Whilst the sun continually shines, we have been harvesting loads of veggies from the garden and also the school horticulture (hort) yard. My Y13 hort students grew hydroponic tomatoes (nothing else I assure you!) to sell to the public... unfortunately they only fruited after the seniors left, so I have been harvesting kilos of fruit over the past few weeks. Stir fry's and salads go some way to using the veggies, but we have both been toiling away in the kitchen experimenting with our own pickle, relish and chutney recipes... we check for a recipe on t'internet, but ignore what we find and make it up as we go along, which is much more fun!
To date we have pickled beetroot and onions, made two red tomato relishes and a green tomato chutney, using about 10 kilos of tomatoes:
Bernie likes to grow various shoots and beans for our stir fry's and salads too with the help of this funky contraption:
Further to this, I have had to buy another honey box and will shortly be spinning off two boxes worth of Spring honey from my bees. I have a new queen to introduce soon too as the current one is over the hill - I can still smell at the moment and I am putting it all down to being stung - I actually quite enjoy the buzz of being stung - no pun intended!
We're enjoying the start of our long summer holiday - we're off swimming soon in a lovely outdoor 50m pool this afternoon and I've been getting into the hills on my mountain bike - I found a cave network t'other day, deep in some native forest which was equally stunning...
Bernie is growing nicely and baby is moving around a lot still. She will be 22 weeks gone tomorrow - she will have another scan after 34 weeks due to the placenta being over the cervix in the previous scan. This is very common and usually moves as the baby grows... the worst news would mean a cesarean, but in our mid-wife's expansive experience, the baby nearly always moves it naturally over the next few weeks. We're still set on a home birth and ante-natal classes begin in late Jan which is exciting! We've been looking at names and like Adolf at the moment.
We're really excited about meeting up with Phil and Margaret in Sydney - they are still waiting for their furniture etc from the UK, but we will be out and about a lot - seeing the city, urban beaches (and surfing!), we're going to Margaret's parents for Xmas and heading down the coast for a few more days of rural beach life!
I hope all of you in the UK are enjoying the wintery feeling - listening to Xmas songs here is still bizarre, it is nice not having it rammed down your throat like it is in the UK!
Love and best wishes from C&B!
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