Beware of Animals

 On the roads 'out west' (ie western Queensland and New South Wales) you have to be constantly on the lookout for stock or large wildlife crossing the unfenced roads. In this instance it was cattle, but it could just as easily have been sheep, emus, kangaroos, feral pigs or feral goats.

Sometimes the roads are fenced, but the fences are set back a long way from the road, forming a wide corridor of bush known as the 'long paddock'. These are droving routes, used until very recently when times were hard, to move stock from one station (=ranch) with no grass in a drought, to another many hundreds of kilometres away that has had better weather. The grazier benefitted from the free grass along the way and the government supported the system by providing watering troughs or holes and corrals for overnight stops along the route. See the Wikipedia entry for more information on the history and current situation for these Travelling Stock Routes (as they are officially known).

The cattle mooching across the road at this point are a breed called Santa Gertrudis. They were developed in Texas, from a mix of Bos indicus and B. taurus breeds (ie both Asian and European domestic cattle) to be an excellent all-round breed, resilient in the heat and having high tick resistance. Cattle ticks Rhipicephalus microplus are a terrible problem in Australian herds, causing fever and death in infected animals.  If your stock is in a tick infested area you cannot move them into the controlled or tick free area on the coast without providing a certificate verifying that they have been treated for ticks and inspected.

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A la cuisine hier: I broke the tip of our oyster knife yesterday, opening oysters for lunch.

Pudding was leftover Krakatoa Cake. Originally this was going to be Chocolate Chestnut Soufflé Cake made as a GF dessert for Tim and Gaynor's curry night. However, I made the mistake of trying out my new silicone fluted bundt tin. The cake declined to come out neatly despite my best persuasive techniques, so I made a batch of chestnut cream studded with blueberries as a disguise, to ooze out and over, and rechristened the cake. It tasted fine, but was still clearly deformed. Silicone baking tins really are a waste of money and space, except for the muffin/cupcake sized ones.

I made 2 pints of custard, thus using up half the egg yolks leftover from the cake plus a litre of milk which had reached its use by date. I divided the custard up into 5 batches and it is in the freezer for Ron. Custard doesn't freeze all that well, but if you are careful when you thaw/reheat it, you can serve it without complaint. Low power in the microwave and frequent stops for rigorous stirring is the secret.

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Wood Delivery: Our firewood merchant made an emergency delivery yesterday morning of one and a half stères (we've ordered 10 stères). We had completely run out of wood and it's getting to that time of year. The wood is aged but wet from the rain and will take a few days to dry out again. He's really struggling with the weather. He's delivered all the dry wood and can't get into the forest to pick up the next tree's worth. The ground is too soft to take a vehicle in. Even once he's got it to the yard he needs a spell of fine weather to cut and split it ready for sale.

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Loire Valley Nature: The Identify Your Orchid entry, which had been completely messed up by Blogger changes and stripped of its images, thus rendering it useless, has been completely revamped. It now has images again and hopefully will serve as a jumping off point if you find a wild orchid and want to identify it.

A photo has been added to the Burnet Moth Zygaenidae entry.

A new entry has been added for Ladybirds Coccinellidae.

Some photos have been added to the Azure Bluet Coenagrion puella entry.

A new entry has been added for Bank Vole Myodes glareolus.

A photo has been added to the Swifts, Swallows and Martins entry.

Some photos have been added to the Bee Flies Bombyliidae entry.

A new entry has been added for Black-tailed Skimmer Orthetrum cancellatum.

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Orchard News: I planted garlic yesterday (thank you to Tim and Pauline for the clove).