Making the Most of it

06/05/2023

Today on the homestead:
- Our first saffron flower since we got home from France. Before we left, we had saffron crocuses, but they, well, I guess they didn't survive our absence somehow. Anyway, new bulbs went in a few months ago and have now popped up. Surprisingly, we actually got one flower, which opened today! (Surprising because they don't usually flower their first season.)
- I have previously lamented the lack of female flowers on the pumpkin vines. Well, we finally got a couple and this is the biggest. It's small, and way too late in the season, so I expect it to come to naught. Looks like a cross breed.
- We harvested two of the topinambour (aka Jerusalem artichoke, sunchoke, fartichoke) plants - more than 3kg! We had never eaten, let alone grown, these before we were in France. We worked on the local school garden during lockdown and found some in a garden bed we were turning over, so we dug some new beds and planted them out. Unfortunately, we didn't see them grow and flower as we went travelling over Summer, but we harvested them when we got back. They were much muddier than these and took a lot of cleaning, but I loved them. 😋 So excited to be growing them here! Thanks to our local Buy Nothing group for the tubers!

08/04/2023

Sorry for the silence. The last few months have just flown by and I don't know where the time went! Mr MMoi has been travelling a lot for work (e.g. 3.5 weeks away in March, now looks like alternating weeks away for the foreseeable future 😞). I feel like I've achieved very little, but we're all still alive so that's something, right?

We've had a disappointing summer season in the garden. The tomatoes have taken up a lot of real estate but hardly produced anything. I've had loads of self seeded pumpkin plants pop up and produce lots of male flowers, but not a single female. We've had a few yummy beans from the Bunnings 20c punnet rescue seedlings, and a pea seedling that I thought was dead so threw in a worm tower is growing spectacularly. But we've harvested hardly anything. No cucumbers, no lettuce, no soy beans, nothing is growing. We think our soil is very tired and needs some love. 🙁

Anyway, now summer is over and the weather is certainly turning. The topinambours (aka Jerusalem artichokes aka sunchokes aka fartichokes) have flowered (top left image) and I'm looking forward to harvesting. I blinked and the top right image is the result (zucchini on left is a decent-sized store bought one for scale). The gorgeous dark green acanthus is re-emerging by the front door (bottom left image). And I have hundreds of self seeded things popping up in the vege beds (bottom right image is a small portion). There's peas, walking onions, and garlic (sprouting from ones I missed harvesting), but it took me a little while to figure out the one there is most of... It has a curly kind of seed that stays attached to the first leaves for ages (some I've had to pry off as the second leaves were coming through). Do you know what it is? 😉 I'll put some photos of the sprouted seed in the comments and you can guess! If you know what it is, I'd love you to share your favourite way to use it! 🤗

Happy Easter! Hope the Easter bunny or les cloches (or both!) visit you tomorrow! 🐰🔔🍫

31/12/2022

Happy new year all! Hope you are ringing in the new year in bountiful homesteading style! Thanks for being part of our journey this year - it has been an indescribably tough one for us as we've tried to adjust to moving back "home" to Australia, and so posts have been scarce and sporadic as we deal with myriad issues, but one thing we've cherished is getting back to growing our own produce. ❤️ Wishing you all a 2023 that was better than 2022, even if your 2022 was amazeballs. 😘

Today on the homestead:
- Yesterday, I stopped by church (aka Bunnings) on an unrelated (and unsuccessful) endeavour, and stumbled across a huge assortment of stock in need of intensive care in the plant department, including 20c seedling punnets! They were in critical condition, so I grabbed a bunch and raced home, stuck them in water to soak, and, viola! Rejuvenation! It's a new year's miracle! I even managed to plant out some today.
- Flowers in the garden - one is some kind of Lilium, I suppose (chime in if you are in the know), and the other is feijoa. 😋
- In order to make space for a few of the climbing seedlings, I pulled up the dregs of the dark sweet peas. They had totally dried off and many pods had already split open and released their seeds. Hopefully that means lots of self-seeded dark sweet peas soon, but we were disappointed that the spectacular split pea shells didn't helicopter. (Terrible photo, sorry - impossible to get phone to focus!! But you can get the drift.)

Tonight we have icy poles and a fire pit in the backyard, with sparklers and fireworks later. Happy new year!

