Go away Polar Vortex………….

July 20, 2015July 27, 2015 / susiecameron / 2 Comments

In a week when the polar vortex hit Eastern Australia with a vengeance our main focus was on keeping warm. That is easier said than done in an old weatherboard house built in the 1800’s. The beautiful old oregon floorboards have cracks through which you can see the great outdoors and and heat is easily lost. We have decided to get the underfloor of the house insulated with a hi-tech honeycomb material clad in what looks like tinfoil. It blankets the underneath of the house blocking the cold that comes up from the ground and effectively trapping in any heat. I wasn’t too sure until a friend of mine said her brother did it in Tasmania and it made a huge difference. It should improve the temperature indoors by 5-7 degrees which would improve it from ice box to cool room temperature! The cold weather has encouraged us to keep the wood fire burning and we snuggle up in one section of the house as much as possible. The easiest way to get warm is to take the dog for a walk or do some work in the garden to be honest!

2015-07-14 14.31.14 Our wood neatly stacked and staying dry next to the old bread oven.

We finally got round to “pruning” the mulberry tree which was so huge there was absolutely no hope of getting any of the fruit before the birds so Cam made yet another call to Noel in Nowra (who provides him with all his boy toys) and on Saturday Noel delivered a sparkly new chainsaw. He stayed to show him how to work it and to help us chop most of the tree down. He was invaluable as he had straps and experience to ensure it all went event free. Now we are hoping that when the new canes sprout from the tree we will be able to bend them and create a tree – almost like an espalier – where we can harvest the fruit easily and hopefully before the birds do….

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I was most excited this week to discover there is somewhere in Berry that stocks all my foody items, No more trips to the Essential Ingredient in Sydney to pick up my favourite things. The Treat Factory was, I thought, just a gimmicky place selling jams to the coachloads of tourists that flock here each weekend but next door to it is their warehouse and blow me down with a feather it sells Careme pastry which is a girls best friend when it comes to a bit of puff pastry for a tarte tatin! Those of you that use it will understand my delight….

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A bit of foodie heaven in Berry

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Armed with my beloved pastry, pomegranate molasses, the longest cinnamon sticks I have ever seen, some raw honey and some mustard pickles I was a happy chappy indeed. They even said they could order things in if I needed something they didn’t have in stock – customer service excellence!!!

Back home the chocolate one had her collar removed much to her delight and has been finding long lost pleasures in running (well leaping actually) around the garden and reconnecting with her toys that we had hidden while she was meant to be resting. Stitches out this week and hopefully no more vet bills for a while.

2015-07-18 10.09.01 Happy to be collar free and reunited with her toys.

In the veggie patch we harvested the baby leeks and some onions and a large batch of potato and leek soup will be made this week and frozen for a quick and easy lunch down the track. I really need a bigger freezer now that I have such big gluts of produce. The cabbages are nearly ready to pop too so I’m dabbling with the idea of making sauerkraut. I’ve never had it but its flavour of the month in the food world – pickled and fermented foods being the thing ‘de jour’ so maybe I will give it a whirl.

2015-07-18 13.17.25 Our beautiful baby leeks

Cam and I have been looking for a chest of drawers or a console for our bedroom. It is such a big room all our current furniture just fills one half of it so I was quite excited to find this at a local recycled furniture shop. A nice shape and size but not quite the look I was after. The owner suggested I could revamp it with Annie Sloane chalk paints which doesn’t involve any preparatory work – you just slap it on apparently!! Cammo even voiced some enthusiasm for the project so I’m keen to see his creative side come out after 30 years in the dark….

2015-07-14 11.25.51 Awaiting transformation

I’m enjoying being part of Greenbox, the local co-operative packing and distributing farmers produce. There are a dedicated bunch of volunteers and I have buddied up with a couple of the women there and persuaded them to do Pilates with me. They also have dogs and we have plans to walk beautiful 7 mile beach with them when the weather warms up a bit.

2015-07-16 11.08.22 Our warehouse 2015-07-16 11.08.31 Headquarters

Our warehouse in Gerringong where everything gets delivered and packed and people come to collect their orders. Fresh, local produce – delicious !! 2015-07-16 11.10.36

Poo

July 12, 2015July 27, 2015 / susiecameron / Leave a comment

Not the most glamorous of titles for this week’s blog but poo is a very important part of life in the garden and indeed the country. Being surrounded by a dairy farm as we are it is even more important. The downside is that in the summer if the cows are in an adjacent paddock to our house we tend to have an increase in the amount of flies (I have an ever lengthening list of how to get rid of them “naturally”) but the upside is that the farmer is happy to deliver a scoop (a tractor load to the uninitiated) of rotted down cow manure to our veggie patch ready for us to use.

Compost or lunch??

Peter our guru gardener has managed to get me some asparagus crowns which, once planted, apparently last a lifetime – producing beautiful fresh asparagus in season and then dying down in winter so it was important to prepare our bed properly as you don’t want to interfere with the roots once they are established. A trench is dug and then filled with our beautifully rotted manure, before planting and mulching. As this is the bed that runs adjacent to the chicken run it is also the favoured place for one small chocolate dog to sit in the sun and check out the chooks. Not too sure how good that is going to be for any potential asparagus to be honest…..

