Beechworth Urban Landcare and Sustainability

by Charlie Robinson

I am living proof that good luck will always compensate for stupidity and ineptitude.  In my last article I bewailed my inability to produce even one drop of apple juice, despite a considerable investment in time, money, and expletives.  Good luck came in the guise of my inventive brother-in-law who just happened to have a pork mincer, with attached electric motor, lying around the shed (as you do).  Now, this pork mincer performs the task of apple scratting to perfection.  It looks like an over-sized meat mincer and seems custom made for the task at hand.

The quartered apples are simply shoved into the top chute and a knurled shaft forces the pieces through a sieve into the bucket at just the right consistency for pressing.  The scratted apples are then placed into the press and compressed by hardwood blocks and the juice escapes through slats into the base which then flows into another bucket.  A washing basket full of apples takes about an hour to scrat and press.  This is enough to produce 25 litres of juice which I leave for a couple of days, skim off the floating residue, and pour into a fermenting vessel.  After adding yeast and a kg of sugar, a lid with airlock is screwed on and the action commences.  Before long you can see the gas bubbling through the airlock and you know that fermentation is happening.

Once the bubbling has ceased, between 7 – 10 days, you can then bottle the fermented juice.  At this stage the liquid smells and tastes a bit rough but I’m assured that the taste will improve in the bottle over the next 3 – 6 months.  I will be calling on “guinea pigs” around September to verify this. Initial reaction from a few friends has been favourable and it’s certainly a huge improvement on the apple scrumpy I purchased at a fair in Oxfordshire a few years ago.

Not everything we’ve done on our property has flirted with disaster.  Our initial decision to plant a Lleylandii cypress hedge around the perimeter of our property was a good one.  We had achieved great results with these trees on our previous property in Bungendore and were keen to repeat the success.

Lleylandii cypress receives lots of bad press but I believe this is not the tree’s fault but the people who plant them.  Nurseries market them as hedging plants when they are actually massive trees when grown to maturity – the trick is to keep them under control early and they are quite compliant to the secateurs.

I’ve limited the height of the hedge to 3 metres and the width to 2 metres.  Although the hedge is still young, this year many of the trees reached their intended height so I simply snipped them off at 3 metres.  This cut will still be visible next year when I trim them back again.

Our decision not to plant a native hedge was an easy one.  There are several varieties of acacia that will do a similar job, and grow more quickly, but they have a limited life span.  The last thing I want to do when I’m seventy is to replace all 240 trees in the hedge.  Callitris are more long-lived but don’t provide the vegetative density I was looking for. There is a long row of dead Lleylandii near the White Spot (Everton) turnoff on the Wangaratta Road, evidence of the severity of the big dry.  However, I have found them to be extremely drought-resistant (more so than some eucalypt species) and there are several examples of long Lleylandii hedges throughout Indigo Shire, but they won’t survive months of no watering.

Many people reading this were brought up with a cast iron stove as the centrepiece of the kitchen.  We bought a new one when we moved into our home and this was a good decision.  It’s so nice to have a large container of soup bubbling away when it’s cold and wet outside while the kettle is always ready for a cuppa.

Maintenance is a breeze and we just wipe the stove with a paper towel and vegetable oil every few weeks to maintain its black colour.   The wood ash is used around our fruit trees and we‘ve never had to buy wood as there is always branches falling across nearby roads or neighbours looking to clear vegetation.   The stove prefers smaller limbs so we can use our fruit tree prunings as well. We also appreciate the stove’s ability to support the solar hot water system on those long overcast weeks when the sun’s power is compromised.  With the cost of electricity continuing to rise, of all our sustainability initiatives the stove gives us the greatest piece of mind.

Next time, I’ll continue to describe the continued successes and failures of our Fighting Gully Road venture.

By Charlie Robinson

Was it Kermit who sang “it aint easy being green”?  Most of the time I would dispute Kermit’s assertion but there are times when things don’t go exactly according to plan.

Here are a random collection of initiatives we have undertaken that have had their ups and downs.

