My whole family went mulberry picking about a week ago and we picked around three kilograms of mulberries. Two of which I used for making jam.
It all started with a parcel in the mail. This parcel contained hundreds of eggs, and some tiny black specks that were already humping around, baby silkworms. Our tree had next to no leaves on it, so we had a dilemma. In the end a question on a local Facebook page fixed it. Someone told us off a huge mulberry tree that grew at the end of a fairly run down street and it did not belong to anyone.
Note: food does not generally inspire me with awe.... but it is the name of the tag so I shall leave it alone.
I have set mine eyes upon snow twice in my life. Just a week ago the second time came around. At the beginning of the day we were rather in doubt as to whether the weather would be horrid or not. The predictions spoke of rain, and we did not even know if there would be any snow left, from all the falls on the weekend when everything on Barrington Tops had got covered in a heavy shroud of snow. We set off despite all dire predictions, as we had planed... well rather spontaneously the night before.
One of my chooks went a-wandering so I went off into the paddock after her and came across this plant. I could not remember what name eblonged to it but after searching "Bush tucker ground cover" and looking at pictures I eventually found this plants name; Winter Apple or Eremophila debilis. I much prefer the English name.
I can often find the Winter Apple growing in places around our property, it is easiest to spy now though because its fruits are ripening. They become a much brighter pink than in these photos. They are a ground cover plant and native to Australia. I found these two plants growing under a box tree and it turns out that the Winter Apple prefers to grow in Box and White Cypress tree forests.
The fruits are edible, but there is not really much to them. I will eat a ripe one or two if I come across them, but nearly all of the fruit is seed and what skin and flesh there is can sometimes be bitter, you never really know until you have eaten it.
I find it rather fun though to be able to go walking in the paddocks and be able to find bush tucker and to be able to pick eat it as I go.
I can often find the Winter Apple growing in places around our property, it is easiest to spy now though because its fruits are ripening. They become a much brighter pink than in these photos. They are a ground cover plant and native to Australia. I found these two plants growing under a box tree and it turns out that the Winter Apple prefers to grow in Box and White Cypress tree forests.
The fruits are edible, but there is not really much to them. I will eat a ripe one or two if I come across them, but nearly all of the fruit is seed and what skin and flesh there is can sometimes be bitter, you never really know until you have eaten it.
The plant can get up to 1-2m in diameter but I have never found any that big, the ones pictured are around 30cm. There is also a white variety, whose fruit goes white and it is said to be sweater, but I am not sure if that one grows wild or not. I suspect that if grown in a garden they would grow a lot bigger.
I find it rather fun though to be able to go walking in the paddocks and be able to find bush tucker and to be able to pick eat it as I go.
I went camping again for the first time in years.... quite a lot of years. After the first night I remembered why. I tend to not sleep well on a less than an inch thick inflatable mattress. It sure makes me thankful for the beautiful, comfortable bed I have at home!
I shan't mention more than the fact that there was something called a toilet and that I don't wish to dwell on the thought. But to the good parts, food could be found in plenty... Though some of it was rather strange like the Nettle Quiche. Because we had arrived the night before we went up to the house and helped make the "Mud" Roasted and crushed wattle seeds. Oh they were hard to crush. Later that day we mixed up some Wattle Blossom Pancakes, which are exactly as they sound. They were fairly normal pancakes, a bit thicker, with wattle blossoms in them and no they did not taste fluffy. We used the "mud" in the cream to go on the pancakes, it felt so strange to scrape in the rather mud like stuff in to the white cream (that refused to thicken).
We also ate Prickly Pear Jam on "twisters" which were like bread/damper that we twisted on the end of a stick and cooked over the pit fire. We also tried some Blackberry Nightshade Jam on the pancakes along with the cream and mud mixture. We also had pizzas that were pretty normal except for the fact that they were cooked in camp ovens or the big mud oven thingy (I forget what it is called). Other people ate the kangaroo, possum, and fish.... I didn't, there was quite enough other food.
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We were shown lots of bush tucker... mostly weeds that could be eaten like the native bush above, you eat the fruit which if you get a less mature fruit is really sour, there is not much of it to eat though because most of it is seed. We also chewed on black boy spikes and ate flowers, violets. Huge Variegated Thistles grew all along the driveway but they were things to be proud of and not got rid of. We were shown the Green Hooded Orchids that often are hard to find, but because of a bushfire there last year they were springing up in tens and twentys all along the creek where we walked. The Aboriginals used to eat the bulb... I think. We ate Wandering Jew like it was lettuce along with chickweed, after learning how to tell if it is real chickweed or false. (the false chickweed is more hairy and the real chickweed only has hairs on one side of the stem.)
I shan't mention more than the fact that there was something called a toilet and that I don't wish to dwell on the thought. But to the good parts, food could be found in plenty... Though some of it was rather strange like the Nettle Quiche. Because we had arrived the night before we went up to the house and helped make the "Mud" Roasted and crushed wattle seeds. Oh they were hard to crush. Later that day we mixed up some Wattle Blossom Pancakes, which are exactly as they sound. They were fairly normal pancakes, a bit thicker, with wattle blossoms in them and no they did not taste fluffy. We used the "mud" in the cream to go on the pancakes, it felt so strange to scrape in the rather mud like stuff in to the white cream (that refused to thicken).
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| Wattle Blossom Pancake mixture |
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| "mud" |
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| Nettle Quiche |
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We were shown lots of bush tucker... mostly weeds that could be eaten like the native bush above, you eat the fruit which if you get a less mature fruit is really sour, there is not much of it to eat though because most of it is seed. We also chewed on black boy spikes and ate flowers, violets. Huge Variegated Thistles grew all along the driveway but they were things to be proud of and not got rid of. We were shown the Green Hooded Orchids that often are hard to find, but because of a bushfire there last year they were springing up in tens and twentys all along the creek where we walked. The Aboriginals used to eat the bulb... I think. We ate Wandering Jew like it was lettuce along with chickweed, after learning how to tell if it is real chickweed or false. (the false chickweed is more hairy and the real chickweed only has hairs on one side of the stem.)
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| Variegated Thistles |
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| Green Hooded Orchids |
We did crafts like mat weaving... I got titled something like master mat-weaver, I had done it before so I knew what to do.... and I don't actually know if anyone else finished theirs. We also got covered in mud making clay things, the problem was we had to remove as many stones as possible from the clay before hand.
We threw boomerangs and got them back out of trees and found the ones we lost. Some people made "spears" (sticks with pointy ends) and chucked them at a box. We were attacked by wild goats.... ok not exactly.
Well my shoes counted themselves attacked at any rate. We did a bit of standing around fires talking, and I have a lot more things for an Awkward and funny post I'm going to do soon.
I also could not be bothered to put my water mark on so many photos.... I have to do them one at a time so I just exported them and bulk watermarked them... easier. And now follows more photos...