In recent days I had become convinced that a local rabbit or hare was getting into my patch as the lettuce was being systematically eaten and leaves strewn across the garden, however when I was looking for Bailey the other day I found her in the veggie patch tucking into and eating an entire lettuce!!! I think I have a vegetarian dog – she LOVES tomatoes, cabbage and lettuce leaves, oranges and grapes (preferably seedless) so unfortunately for now I have had to lock her out of the patch in the hope it breaks the habit. Of course the aroma of the newly installed manure is enticing her all the more to venture over there and have a bit of an exploratory dig! We have built all the beds up and constructed a compost bin so it is all going to be used asap to avoid any further temptation for you-know-who.

I ‘m not sure if we will end up eating any of our crops at the moment as we have a flock of 2-300 corellas that regularly patrol our lane looking for delicacies. You can hear them coming 5 minutes away as they screech their way over the fields. I’m not sure if they are looking for anything in particular or are just hoping to come across something yummy. The guru gardener says it’s a good idea to pick all the lemons, oranges and limes from the top of our trees (which the birds can spy whilst flying) and just keep the lower part of the tree laden with fruit until the last minute as they ripen and sweeten far better on the tree than in your fruit bowl…

2015-07-09 08.13.04 Pesky visitors

The other day when we were having a shower an ominous gurgling was heard in the drain in our beautiful new ensuite. It didn’t go away and the plumber was duly called. A blocked pipe was the suggestion and he asked when we had last had our septic pumped. An interesting question for this city girl as I have never had anything other than the usual mains sewer to contend with. Our house here has an Enviromax which is an environmentally friendly sewage system and needs to be pumped out every 3-5 years and apparently this needed to be done now. So about 50 metres away from the cow poo being delivered ours was being pumped into a truck. What a job – no wonder it cost $400. No-one ever says “when I grow up I want to be the poo pumper guy” but I am grateful that some do and the plumber can now get on with the business of fixing the blockage. The joys of living off the grid….!!

We have had a quiet week as the little chocolate dog had to go to the vets and get desexed. For girl dogs that involves a hysterectomy and removal of the ovaries which is quite major surgery and she was in the vets all day. When they examined her they also found that her baby canine teeth had not come out and were impacted in her gums causing irritation and potential infection. The roots are 2 inches long and quite hard to extract so I was very glad she was out cold for the whole procedure. They gave her everything else at the same time – heart worm injection, pedicure, worm and tick meds and she left there with an “Elizabethan collar” to stop her pulling at the stitches. She has to keep it on for 2 weeks and at this stage she isn’t particularly impressed with it – she keeps bumping into the doorways and furniture and can’t quite seem to find a comfortable sleeping position. I am sure she will get used to it but she woke us up every 2 hours last night as the pain killers wore off and things weren’t quite right in her world but this morning she seems as bright as a button and is mainly just desperate to eat anything and everything after having fasted for 24 hours – a situation no self respecting Labrador would ever want to find themselves in.

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Anthony from the “Village Vets” (new series starts July 30th on Lifestyle) with Bailey waving goodbye to us just prior to the big chop….They are so lovely at The Berry Vet Clinic, they spend loads of time with you and your pet going through everything. Really nice guys and a great practice.

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Bailey looking decidedly unimpressed post surgery………

Now that I am working in town and joining lots of different organisations I am in the pleasurable situation of bumping into people I know in Berry now as I walk down the street. I am starting to get a sense of belonging and being part of it all which is what I had hoped for before we moved but wasn’t sure I would get for quite a while. In the meantime my Sydney friends all seem to make regular trips down to the South Coast and as we are so accessible from the highway (the ONLY good thing about having it so close ) is that they pop in and say hi or like Annie did yesterday call me to say she and a few girlfriends were having lunch in Berry and would I like to join them! It was lovely to catch up with her and after a delicious lunch I felt like I had known all her friends for ages! Such a great thing about being this age is that we all have similar stories with our kids and our lives and can have a sense of ‘belonging’ quite quickly. A lovely bunch of girls and I’m pretty sure they would have had a great time at Hyams Beach this weekend.

2015-07-10 13.31.15 Lovely to see you Annie!!

The days have been decidedly CRISP lately. The whole of the east coast has been subjected to a polar blast and in our lovely old weatherboard it definitely feels that way. If we have all the fires pumping it is cosy but that feels a little extravagant mid week and I basically just heat the kitchen, lounge and pop my electric blanket on 15 minutes before sliding into the sheets but at the weekend we have the combustion stove going too which makes a big difference. There is talk about insulation going UNDER the house floor – a blanket against the cold rising from the ground and apparently it makes a huge difference. Another thing on the list…..

In the meantime the skies are mostly blue with sunshine and clear cold nights produce some amazing morning mists. It looks so pretty even if I risk frostbite getting the photos……..

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A blanket of mist hugs the fields in the morning

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Beautiful blue skies along with the cold daytime temperatures

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Our garden is turning into a artist’s palette of colours…….

The simple things in life

July 6, 2015July 27, 2015 / susiecameron / Leave a comment

It was a week that I had to dedicate to finalising my accreditation for Real Estate and getting things done around the house. Scintillating I hear you say, but not every week can be a stand out week and I really enjoyed paring everything down and enjoying the simplicity of every day. Wayne was in Brisbane so it was just me and The Chocolate One, hanging out and trying to stay warm.

