Time-sinks

We had just a wind-riffle on the water last night when we went a-floundering. Very frustrating, and we only got four flounder. Today has been beautifully still again, and I am half-tempted to go and try again, perhaps elsewhere. I probably should have siezed the weather and gone diving today but did some writing work instead. It was a reasonable day, but not great, writing-wise. So it might be good for my halo, but not the fish-in-the-freezer stocks, or major progress stocks. Yesterday we turned the wrasse we've been accumulating into kitty-fish - turned into 56 days of kitty fish. I turned what scrap roo/meat into dog-gobbets too, but our stocks there are a lot lower. I'm not sure how much money this really saves us (as compared to buying cat-tins). Most of our lifestyle choices are quite time-hungry, so one does end up a little thin and stretched. Still, labor in Australia is very expensive, so we do save a lot by doing for ourselves (which considering my US dollar income - and the fact that authors are slightly more ripped off than musos in what they get for their work, is very important). Some of it I quite enjoy (cutting and splitting wood, growing the veg and herbs) and some of it - mincing fish - I definitely think automating as much as possible is called for. Being as self-sufficient as possible is what we want to do, and does give us a lifestyle way beyond our means :-)(you simply couldn't BUY a lot of what we are able to enjoy) but my word, it can be a lot of work at times.

The Italian Job and a great deal of bouncing.

Well, there was no gold, mafiosi, car chases were few, but we had an italian dinner, anyway. We got a group of friends together to try the theory of meals in the style of a different country every month. I missed a glorious opportunity to serve squid ink Rissotto to my friend Bill, but the raw fish challenge is on. Somehow we WILL treacherously insert raw fish past his clenched teeth. We had various antipasta, and cheese thingy with authentic italian seaweed buscuits. I did home made pasta, with a sauce of flaked roasted peasant (what else do expect us to do peasants here on the island?)... er Pheasant (as plucked yours truly) -which I pot roasted with lots of garlic and rosemary and 3 rashers of bacon, with an apple in the cavity. I flaked the peasant... pheasant, chopped the bacon, softened more garlic (just in case) and made a sauce with 200 ml of cream and about sweet fortified wine (should have been marsala) a little more rosemary and the juices from roasting. To this at the last minute I added briefly cooked broccoli (picked shortly before cooking) and a small handful of roasted pine nuts and italian flatleaf parsley. It was pretty good for a 'entertaining' meal for fairly little not foraged or grown input - the bacon I had bought (but we will be making our own, as soon as I have the pink salt), the cream too, the sweet wine, and the flour for the pasta. The pine-nuts were a gift, but we have discovered we have the right tree right here in the garden.

We then had Tiramisu with all the marsala I should have cooked with and some extra, and Italian style gluwein.

I learned a great deal, especially about how to inflate a blow-up whale. You never know when you will need to know these things.

Today I went to try and stock up on some fish for the coming of the 5000. Dear willyweather promised good weather and light winds and small swell. He's a liar, although it did look promising in the morning.

But the current, sea, windchop and swell running longshore all mixed up horrifically. I got the most amazing tangle in my handline, and it was bitterly cold and windy. Still we got 3 gummy shark and 15 flathead and a gurnard perch (scorpion fish-- nasssssty-- but tasty, and about 8 kg of huge wrasse for the cats.

The weather coming in was a lot less nice, and you could see storms devour first Strzlecki and then mount Tanner, turning the the island landscape into some sort of sepia-tinted artwork... which I really wanted a picture of, but as I was trying to squat (sit and I'd have no bum, and possibly a broken and definitely a bruised cocyx) and cope with bounce and splash, photos did not happen.



The landing was relatively painless (beach extractions can be... interesting) and then we gutted the fish. With quite an audience in the bleak late afternoon.

spectacular for a chilly passtime.

30 000 olives.

Today we picked 30 000 olives. That's a lot of Olives... and I am dead tired. I've done my K of writing (and it is good) and now I am going to bed, which will also be good!

Well, B has an inner ear infection, Continuum 7 (the con in Melbourne) is making chaos with their plane booking/ hotel booking arrangements. It's a small con, and doubtless a bit stretched, but the late chaos is not making life easy. Other than that we have a glorious new tablecloth (thanks Rosie!) and have arranged with Bill to pick olives on Friday for the olive oil press guys. We will, I hope, get some oil. Yes, it would be cheaper and faster to buy it. But I would like to get some off the island, not a supermarket.

