You can tell it’s winter here by several measures.

Firstly, and most obviously, I have had time to start a blog of our days filled with edible adventures on Bruny Island.

But there is more than one way to read the mercury; the constant flow of people to our Cellar Door has slowed to rate which lulls us into a feeling of being in control, the range of antique apples we sell juiced has dropped to just a few, the penguins on the Neck are all but gone, an email from the neighbour behind declares their first commercial olive harvest to be a success (200 jars is the guess, and yes we will take them all Owen), the Saint is different - a result of the seasonal change in the milk I’m guessing, the globe artichokes are shooting, the windows upstairs are permanently frosted disguising the fact that I still have not got round to washing them, the garlic is in the ground, the wild slippery jacks across the road are finished (not a great season…where did all the rain go?), the chickens are starting to show a poor return on investment and the majority of the washing up in the sink is soup bowls.

And just a couple of weeks away from the shortest day. The Pagen days are always a lark on Bruny - bumped into Ikea yesterday at the organic stall in the market and he told me there would be a bit of a knees-up at his joint and the north end of the bay. The usual bunch of hippies and ferals. Music, dancing, fire. Great fun. Ikea tells me he is building a labarynth especially for it. I really don’t know what that means.

The colder it gets the more I want to stand around the stove, stirring a pot for hours on end. Of course, I am usually lucky if I have enough time to stir it to prevent it from burning. Instead I end up spending hours scrubbing the burned bottom of the pot.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 7:16 am.