I rewarded myself after an hour of paperwork by going for a walk or sitting outside with a cup of tea on my veranda in the winter sunshine simply appreciating things! The only new thing I attempted was to go to the farmer’s markets in Kiama. I had heard lots of good things about them and they are very scenically placed on the water so I bundled Bailey into the car and we headed North. Kiama seems like a lovely little town and has a few worthy homewares shops and cafes to enjoy. The markets themselves were much bigger than I had anticipated and were full to bursting with families as I had completely forgotten it was SCHOOL HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!!!! Rookie error as there were kids everywhere, all at Bailey’s height, and most of them eating something yummy and very tempting to a labrador. Need I say more?? I was exhausted after keeping her on a VERY short leash and having to supervise when people stopped and asked if they could pat her (slightly concerned that she may actually attempt to ingest their hands that smelled of vanilla ice cream and doughnuts and other such delicacies…) . Next time I will probably leave her at home as I have a friend in Kiama that I would like to catch up with for coffee without worrying if Bailey is gong to eat a pre-schooler…

Scenic spot for the market

Local Real Estate Agent and vegan chef Adam Guthrie runs some cooking classes for kids at these markets as well as at the Berry Sourdough bakery. Even if you are not vegan or even vegetarian he still has some lovely food ideas cooked fresh from scratch. He has a huge productive garden where he grows most of his own food and follows a permaculture style of gardening. If you are interested you can find him and his cooking philosophy on facebook as “I Feel Good”.

Kiama-Farmers-Market-Kids-Cooking-Class-Image4Web-630x315 Adam and the kids cooking class in Kiama.

This is the coastal route to walk from Kiama to Gerringong – definitely on my list of things to do.

So apart from working in the garden where all my winter crops are looking BEAUTIFUL, pruning the apple trees and preparing my new asparagus bed I spent the time walking in the nearby country lanes where I occasionally felt like I was in the Chevy Chase movie ‘Funny Farm’. At the top of our lane the steam was still coming off the newborn calf in the cold winter sunshine, Crimson Rosella were flitting to and fro in front of me, magpies called to each other and the meadows were full of wildflowers and horses running with their manes streaming behind them as they came to greet their owners bearing gifts of hay! Sometimes I really have to pinch myself that I have stumbled onto such an enjoyable albeit simple new life.

2015-07-05 10.02.57 Some local countryside

I managed to coerce Cammo into driving up to Moss Vale and use the new Ute to pick up a bedhead from our favourite shop Country Homes & Interiors. While we were there we spotted at least 3 other things we loved and have a couple of things on order……….I LOVE the new financial year!!

Half the reason he agreed to come was I suggested we stopped off on the way home in Kangaroo Valley to have lunch at The Friendly Inn. It has a long history in the Valley and is the central point for all the locals to meet up as well as a few blow-ins at the weekend. It is the only pub in town and is well frequented.

The Beer Garden at The Friendly Inn

When we got home it was time to pick a load of lemons from our tree and get to work making some limoncello. As if by osmosis I heard from Lou, one of Lauren’s best friends who was passing through from Mollymook to Sydney, and she called in to say hi, have a look at the house and give Bailey a play date with Coco, a golden retriever who she was babysitting for a week! It was the first dog she has played with at the house (sorry Gin and Tonic) and they both had great fun running around and around….Baileys and cream……

Baileys and Cream My little helper for the limoncello….!!!

Next week is all about poo. Cow poo. We need it and we are surrounded by it so fingers crossed we will get some. Watch this space.

2015-06-27 11.35.30 The Brussel sprouts and cabbages coming along beautifully 2015-06-27 11.35.39

A beautiful sunrise in The Meadow

Friends and Frolics

June 28, 2015July 27, 2015 / susiecameron / 2 Comments

How lovely to have our friends from Forster, Wayne (Baz) and Cathy come and stay with us for a few nights. We haven’t seen them for about 8 months and it was great to finally show them the new house and some of the surrounding areas. They are the best sort of friends – happy to relax, drink wine and chat about old times (the two Waynes go back to their early 20s when they both met working in a ski resort in Switzerland) and equally happy to roll up their sleeves, don the tool belt and attack our never ending “To Do” list!! Many thanks to Baz for helping Cam fix the chain fence around the veggie patch that one (not so small any more) chocolate dog was using as a gate…..!! Cathy and I attacked the weeds and then she very kindly mulched them for me as the mulch is one of the things that send my lungs into crisis – all that dust in the hay bale I presume.

2015-06-27 11.35.48 The boys being boys with power tools

2015-06-27 11.38.40 Cathy being a champion mulcher..

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and SOMEONE not being much help at all….

They also helped us move our beautiful old Butchers Block into our kitchen to create an extra work surface and a more sociable environment. I really missed the kitchen being part of a living area and as the rennos are on hold for now this has really helped make the kitchen a bit easier to hang out in – a couple of stools from the garage and a bottle of wine and everyone was in there within 10 minutes having a chat with the chef!!

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It didn’t take long for us to love it!!

The Butchers Block was originally located in our local Butcher’s shop in Epping where Sam had his very first job at age 11 – he used to wash up all the meat trays etc in the back room and he learnt a lot about having a work ethic and also about life as the three young Butchers in their late 20s chatted as they worked about EVERYTHING!!!!