Chookabago and residents

Boss chook - who will take worms or eat cray legs from my fingers.

This lot is especially for doubting Francis and Paddy (who demanded to see the chooks).

They move about 3 metres a day, and boss chook leads eagerly. They pretty well rip the grass (bar big tussocks) out and turn it into scratched over chook-pooed dirt. I am planting the strip behind them with potatoes and parsnips ATM. I want to plant grain in their trail.

They're tame and curious - boss chook is afraid of nothing.

and they're chatty and love to scratch and eat.


Payoff



And a lot of wheelbarrow and spade work: The new raised bed. The high sides keep the wind and dogs out.

Tomorrow I faithfully promise I will post pics of the chookabago and the new raised bed. Barbs is home and I am a happier camper. It's rained on and off and I hope was good weather for transplanting some little lettuces and swiss chard and brocolli.

The little things

The little things get you. It's not the big stuff, because, well, the countries have a lot of big commonalities. Parts of the island could be Scotland or Wales, or the midlands of KZN. Parts look like the Cape (Some parts - the limestone areas on the coast for example are just Flinders) It's the little details that jar you into realising that Australia isn't the old country. Forex flatbed utes are every farmer's norm here. The only ones back in South Africa belong to furniture shops that deliver. I never saw a digging implement there that does not have a handle on the end. Here a sort of pole-shovel is if anything more common than a spade. A live chicken is a chook, a chicken is sunday dinner...

Just when I start feeling familiar with my environment and forget, along bounces a wallaby or along waffles an echidna... but in between, well, sometimes I forget I've moved half a world away. It's a good thing, I think.

I barrowed the contents of my 1 compost heap into the one raised bed tank, and now want to add 3 or so more barrow loads of this rather rubbish sandy topsoil. One of the odd things about living in the middle of a flipping huge radiator (the sea) is that 'winter' comes late, but stays long. I had to get brutal and root out a lot of things that just will never bear - tomatoes still flowering. With my non-skill at gardening I hate pulling out anything that isn't dead.

I turned on the TV tonight to make a background noise... and there was Pietermaritzburg - well a gum-plantation near PMB! (our nearest city back there). It was mountbike downhill race. I looked for a while, to see if I saw anything nostalgic/familiar. But it was gum trees and and a muddy track. Most of the gums here have stuff growing between them, that was all.

Well, we had a big seafood lunch today, despite B being still based in Lady Barron. I did a seafood soup, crayfish and mushooms in a light cheese sauce (the sauce thickened more than I like - timing issues, and chocolate based pecan nut pie. Lots of washing up :-(.

Mrs Black - who has not been a happy chook, has gone to a better place. No, not that better place, Jamie and Sandy's - where she can go back to being a feral free-range chook.

And that was today, really.

The Flasher

Can keep flashing for 2 and half hours and doesn't even have a greasy old raincoat. Bill made me a flasher (it's all his fault, and I will say so in court). It's a little more innocuous than it sounds although a lot more illuminating than other sorts of flash. It's two LED displays for the ute when we go floundering - it's dark sometimes misty (or raining) and very easy to get disorientated. So my mate has devised a sort of strobe LED display run off the cigarette lighter.

Tonight is very still again, but the moon is still quite full. I ought to go out (need fish for the mobs in June-July, but we have people for lunch tomorrow (so much more healthy than eating cows. People must have all the right nutrients for people)) and Bleah grrr! Barbs is still house sitting Lady Barron, because Max managed to miss his flight (possibly due to weather delays) and now can't get back till Monday. He's possibly a blameless victim of circumstance, but right now a few of us would like kick his tail for it. Oh well. What can't be cured must be endured.

The Nina, the Pinta...

And the Maria I didn't mean to go to sea! (Well, that's Bill's line anyway.) I talked him into paddling a kayak from Fotheringate beach to Point (it's about 800 metres). Only when we get back does Bill say "I've never been in Kayak before". Oh well. To have mates as crazy as you are...