17/12/2022

Today on the homestead:
- Very sad softneck garlic harvest.
- In raised bed 1 we have dark sweet peas gone to seed, calendulas flowering, small orange sunflowers (I have forgotten their name) budding, small tomato plants, walking onions and topinambours.
- In raised bed 2 we have hardneck garlic (which is finally producing scapes! 🥳), chard sprouting from the sawn off bases, small tomato plants, topinambours, and broad beans (which we've been harvesting and eating 😋 but are at the end of life). Background left is the raspberry jungle, which has started giving us what I can only presume are delicious raspberries (voraciously scavenged by small people before I get any).
- Our acanthus are amazing, as always. Window for scale - our flower heads are huge.
- Nasturtiums are flowering.
- I has a chicken. Oldest child spent time with each chooken while we were fire-pitting this evening. Meanwhile, the two smallest niblets very sociably talked to a regular passer-by who by now surely knows everything about our family. 🤣

20/11/2022

Today on the homestead:
- My garlic is very sad. These are the best looking ones, I think, but they don't seem to have developed any bulbs, and there are no scapes (they are hardnecks). The softnecks look terrible. Woe. 😭😭😭
- Harvested the first lot of broad beans this morning. As usual, lucky to get any inside the house! We so missed growing our own food the last three years! It's a delight to have the kids munching on produce fresh and raw straight from the garden again.
- More grass clipped - can see the other bed now!
- I managed to make space to plant out six more tomato seedlings, but I still have a long way to go! 😭🙃
- It has been soooo windy. This morning our back door blew shut and the glass shattered! What a mess, but luckily no-one injured (Bear, 6, was right there when it happened). Mr Mmoi has patched it up for now... 🫤

19/11/2022

Today on the homestead:
- Remember a month or so ago I mentioned that I couldn't even get to the new raised beds because of the jungle of grass and I needed Mr Mmoi to mow it? No? Oh well, that's okay, maybe I just dreamt it (that happens to me far too often! 🤪🙃). Anyway, I decided to take matters into my own hands and chop it down using shears. 💪 It has been a huge amount of work but I'm getting there! Still can't see one of the beds in this photo because of the enormous grass! All the rain we've had has caused an explosion of weedy growth. I also extended the chicken coop so the chooks could access more of those delicious weeds. At some point I'll try to move the huge pile of grass I've chopped down to them... 🐔 One of the chickens appears to be broody already, and has been for weeks. It's a right pain. 🫤
- Picked a posy from the garden - Ixias and lavender. 💐
- Potatoes have started flowering.
- At the front door, the acanthus is starting to open, there are more roses, and the grapefruit flowers are finishing up but there are still enough there that the buzz of visiting bees is deafening. 🐝
- We enjoyed the glorious weather (not raining for a change!) with lunch outside - baked ricotta, lots of veggies, a little prosciutto, and toasted thinly sliced baguette. 😋

Then, exhausted and affected by the heat and sun, I had a quick shower and a long nap! 💤 Next up tonight: backyard fire pit! 🔥❤️ (Assuming it stays clear - the clouds are looking a bit threatening...)

14/11/2022

Just ordered a seedling subscription box for 2023 from Bean Town Farm ! If you are in the Canberra-region, please check them out and consider supporting a new small farming enterprise with a social conscience. Those on higher income brackets can not only get themselves seedlings each quarter but also help a low income family grow their own. Those on lower-income brackets can order at reduced cost when spaces open up. If you aren't in the Canberra-region, but know someone who is, maybe a gift subscription for Christmas is what you need? Check it all out here: https://www.beantownfarm.com.au/

(Other than independently purchasing a subscription in my personal capacity, I have no connection to Bean Town Farm, nor have I received, or expect to receive, anything in exchange for sharing this information, I just think it's a good idea. 🙂)

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13/11/2022

This weekend on the homestead:
- I cut down some of the chard yesterday (I had to use a saw!!). Small people (12yo and 8yo) for scale - the tallest was over two metres. I stripped off the good leaves for dinner and the rest went to the chooks. I also pulled up the silverbeet and planted some tomato seedlings in its place.
- My first calendula flower.
- What a difference a week makes! Now the lemon tree is buzzing with bees too, as the blossoms have started opening.
- More roses every day.
- Lots of rain = fungi. I found a couple of earthstars (Geastraceae) in the grass today.
- I haven't killed all the strawberry plants I was gifted! (Just most of them. 🤦‍♀️)
- The Ixias are flowering. 😍 We have lots of different colours.
- The jasmine is flowering and smells divine, conveniently located next to the stinky chicken coop. 😂

06/11/2022

Today on the homestead:
Everyone except me (🤞) is sick, so we are taking it easy.
- I've cut the aphid-affected tips off the kale and given them to the chickens, and harvested a very small amount of the chard to have for dinner tonight (Indian feast! 😋 This will go in saag aloo). How cute is my basket?!? 🐔
- The grapefruit is flowering and the bees are loving it. Looks like we will have approximately one gazillion grapefruits this year, and we don't really eat them! Hit me with your favourite ways to use grapefruit!
- There are about the same number of buds on the lemon but they aren't open yet.
- The roses are blooming and the acanthus is looking very healthy. It usually flowers around Christmas time, iirc, and is very striking. Some people don't like it because it's hard to get rid of once it's in, but I like it - great foliage and huge flower spikes.

