Hi All,
Bezial is begging again. He has a sore leg because of a spate of rainy cold weather that started yesterday and a desire to race around like a spring chicken when he is effectively a middle aged man (something like those sad 35+ year olds that carry their skateboards everywhere…). This means that he doesn’t walk today and it’s my day to stay home with him while Steve walks Earl. We can’t NOT walk Earl…our home is too precious to us and as penniless student hippies we can’t afford to replace what his overactive teeth tend to expend that excess energy on when he doesn’t get his regular quotient of exercise. Earl gone = Bezials free reign at trying to get me to open the treat cupboard and feed him till he bursts. You can’t blame him for trying though. He is part labrador…his entire digestive system is Labrador along with his desire to frolic maniacally in any form of water from the chooks water bowl to the sea. He “looks” like a lovely big black American Staffordshire terrier BUT in actuality he is channelling his inner labrador most of the time. Anyone who knows dogs well knows that Labrador’s come a very VERY close second to Beagles in the gutsy dog stakes. Bezial has always had a tendency to eat to excess (a bit like his female caretaker to be honest!) and we once gave him 2kg of prime dog steak to see if he could eat it all when he was a pup…he did! Earl, even though he appears to be a heifer, has trouble with eating too much food and will leave some at the end of most of his meals. He tends to be a lot pickier than Bezial about what he will and won’t eat but unlike Bezial, he doesn’t use food avoidance to get his point across! The dehydrated dog steak treats that we give our dogs are Bezials snack of choice. We forgot to turn off the dehydrator when drying out the last of the steak the other day which resulted in amazingly crisp and crunchy meaty goodness and Bezial has his mind firmly centred on getting as many of those crispy meaty treats into his ever expanding girth as those big brown puppy dog eyes will allow. I am a sucker for those eyes. I threw Earls leftover steak out to one of the feral cats last night because of big cat eyes…I am also a quintessential over-eater so I sympathise with Bezial…I, too, am channelling my inner labrador and so am able to allow him his space to sulk when I put the lid on the treats and put them up on the treat shelf.
Here’s a few gratuitous grub shots…veggies ready for roasting
Barley and lemons…what more could a girl want?
Barley combined with mushrooms, capsicum and onions being sauted ready to make barley risotto
Veggie stock added to the barley risotto…I can’t find a photo of the finished result but it tasted delicious 🙂
Did anyone else out there realise that it’s almost Christmas time?! One of the blogs that I follow reminded me of it when I was reading my rss feed reader the other day and I almost fell off my chair! No time to panic about the Mayan calendar…CHRISTMAS IT COMING! Incidentally…the native Mayan descendants are a bit pissed about it all to be honest. They say that the local governments in South America are making money out of crazy foreigners booking “end of the world” trips to South America to party hearty while they, themselves, are celebrating the end of the old calendar and the beginning of the new. No-one is sponsoring their own new beginnings parties because there isn’t any money in new beginnings…only wildly spending desperate people who think that they won’t have credit card debts in February 2013 (let alone Christmas debt) so they are willing to go out on an exponential limb and party like its 1999. Christmas WILL come folks and with it, the usual hype, overspending, overeating and credit card woes in February… it’s inevitable…or is it? We are bollocking Christmas off this year. Not the sentiment or the actual meaning, but the rubbish that goes with it. This year we are going to volunteer (already have in fact 😉 ) at a local community church event aimed at giving people alone at Christmas time some Christmas cheer. After we get home we are going to cobble together a delicious simple meal of our favourite things and share a bottle of something tipsy to allow us to really feel grateful for our lot. We have been so very fortunate to be given the chances that we have in our lives and we just want to share that around and pay back some of what we have been given in kind. Consumerism? “Forgedaboudit!”…not this year world! You aint gettin’ ANY of our hard grafted moola! We need to stuff our moth eaten sock for prospective bills and permaculture practices so there’s no room in the inn for your overinflated projections of what makes people happy…Christmas no longer makes people happy (aside from people who manufacture anything with an “I” in front of it…and most of them are on minimum wage in China somewhere and could care less about Christmas). Let’s all take back the real meaning of Christmas this year and get stuck into feeling grateful and thankful for our lot. We really are a lucky bunch you know…let’s start acting like we know it!