Still, it was fun, if hard work (I was paddling the inflata-galleon, which is not very stable (and there were waves) and drags a vast water-bag. The coast is etched limestone - recent stuff from when the sea level was about 5-6 metres up.

We caught quite a lot of very large wrasse (the cats need food, and this is their favourite)and a leatherjacket and paddled back, on rapala. It was rather disappointing in the catch different stuff line (last time I went there alone I got a range of fish that we don't often catch). The big Leatherjacket were treating Bill's bait like a buffet dinner and just stripping his hook in seconds, just at his feet. At one stage I thought he was going to leap into the water, knife in his teeth.

Anyway, Scottish dancing tonight, and tomorrow B comes HOME.

I got back Lady Barron and going to cook Barbs some 'tea' (boat day and a lot of offloading, so she didn't come up) and then having successfully played Wallaby dodgems and discussed the ultimate cray pot with Peter(with thermal probes and probably hot and cold running maids:-)) got home and noticed it was windstill. So I went off to Bluff road to look for flounder, despite the moon being full (you want dark nights). It was bright enough to see colour so a bit of a waste of time, but I have been threatening to get there for some time, so carpe diem, well, carpe noctum or something like that. The area was remarkably fish sparse, probably because of the commercial seine netting. I'm really not sure if they're trawling with those nets, but the damage to fish life seems obvious, whatever. I actually have less time for mechanically hauled seine nets than I have for gill nets (gill nets are passive, size selective gear - limiting the effect of them is not hard. For seining, (which is active - you catch the prey it does not catch itself) mesh size and length and means of set and haul are possible limiters. I didn't see as much as a Toby and I walked 3.4 km - through water - to spot one flounder, which I speared. I was however suffering from sore feet, and sleep was a long time coming when I got back.

Today we had our little writers group again, and I came home and lit the fire. It's windstill but cold and I will forgo floundering tonight.
The chooks did 2 eggs yesterday and three again today!
Go chooks go.

three egg day...

You may remember three dog night? Well, I have now entered onto something completely unlike it - three egg day. We only have 3 chooks in the laying stakes (mrs black I think is only there to be bottom of the pecking order.) And they've got to the stage of ordering me to move the chookabago. Cluck-Talking at me, and standing against the front edge, waiting. Their attitudes to fish are hilarious. I suspect fish is crack-cocaine to chickens - to judge by the hooliganism that goes on over half a garfish. Anyway they're going to get some wallaby tomorrow. They really ARE the lineal descendants of T.rex. How the mighty have fallen.

I turned my ineptly butchered wallaby (pademelon) into mince and chunks - we have some my polish friend butchered and I deboned (or jointed) for the mobs in June-July. I got 9 350 gram minces out of it -still using the old hand mincer. Makes mince a little more... hard work!

Nothing else today except flurries of what would be snow if we were not at sea level, and the temperatures are actually still quite mild. So flurries of thin rain... I resisted the urge to go out and throw rainballs or make rainmen, and worked. I am counting the days until B finishes her stint of house sitting in Lady Barron. I even turned the TV on tonight to make a little background noise.

I must say Gravatar is the nearest thing to blogger in the 'not running well stakes' Blogger is not a well site and I may be forced to use something else unless Google does some fixing fast.

Barbs and I helped to pick olives for Jude and Mary-Anne -- who have set up an olive oil press up at Killikrankie. We spent about 2 and a half hours at it probably picked about 15-20kg (I'm really not sure) of olives each and neither of us are slouches at getting stuck in... it's just an olive weighs 5 grammes and they're only picking purple and up, it's a lot olives and a lot of manual labour. The scary part is the yeild - 10-12%, and the press is not huge and can't deal with too many kg an hour (I forget but I think 25kg an hour?). It also takes several hours to clean - so even starting it for less than 50Kg is not worth the effort.. This comes under olive oil for love, because you really can't afford to do it commercially -- not without harvesting a lot faster per person, because you simply can't afford to pay the labour, and compete with the big operators. Anyway, I am curious enough to volunteer my labour in exchange I hope for some oil, and they're nice folk and working damned hard at it themselves. I suspect it will be too good to use for anything but neat where you really can taste the oil - good salad dressing etc.

