seedlings and the beds

Back in mid August we began to germinate and raise seedlings for our summer garden. The unreliable length and strength of our Tasmanian summers means that we need to extend the season by starting frost sensitive seedlings indoors or under plastic cloches. We nurture these babies for about 6-8 weeks, potting them up as they grow, making sure that they do not get stressed until November when it is safe to plant them out. Tomatoes account for about half of all of these seedlings with about 8 varieties represented; Stupice for the earliest producers; Mamma Mia and Costoluto for high production for saucing; and a bunch of other heirloom varieties for taste sensations. Other seedlings started in this manner include eggplants (Ping Tung), chillis, capsicums, zucchinis, pumpkins, rockmelons and cucumbers.



We also have two garden beds with low plastic hothouse structures, which we use for establishing plants before November. We have bush beans, lettuce, coriander, dill and parsley coming along in these.

Two weeks after rotary hoeing the garden area, Stan rehoed and used the furrowing attachment to create paths and, not incidentally, our raised beds.


This is where all of the seedlings will go as well as a whole bunch of other stuff that we sow directly. Watch this dirt!

pizza

Some years ago, we built an adobe oven so that we could make good bread, pizza and other things that cook in wood-fired ovens. It's pretty hard to get a decent pizza in Tasmania and even in Australia. Most of the doughs have all sorts of weird conditioners, the bases too thick and the cheese cheddary. Then to top it all off there are too many toppings.
It's sad because it is not hard to make a good, simple, traditional pizza.
The dough should only have flour, water, salt and yeast. To have pizzas ready for dinner, make a batter of flour, water and yeast as early in the morning as possible. Cover and leave to ferment until just before you light your oven. For us, this is 3 hours before we cook the first pizza. By this time, the batter should be bubbly and yeasty smelling. This is where all the flavour comes from.
Add quite a bit of salt and enough flour to turn it into a pliable dough.


Knead for 15 minutes and then oil the ball of dough and place it back in the bowl, covered, until the fire is ready.
We make a simple sauce with our bottled, pureed tomatoes. Just reduce the sauce with a little salt and some oregano added. The cheese is a bit of an issue. It's almost impossible to get real bufalo mozzarella in Australia and if I could get it, I would just gobble it up. We use a cheese variously called cappriciosa or fior de latte. It's really good on pizza and similar to a mozzarella.
Briony is our champion dough puller. She pulls a beautiful thin base which we top with some tomato, a bit of cheese grated (even though it should really just be ripped apart) and then one or two toppings.


It takes about 2 minutes to cook in a hot oven ..............


................and it's difficult to wait for long enough so that the roof of your mouth doesn't burn.

casareccia

It's that lean time of the year. New plantings are going in and lettuces are getting close to being ready but in the garden there's only kale, cime di rapa (a leafy brassica), silverbeet, leeks, celery and a bit of parsley.
A nice pasta dish can be made with cime di rapa and/or kale. This could be made with orechiette (little ears) or casareccia, which although means "home-made" in Italian, usually isn't.
To make casareccia, make a stiff but just pliable dough with 4 cups durum wheat flour (we are currently using some Australian grown and milled stuff called Bellata gold which is great) and about 1 1/4 cups of water and 1/2 tsp salt, knead it well and let it rest in a plastic bag. Resting relaxes the gluten and allows the pasta to be worked without springing back.
Roll the dough into sausages about 2cm in diameter. On a lightly floured cutting board use a sharp, small knife to cut off a disc about 3mm thick then use the flat of the blade and "smear" the dough away from you with the sharp edge of the blade pointing towards the sausage of dough.


Because of the strength of the dough, it won't actually smear but will roll itself into a loose, folded spiral that emerges magically from the blade.

