Welcome back to Moat Cottage,
it's late Autumn and the trees are displaying their beautiful fiery colors, it's nature's last
gift of brightness and warmth as the short cold and gray winter days creep up on us.
My Winter preparations start the Winter before when i'm looking at my seed packets,
seed catalogues, as well as the pantry shelves and deciding what i will be
needing to grow for the year ahead. Then there is the soil preparations, sowing of the seeds,
growing, harvesting and preserving. By the time it gets to the end of Autumn
only the very last of the jobs needs to be done before the change of the seasons.
I'm regularly bringing cut flowers inside, I have vases of cheerfulness all over the cottage.
Having a lot of flowers inside the house at this time of year really helps with
the transition of not being able to spend as much time outside and having to spend more time inside,
they add a beautiful energy to every space that they're in and i put them in all sorts of vases.
The chickens and Muscovy ducks are getting the turnip tops
and some silver beet that i just harvested
it's finally time to harvest the remaining tomato plants as well as the chili plants.
My vegetable garden area is quite protected and we've had temperatures go down to -1
degrees celsius so it is time to get rid of the plants that no longer can tolerate the frosts,
this will make room for new plants to go in for the winter crop.
this also means i finally get to harvest the pumpkins. It wasn't a good year for my pumpkins, I
lost numerous plants, in fact i only had one plant survive, this was due to unnoticed irrigation
issues. I couldn't tell some weren't getting watered as it was a jungle of life over the
summer, i didn't notice until it started to die back and i could see what was actually going on
i've harvested three pumpkins and there is a fourth pumpkin still ripening up
so i'll leave the vine there and if we're lucky we might get that one as well. Thankfully last year
was a successful year so i still actually have a pumpkin that i harvested last year
on the shelf, which i will have to use soon because i can't believe it's lasted this long,
hopefully it's okay on the inside. I have pressure canned pumpkin on the
shelf from the year before when i had an excellent year as well
i also decided to buy four whole pumpkins because they're a good price in the autumn
when they've just been harvested and i would rather have too many than not enough
and for now my pumpkins are ready to cure in the pantry ladder
Most herbs survive my Winter but the last of the frost tender ones get hung,
we've also got plenty of wood and all of the heat sources are well
and truly checked by now and have been going for half of the autumn already,
smoke alarms have new batteries and are working, everyone in the family has enough warm clothes and
shoes although i did realise that i'd be needing new gloves so i've ordered them and they're on
their way. We have plenty of blankets for the family and a few extras for guests. The door
snakes are back out to prevent draughts from under the doors and the heat sacks are ready to heat up
on those cold evenings. When the weather starts warming up in the spring, I use electrical tape
to tape up the switches for the heat lights so that no one accidentally turns on a heat light
because you don't want a heat light on when it's in the 40 degree temperatures heating up the room
so that tape is now removed so that we can now use the heat lamps when we're having showers.
We are always pretty organized with our own supply of water that's off grid
and have plenty of food and medicine and pet supplies as well as spare batteries and toiletries
so it's not actually something we have to really go out of our way
to think about at this time of year but if you're not as
organized or prepared then maybe that's something you could think about getting
and the vehicles are mildly winterized with good tyres and new windscreen wiper blades because
now that it's raining occasionally we might actually need to use them
this is my very own onion marmalade recipe, i've made a video on this so if you want to watch it
then i'll leave the link in the description below for you.
The very last of this season's chili's have been dehydrated and i'm turning them into a powder.
I keep my chili powder on the spice rack so it's near the stove top and
i can use it anytime i feel the need for a bit of extra spice and flavour in my dishes
at this time of year i'm also starting to think about tidying up some of the cupboards,
i know two of my kitchen cupboards look like a cyclone's been through them
so they will need some attention in the near future
any onion marmalade jars that don't seal can be frozen it works out quite well and it lasts for
up to 12 months in the freezer with no problems or you can turn it into a delicious onion tart
i do use ready-made pastry occasionally but this tart is insanely good with
homemade pastry, it's only flour, butter and egg.
i rub the butter into the flour and then mix in the egg
although i live in a cool climate - for Australia,
as far as the world goes it's not cold, it's fairly mild winter that we have
so our preparations aren't as extreme as what some of your preparations would need to be.
We're not getting 10 foot of snow, we're lucky to get one millimeter of snow, it would be so
exciting if it snowed here, occasionally it does but one millimeter would be amazing. It's
not really something we have to think about here. Summer is really what we prepare for, we have the
extreme dry heat and obviously bushfires so that is the season that is for our big preparations
but even though we don't have to have major preparations for winter here, it's still good
to be prepared and make sure the roof is sealed and all the doors and windows work properly and
seal properly and that you do have all the things you're going to need for a cold winter
if you don't have electricity or heating for some reason, you have to have your backup plans
like a generator and plenty of blankets and warm clothes and insulation around your hot water
service so that it doesn't freeze because we still get minus six degrees and that is cold.
This is a fragile pastry, so it's nearly impossible to get it in the dish without breaking,
however it can be easily molded into place, in the greased cooking dish. Once your pastry's in
then pop it in the fridge for an hour before adding the onion marmalade, don't worry about
blind baking the tart casing though, it all cooks well with the marmalade inside.
If you normally heat your hot water up with electricity, then it's a good idea
to have a backup heat source for warming water like a barbecue or a gas stove top
in that case you also need a kettle with a whistle so that you can heat up the water because if you
don't have electricity it's always nice to be able to have a cup of coffee at the very least
thanks for spending your time at Moat Cottage and for sharing my videos on other social platforms,
I really appreciate it. Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next one.