MORE gratuitious grub shots…this time of the beginnings of an amazing pasta sauce containing caramelised onions and heaps of garlic, capsicum and mushrooms
Here’s the middle of the delicious pasta sauce…
and here’s the end result! Thick, rich and delicious…much like many a boy band member! 😉
And lastly heres an action shot of an incredibly delicious dhal that I made earlier in the week
Talking about Christmas has me contemplating our next homemade Christmas tree and most probably the photographic content of a future post. We have gotten quite adventurous over the last few years with what construes a Christmas “tree” here on Serendipity Farm. As rabid hippy tree hugging horticulturalists we refuse to kill a tree in the name of a seasonal holiday. This smacks of pagan sacrifice to be honest! The borers ate last year’s tree. It would seem somewhat significant because it was also mum’s last year on earth and her final Christmas with us. She died not long after Christmas and I am contemplating burying our Christmas tree somewhere on Serendipity Farm to make a bit of a statement. Steve is contemplating having me committed because aside from wanting to bury a handful of borer eaten branches, Serendipity Farm is predominately comprised of 1 part soil to 9 parts rocks and there is NO way that he is going to dig a large hole for anything let alone some mouldering bits of twig. The alternative is to give our last year’s Christmas tree a full Viking funeral where we burn it on a pile and reinvest it into the soil rather than make a raft for it and send it out into the Tamar River which is tempting BUT we are too lazy and busy at the moment to go to that sort of an effort… What are we going to build this year? Not too sure. Maybe an homage to a Christmas tree in the form of a vertical gabion herb spiral with Christmas baubles on it? Probably not…that’s a little bit far gone for even me but who knows… 2013 might just be the year that I finally channel my inner hippy and go nuts and totally dispense with the traditional and usher in a radical new ethos…but I doubt it…that would mean actually building said edifice to herbs and that would mean that both Steve and I would have to meet in the middle of a project that requires more than a day or so of combined effort which inevitably results in one of us exploding (usually me) and the other one sulking (usually Steve). We certainly don’t have a shortage of rocks to donate to the project!
Here’s proof that you don’t need a shmicko camera and light box to take a good photo…I was attempting to take a photo of my garlic scissor hands for Halloween and noticed that this photo looks “FABULOUS” Darlings! I have decided to throw everything to the 4 winds and run off to become a famous French photographer…on second thoughts…I just can’t be quite bothered at the moment…I will just keep my latent amazing photography under my hat 😉
Earl sitting on one of the kitchen chairs waiting till I stop pointing that bloody thing at him till and turn back to the computer so that he can put his nose into that white bowl to the right and steal walnuts to his hearts content! He loves stealing walnuts and cracking them on the floor for unsuspecting bare footers to step on early in the morning…(you will notice that I have reverted back to my crappy photography but whatchagonna do eh? 😉 )
One of Earl’s stuffed toys fell off the deck when he was playing with it yesterday and Moustachio found it. He is mid destruction in this photo. Anyone who knows cat’s will know the position for destruction and those hind feet were going like pistons! You can see how he got his name in this shot
Steve says that he is instituting a new Boxing Day tradition on Serendipity Farm. He is going to tow the barely used aluminium tinny that dad left him down to the jetty and go fishing. No sports for him, unless he hooks a shark which isn’t an impossibility as we are just around the corner from the sea and Devil’s Elbow, the name of the little estuarine pocket of the Tamar River that we live on, which is a shark nursery and sanctuary. In that case he will be probably towed out to sea and will have to row his way back and that will be enough sports for him to last all year! The funny thing about spring is that time seems to go MUCH quicker than the rest of the year. I feel like I only just posted my last post and Steve reminded me that it’s time to post again tonight! We are doing a lot of work in the garden at the moment to stave off more work in the future. We have been dealing with the blackberries that are threatening to take off and are removing them systematically. We have a garden bed that needs to be totally cleared out and replanted along with a very large Cotoneaster tree that also needs removing. We are then going to renovate a pond, clear out the jungle part of Serendipity Farm and start planting out some of our precious trees. We have to irrigate the trees that we have planted out so far and we have to install a gate on the side of the house so that we can get out to the veggie garden beds and relocated compost heap more easily… oh yeah…we have to relocate the compost heap! Spring is a time of barely concealed blind panic where you spend your days trying to outrun the weeds (and usually lose).
