Food – Gallifrey Forest Farm

Sourdough Almond Pancakes

2023/01/12 Danielle 0

The first thing I ever learned to make without a recipe in front of me was flapjacks – a sort of traditional South Afican (and Dutch) miniature pancake. Basically because they’re easy, the recipe is super forgiving of ingredient substitution and changes to proportions (they can be made with 1 egg or 4 eggs, or with 1/2 cup of orange juice in place of eggs, with regular self-raising flour, wholemeal flour, or even almond flour, with oil or butter, with or without milk), and at the time I was working with limited ingredients and unfamiliar kitchens. As a teenager, when […]

Lost Skills: Butchering

2022/12/19 Danielle 0

This is going to be a controversial post for some people, so please consider yourselves warned: I will be talking about killing animals, including the mention of blood and guts and slaughter. There are no images. It is my strongly held opinion that there is nothing wrong, per se, with humans eating meat – provided it is done ethically. Which is to say, the animals involved live good lives, and were killed in as stress-free and painless a manner as is possible. What this means, practically speaking, is that you need to either raise and kill, and butcher your own […]

Citrus Variety Planning

2022/11/28 Danielle 0

Disappointingly, it turns out that I cannot in fact get access to the new red-fleshed Mandared mandarin cultivar being managed by ANFIC. Early discussions indicated that they would send me budwood for an evaluation planting, but.. well, the person who said that no longer works for them, and apparently failed to mention that (a) there are fruit royalties on the variety as well as tree royalties (it’s a PBR variety), and (b) it’s being managed through a massive marketing group for nationwide sales and export, and (c) therefore they’re really not interested in smaller plantings. Like I said: disappointing. It […]

Lost Skills: Cooking

2022/08/24 Danielle 0

I know. It’s a weird thing to list as a “lost” skill, right? But hear me out. A lot of people don’t really cook anymore. They never learned, or they don’t have time, or they think it’s hard (it’s really not). The rise of convenience foods and cheap (relatively) fast food have combined with the increased and increasing need for families ot have two – or possibly more – full time income-earners to make ends meet. It’s not a good thing. It probably showcases a lot of what is wrong with our capitalist society and economy, and we don’t even […]

Belatedly

2022/05/19 Danielle 0

Well, it’s been a ..I want to say year, but in fact closer to four years since I updated this. In the meantime, we actually moved out and into town for 2 years because roadworks on the main road up here were making our commute to our on-premises, in-town day jobs miserable. Then there was Covid-19, and a few changes of job situation, and the roadworks finished (finally!), so we moved back in. The farm is still going, in spite of 2 years of not living on the property, and slowly, slowly, our plans are coming together. Not helped by […]