Ups and Downs

What a week! I have had such an incredible response to A Plot in Common. The support and enthusiasm has been much more than I anticipated. I was just saying to Ben, how much I love to meet people who are truly passionate about something. This week I have been fortunate to meet a bunch of those people. I think it would be nice to bring everyone together and share their stories, interests and passions. Maybe Spring?

photo taken by Tara Pearce @outertowners

We had quite a bit of pork in the freezer from last years pigs. We dreamed of salami, prosciutto, bacon, anything cured really, but it seemed a little out of our league. Funny how you put things in the 'too hard basket'.  Its just taking that first initial step isn't it? Bacon was our first step. We thought that if we were going to make our own bacon we definitely needed to smoke it! We knew nothing about either. We followed a cookbook on how to cure the bacon and while we were waiting for the salt to do its magic, we started building our smoker. We gathered what materials we could from around the farm and with Ben's creative head and hands, built a smoker (we keep on having a little giggle at our little outhouse with a chimney). We rinsed the bacon and hung it in the barn for 10 days to dry. On Saturday we excitedly fired up the smoker. after regulating the smoke we hung the bacon in the smoker for 7 hours.

Dinner Saturday night was going to be bacon and eggs. Nope. The bacon was too salty to eat. It had a beautiful smokey flavour but was completely overpowered by the salt. I'm not sure where I went wrong. Maybe I cured it for too long. Maybe too much salt. Maybe my rinsing technique. I'll do some more research. Any advice is welcome.

It's a bummer when things don't quite go as planned but I love a challenge and this salty bacon won't beat me!

Tash xxxx

The faces behind...

My beautiful husband Ben and our three kids Eden, Kobi and Maya are my constant support and inspiration behind A Plot in Common.

Fortunately we all have a deep love for food, cooking and eating so it seems to be a natural progression to be doing this together.

Although our love for food is not new. Growing our food is. It has been really interesting watching how each of us has approached this new way of life. The new interests and love for things, the things that have been confronting or of no interest. I find it fascinating.

Last year I had the privilege of home schooling Eden, Kobi and Maya for the year. We set up a classroom in the old barn and had an incredible time. It gave us all a chance to settle in to the farm and learn a whole lot of stuff together and about each other. It  gave us a real opportunity to explore our interests. I loved it.

I love so much learning, trying, failing and succeeding with these 4 incredible people.

Tash xxx

Start with WHY

I watched this fascinating Ted Talks segment yesterday which made me start to think that I should share with you more about the WHY of A Plot in Common, more so than the WHAT and HOW.

There are many reasons for my WHY, but here are two.

Firstly, I've touched on the incredible joy and satisfaction that this farm has given us. The recently new journey in growing our own food and what that means to us. To give others the opportunity to grow food, make a connection with their food, and make that one less trip to the supermarket, would make me deeply happy!!

Secondly,  I have become very passionate and concerned, like many of us, in where we as 'consuming beasts' are headed. So I hope by opening my world to others we might reassess our consumption and think more about giving and sharing....

There are so many ways we can GROW, don't you agree?

Tash xxxx

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The grow page

  I've decided to use this page as a place to keep you updated on how we are 'growing' here at A Plot in Common. It will, I suppose, be a blog but with more videos and photos than words. I'm not much of a writer so I will make up for it will lots of visuals!

I hope that this page will give you ideas, inspiration and a sense of being a part of our farm.

This is a new and exciting venture that we hope we can share with as many people as possible.

Welcome to A Plot in Common!

Tash xxx

Our first strawberry plot

Today we built a strawberry plot, planting strawberry runners. Here is a short video.