Note the blackberry tangles in this area of the garden…
The darned chooks certainly did!
Here’s another one of their well camouflaged nests inundated with brambles
We were outside bums up and heads down hacking away at blackberries when we heard a chicken’s tell-tale egg song. We are more than aware that the hens have moved their regular nests “somewhere else” and so we decided to have a look-see to see if we couldn’t find where. We found one of their nests and heard another hen down in the jungle area and if they are nesting there good luck to them! We will be sorting out which hens we do and don’t want to keep soon and will be selling some of them off. After we do so, we will be making a large enclosed area for the hens and Yin to live in with a gravity fed deep litter run. We want to be able to mulch our garden beds and our hens are most determined that we won’t. This is one battle that I fully intend to win! I have noticed that since we cleared out the side garden all sorts of plants are starting to grow. Lots of aquilegias have emerged and as waterwise perennials you can’t do much better. I noticed that some of the tall blue salvia that used to grow down next to the bird baths has shown its face in the garden. I thought that I had lost it all but it would seem that it was there all along, just tangled up in blackberries and unable to shine. We need to ensure that the soil stays moist over the coming summer months. Northern Tasmania has an extended period of hot weather without much rain. We have been leaving debris and branches around the wilder areas so that the chooks won’t scratch the soil bare but until we contain and reduce their numbers we can’t stop them from doing what hens do best. After we reduce their numbers and contain them we can start using chook tractors to get the chooks to work where WE want them to work. No more eggs off in the wilderness! No more random ferals living in trees…no more chickens emerging from the shrubs to be hoovered up by the feral cats. In effect, we will be able to take back control of our chook population and contain them where we want. I am sure that there will be some rumbling protestations by the hens but too bad…they have had it all their way up until now and the humans are taking back the farm! 😉
Billbergia nutans (Queen’s Tears), an epiphytic bromeliad native from Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina is a very hardy plant. I recently divided it in thirds and all 3 of them are flowering like crazy after being planted into the garden
Acer palmatum ‘Beni shidare’ one of Steve’s lovely dissectum weeping maples
Another showy maple…this one is called “Peaches and Cream”
Our veggies are happily growing and we bought 2 more punnets when we were last in town. We decided on some rainbow chard and a punnet of mixed zucchinis (yellow, regular green and some light green ones). We also bought a packet of Italian kale seed and found a site online that showed us how to make a seed block maker to make our own seed blocks for planting in using our own customised seed raising mix. Our dried beans that we put into my rarely used automatic sprouter have all started sprouting and we will be planting them into soil tomorrow. I am excited to see what we are able to grow and will be saving seed from this year for next year’s bean futures. Most of the punnets of seedlings that we bought are not heritage seed but we didn’t have much choice this year. Next year will be a very different situation and we will be buying heritage seed and planning out our garden beds much more carefully next year. You have to start somewhere and we have at least “started”. We just fed the dogs a dozen hard boiled eggs and they will get more tomorrow. We have too many eggs! The end result of the dogs degustory delight at being able to freely imbibe eggs on a regular basis leaves a LOT to be desired and we might have to think of something else to do with our excess eggs. Reducing the chook population is a good start but we are going to have to start thinking of ways to use up our egg surpluses to make the best use of our resources. Cake baking time methinks! It might even be Pavlova time!
Nectarine futures on Serendipity Farm!
Abies koreana ‘Silberlocke’. Can you see why we love conifers?