In between our working sessions we did manage some R&R. The boys went to a salami and sausage making day in Wollongong with our mate Phil. Sam (84 and as bright as a button) ran the day in his garage and after a 9am start the boys were quite surprised to see the beers appear at 10 and sambucca shots at 12 – maybe this is the trick that the Italians have to getting their entire family and friends to their tomato bottling and sausage making days!! Luckily a pig had already been dispatched (one they had prepared earlier…!!) and the boys just had to learn how to bone the meat and make some great spicy pork fennel and chilli sausages as well as a huge amount of salami (all made to Sam’s secret recipe..) A really informative and fun day rounded off by Sam playing his accordion while everyone had a glass of wine! Thanks to Phil for organising it all – I’m envisioning a similar day at Claydon Park at some stage with one of his Berkshire pigs.

Baz the butcher

Baz the Butcher….

phil making sausages

Phil mixing up the secret recipe…

finished salamis

The salamis ready to hang

Sam the salami man

Sam 84 years young…

Cathy and I used our day to have a girly shopping trip to Bowral via Kangaroo Valley, It was a perfect Winter’s day – cold and crisp with blue sky and sunshine and we loved pottering around the vintage stores looking for some furniture finds for the house. We saw some delicious things but I’m definitely going to have to work for a few months before I can go crazy. We had a lovely lunch in the new Harris Farm markets in Bowral which had the most beautiful produce and flowers, it felt more like Spring with all their colourful displays.

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2015-06-26 12.17.04 So many beautiful things…

We managed to tear ourselves away from the garden long enough to drive up to The Cambewarra Lookout which I had been told had an amazing view of The Shoalhaven. We were not disappointed and the beautiful bird life was a bonus. We could actually see our house from up there too – funny to think that people would have been able to go up there and see our house now for 119 years!! There is a lovely little cafe up there serving breakfast, lunch and delicious devonshire teas with tapas and wine on Fridays.

2015-06-27 15.25.50 Great view from The Lookout.

2015-06-27 15.23.28 Crimson Rosellas and a King parrot.

As always it was lovely to be with our old friends and especially nice to see the “old mates” together again. I must be getting sentimental in my old age but this photo warmed my heart…

2015-06-27 16.38.53 Off for a walk…

Before they arrived I came back to find a little surprise gift at my front door. Despite making a couple of calls I haven’t been able to track down the anonymous donor but it’s obviously one of the chocolate dog’s fans…..

2015-06-28 12.12.43 Going to smell rather posh after her next bath…

2015-06-27 07.28.48 Our beautiful Bailey starting to grow into her paws

Short week

June 21, 2015June 21, 2015 / susiecameron / Leave a comment

Back to Work

June 14, 2015July 27, 2015 / susiecameron / Leave a comment

After a week in Asia, 2 weeks of being sick and a week starting a new job I have spent very little time in the garden and it is very apparent that this is NOT a good state of affairs. As much as all my veggies grow and blossom the grass and the weeds also grow and it doesn’t take long before things get out of hand. My lovely gardener Peter came this week to help me get on top of things and his sage advice was not to hesitate for a minute – hire someone if necessary- and get on top of the weeds NOW and then mulch – deeply and regularly, if I am to hope for any break from the bossy weeds. So we attacked it with a vengeance this weekend in an attempt to get on top of the situation….my new mantra is MULCH IS MY FRIEND!!!!!!!!

We invested in another bale of silage to mulch the freshly pruned rose bed and Cam has finally got the idea that we have to put at least 6 inches of mulch onto these beds to do any good.

All the roses are pruned and mulched.

The veggie patch is going really well and we are harvesting cauliflower and broccoli with a few snowpeas starting to arrive on the scene too……….

The chooks are all laying and we are now getting 7 a day!!!!!! Fantastic and always nice to send visitors home with a dozen home grown eggs. Just got to remember to ask all our friends to save us some egg cartons. Smeds has been wonderful in this department and gets a gold star!

The interior of the house is starting to feel quite homely as we are now lighting the wood combustion oven in the rear of the house at the weekends which keeps things a lot cosier and we finally have our walk in wardrobe up and running and our ensuite completed.

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built in

Next job to attack is our library incorporating a Murphy bed for those times we have the whole family here, giving us in effect a 4th bedroom. Our lovely architect Natasha Marshall has come up with a fabulous plan for a great extension incorporating all our heart’s desires ( walk in pantry/wine cellar/bootroom/indoor-outdoor fireplace/big cathedral ceilings with revealed trusses etc) but it comes with a horrendous price tag and we have to decide if we really need to almost double the house’s footprint when most of the time there is only 2 of us here? For the price we could live overseas for a couple of years or invest in another smaller place so it really is quite a big decision. The main motivator for the extension is the fact we are very unused to not having open plan living and at this stage we have the kitchen at one end of the house and the living at the opposite end which seems a little unfriendly. However with a minimum price tag of around $350,000 we are hoping to find another answer to our dilemma……….

After last weekend’s windstorm Cam apparently isn’t even sure he wants to stay in The Meadow…………….!!!!?????????!!!

It really was a horrendous couple of days where we had extremely squally strong winds coming from all directions. We lost all our veranda furniture – scattered to the front and side garden and smashing the glass top to the table. I lost my seat cushions (they were found blown into a wire fence in a paddock 2 fields away) and the pot plants inside ceramic pots (also smashed) are lost completely. All the mulch and newspaper from the side garden ended up at our back door (and down the lane) and none of us could get outside to do anything (chickens included, they seemed a bit miserable). It literally stops you in your tracks when it’s like that and it’s a pain in the neck. Of course once the sun comes out again it’s all a bit of a distant memory but our neighbours are warning us that it can go on for a month in August…..I think Cammo would be running for the hills after 4 days let alone 4 weeks…)

Today was just glorious though and hard to do anything other than love it here. With a tummy full of lamb shanks and Cab Sav I must say I’m a contented girl tonight………..

