February 2016

The drought continues, though a recent couple of days of fabulous rain (and some not-so-fabulous wind), has been a blessed relief.  I had got to the point of considering a rain dance.  The moisture might have to last for a while though, as no more rain is on the long term forecast.  The ground is very very dry, and that’s knocked back the pasture growth.  Peter has been out and done some paddock topping of the dead, straggly grass, using the grass cutter attached to the car.   There still seems to be enough greenery underneath to keep the cows and sheep satisfied, though we’re moving them around quite often. 

Last years’ lambs, like their predecessors, were growing huge.  As the boys hadn’t been castrated, we didn’t have the leeway of waiting too long to get them on the menu, as they seemed to be sexually maturing.  The home kill man came and took 3 ram lambs from last year, plus the remaining ram from the year before who’d escaped the chop by accident (our mistake).  That leaves us with the 3 original ewes, last year’s ewe lamb and ‘Leggy’.  Carol and Karyn are having a lamb each, and we’ve sent one to the butchers for ourselves.  Peter’s butchered the last one at home.  Aside from a few choice cuts, he’s made lots of mince that will be made into lots of sausages.  Maggie loves being a butcher’s dog, but even she got full up!

Online lamb sausage recipes seem to be quite thin on the ground.  There are recipes that include rusk, though most suggest that breadcrumbs work as well.  In the past I’ve used breadcrumbs or oatmeal, as I couldn’t get hold of rusk.  Now I’ve discovered that rusk is easy to make – basically a biscuit that is baked and dried and then blitzed.  Rusk absorbs 1.5 times its own volume of liquid, whereas breadcrumbs only absorb their own volume.  As lamb sausages are fattier (at least they are when I make them), hopefully this will work well.  The rusk can be seasoned with herbs and spices which help hold the flavour in the sausage, rather than it leaking out with the fat.

Most of the soft fruit is done, though the blackberries are on a roll and I can still pick a few redcurrants when I trawl through the undergrowth.  Plums are go too, and in huge abundance.  I’ve had to think outside the square (well at least as far as alcohol) to find ways of using them.  Plum Schnapps was an obvious solution, so there’s a jar each of Hawera plums and the unknown variety that was already on the property (possibly Omega).  I came across a recipe for blackcurrant schnapps too, so that’s busy infusing alongside some stunning blackcurrant liqueur that was already made using a ‘River Cottage’ recipe.  Whilst foraging in the orchard, it was a happy discovery that the damsons were also ripe.  There are 3 jars of damson gin now, 2 sweetened with a little sugar, and the other with honey.  I couldn’t find any recipes that included honey at the outset of the process like this, so it’s an experiment.  It’s already looking murky, whereas the sugared ones are a glorious pink/purple and crystal clear.  Here’s hoping not a disaster.  Something tells me there’s going to be rather a lot of fruity liqueurs making their way into the pantry.  It isn’t even sloe or quince season yet.  It puts me in mind of a quote from a home wine-making book: ‘Five gallons are as easy to make as one, and last nearly twice as long.’

The other stone-fruits are maturing nicely.  Apples and pears are nearly there, though they’ve seemed nearly there for ages.  Every now and then I check out a few, but they’re still solid and with white pips, so a little more patience is required.  There are plenty of windfalls too.  The orchard trees have had some damage in the form of branches knocked off by enthusiastic sheep or blown down by the wind – creating a special treat for the cows in addition to the windfalls.  The pasture in there has been partly munched by sheep, and is generally overgrown and raggedy.  Optimistically it won’t be too many years before it comes right, when the trees form a canopy and the pasture growth can be grazed by sheep all year round.  In the meantime it’ll just have to be a case of beauty being in the eyes of the beholder.

The frogs have already produced tadpoles that are now a good inch long.  Peter captured another frog in the same drain at work, this time a juvenile.  It went into the old bath pond (rather than the stock trough pond which the older frogs have opted for) and has managed to survive the last few days.  So far so good.  The ponds are a joy, always a honey pot for wildlife traffic.  Insects are abundant and cicadas are loud.  Peter has put in Paradise fish and White Cloud Mountain Minnows - previously old fish tank favourites.  It’s mostly possible to spot some of them (even by me who’s usually less than observant).  The temperate White Clouds had overwintered in the half barrel-turned-pond in Madame Cholet before it got too hot in there. 

