AN ABUNDANCE OF BEETROOT

I only grow one crop of beetroot each year in my garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B and usually one packet of seeds will germinate enough seedlings to meet my requirements. Some seed suppliers now provide seed on tape, perfectly spaced for planting and all that is required is that you lay out the tape in rows, cover with soil, press down and keep moist until the seedlings appear. As beetroot have rather a large, rough seed I don’t have any difficulty spacing mine in a shallow furrow. Australians enjoy eating beetroot as a pickled salad vegetable and it is said that Australia is the only country where McDonalds have been obliged to add a slice of pickled beetroot to their hamburgers.

Every spring I plant a crop in my garden at Glen Aplin, harvest that crop in the summer and then spend a couple of days preserving the crop as pickled beetroot.

Boiled Beetroot

The tops are removed from the beetroot, they are placed in a large pot, covered in water and boiled until tender. The time will depend on the size of the beetroot. My crop will provide beetroot of different sizes, so I grade them prior to boiling. When a skewer easily penetrates the beet, it is cooked. Drain and cool. Read the rest of this entry »

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THE URGE TO WRITE

All my life I have had an urge to write and this desire was validated in 1986 when I answered the questionaire to ascertain my personality and temperament type according to Myers/Briggs. I discovered that I was an INFP personality type. It is necessary here to explain a little about the different types who make up the population in a community. Myers/Briggs divided people into four types and then broke those four types into another four sub-types, thus giving us a group of sixteen different types. These types are likened to the Gods. The Sensing/Perceiving Dionysian types are ACTION motivated and make up 38% of the population. The  Sensing/Judgmental Epimethean types are WORK motivated and comprise another 38%. The less common Intuitive/Thinking Promethean types use the power of their MIND and consist of about 12% of the population and are to be found in scientific and professional occupations.  The Dionysian SPs, the Epimethean SJs and the Promethean NTs pursue ordinary goals, the goals of the remaining 12% the Intuitive/Feeling Apollonians cannot be seen as other than extraordinary. Because there are more Extraverted than Introverted people, the Ns as they are called, make up the smallest proportion within each group. Thus the INTJ, INFJ, INTP and the INFP are the rare ones, each only occurring in 1% of the population. To understand an INFJ or INFP you must understand their cause for they are SPIRIT motivated. All the NF types have good communication skills, but tend to prefer different forms of writing. The INFJ types write poetry; ENFPs are good at writing advertising and screen plays; ENFJs make crusading and inquisitive journalists, while novelists are frequently found amongst the INFPs.

Every person will have a variation in their scoring on the questionaire. I found that my highest score was for Intuition, meaning that I was lacking in the Sensory area. My lowest score was for Perception which indicated that I wasn’t totally without Judgmental characteristics. When I knew my weaknesses and strengths it helped me to accept my weaknesses and develop management methods. In a world where 76% of the population is Sensing, I often appear slow and clumsy as I work out which way to achieve the desired result. As an example I taught myself the rule, “Lefty loosy, righty tighty.” Now when faced with a stop-cock, a round tap, I think, “Turn to the left to loosen, turn to the right to close it tight.”

It has been a great advantage to me to have a partner, my husband Eberhard, who is an ISTJ. He knows I am an imaginative dreamer. His type make great managers and he frequently fulfills the role of my supervisor.

Eberhard and Fay, June 2006

Learning that all the Apollonian NF types practiced writing as a creative form, validated my desire to read and write. Now I understood why I had roamed the hills as a child seeking to be alone so I could daydream in peace. I understood why I wasn’t competitive and didn’t like to play card games with my sisters, preferring a quiet corner where I could bury my head in a book. Read the rest of this entry »

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SUCCESS BREEDS SUCCESS

It can be said that nothing succeeds like success. Once a successful outcome has been achieved more successes will automatically follow. Das Helwig Haus B&B on the Granite Belt near Stanthorpe in southern Queensland was named by the journalists of The Courier-Mail newspaper in 1998 as the Best B&B in the Sunshine State. As our fame spread every journalist who visited the Granite Belt chose to write about our Bed and Breakfast home or my garden.

Back in the 1980s when I had lived at Dalby, I had begun a course called Writing for the Media from the TAFE College in Adelaide. The knowledge I gained was to assist me enormously. I could write advertisements and by 1998 had I designed our website layout for http://www.webstation.com.au/accom/helwig

When contacted by SBS TV The Food Lovers Guide to Australia asking for details of our  German style Christmas in July dinners I wrote a TV script of how we spent our days. The presenter arrived carrying my script in her hand and proceeded to follow it during their two day stay.

Eberhard is filmed preparing a goose.

