Sweet and the not so sweet

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You might think nothing much happens down on the farm in winter, maybe not below ground, but we humans and  the daffodils are as busy as. Our farm was once a market garden and the legacy each September is a vision straight out of Wordsworth's poem.


     When all at once I saw a crowd,
     A host of golden daffodils...
     Ten thousand saw I at a glance
     Tossing their heads in sprightly 
     dance     


Daffodils are toxic to animals, but they seem to know not to eat them, in fact daffodils are about the only plant that grows completely untouched by any critter in the Australian bush, they thrive on neglect and repay you five fold. The wombats insist on taking short cuts through them, leaving flattened tracks like straight crop circles- if you know what I mean and it's easy to see where the kangaroos take their short cuts because every two meters there is a flattened patch as they hop along. That still leaves plenty for the humans to appreciate -

That's the hereford telling me not to eat those yellow things

      For oft, when on my couch I lie
      in vacant or in pensive mood,
      They flash upon that inward eye
      which is the bliss of solitude.         
                   thanks to W Wordsworth



From bliss to brew...
We've decided to go into home brewing, we have a recipe, it calls for a 200 Litre barrel, that's more than the old 44 Gall drum. So our brew is going to be a seriously large scale production, especially for first timers.
The first hurdle was locating a barrel, one that could be sealed, yet able to be modified for brewing with a gas vent. The barrel hunt led to a deal that seemed too good to be true - $330 new or $12 on Ebay, it was of course a no brainer . The only problem turned out to be where the barrels had been before they were loaded into the back of my car-
and that was a pickled onion processing plant!
I quite like a pickled onion with a slice or two of sharp cheddar, but these barrels had spent way too long in the pickle factory. By the end of the 45 minute trip home my eyes were watering and I was dizzy with pickle fumes, I had become a walking pickle. Three days later the car still smelt as if it was part of a ploughmans lunch order.

In fact the onion smell was the last thing we needed to worry about, because the brew is not for human consumption. We're brewing our own fertiliser down here on the farm. The recipe is worth noting-
      first gather 50L fresh cow dung - it must be fresh.  To that is added yeast, molasses,  milk
      rainwater -  ( no chlorine) and lots of other secret ingredients.
The whole thing is gently stirred, well as gently as you can stir 200L of brown goop and then sealed.  There is one vital modification to the barrel, and that is an air lock to let off the gas from this monster of a brew. If you have ever tried making ginger beer or regular beer in the laundry and had a bottle or 3 explode, you can only imagine what 200L of cow poo brew would do if .....  !!!!

photo:  Milkwood Farm

Our brew must now sit for two months while the microbes and yeast do their magic. We've been assured that when we open it our senses will not be assaulted with a foul smelling concoction, instead we'll have a fine vintage fertiliser, clear and golden in colour and sweet smelling too. We'll keep you posted.