Anyway - Blogger is driving me insane (slow...) and I have a sore throat and bit of a temp... so good night

Pheasant plucker's son...

I'm not a pheasant plucker...
But I had to learn, last night. This (and the rather clumsily dressed 'roo in background) were the partial fruits of an expedition to pick up elderly horsepoo from the top of a mountain. Yes, actually I do live an implausible life. I'd never field dressed a wallaby before and so that too was an 'adventure' - less so for the ex-wallaby.


I can say that on a freezing night, if you have no access to cold fusion-powered gloves, having your hands inside the inner parts of a recently dead wallaby is quite effective, if not likely to be popular on the streets of large urban areas. Skinning these, with no prior experience to help was... interesting - especially peeling the tail!

Anyway I now have a half trailer load of lovely vintage horse manure (the 8 year old - the 2003, has matured well, with excellent body and a lovely colour with a bouquet unlike horse excreta, and has in fact become old rich compost. I am adding soil and compost to it - if I can add sun and some plants hopefully we can get a few veggies - my main patch just isn't seeing any real sun. I have to trim trees.

It's late, and I have just finished the edits on WITHOUT A TRACE. Today was not very interesting. I tidied my desk. There is wood down there... Oh and O'Mike my agent suggested he needed an Urban Military fantasy. I told him to wash his mind out with soap. Urban... that's so me. And I loved being in the army so much that I want to write about it.(not). It was the mindless following of orders from people who had trouble tying their own shoe-laces that I loved most. If you want my opinion of my Military experience - read GENIE OUT OF THE VAT (and RATS BATS AND VATS to a lesser extent) it was written as ridiculous fiction because the truth is too ridiculous to be believed. I met some brave comrades I respected and learned a lot from, but WW1 thinking was quite prevalent... as were the relics of peacetime army (as in the Rats books)

Simak wrote rural sf, and no one else seems to have... More my metier

Tough legs...

I cooked a Cape Barren goose leg and thigh that we got from the shooters in goose season(I don't see the sense in shooting anything you don't eat, but others do)

The flavour is remiscent (slightly) of Ostrich. But it has a taste of its own. But it's like sorbo rubber... I slow cooked it for two hours in the oven in a thick case of veg in a cast-iron pot. And it was STILL tough. I flaked it into the veg (lots of rosemary, and potato, onion, parsnips. Really good... lots of chewy bits though! Must figure a way to cook it tender.

I cut up two roo (wallaby) for the dogs this morning packing it into their daily rations (they get 100 grams of meat in that a day - which isn't a lot, but it's real meat. They get rice and dog-cubes too, according to their weight. We have to keep Puggle on a diet to keep weight off the crucuiate - and it's hard. Puggle... well any labby or labby cross thinks diet is die with a T on the end.) It's when you really appreciate that self-sufficiency is easier as a group or at leat 2 - I spent forever doing chores like this this moring, things we normally do in 1/3 of the time together. Anyway 25 days of dog-tucker packed.

I'm starting to get the various people from Continuum 8 e-mailing in about all the organisation - the panels I'm on, the screeches... speech I have to give, dinner I have to go to (well I really don't mind. We writers have to eat, contrary to the belief widespread in publishing. And foraging in cities is risky and dirty. And dumpster diving is considered bad form from your GoH.) I have to judge costumes... Holy maloney. The soul of sartorial elegance, Dave Freer. Yes, your natural judge! You win if you wear a thin layer of oil, and come as grease...(well... maybe. Maybe not. SF cons are a wonderful excercise in meeting other people who have no idea of what clothing they can wear well. And I don't mean plaid shirts and jeans and wellies (ie -my choice). B also wants to fit in some shopping... and I have a feeling it won't be for dive gear, or bulk rations. Well, some WILL be.

Going too far South

We have a massive cold front sweeping in and the weather looks really vile for another week. I tried for squid this evening, got none. I have been preparing 2 cut off water tanks to become raised beds... (I have been promised a load of horse manure, and have some compost, and will add some of the sandy soil) and just hit a far south problem - the trees mean in winter even 17 metres away from the tanks the sun angle is such that they're in the shade. Said trees either have to lose some upper limbs or I have to find a better place.

