Eating our greens

Here is proof it's spring:  the first broadbeans of the season.

 

In a salad with broccoli and fetta from the local farmers market, lemon from our neighbour's tree and parsley and dill also from our garden.

That's an Alfred Meakin salad bowl c1930s and a silver plate serving spoon we found in an op shop.

It went very well with steak and an earthy shiraz.

She's all grown up!

After the departure of Horace the Rooster last weekend, we started to wonder when our last remaining chick, Shirley, would start to lay.

She's about six months old, so it's time.

And then today, we found this:

The picture doesn't really show it, but it's really small and a bit blotchy.  It was also in an odd place.  Like a chook had been caught by surprise.

We do think it's her first egg.

We're rather proud.

First ever!

At least, we hope so!

This is passionfruit lemonade marmalade.  Made from lemonade fruit (a hybrid lemon/navel orange) and passionfruit.  It tastes great (although not at all like Passiona).

We might enter it into the marmalade section of the Swan View Show.

Decision time

Just lately, Horace, one of our two surviving chicks, has started to asset his masculinity.  He's quite a magnificent creature - tall and glossy and his comb and wattles are getting bigger.

He's also started to experiment with crowing, luckily not too early, but we don't expect that to last.

He sounds like a teenage boy whose voice is breaking.  The hens are picking on him less and less.

If we don't find him a new home soon, he's going to be too tough and stringy to eat.

Unexpectedness

Last year, the practical reinventor went to rather a lot of trouble to use this horrible old bathtub that had been dumped in the backyard for, oh, about 10 years.

Our preferred crop: water chestnuts.
They struggled and died off, and we got busy, so they got left.

They're supposed to grow through summer, then you harvest the corms (the water chestnuts are a sort of root vegetable) in Autumn, then plant the next lot in spring.  Since we didn't harvest them, we figured they all died and rotted away.
Except they hadn't.  Some had started to shoot, but most were crisp and added a definite sharp crunch to a coleslaw.
We've planted half a dozen in new potting mix and hope for a larger harvest next Autumn.

If we remember to harvest them...