Intro | New Books | New awards | The July Garden
Plants for Chooks | A Few Recipes, including sugar free souffles, Victoria Sponge, corn cakes, zucchini slice, potato latkes.
It’s cold. The sky is that high washed out winter blue, and the wombats are blonde and fluffy, which means it’s going to be a long cold winter. There are brown frost burns on leaves that have never been touched by cold before. The leaves hanging limply, even on the camellias in full bloom.
Despite the cold, winter is a gentle time. The creek is usually flowing; no bushfire smoke on the horizon; trees drooping with avocados, pecans , chestnuts, macadamias, lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangelo, lemonade fruit, oranges, cumquats, calamondins, the giant chilacayote melons still hanging 20 metres up on the pear and avocado trees, endangering anyone who walks underneath.
You don’t have to race to pick things before they rot or the fruit fly get them in winter; except when your fingers turn blue, anyhow.
Our little lone auracana chook is still giving us an egg a day, too. She’s about 16 now, and her fellow araucanas have long fallen off the perch. In fact all our chooks are ‘loners’ now, having outlived the others in their batch of chooks. The youngest is 12, a home reared Australorpe.
This year we’re finally going to buy new chooks- Hannibal the rooster is a geriatric too. I haven’t seen him mount a chook for years, so I doubt any of the eggs are fertile. He manages two crows each dawn, and then goes back to sleep.
Today I planted a bag of shallots and some new strawberry varieties, and then ran back in to warm my hands at the fire. I’ll dash out again to feed the wombats when I finish writing this - Bruiser, the new young wombat ‘placed’ here to return to the bush still gets some hand feeding, which has reminded Mothball that a bowl of rolled oats and alpaca pellets is her due too, and if she doesn’t get them she bashes up Bruiser and then attacks the door mat.
After Bruiser and Mothball have finished Rosie wallaby and her joey Emily eat the coarse chaff left in the bowls that the wombats haven’t bothered to eat.
If Bruiser hasn’t finished when they arrive Rosie raises herself to her full metre and half height and screams at him, claws out, which sends Bruiser scuttling back to his hole under our bedroom. The currawongs scare Bruiser too, and even the blue wrens refuse to back away when he growls at them.
The only one lower than Bruiser in the pecker order is me. When the wallabies, blue wrens and Mothball get too much for Bruiser to cope with he retreats under the bedroom and shrieks till I go out to him. I’m glad he has someone to boss around, even if it’s only me. But it says a lot about how the local animals regard us.
Forget about being top of the food chain. As far as the wildlife is concerned we’re waaaay down the bottom.
Latest Books
‘Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior’ is out! It’s the first in the new series, A School for Heroes, and it’s funny. Okay, it’s totally hilarious, made even more so by Andrea Potter’s fabulous drawings of the Glastly Greedle and Gloria the Gorgeous (she’s not just gorgeous, she’s drop dead gorgeous. Or she was 80 years ago. But hey, it’s nothing that a bit more lipstick can’t fix.) Though I think I like Andrea’s Dr Mussels and his fearsome bananas best of all.
The School for Heroes in set in a volcano, staffed by the retired heroes from Rest in Pieces- old heroes never die, they simply rest in pieces. (The heat is good for their arthritis). And for Boojum Bark, student hero and werewolf, there’s a lot to discover.
Why is the headmaster a banana wielding monkey?
Exactly what is Boo Fu, taught by Mrs Kerfuffle the librarian, who’s deadly with a well thrown dictionary.
Why does Princess Princes Sunshine Caresse von Pewke get so upset when he sniffs her bum?
How do you face giant Rabbits, Trrroooolls, Orges and other bogeys armed only with a zombie sausage?
What does the mysterious Yesterday want with the school garbage?
And where do flying pigs get their little jumpers?
‘Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior’ is a big book. There are lots of hilarious short books around. But the trouble with a short book is that you just really get into it, it stops. If kids can find a two and a half hour moivie fascinating, why not a big book?
Lessons for a Werewolf warrior is crammed full of universes, where Rabbits are deadly predators (almost as bad as budgies) and fairies bite, and zombie spaghetti may be the most fearsome weapon of them all.
