Greenhouse Action & Musings – Day 8 NaBloPoMo 2016

08 Nov 2016 2 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Music, Performance, Produce, Singing, Tasmania, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today, I’ll start with an apology – there’s no gratuitous cute bunny pic in this post. In truth, I forgot to take one today. To Bernard Black Bunny’s fans, I promise I’ll make it up in tomorrow’s post!

I went into the city today for lunch, catching up for coffee with a dear friend and calling into my favourite bookshop, but this morning after I fed the animals, I had a little bit of fun in the greenhouse.

I grow strawberries in pots so I can move them around the yard throughout the year and I’ve been picking fruit steadily for the last few weeks. But one poor plant really wasn’t looking great a couple of weeks ago, so I took it into the greenhouse, fed it some of my home made worm juice fertiliser and promptly forgot about it. What a lovely surprise this morning when I discovered this luscious beauty and more on the way 😀

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A few weeks ago, I planted my precious stash of chilli seeds for the coming summer. While I usually keep a few Cayenne and Rocoto in the greenhouse to overwinter, most get treated as annuals, so this is a big deal for a chilli-lover like me. I was thrilled to see the first of this year’s crop poking their heads up this morning. The weather has been downright cold at times in recent days, so I was worried that I wasn’t going to get any to germinate, not uncommon if temperatures are too low. I’ll post some pictures in the next couple of days.

This winter was so mild, there’s more chillies than usual held over from last summer, including a few Poblano Ancho and I’m really pleased the Cayenne are starting to flower already.

After, I went into the city and (not for the first time) I was quite astonished at the difference between my oasis here and being in town. All the more so that it’s a 10 minute drive or a 25 minute walk from here to central Hobart – it’s not like I like in the bush or even an outer suburb.

I had a great time with my friend but my last stop was the best – catching up with Richard and Mike at Cracked & Spineless New and Used Books. I love bookshops but this one is really something else. It’s not uncommon to bump into friends there, it can be hard to navigate around the shelves depending on how many boxes of books have arrived that day, sometimes you’ll even see the shop’s stick insects fornicating in their tank (I have photographic proof of this!) and for me it’s almost impossible to keep track of time once I set foot in the door.

And while I always come away poorer in monetary terms, I’m always enriched by the books I buy. Today I picked up a new sci-fi thriller, The Tourist by Robert Dickinson, and a very important book from my early adolescence, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

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My father gave me a copy of this same printing when I was probably 11 or 12 and it quite literally changed my life. It caused me to think about making a smaller footprint on this fragile planet, something I still strive to do to this day but above all, it brought me even closer to my father. I’m looking forward to re-reading it and remembering my dad ❤

Finally, for those of you in southern Tasmania, I’m playing a short set Thursday night at the Waratah Hotel in Murray Street. I’m opening the wonderful UNLOCKED show that, now the days are getting longer (and sometimes warmer), is back to being a weekly event. I’m really looking forward to playing 😀

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A Day In The Life – Day 7 NaBloPoMo 2016

07 Nov 2016 1 Comment

by Debra Manskey in Baking, Biography, Chickens, Cooking, Produce, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This post came from an idea one of my friends gave me this afternoon. So here’s a day in my life……..

Today was Monday, and a day off from my usual work at Oak Tasmania. But there were all the usual jobs and dinner to prepare early because I also had a 1500 word essay to upload to my tutor for my current creative writing unit, Writing For Children and Young Adults. 

First, feed the animals. There was squawking and jostling to get the best position, but the chickens all got their share of seed mix and there was an early egg from dear Hipster, the oldest girl in the flock. Then some quick weeding to gather greens for the rabbits and a big chicory leaf for each of them (because rabbits!) and the obligatory cute Bernard Black Bunny pic of the day……

I'm Cute - But I Will Not Share My Chicory!

I’m Cute – But I Will Not Share My Chicory!

Once everyone was fed, water checked, pats and cuddles given, I watered the greenhouse and picked veggies for tonight’s dinner, a slow cooked beef and veg curry. This involved picking celery, purple cabbage leaves, silverbeet and snow peas and (as always) more weeding around the plants and cutting back flower heads – all of which went straight to the ravenous chickens.

