A poem to celebrate the completion of the new packing shed

Journey of a lifetime - By Alison Gotts

Who would have thought it would take twenty one years?
I could have raised a child,
Become a barrister or a town planner.
Instead I chose to be
A mangosteen nurse-maid.
Twenty one years - weeding, feeding, weeding, feeding.
Don’t forget the whipper-snipping
Five whipper-snippers - four slashers - three tractors
Weeding, feeding, weeding, feeding
Feb 99 - Cyclone Rona
Her eye on our orchard
A message received in Tasmania
Gotts, your property destroyed by cyclone
Two hours to get from the front gate to the house
Breadfruit trees like toothpicks
Durian trees -  that dream is dead
The lychee screwed out of the ground and gone
Mangosteens still standing
Leaning at 45 degrees in heavy rain
Get them up – stake them
Thanks Gill and Kellie
That job wasn’t in the house-sitting agreement
Chainsaws, cutting, loading, clearing,
Day after day, month after month.
Am I too old for this?
What if it happens again?
October 2000 - petals on the ground
The first flower
Mangosteens at last
Eleven years hoping
More years creep by - the fruit dribbles out
Hoping, waiting, weeding, feeding
April 2006 - a small commercial crop
Don’t complain
5,000 bucks is better than a kick in the pants
Raining, raining, hoping, waiting, weeding, feeding
No crop – too wet
Is this how I want to spend my life?
Waiting for fruit that never comes
September 2009 - Hot – too hot – no rain
Trees start dying
Brown leaves - dead branches
Stress – mine and theirs
I didn’t plant these trees to die
Heavy rain at last
Flowers - more flowers
Three flowers on one stalk
Twenty one years of waiting
Here it is – so many fruit
Every tree loaded
How to pick them all?
Get organized
Ladders, scales, boxes, pickers,
New packing shed
Paint it purple
Count down to zero
February ‘10
Twenty one years of waiting
Ready for a new journey
FREEEEDOM!

Repairing erosion after the flood with gabions

Last January our creek overflowed its banks, and the walls of the creek undermined our driveway, very close to the house. We discovered that this could be repaired using Gabions - strong wire baskets wired together and filled with rocks and built in stacks, each layer slightly overlapping the layer underneath.It has taken nearly a year to get to this job. Here you can see Digby with Suzy and Alistair, two WWOOFAS from Scotland who are spending Christmas with us, starting the rock layering. Very hot work.

Recipe for mango salsa to serve with grilled prawns

This recipe is a winner - we tried it at our staff christmas party and it tasted excellent. . Serve mango salsa on the side with prawns or duck breast or scallops. We ate the salsa with cooked prawns - the hot spicy and sweet flavour of the salso worked well with the prawns. The recipe comes from Stephanie Alexander - 'The Cook's Companion'. Thankyou Stephanie!

Mango salsa

Ingredients
1 mango peeled and diced
2 slices of red onion chopped very finely
1 fresh red chilli, seeded and finely chopped
1/4 cup of chopped fresh mint leaves
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt
freshly ground black pepper

Method
Combine all ingredients and allow to stand for several hours before using.
We think that vietnamese mint would work well instead of normal mint too.

Drinking Mango Bellinis for Xmas

A christmas celebration with all our workers - we couldnt do it without the team.

Make a soursop daiquiri for christmas - here is the recipe

Prepare the fruit to get the juice
The soursop should be avocado soft but not squishy. Hold the fruit with one hand and peel away the skin with other hand. Once you have removed as much skin as possible, break the ripe fruit open, and remove the core and the flesh with your hands. Place the flesh in a mouli or a sieve and push the fruit through the mesh so that the seeds and pulp are left behind and the juice is collected underneath.

The cocktail ingredients
60 ml juice, as prepared above
45 ml bacardi rum
15 ml white curacao
5-8 ice cubes
a maraschino cherry for decoration

Method
Place all ingregients in a blender and blend until smooth, pour into a large cocktail galss and decorate with cherry. Yum!

Soursop Juice

We are currently researching a new product to add to our jams - soursop juice. We have received many requests for fresh soursop and juice from people looking for the fruit as a medication against cancer. Research has shown that the fruit, the bark and the leaves all have medicinal properties and anti-oxidants which have shown promise against cancer cells.

It is very difficult to send fresh soursop to the market as it is very perishable. It is also difficult to preserve the juice without adding sugar. We have imported a large pressure cooker from the US and completed a trial batch of bottling the juice and then heating it to extremely high temperatures to kill the bacteria. We are still testing the product to determine its USE BY date, but it appears to be at least a couple of months.

Hopefully this product may meet some of the requests we receive.