Coming Soon
The Night They Stormed Eureka: a fresh look at the history we thought we knew.
Are the history books wrong? Could the rebels have succeeded? Could we too have seceded from Britain, like the USA?
This is the story of Sam, a modern teenager, thrust into the world of the Ballarat goldfields, with the Puddlehams, who run the best cook shop on the diggings, and dream of a hotel with velvet seats, ten thousand miners who dream of gold and rebellion, and Professor Shamus O’blivion, who tries not to dream at all.
Baby Wombat’s Week. At last- the sequel to Diary of a Wombat.
What is even funnier- and stroppier- than a wombat?
Her baby. A book for every child, and every harried mother, too.
New awards
Both ‘The Shaggy Gully Times’ and ‘Pharaoh’ have been short-listed for the YABBA (Young Australians Best Book Award). Many, many thanks to everyone who nominated them… and enormous hugs to all who vote for them. (Pharaoh was also a Children’s Book Council (CBC) short-listed book last year, and also short-listed for ACT Book of the Year.)
‘A Rose for the Anzac Boys’ is short listed for the CBC awards this year, and ‘The Camel who Crossed Australia’ and ‘How High can a Kangaroo Hop?’ have also been made CBC Notable Books for 2009.
Schedule for ‘09
I’m afraid I won’t be able to manage much more than the list below. (It doesn’t include all the other things that have to be crammed into my life.) I usually receive at least one invitation to give talks, workshops, visit an inspiring project, meet kids with a problem, or a request to tour a garden each day, often several. Much as I’d love to, I just can’t do them all – or even most of them. Mostly I choose events with the biggest audience (at least 200, preferably 600 or more) because this means that I can speak to more people in the time I have available. I find that about eight hours of travelling is all I can manage a day, too – and it takes three hours to catch a plane from here. I’m just not able to travel to Sydney, Melbourne or any cities that I have to fly to, and then make it back home the same day. A one-hour talk that needs two flights can mean two day’s travelling.
Please forgive me if I can’t come to your town, school or event – it doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I wish I were Superwoman and could do them all – and respond to every request for help or mentoring too and give long answers to every kid who emails for material for projects. But I only have two hands and 24 crammed hours in a day.
August: Talks in Sydney. Contact Lateral Learning for bookings.
September 9, 10,11, 12: Brisbane Writer’s Festival
September 19 & 20: EYES Conference and possibly other talks in Fremantle and Perth
Sept 5 & 6; October 3,4,5, and 9,10, 11: three talks each day at the Floriade Festival Canberra. Contact Floriade for details or see the Floriade programme later in the year.
October 28: Children’s Day, Canberra, workshop at Marymead.
November 15: Open Garden workshops at our place. Contact the Open Garden organizers for bookings. act@opengarden.org.au If you want to make a weekend of it, there are lots of places to stay, from cheap pubs to luxury b and b’s close by. Look at the Braidwood web site. We also have a cottage that we rent for weekends sometimes- with very limited tank water, a healthy population of snakes, and lots of wildlife who’ll ignore you and go on munching .
The July Garden
This is the time to plant all the things that it’s too hot to plant in summer, like trees and shrubs and artichokes and rhubarb. Basically you can plant anything, any time, as long as you have water and some shade cloth. The old habit of planting fruit trees and roses only in winter was because they were transported ‘bare rooted’ i.e. without soil and pot, so needed to be dormant. These days most nurseries have potted trees and roses all year round, but winter planting is still a good idea- neither you nor your plants get as stressed in winter as you will in summer’s heat.
Plant: Trees, trees, trees - if you don't have fruit trees now is the time to put one (or twenty three) in. Also roses, in pots or bare rooted, asparagus crowns (but seedlings in spring will grow faster), rhubarb crowns, artichoke suckers, thornless blackberries and raspberries and loganberries
Prune: Leafless trees, shrubs and roses.
Don't prune: Banksia and other roses that only bloom in spring - wait till they've flowered. Don't prune roses or other shrubs in very frosty areas either - wait till next month
Spray: Fruit trees and roses with Bordeaux - this will kill the fungal spores that will give them black spot and other leaf and fruit disease next season.
