I was going to make some farmhouse Cheddar cheese on Friday but Mother Nature had other plans. Storm force winds on late Thursday afternoon blew the electricity wires down the road so strongly they touched, and melted and ended up on the ground. This left us without power until 4pm Friday. The poor cows had to walk to a neighbour's dairy where they were able to be milked using generator power. Luckily a paintbrush doesn't require electricity so I busied myself painting window frames for the day with my battery powered transistor radio for company.
Yesterday however it was back to plan A, although almost foiled by the milk truck arriving very early to take away all my raw ingredient! This morning I took the cheese out of the press and now have it air drying, a process which will take a few days. Then it will be waxed (if my wax arrives in the mail on time) and matured for a couple of months. I have just bought some baskets for fetta and halloumi making from Cheeselinks in Victoria which should arrive in the mail soon too).
Meanwhile out in the vege patch, I am finding small patches dry enough to dig and plant some lettuce, wombok and leeks seedlings but a lot of it is still too boggy. My potatoes are starting to come up - I spread my planting over several weeks and it's funny but the pink eyes planted half way are far in advance of the earlier and later plantings. I will be spending a lot of time outside in the next few weeks gradually putting in all my summer veges so I hope we get a break in the rain for a while. I usually sow sweet corn in early October so I have to dig over enough ground for that first. Then by early November, it will be mass planting of all the frost tender things like tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, pumpkin, squash, eggplant, capsicum and watermelon.
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