So tranquil and peaceful today….

Tom and Lucy came down this weekend and we did take a couple of hours off from the dreaded weeding and mowing and showed them 2 Figs Winery which we loved so much last weekend at the Wine Festival. A totally different animal this time with just a dozen cars and plenty of picnic tables to choose from. A bottle of rose, a bottle of red and 2 cheese platters (with the most amazing mustard pickles and marinated baby figs) later and with the sun setting behind the mountain we went home. Bailey was exhausted after running around and around with the winery dog Chloe, The whole family had had fun!!!

Nice way to spend a sunny Winter’s afternoon

The beautiful Shoalhaven River stretches out before us…..

So another week finishes and as we get ready to try out The Roxy in Nowra to see a movie I feel quite chuffed that we have achieved so much in the garden this weekend – thanks to nature behaving itself and providing a picture pe Lovely to see you Tom and Lucy xx

Shoalhaven Winter Wine Festival

June 8, 2015July 27, 2015 / susiecameron / Leave a comment

If it’s the long weekend in June then the place to be is The Shoalhaven!! What better thing can you think of than cosying up somewhere down on The South Coast and touring up to 7 wineries in beautifully scenic locations with live music and some decent food options all washed down with loads of local reds and whites and all available via a hop on hop off bus!!
Our dear friends John and Lyn came to share the weekend with us and our son Sam came down too. They were all happy to escape the city routine for a few days and soak in some of the countryside and a change of scenery. We had the wood fire roaring and it was great to use our big dining room and rip open a few bottles of red and catch up on all the news over dinner.
Saturday dawned bright and sunny and we drove to Silos where we left the ute for the day and started our Grand Tour! Raj – the owner at Silos took us through his range of wines in his cellar and he is a great front man- very entertaining -and with a small range of good wines and a great restaurant together with some boutique accommodation he has the recipe for a successful business. We are very happy that we are so physically close to Silos!

Silos + the big blue duck!

The bus took us then to Mountain Ridge Winery closer to the coast and in a very pretty location. They all had gone to a lot of trouble to have some music and food on hand to enhance the experience and lots of families were picnicking here. The drinks were starting to go down easier as it got closer to lunchtime! It was nice to see different parts of our area that we would never usually get access to and reaffirm the beauty of this part of the coast.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The boys! Mountain Ridge Winery.

Off to Coolangatta Estate where we have actually stayed a couple of times before we ever moved South. It is pretty well established and has a massive restaurant as well as some holiday stay cottages. A few local oysters and a guy doing some nice covers with his trusty guitar and we were starting to feel pretty relaxed and happy. Sam and I toddled off for a walk down memory lane to see if we could remember where we stayed when they were little and as usual Sam and his amazing memory for detail manages to remember more than me!

2015-06-06 13.32.02 Lovely fire @ Coolangatta

We piled into the coach and set off for 2 Figs Winery which we had wanted to go to for AGES. Some Sydney friends used to rave about it and we had intended getting dolled up one summer weekend afternoon and going for a visit but never quite got round to it so we were very interested to see if it lived up to the hype. As we approached up the steep driveway it was apparent that the view was going to be AMAZING! The Shoalhaven River snaked all around us shimmering in the afternoon sun and about 400+ people had had the same idea as us to make this the ‘lunch stop’ and enjoy those views. A few food trucks serving confit duck on polenta, pulled pork panini and wood fired pizzas were all doing a roaring trade and the queue to buy a bottle of wine was ominously long. A couple of bottles of the 2 Figs Rose later and the sun starting to sink a little in the sky and we hopped on the bus for the last winery Cambewarra Estate

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA So many people at 2 figs for lunch……

. Confit duck The Mighty Shoalhaven River.

Beautiful Cambewarra Estate Winery.

The weekend was spent eating and drinking far too much and we packed everyone off with home grown eggs and some slice for afternoon tea back in the big smoke. Lovely to see everyone and tomorrow is the start of my new job (now that I am germ free and capable of standing upright for an hour at a time again….) and puppy school graduation plus hopefully 2 full days working in the veggie patch coming to grips with the weeds and getting the last of the winter crops in and staked.

Fresh from the garden Heirloom carrots. A beef rib roast to top off the weekend

I’m not sure if this one is going to graduate from Puppy School tomorrow night at this stage……and as I prepare for my first day of a new job I’m not feeling 100% confident about leaving her at home for 9 hours!!!!!!!! Watch this space…….

An up and down week…….

May 31, 2015July 16, 2015 / susiecameron / Leave a comment

Well now I am back there is SO MUCH to do in the garden. It’s literally been at least 3 weeks since I’ve been able to do anything out there as it was very wet and windy the week before I left and unfortunately it has got rather out of control. You really need to do an hour a day to keep the weeds down and the little jobs like staking and mulching as a pleasurable task instead of my current A4 sheet of “To Do” tasks in the garden!

I am spending as much spare time as I have out there this week to make progress, luckily although it’s cold we have clear blue skies and sunshine and it’s warmer outside than in unless I put the fire on -so no excuses for me!!! So the broccoli and brussels have been staked and tied, onions and garlic have been planted along with snow peas and leeks and my asparagus and rhubarb crowns have been ordered. I am preparing beds for raspberries and blueberries and mulching anything that moves in an attempt to suppress the weeds.