Finally, I managed to get back in the house and make some breakfast for me! This morning I felt like something savory on my toast. So, before I went to feed the animals I went searching through the freezer. I had the last of my current loaf of sourdough toasted with a very decadent and different kind of topping. I was quite thrilled to find a tub of basil pesto (sans pine nuts) from the autumn harvest tucked away. By the time I got back to the kitchen it was defrosted enough to spread thinly on my toast. It was intense, both garlic and basil flavours came shining through and utterly delicious!

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Time then to knock a loaf of sourdough together and put dinner in the slow cooker. I replaced some of the bread flour with rye this time, which makes a nutty, slightly denser loaf. Wee Beastie the sourdough plant is really powering at the moment, so this is what it looked like after a few hours of proving under a damp tea towel in the kitchen.

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I cannot begin to describe how lovely and yeasty these loaves smell at this stage – and without any added yeast! I’ll leave it to prove overnight and bake it first thing tomorrow morning so I’ll have fresh bread for breakfast ❤

Next on my list was getting dinner prepped and in the slow cooker. About 500g diced stewing steak and a couple of diced onions got seared in ghee and tossed into the pot with a jar of home-made tomato based chilli sauce from a couple of seasons ago and a tub of cooked chick peas. Lots of spices, herbs, red wine, plus celery, carrot, broad beans and mushrooms (thanks to the garden again!). All thrown in the slow cooker, switched on and forgotten about until later in the afternoon.

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Then it was down to the nitty gritty – wrangling all my notes into a cohesive discussion about what I consider to be “an area of childhood that hasn’t been satisfactorily written about”. It’s a potentially huge subject and I only had 1500 words to work with. Chained to my laptop for the next few hours, I referenced, edited and pulled it all together – with Brahms in my headphones and the first cricket test against South Africa on the television. It was a bit mad for a few hours, I remember getting up and making a cup of tea at one point but apparently didn’t drink it, and some kind soul put food in front of me at lunchtime. But I managed to get it all done, correctly formatted and uploaded to my tutor who lives in a different time zone.

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After a cuppa with a friend who called round, it was time for the afternoon feeding of the hungry hordes, more egg collecting – and bunny cuddles ❤

I also picked some snow peas that I’d missed that were way too far gone for the table but rather than waste them, I shelled them and set them to dry on my seed shelf. They’ll form the basis of the next crop and/or traded with other fellow gardeners.

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Finally, I prepared the veggies to finish off the curry, silverbeet, purple cabbage and snow peas while some nice person cooked rice.

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And now, dinner has been devoured (delicious!) and there’s plenty of leftovers to refill the freezer. I’m currently crashed on the couch with my laptop watching my favourite current affairs show, The Feed on SBS and once I publish this I might get back to reading my new book, Jennifer Livett’s Wild Island. Or maybe think some more about that song I’m starting to write. Or perhaps do a little work on my final assignment for this unit, a creative piece of writing and exegesis.

Or maybe go to bed early.

And this was a day off……

Sunday Fun – Day 6 NaBloPoMo 2016

06 Nov 2016 5 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Cooking, Produce, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hi friends,

Firstly, an update on the potatoes from yesterday’s post. Last night’s dinner was simple but delicious – and the first decent meal I’d been able to eat for a few days thanks to a vicious gastro bug!

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On the plate besides the chicken breast was the first of the broad beans, Pink Eye potatoes with fresh new season garlic butter and a lot of of lightly steamed silverbeet (aka Swiss Chard and possibly my favourite vegetable). Sadly, the carrot came from the shop, I didn’t have time to check the carrot tub out on the balcony.

Today, my friend Karen and her daughter Georgia came round to visit and we had a great time, feeding the animals (we all got to cuddle Bernard Black Bunny) sharing lunch and playing board games. Karen and Georgia were my neighbours for almost seven years and though they only moved a few streets away a couple of weeks ago, I miss them dearly. It was brilliant just hanging out and laughing together.

Board games are big in this house and we’ve managed to get quite a collection together over the years. Today we played a great little bluffing/card game called Sheriff of Nottingham and the wonderful Betrayal at House on the Hill, which is incredibly suspenseful and loads of fun.

