kale chips, dairy goats and flatbread

When I first started this blog a hundred years ago, I was living in Sydney with two children, not three, and Adam and I would foray down to Gerringong periodically to visit my parents, and we'd wonder on the way home what was keeping us in Sydney. 

We toyed with the idea of moving out of the city and down to the farm for years before actually having the guts to jump, and just do it. 

I mean, what an offer. A family farm, debt free, if we wanted to have a go. It was circumstantial that none of my siblings were able, or interested, to take the farm over, and Dad eventually sold off a big portion of the farm and paid everyone else out in order to allow Adam and I to confidently invest in the 18 acres we were left with. Amazing. I thank my lucky stars every day. 

But once we got going, and once we started to run on-farm cooking workshops every weekend, that was the end of this blog. With three small children (not that small anymore) and gardens and chickens and farmer's markets and sauerkraut to make and administration and bookkeeping and marketing and workshops to teach, I was able to get dinner on the table every night but had absolutely no ability to write a blog post about it. More's the pity, I'd at least then remember them. 

It's been an incredible ride. If you were here three years ago, you'll know we nearly hit the wall after a few fairly major chicken losses to fox attacks. I'd say we came perilously close to the wall pretty regularly for a few years. Even now we occasionally consider what our world might look like if one of us took a job off-farm. But then we get back to it because we love working for ourselves, we love living and working here together, and we can't really imagine being happy doing anything else. And there's kale to pick and workshop participants to email and bone broth to make for the market so a little less naval gazing and a bit more action! Move!

 

If you know a better way to eat kale, please tell me. We think that fresh kale scrunched with good olive oil, sprinkled with salt and baked in a moderate oven (170 degrees C) for about 10 mins until they're flakey crunchy chips is the best way on earth.

One of the big new additions to the farm in the last year was dairy goats. 

 

Goodness me we love them so. 

 

I milk them every morning, by hand at present, and I've milked up to four but we've dried three off now in anticipation of them kidding in a couple of months. We get on average 2 litres of milk per goat per day (one milking) and we love it. We make cheese. We walk them out to pasture from the hayshed every morning and bring them in every evening. They hate the wind and passionately hate rain (princesses) and the cheese is good. More on that later. Suffice to say it's kind of a dream come true. 

 

In other news, what are we eating? 

Lots of sourdough, goats cheese, bone broth, fresh veggies, eggs, homegrown chicken and beef and pork and traded lamb and bartered trout. 

And about once every two weeks, in some form or another we have flatbreads. 

 

 

You can whip these up with whatever flour you have on hand, but I keep a nice organic unbleached self raising wheat flour around for this purpose. 

FLATBREAD

Ingredients:

2 cups self raising flour

1 cup natural yoghurt

2 tsp salt

 

Method:

Mix all ingredients together, roll into 8 balls, roll out thinly into circles. 

Throw into a very hot dry pan and cook for about 20 seconds each side. 

Wrap in a tea towel to keep warm and soft while you cook the rest. 

You can halve or double this recipe - just keep the proportion of half the volume of yoghurt to flour.

Extremely delicious spread with fresh goat's cheese. 

xxxx

Comments

[Jane]

Hello again Fiona. So nice to see you back. I was thinking about making some flatbread today, so thank you for the recipe.
Looking forward to seeing you on here and hearing about your family and farm escapades.

[Selina Clare]

welcome back!
have just read back to the beginning of 2013, some lovely posts, love it. would love to have a farm one day too
glad the work shops are still going strong

thanx for sharing

[Tracy]

Mmmmm, I love goats' cheese. Love it. It has a much cleaner feel on the palette. And yet my 21yo daughter completely disagrees. Flat bread and goats' cheese? That's heaven on earth, I think.
And that baby goat is adorable, even if goats are inclined to eat everything, including the clothes you're currently wearing on your body. They're funny little beings!

[Meryl]

Oh, I'm SO glad you're back! And thanks for the wonderful post about goats. I've spent the last little while thinking, "I want to live in the country and keep goats," so this is inspiring and perfectly timed!

[Sandra Ward]

Your goats are so beautiful. How lovely to be on the land but I see you have paid a high price. So aware we need to value our farmers! Hope your journey from here on is rewarding in every way. :)

[Hazel]

It's lovely to have you back- I can't believe how long it's been. I have a Tilly as well, here in the UK, and she's now 18 and driving. Time flies past so quickly.

I am slightly envious of your goats...

[Britt]

I still love a blog post - so it's lovely to see you blogging again. I remember when you used to blog about crafty things years ago. And posts like this... I made my partner read it, and we both asked ourselves "what's keeping us in Sydney?". Well we don't have a family dairy farm to come to but if we sold our Sydney home and bought up down your way we could maybe be debt free. Please keep tempting me with cute goat pictures :)

[Jacinta]

So glad to have you back! Will be making flat bread tonight :)

[lors]

Lovely to see you blogging again. I would love it if you brought back your slice recipe on a Wednesday or any other day really. You inspired me to try so many of your recipes. I am glad life is working out so well for you and your family on the farm.

Lors :)

[Karen]

Lovely to see you back here. I've missed reading your blog!

[Melissa]

How fun to see your newest updates! We, too, have dairy goats now (we didn't, like you, three years ago) and absolutely adore them :-) So happy to see you're still farming (what a blessing of a property to be able to farm on)! Hope the slide into spring for you all is a gentle and abundant one!