Snippets

I have cheated in the preparation of this article. A long spell of wet weather up until mid-April and low temperatures thereafter left me with a very late start to a spring and summer work schedule that I cannot complete, but I must do as much as possible. That has left me no time to write a blog and the next few weeks will be no better as I have begun hand harvesting about 1.6 hectares/4 acres of beans. It is almost three months since I last posted, and that is far too long. I have been thinking what I could do instead and have a brief opportunity to post now.

Since publishing about my almost 70 years of rural living, a huge number of people around the world have accessed the book’s home page at Smashwords, and many have taken up the option of a free sample, but this sample is the opening pages and does not properly reflect the whole content of the book. So I decided to post a few later snippets that I have “on file” for proposed adverts. These snippets give blog readers an opportunity to learn about where I have been and some of the thoughts I have on rural living even if they have no interest in the book. When things slow down I will prepare a blog reporting on the year to date at the Monte.

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With the combined resources of ten years shining the seat of my pants on various office seats, and some help from my friendly bank manager, I was able to buy nine acres, a few buildings and a large house that would benefit from some improvements.

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The Church of England Commissioners decided to sell this small hill farm they had acquired with Queen Anne's Bounty. Now Queen Anne died in 1714, and I doubt whether the Church Commissioners had spent any money on the place since they acquired it.

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The first Monday morning after I ceased being an employee was undoubtedly one of the happiest days I have ever experienced.

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We found a sheep and cattle station in the Bingara/Barraba area we thought would suit. 3006 acres. A typical weatherboard Australian house that was in decent condition, sound, with mains electricity, water from tanks and a deep borehole.

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Christmas Night, 1982. My wife announced she was going to have a baby. Well, I knew that, I thought he was due to arrive in March sometime; but she meant NOW.

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Out of idle curiosity one day I had called in at a goat sale. The first animal into the ring was this Angora buck that had not only been Supreme Champion at the Sydney Royal two years previously, but had sired the Champion group of doe, buck kid, and doe kid the following year. The auctioneer tried to start him at $A8000 failed to do so and began drastically reducing the opening price, but could not get any takers. I offered him $A200 to get the ball rolling.

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We had discovered on our visit from Australia, and another occasion immediately after returning permanently, that we both felt we were home once we were north of Pitlochry. You know when you are somewhere you will feel happy to live.

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We had help in the growing of the mushrooms from what we referred to as our Mushroom Ladies. These were some local schoolgirls who would work on Saturday afternoons and were extremely adept at the precision work of mixing growing mediums and inoculating with precise amounts of spawn. Another area where I feel the female of the species is likely to be better than the male.

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We had already decided we were unlikely to find anywhere better than one of the places we had seen near Castelo Branco.

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You will be restricted in what you buy by the amount of money you have available or can borrow, but there is one thing that it is imperative to remember before you buy. Someone, sometime will sell it again.

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That is the purpose of these Chapters, in fact the whole book – not to force my opinion upon you, but to give you information that allows you to make decisions when you consider your own particular piece of soil and what you will do with it over the next few years.

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Think of your land as a series of accounts at a bank. Every time you grow something you write a cheque.

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Bare soil is never a good idea. Bare land is more subject to erosion by wind and water, and is doing nothing towards improving your property.

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Weaver’s research, which involved digging pits as deep as necessary, showed that almost all plants we are likely to grow on the farm and in the garden will send their roots to six feet deep, and some to more than twice that depth – if they are able to penetrate the ground.

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If you have livestock that are housed then they will as a matter of nature produce the finest organic material there is, and mixed with the bedding for them I believe it is the absolute pinnacle of feed for your soil and underground workforce.

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Having land permanently stocked, even if very lightly, is not the correct approach. There has been a fair amount of research on this topic in several countries confirming that rotational grazing is required.

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There is not much point in cutting down a healthy tree and turning it into charcoal just for the purpose of making a carbon sink. About 50% of the carbon in the tree will be released into the atmosphere in the process of making the charcoal.

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Personal experience of ploughing out a grass ley that has been down for four years has given me great confidence in the system.

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If it is true that energy is wasted for one crop, say maize, then it must be true too of tomatoes, cauliflowers and all other directly eaten food crops which the anti-grain feeders are telling us to grow instead. There is not a lot of energy in a 95% water content lettuce.

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My experience of Mediterranean diets is that the old country folks living their simple lives consume a lot of high quality animal meat and fats, and enormous quantities of eggs.

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A lot of the existing forage in these upland areas is really only suitable for some classes of ruminants because of its lower feed value. This lack of choice by farmers is, of course a major stumbling block to the theories of non-farmers on how to produce food.

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POULTRY. We will start with something that I am confident to claim I know a lot about, and I have a great deal of experience, so have no hesitation whatsoever in destroying some widely held beliefs and myths. I will go into much more detail than with other species, but I repeat my warnings that this is not a text book, so what follows is an extremely long way from containing everything that a poultry keeper needs to know.

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Advice on machinery is even more difficult than livestock. One thing is certain, and that is that all machinery will cost you money to buy and keep on costing you money every time you operate it.

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Simply sowing nuts can be a very cheap way to produce the trees. I planted some almonds, as well as walnuts and sweet chestnuts, in the first Autumn we were in Portugal, 2003, had a harvest of almonds in 2010 and planted more nuts from this harvest so have numerous trees for a few cents and some time.

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Garlic. A necessity of life. I would like to believe the miraculous powers attributed to garlic as a preventative and curative of all sorts of illnesses and diseases.

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For those who want to know, the order of courses is Hors d’oeuvres, Soup, Fish, Entrée, Remove, Game, Entremets Sucre, Entremets Savoreux, Cheeses, Desserts. We harvested olives in the November and the Hors d’oeuvres were our own olives with home baked tomato bread (incorporating tomatoes we had grown and sun-dried ourselves) and the first tasting of our first vintage.

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I really do enjoy specific wines for specific courses, but at the same time I have no objection whatsoever to those who drink only whites or only reds with everything. If that is what they prefer, then that is fine by me.

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SEAFOOD WITH PASTA

This can be either a starter dish or a main course depending upon quantity served. Any seafood you like, garlic, parsley and cream. Heat the lot whilst the pasta is cooking. Drain the pasta and mix everything together. Some like ground black pepper over it. Can be eaten cold as well as hot, and with a lot of cream and only a little of the seafood and pasta it makes a good thick soup course too. For a soup you could replace some of the cream with milk so that it is not quite so rich.