night, and anyway, how many evenings do you celebrate someone in the family receiving such an award?

There were many toasts of wine and kids cups and the kids made Dad wear his medal and the Grange was extraordinary (and quite delicious with nachos, goodness me) and how utterly wonderful. 

Most of all I'm just so happy we were here for this. 

Cheers to you, Dad. Today was a great day. We're impossibly proud of you. 

 

xxx

sourdough loving

 

I've had a mixed relationship with sourdough. It started well, with a from-scratch starter and passable loaves. For a while it completely replaced yeasted bread around here. 

Then I moved to the farm and neglected my starter and it all went pear shaped. The chooks ate a lot of heavy-as-lead sourdough. A lot. My friend Heidi gave me some of her starter which was legendarily from the same mother as the one used by Berry Sourdough. I made one good loaf. The next wasn't so good and by the time the starter had lived with me for a fortnight only the chickens were eating the bread. 

Finally I chucked it in, much to the chooks relief, until last weekend I nicked some starter from my friends Greg and Jan. Thankfully I had given them some of my orginal starter when I first embarked on the adventure, and they did a much better job with it than me. The gift that keeps giving. Thanks you guys!

I made an average loaf yesterday. It's on the bench and someone made some toast with it. 

But today I think I got it right. It's not perfect but it's not chook food. We can work on that open hole structure, as long as I can keep the damn starter alive. 

 

Yesterday I used the River Cottage Bread cookbook recipe, the one I had persisted and persisted with unsuccessfully. I adjusted it a bit today. I won't be so bold as to blog it yet, let's get it right twice first. 

 

I'd forgotten how much I like it. Chewy and tasty. Great with chicken soup and lashings of butter for dinner. Back on the horse. Hooray. 

 

Happy Wednesday lovely folk.

xxx