Autumn at Onemilebridge

 Stig Cooper, a Mole Creek-based landscape and nature photographer, has always loved Onemilebridge in autumn. One day last May he came by to take some photos of her in all her golden glory.

I've been meaning to post some of the pictures here ever since but I haven't managed to get around to it.

Until now.

We've put a bigger selection of them up on onemilebridge's own blog.

You can see more Stig Cooper photography at http://www.stigcooper.photomerchant.net/home

I love how he sees the natural world, imbuing scenes with  an almost fairytale quality.

So that even the everyday becomes quite magical.

Onemilebridge End of Summer Jam

Ah, the first day of autumn is upon us. Here in Mole Creek we celebrated with a temperature of 0.4 degrees centigrade at around 7.15 this morning, though it warmed up to a pleasant 17 by late morning.

I love autumn. There's still heat in the sun though the breeze is cooler now; the evenings continue to draw out and the vegetables and fruit in the garden loll about ripening.

A few days ago we picked a bagful of the apples from one of the street trees we pass on the way to the post office, and an ice cream container of blackberries from the canes that cling to the fences. Then, to mark the end of summer, I made a batch of blackberry and apple jam and called it Onemilebridge End of Summer Jam. Here's how I made it:

I very slowly stewed one kilo of blackberries in about 60 mls of water, then did the same to about 350 grams of apples. The apples we'd picked were perfect because they were very tart and lost their shape completely, so my jam would have no lumpy bits in it.

After I'd mixed all the fruit together and weighed it, I stirred in an equal amount of sugar and boiled the mixture, scraping off the scum and then continuing to test it until it was done.

As usual I found this last bit nerve wracking, but I know if it's underdone I can always reboil it, whereas if it's overdone it's useless.

We'll eat the jam through the winter months, on homemade bread and crumpets, tasting those summer hours of daylight that were ours to squander.

Picnic Perfect

On Tuesday Farmdoc and I decided to take advantage of picnic-perfect weather. Maybe the last warm day of autumn. We packed a basket and went through Hayshed Paddock and down to the creek. The goats looked expectant when they saw us but didn't follow.

We chose a flat grassy spot under the pine tree that marks our south eastern boundary and lit a fire.

The water level was high and it was noisy as it rushed over fallen branches. This is the part of the creek where we often see platypus, but this day we didn't see any.

Farmdoc cooked the chops and heated the spuds that I'd baked in the oven.

We ate our picnic and drank red wine out of plastic glasses, reclining on the bank and enjoying the autmn sunshine.

Then I broke a dental bridge. Disaster! We packed up and rushed home to ring around dentists. The earliest appointment I could get was in Hobart so yesterday we drove the six-hour return trip.

'When did you have this done?' the dentist asked me.

'About fifteen years ago,' I said. What I thought but didn't say was that I could work it out exactly because I wrote a short story at the time called 'Teeth', inspired by all the dentistry I had that year.

The story was about the relationship between a dental mechanic and a girl who worked at a post office. While I was writing it I visited a dental technician's workshop and spent an early morning shift at a post office in Armadale, watching the posties sort the mail.

I remembered all this as I reclined in the dentist's chair enveloped in a smock, eyes hidden behind dark glasses, but I didn't say anything because my mouth was wide open and full of equipment.

We came home last night so happy to be back on the farm and now we have to return to the dentist this afternoon. Six more hours in the car. The only good part about it all is that it's cold and grey here and apparently warm and sunny in Hobart. That'll be nice. Almost picnic weather I imagine.

Desperately Seeking Goats

Well, we still haven't found the lost goats though we have seen evidence of where they've been - walking in single file along the outside of the Truck Paddock fence and wandering down our driveway to the front gate.

Yesterday morning we walked our share farmer neighbour's boundary to see how the goats escaped in the first place. The fence between her and her neighbour on the other side is in pretty poor shape so that's the answer.

