![]() Another Country Diary Links to images and other pages usually open a new window. The Diary Archive menu is here. 16 February '02 ![]() When I was picking up the ones that had dropped and rolled into the reeds beside the pond, I found a 'nest' where some animal (s) had been taking fruit and eating it. It was hidden by overhanging grass and there where a dozen or so nectarine stones eaten clean, and some soft brown droppings that looked wrong/too big for a possum. (We get lots of possum droppings on the tops of our cars. The possums sit in the apple tree that overhangs them. You learn not to leave the car windows open or you get a seat covered with possum shit and sticky urine.) Whatever this is, it's
been eating the nectarines that are hanging low to the ground in a manner which
I thought were snails. They almost peel the skin off and eat shallow
hollows, completely unlike birds. Other than a possum, all I can think of is perhaps
a rat (there have been some big fluffy native mice or rats around that have
been killed by neighborhood cats). Some of the droppings were suspended high in the
grass so whatever it is, it can climb a branch but may have been stopped
by the netting. |
17 February '02 |
![]() In the pantry I had a some jars, lids and clips but no rubber rings. After asking at a few hardware stores where they looked at me blankly, and at David Jones where a nice older woman told me that someone in Tuggeranong was the stockist (they weren't), I rang Fowlers in Melbourne and asked for a local dealer. Someone else had 'the sales book' when I called, but a lady promised to ring back and yesterday afternoon I made a quick trip into Queanbeyan to the Karabar Home hardware. I picked up another eight jars of different sizes, their lids, clips and rings. At the counter, the man who obviously knew the product well, ("you'll need a pack of the size 20 for them, they're hanging just around the end of the shelf on the left') took my money, and at over $100 I wondered about the value of all this. Sure they're reusable, and the ingredients in our case are free. But this isn't the poor people's solution anymore. Home bottling would be heaps more expensive then all the tins of fruit most families eat in a year. So it's back to the 'luxury you can afford' argument. The food is high quality, unprocessed and more tasty than commercial product. The concern about not wasting produce is also an issue. "I've been given this fruit (even if I didn't plant the tree) and it's now my responsibility". Sharing it around friends is appreciated, but at the peak of ripeness and attractiveness, bottling seems to make most sense. Now if I could only make it look as good as the entries in the local show.
There's one clue as to when the relief
is coming. The frogs stop croaking. Were the frogs come from, or hibernate
to between these irregular wet spells I don't know. But with the first
puddles, they're there, loud and constant. Enough to draw the attention
of weekend day trippers who stand along the concrete footpaths and stare
into the water, never guessing the true purpose of the block. An old
couple today were staring as I walked past, and I immediately assumed
they were considering passage. I said something obvious like "It's
a bit damp at the moment', but the woman said, "We're listening to
the frogs!". I agreed that they were great. "They're so loud' they said, 'are they always
there?' I gave
them the above potted history of the pond and they nodded and smiled a lot and said
thank you. They then walked around the sum of the squares on the other two sides, to the store. |
18 February '02 |
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I know that many people don't like
beetroot, but the tinned vinegary variety was always part of what we
called salads in my childhood and is still appreciated when it appears in occasional 'real'
hamburgers today. Vaguely considered common, beetroot has moved to be more socially
acceptable with baby beets appearing as a side vegetable in some
recent restaurant dinners. That's how I managed to overcome Jan's expressed distaste of them, enough to plant a patch of seedlings this year. "We'll pick them small" I said. "Baby beets are lovely!" I checked one about two weeks ago and thought it was a bit small and yesterday I pulled one up and thought 'Damn, it's too big'. I still picked the bunch in the photograph above because eldest daughter Jackie was home for dinner and as she's a non-red-meat vegetarian, we needed some more veggies on the table. I'd just dug up some fresh new potatoes and thought she'd also like the beetroot. When I asked, she shuddered and said no, but when I went on about 'not in vinegar but fresh, tender, lovely with butter salt and pepper, etc.', she agreed that she might try a bit of one if I cooked some. I scrubbed them and put them on to boil, then wondered what other things I'd do with the rest of the crop over the coming weeks. Given that there was some convincing required to get anyone other than me to eat them, I looked about for some recipes. Figuring that they're a common English root vegetable, I looked up Nigella Lawson's How to Eat, the Pleasures and Principles of Good Food. Chatto & Windus.
