Lamb chops and giant zucchini

We are really starting to enjoy produce from our own lamb. On Friday we slaughtered the first of the lambs born and breed on our land. Pastured fed natural lamb with no added antibiotics or steroids.


Attached you will see a pic of our giant zucchini that I harvested yesterday. Take your eyes off them for a day or two and they mutate into giant marrows that are a meal in themselves.

As we wind down the year to enjoy the holidays it is wonderful to see what can be accomplished with a little hard work and dedication, and as summer comes into full swing – the rich bounty of our land is evident everywhere.

Don't call a friend, call a farmer

Today I was astounded at how much real farmers know about their livestock. Being just a beginner and learning the ins and outs of my small farm keeps me busy but today’s experience was a prime example of how little I know about livestock farming.


For the past week one of our ram lambs – which are 7 months old – has been limping. He is the smallest of the 3 and I assumed that perhaps he had been trampled on or hit about a bit and would come right after a few days. Needless to say, a week later he is still limping and not using his hind leg at all and it has begun to swell. So I did what any good wanna-be farmer would do – I phoned a real farmer. I had even begun to think that we might have to slaughter this animal early as he just seemed to be getting worse, so when my farmer friend Gerhard De Villiers told me to examine the leg and look for a simple tick I was rather sceptical. So off I went to look for a tick, all the while thinking that Gerhard had to be wrong as this looked much more serious than that and this animal was a goner.

Well, I was soon proved wrong as there in the middle of this poor rams hoof was the largest tick I have ever seen. I couldn’t believe that such a small animal could cause such severe pain and damage. So he has been removed and hopefully our little guy will recover soon and be leaping out in front with his brothers once more. However, I learnt that a real farmer knows his animals and can identify the cause of a problem just by hearing of the symptoms. I have been humbled and hope to one day graduate to being a real farmer, paying as much care and attention to my animals as any good farmer can.

In other news, we seem to be having a game of musical nest boxes in the hen house as each time I go to check on the now 3 hens sitting on eggs in the hen house, they have switched places. So much so that today one of the new chicks could not tell who his mother was and is sitting with the hen next door.

But my highlight for the day was not doctoring our sheep’s foot or checking for chicks under the hens but it was spending the late afternoon with my two daughters watching them frolic and wriggle in our new muddy dam. They were like 2 dirty muddy hippo calves rolling in the mud and water having the time of their lives, and I was having the time of mine watching them. It was even more rewarding knowing that my children are living their childhood in the wonderful nature of the country side. That they don’t only get to enjoy these freeing experiences on weekends but on an ordinary Monday afternoon when other kids are at aftercare centres or watching TV at home. I thank the Lord for this rare and wonderful opportunity.

Roast rabbit and homemade yoghurt

As a family on a journey to self sustainability we are always trying to find new things to make ourselves instead of having to buy. So on Friday night we attempted our first batch of homemade yoghurt. It is actually so easy to make (see recipe below) that we don’t know why we didn’t attempt it sooner.
• All you do is get as much natural unpasteurised full cream milk as you want to make into yoghurt – we used 2 litres. Place a pot on the stove with water in it, then place another smaller pot inside that pot to make a double boiler or water jacket effect, to prevent the milk from burning.
• Pour the milk into the top pot and heat it to 85˚C or until the milk begins to froth.
• Then cool the milk to 43˚C in a water bath so it cools evenly.
• Then add 2 table spoons of store bought plain yoghurt with live cultures to your milk.
• Pour the milk into clean, sterile containers and cover each tightly with a lid.
• You now need to keep the yoghurt warm and still in order to encourage bacteria growth for the next 6-8 hours (38˚C is optimal). We did this by keeping our yoghurt on our hot plate on very low overnight, but you could also place it in a cooler box with a big blanket over it over night. The longer you leave it beyond 7 hours the tangier it gets.
• In the morning place the yoghurt in the fridge and enjoy with your favourite flavourings or over cereal etc. Within the next 2 weeks.
• Just remember to keep some of your first batch as starter for your second batch.
We are happy to have found something else that we can make ourselves in a healthy, cost effective way.
Another first for Friday was that we slaughtered our first rabbit and ate it. It may sound goring to you but all over the world people eat rabbit as part of their meat diet. We had too many male rabbits and they have been fighting over mating rights to females for the past few weeks so we decided to put the underdog out of his misery and let the dominant male and his girls enjoy their happy family on their own.
As the meat can be quite tough I found a recipe where you first marinade the meat in olive oil and fresh herbs over night before frying the pieces and then placing them in a roasting pan and baking them for an additional hour and a half. The meat was tender and flavourful, even though it will take a while for us to get used to.
It never ceases to amaze me how we do not acknowledge that the meat in the shops was actually a live animal once and that someone else just killed and cleaned it for us. Seeing the process from live animal to your plate gives you a greater appreciation for the meat, as the process of killing, cleaning and cooking involved some things we don’t often even consider. I am glad that our family is coming closer to the origins of our food, so we can enjoy a healthy understanding of the circle of life.

