Thread: Getting back to living off the land.....

Originally Posted by Jhon

Yell if you want a great Vindaloo recipe, genuine grind yer own spice one.

Thanks; always looking for recipes!

A busy morning of baking bread; plain white and a sultana and cranberry, picking Shiro plums and cooking a cured (unsmoked) goat ham. The reason the ham isn't pink is that no nitrites were used in my brine to keep the pinkness.

Also; made up another batch of Chinese tea eggs. They last for about a week in the fridge, super handy for a healthy snack.

The Shiro plums were loaded in only their second season (The Warehouse bargain bin trees). But the birds beat me to a lot of them. An awesome plum; lots of flavour and as juicy as a golden queen peach.

So a lazy tea of home cured goat ham, home baked bread and plums for dessert....

Originally Posted by Phil_H

My dinner tonight courtesy of my darling wife Sharon.

Attachment 128849

It has been a bountiful summer. The dinner does not have the same presentation as other pictures on this thread, but all from our own piece of land none the less.
Peas, potatoes, silverbeet, pumpkin and onions all from our garden. The meat is a bit of rolled hogget - one of our seven - that I butchered yesterday. Makes a change from venison which has been our staple meat over the last 12 months. Oh, and an old Plonker in behind it all is her husband......poor girl.

Cheers
Phil

Good effort Phil. How do you have Pumpkins and onions ready now ??

Originally Posted by Phil_H

My dinner tonight courtesy of my darling wife Sharon.

Attachment 128849

It has been a bountiful summer. The dinner does not have the same presentation as other pictures on this thread, but all from our own piece of land none the less.
Peas, potatoes, silverbeet, pumpkin and onions all from our garden. The meat is a bit of rolled hogget - one of our seven - that I butchered yesterday. Makes a change from venison which has been our staple meat over the last 12 months. Oh, and an old Plonker in behind it all is her husband......poor girl.

Cheers
Phil

Good on you. You are eating that hogget pretty fresh - was it tough? I have always hung my meat for at least a few days.

I like what you are doing.

Originally Posted by Phil_H

No not tough at all. I hang them in the winter but this week the wool shed was in use so I had to use an implement shed. The flies were horrendous so I actually delivered the carcass onto the kitchen table still warm. Sharon had him in the freezer within the hour. The local farm manager showed me how he does it. He claims the secret is not to stress them at all. Put out some sheep nuts and let them feed away merrily and then from a distance put a bullet in the head. They drop without even knowing what has happened. Then go and slit their throat, hang them immediately and let them bleed out. I use the 10/22 which is my possum gun set up with a red dot. It always drops them on the spot but often they are not dead but just unconscious, hence why I cut their throat straight away. But it seems to work, no stress and the meat is vastly different to animals that have the adrenaline running high through their system.

Cheers
Phil

Good. This Sharon - she sounds very handy.

Great thread thank you.

We live on a small section at the outskirts of the city, although we have a rural outlook and rural postal delivery. We don't have much garden space so we don't grow potatoes or corn, but we always try to have greens, especially silver beet (a very reliable cropper), and herbs. During the season we might plant beans, carrots, parsnips etc.

For a long time I grew garlic every year. The last few seasons we've had rust which really munts the garlic. I have some perennial Egyptian Walking Onions which don't seem to get affected by the rust though, and these are handy to have. These actually might be better classified as shallots. You can eat the green tops... or the relatively small mature bulbs... or the crazy little bulbs that grow from the flower heads. These onions 'walk' and replicate themselves as the top bulbs grow and cause the plants to bend over until the top bulbs reach the ground and take root. Our garlic chives also seem to survive the rust quite well. I'm hoping I will overcome the rust problem with the garlic though... maybe someone will come up with a resistant variety.

Another standby perennial I grow is Jerusalem Artichoke. I enjoy the flavour of these (especially when roasted), although we don't eat many at a time as they can be rocket fuel for your farter.

We grow quite a bit of fruit. I figure if you are going to have trees or shrubs on your property you may as well be producing fruit. I've trained several trees as espaliers, and I've grafted my apple trees to have more than one variety on them. My best 'keeper' apple is Court Pendu Plat. Another good disease resistant variety is Liberty. Our favourite cooker which explodes into a gelatinous pulp is Monty's Surprise. The apples have quite a few codlin moth holes in them this year but, while undesirable, they don't wreck the whole apple and they can still be eaten or processed. I don't like codlin moth, but I don't like insecticides (or 1080) either. We have a wonderful French Sugar Fig which has already produced its first crop, an Omega Plum with a heavy crop that is just about ready, some excellent grapes, citrus and feijoas.