“Get eating boys…we have 12 dozen to get through!” 😉
Time to wrap up another post and get it all packaged up and tied with a bow to send to your inboxes. I have a few interesting ideas up my sleeve regarding starting a seed pen-pal group to share heritage seed in Australia. I follow a Dutch blog that has done this most successfully and would love to do something similar here in Australia. We might not be able to receive certain types of vegetable seeds but most are fine so long as they come from Australia so I am contemplating how to go about starting something like this. It’s a sort of online seed swap that gives people a chance to share the genetic love around. I thought it was a brilliant idea when I read about it on the blog and think that we Aussies shouldn’t have to miss out because of our strict quarantine laws regarding the import of seed material. We have imported a lot of seeds from other countries but you never know how they are going to react and many imported seeds are unviable or unsuited to our climate. It would be amazing to swap seeds amongst like-minded people with minimal cost (aside from postage) involved. Let me know if you think it’s a good idea and if it could work and I might start thinking more strongly about it. See you all on Wednesday and enjoy the rest of your weekend :o)
theroadtoserendipity 
Nov 03, 2012 @ 18:01:59
Hi Fran..such a shame about the Cotoneaster I rather like them. Next door has one and it hangs over our fence. Beautiful tree and the birds love it.
Have to laugh about the dogs eating the eggs especially Bezial being part Lab. Labs can be very gaseous at the best of times.
You could try making 100 year old eggs for the market and the crushed shells stop snails too.
Have you got a small conifer in a pot? I had one for a Chritmas tree once. It was great, put a few baubles and tinsel on it won’t die and drop needles everywhere and when Christmas is over out it goes till next year.
Nov 04, 2012 @ 05:07:57
We were laughing about the dogs eating eggs until we got the end results! 2 scented oil burners couldn’t cope with the backlash ;). The girls have a little conifer in a pot that they asked us for last year. They are using it as their Christmas Tree and it just goes out into the garden for the rest of the year. We like the idea of making our own Christmas tree and it becomes a bit of a challenge seeing what we can come up with. The first year that we became tree-o-philes we headed up to a reserve and found a dead euc branch and sprayed it gold and went from there. Our second one was the straight branch with the ever decreasing spiral of twigs. We loved that tree and as mentioned it is going to have a Viking funeral (or maybe Earl can snip it into small bits and it can ride with the Valkyre’s into Brunhildas furnace? 😉 ). It is a shame about the cotoneaster to be honest. Its the biggest cotoneaster that I have ever seen! It is about 35ft tall. The problem with cotoneasters here in Tasmania is the same problem with forget-me-nots. Over in W.A. they are lovely and useful things… here they are weeds. The birds love them, eat the fruit and spread the seed everywhere and you end up with a garden full to the brim of cotoneasters. I haven’t quite decided to remove it yet. Its a lovely shaped tree and the main spreading cotoneaster here is a small low angular one that I really like called Cotoneaster horizontalis that the bees go nuts for so it might get to stay yet…plus we are lazy and the odds of us taking the huge cotoneaster on are slim so it might just get to stay :).