She wants to be a mommy

As a mother myself, I can’t blame my chickens who, despite me trying to take all the eggs out of the hen house, refuse to stop sitting on them and trying to hatch a few. It would seem that the instinct to care for ones offspring does not just kick in when they are born (in this case hatch) but long before then. One of my hens escaped from the farm yard weeks ago and made herself a nest in a pile of straw we keep for the sheep’s bedding, so we can expect her 11 little ones to emerge any day now – I will post picks when they hatch. But another hen, who has always layed her eggs in the hen house, one day decided that she wanted incubate and hatch them. Despite me trying to take them all away daily, she refused to leave the nest and has been sitting on 3 little eggs that I left there ever since. Luckily I have been able to con the other hens into laying in the nest box next door by leaving an egg there every day so they think that is always where they lay. So our new mother will also be hatching little ones in about a week and a half – all be it a much smaller brood.
In other news, the excitement about our full dam due to all the good rain we have been having has been somewhat short-lived as later that day I realised that my neighbours badly constructed back wall had collapsed onto my property destroying my top corner fencing and leaving my animals vulnerable to escape or attack from my neighbours 2 big dogs. So emergency fencing operation number.... I have lost count began on Wednesday last week and is still in progress.
We enjoyed a wonderful variety of lettuce, beans, peas and baby marrows in our family meal yesterday and I love giving family and friends the best of our organic produce to enjoy when they visit. Hopefully there is lots more to come in the months ahead.

It's raining, its pouring

As I write this we are having a torrential downpour. Water has covered the land and is running across the property in little rivulets into our lovely new dam which we just sealed! Yeah! (don’t you just love it when a plan comes together) Our dam is now overflowing with water. We only sealed it a week ago with a 400 square meter piece of recycled plastic which means that there should always be some water in our dam for ducks and wild water birds. (the pics are of Lorenzo installing the plastic and my girls enjoying the new water slide.)
The most wonderful thing about all this rain is that we just finished planting our mielie field this morning so our new seeds are getting an awesome head start with lots of moisture in the ground. We have planted the field according to conservation farming methods of no tilling of the soil and hand hoeing. Each hole was prepared with 2 cups of manure and 3 organic seeds. I spoke with the dairy farmer next door last Thursday who told me he has heard from the weather guys that now is a good time to plant as we will have good rain in the next 2 weeks – well, it seems his weather guys knew what they were talking about and I am glad I took his advice and planted. And not a moment too soon as we had just finished covering the last holes when the rain started.
It has been a while since I updated the blog as I have been having some computer probs – in fact my hard drive crashed last week – so I am out of touch and behind on everything.
So in other news over the past week, our ram Rocky and I had a bit of a rumble on Sunday morning. It is mating season and he seems to be even more aggressive than usual, so as I was trying to shoo the sheep away from breaking the hen house door when he decided to attack me leaving me with many cuts, scrapes and bruises and a damaged confidence in my sheep farming abilities.
Some good news is that we ate our first lettuce, beans and baby marrows on the property last week. It is wonderful to eat the fruits of our labours and add delicious veggies into our family meals that have been freshly picked off our own plants.
Last week also saw me take some unusually drastic pest control action against the baby grasshopper infestation we are battling. After spraying with a home brewed organic pesticide and buying some bantam chickens to eat them, on Wednesday last week I ventured out with my vacuum cleaner and literally vacuumed them off of the plants they have been sitting on. Although I didn’t get all of them by any means – I have seen an improvement in the area I covered. I am sure that is a method that you will not find in any organic farming book, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Now that our dam is so full I am also planning to invest in some duck breeding pairs as they are apparently excellent pest hunters.
As you can see, lots is always on the go here on our little piece of heaven in Walkerville. We hope you enjoy hearing about it half as much as we enjoy living it.