Repot: Hanging baskets and pot plants. Potting mix starts to repel water after a year or two, or turns into concrete - which is why pot plants stop growing and flowering so much as they get older. Repot each winter and they'll keep on looking lush.
Water: Everything! Cold weather dries out plants - and water penetrates best into slightly damp soil. If you wait till the ground is dry most will run off or not penetrate to root depth.
Think herbs: Plant drought tolerant lavender, rosemary, sage, thyme, santolina or curry plant in sunny spots; Corsican mint, creeping thymes and prostrate savoury in sun between paving stones; woodruff and comfrey in light shade.
What to plant:
Flowers:
Cold – warm: Seedlings of pansies, primulas, polyanthus, alyssum, calendulas, dianthus, hollyhock, foxgloves and poppies.
Subtropical - tropical: As above plus any annual seedlings in the nursery.
Vegetables
Cold - temperate: Onions, artichoke suckers, asparagus or rhubarb crowns
Subtropical - tropical: Just about anything.
What to grow for Chooks
I love chooks. There’s nothing more beautiful than a mob of White Leghorns like sailing ships flying with the wind, comfortable Australorps in their fluffy black knickers dedicatedly sifting through the old tomato bed for insects and titbits, or a tribe of Rhode Island Reds scratching under the lavender. There’s no sound as domestic, either, as a mob of chooks clucking in the backyard. It gives you a feeling of safety and security No matter what disasters are around you, you have eggs and meat and entertainment down in your backyard.
Keeping chooks means you never have to feel guilty about that leftover lasagne or the squishy avocados. The chooks will love them. They love toddler’s breakfasts, too, and the oil from last night’s potato cakes poured onto a stale loaf of bread.
Our chooks have laying pellets in a ‘self feeding’ container to eat whenever they want them. But they don’t eat them much. They are too full of scraps, and leftover avocadoes, and a few baked potatoes.
A lot of our homegrown fruit and veg go to the chooks. Some of it is grown especially for them, like the amaranth and the sunflower seeds. Other stuff is basically what we don’t want, and when you have 130 varieties of apples, an uncounted number of avocado varieties (uncounted because now we have many deliberately bred new varieties here), plus a good summer range of grasshoppers, which the chooks adore, and other pestiferous types of chook tucker, pellets are the last thing on a well fed chooks mind.
If you don’t want to rely on commercial pellets, or expensive organic grain, the following are easy to grow in large amounts i.e. the amount you might need for 2-4 backyard chooks. (If you have more than four you either need a large backyard, or to keep them mostly penned, otherwise you’ll end up with a chook style desert, everything either scratched up or turned into concrete from their droppings. )
Plants to grow for chooks
Maize. Maize is a more vigorous, tougher, hardier version of sweet corn. You’ll get a crop even in a drought. Maize is grown just like sweet corn: plant after frosts, feed well, mulch etc; there are usually at least two, often more, big cobs per stem. They are ready when the tassels turn brown, but can be left on the plant all winter, if you turn the cobs downwards so that rain doesn’t penetrate the papery husks, and as long as bush rats or house rats don’t discover your crop. If they do, you may find that overnight you’ve lost your maize crops, and your rats are fat. Otherwise dry them spread out in the sun or even indoors, then store either on the cob- easiest but takes a lot of space- or scrape or twist off the cob. Twisting maize off the cob used to be one of the longest, most wearisome jobs for farm kids. Throw the chooks a few cobs each day, so they can peck off the kernels, or throw them a few handfuls of corn each afternoon, or add it to the mix in your hopper.
Maize turns chook fat yellow, and gives richer coloured yolks; a lot of maize can also cause some breeds to put on fat, rather than meat, especially if they are penned up with little exercise, or elderly. But in winter maize is great for chooks. Chooks need more carbohydrate then, to keep warm, so an extra helping of autumn harvested maize is excellent.
Avocado trees: Avocados are perfect chook food. One large tree should give you 600-2,000 fruit a year, which is enough to happily feed both you and your chooks. I’d grow a hedge of them if I lived in suburbia, with at least four varieties to make sure I had avocadoes all year round.
