We're off to the Wilds of the Eastern Cape tomorrow for a few days sojourn in Grahamstown to attend Dale's graduation ceremony at Rhodes U. Quite an occasion, and, since (still) nothing's happening in the garden, a welcome diversion.
Rhodes seems to make a much bigger fuss of graduation than my old uni: we've received invitations from both departments that awarded Dale his major subjects. Cheese and Wine with the Zoology department, and Breakfast with the Geography dept. We're especially looking forward to the Zoology do as we'll get a chance to meet some of the Profs and lecturers that Dale's dealing with this year - he's reading for his Honours degree in African Biodiversity this year.
And while we're talking academics, a big Thank You to the Zoology department for a scholarship awarded to Dale. Certainly takes some strain off our finances!
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
07 April 2010
08 December 2009
Rain!
36 mm yesterday. A nice soaking rain, too, and very welcome, seeing as it's the first semi-decent rain we've had in a month.
Meanwhile the Spelt is ripening nicely, and we should be able to harvest it within a week or so. This year's harvest will all be kept for seed, but hopefully next year... we'll be brewing with Spelt ;-)
Actually, we could also use it for bread. On our last sojourn to Cape Town some weeks ago, we stopped off at a lovely museum cum antiquey-shoppe in that famous tourist trap, Hermanus. (Actually, if you want to see lots of Southern Right Whales, Hermanus is the place to be. Whales come within mere metres of the seaside cliffs, generally from about May/June until October/November, as it's a safe haven for them to give birth. When we stay with family in Gansbaaithey the whales can keep us awake half the night with their noise!)
There we found a grain mill in pretty good nick. After umming about it a bit we bought the thing. In retrospect we got a steal! We paid R270 for it, and the plates look like it has never been used for actual milling! We soon put that right, and have baked a couple of loaves with hand-milled flour. It's not as onerous as I had been led to believe. We've learned that no good comes of trying to mill the Wheat to flour in a single pass; it takes 2 or 3 passes through the mill, sifting out the fine flour in between, to get good flour. That said, it only takes about 3 or 5 minutes to mill sufficient grain (450g) for a loaf, so hardly justifies motorising it or anything. And the flavour of the resulting bread is not to be compared with bread made from factory flour.
Put it all together, it means that, in just a short time, our self-sufficiency efforts seem to have taken a quantum leap forward. All that remains now is to rebuild the Clay Oven!
Meanwhile the Spelt is ripening nicely, and we should be able to harvest it within a week or so. This year's harvest will all be kept for seed, but hopefully next year... we'll be brewing with Spelt ;-)Actually, we could also use it for bread. On our last sojourn to Cape Town some weeks ago, we stopped off at a lovely museum cum antiquey-shoppe in that famous tourist trap, Hermanus. (Actually, if you want to see lots of Southern Right Whales, Hermanus is the place to be. Whales come within mere metres of the seaside cliffs, generally from about May/June until October/November, as it's a safe haven for them to give birth. When we stay with family in Gansbaai
There we found a grain mill in pretty good nick. After umming about it a bit we bought the thing. In retrospect we got a steal! We paid R270 for it, and the plates look like it has never been used for actual milling! We soon put that right, and have baked a couple of loaves with hand-milled flour. It's not as onerous as I had been led to believe. We've learned that no good comes of trying to mill the Wheat to flour in a single pass; it takes 2 or 3 passes through the mill, sifting out the fine flour in between, to get good flour. That said, it only takes about 3 or 5 minutes to mill sufficient grain (450g) for a loaf, so hardly justifies motorising it or anything. And the flavour of the resulting bread is not to be compared with bread made from factory flour.
Put it all together, it means that, in just a short time, our self-sufficiency efforts seem to have taken a quantum leap forward. All that remains now is to rebuild the Clay Oven!
21 November 2009
Abbreviated Update
A miscellany. Life has had too much happening to have blogged it all in detail. I may get around to telling some of it in more detail, but, like all other Good Intentions, don't hold your breath.