Only one chick made it, and is growing beautifully.  It’s in a run with its mum and Auntie – the other hen that went broody but none of her chicks survived.  We were going to move Auntie into the run with Cornelius and the other 2 hens, but she was skinny and bedraggled from her weeks of fruitless brooding.  There isn’t any animosity between her and the other hen and chick, and we thought it best to keep them together so that they can all be fattened up before being returned to the pecking order.  It seems to be working.  One day we’ll put them all back together, but no hurry for that.

Karyn has been a treasure and helped with some gardening whilst I’ve been incapacitated.  She even helped to tidy up the pumpkin patch – quite a big ask of a pumpkinophobe!  We chopped off multiple rampant tendrils, but are still left with more pumpkins than you can shake a stick at.  Madame Cholet was next on the list, and Karyn heroically hacked down some of the flowering plants that were taking over.  The compost heap has never been so beautiful, and there was hidden treasure in the form of ripe tomatoes and peppers which had previously been obscured by the humongous cosmos and marigolds.

Much of the 24 litres of delectable honey has been bottled.  It’s been put in old jars with their labels painstakingly scrubbed off, then labelled ‘Ti Kouka Raw Honey’.  It makes fantastic gift currency.  What was surplus to the jars was bottled in 1-litre Agee jars (x10 of them).  It can be used for topping up or in baking or mead-making.  It’s such a luxury to have unlimited honey.  It’s added to my foraged breakfast smoothie, sweetening the seasonal fruit, greens, nuts, seeds and home-made kefir.

I’ve managed to weed the paths between the beds in the vege garden, but the weeds are already re-establishing themselves.  I’m working my way through the beds too, but progress has been slow and the weeds are winning.   Among the usual weedy suspects are parsley, fennel, tomato and kale seedlings, springing up everywhere and making the task of weeding more enjoyable.  Where I’ve managed to do some clearing, winter crops have been planted.  Sprouts, celery, spinach and silver beet are in, with peas, cabbage, cauliflower and carrots still waiting for their slot.

Despite the weeds, the vege garden is pretty productive.  Carrots and corn are nearly fat enough to eat.  We’re picking beetroots, beans and courgettes, and a few varieties of brassicas and greens.  Managing to coordinate lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers is a triumph for me.  The melons didn’t come to anything (again), and though the aubergines are beautiful plants with gorgeous purple flowers, they haven’t fruited.  Must research this as I’ve never successfully grown them.  A few batches of tomato sauce are already in the freezer.  It’s interesting that the tunnel house tomatoes have ripened no sooner than those planted outside.  Maybe that’s more common in the hotter summers.

Whilst I indulge the Good Life here in paradise, it feels reassuringly cut off from the rest of the mad world.  The rise of Donald Trump right now is truly horrifying – why do so many people rank arrogance as a quality?  Thank goodness there are folk like Jake Bailey to restore our faith in humanity.  He’s head boy at a Christchurch school and was recently diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer.  His prize-giving speech went viral:  "Here's the thing, none of us get out of life alive. So be gallant, be great, be gracious and be grateful for the opportunities that you have."  Such wise and beautiful words, which were enhanced by the school principal’s observation that ‘humility is so much more powerful than arrogance’.  I’m deeply deeply privileged to have the opportunity to live this life on the land.  To be surrounded by beauty and abundance.  To love and be loved.  Now – what’s for tea?

January 2016

Our Christmas guests – Kaja and co, and Dave – arrived safely and happily and shared Christmas with us.  The weather was in holiday-mode too – lots of sunshine and heat.  Dave took us out to see the new Star Wars film (excellent) and travelled back to Christchurch with Lucas, to try his luck with finding work there.  Kaja, Jeremy, Michael and Melissa stayed awhile with us at home, plus a few nights at Picton Top Ten camp site.  Then they travelled to Kaikoura and Hanmer before flying home from Christchurch.  The twins were toddlers the last time we saw them, now they’re all grown up to 8 years old!  And talking of grown up, Lucas was 21 years old on January 13^th.  It’s hard not to dwell on being an old git.  I've recently had some surgery which has curtailed my garden activities to nearly nothing for now.  Hopefully that'll improve in the next few weeks while I watch everything grow and mature.  And hopefully that won't be too much of a frustrating prospect. 

Weeding remains a momentous task.  A break from the garden whilst we had visitors, followed by a week’s work on the West Coast has given the weeds free reign.  It seems they’ve thoroughly enjoyed themselves, rampaging through the beds, hedges and paths.  Despite the quantity, they haven’t got themselves too well established so are relatively easy to pull.  Grass and clover are always the most tricky to get rid of, though the clover redeems itself by fixing nitrogen into the soil.  Wild sorrel is also a pain in the arse as it happily leaves its roots behind.  The rest I’m mostly rather fond of, even the thistles. The photo is happily a 'before' shot'.

