Ricotta at the Co-op

Today's main post is over at the Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op and is about making Ricotta cheese.  I believe it is one of the most simple cheeses to make and tastes much better than the store bought stuff that they try to pass off as fresh Ricotta.

Also, I must apologise for the lack of posting over the last couple of weeks.  I have been ill in bed resting a hernia (ouch but soon to be fixed) and trying desperately to finish off my first assignment for my Diploma of Carbon Management which is due on Friday!  I know that you will forgive me, and I promise many more posts next week.

Gav x

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow!

It is with sadness that I write this post.  In my last post I was very excited about getting 3 new hens and a bantam rooster who I named Mr Darcy. 

Well, as it turns out, Mr Darcy was a very noisy rooster, and didn't just crow in the morning, but during the day and just before sunset as well.  Kim was stressing to the max, because our local council laws do not allow a rooster in suburbia, however we are allowed to have up to 12 hens.  She was so worried that someone would complain, that in the end I took up the breeders offer to give him back which I did today begrudgingly.  Note the sad face before I had to put him in the box to transport him.  Ironically, he hardly made a sound today.  Maybe he knew that he was returning back to his other harem.

I was so amazed that the little bugger grew on me so quickly.  He is one cool pint-sized rooster and really loved those two little hens in the few days he knew them, and I really mean loved ;-).  After all Jane Austin is so right when she wrote in Pride and Prejudice, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Mr Darcy by name, Mr Darcy by nature!

Maybe I am sad because he bought order to the flock so quickly and stopped all of the infighting straight away that you normally get with introducing new hens to an established flock, or maybe because I could relate to his blokeyness!  Oh well, you win some, you loose some.

Adieu Mr Darcy.

Mr Darcy and Ladies

"I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise."  Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 13.

What a nice looking lad is our Mr Darcy, and he is one of the four new additions to our flock of chickens that we purchased today, and I will introduce you to the others in a minute.  But, shhhhh, don't tell anyone, because we are not supposed to keep men chickens in our area.  If I call him a man chicken I don't feel so bad at breaking the law!  Anyway, he is so small that his crow sounds like a dog barking.  Woof.  Large dogs are noisier than he is.

Anyway, I have a plan to stop that 4am crowing in the nicest possible way.  The lady that we bought them from recommended that we keep him in the dark after daybreak, which is fine because our little chicken house is built that way already.  However, we have had to do a bit of rearranging at le manoir de poulet due to some sad news.  One of our little Pekin bantams, Pippy, passed away suddenly on Friday afternoon, and was probably due to the larger ISA brown hens picking on her.  She will be missed as she was such a wonderful little hen, and I feel so bad and should have been on to it right away.

I bit the bullet and separated them all.  We put Poppy, our surviving Pekin bantam into the front coop and segregated the two runs.  The large hens get the back run and chook house and the bantams get the front with some new digs that I am going to construct next weekend.  This should also keep Mr Darcy in the dark until I let them out each morning.  We have told both neighbours on either boundary, and they are okay with him so far, but our breeder told us that if he causes too much fuss then we can take him back.  Which would be a shame because I do believe that Poppy has fallen head over heals in love with him!  

Here are a few pictures of introduction.

This is Jane Austin.  She is also a Pekin bantam and you can also see Poppy just up the back.  They are all so cute.  

Mr Darcy is showing the ladies how big and strong he is.  He is so manly.

As I mentioned before, Poppy is already in love with Mr Darcy, because I figure that she couldn't get any closer to him if she tried.  Miss Jane Austin was getting very jealous at the time.  We are hoping for lots of fertilized eggs soon enough, because Poppy is the broodiest hen I have ever met, and would make a great mother hen.  We are not so worried about egg production for these two little ladies, they are just fun to watch and once they get settled they will have the run of the yard, but if we get chicks then that will be a bonus.


We also bought two larger hens to replace Ginger who passed away last month.

Not the best picture, but the black speckled hen to the rear is Jennifer, and the brown at the front is Daisy.  They steered clear of the other hens all day, there were a few minor altercations, but nothing to be too worried about.  If some of the older hens get too bossy tomorrow, we will put the trouble makers into Coventry for a day to knock them down a rung or two in the pecking order.  

Jennifer has wonderful markings.  We were told that she is a Barnevelder/ISA Brown cross.  She has a lace pattern around her neck and bright yellow legs.  

As for Daisy, she just looks like a normal run of the mill ISA brown hen, and has already laid an egg today.


To help with husbandry, we gave them all some pullet starter crumble mixed with 8 cloves of crushed garlic and a little water.  We mixed it into a semi-dry porridge, and they all wolfed it down with gusto.  We will keep doing that each week to keep any mites and intestinal worms at bay.


So all in all, a great day out to get the new additions to the flock, and they have settled in well.  The bantams sorted themselves out quickly due to the masterful Mr Darcy, and the ISA browns will probably take another day to settle down.  We have 7 laying hens, and 3 bantams just for their good looks.

The 8000

On Saturday, I attended the Getup! Price on Pollution rally at Treasury Place, Melbourne.