Last week was a trip down to Cape Town to chat with all the microbreweries between here and there, gathering some basic data for a business idea I have. Along the way was a most interesting visit to the SA Barley Breeding Institute! Many thanks to the kind folk there who were so generous with their time!
CT was a bunch of hectic running around sourcing various materials for the brewery, culminating in a get-together with the SouthYeasters Brew Club on Wednesday evening. My good friend Franz kindly gave me several new yeast strains, including a couple of Belgian abbey strains, so I'm looking forward to brewing some Belgian Ales in a little while.
Cut the trip a little short and returned home on Thursday, as the OB Dog was obviously very seriously ill. And I am very glad we did. We spent a last few hours with her on the vet's lawn last Friday. That evening I had to take the very sad decision to let her go... she was suffering from an inoperable liver tumour that was causing her all sort of grievous problems. We're still very sad about losing her... tears come to my eyes at the oddest moments. I've had many special dogs in my life, but none as special as OB. She taught me things about what it is to be a wolf/dog, and also things about what it is to be a human. The truest friend anyone could have had, we were extremely fortunate to know OB -- most people will never experience that privilege!
This week has been a bunch of gardening, still trying to get beds cleared, Tomatoes transplanted, squashes in,... I've left the bloody Fennels too long in the seedtray... endless litany of weeding and clearing.
Culled a couple of roosters on Wednesday morning, only to have someone leave the chicken-house door unsecured that evening, whereupon the Ratel (or maybe a Gennet or a Lynx) got in that night. Rudely awakened at about 10.30 to the squawking and screeching of dying chickens... the bastard took out 2 roosters and 3 hens, which amounts to half the flock. So I got to spend Thursday morning plucking and cleaning Still More Chickens. Too late did I read Hedgewizard's Really Good Idea... Would have saved me a bunch of work, I can tell you! The only consolation is that I was planning to cull those two roosters anyway.
Also started on making another batch of malt. 2kg of Barley soaking, half of which I'll make into ordinary Crystal Malt, the other half will get roasted much longer in an attempt to make something like a Special B Malt in preparation for those Belgian Ales. I'm thinking of brewing a special Belgian style beer to be named for OB. (She was a Belgian Shepherd.)
And the drought goes on. It's even too hot to brew!
Last week was a trip down to Cape Town to chat with all the microbreweries between here and there, gathering some basic data for a business idea I have. Along the way was a most interesting visit to the SA Barley Breeding Institute! Many thanks to the kind folk there who were so generous with their time!
CT was a bunch of hectic running around sourcing various materials for the brewery, culminating in a get-together with the SouthYeasters Brew Club on Wednesday evening. My good friend Franz kindly gave me several new yeast strains, including a couple of Belgian abbey strains, so I'm looking forward to brewing some Belgian Ales in a little while.
Cut the trip a little short and returned home on Thursday, as the OB Dog was obviously very seriously ill. And I am very glad we did. We spent a last few hours with her on the vet's lawn last Friday. That evening I had to take the very sad decision to let her go... she was suffering from an inoperable liver tumour that was causing her all sort of grievous problems. We're still very sad about losing her... tears come to my eyes at the oddest moments. I've had many special dogs in my life, but none as special as OB. She taught me things about what it is to be a wolf/dog, and also things about what it is to be a human. The truest friend anyone could have had, we were extremely fortunate to know OB -- most people will never experience that privilege!
This week has been a bunch of gardening, still trying to get beds cleared, Tomatoes transplanted, squashes in,... I've left the bloody Fennels too long in the seedtray... endless litany of weeding and clearing.
Culled a couple of roosters on Wednesday morning, only to have someone leave the chicken-house door unsecured that evening, whereupon the Ratel (or maybe a Gennet or a Lynx) got in that night. Rudely awakened at about 10.30 to the squawking and screeching of dying chickens... the bastard took out 2 roosters and 3 hens, which amounts to half the flock. So I got to spend Thursday morning plucking and cleaning Still More Chickens. Too late did I read Hedgewizard's Really Good Idea... Would have saved me a bunch of work, I can tell you! The only consolation is that I was planning to cull those two roosters anyway.
