say cheese, please.

Hmm. Well, perhaps the great cheese making experiment is going to start soon. We have some new semi-neighbours, from WA, and they at great expense and difficulty imported their housecow, a Jersey (there is a disease that makes importing cows to the island very expensive. WA doesn't have it). And they gave us about 10 litres of milk today, with an offer of more at some future date. So Dave is frantically looking for his Yogurt culture, and his cheese-making book. Found the book. The little bottle of yogurt culture is somewhere in one of 3 freezers. I've done a search through the smallest (which was also the likeliest, but also small.) and discovered many many secrets of the orient... and other things besides fortune cookies, some of which I was pleased to see, and some of which I have NO idea what are (and yes, we do try to label stuff, and yes, there is a method of sorts.).

I'd be really pleased if we could make at least a fetta and camenbert/brie. (I've never been a huge fan of cream/cottage/soft cheese - will eat it but it's less useful than the rest). Hard cheeses (cheddar etc.)require lots more milk of the same batch, and are more complex, and need a long cool maturation. Blue, while I'm fond of it, will probably also have to wait...

But it's a start.

Weekend weather

So it's the weekend coming, and my two regular dive partners are available. And the weather looks like... weekend weather. Blowing a gale. I did go and dive for some Abalone today - but even being lazy and using an aqualung that only took 70 bars out of the tank. I worked harder carring the dratted thing and weightbelt to my spot than I did diving, which is wonderful, but then my concience said, get out and go and do some work. I am getting a bit stir crazy with too much writing, not enought sunlight :-). It is I am afraid creeping into the winter of discontent. The water in September is pure murder (It's at its coldest then, HURTS), but at least it means spring is coming. We have rather weird seasons, because of the Warm current that comes down the Australian coast. It takes a few months to get from warm parts to us, cooling as it comes, but still means everything is delayed as we're getting 2 months ago's warmth (or cold) into the big radiator (the sea) that surrounds us.

My garden is suffering neglect and winter - I left getting in the winter veg a bit late so we have carrots, parsnips, salsify and silverbeet, and still lots of spring onions, and no brassicas (I've got some struggling up). Beet seedling are still growing but very slowly. Have still been getting tomatoes, which is why the rest were late. There are a few capsicums and tomatoes in the makeshift greenhouse.

Of course we do have pumpkins, potatoes still, and quite a lot of frozen and dried stuff.

Garlic in meanwhile is desperate to get planted.

I'm going hammer and tongs at the current book ATM, and trying to do a lot on that, work on two others, fiddle with with the self-publishing stuff (yes there is more coming, provided it kind of pays for itself and makes a little trickle, Thanks to those who bought THE FORLORN, A MANKIND WITCH, and SAVE THE DRAGONS (off the davefreer website) and the various BOLG PI and other stories. It all helps.)and trying to get more wood in to the store before rain makes driving close to the trees impossible (we don't have a 4x4 and it can get very boggy. There are thousands of dead trees - no shortage, but some are a long way from a decent track)

We've had some rain, but we're still a long way down on normal.

The pig got very upset at the cattle noises from the lane-way. Upset enough not to eat the apple I gave her, which if you knew Fairy you'd realize is very serious indeed. She knocked the food bowl out of my hand yesterday in her desperate haste to get to the goodies (she has plenty of grain, but I make her a boiled mash of pumpkin, apple lentils and a little wallaby, thickened with maize meal). However she has recovered her timbre of mind and is one again a food obsessed pig, growing fast.

The new chooks are settling... but not laying. The old ones were easier, but these will get there.

I went for a really anoying dive today - my friend had seen his erstwhile son-in-law dive the spot very successfully for greenlip Abs. All I could find were small blacklip -lots of those, but undersize. I did seem some very good fish - trvally and sweep, but hadn't taken a spear with me. Oh well. You learn.

The town writer and the country writer

What's the difference between an urban writer and a remote rural one on Flinders Island? Well the urban one will get up at a civilized hour, have coffee, maybe put the cat out, have breakfast, go to their desk and start work. Maybe sometime between 8.30 and 9.00. He might answer post, or twitter knowledgably about the Great Gatsby. Later he might take a break and go shopping or be one these really odd people who can write on a laptop in a coffee shop. They exist. Really. I didn't believe it myself.