Avocado is possibly our chooks’ staple food. It’s rich in oils, protein, vitamins and minerals, calorie rich too, and soft and easy for chooks to peck at. Flies don’t lay maggots on them, and if they rot they don’t ferment. I pick a lot for us every week; any we don’t eat are thrown to the chooks. The avocado rich diet may be one reason why our chooks refuse to die. Chooks are supposed to live for 5-8 years, or possibly ten at a pinch. Ours regularly live to 12, usually to 14, sometimes 16 or 17- and while the elderly ones don’t lay often, they still do lay some eggs. I can’t praise avocadoes enough as a staple diet for chooks. I try to make sure each chook has at least one large avocado a day. By the way, don’t be put off by myths that avocado is poisonous for chooks. Avocado leaves have been added to commercial chook food, and also to commercial dog food, as have all sorts of things like urea, rendered sick animal carcasses and many other horrors, all in an effort to produce cheap feed. The avocado leaves proved fatal for dogs and chooks, and somehow the myth has grown that the fruit is harmful too. It isn’t.
Sunflowers Chooks love sunflowers, so I put in a big patch every year. I get the flowers, they get the seed. Cut off the heads when they are mature, i.e. when the flowers die off and the seeds are large and fat, and toss a head into the chook yard every few days. I store sunflower heads in old chook food sacks, suspended from a rope from the shed ceiling, well tied up so the rats can’t get into them.
Fruit trees One of the best ways to feed chooks, and to keep your fruit trees pest free, is to run chooks in your orchard, under the fruit trees. Yes, the chooks may fly up and peck a bit, but not much- they’ll soon learn that the best i.e. ripe and squishy and peckable, fruit, falls to the ground.
Fruit fly and Codlin moth infected fruit falls prematurely from the tree once the seed has been disturbed, so running chooks under your fruit trees is a great way to clean up pests.
Chooks eat any fruit except citrus and bananas: apples, guavas, plums, apricots, mangoes, mulberries, white mulberries, or tamarillo. Hens mostly ignore fallen citrus, although geese love them, and hens will leap two metres to peck a fig.
Avoid fruit that stays on the tree instead of falling off when they are over-ripe: loquats, for example. Chooks won’t be able to get them, and they will attract fruit-fly.
Nuts
Nuts are a great way to grow your own protein for the chook food. Nut are rich in calories, protein, oils, vitamins and minerals- excellent for you as well as your chooks. One or two handfuls of chopped nuts a day should give your chooks enough home grown protein. As for which nut- choose the ones that grow best in your climate, walnuts, hazelnuts and ginko nuts in cold climates, those and almonds, pistachios, bunya nuts and macadamias in warmer temperate climates, and macadamias, bunya, cashews and Brazil nuts in the tropics. Of all of these the bunya nut gives the most gigantic crop, but it can take 20-50 years for a tree to fruit, an they are gigantic, plus a ripe bunya cluster falling from the sky can squash a car. Grow with discretion.
Chilacayote melons
These are giant perennial melons. They die down each winter, then grow in spring, and fruit prolifically in autumn an dearly winter. They’ll climb a 60 metre tree, and drop- possibly deadly- fruit as the vine withers. Again, make sure no member of the community, human or other wise, is killed by falling fruit.
The melons are massive, and so hard skinned they’ll last all winter and summer without rotting. But when they are split open both the seeds and flesh inside make superb chook food, with almost no work on your part to get it. Grow vines up all your large, safely positioned trees, and give the chooks a split in half melon once a week to have a peck at.
Potatoes
Spuds give the most calories for the smallest amount of space. If you seriously want to grow your own chook food, spuds are a good basis. They will need cooking though, before the chooks can digest them properly, and don’t feed chooks rotting spuds.
Grains
Yes, you can grow backyard rice, wheat, barely, millet and oats- see Backyard Self-sufficiency for details. Of these, millet is the most hard, and gives the most crop on poor soil. All are great home grown food for chooks.
Amaranth
Amaranth is drought hardy; both the grain (seeds) and leaves are edible. We grow lots, and when the flowers fall and the seed swells I cut off the top of each plant and throw them into the chook pen. The chooks adore both the seeds and the greens, and the plants then grow again from the leftover stem. One good head of amaranth will give a chook most of it’s grain needs for the day, and a few square metres will give you a large amount of your chook food for about three chooks all through summer and autumn.