I have my little helper of course. She comes into the veggie patch and cleans up all the tags in the beds telling me what I’ve planted. She digs little holes and sits right next to the chook run fence and stares at them for ages – hopefully with an eye to playing with them rather than eating them. She went missing for a while today and when I tracked her down I found her asleep on the front veranda curled up with her lead hopefully in her mouth. She had to go to the garage and pull it down from the hook it lives on so she obviously really really wanted to go for a walk……She also got her first mail delivery today

– I have no real idea what it was but it was beautifully addressed

It was a photo frame?

She started puppy pre-schooltonight and it was her first real opportunity to be with other dogs close up and personal apart from a little flirtation with Wally further up the lane. After being a scardy cat for the first 10 minutes and being extremely submissive she then relaxed and made lots of friends. It was lovely to see her interacting with the other dogs and she behaved pretty well considering people were offering her ‘treats’ left right and centre. She completely ignored me as I was food-less but tomorrow I’m guessing she will remember the hand that feeds her for the other 6 days of the week…!!

Making friends.

She gets super excited when I take her into town and wants to say hello to EVERYONE and the sound of a child’s voice even from a great distance is enough to give her the strength of a super hero dog (if there is such a thing) and pull me half way down the highway. Atrocities are now few and far between but a roll of toilet paper lay crushed and ripped on the front veranda today and on leaving her home alone last week for 3 hours I came back to a house strewn with 2 kilos of rice after she nudged open the pantry and “discovered” her dinner rice. After consuming way too much of the raw stuff she had an upset stomach and rather snazzy looking rice encrusted poo for a couple of days….

She is going to have to get used to staying home alone a little bit as I started work for Raine & Horne in Berry today. At this stage I am just helping out with the property management one day a week together with reception and doing the open inspections every other Saturday – that makes a very taxing 3 day fortnight! Down the track another girl in the office would like me to fill in for her so she can have a 9 day fortnight and they also require me for holiday relief. I don’t really want any more right now anyway as there is always so much to do at home but this is enough to get me out of the house and meeting some locals and keeping my brain engaged. Also a bit of pocket money in case I ever get to go shopping again….??

It is so nice to NOT have to work out what time to leave home to get to work and get a parking spot etc. 10 minutes before I start I leave home and that’s that! I am also very conveniently located in the newly hip end of Queen Street in Berry right next door to Little Rae’s general store and the newly opened Burrows and the ever beautiful Moss Nest. I have a feeling my earnings may well be spent within 10 metres of where I earned them….

Well luckily I wrote this on Wednesday – the day before I fell pray to the dreaded flu virus. I haven’t been this sick since the 1980’s in Kathmandu! I literally can hardly stagger from my bed to the bathroom and I feel constantly nauseous and light headed. Wayne kindly gave it to me and he probably got it from Sam last week when we went up to Sydney for Tom’s 25th birthday where we had a fab night at Sake in The Rocks. This embarrassingly means I have had to delay my first solo day in the new job. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t want this bug anyway.

Before the influenza struck……….

Sadly that meant I also couldn’t travel up to Sydney for a close friend’s son’s wedding. I couldn’t believe the timing but there was no way I could even get into the car for the 2 hour drive let alone anything else. Wayne manned up and represented the family despite still feeling under par and sent me photos of the lovely wedding and the reception at Taronga Zoo with amazing views of Sydney harbour in full ‘Vivid’ colour.

A great time was had by all and I’m so sad I missed out on such a happy and vibrant occasion – congratulations to Dean and Gemma, lots of love for many happy years together xxx

A little escape to Asia

May 24, 2015May 24, 2015 / susiecameron / 3 Comments

Hello people – after a 2 week break spent in Hong Kong visiting my daughter and an aside trip to Beijing to explore and climb The Great Wall I am back safely tucked up in The Meadow and enjoying a few completed items finished while I was away. The boys almost finished the ensuite with just a couple of small things left to do – hand towel rings and a couple of paintings to go up. We are very happy with it and it’s lovely having so much room after sharing a small sink for the past 4 months! I also LOVE the soft closing loo and drawers – no more arguments of the seat up/seat down variety! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The mantelpiece for the new fire also got put up and now that the nights are getting (very) chilly the fire is belting out most of the time. Thank goodness we did it when we did. A Jetmaster is well worth the expense for efficiency and atmosphere and most definitely for the IMMEDIATE heat! We will have to have a go at lighting the wood fire in the dining room soon before our guests arrive for the June long weekend. The walk in dressing room should go in next week and then we can officially unpack lots of our boxes. The rest will finally get opened once the library is installed which is my next project…… So I’m a happy little vegemite and all the more so after spending a lovely week with Lauren. Despite the fact that she was working (and organising an art fair which started the day I left!) we managed to spend a lot of time together. I would meet her for lunch every day and do my own thing in between and we made the most of her long weekend by flying to Beijing on Thursday night arriving at midnight and the same on our return to HK on Sunday – although this time round we were delayed by 3 hours making it a 3.30am arrival back at her apartment. Not ideal as she had to go to work at 7.30am…..

The view from Lauren’s apartment

2015-05-17 11.30.24 Flea Market finds The Forbidden City 2015-05-17 14.54.22 Our hotel in Beijing Beautiful parks in Beijing Aerial view of the forbidden city Good old Chairman Mao Real Chinese food!!! Can’t believe we are here! IMG-20150518-WA0203

Slowly making my way up…..