We'll get them sometime in the next couple of weeks and meanwhile we've seen some pretty autumn sights.
Cobwebs shimmering in the sun on the grass of the Truck Paddock,

unusual fungi,

and vistas that after more than six years living here still bring me joy each time I see them:

After the search Farmdoc and I continued on down to the village to the post office and to the Laurel Berry for fish and chips. Ho hum, another hard day's work in Mole Creek.

In Search of Lost Goats

Goats are such escape artists. They find all the weak spots in your fences, or simply jump them, and then look surprised when they land on the other side. How did I get here? they say.

And when they've gone missing and you find them - or they find you - they look so innocent. Who me? they say.

Yesterday we went in search of a mob of fifteen that had breached the fence between our share-farmer neighbour and her neighbour, and then made their way via another neighbour's property in a long loop back into our sycamore forest.

We haven't really been panicked about them; this time of year when the leaves turn and fall there's plenty of feed in the forest for goats.

We didn't find them, but there can't be too many nicer ways to spend an autumn afternoon than tramping through paddocks, bush and forest with your fellow farmers. And we didn't come home empty handed: one of our neighbours has a laden pear tree he was happy to share with us. As for the goats, they're holidaying somewhere on our land and we'll look for them again later in the week.

One potato, two

When I get back to Mole Creek the first thing I do after I've kissed Farmdoc and dumped my backpack is to check out what's growing on the farm.

When we built this house an important requirement for me was a herb garden right outside the kitchen; now all day I'm in and out of the kitchen door, tipping water, tea leaves or coffee grounds onto the herbs, or cutting fragrant leaves for vases or cooking. Because everything here has to be fenced off to protect it from wallabies, possums and wombats, the herbs have their own little house inside which they grow like crazy and need to be constantly pruned.

Yesterday I picked lemon balm for the house. It makes a delicious tea but I love the look of it too.

Second stop was the vegetable garden inside its own enclosure at the side of the house. I pushed open the gate, carrying secateurs and a container and wondering what would be ripe. Yesterday afternoon I dug up a bed of potatoes. We grow mostly Dutch Creams, which are delicious boiled, roasted, baked or mashed.

Last night we ate sweet corn and mashed potato sprinkled with chives for dinner. Ahh, home sweet home.

Quince Jelly

We weren’t planning to gather quinces.
We were on our way down to the market garden to pick a lettuce and some rocket for dinner when we detoured to see if there were any quinces on the tree in the top orchard. There were so we stayed to pick them. This was at my daughter K’s place. A couple of quinces were too high for me to reach so I had the bright idea that if I lifted my granddaughter J up she’d be able to pick the fruit. That didn't work: although she’s slightly built she was still way too heavy for me to lift very high. In the end K clambered up into the fork of the tree and got them that way.

The next day I began the process of making quince jelly.
After wiping them down, I cut 2 kilograms of the quinces into pieces, including the skin and cores, and put them into a pot with 2 litres of water.
I brought this slowly to the boil, and then simmered it, covered, for about an hour until the fruit was tender.

Then I needed a potato masher but couldn’t find one anywhere.
‘Try the sandpit,’ K said. It took me a few minutes of searching among all the buckets and spades, pots and pans, toy cars and Barbies, but eventually there it was.
I had to boil the kettle to pour boiling water over a muslin square for the next step so I poured some over the potato masher when I’d washed that too. While I mashed the fruit, K pegged the cloth over a pot and I poured the pulpy mixture into that.

Then we covered it with a tea towel and left it to drain over night.

That was the end of my involvement. Farmdoc and I left the next day so K finished making the quince jelly on her own.
She first added ¼ cup of lemon juice, and then a cup of warmed sugar for each cup of liquid, and after that she used her normal jam making method.
The only difference she found was that when she skimmed the scum off the top, the jelly was less forgiving than jam as there’s nowhere to hide anything.

The result was jewel like. Bottled autumn.