The Whole Five Acres

Are we there yet?

I can't believe it. We've owned our new home since Tuesday, and we have only spent one night there, camping out on a little mattress in the middle of a bare lounge room floor. We did though, manage to hop in the spa bath, talk all night around the garden about our plans, plan some more, and then christen the place with a little spot of bubbly. The crazy thing is that we may not be able to move in until mid May! Yep, Mid freaking May!

Life is so crazy busy that moving has to take a bit of a back seat. We're off to Tonga for a week on Thursday. Much needed rest is in order and it's also time to look in on the family. I have a book of 1200 not well written pages to get through, and the other half has two boats over there that need to get out in the water for a run. We're booked into some place that promises to be by the lagoon to make this fishing adventure a little bit easier, but given that we're talking Tongan Resort Promises, then we may find the lagoon pictures were taken somewhere else, and we may be in the middle of the island for all we know. We do have crabpots too to throw out, and the best bit is that Tongan rules do not govern how or when you can fish. Fingers crossed dinner each night may just come out of one of our little boats.

Between now and Thursday we have two days at the markets, a birthday dinner to prepare, a ton of Mother's Day advertising to produce, some packing and planning to do, a book to finish, invoicing to do, some cooking to do (special requests at one of our markets), weeding, animal husbandry, house cleaning, staff paying and a bit of packing if we aren't sleeping.

It's safe to say our lives have just spiralled out of control. For the life of us we can't manage to get all things in order so that we can take a well earned break without freaking out beforehand. If only we could get an interested pair of hands to help us out on the farm properly. And another interested pair of hands that would happily work on the design side of things without expecting to be the new Siimon Reynolds. You'd think given the doom and gloom about employment these days we may find a couple of people ready to risk a stress free employment life with us - but hey, nope, all the young'uns still want to earn a million before they get experience. Eventually though something has gotta give.

But it's all good. The new house is lovely. We can't wait to get in there and make it our own. I have a fabulous new work space, and already the kitchen plans for the workspace are taking shape. Yep, that's right, I said kitchen plans. The design biz is going to take a backseat as much as it can so that I can continue to develop the chilli sauce/paste/pickle range that is getting all our customers excited. 

I'm not a great chilli lover, it has to be mild for me to enjoy it with my food. For some reason though I seem to be able to turn out a mean chilli preserve, and it doesn't seem like i can cook enough. We spent Easter Sunday cooking through 40kg of chillis and putting them into pretty bottles in all different ways. Those bottles are pretty much all gone a week later. We ran out of three versions on Wednesday and there just wasn't enough time to replace the stock before our market today. this is why we need the commercial kitchen. A fat oven big enough to triple output without tripling time. A huge stainless steel bench to make prep-work a cinch, not to mention cleaning and disinfecting. And shelves by the mile to store our stock until it's required. I see it all now, a veritable treasure trove of all things that are good with the cooking world.

Bugger me, if i don't already have a shop that wants to test out my wares so they can stock them! Bring on the asbestos hands!

The most peculiar part of chilli being my foreseeable future is that I appear to be allergic to the wretched stuff and if I'm not careful preparing it my hands, arms and face all puff up and blister. When the farmer comes home with more, I'm generally sitting at the table nursing some very sore appendages unable to hold more than my book. I'm a rare sight for sore eyes...oh yes, that's right...my eyes don't like the stuff either.

All in all though, I can't, and shouldn't complain. Many of my clients are complaining that their workloads have gone through the roof, and their job security has plummeted. In this crazy time of economic uncertainty it appears that chilli is my friend if only we can harness it's power for good.

There would be pics, except that would involve adding another 10 minute job into my day. As Rhett would say, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

The ones that got away...

The yabbies you see in the photo above were rescued from our car this evening. And no, we're not underwater here, or staving off floods, these guys were invited into our vehicle of our own free will.

We'd purchased a kilo of these fine beasts, and after a roundabout trip home were ready to throw them in a pot of boiling water to see what all the fuss is about. You see, these yabbies we think, are the same as Lousianna crawdads, and that thought alone had our mouths watering at the hint of dinner. The plan was a big hint of chilli, some tomato, a hot walk in the wok before being served on a bed of steamed rice.

Unbeknownst to us, while we were away from the car for a little while, these plucky buggers had broken free from their wrapping and were making tracks around the underbelly of our car. Through a plastic bag, some newspaper, and then another bag...these guys were earnest in their pursuit of freedom. In the dark we had no inkling that anything untoward had happened to our fish shop purchase...all seemed right with the world as we made our merry way home.

Happy's hearing is at times appalling (usually when I'm talking) and at other times amazing (usually when I'm not). So as we're driving along, he's going 'what is that nip nip nip sound I hear?'. I'm all 'go back to sleep, there's no nip nip nip noise' and can honestly say I didn't hear a thing. 

Turns out, nip nip nip was our dinner tromping around under the seats of our car, and looking for new homes to roost in. It wasn't until we were in the kitchen assessing our booty that we discovered we were short half a kilo of our fine crawdads. 

We found the blinking things everywhere! In the shoes we leave in the car, under seats, in jumpers, tissue boxes...you name it. They didn't leave a stone or shoe unturned in their pursuit of freedom. If freedom fighters they were, I would commend their creativity, however, please never put me on a team run by crawdads. I do not wish to end my days in Happy's shoe! Where on earth did these crawdads think they were heading anyway?

A few died in the freedom skirmish, so we quickly cremated (boiled) them and I gotta say, as nice as each tiny bite of meat was, they will need to be less than $29 per kilo for us to buy more.

Just so you know, the photo above represents about half a kilo of yabbies. Happy's hands make the bootie look far smaller than it is in real life. The yabbies were about 6-8 inches long each...his hands are gigantuan! There's no meat to talk of in their claws, none to speak of in their heads and just a medium tiger prawn's worth in their body. Yes, I'll admit, it's lush and succulent...just figure though that each one is but a mouthful. Effort to mouth-profit is very low, which is not good unless you have just won the lottery.

I love this pic too, it captures his delight at an unexpected skirmish for food. Happy has the gift of enjoying every moment in this world and never looking back. I wish i could be the same way.