Nov 03, 2012 @ 19:49:26
I like that wooden bird tree that was up the side of the house. Could you adapt that idea for inside? Then you could even use the lower pots for herbs, but not too low for the destructor (aka Bezial), to get. I was wondering about the gassy side of things with the dogs too. My Golden Retriever used to be like a vacuum cleaner. Anything that went in his bowl was hoovered up so quick you wondered if it was in there in the first place! If anything fell on the floor it was gone baby, no 3 second rule for that dog lol. I would give him a raw egg in milk every week to make his hair nice and shiny, he loved it. All you need now is a cow. Imagine the cheese you could make! I agree with you, spring does seem to just fly by. So much to do to get ready for summer. I use the egg shells in the garden for snails. They disappear quickly, so you have to top them up, but it does seem to keep them off. We bought some mesh blinds to put up at the end of our patio and can’t believe that A: they were on special, and B: they fit perfectly. Now we won’t be blown away in winter and we can sit outside in summer without the sun in our eyes. Bonus 🙂
I love it when things just fall into place. Here’s hoping you have some “falling into place” too. x
Nov 04, 2012 @ 05:17:29
I tend to fall into place in bed at about 9pm nowdays and sleep like the proverbial log! I love our new processes as they give me so much to enjoy. The best rewards are those that pay you back in kind and our vegetable futures are our goal :). Bezial is fussy. His saliva glands must be joined directly to his brain because he refuses food as a form of punishment (to us). He is going through a phase at the moment where he refuses food if he thinks that we are going to go out anywhere without him. We also have to break his treats up into small bits because he thinks that we are trying to poison him! Earl is the destructor dog and has been jumping into the wood box and scrabbling like crazy and tossing wood chips all over the deck. We think that he has “buried” one of his bones in there and he keeps going back to cover it up better 😉 not that Bezial could FIT in the wood box to steal it and we tend to leave stinking bones alone ;). I like the idea of that outdoor bird nest tree being made into an indoor Christmas tree Kymmy! You are a genius! Now all I have to do is figure out where to put it…Have a fantastic Sunday and enjoy those mesh blinds. You are right, it’s lovely when a plan comes together 🙂 give Bruce a hug from me 🙂
Nov 03, 2012 @ 20:07:13
Such a a great post – lots of news about what´s going on, pups, recipes and weird garlic…how much more can you you pack into one post?!
Nov 04, 2012 @ 05:21:12
Cheers for the lovely comment 🙂 We are full on here at the moment and there is so much going on. The growing season on Serendipity Farm is a small one thanks to our temperate climate so we have to make sure that we organise our veggie garden well to make the most of it. We are planting out our beans (scarlet runners, yin yang beans and borlotti’s) today along with some zuchini and some silverbeet. We are thinking about cobbling together more veggie garden beds to handle some more veggie production as we have just planted Cavelo nero and I will need somewhere to put it as it isn’t safe in the garden until the chooks get containerised ;). I am glad that you enjoyed the post and hope you have a lovely Sunday 🙂 by the way, the reno’s are coming along nicely and pretty soon you will be twiddling your thumbs wondering what to do! You might just have to do another reno? 😉
Nov 04, 2012 @ 21:53:19
WIll have to look up Yin Yang beans! Glad things are going well for you – it´s a busy time of year. Yes, we have def got the reno bug, we were talking last night about “what next”?! No decisions yet though….
Nov 05, 2012 @ 04:58:03
A new business perchance? Yin yang beans are lovely round meaty dried beans with a distinct yin yang pattern on them. I prefer dried beans to green beans and the closest I got to planting “beans” was scarlet runners. I adore borlotti and hope that we get a good crop so that I can eat some and save some for next year to start our garden cycles and our seed swap futures 🙂
Nov 04, 2012 @ 06:40:53
Thanks for the mention of Seedy Penpals.
I am very happy to help you out to set it up, as I promised. The logistics are pretty easy (so far!), although we did have a couple of teething problems. It would be fantastic to see this happening in Australia too.
I totally understand the need for quarantine laws, but it would be a shame for you to miss out because of them.
Please feel free to e-mail me, and maybe we can arrange to talk. 🙂
Nov 04, 2012 @ 06:46:46
🙂
Nov 05, 2012 @ 06:19:27
Hi Fran. It seems like things are really coming along for you. I haven’t even given Christmas a second thought – but know I need to! Definitely want to reduce the plastic junk the kids get.
Am with you on the chicken front… they have found a weakness in their fortress and come and go as they please! We just got rid of the last extra rooster yesterday (freestuff.co… we don’t ask what his fate will be) and I’m not all that keen to go through the baby chick thing again – no matter how cute those fluffy bums are! We have more chickens than we need and definitely too many eggs – although not as many as you… have you thought of using those lemons with the eggs to make lemon curd… it is so yummy!
The veggie garden sounds great. My zucchini are still in their pots and beans are still in their seed packets, as sometimes life has this habit of getting in the way of gardening. I hope to sort this out today.