For those of you interested in such things, I highly recommend TableTop, created by two of my favourite geeks, Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton. Here, Wheaton hosts and plays through board games with fellow celebrity geeks. Don’t be fooled, this isn’t necessarily for kids – some of the language and games definitely have adult themes – but is well worth watching if you’re interested in seeing how particular games are played. I view it as a very entertaining “try before I buy” tool 😀

Meanwhile, I’m on the home stretch with a big essay. My deadline is tomorrow night, so I’m off to write as much as possible tonight (as long as it takes) and edit it all tomorrow when I’ve had some sleep.

And it wouldn’t be right unless I finished with a gratuitous cute bunny pic ❤

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Take care wherever you are friends and let me know if you have a favourite board game – I’m always interested in new additions to the collection 😀

For the Love of the Humble Spud – Day 5 NaBloPoMo 2016

05 Nov 2016 4 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Cooking, Produce, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening Tags: , , , , , , ,

Winter in southern Tasmania this year was a very mild affair (compared to 2015’s coldest winter in 50 years) and at the end of autumn I was given a present by a gardening friend. It was a Pink Fir Apple potato, considered by many to be the ultimate potato for salads.

Regular readers of my blog might remember that once this precious little beastie had started to sprout, I cut it up and planted it in a tub in the greenhouse to see if I could grow potatoes over winter here. You can see the original post here, which includes a link to Dan, who was my inspiration for this whole experiment. Though Pink Fir Apples aren’t without their problems, being quite susceptible to many common diseases, I thought it was worth a try.

Originally, my plan was to harvest them after roughly 100-120 days but I decided to let it go to about 140 days from planting. Space in the greenhouse is starting to tighten up and once I start potting up basil in the coming weeks, it will be at a premium so I decided today was the day!

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Pink Fir Apple Potatoes in a Pot

The yield wasn’t fabulous but I learned a lot from the experience, most notably that I should try this again with different types of potatoes – and that I really do need a bigger greenhouse! Pink Fir Apple are a very late cropping variety and in hindsight, I probably should’ve waited longer before harvesting these or used a different variety. Oh well, next time 😀

I also had a couple of Pink Eye seed potatoes that I planted at the same time. Pink Eye is a delicious, determinate early variety, beloved throughout Tasmania. The pot wasn’t as big but it’s yielded a nice little feed of lovely, fresh spuds for tonight’s dinner. Now I’m feeling better a simple dinner of potatoes, salad (from the garden of course) and a little grilled meat sounds really delicious!

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These aren’t the only potatoes I’ve got this year. There’s Pink Eyes and Nicola’s in the ground that are quite advanced and looking extremely healthy, and I recently planted a swag of seed potatoes that I bought from a local company Tasmanian Gourmet Potatoes. I’ve always had great results with their certified seed potatoes and they’re great to deal with. Also, they will post to anywhere in Australia, so worth checking out! This year I bought Red Norland, Pentland Dell, Patrones and Carlingford

My personal favourite is the Red Norland, a delicious potato with beautiful white flesh and gorgeous red skin. Lovely in salads, but equally good baked or boiled and they seem to keep quite well.

Red Norland Seed Potatoes

Red Norland Seed Potatoes

They’re all in the ground now and most have sprouted through their blanket of mulch. As you can see from the Red Norlands above, I allowed them to sprout or “chit” (I love that word!) in a brown paper bag before planting out. I’m hoping for a decent crop from all and determine which are the best varieties for storing over winter. Like the garlic crop, I’m trying to grow enough to cover my household’s needs through winter. This is reasonably demanding considering the amount of ground a crop of potatoes will tie up and the number of roasts we have through the colder months.

Not bad considering I wasn’t all that keen on potatoes when I was a kid! But as Sam said to Gollum in Lord of the Rings, “boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew”. In the years I’ve been living in Tasmania, I’ve become quite a convert to the charms of the humble spud ❤

And to finish, another completely unrelated cute bunny pic – because cute bunny 😀

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A Quick Friday Update – Day 4 NaBloPoMo 2016

04 Nov 2016 3 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Produce, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening Tags: , , , , , , ,

It’s been a mixed week. I’m trying to finish a uni paper and keep up with spring planting in the garden. Meanwhile, gastro has stormed through my household and has left all of us feeling a little less than wonderful!

There have been lots of good things though.

The last couple of mornings, I’ve been lifting more heads and weeding the beds as I go. While this year’s garlic crop will be less than last year on average, the heads are undoubtedly bigger.