Bantams, Auctions, Broody hens and teasing rain

The baby grasshoppers have hatched and are sitting on and eating all my exposed veggies. Being organic I cannot go out and murder them with some horrendous chemical, so I am having to think up another cunning plan to deal with them before they mutate into larger versions of their species. My new idea is to buy bantam chickens that don’t damage your veggie garden but enjoy the added protein in their diets. So I think I will be off to the local De Deur auction on Saturday morning to get some. Speaking of which the De Deur auction is really a site to behold. It never ceases to amaze me how many people turn up on a Saturday to buy anything from a mattress to a chicken, from a pig to spare car parts and electronics – you can literally find anything laid out on a concrete slab at the De Deur auction on a Saturday morning.
I will never forget our first experience actually bidding on something at the auction. Lorenzo and I went to buy some peacocks all of 2 months ago – not knowing anything about them at the time. So we spotted what we wanted and then decided on what we were willing to pay for them. When they started the bidding on the birds I was petrified and told Lorenzo he had to do it. We didn’t know if you needed to nod or raise your hand or what. Anyway, hearts racing and palms sweating we tried to understand what the auctioneer was saying in his racing speed commentary. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the other bidder bailed out before we did and so we got the birds. Exhilarated and exhausted we then had to think of a plan on how to get these 2 big beauties home. (Having not thought to bring a box or crate with us – as I said we didn’t have a clue)
So this week me and my box will be off to bid on some bantams to eat the baby grasshoppers ... unless I come up with another idea before then.
In other news our mother hen is at it again and has escaped from the chicken run and layed a clutch of eggs in the heap of dry grass we use for the sheep’s bedding. She has become broody and started sitting on the eggs today. I was in 2 minds as to whether to let her hatch them as I still have her other nine 4-month old pullets growing up in the farm yard and my daughters incubator experiment in my kitchen which could see a further 4 chicks hatch - if it works (I will know by Sunday if you can incubate eggs in a biltong box). But the thought of little fuzzy soft and cute baby chicks got the better of me and so we will have a new brood in just under 3 weeks time.
The rain has been teasing my for 3 days now. As I write this wind is howling and the clouds are overhead but no rain is coming from them. Today I had to water my garden with a black sky above me as it blew into the distance without releasing any water near us. I think I was trying to taunt the rain into falling by watering my garden. Anyway, the farmer next door (Eon, the dairy farmer) has informed me that we should only plant our mielies when we have 50ml of rain within 3 days – so it would seem we are a far way off from planting.

Fruit Trees – an investment in the next generation

Yesterday my family and I did something that we just love to do. We went to the nursery to buy fruit trees for our orchard. Although we already have over 30 fruit trees in our orchard, it is still good to keep planting more. Just this winter we lost 3 trees that didn’t survive the cold so we need to always be replacing and adding new types of fruit, nut and berry bushes that we don’t already have. We have been growing our trees for nearly 4 years now and only now are we starting to get any return for this investment. For the first few years the trees just needed to get established and make it through the harsh winters. During those harsh winters we learnt the hard lessons about what types of trees don’t grow in our area – namely citrus fruits like oranges, nartjies and lemons and tropical trees like avos and bananas. Our collection of surviving trees now includes plenty of peach trees, apples, pears, plums, nectarines, apricots, quince, pomegranate, young berry, mulberry and pecan nut. So yesterday we added walnut and cherry trees to the collection.
The funny thing is that although we spent under R100 for each, they are an investment for our children and our children’s children. Not the type of investment that will pay out large sums of money for their education etc. But the kind of investment into their health and childhood memories that is rather priceless. I look forward to my children and I being able to picnic in our orchard and just walk through the rows picking off ripe fruit as we go and eating it right of the tree. (no herbicides or pesticides included). I look forward to my grandchildren coming to visit us out here and helping me bottle peaches and make jams – something I don’t envisage myself having the time for till I am an old granny.
So we are investing in our children and our children’s children – one fruit tree at a time....
Ps. For info on the best way to plant your new fruit trees – lessons learnt from making mistakes – take a look at www.natural-organic-farming.com/what-not-to-do.html

