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.