The chooks seem happy, but no eggs today. 9 eggs since they arrived.

roo stew, and thoughts on the land

I made roo-stew on the wood-fired heater today. Slow cooking and house heating one. The snow on Mt Wellington is blowing straight to my feet. Winter really has hit, and I am glad not to be diving or fishing today. One has to remember this when talking about self sufficiency in a nice urban home -- it doesn't stop for rain or cold. It must have been even worse for those first settlers, especially ones that came from cities and then found themselves without the skills or background, trying to live off a very very different land. I think those who were clever, and flexible and tough (at least 2 of the 3!) survived. This is quite a kind land compared to Northern Europe or even the desert bits of Australia - but it must have seemed inhospitable if you were hoping for a pub or a shop or even a cultivated field.

Cray regs

It's raining and cold and miserable out there. I've lit a fire for the cats, fed the critters, and am now in my study trying to focus on books. I stopped in with Greg today to try and find James's missing dive mask. No such luck :-(. We discussed the state of crayfishing and the Fisheries regulations. It appears they want to cut the 'recreational' fishers quota -- myself as one - but I prefer to think of myself as a non-commercial diver, from 5 to 3 per day. 'To rebuild stocks' Now this makes slightly less sense than an Emu on Acid... as the entire recreational catch is... 7% of the catch. And, what's more the average daily catch is IIRC less than 3 anyway. And 12% of the total catch is supposed to go to recreational fishing. Commercial fishing already takes 5% more than its share, and at 93% of the catch any restrictions that do not reduce their catch (and none appear to be proposed) are meaningless. How to make Fisheries Scientists look like idiots or political pawns to a powerful commercial fishery lobby.

Anyway, chooks laid another egg, and I have yet to catch more than 2 crays in a dive.

Olives and the semi-batchelor

We picked and cut olives today. I figure Barbs and I cut over 1000 each. They take longer to pick and cut than to eat... Now they begin their fresh water changes. I found 18 days last year was about right, but the green only took 12. It's labour intensive, and stains your hands and tries your patience, but the results are pretty good. Not something you can buy in a supermarket.

B is house sitting (well, dog, cat and chook sitting) down in Lady Barron for the next 2 weeks. I can't say I'm enjoying it already. The house is quiet. I will get to see her (and feed her) most days I hope. She's working down there (and other places) and I will just have to fit in between, and really try and get a shift on with this book. Anyway, I've made a fire for the cats (who are seriously peeved about absent laps), and pampered the chooks with some pieces of fish and a wood-cockroach I caught. They gave me an egg in return. Now to feed the beasts and get back to work.

Saltpetre

Gunpowder can very annoying - because it means it is hard to buy saltpetre. Or at least nanny-rules can be. I remember struggling back in SA. I want 10 grams. Not enough to blow up a mouse... but rules is rules I guess. I couldn't find any on the island - which is bizarre. I know nitrates are the new EVUL, but honestly at one stage every farmer in Tasmania, let alone Flinders island would have cured their own bacon (and probably the rest of the pig and the beef too). I was reading Deny King's biography - and bacon and potatoes were all poor people had, often. It's a shame all of that has been lost - no one milks on the island, no one makes bacon (well that I have met yet). Anyway, give me time and enough seed capital from books, and I will turn this around. I have eventually tracked down a butcher's merchant in Lonnie (Launceston) who I hope will help. They do sell sausage casings, which is great news.

The chooks provided one more egg, and I move the 'bago a length forward, in 2 stages. They were wary the first time - the second they had figured it was fresh ground and they were keen to get there (at least the brown-girls were. Mrs Black is a scaredy cat... scaredy chook, I mean.

Bacon and eggs

Well, one egg on the grass this morning, and this evening - one in a nesting box, and one under the nesting box. So that's 5 eggs in 2 days. Bill, who got four chooks at the same time has had none since they moved in. He's blaming the black ones (he's also got two of Nevs black chooks, and also some stripy fellows). I gave the chickens some chopped fish and they went moggy (um, chooky) over it. They are dinosaurs, really.

Also incoming today was some Pork -I have a side of pig belly that needs to be made into bacon. I haven't built a smoker yet (the terrain does not suit) but I will make 'green' bacon (unsmoked, not green in colour, we hope). Maybe organise a makeshift smoker...