The paddocks are dry, dry, dry.  Peter’s resuscitated the grass cutter and plans to do some topping of the dry grass in the paddocks which weren’t used for hay.  Underneath the dry stalks, they’re actually not too bad – lots of clover (white and red) coming through.  We’re ever hopeful that we’ll get a good dousing of rain anytime soon, but that’s more optimistic than realistic.  The soft fruit has come of age and produced a fabulous crop.  Only the blueberries were totally stripped by the birds.  They shared the remaining fruits.  Raspberries, boysenberries, red, black and white currants, and amazing gooseberries are prolific and delicious.  

                                                                    There are 2 kinds of the latter – the usual pinky purple large desert gooseberries, and new this year, a much smaller grape-like dark purple variety which is very sweet with a tangy gooseberry after-taste.  Totally yum, but no idea about the variety - perhaps they are just an ordinary desert gooseberries that have responded to the drought.  It doesn't explain why there are also ordinary desert gooseberries which look like they're supposed to.   A serendipitous mystery indeed.

The vege garden is magnificent, and that’s not just the weeds.  Plenty of greens, beetroot and snow peas so far.  Corn, carrots, onions and beans are fattening up nicely.  More onions and leeks planted.  The low circular hedges are coming away too, even starting to look like hedges and in need of regular trimming.  The new trees in the horse arena are doing OK too.  One of the olives is dead, but the rest are thriving and so are the citrus.  The hedging Teuchrium and Corokia are also coming away and already flowering.  More flowers for the birds and the bees!

The orchard trees are mostly heaving with fruit.  It’s a glorious sight, and it’s particularly pleasant to be out there in the cool of the early evening.  Some branches have had to be tied onto their stakes to support the weight of the fruit.  I’ve done a bit of thinning, but have to admit that thinning fruit is a task I find difficult.  It just feels so counter-intuitive and a bit unkind.  The cherries have been scoffed by the birds – again.  Still didn’t get round to netting them, oops.  But there are loads of plums, peaches, apples and pears of many varieties.  There’s a good crop of Bramley apples for pies and crumbles, and more Foxwood Broxwelp cider apples than you can shake a stick at.  Must dig out a cider recipe.  The pear trees that arch to make the entrance to the veg garden have fruited well for the first time.  Can't wait to see what they taste like.  The red pears have been most prolific, and I particularly like the way that a couple of them dangle down from on high like a pair of testicles.  I'm too short to be bothered, but the extra height that the boys have has led to several complaints about being biffed on the head as they enter the veg arena!! 

Peter has made progress on the chicken housing, and one side of the big original run is complete.  It is currently housing Cornelius and 2 of his harem.  The other 2 hens have been sitting on eggs for a while.  So far only four gorgeous fluffy bundles have hatched, 2 of these have sadly disappeared and it’s not looking promising for any others to hatch.  We don't really need more chooks, but must try and work out what's gone wrong this year.  We weren't really ready for chicks, so the hen house conditions weren't ideal.  Plus we suspect that rats may be responsible for some of the losses - a tricky problem to resolve.

Madame Cholet is looking after her charges admirably.  The tunnel house is full of salad plants (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and aubergines) and some basil and a few colourful flowers to keep the beneficial insects happy.  The lettuce and cucumber are harvestable, and the others are fruiting up nicely.  It gets very hot in there (40°+) on some of sunniest days, so watering is at least a daily chore.

There’re also salad plantings in the newest keyhole bed.  A few more tomatoes and aubergines.  There were supposed to be more cucumbers there, but it seems my usually robust (haha) labelling system went awry.  There are 5 very healthy plants which may or may not be butternut or crown pumpkins, or gourds.  It’s quite a happy misunderstanding though, as pumpkin varieties need a lot of nourishment, and this bed was the former compost heap.  I do have pumpkins elsewhere in the vege garden, so there may be a pumpkin glut ahead.  There are worse things (eh Karyn??).

Leggy the lamb is looking more majestic than ever – definitely a promising contender for the flock ram.  Here’s hoping he’s not a ‘jaffa’ (that’s an English ‘jaffa’ meaning a seedless orange - a Del-boy classic - rather than a derogatory term for an Aucklander) and that he has many happy years ahead of him.  We also have new wildlife, this time amphibious in the form of a pair of native green bell frogs.  There's a huge wetland area at Peter's work, and he's been trying to catch some for a while.  This pair were inhabiting a drain before he caught them, and they seem to have settled in well.  We have seen them on many occasions, though only briefly before they're aware that we're around.  Their night time croaking is enough to keep us awake at times!

