VISITING THE VEGGIE GARDEN AT WOOLMERS

Imagine a neat formal garden with a diminutive fountain at its very centre; this has two little bronze birds appearing to be permanently drinking in its reflective pool. And the fountain is flanked by four standard mandarin trees, all bearing fruit right now, with low hedges of vivid lavender forming an outer circle.

Then, spreading out from that central circle, are neat beds planted with rows of onions, chives and garlic in one direction and broad beans and celery in another. Neat pyramids support several varieties of beans, and tomatoes and cauliflower are promising a bumper crop. Pumpkins are just starting to send out their runners and will very soon bloom.

There's a large bed of rhubarb ready to be picked and a bed of lettuce of alternating colours and varieties has been planted to form a decorative square.

An enclosed raspberry cage promises a crop of fruit which is destined for jam making to accompany the Servant's Kitchen speciality of scones with cream. (Don't miss this treat!)

Along one side of the garden are espaliered apple trees, planted as a reminder that there were once orchards of cider apples at Woolmers. And everything grown in this garden eventually finds its way into the Servant's Kitchen Cafe.

Separating all the vegetables from the National Rose Garden is a long row of ornamental cherry trees. And beyond that the roses in their thousands are all bursting into glorious bloom and wafting their delicious perfume over everything.

I love to visit the ever-changing veggie garden at Woolmers and I know many visitors enjoy the notice warning them to keep the gate closed so as to prevent Peter Rabbit from getting in!

Check out the website at www.woolmers.com.au

What did those convicts eat?

Especially after I've enjoyed a wonderful (and often filling) meal at the Servant's Kitchen at Woolmers I get to wondering how different things were in days gone by. What, for example, did those convicts assigned to such an estate eat?

When I think about the abundance of wonderful food we can enjoy every day - especially in Tassie - I wonder how different it must have been in the early days of settlement.

It's possible the convicts who were transported here were actually better fed when they arrived than they were in the grindingly poor slums of Victorian England from whence they came.

Those who had originally lived in the country would have been better able to survive as their skills could have included knowledge of edible wild plants, such as nettles, dandelions and wild berries.

Starvation was always a prospect for the poor, especially in the urban slums of England and Ireland. Porridge made with boiled maize, oats or rye in water or milk and vegetable soup bulked out with bread - was what people ate if they were lucky - three times a day.

A family's entire diet might consist of no more than potato parings, vegetable refuse and rotten vegetables made into soup and eaten for want of other food. Or they might have lived chiefly off bread and cheese, with bacon two or three times a week, varied with onions.

At Woolmers there was a thriving veggie garden (just as there is today) and an orchard with many different fruit trees, and at one time there was a sizable apple orchard grown for making cider.

So, when convicts were finally assigned to work at Woolmers or Brickendon or any one of the other large pastoral properties of the day, they were at least much better fed than probably they had ever been before. And they would likely have been well able to produce nourishing meals from a wide variety of meat and vegetables.

Soup seems to have been almost a staple, which could be made from almost anything at all - animal or vegetable.

And the early settlers used wild animals and parts of aminals we would never dream of using now - for example I've seen recipes for stews and soups using wombat and echidna and even for sheep's head soup ..... the mind boggles!

Lovely Lamb Shanks

Simply the most delicious lamb shanks I've ever tasted! And where are these wonders to be found I hear you ask? Well, this is the most popularly requested meal to be had at the Servant's Kitchen at Woolmers Estate near Longford, and was what I enjoyed last week.

Accompanied by mashed potatoes and a most acceptable glass of red wine (Tasmanian of coures!) the lamb shanks were followed by a yummy sticky date pudding. Actually the meal was also accompanied by interesting and stimulating conversation - but that's another story!

Consumed in front of a roaring log fire, we were left feeling very pleased with the world and quite replete! All quite bad for the waist-line of course and now I shall need to be walking a little further and perhaps faster each day - but while I'm doing that I can be planning my next trip for lunch at Woolmers.

Now I wonder which of my friends I should round up for my next delicious (and perhaps equally wicked) expedition.....

Fashionable Devonshire Tea!

"Of course the best Devonshire Teas in the whole of Tassie are at the Servant's Kitchen at Woolmers, near Longford." I said to the visiting food and wine journo. "And it's just amazing how scones and jam and cream are so, so fashionable right now!" said she.

Oh dear! I thought, and there I have been guzzling those very things at every opportunity for years and years without it ever occurring to me that I was showing myself to be completely out of fashion. And been spouting on too, about how delicious the raspberry jam is at Woolmers to everyone who would listen, thus spreading the word far and wide about my lack of fashion conciousness.

"But then everything old is new again." said the journo as she left me.

Whew, thank heaven for that!

So, I'm off to Woolmers right away, to order a round of warm, freshly baked scones with all that lovely home-made raspberry jam and lashings of thick real cream.

And I can be happy and secure in the knowledge that I'm right up there - so, so in fashion!


This blog written by Pixie Lowe http://pixielowe.blogspot.com/