It's a new year and a new beginning for all of us. Darren and I enjoyed our 2 week holiday to Tasmania just after Christmas. We spent time with Darren's family in Devonport then had a mini getaway to a little coastal town called Stanley. It was wonderful to breathe in the fresh air without a face mask for the entire 2 weeks.
The second half of January was spent in the garden picking fruit from our trees and finding ways to use it all. Our pantry was given a clean out / sort out ready to tackle 2021. Our freezers are full of cooked meals, fruit and our usual stockpile of meat.
Here's what else we've been up to -
* Made three loaves of wholemeal bread with extra goodness.
* Made lots of apricot jam using the apricots from our tree.
* Made a 2 litre bottle of foaming hand wash liquid using diluted shower gel.
* Made up a bottle of surface cleaner using diluted dishwashing liquid.
* Knitted quite a few dish cloths and face scrubbies ( wash cloths ) while we were in Tasmania. Now that we are back home I've continued to knit in my spare time.
* Cut Megan's hair for her.
* Made lemon butter using eggs I froze a few months ago and lemon juice I froze last year ( lemons from our tree ). I've been enjoying it on my toast for breakfast.
* Froze excess plums from our tree. I'm planning on making jam later in the year when my current supply is low.
* Darren dug up the potatoes he planted last October. From 7 scrawny little supermarket potatoes we harvested about 13 kilos. At the moment, supermarkets are charging $4 a kilo.
* We made a bulk batch of salmon patties and stretched them out by adding cooked potato and grated carrot. There were enough for 9 meals for the 2 of us. We ate some that night and 8 meals were put into the freezer.
* Gratefully received lots of plums and tomatoes from my Dad's garden. The plums were frozen for future jam making and sauce making. The tomatoes were cooked up and made a very large lasagne.
* Planted cucumber, zucchini, potatoes, lettuce and bean seeds.
* Gratefully received a large zucchini from Jessica's boss. This was used to make lots of zucchini / veggie fritters.
* Saved lots of kitchen water from drink bottles and rinsing veggies. This was used on the plants in our back garden.
* We took as much food as we could for our trip to Tasmania. The muesli bars, tins of chunky soup, homemade shortbread biscuits and savoury biscuits saved us a small fortune. We also took lunch and snacks on the boat trip over and only needed to buy a cup of tea and dinner.
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| From our fruit trees |
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| Our potato haul |
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| From the garden on Christmas morning |
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| Bryson on the move |
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| A new greeting card I've been making |
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| Cooking up the tomatoes |
Welcome back Wendy, glad you had a lovely holiday, Tassie is a special place to rest and recoup! Love seeing your garden pictures, our tomato and cucurbit crops have been very poor this year, the cool damp summer has not been kind to our small bayside courtyard garden,but family have gifted us produce so we have 'tasted' summer. Have also been knitting dishcloths,and putting the old manky ones into the rag bag.Have a safe week.
ReplyDeleteSo good to have you back and inspiring us all Wendy...God bless
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see you back. And, those plums look amazing! Citrus fruit grows really well where I live (California) & neighbors always have boxes of lemons, oranges & sometimes limes to give away. Some trees just produce an incredible amount, and I'm always on the lookout for ways to use up oranges. :-)
ReplyDeleteIt's good to see you back. Very impressed with Darren's potato harvest!
ReplyDeletePotatoes for weeks Wendy and Darren!! We planted maybe a dozen supermarket potatoes a few weeks back. Will be interesting! The kids chucked in two carrots that had started growing roots. An experiment I think. Haha.
ReplyDelete13 kilos from 7 scrawny shop potatoes. That's an amazing crop. I'm feeling inspired, but probably will have to wait till later in the year to do this now.
ReplyDeleteGlad to welcome you back and equally glad that you enjoyed your holiday! There are big changes afoot here in 2021. The pandemic and work-induced stress has caused us to reassess what is really important and after a bit of number-crunching and soul-searching my husband has decided to take early retirement. The plan is to live off savings and a couple of small income streams for two years, before starting to draw down on his private pension. I am excited and apprehensive at the same time!
ReplyDeleteWOW so much abundance at the moment and all put to good use!
ReplyDeleteI love your frugal list for ideas for myself. I am determined to spend as little as possible this year so to pay off some farm loans more quickly. The amount of food we have in this house is almost embarrassing! We don't need to buy ANYTHING for at least a month! I'll post more of my plan on my blog later today. (I'm busy so I don't blog every day or even every week but I'm trying to check in more often) https://prairie-quilts-and-kolaches.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteAlso, What a great potato harvest. Check my blog photos for what we harvested last year. I have leftover potatoes to plant this year. I'm afraid to check them as the last time I looked at them, they were sprouting already. I need to grate them and freeze or make them into mashed for freezing. Thanks again for the interesting read.
Glad to have you back and nice to hear you had a lovely holiday 😊
ReplyDeleteIt is so great to read that you have had a wonderful breakaway and have worked towards getting 2021 off to a splendid beginning. I bought some more citrus trees but I think one of our extreme heat days was too much for my investment. One day I will manage a harvest.
ReplyDeleteLovely to 'see' you again!
ReplyDeleteWe had quite a bit of snow here, about 5cm. DD2 (9) has no recollection of this much snow and was a bit hesitant. We'll take a longer lunch break today and take dds (the eldest is 12) to a small incline in our village to slide a sled. The incline is about 1.5m, but it's the best we can do at the moment.
The newspaper had a feature about Belgian fruit tree growers (for sale) that they couldn't keep up with demand. Apparently, all Belgians with a garden are now filling it with fruit trees. I like that news.