Slow Food Movement

I really feel part of the ‘slow food movement’ today as my plants seem to be growing much slower than the bugs are eating. Without chemicals and fertilizers pumped into them, natural veggies seem to take somewhat longer to grow – and heirloom varieties seem to take even longer than hybrids. But we are not in a race, and although I cannot wait for the taste of the first heirloom tomato, hopefully the extra time taken to grow will produce the superior taste, flavour and texture that only an organic vegetable can provide.
In the mean time, I have been investigating potential outlets to sell the veggies when they are ready and it seems that I have interested buyers but nothing to sell at the moment.
I went to visit one of the many new organic markets in Joburg today to see what was on offer. It was a wonderful site to see and smell all the delicious delicacies on offer, but I do feel that many more will get on the organic bandwagon in the future as the trend to go organic grows in South Africa.
For news on where to find these organic markets, or anything organic really, take a look at www.urbansprout.co.za – a wonderful green site with loads of info on anything organic. And soon this blog will join their list of SA green bloggers.
Here is a wonderful picture of how Grants mud cottage is coming along. We are all amazed and excited at how this project is turning out.

Sad News

We had some sad news yesterday to find that one of our hens was very sick and dying. She was a great hen and good layer who hatched babies earlier this year. She has been looking a bit worse for wear but we didn’t know she was sick till we found her curled up under the henhouse on Sunday. It was clearly too late to save her, so we isolated her to try and save the rest of the flock from catching the disease and buried her a little while later when she died.
I have done various internet searches since then but reading up about one poultry disease sounds very much like the symptoms of another and so it is very difficult to ascertain exactly what she had. We just hope that the other chickens will be ok – but so far no sign of symptoms from the others.
It is Monday and I can report that over the weekend my hubby was hard at work rebuilding the wind turbine that did not work last week. The old one has become a work of art mounted in our orchard to try and chase away birds from our developing fruit – amazing how failures can come in handy. The new one is a shinier, snazzier version than the clunky metal 1st attempt, with Perspex blades and the alternator mounted straight onto the blades to prevent increased resistance to turning. Now we just need to wire her up and see if she produces any current. We know we have the wind out here but is it enough to produce any usable current remains to be seen.
Grant was also hard at work – sick and all – on building his mud cottage. The walls are going up with mud bricks and he has put in his door frames already. Next weekend he should be up to window height – go boy! It is really looking great. I can’t believe that you can build an entire house out of mud bricks made and baked on your own land – very inspiring.
Besides that, the wind is howling and I am not looking forward to going out to water my veggies later, but the rain seems to have passed over so I will be braving the hurricane later.
Oh, and it seems like we may have found a solution for how to seal our dam. Yes, the one that has been sitting empty for more than a year now. A dam lining supplier can supply us with 550 micron recycled printing plastic at half the price of normal plastic that thick. It pays to take the time and look around at your options before making a decision of this size – 400 square meters in size – but we are glad to have found a solution that will get us water on our property, and that we are doing something for the environment by using recycled material at the same time.

Taking time out

As a work-from-home-mom of 2 small children having time alone to do what I want to do comes about....well, almost never. Which means that most of the time I feel a bit frazzled and worn out. Don’t get me wrong – I adore my children and family, but a girl just needs a little time out once in a while.
Well, thanks to my wonderful mom and dad I got just such an opportunity this morning. They had the kids for the night and my hubby had to work today so little old me was home alone for most of the day. I woke up and sent my man off to work. Then cuddled back into bed with a cup of tea and biscuits to watch an old movie. Just this small act of self indulgence made me feel totally rejuvenated when I got out of bed later at 10am.
Being a farmer means that even on weekends there is lots to be done around here. But today, because I was on my own (not with 2 little girls, with their sandals, and dresses and muddy feet and flowers and sticks and stones and wining in tow) my work outside seemed so pleasant. No one was asking me if I was finished yet or telling me they need the toilet or a drink of water or a snack. No one was nagging to go inside and no one was walking through my vegetable seed beds with me having to yell at them to get away from my plants. It was a windy day outside but totally peaceful and calm in my head and heart and I could enjoy planting out my new seedlings and securing some steel wool around them to ward of the snails and slugs. I could enjoy weeding around my little plants and helping them to attach to the canes they are to climb up. I enjoyed watering my seeds and seedlings and taking the time to see how each one is doing.
I was doing what I always do and have to do each day, but I was loving it.
So if you are a busy mom, or dad or student or farmer, take some time out – alone – to treat yourself sometimes and pause a while to enjoy what you do.
P.S. In other news, this week has seen one of my dogs get sick with billary (tick-bite-fever). No matter how often you treat them for ticks, living on a small holding means that ticks and fleas are everywhere and they are bound to get it sometime – so heres hoping the others don’t come down with it too.
We have had no rain since Sunday and have had hot days of 30 degrees Celsius which means that everything is dry and dusty. Hoping the big rains will start soon.