Eberhard joked with the crew, “What is the difference between a cook and a chef? A cook does his own washing up. I do my washing up!” Read the rest of this entry »

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AN ABUNDANCE OF SWEET CORN

As a child the only corn I knew was maize. My father always planted a plot of this corn, much of which was fed to the pigs. If it was picked young while the kernels were still milky with juice it could be boiled and served for a dinner vegetable, but my favorite treat was to roll the young cobs across the hot metal top of our wood burning stove until some of the kernels blackened. Then I would sprinkle the cob with salt, slather it with butter and go outside to chew every last kernel off the cob while butter ran down my chin.

Back about 1983 I spent a week holidaying in Fiji at one of the expensive beach side resorts. I had slept  too late to take any of the Saturday morning excursions organized for tourists, but found the Fijian entertainment manager in the lobby trying to put together a trip for his own amusement. With nothing else to do I accepted his invitation to join him and a few other stragglers, to attend a football match in Sigatoka. We all piled into a little bus, then made a side trip to collect the children of his family, before taking the road through sugar plantations over the hills to Sigatoka. The football field was a bare area of grass surrounded by a high ring of corrugated iron sheeting. Young lads perched, seated on their rubber flip-flop sandals on this sharp edge. Men had climbed trees and were sitting on all roofs  that offered a view. We were led by our guide through a muddy area where forty-four gallon former fuel drums, set over fires, were boiling water with corn cobs still in their husks. The Fijian locals were buying this corn on the cob, pulling off the husks, dropping these on the ground, munching off the corn kernels and then dropping the chewed cob to join the other refuse under foot. I reminded me of my father’s muddy pig pens.

By the time I had my own garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B and began growing vegetables the seed of sweet corn was readily available. Now there are many seed varieties from which you can choose.  While seed packets give instructions about the distance apart and the depth to plant seed it is important to note that corn is wind pollinated and should be planted in squares, not long lines.

Sweet Corn growing at Das Helwig Haus B&B

Read the rest of this entry »

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A NEW START

A successful business has three essential components.

• A good product
• Good financial management
• Good marketing

A good financial manager and a good marketer are never found in the same person. My husband, Eberhard, is a work motivated Introverted, Sensing, Thinking and Judgmental personality/temperament type – an ISTJ. This type are the salt of the earth and make great middle managers, school inspectors or hospital matrons.

I am an Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling and Perceptive type – an INFP – a spirit motivated person. Although rare in number this type are to be found in nurturing positions as teachers, nurses and missionaries, but they also have a capacity for creativity and drama as actors or writers.

There are values that Eberhard and I have in common like we are scrupulously honest, but apart from the Introversion of preferring small groups of people over large crowds, we are opposites in many ways. My reading of psychology helped me greatly to understand the motivation of my husband, especially his work related values and how to partner him in a joint business. We developed a clear demarcation of duties, recognizing the strengths and weaknesses that each possessed.

Eberhard managed our finances and the nitt gritty matters of keeping everything functioning smoothly.  I am the holistic thinker looking to the future and planning our marketing – a visionary. I chose to call our Bed and Breakfast home Das Helwig Haus B&B - The Helwig House; to provide a German decor, German music and German food. Thus I differentiated it from every Honeysuckle Cottage, Apple Blossom Inn or Camellia Cabin in the district.

Das Helwig Haus B&B

After moving to the Granite Belt my personality began to bloom. Here no one knew my father, my former husband or my children. For the first time I was not seen as a daughter, wife or mother, but as an intelligent, hard working woman to be valued as a person. Already in his sixties, Eberhard had achieved most of his goals in life and was willing to support me while I followed my dreams. In 1995 I was asked to contribute to the tourism community by standing for election as a Director of the Southern Downs Tourism Board. Read the rest of this entry »

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A FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL

From the very beginning of writing this Travels in Life series my focus as been on my desire to read, write and speak eloquently.  I have written about my country childhood deprived of music and books. I’ve have written about my twenty-five year marriage when I was kept so busy that I found it almost impossible to read or study.

When my marriage ended I began a two year fight to avoid bankruptcy, selling my home, the factory and attempting to sell my farm in an endeavour to pay the debts which had been incurred in my name. Just as joint assets may be divided for a divorce settlement, the Family Law Court also considers such as debts as were in my name, joint debts of the marriage. In addition, my husband had signed a guarantee to meet any shortfall when purchasing the factory.  His wealth of more than a million dollars was tied up in family trusts within the transport company controlled by his father, uncle and brother. This meant that I wasn’t fighting for my rights against one runaway husband, but against four ruthless men determined to protect their family assets. Read the rest of this entry »

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