There have been media stories for and against both sides.  There were many reports that the 8000 odd people that attended the pro carbon tax rally were a bunch of pot smoking university student rent a crowd types that were paid by the Labor party and the 400 people who attended the anti-carbon tax rally in Werribee were a 'grass roots' movement.  Make your own mind up, but from someone who was there with my daughter, who are far from being dope smoking hippies, I did not see anyone being paid to attend or did I see any rent a crowd types, just concerned citizens who voiced their opinion for action on mitigating climate change.

Anyway, my lovely daughter Megan took lots of photos which I made into a presentation video.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did in attending the event!




This post will be the last climate change one for a while.  I want to get back to simple and sustainable living again.  I think that you can only protest so much, and you need to balance that with a whole lot of just getting on with it.

Gavin

The Message

 

Enough said.

More later. 

Need beer!

Our Children's Future. Act This Saturday!

That is what is a stake if this country does not take climate change mitigation action within the next few years!

So please join me and my family this Saturday at the Climate Action rally at Treasury Place, Melbourne along with other concerned citizens to counter the fear campaign being set up by Australia’s climate deniers, right-wing shock jocks and big polluters who are jumping on board the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s scare campaign against a price on carbon.  They’re trying to stop action on climate change by frightening people with misinformation and scaremongering. And they’re planning anti-carbon tax rallies across the country – starting this weekend - to frighten our politicians into further delay.

Join me and many others including members and organizers from GetUP!, Environment Victoria, the Australian Conservation Foundation, and the Australian Youth Climate coalition to send a message loud and clear that the majority of Australians and the global community want climate action and a strong price on pollution now.






For those readers in the Melbourne area, See you all there!

Wet. Not Dry

A while back, I predicted above average temperatures and rainfall for southern Australia based on information from the Met Bureau.  The post was titled 'One Wet Year'  How wrong was I.  Lucky I am not a meteorologist!  The only part I got right was the wet bit.  Now that summer has officially passed us by (even though I think we have a few warm days ahead still), it turns out that it was Australia's second wettest year on record, and if you single out Victoria it was our wettest summer ever.  In fact it was our first wet summer ever, in recorded history anyway.  The La Nina in the Pacific Ocean still has a lot of potential in it, it looks like the wet season will continue up north until April/May.

However that does not change the fact that 2010 was a tie with 1998 for the warmest combined land and ocean surface temperature on record worldwide.  If you want to look at that data, pop on over to www.sciencedaily.com for the rub.

So forget any clueless weather forecasts from me in future and take it with a grain of salt.  However, please do take heed of the consensus of a overwhelming majority of climate scientists, when they warn that the Earth is indeed warming due to increase levels of CO2-e in our atmosphere and oceans and that our climate is changing for the worse.

However, to cap it all off , I read this article today that made me grimace with a sense of loathing.  I shouldn't really pick on this bloke, but hey, it was in a NewsCorp rag so it had to be bent towards climate change denialism.  Have a read of this article in the Tasmania Mercury titled "Victim unmoved by flood".  It is a gem.  After all, this bloke is highly qualified to pass commentary about climate change when the, and I will say it again, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists that anthropogenic climate change is occurring, but he has an opinion just as I do.  What gets me is that after he dismisses man-made climate change, he offers solutions on how to solve it.  Recycling more and using less stuff is the key folks. Kind of right mate, but you left out the part about lowering our carbon emissions.

Or that is what NewsCorp would have us believe.  It must be part of Rupert's grand plan.

Slacker

So what have I been up to over the last week?  Well not a lot really.

I have been recovering from another bout of abdominal pain (aka diverticulitis), and spending a bit of time in bed, and working from home.  Lethargy overcomes me more often than not and I have spent far too much time sleeping.  Unfortunately,  I have a little less mojo to go around.  Hopefully all that is changing as today, I feel well rested and not as sore as the last few days.

Yesterday, as I was feeling a little better, Kim and I spent about 4 hours in the garden tidying up.  Basically weeding and a bit of harvesting.  Here are some photos that Ben took for me.

Our sweet corn, that is yet to be harvested.  It is about two weeks away from being ripe.

Very artistic Ben.  The tops of the corn stalks.

Maybe this lad should not be let loose with the camera?  "Nice bum Gav", Kim said!

After cutting back many tomato vines we moved to the eggplant patch.  Here is a nice sized eggplant that you would normally see in the shops.

This is the eggplant patch in its glory.  There are about 6 plants in there somewhere that I grew from seed.

Here are some finger type eggplants, which I have found are great in curries.

And a Listada de Gandia.  I love the purple and white stripes.  It tastes like the normal purple variety, but I think it is cool.

To put the corn into perspective, I took the camera away from Ben and asked him to pose for me.  He is about 168 cm, so that would make the corn over 2 metres tall.  Each plant has two ears on it.
 

I posted this one before, but I am so proud of this caerphilly cheese.  It worked out perfectly.

Last but not least, Kim decided to harvest all of the Jonathan apples today mainly because the chooks kept eating the low hanging fruit and even Holly the dog decided that they were just too good to resist.   I expected some apples, but this is beyond my expectations.  They taste a little tart, but sweet enough for my liking, with not a chemical spray in sight!