This year I’ve got a fantastic 24 litres of the best honey in the world.  I got several litres before Christmas, and then the remainder in early January.  It was extracted manually – scraping the frames and filtering and sieving the resulting honey/wax mix.  The honey consistency is perfect, and the flavour is amazing.  I wasn’t going to make more mead this year, but since last year's is so delish, and there is so much spare this year, I might just have to make more.  Catastrophic I know, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.  Billy hung up the bee suit and added a mask of Mr Bean inside the netting - it was uncannily spooky in the dusk light.

The bees put on a Christmas Day performance for our guests – a particularly spectacular swarm.  The large swarm took a while to gather and drape themselves on a high branch of the tulip tree.  Before I could decide what to do with them, they were gone.  Amazing that they arrived with the sound of a spitfire, and yet left almost silently.  Thankfully both hives had been varroa treated.  That was late in the season for a swarm, but not as late as the next swarm on January 9^th.  This was a smaller swarm and settled on a delicate branch of the fig tree. It was easy to knock into a cardboard box and has gone to a new home with a novice beekeeper.  The swarm was from the gentler of my hives, so hopefully a good prospect for a 'newbee'.  Since then there've been more swarms, but I'm not in any position to check out what's really happening in there.  Feral swarms don't have much chance of survival because of varroa.  Hopefully at least they wouldn't have be carrying too great a varroa load when they swarmed.

Hokitika is a delightful arty crafty place on the West Coast – a cool little town where work was available.  The beach is actually in the town – you just walk through the shops and there it is.  It’s a perfect place to while away some hours, steeped in beautiful coastal and rain forest scenery.  Luckily for me, the weather was completely charming – hot, sunny and barely a breeze.  The usual rains came on the day I left.  Unluckily for me I was on call.  Many of the most gorgeous places don’t receive a cell phone signal, so I couldn’t really linger.  It was enough to whet my appetite to explore this part of New Zealand without restrictions at a later date.  

One of my favourite Christmas presents (among an impressive range of poo and bee-themed gifts) was a voucher from Billy (aka CEO of Poo-well Ltd).  I’ve traded in my voucher and put the poo on one of the horse arena raised beds.  There are 4 beds which are being built up for planting next year.  Eventually they’ll be closed down and covered in hay, to compost away over winter.  Hopefully they’ll end up with beautiful soil and grow fabulous grains next year.  

Roll on the end of El Nino and for a break from the heat, and roll on a quick recovery so I can get back to the gardening.  Though it's a welcome break from paid work and a blessed relief from worsening health symptoms, I'm not sure how long simply 'smelling the roses' will sustain my soul.  Massive thanks to those who've supported my body and spirits these last few days - you know who you are and I hope you know you're awesome.  

A healthy and happy 2016 to all!

December 2015

This year’s lambs are quietly growing away.  Most of them are shedding reasonably well, but one has perfectly beautifully surpassed himself.  He was promising from the day he was born, but we weren’t sure how he’d end up.  He’s now destined to be our flock ram.   We named him ‘Leggy’ and he was different (in a good way) from his twin brother ‘Fluffy’ and the other ram lambs- i.e. longer-legged and less woolly.  It’ll be a bit unfortunate for him if that name sticks, but at least he’s probably got a life-time of indefinite shagging ahead.

At long last, one of the chooks went broody and is sitting.  She’s currently on 6 eggs, and they’ll be due to hatch in early January.  Of course this means that the other hens have pretty much stopped laying in the interim, or maybe they’re just brilliant at hiding their eggs.  Not really sure why this happens, but it always does.  Hopefully I won’t have to resort to buying eggs for our Christmas Egg-Roulette.

Hay has happened!  Sooner than we thought, but we’re glad to get what we got.  Despite liming this year, we only got 50 bales compared to around 70 last year.  It’s been the same for everyone in the region though, because of the drought.  It’s been the driest November since records began, and December’s not looking too flash either.  We’ll try and buy a dozen more bales to make sure we have enough for winter. 

This winter though, we won’t have to account for Zeus’ appetite.  The home-kill man came, saw, gasped, and did the deed.  Zeus was so big that he had to use his truck pulling-power to turn him over.  His hoof weight must have been literally about a ton because the carcass weight was 512kg.  That’s 512kg of prime, organic, grass-fed beef.  The butchers were pretty impressed with his size too, and with the tenderness of the meat.  It took 4 of us over 3 hours to bag up portions and get them in the freezer.  We had to offload some into Karyn’s freezer, and we’re still waiting for sausages.  Mince has finally returned to the menu!  We were getting quite sick of steaks and joints all the time.  It’s a hard life etc.  Hera and Athena have been a bit jittery since Zeus’ departure, and have been entertaining themselves by chasing the lambs. 