Also started on making another batch of malt. 2kg of Barley soaking, half of which I'll make into ordinary Crystal Malt, the other half will get roasted much longer in an attempt to make something like a Special B Malt in preparation for those Belgian Ales. I'm thinking of brewing a special Belgian style beer to be named for OB. (She was a Belgian Shepherd.)
And the drought goes on. It's even too hot to brew!
27 November 2007
Storming-up a Brew
For a while, now, I've been planning to start brewing beer again, as I did until some years ago. Remember that one of our self-sufficiency goals is Pizza dinner made completely from self-produced ingredients, baked in a self-built oven. And a critical part of any self-respecting Pizza dinner has to be the beer!
As ever, the challenge is in getting all the ingredients and equipment needed. Despite homebrewing being quite popular in SA, it is not like more civilized parts of the world where there are plenty of homebrew shops that can supply the necessary. The tiny handful of suppliers that exist are hard-to-find, carry very limited ranges of ingredients, and are generally not very useful.
Last weekThe week before last I drove down to Gansbaai to rescue pick up J from a visit to her parents. The drive down takes about 5 hours, and the route takes one through the country's breadbasket. Vast tracts, kilometre upon kilometre of rolling grainlands, as far as the eye can see for hour upon hour upon hour whilst traveling at 120km/h.
It is the harvest season. The road was fraught with grain trucks carting the harvest to silos. Wheat, barley, wheat, oats, wheat,canola rapeseed, wheat, rye. And, of course, wheat.
I made a stop in Swellendam, to buy some stone-ground whole flour for breadmaking; there is an old watermill at the local museum where they mill a small quantity of wheat every week. Swellendam is also in the very heart of Grain Country, and sports a very large grain-storage facility. As I drove out of town, at least 3-dozen grain trucks were lined up at the silos to offload their precious harvest. It's been a nerve-wracking time for the farmers. Millions of Rands tied up in getting the seed into the ground. Less than perfect rainfall during the growing season, and too much rain a mere fortnight before the harvest. But at last the harvest is in, safely stored in a silo. The nation eats.
I detoured off the usual route to Gansbaai, travelling via Caledon -- another major grain-handling town about an hour-and-a-half from Cape Town. The town is dominated by massive grain silos and the railway tracks that run through them, ready to transport the grain to Gauteng. My reason for the detour is that Caledon is also home to a very large maltings: SAB Maltings. The same SAB -- previously South African Breweries -- now SABMiller, that is one of the largest beer conglomerates in the world. The maltings was a fascinating and entertaining diversion. They produce something like 220000 tonnes of malt a year! But they're still happy to deal with homebrewers wanting only a tiny, little, insignificant 50kg sack of pale malt. A very helpful, friendly lady named Estelle was wonderful in helping me get my malt. For them a tiny little drop in an ocean of beer. For me a rather large1 quantity. Had to park the car on a weighbridge long enough to weigh a small train so that they could weigh my purchase. 50kg on the nose!
I'd have taken a picture of my little Corolla pimpmobile on the weighbridge, but, after my single pic of the maltings, the security guy on the gate came running over to tell me, "No, no! You're not allowed to take pictures!" Say what? It's not like this is a weapons factory. They make malt! We've known how to make malt for thousand of years! WTF?
"What would happen if I just stood outside the gate, across the road and took a picture?" I asked him. "You couldn't stop me then."
"Yes," he agreed, "It's a stupid rule, but its more than my job's worth!"2
I promised him that I would delete the picture from my phone. Faithless liar.
