We have so much honey, and a lot of it crystallised, so we decided to try Sandor Katz T’ej (Ethiopian style honey wine) as described in his book ‘Wild Fermentation’. It is delicious, and so very easy to make! It has helped put the crystallised honey to good use- we just warmed it enough to liquify before mixing with the water.
Naturally fermented mead (T’ej)
Well, the hives are going well. We decided to re-queen both hives- we had read a lot of advice on re-queening annually, plus with the billabong hive still behaving aggressively we decided that replacing the queen was the only option. Never having done it before, we did some research and found it surprisingly easy. The hardest part was finding the old queens and removing them!
After re-queening, we left the hive for 10 days and then checked, and sure enough the billabong hive was calmer already, so we knew we had done the right thing. With the weather getting cooler, it was also time to reduce the number of supers again. We had already removed one super from each of the kitchen and billabong hives, and harvested heaps of honey, and we now reduced them further. For winter, each hive has the brood box and one super, which is more than half full of honey. We will keep an eye on them but hopefully this will keep them going over winter. Mind you, it has been amazingly mild so far and the bees are continuing to bring in pollen at a great rate!
Produce room full of honey
Well, it certainly has been a hot Perth summer, but autumn has finally arrived and with the cooler weather the plants are recovering. We have loads of pears, guava, citrus and apples growing at the moment. This is the first year we have been able to pick guava, and they are delicious!
Strawberry guava- delicious!
We also have had a huge amount of honey from our busy bees- the shelves were full of jars of honey and we did another harvest a couple of weeks ago. This is a 20 litre bucket!
20 litre bucket of honey- second harvest this year!
Our olive trees have also fruited this year, much better than the dozen or so olives we harvested last year!! Enough to fill a couple of 2 litre jars. These are soaking in water, changed daily for 2 weeks. Next comes the brine solution which they will sit in for a year- such a long wait!
Olives in water
Our latest preserving venture is lacto-fermentation, a process which has been around for a long time and has many health benefits. After a few experiments and a couple of hands on workshops (in particular with Yoke Mardewi from Wild Sourdough, we are now well on the way and have a few delicious items fermenting away!
Just a few….
There is a batch of sauerkraut and a batch of kimchi in the fridge being eaten, and in this photo is two types of sauerkraut, more kimchi, rhubarb and beetroot (left), saltless carrots, garlic in brine and garlic in honey. Next on the list is a mushroom ferment…..when we can find the shimeji mushrooms needed! Recipes will be added soon to the recipe section.
We made a yummy rabbit liver on the weekend! We used the livers of four rabbits and followed a thermomix recipe for chicken liver pate and just substituted rabbit livers. It was very easy to make and really delicious!
Home made rabbit liver pate
It has been a busy few weeks, but we now have a full freezer…..of turkey, rabbit, lamb, and chicken as well as pate and various stocks on hand.
This past year we have been much more successful using and preserving what we grow, and we have learnt a lot about what works and what doesn’t!! There are some great websites with successful recipes that suit what we grow, our resources and our lifestyle, so we thought we would share some of our successes in a ‘recipe‘ page- beauty/health products such as lip balm, calendula salve, aloe vera gel, calendula oil; and our favourite recipes for home grown rabbit, duck, fish, veggies etc!
Today we made Aloe Vera Gel, which is good for sunburn and dermatitis. Because of the gelatinous nature of the aloe, we made the mix in the Thermomix. This helped to blend it well with the coconut oil and Vitamin E (which is added to help preserve it- though it still needs to go in the fridge).
Aloe vera gel making
The finished product is certainly gel like, so we will see how it goes!! The recipe will be posted on the new ‘recipe‘ page once we know it is successful!
Finally the mead is bottled. It is tasting ok now, but should improve with age so is stored away for a few months.
Ready to bottle
We decided to bottle into beer stubbies as one bottle makes two glasses, probably quite sufficient! It also means there is less waste when we open a bottle in a couple of months to try it.