Mine's a pint

I have not been a regular pub drinker since my early twenties but have recently started going to my local with a friend for a beer or two. All a bit "Sliding Doors" really as I mostly listen and laugh incredulously at how other peoples' lives and problems develop into full blown crises. Going to the pub used to be easy. "I'll have a schooner of Reschs" doesn't work any more as my local serves over twenty different beers ranging from full strength to gassy low alcoholic and chemical tasting brews (like making love in a boat - f@#$ing close to water as we used to say). Also I am mystified by the beer glass sizes, though in reality they have not probably changed much in time. Half a pint in New South Wales is a middy, in Queensland a pot, in the Northern Territory a handle and in SA a schooner. Even a pint is different in South Australia where you only get 425 mls rather than the 570 mls in all other states. Crow eaters also only get 285 mls in their 425 mls schooner.  At least a jug is 1.14 litres wherever you drink and since that's what we drank then I never needed to know the other sizes!


I have recently started to contemplate brewing my own beer again after a thirty year gap. The last experiment in my wardrobe at university exploded and ruined my only suit so this time it will be on the verandah. Might be a little bit too cold for the yeast to work properly this time of year so the first batch is taking a while. Might look into growing some hop plants and buying small quantities of malting barley to see if I can produce a drinkable drop. Then again it might just be simpler and more entertaining to order a glass from my local.


Cheers.

The Gandangara - owners of the land

The traditional owners of our land were the Gandangara people who lived in south eastern NSW from Lake George to the Nepean River and from north of Goulburn to Camden. Their tribal names includes meanings for east and west. In 1802 the explorer Francis Barallier met them near the Wollondilly River and in 1816 troops were dispatched to capture and kill Aborigines after 14 settlers were killed. By 1848 there were only 25 Aborigines registered in Gouburn after the influenza epidemics of 1846 and 1847. According to local historians it is doubtful whether there were ever large numbers of Aborigines in the Goulburn area.

They believed in animal people (burringilling) who lived in the dreaming in clouds, scrub, mountains, trees and water courses. The most important spirit was D(h)aramalan and his voice is represented by the bullroarer cut from a tree. In initiation ceremonies a rock crystal stone is used and the myth says that when once Daramalan caught a boy and hit him over the head a tooth fell out and became a rock crystal.

We chose Daramalan as our farm name because it represented a powerful and auspicious spirit that had a local connection to Goulburn. Daramalan (or Daramulum) means one legged and was the son of spirit Baime and his emu wife Birrahgnooloo. There is a rock carving in Sydney's north west showing him in half profile with one arm, an emu back and a club foot.

We would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of our land.

Footnote: Daramalan Border Leicester Stud has no association or relationship, commercial or otherwise, with Daramalan College in Canberra.
The above image is by Daniel Goodwin.

2010 Drop on the way

We had our stud flock ewes pregnancy tested two weeks ago by local contractor Steve, a good man with a very sharp sense of humour. I guess when you spend a fair part of your working life inside a makeshift tent and with an ultrasound on a ewe's belly you develop a sense of the absurd.

The good news is that we have about 230 lambs in utero from 150 ewes making a lambing percentage of over 150%. So the rams Hermes, Osiris and Vulcan have been doing their job. Indeed Vulcan is getting a reward and has been at Logancrest serving some Poll Dorset ewes too. We have 95 ewes with multiple lambs which I thought was a high percentage but Steve told us it is the same at almost every stud in the region. It will be an interesting sale year in 2011.  Only 12 dry ewes and those that are more than two years old are off to Southern Meats and the 'maiden' ewes will get one more chance next year. Fingers crossed for an easy lambing season which may start as early as mid July.

Elsewhere the 60 flock rams to be sold in November this year are doing well, particularly the few that we did not shear as a small test group. We wont shear them in January next year but leave the wool on until August or September. The 40 ewes we had not sold are doing well and will join the stud flock later in the year and the 200 first cross ewes are all the better for a drenching and being on the new turnip and clover crop.

It has been wet (luckily) and very cold (not so pleasant) so we have been chopping wood, fencing and getting the new water tank set up so that we can begin to irrigate the house paddock and plant out the orchard, olive grove and a very small vineyard. All in all it is progressing realy well and ahead of schedule.....more on that soon.

Cheers!

As clear as glass

Well at last I have completed my first glass fusing projects. After about a year of trying to get into a course, and two years of owning a kiln, I finally managed to connect with four others and go last Saturday to the Australian Stained Glass workshop in Leichardt. Very lucky to be taught my Dagmar Ackerman who is very knowledgeable, patient and talented. You can see her work at http://www.glassbydagmarackerman.com/


It was an absolutely fabulous day and now I am hooked. Looks like it will be an expensive hobby or most likely another way to earn an income. Cutting glass is easy once practiced and the assembly is straightforward. It is creating the original design and firing in the kiln where the magic happens. Glass seems such a fragile medium but is remarkably robust to work with. Of course you can't drop it on the bench or floor but it can be ground into frit or paste (pate de verre) and cut into an almost infinite number of shapes.

I made three fused plates, 25 cm square or in diameter, from cut Bullseye glass that were slumped into a plate shaped ceramic mould. One is a circular geometric design (above) that was really to experiment with colour, opacity and cutting curved lines. The other two are representational of the landscape at the farm; one is the German's Pinch hill to the north of our property over the Tarlo River and the other is a white ghost gum in a storm or bush fire. Our soil is obviously not red but that glass colour was too hard to resist; just gorgeous.

