The Handy Girls Can Do It!

After planting some climbing peas and broad beans came the question of what they were going to grow up. I had made some climbing apparatuses in the past for climbing peas, but they didn't really stack up all that well once the peas took off as they usually slumped under the weight of the plants. So it finally came time to make a more sturdy, long lasting device that my plants could grow up and that I could use season after season.
I came across plans online to make an A-frame trellis which seemed simple, sturdy and looked nice, so on Sunday, Dave and I went to Bunnings, picked up all the bits and pieces we needed to build the first test trellis to see if I liked it before building the next two.
Seeing as I'm uni holidays at the moment, I decided why wait for the weekend when Dave could help and build it myself! Dad has always taught me to use power tools with confidence (or at least with a healthy respect for the fact fingers saw off just as easily as timber) so I plucked up the courage and got to it! It took me two afternoons of working on it, and I think it turned out pretty darn well!

Three things I learned from this project:

1. Measure twice and cut once. At the beginning as I was figuring out where to cut the wood that would become the top and bottom pieces. I plugged into the calculator 2.8 meters when it actually was 1.8 meters, it was only as I was about to cut it I thought, 'Hey, wait a minute that doesn't look right!'. I am very thankful I went back again, remeasured and fixed it before cutting or I would have been super annoyed.

 2. When making a square, 'almost square' doesn't quite cut it. I got it pretty close, but then when attaching the hinges noticed they didn't line up quite right. Thankfully you can't notice it when it's standing in the garden but it's something to keep in mind for next time.

3. Listen to your mother when she says to wear work gloves when working with chicken wire. That stuff is evil! Whoever named it 'chicken wire' was way off. They should have called it 'razor sharp metal sheet of death wire'. That would have been more accurate. On day two I wore gloves.

All in all I am very proud of my garden trellis even if it's not perfect, as this is the first wood working project I've completed entirely on my own with no help from either Dave or my dad. Here are some pictures of the building process along the way.

Cutting all the boards so they were all the exact same length

First side of trellis screwed together

First side with aforementioned evil chicken wire.

Second side with the wire adding process in mid staple

The two sides lined up with hinges on

Tah dah!

Placed in the garden!

Tiny little pea seedlings ready to climb!

Winter Garden Updates!

It's been a little quiet on the updating around here this winter, so I thought it was about time to do some garden and hobby recapping. Some of the summer veggies are still going strong, with a lot of the root crops staying in the ground until we need them. The tomatoes are pretty much finished, and the leafy greens are mostly done. Things like the broccoli, cabbage and parsnips are still growing and still not quite ready, so hoping they get a wriggle on and finish up soon! Winter things planted lately include three beds of potatoes, garlic, onions, two types of peas, broad beans, carrots and lettuce. Most of these are still in the seedling stages but are all doing well and seeming to enjoy the cooler days and moister soils than in summer.

Dave and I headed down to the Midland Farmers Market yesterday and found that unlike a lot of other markets, this one had plenty of stallholders selling fruit and veg, and the prices were way cheaper than any supermarket. We went a little crazy as the photo shows, we got a good variety that should last us all week. All of that for well under $50 makes us happy people.

Fruit n Veg haul from the market. Tonight: Pork chops with apple and fennel and roasted veggies.

Winter garden beds. Top left: Two varieties of lettuce and two of carrot. Just starting to sprout now, so we should have lettuce in about 8 weeks and carrots during the spring & summer months Top right: Kohl rabi, broccoli, cabbage and kale which were all planted when my folks were here in December and January. Not sure if cabbage and broccoli should take this long? The cabbage is finally starting to form their inner heads, but still no love from the broccoli.

 The onions and garlic bed. Two types of onion, brown and pickling onion, and garlic that I picked up at Perth City Farm which all sprouted and are now looking quite nice.

