It was my daughter's third birthday yesterday, so we had a simple, extended family BBQ on Sunday to celebrate :-) This was preceded by another birthday party for all three girls (for a two year old friend of the family) on Saturday at our local farm animal park, where my oldest two girls were traumatised by cute baby goats jumping at their bags of lucerne pellets whilst my youngest ran excitedly from animal to animal and almost lost her hand to a hungry Clydesdale horse (sigh).
In the meantime I was busy making presents (although sadly, I didn't have time to make any felt food as I had wanted to), and dealing with the remainder of my ginger harvest,
By pickling it in sherry (yum):
And drying it:
Grinding it:
Then labelling and storing it for use in my homemade ginger beer:
I dug out my sweet potatoes ready to be moved the the front yard and dug over the bed with some chook manure:
And found some bonus potatoes sprouted from last season's crop amongst the orange sweet potatoes:
I rescued this timber table from the neighbour's on the local council bulk waste collection day:
And had visions of using it for a potting table (as the surface is warped and stained) but I may just sand it back and paint it for Miss 6 to use as a desk in her room as it is good quality, heavy timber.I planted up my recently purchased Arrowhead (Duck Potato) corms and the largest six water chestnut corms from my last harvest, in the water pot:
I discovered that despite almost 0'C temperatures overnight recently, the raspberries are shooting:
And although the blueberries are getting big and fat, they still aren't quite ready for eating yet ;-)
Now I need to do something with the turmeric I dug up recently (more drying and grinding), I need to dig out the front garden bed ready for making a wicking bed and planting out with sweet potatoes, arrowroot and yacon, and I need to move all my cold-tender bromeliads out of the mini-greenhouse so that I can get ready to use it for sowing vegetable seeds!
But first I need another cup of coffee ;-)
8 comments:
The farm sounds like fun! I love draft horses. I specifically remember being TERRIFIED the first time I saw one though. You have to be a BRAVE kid to almost loose your hang to one!
I'm so glad you posted about the ginger. I've been wanting to grow some for awhile now. Now that I know there are so many ways to preserve it, I'm going to go for it. Right now I cook with it and make tea, but it would be wonderful if I could make the ginger beer myself since my husband loves it so much!
Well done with the ginger harvest and preservation - a real success!
We use a lot of ginger and it is something I will look at planting very soon.
The drying and powdering process is well documented and very helpful. Thanks again for such brilliant information.
Great ginger harvest and prep. I have a question though. Do you think I would be able to grow ginger sucessfully in Melbourne or is it too cold?
Gav
Thanks for sharing the details of your ginger harvest. We've just started growing some about a month ago and are looking forward to what happens. We already made a bit of ginger ale with it (recipe unfortunately still needs some tweaking) but we definitely have to give the beer a try too!
Tiffany
Hi Rachel,
You should definitely have a go at making ginger beer, it's so easy and so yummy :-) And if you pickle the ginger in sherry, make sure you keep the sherry to use in stir-frys etc as it is infused with the ginger flaour - yum!
Hi M,
Thanks! Since you're further north than me you should have great success with ginger - although I hear it's been actually frosty up your way this week! Brrrrrr.
Hi Gavin,
My ginger dies down in winter, which is when you harvest it, so I see no reason why you couldn't give it a bash in Melbourne? I think your only issue would be keeping water up to it in summer, it's pretty thirsty. It also likes humidity, but if you try it in a pot to begin with, you could keep it sitting in a saucer filled with gravel (so that it doesn't have wet feet and the mozzies don't breed in it), which has water in it all the time to keep up the humidity, and you could bring it inside if you were expecting an early frost?
Hi Tiffany,
The ginger beer is so easy - have fun with it!
Cheers, Julie
Just wanted to quickly drop by to tell you that I've awared you a blog award.. YAY!
http://fmll.blogspot.com/2008/08/you-love-me-really.html
I have just found your blog and it is very inspirational. I try to live as simply as possible with my family, but often loose my way.
Hi Felicity,
Oh thanks! :-)
Hi Thimbleina,
Thanks for your kind words :-) It is easy to lose your way sometimes, but I've found that as long as I take it one small step at a time, and be consistent, that I am making slow, but significant progress.
Cheers, Julie
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