It’s a long way up…..

Nearly there I made it!!! 2015-05-16 17.10.15 Lake Houha Great way to get around Beijing on a Saturday night Relaxed and happy at Cocktail hour

All in all Beijing was a surprise. I was expecting drab blocks of grey cement buildings and terrible smog but we got 25 degrees and blue skies and sunshine! The old town where we were staying within walking distance of Tienanmen Square was delightful and a bit of serenity within a hutong. Courtyard hotels proliferate around here with their tranquil inner courtyards often with a pond where you could be forgiven for thinking you were anywhere other than a huge city with a population of 11.5 million! You could tell in some ways that it was a communist country – no Google, facebook, instagram etc but in other ways you could be in a modern western country. Cute little quirky cafes, takeaway frozen cocktails on sale, cutting edge sunglasses shops, coffee shops and wine bars all alongside old guys with rickshaws or tuk tuks, peking duck restaurants, cultural palaces from hundreds of years ago and Tianemen Square, literally a huge square with no obvious mention of what ensued in 1989. Shops galore – Zara, Gap, Forever 21 – you name it they have it. Lauren’s colleague Ashleigh who had lived in Beijing for 3 years gave us a 7 page to do list of restaurants, cultural sights, bars and markets. She put us in touch with a great driver who spoke English and didn’t drive like a maniac and Terrence with his big smile was there to greet us at midnight on arrival as well as drive us out to the Wall, He was happy to chat or be silent, whatever we wanted and if anyone ever goes there and wants a great driver I would be happy to pass on his details. Ashleigh’s printout which included the chinese words was a godsend and we were forever thrusting it into the face of taxi or rickshaw drivers in the hope they could take us to ‘THE’ place to be in any given circumstance. Sometimes we sat in what was basically a baked bean can and put all our trust into a toothless 70 year old who reckoned he could get us there. Funnily enough, despite the low key form of transport they often whipped out their brand new iphone 6 to check up on the directions!

All that’s between us and death is a baked bean tin…..

So in summary I was very glad we decided to have an aside trip to Beijing and have a brand new experience and despite 4 flights in 7 days I am glad I crammed in as much as I could. Next time I see Loz it will be here in The Meadow at Xmas and I can’t wait to show her some of MY beautiful part of the world. When I drove into the bends at Kiama I was so happy to be back in the green, serene dairy country of my little part of the South Coast and sitting on my veranda later that day I was so grateful for all I have in this new country life of mine.

A country wedding

May 10, 2015July 27, 2015 / susiecameron / 3 Comments

You’ve got to love a country wedding….

Just about everything country was epitomized in the weekend wedding of my dear friends Leigh and John. It was truly a magical day in front of 85 of their nearest and dearest and in beautiful Autumn sunshine. They exchanged their vows on the grassy slopes of their Kangaroo Valley property The Old Koonabulla Dairy and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house! The bride and groom couldn’t take their eyes off each other and John (aka Mr Romance) left us hankering after some more romance from our hubbies of 30- years!! A lot of fun was had and one of my lasting memories is of Leigh tucking her beautiful satin Carla Zampatti gown into her knickers and hitting the dance floor with gusto!!

I’m pretty sure that lots of the Sydney based guests have gone home hankering after a country existence and as we sat under the beautiful Pin Oak trees eating our recovery breakfast the morning after I was SO GLAD to call this beautiful part of the South Coast home!

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Walking to the wedding

2015-05-09 12.23.01 So much love….

2015-05-09 12.45.27 Husband and Wife!

2015-05-09 12.58.37 The Brady Bunch

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2015-05-09 11.55.28 Yummy food thanks to Simone Logue

2015-05-09 14.23.19 The beautiful bride

11080881_10152884434157939_723404064450526630_n Congratulations Leigh and John

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The hub…

2015-05-09 15.46.11 Magnificent Dessert Table

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Lots of chat around the fire in the dairy as the night went on….

How beautiful was it? They were truly blessed with the weather and the whole day was perfect from start to finish. I love them dearly and wish them a lifetime of happiness together.

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On the home front we have been experiencing extremely strong winds that have literally lifted our furniture from the veranda and blown it half way across the garden. Wicker chairs and cushions, gumboots and peg bags, torches and dog toys have been scattered to the four winds and apparently the real wind doesn’t start until August…….yikes!!

2015-05-01 12.53.16

Bailey has been growing before our eyes and has the funniest personality. She has started going into town with me and loves everyone she sees, they mostly love her too and it takes a long time to buy a pint of milk with everyone stopping to pat her. She hasn’t attacked any more shoes (mostly because I have them off the floor now) but I thought of her when I saw this…..

How can you stay cross with them???????????

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I went to a great dinner at Silos on Thursday featuring local food producers. Their food was cooked in 4 courses and they gave presentations about both the good and bad bits of being a small producer trying to stay true to their ethics. It was a fascinating night and I was very encouraged by the enthusiasm and passion of these mostly young people trying to make our food “good” again. We had local pasture fed chooks, local unprocessed milk, grass beef producers who are trying to improve the life and death of their animals and a biotech company harvesting seaweed and using it in food and also as ‘food as medicine’ which essentially all well produced and unprocessed food is. There were about 200 people there supporting the evening which was promoted by the slow food group here on the south coast. Many of them were local farmers and we heard many stories of share farming and innovative ways of sharing the burden of debt that often accompanies small farms. We left feeling encouraged that our little part of the world was in good hands.

