Potatomania

Last year our friend Sue was obsessed with potatoes. She planted 40 varieties, which she documented to discover which type gave the best yield and which were best for which purposes. After Farmdoc's surgery she gave us a gift of around a dozen varieties with instructions that we were to note how each type did. We planted them as instructed but we haven't dug any up yet, so we haven't had to formally present our report.

This year she had recovered from her obsession: she planted only 35 varieties!

Sue is an adventurous cook so when she and Craig invited us for lunch at their house on the side of a mountain we expected to eat potatoes.

And we were not disappointed.

There was chicken and salad, but they took a back seat to  a potato feast, which included Spanish omelette made with King Edwards, smashed Nicolas,

 Boiled Salad Rose and Pink Eye:

 Baked Toolangi Delight:

And wedges of Spunta and Up to Date :

The piece de resistance, however, had to be the dessert. Mashed Kestrel mixed with blueberries and dipped in dark chocolate together with mashed Saphire mixed with coconut and vanilla and dipped in white chocolate!

How about you? What type of spud do you like best? And what's your favourite method of cooking them?

Late last year Sue planted 40 types of tomatoes. It's a bit early to see the results of that experiment but right now there is lush growth in the sprawling vegetable garden beds that Craig dug and fenced. We're looking forward to a tomato feast now.

The Wool Cheque

Taking the wool clip in is one of my favourite farm chores. Last week it was time to do it again.

We always sell to Saunders in Launceston. We must be amongst their smallest wool producers, but they treat us as though we were the biggest. Although our small clip is lost in a sea of wool packs and fleeces they remember us from year to year and always give us a personal welcome. Our sheep are Border Leicester, so their wool is coarse carpet quality. No Italian suit maker will be calling on us.

Each time we go I think about my dad’s family who were wheat and sheep farmers in Western Australia. One of my uncles was a wool broker. These vast wool stores must have been very familiar buildings to them, with their smell – part dust, part wool – and their dim, cool expanse, bays tumbled full of wool.

The year Dad was fifteen he spent the whole of his summer holidays collecting wool from dead sheep. It was difficult, smelly work and there were long days battling the heat and the flies. At the end of it all he earned five shillings, which was not bad money for the period.

At that time his four older brothers were in the habit of dropping by the neighbour’s watermelon patch and helping themselves to fruit. Dad loved watermelon and he thought he’d go one better, so he backed the farm ute up to the neighbour’s gate and filled the tray.

When the neighbour followed the wheel tracks to the family farm Dad’s brothers dobbed him in immediately. It cost him his entire summer earnings. They all thought it was a great joke – even Dad.

In a few weeks we'll be shearing our lambs, and the cycle will begin again.

Farewell 2011

On the last day of the year, while we were still in bed, I read aloud to Farmdoc from an article in The New Yorker by Calvin Trillin. The article is about Trillin’s repertoire of recipes. There is some discussion in the piece about how complex a dish needs to be (for example how many ingredients it must have, and whether it needs a stove) to be included in the repertoire. It’s a charming, funny, and even moving piece of writing.

Farmdoc’s own repertoire has changed recently. He no longer bakes his delicious chocolate cake, among other sweet treats, and the ice cream maker now sits unused in a dark corner of the pantry. His diet these days is as low in sugar, salt and fat, and as rich in fibre, fruit and vegetables as he can make it.

When we finally got up, we ate Farmdoc’s famous stoneground muesli hot cakes for breakfast. I had mine with stewed sour cherry compote. Those cherries are delish but in the morning light I discovered that I had splashed the wall with their juice while pitting them. Oops! I have to admit that the table was a little sticky too.

In the vegetable garden we picked raspberries, transplanted seedlings and dug up potatoes that had volunteered from the previous year’s leftovers and were threatening to take over every bed.

For morning tea we ate Farmdoc’s tahini cookies (recipe courtesy Daughter Number Two).

 

In the afternoon, while Farmdoc went for his walk (10,000 steps a day), I worked in the sycamore forest, showcasing the ferns as I like to do.

Late in the afternoon we lit the stove and Farmdoc baked a loaf of rye bread for dinner, and I made raspberry jam. Recipe here. I made more jars than I’d intended, but it’s easy jam to make and it’s lovely to have on hand for gifts during the long Tasmanian winter.

We had intended to slash some bracken in Home Paddock in the cool of the evening, but it grew dark before we had a chance to get out.

For dinner we ate our share-farmer Sharon’s eggs with the potatoes we’d dug in the morning and Farmdoc’s fresh bread. I was tired and didn’t quite make it to midnight.

So the year ended.

2011 was a big year for us at Onemilebridge. Farmdoc is glad it’s over. I don’t know if I am. It was such a rewarding year, how can I be glad it’s gone? Those days that Farmdoc was in hospital were terrifying, that’s true; the first weeks afterwards were worrying too, and I know he’s still anxious about his future.

But I’m grateful for the year’s bounty and I’m grateful beyond words, beyond measure, for the love and support of my family and friends – both in person and in the blogosphere. I am so much richer for it. 

