Provisions

This was our harvest of Mountain Pepper for the season.  Not a huge amount but not bad for one small tree.
















I had a go at hot cross buns for Resurrection Sunday.

Not bad for a first shot, and they were delicious.

Now there's a tale to these.
I decided to make plum wine.
I had picked heaps of Greengage and Golden Drop plums from Rachel's orchard, and Sue had frozen them.  Freezing makes them easier to pulp once they are thawed, so I set about making up about 7 litres.  Problem: it's hard to tell frozen plums and apricots apart, so instead of plum wine we ended up with plumpicot wine.
It has resulted in a delightful dessert style wine, with a refreshing fizz.
We also experimented with rhubarb wine - 7 litres initially - and the results were so good that we immediately cleaned out the rhubarb patch and now have bottled 29 more litres.
I also made 10 litres of cider from our own apples and have 25 litres more brewing from apples from Rachel's orchard.
I also have 15 litres of ginger beer brewing.
All told, we have about 90 litres of hooch either bottled or brewing....and I wouldn't average a standard drink per day.  Looks like I'm just about covered for winter.

But there's always a catch.  That 40 litres which is brewing will need to be bottled and we're out of bottles.  A message has gone out to friends to save their soft drink bottles.  I prefer the PET bottles to glass for a good reason: I don't like glass grenades.  PET bottles go out of shape before they will burst, so there's plenty of warning if pressure needs to be eased.

I ran the costs.  Cider costs us nothing when I rely on the natural yeast, or less than 1cent per litre if I use champagne yeast.  The other country wines come out at about 15 cents per litre because of the added sugar.  At those prices I could put up with ordinary hooch, but this stuff has all been great.  Ok, the blackberry wine had a stinkbug in it, which made it less than completely wonderful, but otherwise...

Autumn is in full swing

The winds are blowing.  The apples have all been picked.  Plums, apricots, and rhubarb have been converted into country wines.   Cider and ginger beer are brewing.  Kilos of fruit are in the freezer.  It's the "season of mellow fruitfulness."
Since my last post, Poppy had her calf.  Unfortunately it was still born.  She also seems to have had a hernia.  I need to have the vet check it out to be sure, but, if she had one, it means we won't be able to breed her again.

 Poppy's udder was huge and she had plenty of milk, but her teats were too small to milk by hand - especially the rear teats.  It was impossible to get milk from the rear quarters, despite them dripping milk constantly.  Those tiny teats were just too small to be able to squeeze properly.  At least I was able to get two fingers on the front teats but, again, they were so small that it took more than half an hour to get a litre out of her.
So I've had to dry her off to avoid mastitis.  Thankfully, drying off went without any problems and she's in fine health.
If - and it's a big "if"- we are able to breed her again, I'm hoping that the calf will be able to get onto the teats and stretch them out enough that she becomes milkable.
The upshot of all that is that this year's milk, butter, cheese and yoghurt will now need to come from the supermarket instead of the paddock, and our beef supply is put back a year.

Our batteries finally collapsed totally and we spent a few months running everything off the panels and generator, and with no power at night.  Very frustrating.
We were able to pick up four deep-cycle batteries from a chap north of Hobart for $1600 - less than half price.  The vendor, Michael, honoured our deal despite getting a better offer.
They are now installed and working fine.  We still turn the fridges and freezer off at night, but are making float every day, and staying above 80% charge all night.


Covid-19 is doing its thing.  Tassie has over 200 cases, which gives us the highest per capita infection rate in the country.  Isolation is not too hard for us as we need to go around to the cow most days to check her water, move the electric fence, etc.  On top of that, 10 years up here on the hill has taught us to cope with isolation.  The hardest thing is knowing family can't come down, and we miss church too.
Two of our friends have had the virus, but seem to be recovering fairly well.