This is the garden bed that has the most going on in it still from summer. Rainbow chard that seems to be the veggie that just keeps on giving. We keep taking and it keep growing fast enough to keep up with us. Quite impressive actually. Then we have a large crop of beetroot still, as I thought Dave liked them (which apparently he doesn't), and I sure don't like it, so it's just sitting there until someone comes along and steals it or I can give it away. Then parsnips, spinach, carrot and fennel, all of which seem happy and growing well. Tonight I might pick the first parsnip to add to some roasted veggies. Exciting!

 The two tubs of olives we have picked off our tree brining away. They are both 30L tubs so I think we'll have enough olives to last us for a really long time. Next year we plan on using all the olives to attempt to make our own olive oil, which should be fun!

 Potato beds and closeup of plants. The are still pretty small, but so far looking good. Can't wait til we can dig up and roast some freshly grown potatoes! Nothing better! Yum yum yum.

Dwarf peach tree that we got as a wedding present is now planted and is looking quite happy, although it's leaves are starting to drop off for winter now. It already had peaches on it last year while the poor thing was still only in a little container, so excited to see how many we get off it this year. :)

Patchwork Placemat Tutorial

 So my latest little project has been to use up some of the masses of fabric that have been relegated to my scrap bin. I had started on a table runner, but I need to get some different batting, so decided until I get around to getting the batting I would start on something else in the meantime. Very unlike me I decided to try something a little smaller than a full on quilt, and have been trying my hand at patchwork place mats! I have a new found respect for any person who can actually do proper quilting as I think it is slightly impossible. But we have now gotten one whole place mat completed with only five more to go! 

I used an old towel as batting as I wanted to try and use all recycled items when making these. I think it turned out really well enough padding to kinda give it that 'quilted' look, but still thin enough to put a plate or glass on without it going all topsy turvy on you. 

I started out with my new quilting cutting board that has handy measurements on it, laid out the fabric pieces and pinned them all together at the edges. I went for a size of 12 x 17 inches, and cut off any scraps that didn't fit into that size which left me with these pinned place mats all the same size.

This is the first place mat pinned and ready for basting. I used a loose zigzag stitch along all the of the edges to keep everything in place before I went back around all the edges using a much tighter zigzag stitch which hid the raw edges and gave it an interesting look, plus it was easier than trying to do official style quilting. I still have no idea how you would do that where edges of fabric don't meet up in perfect angles, so for at least these place mats I'll continue using the zigzag stitch, plus I just like the look of it.

 This is the place mat basted but not with the final zigzag stitch, but you can see how all the pieces are a bit more 'together' and easier to work with and not flopping around by just being held together by pins. So far so good!

 

Action shot! I just used a normal foot and set my machine to a zigzag stitch long enough to catch both sides of fabric and voila! Job done. Plus it went pretty quick once you got going. All you had to be careful was you were still getting both sides of the fabric as the zigzag stitch wasn't super wide, so you just had to keep a close eye while sewing. 

 

 This was when I was layering the patchwork top layer, towel and bottom blue polka dot layer, be sure to leave about an inch around the edge of the patchwork with your batting when sewing, and about an inch and a half around for your bottom layer. 

I then did diagonal straight stitching across all three layers to give it a 'quilt' look, and to adhere all the different layers together. I went around after and trimmed the towel batting to fit the size of the patchwork top layer, then folded in the raw edges of the bottom layer, pinned them to the top of the place mat and straight stitched all the way around. That was all!

Tah Dah! Final product. I'm pretty happy with it, hope you enjoy making some awesome place mats and post some photos of your finished projects! Happy crafting!

Dill pickles

For the long weekend we had a nice relaxing time down in Pemberton, about four hours south east of Perth. Upon our return I found quite a few cucumbers a good size for making my first attempt of dill pickles! Thankfully today my order from OzFarmer.com arrived that contained lots of wonderful things I needed to make my pickles, so I got cracking!
I didn't have a huge amount of cucumbers, probably about 15 small to medium, but I didn't want to leave them on the vine any longer as the plants themselves seemed to have died off with what looked like a while dusting of mold on the leaves while we were away, and I wanted to get some pickles out of them before they died completely. I'll have to do some more research on what this might be, there did seem to get a lot of aphids and ants on the cucumber plants while they were growing, which I did try to deal with with some organic pest control, but it didn't seem to do a huge amount of good.

