Hello world!

Welcome, I’ve started this blog to share our adventures of setting up our urban farm.

In April 2007 my family moved in to a very well loved, old weatherboard in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. The year before we had moved from our home in East Gippsland.

We had missed the bush, so we thought we would recreate a little country oasis in the city.

I spent many hours designing and redesigning our urban farm. Like most gardeners, I look at a plan, then go with what feels right.

What we have today is a wonderful little oasis, growing and changing every day.

Please enjoy the following photo’s and stories.

Best Wishes

Deborah and Pete

Urban Farmers

ATTENTION Willing Workers on Organic Farms (Wwoof)

If you wish to apply to Wwoof at our property please read, Wwoofing at our Urban Farm.

All quiet on the gardening front….

Winter is most definitely here…. and things are definitely slowing.

All the various Brassicas are slowly getting to maturity (cabbages, broccoli, swedes, kale, etc); the snow peas are finally climbing their trellis after a very slow start; and we’ve just sowed some heirloom purple broad-beans.

The plan is to start sowing seeds into trays for late winter/early spring, so that the seedlings are ready to plant. Although between exams and holidays, its not certain when we’ll actually get this happening.

An exciting development is a large number of hard-wood cuttings of two different varieties of fig trees, which we hope will strike and provide us a number of fig saplings.

Of course, winter is the perfect time for brewing lagers and other brews requiring bottom-fermenting yeasts. After tasting the Golden Winter Steam, I was inspired to make another one. This is an interesting beer, one that definitely can be classed as a hybrid – a cross between a  lager and an ale. The first taste is reminiscent of classic lagers, but then followed by a hint of fruity-esters, and then an aftertaste of malt. The aroma is not what was aimed for, and may have been because I picked the hops flowers too late. There are at least two batches of my Happy Pils that need to be made in the next month or so – the Czech Pilsener yeast works best in these cold temperatures.

Surprisingly, our tomatoes, eggplants, and chilli plants are all surviving – there are even ripening fruit on the tomatoes!!!! Weird, huh?!?!?

We are having a pest problem that is destroying the mature broccoli – and its not something that snail-ale will fix – we think that possums are eating our vegies! Perhaps possum pie is in order….. grrrrrrrrrr….!!!!!!

It will be interesting to see how things pan out for this year. I predict that we may see an early start to spring this year…..

#25 Golden Winter Steam

Some months ago I bought ingredients in bulk to make a couple of batches of ale. But as is usual, I never get round to brewing it in time. Ale yeasts generally want warmer temperatures – but being I was going to be brewing in colder temperatures I was going to need to look at getting a lager yeast. So I compromised: Wyeast’s California Lager yeast variety is a lager yeast that can handle warmer temperatures (14-20°C), and is characteristic of the American West Coast Steam beers; alternatively, you could use it for ales brewing at a colder temperature, which is kind of what I have been going for here.

Ingredients

• 2.25kg Ale malt
• 500g Light Munich malt
• 100g Light crystal malt (55L)
• 50g Chocolate malt
• 1kg LDME
• 20g Northern Brewer (AA 9.5%) @ 60mins
• 1x Cascade plug (AA 6.84%) @ 15mins
• 1x Cascade plug (AA 6.84%) @ 10mins
• 77g Cascade whole fresh flowers (AA unknown) @ flame-out
• ½ tab Irish Moss @ 5mins
• Wyeast 2112 California Lager (1Lt starter) liquid yeast

• Est. OG            1.052
• Est. IBU           39.2
• Est. EBC          22.5
• Actual OG        1.051
• Actual FG        1.011

ALC/VOL. ~5.4%

Method

• Mash grains in 10Lt water (~65°C) for 1 hour.
• Add 270g LDME to wort and boil hops as per schedule above.
• Add Irish Moss 5 mins before end of boil.
• Add remainder of LDME.
• Add fresh hops flowers, and let sit for 20 mins.
• Top us with water to 20Lt.
• Add liquid yeast starter.

The colour is a rich golden hue, reminiscent of JS Golden Ale. Its really clear, and the hops aren’t too overpowering.

This batch only took four days to ferment, which I figured was due to the amount of yeast I pitched. It was late at night, and I accidentally pitched while the wort was about 28°C – I truly thought that I may have shocked the yeast, but it started to bubble away within a few hours, much quicker than usual.