Cider Making No matter how badly I construct something, I want it to last, just so future archaeologists can marvel at the ineptitude of 21st Century humanity.  A case in point is my cider press.  Cider presses are usually made to withstand a lot of hard work and mine is no exception.  The press was bought locally and is exceedingly heavy with lots of cast iron pieces that wouldn’t seem out of place on a steam engine.  I then proceeded to build an equally massive table to support the press with steel girders for legs and several hardwood planks measuring 200mm X 45mm.  The planks were screwed to the girder supports by 12mm galvanised bolts, the table was then bolted to the concrete floor with eight dynabolts and then the press was secured to the table with even more 12mm bolts.

Having perused many books on cider-making I had not seen a more solid construction and I fantasised about the years of cider making in front of me.  I visualised large groups bringing their containers while raw apple juice cascaded into empty vessels to be converted into cider and vinegar.

Yeah, right!  On the day of the first pressing I arranged tables on which the apples would be washed and prepared prior to receiving the attention of the press.  Boxes of pink lady apples waited expectantly in rows waiting for their magical conversion into juice.  Fay and I then chopped the apples into fine pieces, loaded the press as high as we could, and proceeded to turn the large steel arm which compressed specially-cut timber to squash the apples into juice.  We turned and turned until we could compress the apples no further and waited for the juice to flow.

Nothing happened. Rapidly retiring to our library to refer to our various texts on the subject, we discovered we had overlooked one vital step – scratting.  Scratting is not an initiation ceremony for Duntroon cadets but refers to the process of pulping the apples prior to pressing.  In the absence of a suitable scratting machine I commenced to pulverise the apples with a meat tenderiser but this method proved to be disappointing.

Subsequent research has uncovered locally-made scratters, powered by electricity, to retail for around $1700 so the search continues for a more-viable option.  Hopefully I’ll have better news next time.

Produce cellar When you have the potential to produce literally tonnes of fruit and vegetables over the growing period, you need a suitable space in which to store this bounty.  We have converted a concrete water tank for this purpose but, despite foil and fibreglass insulation and heat-resistant paint, the internal temperature still rises to 29 degrees C when it is 46 degrees C outside.  This is fine for most things but not fruit and vegetables.

An in-ground cellar should maintain a constant year-round temperature of 16 – 17 degrees C which adds significantly to the shelf life of perishable foods.

So, with the naivety of old age (you may describe this as dementia) I commenced construction.  When I say “I”, I mean a massive excavator which tore large chunks out of the ground like a hungry dinosaur.  This machine was filling a large truck every five minutes and, before long, the hole was completed and the reinforced concrete slab was laid.

I had noticed that the waterproof membrane which was supposed to be laid under the slab (and carried up the sides of the excavation) had been forced under the slab during the pour and this rang alarm bells but it was too late to rectify.  I attempted to circumvent possible ingress of water into the cellar by running a continuous roll of 500mm wide aluminium/bitumen dampcourse around the base of the wall, I added a waterproofing compound to my mortar mix, I also painted the outside face of the wall with bitumen paint, and (finally) clad the entire wall with a double layer of waterproof membrane.  All no good.   After the inside walls were painted, the excavation was backfilled, and the roof was poured, I waited with trepidation for the first rain and (sure enough) there was water on the cellar floor.  Not much, but enough to make me install the shelving on a course of bricks to prevent the timber from rotting.

We will find a solution to both the apple scratting and the wet cellar because problem-solving seems to be the key to succesful self-sufficiency.

Next time, I will relate how we think we have solved the rabbit problem.  Stay tuned.

Here’s Allan’s method for perfect sun dried tomatoes

• Use small to medium size tomatoes. Roma are ideal.
• Wash and dry tomatoes.
• Slice tomatoes in half but do not cut right through. This makes it easier t o place tomatoes on tray.
• Place tomatoes cut side up in a wooden tray -3 ply is ok- 1 metre X 500mm. Sprinkle cooking salt on tomatoes.
• To prevent ants from spoiling fruit use 3 or 4 flattish tins filled with water. Stand a brick in each tin ( brick on its end). Place tray on top of bricks.
• Dry in hot sun-3-4 days. Do not leave trays outside at night. Tomatoes are dry when pinched between fingers and they feel dry.
• Dried tomatoes can then be packed in a sterilised jar with olive oil, basil and garlic.
• Store in a cool, dark place.