Outdoor Kitchen

A dedicated space for processing, preserving and making!

I’ve always wanted to have a space outside of the house to process garden produce. This space is beyond my expectations! The video below I took the other day while I was separating my milk. I’ve just weaned my two jersey cows so I’m not separating at the moment as my other two cows don’t give me enough cream. The separated milk goes straight into buckets for the pigs. I’ve started adding clabber to the pigs milk and it stops it from souring in a smelly way. Difficult to explain without seeing it!

We moved to our current farm, Serenity, almost 3 years ago. I thought it was pretty cool when I got an old kitchen sink on a stand that I could have in the garden. I originally thought I’d use it to wash veg before I brought it inside, but really I’ve just used it as a potting bench.

I’ve processed cassava and arrowroot in my inside kitchen and believe me, this stuff makes a mess! Even making pasta, makes a mess and my bench tops aren’t suitable for attaching the pasta machine onto. Then I bought a book by Olia Hercules called Summer Kitchens. In Ukraine and many other countries, all the processing in summer is done outside, and usually a wood stove is used for preserving, so it made sense to have an outside kitchen so that it wouldn’t heat up the house.

Thats what I wanted…..a summer kitchen, but one I could use all year round! My son Edmund recently built an addition onto our house. If you watched the video, you’ll see that I have a lovely long work bench, a double sink and I have power points! And lights! Although I really don’t plan on doing much out there at night time, but it’s nice to have the option. The video walks you through the area and I was separating my milk at the time. I’ve done and will do quite a bit, including the following:

• sauerkraut and other ferments

  

  Being outside means that there’s less mess in my kitchen. The scrappy cabbage leaves can go straight to the chooks

• butter - the butter churn actually clips on to the bench and is so much easier to use on a solid space rather than on my kitchen bench.

• cheesemaking - I haven’t done this yet, so not sure if it’ll be easier to do this inside

• smoking bacon

• we’ve processed roosters and ducks - we use the sink to dunk them in.

• chopped up pumpkins for the pigs

• braided my garlic

  

  This is not all of my harvest, I still have some to pull next month. I grew this from saved garlic and most of the heads are bigger than last years so I’m really happy with it. I don’t think I’ll have as much as last year and I’ve only just run out, so maybe I’ll need to plant more next year.

• Rendering lard and tallow - I do this using a single induction hotplate and it keeps the smell out of the house.

• I'll use this hot plate for soap making, broth making, pressure canning and fowlers preserving - all these things will be better done outside.

It’s still a work in progress and I think I’ll continue to add onto and build in the area. Maybe some more shelves and I may even enclose it a little. I’d really like to build a cob oven. I have a friend who has said he’ll help, so we will turn it into permaculture group activity so others can learn how to do it, and of course, I’ll probably document it here! I have visions of baking bread once a week - cooking a pizza first, then bread, then a roast or a cake or something like that.

Most of the material used is recycled. The roofing iron was new and we got a cement truck in to pour the cement, but the rest is reused. Edmund has a house worth of recycled timber - he bought the salvage rights to a house built 80 odd years ago on the Sunshine Coast. It was made from timber harvested from the land when the family first settled there to establish a dairy farm. It’s beautiful hard wood so it’s quite special to have used it. The sink was found in a friend’s “resource centre”. I’ve got an old table that we’ll repurpose into a general work table.

I am so grateful for this space and love working in it. No doubt you’ll see many more pictures showcasing products made in my own Summer Kitchen.