The day I drove out of Ballarat to Cremona Hillside, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to cope with the dry, brown landscape. Most of the farms are flat here, and there’s the occasional smooth, bald hill. I can see wind turbines from the kitchen table. After five weeks, and a few days of rain, the paddocks are greening up. There’s still not much feed for the animals, but the view is not so depressing. But it’s taken a while for the Tasmanian eyes to adjust.
Nami and I have settled into a pleasant routine on the farm. At 6am we walk from the house to the dairy, wearing beanies and boots, and prepare to milk the goats. Nami wheels in a bale of lucerne, and fills the troughs with our mix of chaff, barley, and treats. I switch on the pot to boil water for the clean-up, and prepare the goats’ breakfast drink: molasses, apple cider vinegar, and seaweed extract. We start up the one-unit milking machine and the goats wander in. The does hop on the milking stand and shove their heads in the feed container. We use the machine first, then finish milking each goat by hand – Alex says we can get an extra 15 per cent this way. I love this close time with the goats, leaning against their tummies (with kids growing inside) and listening to the choof choof choof of the milking machine. After milking, we feed the bucks, the pigs, and a small group of geriatric sheep who get special attention.
Back in the house, we make coffee and decide what we’re having for breakfast. Nami tends to have rice, miso soup, and spring onions from the garden. I love my porridge with dried apricots, dates, and too much brown sugar. After eating, there’s time for reading on the couches – if you can find space among the dogs.
We’ve been cooking and preserving a lot – it’s that time of year, when the plants start to die off and the wind begins to blow and blow. We’ve been ‘dealing’ with quinces, rhubarb, grapefruit, feijoas, olives, and tomatoes. Today I’ve got two trays of whole quinces baking slowly in the Aga. Kate’s found a recipe for quince candies – I think it’ll turn out a bit like Turkish delight. We’ve made so many rhubarb crumbles, rhubarb champagne, feijoa sorbet, feijoa syrup, various green tomato chutneys…
One of the great discoveries has been grapefruit curd. Kate was given about 20 grapefruits from a friend. Upon googling, I came across this recipe on Yummly. It’s super simple: squeeze fruit, mix with sugar, eggs, vanilla. Heat in a bowl over a simmering pot of water. When it gets thick, and coats a wooden spoon, take it off the heat, stir in butter and jar. This recipe asks for some ginger syrup too, so I just boiled up some fresh ginger, water, and sugar until it tasted yummy and sticky.
I’ve been on a few little local adventures. Farmers’ markets of course: at Talbot, Creswick, and Lake Wendouree. I went to a field day at Taranaki Farm, where Ben Falloon is being mentored by Joel Salatin to set up an Aussie version of Polyface Farms (I’ll do a separate blog on what I saw for you). On a beautiful old farm at Yandoit, I went to a chook brunch where I looked at super-sized chook tractors that even collected and stored their own rainwater. Last weekend we had the Clunes Booktown, where the wide main street was closed off and turned into a book fair with food, music, and performers.
After a few bad night’s sleep worrying about the next part of my adventure, I’ve started organising my trip to Asia, that begins in three weeks. First stop, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam!
Eliza free ranges 