Now that I read back on this post, I haven't been very slack at all!  Maybe I just feel this way, because I am only working at 50% of my normal pace. 

Carbon Fear Tactics

One thing that never ceases to amaze me about climate change is the fear campaign that precedes any affirmative action that government decides to take. It really does get on my goat.

Case in point has been the opposition's reaction and subsequent fear campaign regarding the introduction of a price on carbon which if legislated will commence on 1 July 2012.  A price per tonne of carbon has not even been established, yet quotes of 6c per litre extra on petrol and $600 extra on electricity bills have been thrown around by Liberal scare mongers and radio shock jocks. 

They also keep bringing up evil carbon polluters like India and China, yet China has the largest installed based of solar power in the world and a growing base of wind power and is doing active research in both areas.  Meanwhile in Australia our investment in solar and wind R&D has been so low that we continually see researchers and companies close up shop and moved overseas.   Both countries has far less emissions per capita than we do here in the 'lucky country', but I realise that they have much larger populations that count in the billions, than the paltry 22,580,965 citizens we have, but just imagine that they all had a lifestyle like we do, and an attitude to boot.  We would all be up shit creek without a paddle.

It seems to me that Australians are content to scrabble around in the dirt and flog off the assets of future generations of Australians at rock bottom prices for little to no long term gain to the Australian community. We should be investing in the technologies of the future, like wind, solar thermal, geothermal and keeping some of the natural gas for ourselves to get over the large bump called peak oil.

A carbon tax is a price indicator to an open market is the first step in saying that this way of business is no longer acceptable.  So well done Julia and Bob! I give credit were it is due. No Guts no glory. One for leadership which is sorely missing of late.  Which is more than I can say for the other Coalition of wannabe Tea Party members.  She changed her mind, which is not lying in my book.

Denial is fear based. Fear of everything that involves change. This country can't be dictated too and run by fear campaigns from climate change sceptics.  This is the kind of crap that I have heard lately;

• She lied...
• It will cost too much money..... 
• It will wreck our economy... 
• It won't change anything.... 
• It's a global government...
• Its not happening.... 
• Your all Lefties....
• The sky is falling!!!

Essentially they're just cowards not willing to accept their role or look beyond their own self interest.  I would rather back an intelligent liar than an absolute fool to run the country but better still, the more Indepentants and Green we can gather in Canberra, the better.

We absolutely must adopt a carbon price system as part of a wide range of changes and innovations to start to reverse the environmental damage wrought upon the planet by us foolish humans.  I am embarrassed by our backward thinking on this most important of topics compared to the leading countries of Europe and elsewhere.  And of course folks, people's behaviour needs to change before it is too late, and the implementation of a carbon tax is phase one.

We'll get over the problem of a new tax, we got over the GST, now that was an ugly tax. If there is no carbon tax, the levies on disasters will be much higher, long term.

Just my 2 bobs worth!

Caerphilly for the Masses

What better place to get the word to the masses that Caerphilly cheese is easy to make and a wonderful tasting cheese?  Well on someone else's cheese blog of course!

Jeri from the New England Cheesemaking supply company asked if she could repost my recipe and video tutorial on their blog in exchange for one of their newly published books.  Well, I jumped at the chance, and a few days ago, all the way from the US of A, I received a copy of The Cheeses & Wines of England and France, which I am half way through.  John Ehle has a wonderful style and those who are into cheese making in a big way will no doubt enjoy the interesting people he meets and the wonderful recipes that he documents.  Once I have complete book, I will write a review.

Here is the post titled : Caerphilly - Almost Instant Gratification!

And as luck would have it, today is also the day that my very own round of Caerphilly is ready to eat.  Here it is weighing in at 1047 grams (2.31 lbs).  It was made on the 5th Feb 2011 and I used 8 litres of Jersey Milk to make it.

Oh, and by the way, all of the family agree that this is one fantastic tasting cheese.  Creamy, salty and cheesy!

Swings and Roundabouts - Earth Hour 2011

I was contacted by the WWF today regarding the Earth Hour Awards.  I might have mentioned that I was approached to be a prelim judge for the awards, which I accepted, but it looks like nominations and applications are at a manageable level for the WWF team.

Here is an extract of the email, which was lovely and with a welcome surprise in it.  Thanks Kate for the correspondence.

"Dear Gavin,

We wanted to say a big thank you for your support of Earth Hour and helping spread the word through your blog. We also wanted to say thank you for generously offering your time to be a preliminary judge for the inaugural WWF Earth Hour Awards."

"Instead of being a preliminary judge, we would very much like to encourage you to apply for an award yourself, specifically the Education Award. The Awards now close at midnight this Sunday 6 March."

So, as I mentioned in a previous post, if you think I or others would make a worthy recipient, then pop on over to the Earth Hour Awards link and nominate me or anyone else in your community that you believe has gone 'Beyond Earth Hour'. 

Nominations and applications close at midnight, Sunday, March 6th, 2011.  Go for it.  There are so many people in our great country that deserve a nomination!