The Nation's Beer
Much of the drive is along the N2 -- the National Road that runs from Cape Town all the way to Durban and parts beyond. Driving along the smaller roads between Caledon and Gansbaai gave me a better appreciation of the vastness of the grainlands. I was quite surprised at the humbleness of the machinery still used to gather in the harvest. I expected to see lines of giant combines, four abreast, followed by large tractor-trailers catching the grain. What I saw was simple mowers, cutting down the grain and gathering it into windrows, ready for the thresher in a few days, followed by the bailer to make those gigantic round hay-bales that need a tractor with a forklift attachment to move them.
There was a logic to the old-style balers that made rectangular bales. Bales were still small enough for a man to lift. These huge round things? Never!
What would happen to these farmers if you took their diesel away?
They plough, disk and plant their multi-million-rand seedbed using massive four-wheel-drive tractors, four to six wheels per axle. They spray, spray, spray, poison upon poison, using aeroplanes and wide-boom sprayers aback their tractors. They harvest -- be it with the very large all-in-one combine-harvester mobile grainfactories (and there were some) or with the humbler, simpler and cheaper machinery -- and load their harvest onto 22m long trucks to be transported hundreds of kilometres to a silo. From there the grain gets trucked -- mostly trucked, since the rail network no longer finds it economic to transport grain -- to the millers. The industrial mills that tear the grain apart into its smallest usable components, to be reconstituted into computer-managed maximum-profit product, stuffed with additives to enhance the colour, smell, and, mostly, shelf-life.
What happens when you take the oil away?
What happens when diesel is too expensive?
How do the millions eat?
Let alone drink beer...
The simple truth is, "They don't!" The Elephant In The Room That Nobody Wants To Talk About: there are simply too many of us humans in an energy poor future. I am not suggesting a catastrophic starvation scenario -- those are more usually politically engendered than arising from natural consequence. But I don't see how to feed upwards of 6½-billion people without cheap and abundant energy.
I'm planning to get into small-scale grains over the next year or so. Even if its just for making my own beer :-)
[Pics taken with cellphone camera. Please excuse the pathetic quality.]
[1] Nearly typed "a very lager quantity" there... Freudian ship?
[2] Not in those words. Poetic license. This is a Xhosa-speaking man for whom English is a third or fourth language. You get the gist. (May I one day speak Xhosa half as well as he speaks English!)
As ever, the challenge is in getting all the ingredients and equipment needed. Despite homebrewing being quite popular in SA, it is not like more civilized parts of the world where there are plenty of homebrew shops that can supply the necessary. The tiny handful of suppliers that exist are hard-to-find, carry very limited ranges of ingredients, and are generally not very useful.
It is the harvest season. The road was fraught with grain trucks carting the harvest to silos. Wheat, barley, wheat, oats, wheat,
I made a stop in Swellendam, to buy some stone-ground whole flour for breadmaking; there is an old watermill at the local museum where they mill a small quantity of wheat every week. Swellendam is also in the very heart of Grain Country, and sports a very large grain-storage facility. As I drove out of town, at least 3-dozen grain trucks were lined up at the silos to offload their precious harvest. It's been a nerve-wracking time for the farmers. Millions of Rands tied up in getting the seed into the ground. Less than perfect rainfall during the growing season, and too much rain a mere fortnight before the harvest. But at last the harvest is in, safely stored in a silo. The nation eats.
I detoured off the usual route to Gansbaai, travelling via Caledon -- another major grain-handling town about an hour-and-a-half from Cape Town. The town is dominated by massive grain silos and the railway tracks that run through them, ready to transport the grain to Gauteng. My reason for the detour is that Caledon is also home to a very large maltings: SAB Maltings. The same SAB -- previously South African Breweries -- now SABMiller, that is one of the largest beer conglomerates in the world. The maltings was a fascinating and entertaining diversion. They produce something like 220000 tonnes of malt a year! But they're still happy to deal with homebrewers wanting only a tiny, little, insignificant 50kg sack of pale malt. A very helpful, friendly lady named Estelle was wonderful in helping me get my malt. For them a tiny little drop in an ocean of beer. For me a rather large1 quantity. Had to park the car on a weighbridge long enough to weigh a small train so that they could weigh my purchase. 50kg on the nose!
