Unpaid Labour and Hanky Panky On The Farm

The other day I noticed that we had some new workers on the farm.
They were hard at work culling the aphid that were trying to set up shop on my roses.

Then when I looked a bit closer I noticed there were heaps of new workers, which could have something to do with the plentiful food supply.  

I have made a concerted effort not to spray pesticides, have let things like coriander flower and go to seed and have planted lots of flowering plants to attract the good bugs.

Well it seems to be working because not only do we have ladybirds galore taking care of the aphids but they seem to to think the farm is a good place to raise a family.  There is ladybird hanky panky going on in all directions.

Do you have any unpaid workers at your place?

Blogger Issues

Has anyone else had issues managing the blogs they follow?

According to blogger I was not following any blogs at all so I have had to spend time following them all again.  I am still not sure I have all of them.  Grrrrr.

For some reason I have no "Manage" button for my reading list.  And now I have rediscovered blogs that I didn't know were missing.  Oh well now I have some reading to catch up on.

Hot Hot Hot

It has been getting very hot here lately and yesterday was no exception.
It has also been extremely dry.  The last time it rained was mid July.  I have raised a lot of seeds and have potted them on into indervidual pots but all this hot dry weather is making it hard to keep them from suffering.
Yesterday we had a scorcher of a day with the below temperature of 37 degrees registering at 2 pm.  It was one of those days that you pray for rain.  People often talk about the heat being oppressive and the air feeling heavy.   Today I knew exactly what they mean.

The dry heat has been a bonus in drying my Pak Choy seed pods and all going well I will have plenty to give away soon so stay tuned.

And it turns out my prayers for rain were to be answered.  A storm rolled in late afternoon, and although there was not a lot of rain(only 4 mls), it was enough to cool everything down and water the garden and paddocks.

A few weeks ago one of our neighbours kindly came and slashed our back paddock to get rid of all the dead grass and thatch.  Since then we have watering it from our bore and it has been greening up nicely.  So this rain just topped it up.

Sprinkler watering the paddock (A bit hard to see but look for the jet of water)

The paddock starting to green up

Weather reports suggest that we are in for a long hot summer so I am sure we can expect plenty more days like this to come.

You Must Be Freaking Kidding - On My Soap Box

This post comes with the following warning:

Should you not wish to be subjected to a bit of a rant that may or may not contain bad language you should close your browser page now.  The following thoughts are mine and mine alone.  I am not a parent so these judgements are not based on my experience and are just my thoughts on the things I have seen.   Please do not take offence to my comments as I respect every parents right to parent as they choose.

Tonight while watching TV hubby and I saw something that made us groan in unison.  I said "You must be freaking kidding", he said "What next?".

What we saw was an advertisement for this an app for phones that teaches kids how to brush their teeth.
Now we don't have kids yet (soon hopefully) and where we live we don't have mobile phone coverage, so to me this just seems ludicrous.
I mean are people trying to get out of parenting?  Are we really living in a world where we want our phones to teach our children how to do things?  "Here you go son, just watch this app and it will teach you how to ride your bike/tie your laces/catch a ball/"
When I sat down and thought about this a number of things crossed my mind.
Don't you start teaching kids to clean their teeth when they get them eg when they are toddlers?
Then why would I be giving my toddler a $500 plus phone?
If I can't be bothered teaching my kids to clean their teeth what else will I not be bothered teaching them?
Are those 2 mins that I spend with my kids teaching them to brush their teeth so bothersome?  I would have thought teaching your children and watching them master new skills was one of the absolute joys of parenting.

Now I am not anti technology but when our kids play tennis on a computer game instead of learning to play tennis in real life something is very wrong.

I would really love to hear what you think about this, maybe you can convince me of it's merits.  Maybe I should just keep my thoughts to myself.
Feel free to let me know.

When Life Gives You Silverbeet And Eggs...

At the moment we have silverbeet and eggs galore.
I have been giving eggs away and trading them for other things and also making the most of them while they are so plentiful.
So today I made a big (I made it in a roasting pan) self crusting quiche.  It was filled with loads of silverbeet from the garden, some our new season asparagus, a few broccoli shoots and some other veggies I had on hand.  I made it with 12 eggs so that used up a few (only another 3 dozen in the fridge).
I have been making this recipe for years so I do not usually measure anything.  I know what the end mix should look like and I just use what I have on hand.
But I dug out the old recipe to share it here.  You can really be flexible with this and just use what ever suits. This time I had some feta to use up and really wanted to use up a lot of eggs and silverbeet so I doubled the recipe overall.  I have also used grated zucchini but if you do you should squeeze out some of the moisture  after grating and halve the milk.

This is the single recipe so if you double it give it an extra 10 minutes but start checking at 30 minutes because I have found that the cooking time is dependant on the veggies you use.

Self Crusting Vegetable Quiche

2 Onions Diced
2 Tbs Vegetable Oil
2 Cloves of Garlic
2 Cooked Potatoes, cubed and cooled
6 Eggs
3 Rashers of Bacon, diced
500 gm Cooked Silverbeet, drained and chopped or 500gm of any other veg*
1/2 Cup of Milk
1/4 Cup Self Raising Flour
1 Cup Grated Tasty Cheese
1 tsp Salt
1tsp Pepper

Grease a 20cm x 30cm baking dish and preheat oven to 210 degrees C.
Cook silverbeet, drain and set aside to cool completely.
Cube your potatoes into 2 cm cubes, cook, drain and cool.
Heat a large fry pan and add the oil and diced bacon.  Cook until just a little browned and remove, leaving the oil behind in the pan, and place in a large mixing bowl.
Cook your onion until translucent and turn the pan off.  Crush the garlic and add to the onion using the residual heat to cook the garlic taking care not to let it burn.  Add  the onion mix to the bacon in the mixing bowl.
Add silverbeet and potato to the mixing bowl along with grated cheese.
In a separate bowl beat eggs milk salt and pepper.  Tip into bowl with vegetables along with flour and mix to combine.
Pour into baking dish and cook  for 20 - 30 minutes or until set in the centre.

* I have tried a tin of creamed corn, zucchini, broccoli, mushrooms and asparagus and silverbeet is the only one I pre-cook.