I wonder what 2012 has in store for us. I for one am ready for whatever it brings - its joys and its challenges. Happy new year to us all.

Team Canada

For the past week the Onemilebridge guest wing has been occupied by a Canadian family, friends of ours who have stayed with us several times before.  Before they arrived, the youngest member requested a regional specialty that he remembered from his last visit: frog in the pond. This delicacy consists of a chocolate frog set in a bowl of green jelly (or as he calls it, jello). We, of course, obliged, and he informed us it was every bit as good as he remembered. Phew!

I guess that was a taste of things to come and their visit seems to have centred largely on food: sitting around the table, eating too much, talking and laughing. 

We have explored coffee shops,

and picked sour cherries. 

We spent a sticky afternoon pitting the cherries, which I then made into sour cherry jam. 

Readers of this blog may remember this is my all time favourite jam, with its sweet taste undercut by sour. Yum!

Christmas morning we exchanged small gifts.

Instead of a cloth I dressed the table with butchers paper, which the children decorated while the meal was cooking.

After lunch we drove to Alum Cliffs to admire Mother Nature's Christmas decorations. She didn't let us down.

One day we called in at Habitat Plants to have morning tea on our friends Herbert and Sally's new deck.

Mark found time to paint a little.

But the highlight probably has been a visit to our friends, Iris and James, to meet two wombats they are caring for. 

Bindi is only four months old, still on four feeds a day, still living inside the house. She was orphaned when her mother was run over and killed by a motorist.

Ben is a little over a year old now. he'll be coming to Onemilebridge at the end of the summer. As you can see he's getting to be quite a big boy.

Our guests are on their way down to Hobart now. They'll be back here next week for the last few days of their time in Tasmania.

Memories Are Made of This

My dad grew up on a farm in the wheat belt of Western Australia. A long time ago he moved east to Melbourne, and then gradually so did four of his five sisters. His four brothers stayed in the west.

Every summer of my childhood, my parents, my brothers and I flew across the continent to visit Dad’s family. I learnt to swim in Rockingham, a beach suburb just south of Perth, where the whole tribe went each year. Those holiday weeks are amongst my strongest memories: the heat of the sand under my tender city feet, the glittering scales of the fish that my uncles gutted and cleaned on the back porch, the sweetness of the corn that the aunts shucked and simmered in huge pots for lunch, the sound of the mandolin and the slap of cards in the evenings, the deck chairs of the open air cinema, the carnival that came alive at dusk with merry-go-round music and ornaments that I was desperate to win even though I knew they would turn into chalk before the summer was over.

After I married, the visits to WA stopped. We went once as a family for a reunion in Rockingham about 25 years ago, and then I didn’t go again. My uncles are all dead now.

Then this year Daughter Number One and her family took off on a caravan journey around Australia (she has an article about that trip in the current Green Magazine), and in early November she was turning 40. Farmdoc and I promised that wherever she and her family were on her birthday we’d be there to celebrate with them.

They weren’t sure where they would be. Perth looked like being the nearest airport so we booked flights there and, because wherever they were they’d be staying in a caravan park, we booked ourselves a small campervan. 

We flew into Perth, picked up our van and drove to meet them just a little north of the city. We spent two nights there, just long enough for a quick visit to Kings Park and an afternoon in Fremantle – mostly at a small brewery overlooking a giant sand pit and the harbour.

After that we followed Frankie Blue, their old caravan, down to Busselton, where we stayed for the rest of the week.

On Kate’s actual birthday I guest blogged across at Foxs Lane. That was fun. We celebrated the day with a pancake breakfast that Kate made herself, a fancy lunch, a walk along the famous Busselton jetty, and a homemade pizza dinner.

The rest of our time we explored the beaches, towns and vineyards of the Margaret River region. We didn’t do as much walking as we’d hoped because it rained, but we talked and laughed and hugged each other lots. And ate icecream.

Early every morning we were woken by knocking on the door of our van. ‘Who’s there?’ we called. ‘Who could it be?’ When we slid the door open there was four-year-old Pepper, smiling a big proud smile, ready for a snuggle in bed with us. Some mornings her big sisters joined us too.

Now we’re back on the farm and Kate and her family are still exploring the south west corner of Australia, the Nullabor Plain ahead of them on their journey home. The children are making their own memories that they’ll take out years and years from now, to recall the sun glistening off the waves, the fusty smell of a rainy day spent in a closed-up caravan, the sound of their dad’s ukelele and their mother’s rich laugh, the sight of turtles, dolphins, coral reefs and beaches encrusted with millions of shells, as well as the months and months of rituals – jokes repeated, words invented, and friendships made in one park and cemented in others.

Happy birthday, dearest Kate. Thanks for looking after us so well. And for tomorrow, happy eleventh birthday Indigo.

On the move

Farmdoc and I are on the move. Well, not exactly yet, but the decision has been made. Onemilebridge is officially on the market. Note I didn't say, 'for sale,' but used the euphemism, 'on the market'. I guess that expresses my ambivalence about the whole thing.

