Will Work For Wheat

 There are some things I just cannot grow here in Hawkes Bay. Wheat is one of them. The major wheat growing area in New Zealand is Canterbury in the South Island. There is also the problem of milling small quantities of wheat to make flour. Just in the ‘too hard’ basket for this small time, urban farmer.

Making fresh pasta- eggs, flour and a pasta maker.

 It is very hard to live without wheat, unless you are gluten intolerant. I am bartering for wheat so that I am able to make bread and do all manner of baking to keep my hungry boys happy. I am certainly finding that I am going through a lot of flour with the baking I am doing. At least one loaf of bread comes out of the oven each day. Scones and pikelets are a regular afternoon snack, pancakes are a Sunday breakfast tradition and of course there is the homemade pasta for dinner.

Today I had a garden group visit for a tour of the garden. Normally with these such visits, the groups give me a small gift of perhaps a gift card to a garden centre. When the lady who was booking this tour asked what I would like, I calmly replied “a large bag of flour please”. Bet she has never had that request before! I got to meet some lovely ladies, show them around my garden and get a bag of flour to last me, hopefully until the next garden club visit.

Tonight we had freshly baked bread with some pumpkin soup. The boys have never had soup before so it was interesting to see their responses. The two older boys did very well – the four year old threw a wobbly shouting, “yuk, I hate living off the land!”. I have been pleasantly surprised in how well the bigger boys are doing with trying different foods. They are really embracing the challenge and I am very proud of them.