Out and about

The Channon Markets
Every third Sunday of the month, weather permitting, the Channon markets are held at the Channon, about 30 mins from our place along what must be the worst road in the country, seriously.  Lucky there is always something to make the trip worthwhile, like this guy lying on a bed of nails.  Yes, the volunteer from the crowd did drop the bowling ball onto his stomach.  Ouch.

There is always a band, and this drum band was excellent, very entertaining.

And of course, what kind of market would it be without food.  Read and weep, Mum.  Mmmm, waffles.....

Closer to home:
Monty & friend
We don't see Monty too often, but he appeared last week trying to cross the driveway.

And we've discovered another local, this echidna was rustling around in the garden very close to the house a couple of nights ago. 

Chicken Whisperers
The chooks are in the habit of following me around, Ian says it's because I am their meal ticket.  He's probably right.  The cats follow us around the property as well.  So when we were planting out the berry canes last week, we expected to be followed.  But we didn't expect the cats and hens to get quite so friendly.  To give the cats their due they were very well behaved, but were nevertheless watched very closely to make sure they did not help themselves to an early dinner.

New addition
This lovely little chicken is the new addition to our flock.  Isn't she lovely?

And, finally, the hens have just today achieved a record lay of 5 eggs in one day.  To celebrate we are having  bacon and egg pie for dinner.  Better go and check the oven.

Food glorious food

Although we are yet to harvest much of our own home grown produce, we have been able to start brewing and preserving type activities over the last month or so.  To date, we have made our own:

• bourbon
• rum
• gin
• stout
• lager
• rhubarb fizz (supposedly alcoholic)
• tomato sauce
• passionfruit cordial
• worcestershire sauce
• curry paste

We have also made a very yummy passionfruit curd - not shown in the photo because we ate it all.  The only thing that would improve these items, I think, is using our own home grown produce.

What we do have already growing on the property are

• tahitian limes
• lemons
• lychees
• mangoes
• mulberries
• mandarins
• walnuts
• black sapote
• native finger limes
• and lots of other bush tucker trees that we can't remember all the names of, including lemon aspen, davidson plums, some sort of cherry, lilly pillies. 

And there are a few other things that are too young to bear fruit for a few years yet (pears, oranges, apples).  The limes will be mostly put to lime marmalade (saving some for Michelle's G&T of course) and once the lemons are ripe I think, lemonade, preserved lemons and lemon curd will be next on the pantry shelves.

You might be thinking that's quite a lot of fruit trees, and combined with the vege gardens will be a fair amount of work.  But, you can never have too much of a good thing, and so we will be planting raspberries, blackberries and grapes in the near future.  In fact, we have already ordered the berry canes, and here is the site we have chosen, quite close to the house in what we call the 'Septic Paddock' because that is where the septic trenches are.

Septic Paddock looking towards house.  Grass is longer on the soakage trenches.

We've also completed the second vegetable growing area, and now need to fence / bird net the area before we can plant.

First vege beds installed are under the shade structure.