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As soon as the garlic’s gone I’ll be planting advanced tomato seedlings. A few weeks ago, I found an out of date packet of Debarao (aka De Barao) tomato seed while I was planting out this year’s summer vegetables and decided to plant the packet as well as some fresh seed. Amazingly, the new packet did nothing but the out of date all came up. I’ll be pricking these out into cardboard grow tubes in the coming weeks and probably giving a lot away to friends!

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And finally, Bernard Black the Bunny is settling in really well. He is playful and cute and like most rabbits at that age, has a voracious appetite and the cutest, biggest, fluffy paws ❤

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New Traditions – Day 3 NaBloPoMo 2016

03 Nov 2016 3 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Baking, Biography, Brewing, Cooking, Preserving, Produce, Urban Farming, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m writing to you with the smell of new bread baking in the kitchen. It’s one of those things that spells “home” to me though my family weren’t into yeast-based cookery when I was a kid. We had bunches of dried herbs, cured meats and always pickled onions. I also remember the rows of Fowlers Vacola preserving jars (the Australian equivalent of Ball Mason canning jars) full of bottled fruit that my parents would put by every summer so we could eat apricots and peaches in the middle of winter.

I still put food by, it’s a deeply ingrained habit that I doubt I’ll ever fall out of love with. Instead of bunches of herbs hanging (and the luxury of a walk in pantry) I have new traditions – a dehydrator, a set of tall stockpots and a thermometer for water bath processing and a ragtag assortment of jars that I routinely wash, sterilise, fill, process, store and use.

My “pantry” is a bookshelf with a curtain to cut out the light and here I keep my preserved cordials, bottled and dried fruit, basil and lemon oils, homemade apple cider vinegar, bread flour and spare egg cartons. At the moment it’s mostly empty jars. There’s no bottled fruit left, one lonely roll of fruit leather from last summer, some pickled and dried chilies from the autumn harvest and a few bottles of sauce, fruit cordial, basil oil and flavoured vinegar.

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To this day, I’m not sure why we never made bread when I was a child. I suspect with six of us in the house when I was young, it would’ve been much easier and less time consuming to buy bread than make it! My mother was a wonderful baker and I learned many delicious cake and biscuit recipes from her. Every Saturday was baking day and after lunch, the kitchen table would be cleared to make enough biscuits and small cakes for the coming week. In winter there would also be a few dozen Cornish pasties that would end up reheated as lunches, a savoury Pasty Pie and at least one large cake for the weekend and any visitors that might call in.

For those of you who’ve followed my blog for a while, I have a “pet” sourdough plant I named Wee Beastie. She lives on a shelf in the kitchen, where she watches everything that goes on and demands feeding daily. I started her off on new year’s day 2015 so she’s approaching her 2nd birthday.

Wee Beastie - watching and waiting!

Wee Beastie – note the air bubbles visible through the glass jar!

This living culture requires no other yeast and is a wonderfully frothy mix. My basic recipe is roughly 2 cups of Wee Beastie, 2 cups of strong bread flour, 2 teaspoons of bread improver and some olive oil to stop the dough getting too sticky. Sometimes I add half a cup of rye flour and add a couple of tablespoons of water so the dough is fairly soft. Once this is knocked together in a bowl I turn it out onto my wooden bench and knead it thoroughly for about 5 minutes. Then I make it into a loaf shape, coat my hands in olive oil (about a tablespoon) and massage the oil into the loaf, putting it in a bread pan to prove.

I’m essentially lazy, so it only gets one chance to rise. Normally, I knock the loaf together in the afternoon, leave the dough to rise overnight and bake it the following morning. The results of this slow process are pretty spectacular and incredibly delicious!

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Even when it’s a few days old, this bread makes the best toast, perfect with a poached egg  ❤ I’ve even sliced it very thin and toasted it for an alternative to bought crispbread.

Meanwhile, I have to go. There’s an essay to write and (in the name of science) fresh bread to taste test 😉

 

Garlic Goodness – Day 2 NaBloPoMo 2016

02 Nov 2016 4 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Produce, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening Tags: , , , , , , ,

Hi everyone,

It’s been raining again, something I’ve been saying a lot this year! For November in the southern hemisphere however, this can sometimes be more of a curse than a blessing. Root crops can be susceptible to fungal diseases and I’ve seen potatoes rot in the ground from too much water. I noticed last weekend that a few of my garlic plants (the ones I could see through the weeds that keep coming back!) were sending up flower buds so this morning I took the time to check near the edge of the bed.

