Three big heads

We have too much milk at the moment. Not from our cows. Not yet. They’re still babies, or perhaps wilful teenagers. We will get them knocked up at some stage, build a little dairy to milk them in, and then we will have our own supply of milk. Until then we have a regular supply of organic, unhomogenised milk. The kind of milk that makes what you buy in the shops look and taste like white water. I’ve just made a cup of tea and I had to pour the cream off the top of the new bottle of milk I opened. There’s a thick layer of rich cream that I decant for making butter with later.

Or I could use it to make a cream of broccoli soup. There’s three big heads of broccoli in the garden that are going to have to be eaten soon, with more on the way. One of the last jobs I did in the fading light this evening was collect half a bucket of cow poo and steep it in some water for fertilising the broccoli tomorrow. In the past I would have used blood and bone or fish emulsion but I’m tempted by the challenge of using what we have here on the farm. Reduce our food miles, reduce our costs or, framed positively, increase our self-reliance and build our resilience, knowledge and capacity.

Before walking around the paddock picking up poo I was finishing mulching the fruit trees. Each got a thick ring of compost. I’ve been enjoying making compost lately. Once again, using what we have here, changing with the seasons. This was a leaf litter, lemongrass, tomato, mustard, and cow poo compost. With ash from the bonfire. The ash is a good source of potassium and reduces the need to add sulphate of potash later. The compost was OK but I’ve made better. But it was rich and moist and full of worms and micro-organisms. I mulched each ring with straw from the chook and duck houses, along with more fallen leaves from the pecan tree.


Similar to making compost I’m trying to increase our capacity to feed ourselves from the farm. Which is hard because we haven’t made much time for setting up our production. We’ve been building, nesting and resting. But it’s time now. We have all this land and all these dreams and I think by growing our own food we’ll be feeding both our stomachs and our souls. So I decided to use the excess milk to make some paneer, with Noah’s help. I’m experimenting with a different approach to Noah at the moment. Instead of seeing him as slowing me down, and getting frustrated, instead I’m trying to slow down and include him in as much as I can. Show him stuff. He loves it.


This morning he helped me resurrect the chook tractor for our friend’s chickens that we’re babysitting for a week while they’re on holiday. Later we made a little box that we could use to press the curds with. We started off well, tape measures in hand, earmuffs clamped to our heads, but he gets bored easily and wandered off. He was back for the drilling though. Part of my practicing inclusion is to challenge my presumptions of what he can’t do, because they’re too dangerous or require too much skill. Usually they’re the things he enjoys doing the most. I just have to take more time to show him what to do, or do them with him. He really enjoys chopping wood with me. And drilling is another favourite.


After lunch we went for a walk together down to the bush lemon tree to pick some lemons to curdle our milk. He decided that 5 lemons was the right number to pick and I couldn’t see any good reason to disagree with him. It turned out he was right. Another of his talents he’s getting better at is swearing. Yesterday something wasn’t working or was frustrating him and he told me “I’m fuck about it”. I blame the parents.


The paneer turned out really well. I made it into mattar paneer and cooked an egg curry to go with it using eggs from our chook Gladys. This is what we have so this is what we eat.


“I’m grateful that I watched you do the dinner and had a lovely day”
(Confused? Look)