Tasmania

My best friend Amy and I took Tabitha down to Tasmania to visit my aunt and cousins for a few days, while The Daddy visited his father in Queensland.  You may recall that The Daddy, Tabby and I all went down to Tassie this time last year, driving all over the East Coast and making a brief visit to my aunt's farm.

This time, Amy, Tabitha and I stayed on the farm in the little cottage, and just spent the time eating, relaxing and watching the animals.  Tabitha had a really great time - visiting the 'moo', the 'baas' and the 'bok boks' all day, and playing with the cats and dog.

Amy and I had a brilliant trip too - my aunt, Karin, is an excellent vegetarian cook, who uses mostly produce from her extensive organic permaculture gardens.  We did make a couple of trips into town - to visit Karin's shop (Lyrebird, a gorgeous little Steiner toy and bookshop), and to go to the Hobart Farmers' Market (which, to be frank, puts most of the farmers' markets I've visited to shame!).

Here is the little cottage - it's on around ten acres, bordered by two other small farms, a creek and a dirt road.  In the foreground, you can see some of the herb and vegetable gardens.  These look typical of an organic, permaculture garden - lots of different plants and flowers mixed in together, lots of plants gone to seed, plenty of mulch and grasses.

Karin, below, keeps around a dozen chooks and a rooster.  They have the most divine free range life - when they are not ranging all over the ten-acre property (picking through the veggie gardens, cow paddock and around the dam), their enclosure is the size of a small house block, filled with herbs, flowers and older fruit trees, with a large shed for laying and roosting.

The hens are a mixture of breeds - a couple of Isa Brown crosses, a couple of Australorps, and a few bantam crosses.  Below, they are enjoying their scraps - twice daily, they get to enjoy all the leftovers and kitchen scraps, filled with organic fruit, veggies, cooked rice and grains.

Tabitha helped them find all the tastiest bits, pointing them in the right direction:

This is their laying and roosting shed, with Amy, Karin and my little cousin Lissy:

Here is Rosie, Karin's pretty and chubby Jersey cow.  She's just a pet - they don't milk her, save a brief period once when she got mastitis when she had a calf!  Rosie kept trying to lick my camera.  Her nose is enormous and very shiny and wet.

Amy and Tabby patting Rosie - we visited her so much during her stay (her yard is adjacent to the house) that she stopped bothering to eat the carrots we brought her.  Spoilt!

Here is Shaz the Kelpie X.  Shaz's arrival at the property is a funny story - my cousin Aubin, when he was around 12, called up a man in response to an ad in the local paper, offering a free dog.  He chatted to the man for some time - then, later that day, the man called my aunt, and said "is your son actually allowed a dog?  Because I really think he sounds perfect for her!"  So home she came.  She is a wonderful dog - friendly and bouncy and always up for a walk, even just to the clothesline.  She loves helping to round up the chooks, and sometimes rounds up the 6 sheep for her own amusement.

Tabby and her second cousin Lissy picking flowers:

Here are a few young fruit trees - plums, nectarine and a mulberry I think - with a 300 or so year old gum tree in the background:

The incredibly prolific rhubarb patch - around a dozen plants:

Plenty of strawberries (lots of berries all over the farm - Karin makes jam) and some lettuces off to the left:

Picking and sharing sweet strawberries:

Corn, zucchinis, silverbeet, and probably lots of other things hidden in there:

Tomatoes and others:

There are several square meters of raspberry canes around the property.  You pass a whole lot walking between the house and the car, so there are ample opportunities to snatch one as you pass!

The gardens include plenty of medicinal plants such as wormwood, tansy, lupins, comfry, thistles, nettles and the like:

A large patch of currants:

Roses, and many other flowers, make excellent companion plants for lots of fruits and vegetables, and also add colour to the gardens.

The pretty compost heap, edged with nasturtiums:

The dam (home to a few ducks who are currently walkabout), and in the foreground, the potato patch.  Off to the left, out of sight, is a beetroot patch.

This year's garlic harvest, hanging to dry.  Thousands of heads - it's quite a sight!

Garlic flowers are really gorgeous:

More raspberries:

This netted large garden area houses most of the fruit trees, and also the artichokes, below:

Here is what an artichoke looks like when it's left to open its flower - pretty and purple:

This is what they look like instead, when they are picked and steamed!

Basmati rice - Karin adds plenty of fresh chopped herbs (sage, oregano, parsley and possibly others) with some olive oil, for the last few minutes of cooking time.  I am going to start doing this - it is so, so delicious.

Lissy has the best knife skills of an ten-year-old I know.  She is a willing and keen prep cook, and can even carve decorative carrots!  Here she is prepping herbs:

Karin keeps in her kitchen a jar of fresh herbs, olive oil, chopped garlic and mustard. She brushes this onto all sorts of things, including thick slices of sourdough, toasted under the grill.  Seriously addictive.

Dinner - artichokes, rice, vegetable stew, garlic and herb bread.

Apparently there is a French joke along the lines of artichokes being the only food that leaves you with more on the plate once finished than when you started...

For dessert, rhubarb and apple crumble with custard and ice cream...

The next day, after the Farmers' Market, we pottered around the property for the afternoon.

There is a tyre swing by the driveway - hours of fun (literally) for Tabitha.

Pyjama top, skinny jeans and pink Converse.  Good look!

Fun for Amy too - I get motion sickness on swings in my old age.  What a buzzkill!

Karin has a proper professional crepe hot plate.  This is now on my wishlist!  Useful for pancakes as well as crepes:

Little buckwheat galettes with salad and a delicious veggie medley with potato, zucchini, shallots, herbs, all sauteed together:

Followed by chestnut flour pancakes with homemade berry sauce, vanilla Elgaar yoghurt, and ground up LSA mixture.  Too good for words.

We went on a nice long walk - the weather was pretty hot, so back wrapping with my Vatanai woven wrap was the best option.  It's lightweight, and much better to back carry than have her against my tummy on a hot day.  You can wear an Ergo carrier on the back, of course, but the toddler sits much lower, and can't see over your shoulders, which is a NO GO for Tabitha!

She likes to be up where the action is:

Excuse the manic face - she likes me to do 'neigh neighs' which is basically a horsie ride, so I have to gallop around and toss my head and say NEIGHHHH!  The Daddy started this with her, now it's her favourite activity.

She wanted to hold Shaz's lead (she needs to be kept on leash when we walk past a farm with some other aggressive dogs) - we looked quite a sight, Tabby on my back, leading the Kelpie!

Back home, and time for more crepes.

Chestnut flour again - with lemon and raw sugar.

Tabitha loved her crepe.  She took forever to finish it, because she was having so much fun pulling it apart...

More tyre swinging...

And more vegetarian deliciousness.  This time cooked by ME!  I made lunch - roast potatoes, garlic and onions, along with a stir fry of about 9 different organic veggies, with some tamari.  Zucchini, beans, broccoli, carrots, capsicum, leek, pumpkin, yellow zucchini, other beans...

Piled onto grilled sourdough brushed with Karin's delicious herb/oil/garlic/mustard concoction:

There is a really large herb garden just by the back kitchen door.  So handy.

Look at the pretty dolls from Karin for us to take home - Tabby loves her 'baby' on the left.  It's soft and cuddly and the perfect size for her to cuddle. 

It's always nice to come home, but I am sure going to miss sitting on the porch, drinking tea and looking out over the berries and veggie gardens and gum trees.