Cornish food week

22.7.20

Things have not improved much.  The weather continues to be miserable and wet and Victoria is now in the second wave of 1Covid 19.   We are on an up graded stage 3 restrictions, which is much the same as the last lockdown, except everyone now has to wear masks when out of their homes.  Nursing homes and now the prisons are proving to be hot spots, but it is more dangerous than last time because the virus is spreading from through the community rather than from single source hot spots.

So far, our family has remained virus free.  Al got tested twice and had to spend a night in hospital but as far as the tests went, he had a different virus. This week it is Wayne and his family who are in quarantine because they had wood delivered from a man who was positive, and they are known contacts. Edd and I are staying on the farm and keeping away from people as much as possible.  We have made masks from socks while we wait for a delivery of something better. I started to try and make cloth masks, but they were not very successful.

Luckily, we have a lot to do here, especially when the rain stops.  I have now sorted out all the old corrugated sheets that were stored in the chook pen.  The good ones can be used to make the vegetable garden fence.  I have cut away all the low branches where the fence has to go and laid out a string line for the fence to follow.  Edd is still working in the water tank mending cracks but we worked together to clear a space for the new shed.  I hacked all the stored fence wire free from the grass that entangled it and Edd moved the farm machinery that was stored there. We then took down the buck paddock fence and put pegs in where the shed has to go.  Now we are waiting for the earth moving people to dig in drainage and prepare the site for a concrete slab.

The goats are starting to look pregnant and some of the sheep are heavy in lamb.  The chooks are now laying well and I still get enough milk to make cheese several times in the week.  I have also frozen some milk so that it can be used for the kids when they arrive if their mothers are unable to give them what they need. The war against slugs continues in the vegetable garden but we now have enough silver beet, kale, rocket, lettuce and snow peas to feed ourselves.

The broad beans are in flower and the asparagus is sending up shoots so we will soon have a change of diet.  The cauliflowers Graeme gave us turned out to be sprouting broccoli, so we are eating that too. The fruit and vegetables I froze last summer are a great addition to our diet. The sweet corn, beans and tomatoes are very welcome.  We still have several pumpkins and I have eventually discovered that if I attack them with the hatchet, I use to prepare kindling I save myself all the stress of trying to get into them with a knife.

This week we have had Cornish food.  We made Cornish pasties one night and then Edd used a complicated recipe and made saffron cake.  I have been studying regenerative agriculture on the internet whilst. I spin the wool and mostly we are keeping ourselves entertained.