We are 'professional peasants' living on a small farm just outside Perth, Western Australia, growing veggies, ducks, chooks, rabbits, guinea pigs, quail, bees and even fish! We combine our day jobs with making the place work in as sustainable a fashion as possible.
Well, we have had a few hot days at our place in December, with today topping at 44.3 degrees Celcius!
With the hot weather comes a much increased risk of bushfire, something we are very aware of and plan for accordingly. Previously, we used an old McCormick tractor and towed a water tank and pump on a trailer. The problem with this was that it was difficult to start, and difficult to manoeuvre on McCarthy Park 2 with it being so long and heavy.
So, we have a new fire fighting unit! We bought a 1970 FJ45, which now has the water tank (an IBC), pump and generator on the tray, so it is much easier to start and drive around on our property.
This has given us a much safer and more manageable way of fighting small spot fires that may occur on our property.
It has been a busy, though strange, spring. Perth has seem hot days, windy days, cold days, rainy days…. and sometimes all four in one day! The gardens and the bees have sometimes struggled with the changing conditions, but overall are going well.
We had lost a queen in one hive a while ago, and the newly purchased queen did not survive or stay for some reason. This is where it is very useful having two hives, as we were able to transfer a frame or two of brood from the strong one to the weak one. We had to do this a couple of times, but eventually they did produce a queen, who is now laying prolifically!
We haven’t had a honey harvest so far this season, but it won’t be long before we do!
The orchard has gone well generally, with some good harvests of nectarines, peaches, loquats and plums, though unfortunately one of the nectarines we transferred from McCarthy Park 1 (see There is never nothing to do!) suddenly split and was rotten inside.
This, plus a plum and an apricot going the same way, are disappointing nearly four years after transplanting! The rest are going well though….
a few avocados, hopefully will develop beyond pea size!Hopefully a few develop into fruit!
The dragon fruit are loving their new home too, after some trials and tribulations- fingers crossed we finally get some fruit develop this year. Moving them to the verandah certainly helped to protect them from the frost, so this spring they have taken off!
Despite the variable weather, there has been plenty to harvest from the pumpkin palace as well as the aquaponics.
Pumpkin Palace early November…. now harvesting heaps!plenty of things to eat and preserve!
We harvested some of our turmeric this week, which grows really well in the aquaponics grow beds. We chopped up some for the freezer, and the rest was dehydrated and ground into powder. It smells divine!!!
just a little bit of turmeric!sliced and spread ready for the dehydratorwow, what a wonderful aroma and colour!ready for easy use!
We have really been enjoying it in a hot cacao (with soy milk) drink, as well as our cooking.
It is tempting to just share the good bits of our lifestyle (after all, it is mostly good!), but it is important to be realistic too. Over the years we have certainly had ups and downs related to rural living, some we can even look back on and laugh. A few of those stories are in our ‘setbacks’ page as well as the odd post.
After living this lifestyle for over 30 years, we have experienced most setbacks, but some never feel easier. Recently our lovely doe rabbit, Kep, died while heavily pregnant. She was fine one day and not the next. Even though we breed rabbits for food, our breeders are pets. They are loved and cuddled like any pet, so there is a sense of loss when one dies.
She was a very skittish bunny when we first got her as a kit, but with time and patience she eventually enjoyed a pat, and tolerated (!!) being picked up.
We have a new girl now, and she is pretty friendly but not quite as big and impressive as Kep.
After a long, dry summer in Perth (8 months with no rain), winter has finally arrived. The gardens are looking refreshed (as are the weeds unfortunately!), and the rainwater tanks are looking much healthier.
The ‘pumpkin palace’ had provided plenty of zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, rockmelon, green beans and of course pumpkin over the summer, and once we had harvested the last pumpkin, it was opened up to the chooks for the coming few months.
This rotation system is working well- the previous season’s pumpkin palace has been eaten down, fertilised and received lots of scraps, buried fish, carcasses etc so after a clean up it will be ready for the next round of planting.
the grass really encroached into this bed, but the chooks will soon sort that out!
We used to use a three way rotation, but find the two way pumpkin palace rotation we currently use works well. We manage to grow so many greens in the two aquaponics systems, we tend to use these two large beds for things like pumpkin and zucchini that take up lots of space!
It was so exciting, as we have never had flowers before. Just the one plant, had six gorgeous buds…….
……. with one opening one night and the other five a couple of nights later. Out we went with the head torch and paintbrush to assist with the pollination.
We were so excited, and so were the bees- they loved the flowers!
We were very hopeful that the pollination was successful, but unfortunately it wasn’t! The flowers fell off, and then the bit that should have been the fruit!
While that was so disappointing, we are looking forward to a winter that doesn’t mean we start from scratch yet again, followed by more flowering next summer!
Wow….. we have had dragon fruit plants for several years, but they have always struggled. We hoped the new place might suit them better, but the frost each year set them back so much it was like starting again each summer…including this summer.
But….. they are doing really after planting small cuttings in spring in raised (slightly) beds along with some berries (some beds have blackberries and others raspberries).
March 2024- They have grown and now overhang beautifully (despite us fighting the grass in the raised beds).
And FINALLY!! We have flower buds! First time ever!
Time will tell if it is too late in the season for them to form fruit, before the next frosts come, but fingers crossed! We are planning to protect them with hessian this year, so they aren’t as badly affected by the frost, plus they are closer to the house now so that may also reduce the impact.
February has continued to be very hot (the highest we recorded was 44.7 Celcius!! Some areas of the garden suffered in the heat, but a few of the veggies thrived! We had tomatoes in abundance, and despite giving away loads to family and friends there was plenty to preserve.
So we tended to do indoor jobs on those hot days, including lots of preserving the produce that was in abundance, such as…..
Creole sauce is a wonderfully versatile sauce using up the abundance of tomatoes and other veggies. It will make a great pasta sauce, or a base to add meat to, or to add to casseroles in the cooler weather. We are always happy to have plenty of sweet chilli sauce on hand too, so have made quite a few bottles this season with our great ongoing crop of long red chilli.Batches of stewed rhubarb, zucchini pickles, and more delicious Creole sauce!
With the heat, we have been working on perfecting our sourdough bread in a camp oven on the barbecue rather than having the oven on in the house- it has been quite successful, though more tweaking of the controls to get the best temperature for the final browning is needed.