 

This was the harvest mid clean. Not a huge harvest, but still better than none! I had intended on putting the cucumbers in two 1 litre jars, but upon packing found I had too many for just one, and too little for two, so I decided to use the beautiful smaller blue vintage ball jars I ordered and that has just arrived that day. I also used a Kosher Dill Pickle pre-made spice that also had something to make them extra crunchy, along with some vegar and water and brought that to the boil. Then in it went and back into the boiling water canner for 15 minutes. All three of my jars got a nice loud pop when sealed, so I was happy. 

  

 These were the large 1 litre jars packed but not full enough. How annoying. But these things happen, so we persevere! I did have the chance to use all my new fancy canning equipment seen above, which made canning so much easier!

 These are the three smaller jars packed with pickles shortly before adding the brine. I think I could have packed them a bit tighter as once the brine was in them they all floated to the top of the jars, so you could see how much space was left in the jars, but a lesson well learned I guess, I didn't want to over pack them.

Finished product! Three little beautiful jars of homemade pickles! I am so going to get some more of these blue vintage inspired ball jars in different sizes as they are so pretty! Will make storing my canning jars more of a work of art rather than just trying to shove my jars somewhere out of the way! Maybe I'll put in a high rail all along the kitchen and sit them up there until I use them.... We'll see what Dave thinks of this idea. ;)

The haul from OzFarmer.com, my beautiful blue jars, enough canning salt to last until the apocalypse, pickling spice and the very helpful book of Putting Food By. New bedtime reading methinks!!

Cheesemaking update

So it has now been nearly four months since my dad and me made our first hard cheese. We made a colby which has now done it's time so to speak and was time to have a look at. The first thing I noticed was there were a few cracks in the wax around the cheese, not big enough to notice if you weren't studying it carefully, but big enough to allow in mold I suppose as it had a few healthy colonies of different mold species growing on the surface.

Cheese with original wax still intact (except the side I picked open to look inside right before taking)

Cheese with wax removed and mold in full glory. :P

After googling what to do with a moldy wax rinded cheese, scraping off the mold affected area, followed by an application of cider vinegar to the surface of the cheese seemed to be the way to go. I cut off all the surface mold, then noticed that the cheese was slightly holey in the interior, which the mold had started to grow down into (picture below) so had to cut off a good side section to remove all the affected areas.

 This is a side shot of the cheese when sliced through the edge. Quite a few air bubbles. More than I was expecting. Perhaps we didn't use enough pressure when in the cheese press? We did go as hard as it would go, so my other thought was that we didn't have quite enough cheese in the press for it to achieve maximum pressure on the cheese. Who knows, it's trial and error at this stage.

Cross section of aforementioned holy cheese.

Final product after mold resection

So now I will rewax the cheese until I find out if it still fit for human consumption, as I don't particularly want to get sick from eating off cheese. Maybe I'm just a bit wimpy, I'm sure my dad would dig in. We shall see, past experiences have given me a fine appreciation for patience, especially when it comes to mold, as I have a healthy respect for their abilities to make one feel less than spectacular. Will update once we either throw it out/eat the damn thing.

1/2 rewaxed

Fully rewaxed!

Growing steadily

Updates of front garden plants and finally started mulching the beds at last! All the plants seem to be doing really well, and I've started harvesting decent amounts of rainbow chard and radishes so far, with Emma taking home some radishes and a beetroot on her last visit round. Not much else to report on the gardening front, just watching the plants grow (literally). Enjoy :)

First eggplant flower

eggplant leaf, substantially bigger than my hand!

First mulched bed

cucumber!

cheesy self portrait with my beautiful veggies.

Radishes?

Anyone have any suggestions on what one could do with a bunch of radishes? I think I may have planted a couple too many. Will update with what we end up making from it all.