Recycled pallet garden planter

It's time to start utilising the deck more for gardening, and pots just aren't cutting it anymore.
After making sure our pallets were heat treated and not chemically treated, it was a fairly simple task to transform them into a planter. In saying that it would be alot quicker the second time round, but considering what you would pay for a planter this big in a gardening store, the time was well spent.
Caster wheels would have been nice but the cost would have out weighed the benefits.
The best thing about it is that it's just outside the door so we can just grab coriander without having to put shoes on (which can make the difference when it's poring down).
There are no rules, just give it a go.

Plum wine

The last of the plums are well gone by now. We've even drunk most of the wine we made from them but it's been a great harvest / forage and I intend to double production next year. Plums are one of the least labor intensive crops to turn into wine. You can quickly pick enough for a batch and turning them into wine is easy.
Our approach was very unscientific and organic. After all, fermentation is a natural process.
My theory is that you are relying on the fruit itself and the ripeness of it, to give you a good result. For example the best batch I did this year was a carboy of Black Doris plums which were so ripe they were pretty much just juice inside the skin. We hardy had to add sugar or yeast, they just wanted to start fermenting. It was a sweet brew so we combined it with a dryer one we made earlier and it was a match made in heaven.
Can't wait for next season.

The brew below is the Black Doris, that's kombucha back left. Below that the dryer plums and below that the brew we made from them. 

Winter Salads

Is might be the first day of winter here in New Zealand but there is still plenty in the garden to put into a salad. Mint, rocket, purple carrots, parsley, Basil, lettuce leaves. And a good handful of sprouted sunflower seeds from the kitchen. There's also salami in there as well!

One chicken molting out of three

One of our chickens has decided to start molting while the other two keep their current feathers. It works out well as we still have two chickens laying eggs.

Check out the new feathers coming through! 

Fresh root vege

Just pulled these yesterday -  out of a root vege plot in our garden that's now ready for the chopping board. You could see that the purple onion had great color from what was exposed above the dirt but the purple dragons are just as amazing now there out of the ground.

Here are the ones we planted

Cabbage tree fronds and mulch

If you have a cabbage tree ( ti kouka ) on your property, or even if its on the next door neighbors you will be familiar with the fronds getting blown all over lawn. Seems you cant just run them over with the mower ( they are fibrous like flax and will stop any mower or mulcher in its tracks ) and you have to go around picking them up anyway, you might as well make use of them.
Gathering a dozen or so at a time and tying them together creates a nice bunch that can be placed in between seedlings. They offer protection from the wind, stop the weeds from coming up and stop the soil from drying out.

Butchering a Sika Deer

Thanks to the generosity of my boss we are in possession of another whole Sika stag. A whole deer is a windfall of quality meat and its always a pleasure to begin the process of butchering and bagging it all up for the freezer and feeds to give away. This one had been hanging in a chiller for 10 days so it doesnt really get any better than that, especially as we have no where we could hang a beast that big for so long, where it wouldnt get unwanted attention for the various pets and pests that are in the naborhood. So it was just a case of butchering into the various cuts and bagged up into meal sized bags.
If you havent done this befor its a bit of a mission but this youtube link is a start to finish look at how to butcher a whole deer into all the right cuts. The quality is pretty bad but he goes through the process slowly and methodically and its adsactaly what you need to know befor embarking on a task like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzYGBNDc_xU
Note there is part 2,3 and 4 to watch as well.

As you can see the deer was shot in the top shoulder  but there wasnt much meat damaged by the bullet. You have to cut away all the damaged meat as it will spoil other meat its in contact with and taints the flavour.

From that to this. I didnt weigh the animal befor I started but these bags of cuts, which only included the bone from the front legs, came to 22kg. The fillet steak is the easiest and most satisfying portion to take along with the loin. The front legs come of easily as well but then theres the task of cutting away the damaged meat from the bullet. I kept them on the bone for roasting joints. Then theres the back legs which have alot of prime rump and sirloin steak cuts. I dont have the butchery skills to get this part done perfectly but its a very satisfying job all the same.

Thanks to the old school mincer Dad found in Dunedin we are also in the business of making mince for burger patties. Theres alot of meat that comes off an animal that cant be used for much more than mincing so if your going to try this then you need a good mincer.