Spring is here!

Here in New Zealand, the seasons always start on the 1st of a month.  So Spring started on September 1st, then Summer will start on December 1st.  You can do the math for the following seasons.  This is the last weekend of October and the sun finally made an appearance.  Hallelujah!!!!

Since the sun was shining, we decided to start our traditional, Saturday- Seafood BBQ, which will go on till we can’t anymore (maybe late March).  Each Saturday, we choose 3 (or 4 if we are greedy) different types of seafood to season and grill in 3 different ways.  This Saturday we had lemon fish, which I seasoned with garlic butter, lemon ride and lemon juice.  We also had prawn skewers and steamed mussels.  For veggies, we had asparagus and courgettes all dressed with garlic butter.  YummY.

Since the sun honored us with its presence   for both days of the weekend, we headed to the beach.  Anawhata Beach is a west coast beach that has black sand.  To get there, you must hike down through the Forest for about 20 minutes until you get to the beach. 

Sunny and Alex loved it!  They ran….

And ran………

And ran…………

Then we settled near the water and sent Alex to her cave!

We took a self-portrait... Look at the happy couple:)

We had a fantastic time at the beach.   I think Alex and Sunny will sleep like little angels tonight.
Night, night kids.

All in a day’s work

While my husband is the handy sausage maker, I’m still the chicken keeper. I currently have 7 chickens ranging in age from 3 years old to 1 year old.  Out of the seven, five are laying.  One is retired from laying and the other is confused is she is a he or a she.

Being mid-Spring, this is the high season for laying.  This is all in a day’s work. 

We had these exact fresh eggs with yesterday’s homemade sausages.  We are very spoilt in this house.

Boys and their sausages (trying to keep this PG12)

My husband has always wanted his sausage to be longer and tastier than any others.  Well, this weekend was his moment to man-up.  Show me what your beef is made of Baby! He finally brought out the sausage maker I bought him 2 birthdays ago.

Because most store-bought sausages have such a high fat content (and us being such health nuts), he’s always wanted to try and make leaner sausages.  Per 1 ½ pounds of meat, most recipes add ½ a pound to 1 pound of pork fat.  Yuck! 

He was a man with a mission this weekend.  I was only the photographer as he didn’t want me to touch his sausage…. I’ve never!

So, to start, he marinated the meat and herbs.  Once the meat was ready, in it went into the meat grinder.

This shot is from the other side.

Next he had to put all the ground-up meat back in the grinder to push it into the casing.

                                           (I have no comment about this photo but know I’d love to!)
It’s a tricky thing to fill the casing evenly through a very long sausage without breaking it.  See my honey’s long sausage.

Next he had to make them into individual sausages by twisting them at every 5 inch intervals.

Here’s the finished product and a very happy honey.

Almost time

It’s almost Spring.  With a sunny Saturday at hand and time to myself, all I wanted to do was get stuck into my garden.  No interruptions, no lunches to make and well, nobody but me, Sunny…. and the chooks.

Before you can start to plant a veggie garden or any type of garden, there are always pesty weeds to deal with.  The only thing that grows in my garden all Winter long are weeds.

I’m pleased that my parsley grew throughout Winter along with the weeds

Once I had dealt with the weeds, I needed to add nutrients to my soil.  I keep a compost bin in my backyard which I add most kitchen scraps (the one’s the chickens don’t get first), green and brown organic waste then wait till it breaks down to soil again.

                                                      More on composting in another post.

Once my piles of home-brewed compost are in place, I layer it on top of my existing soil and wait.  I wait for a few weeks to a month while the rain spreads the nutrients down to the rest of the soil. 

What do I do while I wait?  I plan my garden.  This is where my handy hubby comes in.  Honey, where should I plant my beans?

If I didn’t have chooks, I would have put the weeds in my compost bin but I saved them along with some extra worms for my girls. Everyone benefits in one way or another today.

Five years

Happy Anniversary to my wonderful husband. We are a bit late with the celebrations but what can I say, we've been busy.
We booked a four day trip to Queenstown, which is on the Southern end of the South Island. We literally went there to RELAX. We had 10 hours of sleep every night in addition to a daily nap.

Queenstown was incredibly scenic and picturesque. I've uploaded some of our photos here with captions included.

Enjoy.

February Egg Count

One hundred and three eggs for the month of February. Wilma, the 'rock star' from last month finally took a much needed break. What does one household do with 103 eggs (that's 8 1/2 dozen)? We share. I gave 2 dozen eggs away last month. I love nothing more than to share homegrown food with friends and family whether it's from my garden or my backyard egg shop.

(you can click on the spreadsheet to see a bigger view)

It will be sad when the garden and chooks stop producing due to shorter days and cooler temperatures.

First weekend in Autumn

When I heard that we were getting hit with a heavy storm on Saturday, I couldn’t wait to have a lazy day indoors. The storm hit hard, it rained sideways but I didn’t care because all I wanted to do was start on the quilt I had planned to start 6 months ago.

Fortunately, I had already cut the material- 72 squares measuring 8 ½ x 8 ½ and 288 strips that are 8 ½ x 1 ½ . Now I just need to sew it all together. These things take time because, once a square is sewn to a strip, it needs to be pressed before the other strips can be sewn on.
Fortunately, I had music- hit here for video.

And, I had an ironing assistant- click here

I did have another kind of helper.

SUNNY!!!!!!