The bees have been ridiculously busy.  I went into the hives to remove the varroa strips, and found them both completely choc-a-bloc of honey and brood.  One hive has definitely swarmed.  I was away in Christchurch and Peter called to say there was a noise like a small aircraft high up in the tulip tree.  He declined the job of clambering up the tree and knocking the swarm off into a box, so alas they were lost.  The hive must have made good its reduced numbers rapidly.  Ideally I should have added another honey box to each hive, but I don’t have any spare equipment.  Instead I took off a few frames (11) and extracted the honey.  11+ litres of the best honey in the world, now potted up and ready to gift.  The next day it rained (hurray) so the empty frames were returned 2 days later.  In that short time the bees from one hive created stalactites of wax comb hanging down from the lid.  The other hive created stalagmites up from the queen excluder.  The beautiful virgin wax was easily snapped off.  It’s immaculate and won’t need to be filtered and strained.  It’ll be ideal for face cream.

The vege garden is growing nicely – weeds and veges all in fine health.  The soft fruit is ripening – strawberries, desert gooseberries, red, black and white currants already in abundance, and raspberries, blueberries, boysenberries and blackberries nearly there.  Some greens are also ready to eat, but most of the rest is just quietly getting there.  There are several artichokes, which should please the bees – I haven’t yet developed a taste for them, but probably I need to persevere with that. 

The figs are coming away, as are most of the orchard tree fruits.  Each of the fruit trees has been blessed with a circle of burned hay around its trunk.  Some of them also had a couple of spades-ful of vermi-compost under the hay.  When I get round to it, they’ll also get a splash of diluted vermi-liquid.  It looks like there’ll be a significant crop this year.  The stone and pip fruit in particular are doing great - can’t wait to get picking.  Maybe in a couple of years we’ll need a ladder.

Flowers are also gloriously abundant.  They’re in the tunnel house, the vege garden and in the flower gardens around the house.  Even the water lily has thrown off its first fat bud.  It’s great to see such a showy riot of colour, even if it’s all a bit haphazard.  And a good feeling to be contributing to the bees’ nectar and pollen sources.  There are always bees – honey and bumble – buzzing around the property.  Shame they're always outnumbered by the sand-flies.

The home-made wine has been re-racked, and some of it is pretty darned good this time, though I say so myself.  The mead is already totally delish, and the pear wine is shaping up beautifully (and possibly approaching ‘Thunderbird’ calibre - you have to be pretty old and quirky to remember this particular ambrosia).  All of the others are promising – even the rhubarb.  Most still have plenty of lees, so not likely to be bottled in the near future.  No hurry though – still plenty of last year’s wines left.

Peter has converted an old wine barrel into a bar-leaner/sun umbrella stand.  It’s a bit rustic and to my eyes, a triumph of craftsmanship.  It will provide some much-needed sun shade and somewhere on which to rest our elbows when they’re laden with wine or gin. 

Lucas came home for a weekend and got stuck into the Christmas cake marzipan decorations.  He’ll be back over Christmas, staying in the plush accommodation which is the new tent.  It was erected today, and will have to be dismantled and taken to Picton where we are camping later in the month. 

Sam has been busy with Christmas band stuff.  The photo was taken at the Mistletoe Market, just one of the events that the band attends over the festive season.  He’s also worked a few shifts at the winery with Peter, and more recently he’s working for a flower company in Wairau Valley.  His boss there is the partner of his other new boss at Giesen’s – a wine company who have offered him work over summer before he starts his course, and during key times like vintages.  He seems to have fallen on his feet there.  Hopefully he’ll get enough exam credits to be accepted onto the Viticulture/Wine-making course that he’s applied for.

Billy received a Chief Scout Award at his final scout meeting.  It was presented to him by local MP Stuart Smith.  It marks the end of scouts, although he could go on into Rangers if he wants.  He’s recently finished school for the year and has been helping out big time cleaning up at home in anticipation of our Christmas visitors. 

Any minute now the house will fill.  The Christmas tree is vibrant, decorations are up and food is sorted.  Entertainment plans are made.  Soon it’ll be 2016 but first there’s holiday time to enjoy.  Merry Christmas and happy blessings for the New Year.