The new chooks

A not very good picture of the new chooks inspecting the local decor. They've settled in quickly (laying 2 eggs en route to us) eating drinking and scratching up the dirt much better. I took them a box full of woodlice (isopods) and they partied - going absolutely moggy (chooky?) chasing and pecking. It seems things like this are a big treat. So far they're very good-natured and easy - the antithesis of Mrs Black who can be seen sulking here. I've seen her drink and eat, but she's not a happy chook.

We had a bit of stripey trumpeter (or typey strumpeter?)--a gift--for our tea. It's a good fish, but I am not sure it's better than many others. Of course it had been frozen and I didn't catch it.

On other news 'the cheque is in the post' actually arrived... a cheque for a short story in Vampire spoof anthology 'FANGS FOR THE MAMMARIES' which got sent to South Africa, sent back to the US, re-issued, sent to New Zealand, and then finally, here. About 2 and half years... So: just once in a while it is true. The exchange rate between posting and now cost me about 20% of the not very large value of the story, but hey, it got here.

Three chicks are coming to stay...

Tomorrow, in theory, we will have 3 more Chooks - Hiline(sp?)X Isa brown (?Sp). This will be a good thing because at the moment we only have Mrs Black - Nev's very feral chook who has never been in a cage, let alone a chookabago. She's very unhappy and intimidated by it and by being alone. She even found my presence a comfort but I really suck at crawling around the Chookabago going cluck-cluck, even for Blackie. So we bought an automatic waterer today, and a latch, and 20Kg of laying pellets. With winter looming we may be being optimistic. Anyway, a new adventure, doubtless with new disasters awaits!

Bill and Garfish, LIVE at badger corner.

Okay, roll up, roll up! I'm selling tickets to one of the greast shows of all time -- ergo my mate Bill and the Garfish. Yes, you do have to wade out in the dark into the cold sea until it reaches your frilly bits, but it's worth it, really (and of course worth my extortionate charges. Sorry, these are traditional) We have a supporting act of Arthur and Jane and the incredible wader-striptease, and our wonderful Polish chorus-singer. You'll love it, trust me.

The first part involves Bill and the landing-net dance, in which the garfish swims through the meshes with grace and charm, and Bill tries to catch the same fish (same performance) three times, with lots of lovely piroettes and an arabesque with an eloquent monologue fitting for the House of Lords. Then we have the part where an enraged Bill swats the water so hard with his net that he stuns the garfish, which he then catches. Then we have the part where our lead performer -- well trained by yours truly at skinny-fish spearing -- gives up the net in dispair and resorts to trying to spear gars - which are long, thin and very fast. This is very acrobatic, and surprisingly successful, and leads us to a beautiful, poignant finale, with Bill with two garfish and his underwater light in one hand, and rather decent gar trapped between the tines of his spear and the mud, and him standing on the fish so it won't get away, all to the melodious baritone solo-piece 'Maria, come help me!' (and in the background the chorus sings 'Oh poor little fish, So beautiful. Ooh quick quick there's a big one! Oh poor little fish...'

Priceless entertainment! And all yours for mere windy autumn night off Badger corner.
Cheap at twice the price.
;-)

Garfish

What do you do with a foot - 36 inch long athletic fish...? all sort of interesting possibilities occur, I am sure, to your agile minds. Probably the one idea that didn't occur was to wade out in the dark into nice cold water with a short handled kiddies puddle-net - net depth about half of the length of the fish - and to try and scoop them up as they skit away from your light. The essential adjunct to this fairly aerial and damp passtime is our wonderful (but excitable) Polish friend. The light goes all over the place - which adds interest, as well as challenge, and of course what I can only call volubility. It's a sort of fishy tennis challenge, with a backhand swipe and wild smashing forehand that showers everyone, and has the fish being juggled with as it tries (and mostly succeeds)to bounce out of the net. The fact we caught anything at all still amazes me.

I think it has potential as an Olympic sport, myself. So tonight I am off to introduce a few more devotees...

We have the first chook in the chookabago. She's not terribly pleased with us as she is one of Nev's ultra free range chooks - but he's trying to re-home them as he's going to be off island. It was two chooks but one of them escaped from him. We're hoping to add 4 Isa browns to the menagerie.