Now I have to figure out how to programme the controller on my kiln and start experimenting and documenting firing schedules so that I can begin to create a range of glass products for sale and display. Some things will be functional plates, bowls and dishes but others will be pure art and sculpture and still others will be jewellery and eye catchers. Limited only by my imagination because anything is possible.


Ciao.

Dinner will never look the same again

Food Inc is an Academy Award nominated documentary made in 2008 by Robert Kenner. It includes interviews with Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and one of my 'heroes', Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma). Not sure why it has taken two years for Food Inc to make it into Australian cinemas but it is a must see now it is screening.

One of the closing quotes is "You have a choice. Three times a day" and that is so true. We will not eat chicken again unless it is certified organic from a supplier we know or it is a chicken we have killed on the farm. There was nothing much really new in the movie that we had not seen or read about before. However, the truth behind the US food industry and the collusion (corruption?) between industry and government never ceases to amaze and confront us.

It started us thinking about who really owns who. For example, Macro Wholefoods is now owned by Woolworths and their products are still marketed in their same green packaging. They still command a premium price but how can we be sure that their products are the same and not compromised by being part of a larger supermarket chain? Thomas Dux is a brand also owned by Woolworths. Prices are higher and store layouts better but are their fruit and vegetables any fresher than in the Bondi superstore? Are the suppliers different?

I have begun to get really irritated by the "brand" marketing that goes on, particularly in banking. Westpac owns Bank SA, St George and BT Funds Management. Why do they insult my intelligence by telling (selling) me that St George is different? It is no longer a small regional bank that cares for customers. It is part of a major financial company that will destroy service and makes monstrous profits while crying foul and poor to the government. NAB is no better with U Bank and CBA is the worst of all with its appallingly awful advertisements for CBA (Determined to be different? Hardly!!) and for Bank West (Do they think I am stupid? Why promote accounts with talking horses, squirrels, goldfish and flowers?)

The problem is that there is increasingly less real choice and while I could bank with Members Equity or a Credit Union I am also pragmatic about risk after the Global Financial Crisis, which is far from over by the way. The only difference now is that it is country sovereign debt at risk as all the banks have offloaded the risk and their toxic waste portfolios to the public taxpayers.

It is the same with breakfast cereals, washing powder, soaps, media and so on. It really means that as consumers we must exercise our power and buy from local Australian owned suppliers. After Food Inc we will buy organic, buy at local farmer's markets, grow as much of our own food as we can, avoid any corn by products and "change the world one bite at a time".

Bon appetit.....and happy banking!!

Top dollar wool press

Above is a photograph from the Powerhouse Museum collection of how the wool was pressed about 1900. The photograph was taken between 1884 and 1917. The press features a simple system of gears which doubled the amount of wool that could be compressed into each bale and increased the amount of wool that could be exported. Early presses were patented in about 1877.

The wool press below is the one we purchased at a very fair price last week at Terry McIntosh's Sylvia Vale clearing sale. Really pleased to have been able to buy it and seems fitting that the press followed the stud ewes to our property. It is an older version of a TPW (Theresia Perfection Welding) press made in Perth, WA. It is a huge advance on the 1900s. The TPW press can compress up to 200 kg and each pressing cycle is a fast 15 seconds. It has automatic bale side pining and the fastest wool pack locking system available. Add a larger opening to the filling chamber, compact height and size and high safety devices with ease of use and it is perfect for our shearing shed.

TPW was established by John and Marion Jordans in Perth in 1975 with a $500 overdraft and a ute. Swiss company Heiniger bought the company in 2000, by which time the Jordans had sold 10,850 presses. Our press is green and gold dating it to pre 2000 and has a 'limited edition' model serial number plate. The short square bales the press produces make handling far easier and transportation a breeze. Well, sort of because the bales are still 180 - 200 kg in weight so even though one man can move them they are still heavy!!

Almost can't wait for shearing time again!!

Slow Food....Arriving all the time..Soon

Slow Food started in Italy by founding member Carlo Petrini and became an  international not-for-profit organization with a manifesto in 09 November 1989. It was founded to counteract the disappearance of local food traditions, oppose fast food and increase awareness of where our food comes from and how our choices affect the rest of the planet. it is based in Bra, Italy and has almost 100,000 members in 132 countries. Slow Food Australia – Slow Food’s first national association in the southern hemisphere – has 42 convivia (branches) all across Australia.

Parts of the manifesto read "To be worthy of the name, homo sapiens should rid himself of speed before it reduces him to a species in danger of extinction.", "A firm defence of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of fast life.", "Our defence should begin at the table with Slow Food. Let us rediscover the flavors and savours of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of fast food."

One of the movement's great initiatives is the Ark of Taste, an international catalogue of heritage foods in danger of extinction. The Ark is designed to preserve at-risk foods that are sustainably produced, unique in taste, and are part of a distinct ecoregion. Foods included in the list are intended to be "culturally or historically linked to a specific region, locality, ethnicity or traditional production practice". Since the foundation of the Ark in 1996, 800 products, breeds and cultivars from over 50 countries have been included, four from Australia: Bull Boar Sausages, Bunya Nuts, Leatherwood Honey and Ligurian Bee Honey, the last one exclusively available from supermarket chain Aldi and is delicious! The Italian bee was introduced to Australia in 1862 and now the only surviving colony is on Kangaroo Island.

An Australian Slow Food campaign is currently being run to allow Australia cheesemakers to use raw milk rather than the pasteurised and  sanitised milk allowed now. Really hope they succeed so sign up at their website and change the world one bite at a time!