We've been in Tasmania for about 20 years now, the last nine here in Onemilebridge. We've built up a whole life in Mole Creek - friends who feel like family, community, a landscape that has entrenched itself inside us. We built this house, established a vegetable garden and orchard, fenced paddocks, released wombats, raised generations of goats and sheep.

I've done the best writing of my life here. We've hosted house guests from Tasmania, the mainland and abroad. We've welcomed visitors in good times and in bad. This has been a home with all that implies.

Often when we've driven down the driveway and I've looked across at the majestic Great Western Tiers, I've found myself humming that song from Camelot, 'If ever I would leave you.' Each season we say to each other, 'Oh this is the best time of year here.' When I know I'm returning to the mainland for a length of time, I try hard to fix the beauty of the place in my mind, to keep it there while I'm gone. I'm not sure it really works.

Now I think to myself all the time, we'll never again live in such solitude, silence and beauty. And it's true. It's just a fact.

But the time has come. Farmdoc's cardiac disease has shaken us and now we are moving to live close to family. Very close. A twenty-acre block  that is across the road from Daughter Number One and a short drive (or a long walk) from Daughter Number Two. What we lose in privacy we will gain in closeness to our daughters and their families. We will be able to help them in their lives and be involved with our grandchildren. I will be a train ride from my father; and my brothers and Farmdoc's sister will be able to go for a Sunday drive and drop in for lunch. We have plans for volunteer work in the community and to continue farming on a miniature scale. We'll build a new house modelled on this one.

Onemilebridge now has her own web presence so she can strut her stuff for potential buyers.

It's an exciting time. Really it is. Really...

Museum of old and new

Last Wednesday, Farmdoc and I visited the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart's controversial new art gallery designed by Nonda Katsalidis. I've been dying to go but this was our first visit to Hobart since the museum opened in January.

The whole visit is an experience, from having to walk across a tennis court to get to the entrance, and being greeted at the door and herded into a group to have the O thingies (more about those in a minute) explained and demonstrated.

The building is reputed to have cost over $100 million and is owned by David Walsh, who apparently earned his vast fortune from gambling. Well, better him than the casinos and their rapacious owners, I say.

From the entrance we headed down a staircase  that encircles a glass elevator and plunges down into sandstone cliff. At the bottom of the steps we were met by a bar and a long line of seating that looks like it belongs in someone's formal sitting room. Bewildering, to say the least.

The art. Where to start? There's so much, and it's arranged in apparently no order, all chosen and arranged by Walsh according to his taste and whim. There are also no signs on the walls, not even the names of the work or the artists. You press a button on the O - an mp3 player you are now wearing around your neck - and up come pictures of the art nearest you, complete with details. Pressing further buttons lets you read reviews or explanations of the piece and sometimes there's audio, which you play through head phones. This can be interviews with the artist or just a piece of music to look at the art by.

When I tried to decide what the highlights had been, it felt impossible - it's all highlights. Sydney Nolan's vast Snake; ancient Egyptian tombs; Chris Ofili's controversial The Holy Virgin Mary; work by Damien Hirst, Brett Whitely, Juan Davila, Marina Abrimovic. How do I remember all this? I don't. When I got home I received an email setting out all the works I'd seen, as recorded by my O, and a list of all that I'd missed.

Farmdoc and I spent four hours there, including 30 minutes for coffee and a vegie baguette in the cafe on the top (ground floor) level. It was a little disconcerting to eat the same food we'd seen fed to 'Cloaca' earlier.

'Cloaca' is a room-sized digestive machine by Dutch artist, Wim Delvoye. It turns food that is fed in at one end through a garbage disposal into faeces that are excreted at the other end via a series of large glass containers. I think it has to do with demonstrating the pointlessness of life. We watched the thing being 'fed' at 11.00 but we didn't return at 2.00 for the defecation. I've seen enough poo in my day. I think I'd be more impressed by a machine that can clean it up. Still it is a spectacle.

And that seems to be the point - spectacle. It's art as spectacle, like a rich kid's toy box - the excess leaves you dazzled and dazed. It's Australia's largest private museum and it's stuffed full.

We emerged into the daylight, dizzy with all we'd seen and felt. Amazed, entertained and spat out.

There's no committee that chooses the art - it's all David Walsh's taste - and I felt very aware of that. The individual pieces don't actually have much opportunity to shock or inform. There's too much.

Overall I think it's amazing. The gallery is set in the grounds of the Moorilla Winery on the bank of the Derwent, with lovely views across the river. You can stay there too: there are four quite stunning one- and two-bedroom pavilions. There's an upmarket restaurant and a wine bar as well as the cafe, and beanbags are spread out over a large lawn area, so you can relax with a glass of wine in the fresh air and recover  from your subterranean adventure.

Entry to MONA is free - at least for the moment. There's talk of charging in the future though.

For all my misgivings I'd definitely recommend a visit or three. Hobart's such a pretty city and you can  take a ferry to the gallery, enjoy a day there, and then eat at one of the many restaurants around town in the evening.

Farmdoc and I will be back in Hobart in a couple of months and I'll definitely be returning to MONA. You shouldn't miss it.