Tuesday 21st September

I ended up taking a mental health day yesterday as I noted. Not that it improved my mental health, but it got rid of the fever.

I should have taken today off as well, it didn’t help at all by going in to work. Although Tiffs brother arrived and can start on the thatch roof for the propagation house after Wednesday, so I need to get the last few posts in place, and one extra one he wants in the centre to run the angle supports from. I’m hoping it will look good, well, it should, but you know that difference that can creep in between what you see in your mind and the grim stark reality, a bit like the difference between the gorgeous lady you met last night at the bar you can’t remember the name of, let alone the city, and how did this harridan appear in your bed the next morning? Girls, you can change it around to suit yourself.

As a good friend once told me many years ago, always drink at a bar with ugly barmaids, when they start to look good it is time to go home.

But that is getting us away from the day. Adrian came in about midday, he’d driven past the lift truck, they were working outside #9 pruning, and lifting the rubbish cage up with the crane. Which sounds normal, apart from not having the hydraulic arms extended out, and the truck being on a 45* lean with one set of wheels off the ground and the tray twisted. So he’d gone back and after a few words got it sorted with the arms out, of course the timber I had in the truck to sit the hydraulic rams on had long vanished for firewood, so it took some time to find anything suitable. But they got it set up level finally and finished.

Then they got back to the site about 4ish, and said the crane wasn’t working. Adrian had already told me about the morning, so I went over the hydraulics etc, and found the safety mechanism had cut in and shut the hydraulics off. I didn’t show anyone where or how to reset, I can see what will happen next time if they know how to override it.

Did I mention the wheelbarrows yet? We bought 2 new wheelbarrows a while back, $1200 or so each, not too bad quality, but certainly not good contractors type. We have or had, several wheels left over from the older wheelbarrows that have either been damaged and destroyed, broken frames etc, which I had earmarked to make my nursery trolleys with, that have shrunk to only 4 left out of the 8 we had. Plus the old trays and some of the broken frames have also vanished. Ok, I know one of the crew has taken them home to rebuild a barrow for himself, which is fine, they were too light for us anyway which is why they got damaged so quickly.

Getting back to the new wheelbarrows. I noticed last week that they had only one stay on the front, instead of 2, which didn’t impress me at all, we put heavy loads into them, and now all it takes is a bump and an off centre load and the tray rips off the frame as the front isn’t supported any longer. I had a quiet word with the person concerned and they said they had been told it was ok to take one stay off each barrow to build their own one at home. I’m not impressed.

If anyone reads WUWT www.wattsupwiththat.com, the lead article at the moment is the eco-fascist greens in Western Australia basically bankrupting a farmer off his farm and land. Ok, it is a feedlot system, I’m not all that keen on them, but we have to raise food somehow, and the people involved in this one were doing everything by the book , and more, until the ecofascists started changing the rules and regulations retrospectively.

I can see the same thing happening in New Zealand with the stupid bloody ETS scheme, it won’t be financially viable to be a farmer raising livestock, with the emission charges, so there will be bankruptcies, more farms sold to the Chinese who are busily buying up farmland around the world to provide for themselves, and in a few years time everyone will be wondering WTF went on. All from some stupid failed US politician clamouring about non existent AGW, corrupt or idiot 3 rd rate weather men calling themselves Climate Scientists without being able to show any warming unless they adjust every temperature reading either down for the years before 1940 and up since then.

And stupid bloody John Key falling for it, and not having the guts to call the left wing looney lentil munching sock and sandal Malthusian Erlich inspired genocidal idiots in the green party and its ilk, to task over the lack of actual evidence, and NO, a computer generated game is not proof. You feed garbage data in, you get garbage data out, GIGO.

On another note entirely, I’ve been meaning to make ginger beer, the real stuff, not the tinned/bottled stuff, although Macs and Bundaberg are quite nice, I’m after the real exploding in the cupboard, fizzing over the room type of home made ginger beer, and I keep forgetting to get online and find a recipe. Finally did so today, and it is this one,

In a large preserving jar add:
1 dessert spoon of sugar
1 dessert spoon of ground ginger
A squeeze of lemon juice
2 cups of water.
This will be your plant…put on the lid and store it in a cool dark place.
The next day, add 1 dessert spoon of ginger.
On the following day, add 1 dessert spoon of sugar – continue to alternate these ingredients for the rest of the week, till you end up adding ginger on the 7th day.
Now, later on the same day, you’re ready to bottle.
In a large pot, or preserving pan, add 2 cups of sugar and 4 cups of hot water.
Stir till all the sugar is dissolved. Add the juice of 2 lemons. Gently strain in the liquid off your plant.
Then add 12 cups of cold water.
Mix well and filter through a fine tea strainer into bottles…makes about a dozen 340ml bottles.
Halve the sediment left in your plant jar, add 2 cups of cold water, 1 dessert spoon of sugar, 1 dessert spoon of ginger, a squeeze of lemon and continue as before for another week…and so on…
Keep your bottled ginger beer for a week or 2 before you drink it, so it has a little time to ferment.
You can either throw out the half of the plant, or start another jar going, or give it away to anyone who wants to try making it as well.
It is recommended to really chill the bottles well before opening.

Copied shamelessly from this blog http://www.keepinitkiwi.co.nz/blog/category/kiwi-chinwag/ which is the recipe I remember growing up with the starter in a jar being fed everyday for a week, then Mum bottling and me using the cap press, (we got high tech instead if using a hammer to put the tops on) then hearing a bottle or two explode in the cupboard in the laundry a week or so later.

Great stuff. I’ve got the starter going now, another week and I’ll be bottling some to try out.