Cheers Sarah : o )
Nov 05, 2012 @ 11:08:27
The dogs are enjoying their dozen eggs every couple of days but we are NOT enjoying the end results of those eggs ;). You and Jean (another blog) have really been inspiring me to get stuck in to the garden and Rabid Little Hippy is putting me to shame! I agree with you about things getting in the way of gardening. We are scrambling to finish off our Diploma in a year. Its a 2 year course but our lecturer said he thought that we could do it in a year so we took his word for it and it looks like he was right :). Its really great to be putting all of the hort knowledge that we gained to good use but its also a bit sad that we have to go back to kindegarten to learn the practical stuff and that is where we need teachers like you wonderful gardeners out there who share what you are doing with us. You truly do make this a whole lot less terrifying 🙂 Good luck with getting out into the garden, we have a day off today but everything seems to be getting in the way of us doing so. I am going to plant out a punnet of mixed zucchini and some rainbow chard today if it kills me! The sun is out and its 25C here in sunny Tasmania…looks like summer is just around the corner 🙂
Nov 05, 2012 @ 09:22:43
I’ll raise you your cotoneaster to our 20 or so water sucking, sucker running silver poplars. 😦 They are stunningly beautiful but the wretched things are shooting up from the runners everywhere including under the house. They are also more than likely absorbing tremendous amounts of water from the creek that runs by the house so we’re leery of replacing them with a beautiful shade tree that adores water but that won’t do its best to reclaim the planet for the trees. So far silver birch are looking like a good option. Once the poplars are gone, the hawthorn is next. It’s fighting back however which my husbands hands can attest to. They wrestled, he lost. Hawthorn fought til first, second and at least third, if not more, blood.
Had a thought, if you’re dairy people, have you ever thought of keeping a goat? They kind of simply ADORE eating blackberries! Might be able to kill two with one there.
Nov 05, 2012 @ 11:17:21
I don’t do dairy and I doubt that Steve would touch goat milk with a barge pole (city dude with city tastes 😉 ) BUT we have been talking about seeing if we can find a goat to eat things. It would certainly have a ball out there in the jungle! We have a hawthorn that we like…we are going to use the haws to make sauces and syrups and we have a spindly sorbus that might be allowed to live should it manage to grow some more leaves than the 2 that it has for its 40ft height. Possums are murdering little bollocks here and we have trouble stopping them from scarfing any tender leaves from our newly planted out babies. The wallabies ate a devils walking stick baby tree the other day…covered in spines and reduced to a stick! They scarfed our sugar maple that we planted out and we are rapidly learning to fence anything that we love. Have you thought of a beautiful willow for your damp patch? Are you after soaking up the water table or a lovely tree? If you are after a lovely shade tree that gives something back, what about a chestnut tree? If you are after water soaking try a taxodium (swamp cypress) as they adore water and will grow in it up to their knees ;). We envy those gorgeous silver poplars along the river further up as we only have melaleucas and blackberries and vinca (that we are about to hack down to try and contain…not the trees, just the blackberries and vinca 😉 ). All in all its hard work to say the least! Country living certainly makes you move! 😉
Nov 05, 2012 @ 10:52:07
Yay for gratuitous food pictures! Looks like you had some great meals going there. Roasted garlic is a favorite of mine, bad breath be darned!
I’m hoping your farm re-takeover isn’t a hostile one. As for all those eggs, if it were me, i would be clogging my arteries with custards… 😛
Nov 05, 2012 @ 11:21:41
I almost spat my breakfast over my computer monitor I was laughing that much over the artery clogging custard :). My son would bath in custard if he was given half a chance (and his boss would let him work in the office naked and immersed in the stuff). I found an article about how to dehydrate and freeze eggs that is interesting…might have a go at that. The dogs are eating their weights worth of them and we are giving them to friends to put under the clucky chooks. Our chook reduction plan can’t come a moment too soon if you ask me! I love food…I love food so much I am thinking about starting a sideline food blog with how to make all sorts of homesteading grub from scratch. I have been hunting online for years to find wonderful things and it might be time to share them with others :). I dare say it won’t happen any day soon as we are WAY too busy with spring springing and all of the work that comes with it. The only hostile thing about our farm takeover is the swearing and muttering when the blackberries try to take back the fort 😉
Nov 06, 2012 @ 05:11:13
I’m so curious to see what kind of “tree” you’ll come up with!
