An absence of vampires …

This week we harvested our first major crop of garlic (Allium sativum) that Cath planted in mid-winter. While garlic is a powerful little wellness shot that has been valued for its culinary and medicinal properties since the ancient Egyptians, I confess to being more interested in its role as a vampire deterrent. The connection between garlic and vampires likely originated in Eastern Europe, where vampires were believed to be malevolent spirits who preyed on the living. Garlic’s pungent smell and association with purity made it a natural choice in the fight against these supernatural entities. Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897) immortalized the humble bulb with one of his key protagonists, Professor Abraham Van Helsing, employing garlic as a primary weapon against Count Dracula.

Vampire repellent

Looking at our vast array of garlic bulbs led me quite naturally down the rabbit hole of English collective nouns. I mean who can resist delving into the origins of an unkindness of ravens or a parliament of owls. Imagine my disappointment when discovering that the collective noun for vampires is a coven, a word that traditionally refers to a gathering of witches. Even more unsatisfactory is that garlic does not appear to have a  collective noun that refers to an entire crop of the stuff and not to the individual cloves. I then spent a few happy, idle moments dreaming up some suggestions. The best I could come up with was a reek of garlic, a phrase that very accurately describes the state of our shed at present.  Whatever the collective noun for vampires, it is quite certain there will be an absence of them in our shed for a while.

Garlic is not the only current success story in the veggie garden. The greenhouse is putting out a nice crop of tomatoes and already the freezer is starting to bulge with tomato-based sauces. The broad bean season has just come to end with the final harvest about to be frozen. Elsewhere, we have an abundance of greens for salads and our strawberries have been excellent. Of course, it is also the time of the year when the apples start to come on stream. Our earliest ripening apple tree, the Vista Bella, has had a bumper year giving us about 11kg of fruit that we have just turned into 5 litres or so of juice. The first stage of making cider, the fermentation process, is now underway and we should be bottling the result in just over a month's time. 

Tomatoes, broad beans, lettuce and some shy strawberries

  Vista Bella juice fermenting and some reserved for priming when bottled

The builders are back after a very short break for Christmas and New Year. The first major milestone for the new year has been the installation of the windows. The windows and doors have been made by a local company out of solid Tas oak, a commercial name that refers to the hardwood produced by three species of Tasmanian Eucalyptus trees, namely, Eucalyptus regnans (mountain ash, swamp gum), Eucalyptus obliqua (messmate, stringy bark) and Eucalyptus delegatensis (alpine ash). The windows look sensational, and it is fun prowling around after the builders have left to admire the views over the Huon from our new living areas. Unfortunately, the scaffolding around the outside of the house is not conducive to a great photo of the windows.

Kitchen window with frame for the french doors into the dining room visible

 

 French doors for the dining room waiting to be hung

 

Luckily we have had a run of excellent weather and we are hopeful our good fortune will continue and allow some key trades to get on site and maintain the excellent rate of progress ...