I made 2lt of starter with this liquid yeast pack, using 1Lt for the batch, and splitting the rest into 6 stubbies, which I stored in the fridge for later use.

After only 7 days, I bulk-primed with 167g Dextrose in 2cups water and bottled.

Do you want your own urban farm?

From this,

To this ……..

Would you like support to create your own urban farm?

Do you have a vision of a food oasis but don’t know where to start?

Could you do with a hand to start or even refresh your garden?

I am offering personal or group sessions in our urban farm or in a location to suit you.

Some ways in which I can help,

• food garden planning,
• bushfire retardant gardens,
• garden mentoring,
• sourcing plants and products,
• problem solving,
• total food garden maintenance,
• natural behaviour and nutrition for pets and livestock.
• improving soil/plant nutrition
• developing and implementing recycling and composting systems
• sustainability planning and development,
• community/school workshops and presentations

I will tailor services to suit your needs and budget. Discounts are available to concession card holders, community groups and I am always open to barter

To find out more please contact Deborah on 0423 150 448.

I am looking forward to helping you create your own urban farm.

#24 Spicy Ginger Beer (gluten-free)

This recipe is actually suitable for anyone who is either coeliac/gluten-intolerant or fructose-intolerant.

Ingredients

2kg Fresh Ginger
1kg Dark Brown Sugar
150g Corn Syrup (maltodextrin)
500g Lactose (milk sugar)
500g Dextrose (glucose)
2x cinnamon sticks
10g cloves
3x lemons
½ tab Irish Moss
4g Yeast nutrient
Red Star Premier Cuvee (champagne) dry yeast pack

Method

Chop up lemons and ginger, add to pot of water and bring to the boil. I did this over the space of a number of days, adding water when the level got too low, and keeping the pot covered when not on the stove.

Once I was satisfied that I had extracted as much of the ginger as I wanted, I strained the ginger into my boiling pot, and adding the corn syrup and dextrose, bringing to the boil once more.

Once it started boiling, I added the spices and the brown sugar. I left this boil for 1 hour. Five minutes before flame-out, I added the Irish Moss (dissolved in 1 cup water) and the Lactose. I poured this solution into the fermenter, and then topped up with water to 23 litres. I then added the yeast nutrient at this point, covered it and let it cool down a bit more.

I rehydrated the yeast in 50ml water, which was about 40°C. I pitched this yeast when the wort was about 32°C. It had finished fermenting after 7 days, which I then bulk-primed with 170g raw sugar and bottled.

• OG 1.045
• FG 1.010
• ALC/VOL. ~5.2%
  

This is a very popular recipe of mine – the perfect ladies’ drink! Given that colder weather is here, the addition of spice should make this somewhat warming.

I found the ginger on sale, it is conventionally farmed and grown in Australia. Obviously, I want to avoid food miles… however, the time I made this with organic ginger, te taste was far better. The problem being the price… organic ginger sells for around $15/kg. If conventional stuff is only a couple of dollars less, I usually go for it, but when conventional is half the price, it makes a difference when buying kilos of the stuff.

The Dark Brown sugar is also essential. It certainly darkens the colour a bit, and also gives off an almost ‘rummy’ aroma – remembering that rum is essentially fermented from sugar cane. You could replace all of the fermentable sugars with this (ie, dextrose), but I find dex is better at fermentation, so I use this blend. Of course, if gluten isn’t an issue, try using malt!

Also, because there is no malt, GB’s tend to love a bit of a shake-up. Often in beer brewing you avoid splashing of the wort as much as possible, as introducing oxygen can sometimes affect flavour. However in this case, oxygen just gives the yeast something extra to play with. Every couple of days, give the barrel a shake.

You can also re-use the chopped ginger to make your supply of ginger paste for cooking. Just put it back into a pot with a little bit of water, mash it up using your blender/bamix until it turns into a paste, and reduce right down. Then decant it into jars (or other container) and refridgerate or freeze. Commercial ‘fresh ginger paste’ has vinegar as a preservative, but it should be ok without it so long as its in the fridge. Commercial stuff is usually 92% ginger, with the rest being water and vinegar – so I’m not sure about how much vinegar you could add if you wanted to store in a pantry. Its really amazing to see how much gingery flavour is still left after having boiled for the GB.

