AN ABUNDANCE OF APPLES

All my readers who have down loaded the free E-book The Summer of the Morning Star will know that I turn my home Das Helwig Haus B&B into a ‘home away from home’ for Korean backpackers in the summer and autumn months. 2010 is the fifth year that I have done so. As these young people are all on Work/Travel visas and are allowed to work for two years in Australia some return to my home for a second year. Usually they are university graduates aged between 25 and 30 years who have had difficulty getting a job in South Korea. Not only do they earn and save money while in Australia they also study to improve their spoken English.  Some believe the added maturity, proven work ability and additional language skills will enable them to find a job when they return to South Korea.  Others plan to return to Australia for a third year on an educational visa with their saved money to undertake training within Australia to fill gaps amongst our skilled workers.

Korean Backpackers

The above photo shows a group of Koreans enjoying a barbecue meal in out gazebo in 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

DAS HELWIG HAUS B&B

It was in November of 1992 that we purchased these 32 acres at 113 Mt. Stirling Road, Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt - the cool mountain district of southern Queensland. Our aim was to establish a Bed and Breakfast business to provide us with a ‘way of life’ during our older years. Happily, we were successful. On the 3rd July this week my husband, Eberhard, reached 83 years of age. I am now in my 70th year. We have reached the reluctant decision that it is time to sell our business and retire. It is unlikely that I will ever truly retire, as once I no longer have the physical work associated with this business, I’ll be able to give more time to writing and sharing with my readers the knowledge I have gained. Nonetheless as Eberhard is 14 years older than me I am expecting that he will need more full time care in the years ahead.

Eberhard

The photo above of Eberhard was taken last December when his heart failed. He was airlifted to a Brisbane hospital by helicopter where a cardiologist inserted a pacemaker to keep his heart beating. He made an excellent recovery. Read the rest of this entry »

CHRISTMAS AT DAS HELWIG HAUS B&B

I have been blessed by the arrival of a useful young Korean man called Jerry, who majored at a Korean University in tourism. When he returns to Korea he plans to work for an Uncle who has a resort on the hills overlooking the eastern sea towards Japan. Jerry told me that I was the ‘busiest’ grandmother he had ever seen. I think he was referring to the amount of work I do. I have found him helpful at cleaning bathrooms, hanging out washing and pressing sheets. He is excellent with meal service too, cleaning up the kitchen and packing the dishwasher after meals. He is a Wwoofer - a Willing Worker on Organic Farms and came to me expecting to undertake garden work. www.wwoof.com.au There will be plenty of that! Now he says he is delighted to be here as he has found himself gaining experience in a tourism business. The photo below shows Jerry emptying compost onto a garden patch where I’ll plant potatoes and sweet-corn next spring.

Korean Jerry

I’ve had an exhausting time since my brief days of rest and recreation in Hong Kong as I’ve been preparing for our winter season when every Saturday night I serve a German style, roast goose Christmas dinner to our in-house guests. This is our 17th year of providing Bed and Breakfast, plus a Saturday night dinner for our guests at Das Helwig Haus B&B who come to visit the sixty wineries of the Granite Belt. Read the rest of this entry »

AN ABUNDANCE OF TOMATOES

Although I grow organic tomatoes in my garden they are mostly for salad use. I find that the cherry tomatoes have less insect problems than the commercial varieties. My garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland is surrounded by commercial fruit orchards and vegetable farms. The down side of this is that all the insect pests manage to find breeding spots every year, hence the need for farmers to use insecticides and those pests are happy to move on to my unprotected crops. The plus side is that the farmers will kindly give me their excess produce.

Cherry tomatoes and hot red chilies.

Last year I was allowed to pick tomatoes from fields that had been abandoned. It is commercial practice to only pick tomatoes while they are green. When the price drops, or the farmer thinks the plants are past their prime, the crop will be abandoned as uneconomical. When time permits the farmer will clear his land for a different crop in his rotation plan. Thus, each year I witness the waste of many vegetables as they rot in the field.

Sun ripened Roma tomatoes

The good thing is that as the crop was still green when the farmer abandoned it, these tomatoes had several weeks to ripen naturally in the sun, free of insecticides. . Read the rest of this entry »

AN ABUNDANCE OF POTATOES.

With a bit of luck I can manage to grow several crops of potatoes each year, planting the first seed potatoes in  October with a further planting after Christmas. Potatoes will handle quite rough soil so are a good crop to put into new ground. They are not a deep rooted plant like carrots, which will push down into the soil. Instead, the tubers grow out from the original seed potato. It is necessary to hill them as the plants grow to cover the young tubers. If you keep building up the soil around the stem of the plant they will continue to make fresh tubers in ever increasing layers. This may also be done by creating a support for the soil with rubber tires mounted on rubber tires.  This is a great way of cropping for people with limited gardening space. Using this method it is also possible to grow potatoes in the milder winter climates, providing the tops are covered each night against frost.

Potatoes are well suited to growing in furrows which can be flooded with a garden hose and is the way I prefer to grow mine. To get an early start this year I planted two rows of seed potatoes in October amongst the red Flanders poppies in my Remembrance Field at Das Helwig Haus B&B at Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland.

Potato rows

Three young Koreans came in November to work for me as WWOOFers - Willing Workers on Organic Farms and as the poppies finished flowering they removed them and hilled the potatoes. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

AN ABUNDANT SUMMER BEGINS.

Is it possible that our Queensland climate could be reverting to the type of summer weather this state hasn’t experienced for two decades? It is shaping up that way with excellent rain on the Granite Belt and a devastating storm hitting Brisbane a few days after my last Red November garden tour. Now my garden is growing like a jungle and the neigbour’s cattle are happily grazing our grass land. The Severn River is flowing and our dams are full.

I set out to take a walk with my camera on Saturday afternoon and met our flock of geese marching home to be penned for the night safe from foxes and other predators. They are always rewarded with a handful of cracked corn to encourage their return, although as a grazing bird their diet consists mainly of grasses and herbage.

Geese coming home.

I was heading down to photograph one of the dams when I began to see the occasional speckle of a white field mushrooms amongst the grass, so promptly returned for a basket and knife. Read the rest of this entry »