I'm in desperate need of space to plant out my bean and cucurbit seedlings. They are looking stressed. 🙁 I could pull up the enormous bolting chard and kale but there's garlic growing in those beds, and beans don't like being near garlic, and I would rather not put cucurbits there. (Also, taking out the chard would mean having to process and freeze a crapload of the stuff, and I just can't face that atm! 😱😬😂) I'd like to put tomatoes in those beds but my seedlings are still so small, so I'm not rushing to plant them out... though maybe they'd be happier and grow faster with more space. 🤔 I need to fill the new garden beds but we don't have a wheelbarrow and even just topping up the potatoes using buckets has been difficult and time consuming and exhausting (the compost is aaall the way around the other side of the house). Dilemmas! 😂

29/10/2022

Today on the homestead:
- Vege garden looks hideously overgrown but I swear it's deliberate! 🤣 (Hmm, or perhaps this photo is just a reflection of the barely-organised chaos that is my life 🤔 Overgrown garden, disused bike that is now really an art installation, half assembled trampoline... Yep, that sounds about right!) Check out how tall the silverbeet is, though! Nearly two metres above the garden bed!! The kale is flowering, which the bees love, and I like to harvest the seed and have self-seeded plants pop up, so it's win-win. I'll try to let the silverbeet do the same but I need the space to plant out my cucurbit seedlings! 🌱 Behind that is the greenhouse, which keeps falling apart in this insane wind we've been having. 🫤 I've lost so many seedlings! 😭 Then behind that are the two new raised garden beds, which are currently still empty, but need to be filled so I can plant out the beans.
- The dark sweet peas are flowering. They are ornamental only, but lovely and don't take up much room.
- Today is the first day of no rain we've had in what feels like forever, so we ate lunch (featuring baked brie with walnuts and honey, and the tiniest tomatoes ever seen) outside. 😋 This afternoon we've also potted on tomato seedlings 🌱, moved and improved the chicken coop (very happy chooks! 🐔), and finally got around to adding a super to the beehive (hopefully happier bees! 🐝). If Mr Mmoi can get around to mowing the jungle out back we'll have a fire pit tonight. 🔥 In bad news, we have an infestation of Paterson's Curse and Arum italicum to deal with. 🤦‍♀️ As if the privet wasn't bad enough.
- One of my favourite flowers, which I missed when we were in France, is in full bloom! 🌼 Rosa Banksiae aka Banksia Rose aka Lady Banks' Rose aka Banks' Rose.

Aah, le printemps! Trop beau! What's happening in your patch?

13/10/2022

Life has been crazy busy lately, so I haven't been here much, but I needed to jump on to share the excitement! Our first egg! 🥚 Don't know which of the new chickens is responsible, but we're all very excited! 🐔 Don't you just love my egg basket - combination of op-shop and ingenuity!

In other news, just quickly, Spring has definitely sprung, and the garden is exploding. 🌱 The purple potatoes have finally popped up, as have the topinambours, and we are getting our second flush of oyster mushrooms coming on. I've potted on a heap of bean and cucurbit seedlings, but the tomatoes have a ways to go, yet. It feels like all the rain we are having can't be good for the garlic, but not much I can do about that. 🤷‍♀️ I've got some more raised garden beds on order to help with my space issues, so that's exciting. What's happening in your patch? Trying anything new?

18/09/2022

This week on the homestead: Chickens!! 🐔🐔🐔🐔
Bok bok bgerrk!
- We picked them up yesterday lunchtime and they've only just now started to explore the run after I sat down with them for a while on the other side. At first they wouldn't eat anything other than pellets but they are now pecking at the strawberries I gave them, and the grass and weeds. We don't expect them to be laying for a few weeks yet. I made them a gravity feeder using PVC pipe stuff and my imagination and I'm pretty happy with it; I just need to glue it together before attaching it to the coop. The kids each have their own chook, which they named themselves: Angel's is an Australorp (black one) with a reddish chest, so she's Captain Redbeard; Possum's is also an Australorp but not so red in the chest, called Nightshade; Sunshine's is a Hi-Line (Rhode Island Red cross) called Marigold; and Bear's is also a Hi-Line, called Sunny. 🐔
- The monster blue oyster mushrooms are doing great! Nearly eating time! 😋