Well, she suggests eating the greens and throwing the
beets away, saying "Something spooky can happen to beetroot when
it's cooked (and I don't mean just the vinegar that is often added):
it's as if the sweetness has a slight putrid edge". (Nigella has a nice 'line' where she
recommends peeling the beetroot "wearing rubber gloves if you don't
want to come over all Lady Macbeth later"). |
19 February '02 |
![]() I felt pretty foolish when Jan came home but she knew what had happened as soon a she'd stepped through the door. Burnt fruit? Yeah. Someone gave our daughter Jackie a big bag of pears. She said her friends had a brother in Young and they get whole trays of fruit from him, more than they can eat. As our pears are still ripening, she asked if I'd like some and I said ok. I found that they were developing rotten patches so I decided to make a batch of pear paste. I chopped out the bad bits and cut the fruit into chunks. (The centers were all brown and soft so I presumed that they'd been in storage). There was enough to fill the pot to the lid, with the steamer frame in the base. An inch or two of water was enough I figured, because I only needed to steam them for about 10 minutes. Well the phone rang and I had to go to my work room to send off a quick email and I forgot about the fruit. The result was pretty spectacular. Smoke, smelling of sweet burnt jam wafted down the hall and into every room. After rushing the pot outside and opening windows and doors, I couldn't resist grabbing the camera and photographing the smoke shifting around in the shafts of afternoon sun light. The movies are best, strange swirling patterns but I'll spare you the download time on those. Trust me, they look terrific. The house still smells hours later, but now it's not so pleasant. |
20 February '02 |
![]() With the guns wrapped in a soft case and permanently tied to the rack above the inside rear window, this is a side of the Bungendore life I don't get close to. That's emotionally. Physically it's all around me as part of this 'country life'. For a year the house next door was rented to three single girls. All nice girls (young women), one a school teacher, the others all working in Canberra or Queanbeyan. I guess they'd all be aged in their early twenties. One kept a horse in the back of the yard and a float in the drive and went to gymkhana's. Weekdays they all left early for work at the time we did, with a synchronised scraping of frost from our windscreens. However Fridays and weekends were a pain, the cars and boyfriends would assemble in the yard and they'd all walk down to the pub. After midnight as we'd just got to sleep, the dogs in yards along the road would start barking and laughter and singing would approach. The stereo would start a few minutes later and a party fill all those silent corners up and down the whole block, for the next three or four hours. It was better when they were inside on freezing nights and we had our windows closed, but in summer it was hell. I did some pleading for a volume change, stumbling in half dressed and wild eyed. The police even came around a few times (the local police station shuts about 11.00pm* and the Queanbeyan police have a twenty minutes drive to get here, so a noisy party isn't high on the agenda). I moved from reasonable, pleading, to angry and shouting but it didn't work. There is no where else to go after the pubs shut, so the girl's place was the party house. At 3 am, with lots of slamming of doors and goodbyes either one car would ferry them all home, or the various V-8s would rumble off with stereos thudding. They were just average but drunk kids, and in the light of day looked sheepish as they passed me in town. But that's a long intro into the story of those weekends when they'd go hunting as a group. Then the town would be silent, no dogs barking after midnight, no discarded stubbies and mixer cans along the street and although a few cars would drive past looking for the party, the lights would be out and no one home. I'd wake automatically at 12:15 and lie there wondering what was wrong. It was quiet. After work on Friday, the utes and tray backs, now with their pyramid wire cages with canvas covers and filled with excited gun dogs, would be loaded up with tents, guns, sleeping bags and eskys. And they'd disappear until late on Sunday night when they'd unpack and head home, not so noisily. A walk past the pub or round the streets will show that there's still a strong hunting component around here, even if the town is filling with Canberra-escaping public servants and old grumpy guys like me who just like to live in the country. The serious hunting dogs are the clue, and the For Sale signs for bull mastiff X's are always in the store windows. When I was growing up, hunting was just a part of what you did if you were male. It was what I did, until as 'late teen'-ager I developed a fear of guns and a hatred for killing things with them. But hey, it's ok if it's just shoot'n ferals and road signs. (See 10th Feb.) *We did have a great midnight high speed chase through town a few weeks ago however. We woke up to lots of sirens and a helicopter. An armed robbery in Braidwood ended with the guy and his car wrapped around the tree at the T intersection in town. The rescue helicopter flew around in circles for half an hour until someone found the key to the lighting on the oval, so it could land. |
Fred Harden |
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