#23 Dockside of the Moon Stout

Ingredients

• 1x Morgans Dockside Stout kit (1.7kg; 81.5 EBC; 32 IBU)
• 500g DME – light
• 500g Joe White traditional ale malt
• 200g Joe White light crystal/cara malt
• 200g Roasted Barley malt
• 100g Chocolate malt
• 35g Fuggles hops pellets (4.4%AA) @ 60 mins
• 1x Fuggles hops plug (5.4%AA) @ 15 mins
• Wyeast 1335 British Ale II yeast starter (150ml)

• Estimated OG: 1.044
• Estimated IBU: 56.3
• Estimated EBC: 65.0

Method

Mashed the grains together in esky for an hour – boiled 7Lt water to 75°C, then poured into grains in esky. Drained wort into pot, added DME and brought to the boil. Added hops as per schedule. Added kit wort at flame-out. Pitched yeast at 24°C.

• OG: 1.048
• FG: 1.019
  

Mini urban livestock, Quails

We have quail!

I would love to show you photo’s of our quail but our camera has been misplaced.

After trying quail eggs from the local market and eating quail at a restaurant last year, I was convinced quail would be a great addition to our urban farm.

Quail eggs are very yummy. From my research quail eggs are higher in nutrient per gram then chicken eggs, have a higher yolk to white ratio and are very pretty, each one having slightly different combinations of white and browns spots and sploshes.

As far as cooking,

Fried Quail Eggs on Toast.

Crack four quail eggs into a cup.

Heat pan, low to medium heat.

A drizzle of olive oil

One egg ring, lightly rubbed in olive oil, placed in pan.

Pour all four quail eggs into egg ring.

When eggs are set to your liking, place on toast and enjoy!

Poached Quail Eggs with Avocado.

Have toast and fresh slices of avocado ready.

Crack one quail egg into a cup (we find espresso cups perfect for this use)

Set a medium size saucepan half filled with water on the stove.

Add a tablespoon of vinegar.

Bring to boil, turn down to a simmer.

Stir water to create a whirlpool.

Pour single quail egg into centre of whirlpool.

Use slotted spoon to remove when set.

Repeat process until you have enough eggs for each serve (I suggest three to four per person.

Care of Quail.

We are currently housing our five quail in a metal guinea pig hutch. The hutch is being used as a quail tractor, with us moving it around under our fruit trees.

UPDATE: Quail Towers has arrived! Hiding away in a shed at our East Gippsland home was a three storey chicken hatchery which I thought would be just perfect for keeping quail. The guinea pig hutch whilst great for tractoring the quail was not all the practical for getting access to the eggs, Quail Towers on the other hand is off the ground and I can easily see if there are eggs with opening the door or bending down. Photo’s coming soon.

We feed Game Bird Crumbles which cost around $24 per 20kg bag. We crush the crumbles in our grinder as quail that are under 16 weeks old find the crumbles a bit too large to eat.

I read somewhere that quail only eat 18 grams each a day, well our quail are eating three times that, maybe due to the cold weather or their age.

In regards to living quarters, quail are very quick to escape out partly open doors, select hutches or cages that will enable you access without fear of losing your new friends.

UPDATE We lost a quail, actually we lost 4 but found three within the day. A visitor didn’t shut the door properly and at some time during the day all but one quail flew out. Quail can definitely fly, we ended up using an old butterfly net attached to the broom stick. The last quail was seen flying over our neighbour’s house, never to be seen again.

Eggs Production

Quail start laying somewhere around 6 – 8 weeks old, lay around 200 – 300 eggs each a year for about 2 – 3 years. Quail that are good for egg laying are not good mothers, like productive hens the mothering instinct has been selectively breed out, so if you want more quail, use a small bantam to hatch them out or an incubator.

We have also processed our surplus (too many males) and enjoyed Greek Style Oven baked quail. Friends came over to help with the task of plucking and preparing the birds for the table. We would like to aim to have at least one meal a month of quail from our own urban farm.

Interested in getting quail? Give Jeremy from Oakleigh a call 0411 048 707, he has stock available at very reasonable prices.

Enjoy your quail!