I'd have taken a picture of my little Corolla pimpmobile on the weighbridge, but, after my single pic of the maltings, the security guy on the gate came running over to tell me, "No, no! You're not allowed to take pictures!" Say what? It's not like this is a weapons factory. They make malt! We've known how to make malt for thousand of years! WTF?
"What would happen if I just stood outside the gate, across the road and took a picture?" I asked him. "You couldn't stop me then."
"Yes," he agreed, "It's a stupid rule, but its more than my job's worth!"2
I promised him that I would delete the picture from my phone. Faithless liar.
The Nation's Beer
Much of the drive is along the N2 -- the National Road that runs from Cape Town all the way to Durban and parts beyond. Driving along the smaller roads between Caledon and Gansbaai gave me a better appreciation of the vastness of the grainlands. I was quite surprised at the humbleness of the machinery still used to gather in the harvest. I expected to see lines of giant combines, four abreast, followed by large tractor-trailers catching the grain. What I saw was simple mowers, cutting down the grain and gathering it into windrows, ready for the thresher in a few days, followed by the bailer to make those gigantic round hay-bales that need a tractor with a forklift attachment to move them.
There was a logic to the old-style balers that made rectangular bales. Bales were still small enough for a man to lift. These huge round things? Never!
What would happen to these farmers if you took their diesel away?
They plough, disk and plant their multi-million-rand seedbed using massive four-wheel-drive tractors, four to six wheels per axle. They spray, spray, spray, poison upon poison, using aeroplanes and wide-boom sprayers aback their tractors. They harvest -- be it with the very large all-in-one combine-harvester mobile grainfactories (and there were some) or with the humbler, simpler and cheaper machinery -- and load their harvest onto 22m long trucks to be transported hundreds of kilometres to a silo. From there the grain gets trucked -- mostly trucked, since the rail network no longer finds it economic to transport grain -- to the millers. The industrial mills that tear the grain apart into its smallest usable components, to be reconstituted into computer-managed maximum-profit product, stuffed with additives to enhance the colour, smell, and, mostly, shelf-life.
What happens when you take the oil away?
What happens when diesel is too expensive?
How do the millions eat?
Let alone drink beer...
The simple truth is, "They don't!" The Elephant In The Room That Nobody Wants To Talk About: there are simply too many of us humans in an energy poor future. I am not suggesting a catastrophic starvation scenario -- those are more usually politically engendered than arising from natural consequence. But I don't see how to feed upwards of 6½-billion people without cheap and abundant energy.
I'm planning to get into small-scale grains over the next year or so. Even if its just for making my own beer :-)
[Pics taken with cellphone camera. Please excuse the pathetic quality.]
[1] Nearly typed "a very lager quantity" there... Freudian ship?
[2] Not in those words. Poetic license. This is a Xhosa-speaking man for whom English is a third or fourth language. You get the gist. (May I one day speak Xhosa half as well as he speaks English!)
05 April 2007
Aaaand... We're Back!
Back from a trip down to Gansbaai (lit.: Goose Bay) -- formerly a whaling village on the Aghulas Plain, now a tourist destination for possibly the best whale-viewing in the world. (Whales usually arrive around June and stick around until about Oct./Nov. to calf.) The occassion was a sister-in-law's 30'th Birthday Bash.
Then on to Cape Town for a family get-together for First-night Pesach and visiting good friends. Best part was that I got some brewing yeast from Franz, so I'll be able to get back into homebrewing after a lapse of several years.
Hmmm.... surely if I put together an unhopped wort... then ferment... then distill... isn't that a simple Single Malt Scotch? Any experts out there?
Then on to Cape Town for a family get-together for First-night Pesach and visiting good friends. Best part was that I got some brewing yeast from Franz, so I'll be able to get back into homebrewing after a lapse of several years.
Hmmm.... surely if I put together an unhopped wort... then ferment... then distill... isn't that a simple Single Malt Scotch? Any experts out there?
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