Tree Lucerne
This is a good green for small plots. Cut down the branches and throw them to the chooks for greenery when grass is scarce.
Carob
Carob is also excellent, rich in fats and protein and the trees survive droughts once established. But the carob pods (not the hard seeds) will have to be harvested and cooked before the chooks can eat them. You need a male and female tree for pollination to get carob pods, and only the female will produce pods.
Other crops
Any crop that grows easily for you, and can be eaten by humans – apart from citrus- is good chook food. After all, chooks have lived on the edges of human life for thousands of years. Sweet potatoes, pumpkins, arrowroot, chestnuts, honey locust, taro, yams, , kumara, Jerusalem artichokes, sunflower roots, and chokos are all good easily grown and prolific chook foods. All root crops will need to be cooked before chooks can eat them though.
Some Good Egg Recipes
Potato soufflé
Ingredients
4 eggs, separated
1 cup mashed potatoes, still hot (don’t add butter, etc.)
1 cup cream
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons grated cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon chopped chives or dill
Method
Beat everything into the potato except the eggwhites. Beat the whites until stiff, then fold in gently. Cook in a buttered dish in a hot (preheated) oven for 20 minutes or until just set and crisply golden on top.
Sweet apricot soufflé
This is a simple, low calorie pudding. The scent of apricot will pervade the kitchen.
Ingredients
4 eggwhites, beaten
1 cup dried apricots, soaked and mashed
1 drop (no more) of almond flavouring (optional)
Method
Blend the apricots and eggwhites gently. Place in a straight-sided baking dish in a hot oven (250°C) and bake for 15 minutes. Serve hot.
Simple Sugar Free Soufflé
Mix 1 beaten egg white with 1 tb sugar free marmalade. Bake in a greased and floured pottery (NOT plastic) eggcup for about 5 minutes in a preheated oven on maximum till well risen and set.
Sugar free cherry or raspberry jam also makes a superb soufflé.
Corn Cakes with Tomato Salsa
Salsa Ingredients
1 large red onion, chopped
3 large sweet fragrant tomatoes also chopped and the juice and seeds poured off (if you can't find a fragrant tomato substitute mango)
a very small dash of balsamic vinegar - don't overdo it. It should just be a hint; the whole affair should be solidish, not liquid.
Corn Cake Ingredients
4 eggs
2 cups self raising flour
2 cans corn kernels if you must, or even creamed corn; otherwise scrape the kernels of twelve ears of freshly boiled corn
milk or cream…as much as you need so that the mix is moist enough to ‘glop’ rather than spread when you drop spoonfuls into the pan. You won’t need it if you use creamed corn… but if you use cream corn it will taste only 5% as delicious as if you use fresh corn
1 tb finely chopped capsicum (sort of optional)
1 tb finely chopped parsley (ditto)
1 tb chopped chives (ditto too ... but do try to add them )
Method
Mix everything.
Heat a frying pan, add a dab of butter or extra virgin olive oil, or a mix of both, slide in spoonfuls and fry till brown on one side then flip over and brown on the other.
Serve hot with the salsa on the side.
You can make these all in advance and keep them warm under a tea towel so they don't dry out in a very low oven ... or just fry them up as people eat, reserving the slightly charred ones for yourself to nibble on as you cook. These are also very good with sweet chilli sauce.
Zucchini Slice
I love this hot or cold.
Ingredients
About 6 cups grated zucchini (the number of zucchini needed will vary according to their size)
1 carrot, grated
1 large red onion, peeled and grated
1 cup strong cheddar cheese, grated
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
6 large eggs
optional 6 tb chopped parsley or chopped coriander leaves
optional 1 tbs finely chopped chilli
optional 1 red capsicum, finely grated
optional salt and pepper
Mix. Pour into a greased baking dish and bake in a moderate oven 30-40 minutes till firm and brown on top.