I love that every now and then you have an abundance of one kind of food, I’ll be curious to see more gratuitous food shots show casing what you do with all of those eggs!
And I almost spit out the tea I was drinking when I read this…”Thick, rich and delicious…much like many a boy band member!” You crack me up! 🙂
Nov 06, 2012 @ 05:28:14
lol…hey we middle aged girls can have our fantasies too you know! lol 😉 and we made lasagne from scratch the other day with home made pasta, pasta sauce, meat sauce and bechamel and Steve said it was fantastic (and he is fussy). We used some of the enormous pile of pasta that we ended up with last night in his soup and again he said it rocked. We have heaps more and might just roll it out thinnly (the stupid pasta maker croaked in the middle of our endevours!) and use what is left of the stupid pasta maker (as it shall be known from this point forwards…) to cut it into spaghetti or fettuccini and dry it out and store it. I LOVE being able to do things ourselves. Aside from being frugal, its great fun and you can tailor it to your own tastes. We have some interesting ways to use up eggs aside from shoving them into the dogs as fast as they can eat them (wearing thin at the moment as our house is starting to be redolent of dog-egg scents…) including a most interesting way to dehydrate eggs and to prepare them for freezing. Both ways involve cooking the eggs but I guess that doesn’t matter so long as you prolong the life of the product 🙂 Hey, it’s all fun! 🙂
Nov 06, 2012 @ 22:19:16
I would also bathe in custard. I love It! Bruce is the best custard maker, yum! Do you give the dogs cooked or raw eggs? Raw might not produce so much effusive wind 🙂
Nov 07, 2012 @ 04:56:38
They are too fussy to eat raw eggs Kymmy…they like them boiled! Which of COURSE results in the added effect of gas which is a dogs best friend. If you are able to manipulate your gas to your own advantage you can get things that you want such as your humans to evacuate the area and you can get the door opened when people are ignoring your requests to go out…boiled eggs = clever dogs! 😉
Nov 07, 2012 @ 17:18:30
We had Yin Yang beans last year, Fran! From Territorial Seed. 🙂 They are gorgeous. Also, we use a small Douglas Fir branch for our Christmas “tree”, mounting it on a piece of wood and putting it on a small Solstice altar. Finally, I LOVE Moustachio. What a gorgeous cat!
Nov 07, 2012 @ 17:52:12
How do you prepare the Yin Yang beans? I just got some purple king climbing beans from another blog that I follow and I am going to give them a go this year too. I am getting very excited about our prospective harvest :). We are still thinking about what we are going to do for our Christmas tree…not too sure what yet, but it will probably involve dead wood of some kind…might float it out on a raft and make some tealight candle ornaments to make a self igniting Viking Christmas tree that we can float out into the Tamar River :)…Steve just said that we are going to head off to the beach and pick up some driftwood and we are going to make a driftwood Christmas Tree…bring it on borers! I hope you like salt with your meal! 😉
Nov 07, 2012 @ 18:02:34
I dried them, Fran. They also look like little Orca whales.:) Especially when I re-hydrate them and put them in chili or burritos. We didn’t have a good bean harvest this year. Too wet and cold. Driftwood sounds like a wonderful Christmas Tree. Maybe we’ll do the same. Set it adrift in Puget Sound heading for Tasmania!
Nov 07, 2012 @ 18:12:39
Thats a lovely idea! Think of all of the curious people wondering what the heck that is on Christmas night floating out in the river! We might both get in the newspaper ;). I love dried beans and as we have been promised a long hot summer, maybe we might just get them to ripen. There HAS to be a silver lining to a long hot summer 😦