Late harvest and a rabbit

Nelson the Rabbit is loving the glasshouse which is just as well as it got very cold this last week. She has chosen to spend her nights on a little blanket on the potting bench which I find an odd choice but there you are – I can think like a cow but I cannot think like a rabbit.

Having a rabbit in the house is a new experience for me. But we are all getting over it. Already the dogs have stopped guarding her door in case she escapes and ends up in their mouths by mistake, and though she has given the oregano a good trim ( she can reach it from her area) she has not shown any interest in the lettuce or the kale. And is yet to come down onto the glasshouse floor. Long may that last!

Here is a video I popped up on cecilia_thekitchensgarden – my Instagram. You can see the potting bench above her area.

The combine harvester harvested the corn in the sunset.

The organic white corn was in little islands surrounded in cover crop so the combine harvester left crop circles in the cover crop. You can see that the cold is hitting the cover crop now- soon it will lay down as a golden blanket to protect the soil fir the winter. We have been eating the Daikon radishes too – they are very tasty.

Now the corn has been harvested, Tima was released from her barn diet yesterday evening. As she raced away to check things out I could see that she has indeed lost some weight which is good. She was almost nimble!

It will be interesting to see where she decides to sleep now that it is colder. I wonder if she will go back in with Wai. It is certainly easier to cover them at night if they are together. But I think their divorce is final.

I will be spending a good part of this coming week in Chicago – talking about flour and bread and pastries. Pastries are not really my forte because I do not have the patience (and do not have a sweet tooth) but I know enough to be able to recommend a flour. And it is always fun for me to visit the bakeries and restaurants – I am escorted from bakery to bakery by the Sysco reps. I am literally handed from one rep to another across the course of two days. So it is fun – like a performance – I am on stage in the bakeries and the cars are the green room and I am given the script and meet my fellow actors five minutes before each performance. I love it!

Deep down though I am more of a bread baker. And my sons and I are thinking this could be my retirement job when I go home. Baking bread. So, I will be looking for locally grown and stone ground flour in New Zealand when I am ready to retire. Though I am not ready to retire quite yet!

I am still baking at the mill in between my other jobs. No kitchen – no posh oven. Just my bench top oven in the lunch room, a bowl, and flour, salt and yeast. Water from our water fountain. I maintain that we should not need anything fancy to make a decent loaf of bread – as long as the flour is good.

It is Saturday morning and I am waiting for the sun to come up so I can go out and get a shot of Tima for you. In the meantime I will set up this mornings dough then turn the oven on – it is cold in the house this morning.

Weekend chores. Number 12. Clean Slobbered-on Door

Here you are! I did not even have to go outside. That did not take long for her to be up here vandalising the porch again. Oh my gosh those dirty windows.

That’s better.

Good morning!

Time to get busy.

Cecilia