To make the "sauce", heat 1/4 cup of good olive oil (we use extra virgin Tasmanian made by Rocky Caccavo at Campania), add 2 anchovies and allow them to dissolve in the oil then add two diced onions and fry until transparent. Add 1/2 cup of pinenuts and allow them to colour a little before adding 5 cloves of chopped garlic and about 1 dozen chopped cherry tomatoes (our frozen ones from last summer). Once the tomatoes soften add 3 packed cups of chopped cime di rapa or kale or both. Mix in, put the lid on and allow the greens to wilt briefly.
After cooking the pasta in plenty of salted, boiling water, drain and toss with the sauce and a generous extra amount of olive oil and salt to taste. Serve with grated cheese, chilli and pepper.

confit duck legs

We raise muscovy ducks for meat. They're fabulously bred because they're calm and quiet. They have a voracious appetite for snails, slugs, waste fruit and greenery (especially brassica).


About one month ago, we killed our third batch of ducks - the autumn hatchlings. Killing 7 in one day is a big undertaking psychologically and physically but once we get into that frame of mind it's worth staying there and getting the job done.
We hardly ever eat the ducks whole because the breasts require much less cooking that the rest. So, breasts, legs, wings and backs are separated and frozen.
Recently I made this dish of rare and crispy skinned duck breast, sausage made from the leg meat, sugarloaf cabbage braised in homemade hard apple cider and crispy parsnip cake.


One thing we like doing with the legs is to make confit. I have twice followed this recipe and it works really well.


Here's a meal made with confit duck leg, panfried duck livers, crispy potatoes, baked baby fennels and braised savoy cabbage. Yum!


The other day, I melted the fat and pulled out 3 confit legs which I then pan fried until the skin was crispy. I pulled the meat - it was deliciously tender - off the bones and served it with silverbeet (swiss chard) and leeks wilted with a little of the confit fat then dressed with a few drops of apple cider vinegar and a big dollop of creamy mashed Kennebec potatoes. Yum!

what this is all about....

We met as Ph.D. students 16 years ago and from that time we knew we'd buy a piece of land somewhere, someday and build an eco-house and grow a big food garden and eat well together. Along the way, we have belonged to 3 community gardens, 2 in Australia and 1 in Seattle where we lived for a year.
In 1999, we bought our dream piece of land in Tasmania. It is 8 acres of ancient creek-bottom - sandy-silt with a reasonable amount of organic matter - that had been grazed by cattle for the previous 25 years.
We built 2 temporary gardens on this land while we were building our strawbale, passive-solar house. Both of these were not very successful probably because we were still quite inexperienced gardeners. Eventually, we settled on the site, just to the east of our house, of our orchard and garden. We planted our trees, fenced them in with an almost-possum-proof fence and planted vegetables in a few raised beds at the northern end (this is the southern hemisphere).
Over the years, our vegetable garden has grown to about 400 square metres. Late in 2007, we decided that we needed to expand the vegetable section. So, we moved trees in the winter of 2008 and cleared an opening in the middle of the orchard (the picture shows the setup as it is right now) that we could cultivate with our newly aquired BCS two-wheel tractor (more on this later).

preparing the ground, germinating seeds

It's early spring in Tasmania. The almond, apricots and peaches have blossomed and set fruit and the quinces, pears and most of the apples are blossoming now. We decided that we needed more room for growing our vegetables so, over the winter, we moved a few of our fruit trees to open up the centre of the orchard for market-garden-style plantings in addition to the raised beds that we have used in previous years. This allows us to use my favourite toy - the BCS two-wheel tractor - and hopefully save my back in the long run. For those who don't know, this is a walk-behind tractor with a power take off that allows different implements to be fitted. We have the rotary hoe and mulching slasher. Both of these are 80 cm wide so that we can till, grow and mow the same width beds.


Using the tractor, I broke the turf last autumn and planted a green manure blend of oats, lupins, peas and broad/fava beans.


I have just now, as the flowers on the peas showed their beautiful purples, slashed them and tilled them in shallowly.
I think after about one week, I'll till again and use the ridger to form the beds for our main spring and summer plantings.