Back on Flinders island the extremely un-urban writer shivers out of bed at pitch-dark-o-thirty. He fumbles on his clothes gets his rifle and goes off to look for a wallaby. On his return, he will skin and gut the same, then go feed the pig, and then deal with the chickens (in this case that means a quick humane execution. The time had come. New egg-layers arrived last night, and I don't want any chicken-fights, and only one of the older ones was still laying. There were only two of them which is not happy for chooks.) Drawing and plucking followed. Then we got to coffee and putting the cats out. Making porrige and then to work - at about the same time as the Urban writer. All I can say about the Great Gatsby was I hated it as a set-book, and I have no intention of seeing the film, should it, in a few years, find its way to Flinders or DVD. Today we were actually going out to lunch, but I did not take a laptop. I need quiet and my environment to write. I did our shopping in garden, and with a knife and a rifle. And at the end of the day I have to earn a lot less than my urban friend did, which is just as well, because I don't seem very good at it:-).

A bird in the hand...

The little superb fairy wren flew into my study this morning. I saw it out of the perifery of my vision, and it fluttered about checking out my beard for bugs. It hadn't actually got frightened and panicky yet, when it settled on the top of the door and I was able to catch it without chasing it. I think it was quite a young bird, judging by the diapers and training wings. I took it outside opened my hands and it sat there. Me? leave. It's warm here, there's a padded perch... After a minute or two I decided to get my camera. Walked in with it, answered the 'phone, had a long conversation, and then took the bird and camera out again. It continued to sit through my inept pressing the on-off button, reseting the camera from dawn and dusk... all one handed. And then it flew off, quite happily. Most of the pics were rubbish, but it must have sat on my hand for at least 5 minutes.

Good thing I am not a cat.

Walkies

I took the dogs for a walk at the beach at Patriararch's inlet this morning, to their delight (partly to delight them, partly to watch Wednesday, partly to get me out for a little bit.) Pugs has to walk on a lead, to stop him doing too much (cruciate problems) but he loves it, anyway. Wednesday runs around us, and does 4 times the distance, but stays very close. Grin, the sea was angry and noisy and Puggles did not like it (he loved the walk to it and back, just it looked like I might say... bath). The only bit of interesting flots They both love swimming but that was no sea for swimming. Anyway, they showed me that compared to dogs, humans are near blind to smells, needing 5X smello-noses. So why do they smell each other's nether ends so closely? - I can smell that product from 5 yards... They found a number of dead muttonbirds (a lot of the young ones just fail to make that first flight) all mostly fossilised and were very disappointed in the fact I would not let them bring the fruits of their beach-combing along. Wendnesday behaved pretty normally, and ate well this evening. She still doesn't want me to touch her back. It doesn't seem to worry her in any other way. I'm still watching it. My dogs are very precious and they're not young any more. I still miss my Roland terribly.

I got given some pork sausages this evening, and we will have them for tea tomorrow. We had quite a bit of rain - but probably only 5mm - the drought continues. It's a green drought so far, but the island fields are starting to look like clipped lawns. Time to get out the cricket kit and plan beach barbeques.

The social whirl

I'm a little worried about Wednesday( the dog, not the day). She's got a tender spot on her back that she's not keen to have us touch. Still eating and running about as normal. This week looks to be another session quiet country week nights, with something on Tuesday night for B, Wednesday (RSL) Thursday (dancing) possibly Friday, and definately Saturday. So anyone wanting a booking for Monday better get in sharpish.

I was reading Sunrise to Evening Star (a biography of Marina King - I'm sure long out of print, and delightfully un PC) today and her second husband solved my farm gate problem completely. He just drove through them. Seriously a very different view to the currently available ones, on life, the British Empire, the slave trade (her father was stationed in Cape Town as an officer in the British Navy, charged with intercepting Malay dhows (her word not mine) transporting slaves to West Indies. It was a trade I never knew existed (I knew about, and saw broken slave trade beads from the Transkei coast from the trade going to Arabia. The beads were hand made, and go back a long time as a means of exchange. They're there, mute testimony to a trade in humans on east coast of Africa the world has forgotten) but I hadn't realised it. What brought up the comment is that they seemed to socialise a great deal, considering ox-wagons were often used for outings... I guess she just wrote about the bits that were memorable. I guess the one advantage of ox-wagons is that 'roo can get out the way.