Our veggie patch has been planted up with all the winter veg – cauliflower, brussel sprouts, cabbage, broccoli and silverbeet and the roses have been pruned back (rather severely to get their shape back after a few years of neglect) and the Jetmaster fire is being used and loved most nights. The cows are enjoying the paddock adjacent to ours which was planted with rye grass a month ago and provides them with some extra goodness coming into the cold weather.

Those trees are in our garden!

I am heading to Hong Kong today to stay with my daughter so I’ll see you all in a couple of weeks.

With love from The Meadow xx

My Move To The Meadow

A tale of our move to the countryside

Author: susiecameron

Go away Polar Vortex………….

Poo

The simple things in life

Friends and Frolics

Short week

Back to Work

Shoalhaven Winter Wine Festival

An up and down week…….

A little escape to Asia

A country wedding

-Is it really a week since my last posting? Feels like about 3 days! The weeks are starting to fly now that I am at work a couple of days a week and this week I zipped up to Sydney for a couple of days as well which made it a pretty short week in The Meadow! I had a rather traumatic experience one morning when I came out to the garage to get in the car and a bird was trapped in there and making a hell of a racket squawking and flapping about. They fly into the garage and as there are large picture windows at the back of it looking out over the paddocks the birds think they can fly straight through. It has happened before and the birds eventually got out by themselves. I opened both the roller doors and backed my car out in the hope that the bird would realise it could get out that way but we had an additional problem in that it was stuck to a mouse trap that Wayne had laid in the garage. They are the size of an envelope and extremely sticky and we thought they would be a safer option in view of the dog in case she got her paws trapped or whatever.
-I realised when I got closer that it was a crimson Rosella and a baby(ish) one at that and its feather were all over the sticky pad. I was really worried that it might have been it’s wing and that it would be the end of it. I was home alone of course and I thought that even if I could catch it in a towel and put it in a box it would still be pretty dangerous to then drive to the vet by myself in case it got out and flapped about in the car. I definitely needed a second pair of hands and luckily my friend Nola who lives about 5 minutes away was able to come straight over and give me a hand. We managed to catch the little one and it calmed down after a while and we could see that it wasn’t a wing on the trap but it’s tail feathers which had obviously come off when it was trying to escape the stickiness. Nether of us were really sure if they could fly without tail feathers but after easing it’s foot off and cutting around the gluey mess to release the bird we thought we could put it in the grass and see what, if anything, it could do. We were so happy when it flew away straight up into a tree and seemed no worse for the experience. A big relief to us both and we felt ridiculously happy at saving this little baby Rosella. Our little (semi) feathered friend.
-I asked Nola if I could buy her a pub meal the next night to say thank you but she was attending an event in Nowra so she invited ME to come to THAT instead!! A friend of hers had bought an old convent and it was its 110th birthday which she was celebrating by inviting some of the old Nuns and some local historians as well as friends to a soiree at the old house. It is a wonderful old house but a definite work in progress. It has 8 marble fireplaces and 6 bedrooms with 13 foot ceilings. I think poor Jenny will be renovating it for a LONG time to come to bring it back to it’s heyday, luckily she loves everything old and is enjoying the journey! While I was there I got chatting to the historian and in one of those amazing coincidences it turns out that her mother had grown up in our house in The Lane!!! She has many stories to tell us about the house and we have arranged to get together with her and our neighbours and one of the previous owners to swop tales and hopefully some photographs of the old house. She is excited to walk around it and I’m sure some interesting information will come out that night….. The old Convent in Nowra.It has become very wintry down here and it is really cold in the morning and the evenings. The fires are lit and we have mastered the art of “layers” to deal with the contrast in temperatures. After 10 am it is so warm on the front veranda that we have to shed the jumpers and we are toasty warm in just a T shirt but 2 minutes back in the house and we are reaching for the jumpers again…!! The trees have either lost their leaves or are well on the way and in the midst of our bare garden we have lush flowering citrus trees, our lemons, limes, mandarins and oranges are a very welcome sight in the middle of such a wintry landscape and I am in the midst of cooking lemony things – lemon curd, preserved lemons and luscious lemon tarts. (recipes in the kitchen section). Yummy lemons….Our lovely friends from Sydney visited this weekend and our neighbours invited all of us to witness the lighting of their bonfire last night along with their children and grandkids. They had been stacking the fire for the last 6 months and it towered into the sky just waiting for ignition. We were rather surprised (and impressed) to see they were lighting it with a flaming arrow from a crossbow!!! Extremely unique (and NOT to be tried Tom/Sam Cameron) and very effective. The little kids eyes were as wide as saucers and we all enjoyed a drink soaking in the fiery blaze and re-living those bonfire nights from our childhood! Getting ready….
 Impressive fire starter…

The four city kids enjoying the country!!
We had a lovely meal in Berry at South on Albany with Dave and Ing. The staff are so friendly and the food is seriously good and we had a great evening exchanging banter with the next table and the wait staff and enjoying our ‘big night out’!!
      The pine mushroom pasta                                    The beautiful fish special.
We love seeing our Sydney friends and sharing our new environment with them, it reinforces all that we love about our new life (especially when the wind ISN’T blowing !!) so today I am a happy camper!

A beautiful tree in our neighbour’s garden…