We discovered the flavour of kaffir lime in recent years, so we planted a tree. We also have a bay tree which we have to keep trimmed.

I love growing tomatoes. I have a mission to find the variety (or method of growing) that works best for my area. So far my most successful variety seems to be Stupice. I tend to grow the early maturing varieties so that I can get a crop before the dry weather and psyllids arrive. I make tomato sauce, and I dry slices of tomato which we like to use on pizza throughout the year.

We make bread too. I think my favourite bread is a simple flat or naan bread. I love the texture. We quite often make 'wraps' .... our recipe is based on Annabel Langbein's Chicken Tex Mex Wrap recipe. I buy the 500 gram packets of Bakels instant dried yeast. This yeast is meant to be used within a few days of opening the packet, but I keep it in a plastic jar in the freezer and I find that it will keep and work well for months once opened.

We do buy a bit of meat, but we also eat a lot of game.... and fish when we can get it.

Here are some of this year's tomatoes... Tangella, Moonglow, Azoychka, Bloody Butcher and Black Krim. Out of all these it appears that Bloody Butcher are the earliest and probably the most prolific. The Tangella and Moonglow are meant to be varieties from which you can absorb a lot of beneficial lycopene if you eat them raw and it is said that people who are allergic to tomatoes may be able to eat Tangella without a reaction. Moonglow has a dense texture and is quite attractive. I kept seeds and may grow it again. I'm only interested in growing open pollenated varieties so that I can select seeds from my best plants.



And here is some bread with a texture that I like.... stringy and soft. We eat all sorts of bread though, including the no-knead variety with its relatively coarse texture.

I also have enjoyed gathering mushrooms. Recently I have done some research to try to learn what else can be eaten besides the common field mushroom (which is still my favourite). As a result I've eaten giant puffballs ... which are OK, but don't have much flavour, pine boletes (pictured below) and birch boletes (gathered from under silver birch trees). The birch boletes are pretty good if not too old.

i have just made "manchester eggs"
should have taken a photo before i ate them but basically its like a scotch egg but you pickle the egg, and the coating is 1/2 sausage meat 1/2 black pudding. then crumbed and baked.
tasty but good job i have a dog i could blame the farts on

I went for a hunt today, but didn't see any fresh sign... except maybe for what may have been a little bit of pig digging in a nearly dry creek bed. There is quite a bit of Himalayan Honeysuckle growing in this particular area, and now there are quite a few ripe brown berries. I dunno how the berries can be so juicy in our dry summer months. There were also a few blackberries around.

Some people may regard the Himalayan Honeysuckle berries as not edible, and I have read that the plant may be the cause of some problems with cattle. But people, including me, do eat the berries. I don't eat many in one sitting though.

In the picture below, the ripe berries are the brown ones at the top of the cluster. They are sweet with quite a unique taste that could be described as 'chocolately' or like burned sugar.

Originally Posted by Coote

...I have some perennial Egyptian Walking Onions...
....I figure if you are going to have trees or shrubs on your property you may as well be producing fruit. I've trained several trees as espaliers, and I've grafted my apple trees to have more than one variety on them. My best 'keeper' apple is Court Pendu Plat.

Coote, We grow the walking onions, they are a great grower for us too, I like them fried next to my steak.
Would you be interested in sharing a piece of your Court Pendu Plat tree, I would love to add it to my apple tree.

I'd be delighted to give you some Court Pendu Plat cuttings. I just have to remember to cut them in July or early August. If you want to PM me your contact details I will make a note. Feel free to remind me nearer the time.

I've also got Blenheim Orange which was fairly rare for a while, but it has been shared around a bit now and I think I've even seen nursery trees labelled as Blenheim Orange.

Originally Posted by Coote

I'd be delighted to give you some Court Pendu Plat cuttings. I just have to remember to cut them in July or early August. If you want to PM me your contact details I will make a note. Feel free to remind me nearer the time.

I've also got Blenheim Orange which was fairly rare for a while, but it has been shared around a bit now and I think I've even seen nursery trees labelled as Blenheim Orange.

Thank you, I will flick you a message.
I used to have a good collection of older and heritage apples, but have sadly lost access to a lot of them, Time to start again.

Some local Taranaki doofus is on Radio NZ.....
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/progr...arden-of-eatin

So that's you Bumblefoot ! Now I know somebody famous !! I look forward to listening to the talk. The written introduction really grabbed my attention. Thanks for sharing.

Is that a bunch of 'Fartichoke greens in you arms Bumblefoot ?