PS Just found this blog site, which includes info of hatching out quail, well worth a read!

http://alifelesssimple.wordpress.com/

Dilemmas and teething problems

What with the wonderful new boiler and my growing experience working with grains and partial mashes, I am having some quandaries taking the next step into brewing with grains.

Essentially, I don’t think the boiler is the best equipment for mashing grains – merely because of its size. Also, because there is clearly a wisdom (and a science) to draining the wort from the mash-bed, and the sparging. Very different to the process I am doing using the muslin liner.

It also means I am somewhat limited with how I can go about doing two batches at the same time that are different – which has been my intention with thinking about the next batch (or two).

So the next one may well be two batches – just that they will have to be the same. About the only difference I can make is in the yeast and aroma hops used (which can be put into each fermenter).

My plan is to use the fresh hops I just harvested: cascade and golden cluster. With any luck, this year we will be able to expand on the varieties we have growing in our garden, and this will be good  for variety.

So, I’m planning to head to the local HBS to get some grains and some advice…

Sustainable Garden Award

“…They said you’d never make it…”

A huge thank-you to the Whitehorse City Council who awarded us this honour. And a thank-you also to Neco for the prize of the gift voucher.

The level of excellence that I saw that night across the community was brilliant. It is inspiring to think that there are so many individuals, households, schools, community groups and businesses who are actively engaging with ideas of sustainability, environmental awareness, and ecological responsibility.

This council is clearly committed to moving forwards in respect to our collective contributions to making a difference. This is truly an example of the ‘grass-roots’ at work!

Huzzah!

And really, this was not hard work. Our urban farm is not just about providing us with some vegies. It is about making less of an impact on the planet by reducing ‘food miles’. It’s about reducing, re-using, and recycling. And it’s about giving back something to Mother Earth.

For us, this is only the beginning. Our home has a long way to go before we are truly making less of an impact. Once the garden is truly established, the dwelling space needs attention: insulating the house from heat and cold, efficient and low-impact heating/cooling systems (using passive and active systems), water recycling, and so on.

It can all be done, and all within budget – it just takes a little brain-power and some time. Yes there are expensive hi-tech ways of doing things – but there are also lots of “lo-fi” ways. And herein lies the beauty of the internet…….

Snail Ale

I thought we were going to get a bumper crop of broccoli this year – that is until half my seedlings were ravaged by wee little critters that crawl in the dark and moist.

Well, I couldn’t wait for the ducks for ferret out all the pests, so I turned to the very next best solution: Snail Ale.

The high sugar content of beer, lemonade, etc attracts the snails, slugs, and a variety of other insects (including wasps). Essentially they drown! No pesticides or nasty chemical pellets needed.

Its very easy, and there are two methods.

The simplest would be water and sugar (a lot of sugar) in a container and left out. Soft drink (lemonade, etc) would also work, but would be relatively expensive.

I find that this purpose is great for bad (infected) batches of home-brewed beer, or when relatives turn up for dinner bringing a 6-pack of Budweiser, VB, or any other horrid commercial beer.

A batch of Snail Ale Premium Braggot Mead

You can buy little traps in Hardware/Gardening stores for such a purpose – but  find its best to recycle old ice-cream containers. The new ones have the little flip-top lid, which works great for keeping the rain out. I bury the containers in to ground level, making it as easy as possible for the critters to climb on in.

I believe the trick with making these work is in strategic placement. It has to be near enough to the susceptible vegies, but not so close that they decide to have a munch on your seedlings on the way to the honey-pot.

Oh, and a note – please do not feed the pickled slugs to your poultry. The last thing you need is drunk chooks!

Anyone feel like creating an urban farm?

Ever had the urge when looking at a discarded piece of land to create a food oasis? So often in our urban landscape, land considered unimportant, is forgotten behind some security fencing with only weeds (sometimes very tasty ones) being produced or as the unofficial local rubbish dump.

Here is a story about a rubbish dump turned into a evolving urban farm.

http://www.alemanyfarm.org/

A short video of their journey

http://au.video.yahoo.com/watch/2815681/8182020

If anyone knows of land that could be turned into a urban farm in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, please let us know, I would LOVE to be involved in turning a forgotten piece of land into a thriving food oasis, that not only feeds locals but teaches them about how to produce their own food and live substantively!