I’ve been doing so much it’s hard to keep up with it all

I’ve made a ton of jam with all of the fresh fruit we’ve been harvesting. So far my favorite flavors have been:

plum, lemon & honey

plum & merlot

yellow plum, lemon verbena and plum liqueur

apricot, ginger, and lemon

I think I’ve pitted about 500 plums and apricots in the last few days. We’re also using a solar dehydrator to dry some apricots to preserve for later.

It feels so good to be making use of so much that would’ve just fallen on the ground and gone to waste. Although it would be so much easier to go to the shops and buy a jar of jam rather than driving to the river, foraging, pitting, and cooking the jam, I learned so much about patience and it feels (and tastes) so much better to eat something that you’ve processed yourself rather than buying something that for all you know could have negative effects on the environment and the consumers.

two of the eight jars of jam I’ve made so far

According to Lyndal’s lunar planting schedule it’s time to sow brassicas so I sowed about 15 different seeds today to add to the potting shed. I’ve planted everything from chamomile to red cabbage. The rocket (what arugula is called here) I planted a couple weeks ago is growing so quickly and I’m so excited!

I LOVE sowing seeds and watching the little babies grow. I swear food tastes better if you grow it yourself and you have the satisfaction of not having to go to the store to buy things, instead just having a quick trot to the greenhouse. We don’t use chemicals here to fertilize our plants which makes them less bountiful than store-bought vegetables, but it is so much better for the earth and for your hearts and stomachs to do it the slower, more natural way.

all of the seed trays I’ve planted so far

my baby arugula (rocket)

I’ve also made three different kinds of cheeses pretty much by myself now. I made halloumi and ricotta yesterday, and feta a couple of days ago. Halloumi takes a few hours to make and is a pressed squeaky cheese which is super good fried in replacement of chicken or any protein in pretty much any dish (I love it so much.)

Halloumi:

when the halloumi curd reaches clean break (when you can cut it without it falling apart) you cut it into cubes in the pail

once it’s into cubes you keep it at temperature and stir it gently for 30 minutes

once the curd is cooked it goes into a press with cheesecloth and gets pressed for 30 minutes and then cut into cubes and boiled in the whey for 20 minutes and then it’s done!

When the halloumi is being pressed, the rest of the calcium needs to come out of the whey so it can boil in it again without developing a weird film. This means you have to heat it up to 85C and then add salt and vinegar to make ricotta and get the rest of the protein out so the whey is clear for the halloumi.

Feta:

Close to the same process as halloumi with different temperatures and when the curd is done cooking it’s put into a cheesecloth to drain and form into a big ball.

the feta is cut into cubes and rolled in salt and put in the fridge

Making cheese takes so much patience and I have gained a ton of respect for cheesemakers now. If the temperature, humidity, or pH isn’t right, the cheese has the potential to turn into something mildly dangerous or just not turn out.

Lyndal doesn’t sell any of her cheese because of dumb regulations regarding the sale or practice of raw milk cheesemaking. The whole system is corrupt and requires the small-scale maker to pay the same amount as a large-scale company would for audits and such even though its such a different market. If Lyndal wanted to sell her cheese she would have to pay $3000/year for audits, pay a certain amount per batch of cheese, and pay other fees involved. The amount per cheese block would make it so that she would make hardly anything off of the actual cheese, making it not worth it at all. She would also have to pasteurize the milk, killing all of the good bacteria and calcium in the milk which ruins the integrity of it and destroys the point of making raw milk cheese entirely. It is also illegal to barter for her cheese or sell even just the milk except if she sells it for “pet milk” or “bathing milk” which is just sad. Small farmers and businesses are always being taken advantage of and it makes me feel so awful for supporting large businesses when people like her aren’t allowed to make money off of all of the hard work they put into doing what they love. Karma is real, and hopefully acts soon.