Usually, this involves removing the mulch and then gently (and patiently) scraping the soil away from the stem until I can see the shoulder or top of the bulb. But today the soil was so soft and damp it was very easy – a little bit too easy really! At this stage of the year, my garlic is usually just starting to swell and hasn’t as a rule formed a head yet.

Imagine my surprise when I pulled this monster out of the ground!

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There was a little bit of mould on the outer layer but with careful curing I think the crop should be fine. Last year I lifted my main crop in mid November but I think I’m going to be looking seriously at getting most of it out of the ground this coming weekend.

Knowing when to harvest garlic is another one of those arcane arts, and there’s a lot of disagreement about it. Some people wait until the leaves are turning brown, but I find the heads have often separated and don’t store as well if I leave them in the ground that long. Usually, I look for any where flower heads (also called scapes) are forming and if the lower leaves are starting to die back, all the better!

Curing is another often overlooked necessity if you want to store your heads into winter. A friend in the UK lays his garlic out in a greenhouse for a couple of days until the outer skin starts to harden and any soil in the roots dries and falls off. If I did that (even here in Hobart) I’d have mushy baked garlic by sundown! I like to hang mine by the tops behind the laundry door for about a week. It’s warm and dry there but with good air flow and very importantly shaded from the fierce afternoon sun. After they’ve got a tough outer skin, I clean up the roots with a paring knife and roughly plait them for storage – again behind the laundry door. Last year my household ran out of home-grown garlic in August (a record for us!) but I’m hoping for September this time 🙂

For the sake of being logical and making a comparison, I checked another garlic plant further in the bed – and pulled out another fully formed monster. Do note, my hands are quite small but these heads are really big!

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Ultimately, no one knows your garden better than you, all its microclimates and idiosynchrasies. What works for one gardener might not work for another. You have to make your own decision about when to harvest and be prepared to get it wrong sometimes, as I have some years. The key is to learn from it and not give up!

Let me know what your experiences are too – I’m always keen to hear from other gardeners 😀

A Month of Blog Posts – Day 1 NaBloPoMo 2016

01 Nov 2016 1 Comment

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Chickens, Creative Writing, Produce, Rabbits, Tasmania, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hey everyone,

It’s that time of year again! November means my annual writing challenge – a month of daily blog posts, otherwise known as NaBloPoMo. With the year I’ve had, it would be very easy to rehash the sadness and grief but I mean to focus on the many positives that surround me.

Having said that, I’ve recently been quite seriously ill, but with support from those closest and my GP providing the right medication I’m feeling much, much better.

Also, today has started out especially wonderful. Early this morning, our new (and rather dashing) black British Giant buck arrived. He’s only 8 weeks old and impossibly cute. Like most British Giants, he’s also very affectionate and loves being held and petted, but if he gets to the size of his parents he’s going to be a handful to cuddle! In keeping with the household tradition, we wanted a “B” name for him. And given our love of the iconic comedy series Black Books there was only one thing to do.

Meet Bernard Black ❤

Bernard B Bunny

Bernard B Bunny

There’s heaps of good things happening in the garden, a bumper crop of broad beans and snow peas as well as the the usual forest of kale, silverbeet and various salad greens that produced right through winter. This is despite a very wet spring that’s kept the soil temperature quite low and of course the chickens are in full laying mode at the moment. But at the moment I’m focusing on university and my current unit, Writing for Children and Young Adults.

Because I’ve been ill, I’ve fallen behind with the work but I have a fabulous tutor and I’ve been granted an extension on a major essay. It’s not an area I feel particularly comfortable with despite teaching music to young folks as well as adults. I think it’s because I’ve never specifically thought about writing for those audiences and I tend to read so voraciously that I make little or no distinctions about genres. For example, I think of novels such as Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Wind in the Willows or The Hobbit as great fiction rather than children’s books – and of course, all those titles fulfill both criteria. As a result I’ve learned a tremendous amount and found the unit quite interesting at many levels.

But I must get back to work, slaving over academic papers through the Griffith University online library and trying to make sense of my early notes. Then I can justify spending some quality time with Bernard, Boudica and Bella later this afternoon 😀

I’ll be back tomorrow, be well friends!

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