Disheartened

Sometimes gardening can be disheartening. I went outside this beautiful morning to find some of my lovely little seedlings mowed down by evil critters in the night. They didn’t even eat the evidence but just sliced through the stems of tomato and lettuce seedlings, leaving them limp and dead on the surface of the ground.
Slugs and snails come out at night looking for young juicy shoots to eat, and young seedlings are their favourite. So I am on my way to the shops to buy some steel wool and a beer. These are the ingredients for a slug and snail trap I read about. The steel wool is rolled into a long sausage and used to form a protective barrier around the seedlings – as apparently snails and slugs don’t like crawling over metal. Then a yoghurt container with beer in it is a trap to lure and drown them before they devour any more of my seedlings. I will also be going out later to spray my young crop with an organic pesticide concoction I made up a few days ago. If you are interested in the recipe its:
Organic Pesticide Recipe
• Cut up 2 onions, 4 chillies and whole garlic clove.
• Put the ingredients into a large pot and add warm water.
• Leave the mixture to stand overnight.
• Then strain the mixture and add 2 tablespoons of organic dishwashing soap to the mixture. Then pour it into a spray bottle and spray onto your affected plants to keep the bugs away.
You will need to spray them often for best results and definitely after it rains.
Besides this unhappy news, it is a lovely summer day and the rest of the veggies are growing wonderfully. (as you can see from these photos).
Tonight is D-Day for injecting our sheep with their spring dewormer so Grant and Lorenzo will have to tackle them and hold them for their shots. We are also spending some time to bring in some fresh veld grass to lay down for our sheep and chickens to sleep on as the farm yard was cleaned out today.
As you can see, there are always lots to do around here, but we wouldn’t trade it for the world. And it’s the little treats – like dinner tonight - fresh herb omelettes made from your own free range eggs and home grown herbs - that make it all worth it.

Welcome

Welcome to the “Half Way There Blog”, entitled so because on a small farm most jobs are usually half-way-there but not quite finished yet. There is always lots of work to be done so half way done on most of them is an accomplishment.

The blog is written by Joanne Delaurentis, a wife, farmer and work-from-home mom of 2 precious little girls - Eva and Bethany. The farm is also populated by Lorenzo, Joanne's husband and the MacGyver behind everything that has been built on the farm, Grant - a friend and border with a passion for uplifting and equipping rural subsistence farmers, 4 dogs, 6 sheep, 15 chickens, 2 rabbits, one cat and a peahen.

It is the beginning of October – the start of the Southern Hemisphere's summer and everything is green and blooming. However, for vegetable gardeners it is still a time of labour without harvest. The seeds have been sown and the little seedlings are going into the ground and starting to get bigger but it will be a while yet before we can enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of our labour – guess that’s why organic is called the ‘slow food movement’
Today I planted out my peppers and the last of my tomato seedlings. Peas, beans, pumpkins, lettuce and marrows are already in the ground and taking off.

My husband has just about finished covering our grape vines so that they will not be devoured by birds before we get a taste of them this year. And our new owl house is up but no feathered friends seem to be showing any interest in nesting there. However, a family of blackbirds has made a home in our workshop and their 3 little ones are growing every day.

We continue to prepare our maize field to be planted before the summer rains come, whenever that will be. ..(now I wish I had kept that rain diary so that I could refer back).
My husband is working on a wind turbine and some solar panel units to power a new development on the property. But as with all new projects - not much goes according to plan and it would seem that although it blows gales out here most of the time, our turbines is battling to overcome some friction and weight problems so my McGyver husband is wracking his brain for a solution.

Our other new project is Grant's new mud cottage that he is building. He laid the foundations on the weekend and has begun to lay the completely mud bricks. So we are on our way to having our first totally natural and self-sustainable accommodation on the property – hopefully by the end of December 2009 (more details on this exciting project to follow).





Until then it is all hands on the hoe...