Potato Cakes or Latkes
Ingredients
4 large potatoes, grated
1 large red onion, grated
4 cloves garlic chopped
4 heaped tb plain flour
4 eggs
black pepper
olive oil to fry
optional: 1 tb chopped parsley, or grated carrot or celeriac to replace some of the potato
Method
Mix all ingredients except the oil. Heat oil in a fry pan. When the air above is just beginning to waver add tablespoons of the mix; fry on one side till brown, then fry on the other side. Serve hot with tomato salsa (see page ) chilli jam, or a good tomato sauce.
Small Frittatas with Light Sour Cream and Semi Dried Tomato
Ingredients
8 eggs
1-cup cream
2 tb chopped chives
½ cup grated sharp cheese or Parmesan
Topping
½ cup light sour cream
16 semi dried tomato halves
extra chopped chives
Mix all the top ingredients. Grease 16 muffin holders, or use 16 coffee cups. Pour the mix into them. Bake 15 minutes at 200C; leave to cool slightly- they’ll shrink away from the container and be easier to remove.
Top with a dab of light sour cream, then he bit of semi-dried tomato, then a dusting of chopped chives. Serve luke warm or room temperature, or keep in the fridge for a few hours till needed, then leave out for 20 minutes to lose the chill. Cold frittata just tastes of cold.
Hot Mascarpone Creams with Raspberry Sauce
Cream Ingredients
250 gm mascarpone (Italian cream cheese - at a pinch you can use the Aussie stuff)
150 ml sour cream (or light sour cream)
3 dessertspoons caster sugar
2 eggs
Beat the whole lot till smooth. Bake in one large or several small pots (don't fill each pot any more than two thirds of the way up so you have room for the sauce on top) in a moderate oven till set (about twenty minutes). Don't let it brown though a gentle gold colour is okay.
Sauce
Melt a carton of frozen raspberries - one of the few fruits that really freezes well. Heat gently in a saucepan and add half a teacup full of Cointreau (this can be omitted if you don't have any, or if you are serving this to kids or anyone who doesn’t want a large serving of alcohol.). Mash a little with a fork, then reduce till it's thick and pour it over the cooked creams to the top of the pot.
Serve at once.
Orange and Ginger Muffins
Ingredients
200 gm butter or marg
quarter cup milk
1 cup brown sugar
1 tb orange rind
1 tb powdered ginger
3 eggs
2 cups self raising flour
half cup almond meal
half cup orange juice
orange syrup (See below)
Method
Beat butter, sugar, ginger and orange rind; add eggs one by one; add flour, milk, orange juice and almonds. Mix gently.
Bake in greased muffin pan or paper cases for about 35 minutes at 200C till light brown on top. remove from pan. Pour hot syrup over the hot muffins.
Syrup
1 cup castor sugar
two thirds of a cup orange juice
one third of a cup water
Combine all the syrup ingredients in a pan; simmer and stir till sugar dissolves.
Victoria sponge cake
This sponge cake originated in the state of Victoria and is perhaps the lightest of sponge cake recipes.
Ingredients
4 eggs
1 cup caster sugar
1 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons boiling water
1 teaspoon butter
Method
Beat the eggs and sugar together for 20 minutes with an egg-beater. The mixture should be pale yellow (almost white) and thick and ropey. Add the flour and baking powder, then boiling water in which the butter has been melted.
Bake in two buttered and floured tins at 220°C for about 20 minutes or until lightly browned and the edges shrunk slightly from the sides. Don’t overcook. Cool. Spread one cake with whipped cream and sliced strawberries, then put the other cake on top of it. This too can be laden with strawberries and cream or simply dusted with icing sugar. I prefer the extra cream and strawberries myself. If you don’t have strawberries, you can use fresh passionfruit instead (you can use both if you are greedy). Kiwifruit are a modern addition and good in moderation.
Lime Butter. (other citrus can be used- mandarin or tangelo butter is excellent)
Take a cup of fresh lime juice, half a cup of sugar, add two eggs, well beaten, half a cup of butter and a teaspoon of cornflour mixed in with the juice. Heat in a saucepan as slowly as possible, stirring all the time till it thickens. Bottle and seal and store for up to six months in the fridge. This is a strong and tart butter - add more butter if you like a blander mixture.
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