March 2014

The month began with an unleashing of nature’s forces.  On Sunday 2^nd I was happily planting out winter veg seedlings during the heat of a sweltering 26 degree day.   The next day I drove down to Christchurch.  The sun was shining, the east coastal route stunning as always.  At 4:30pm Billy rang from home to say it was hailing.  5 minutes later the hail was joined by lightning and cracks of thunder.  20 minutes later it was all over and the ground was a white-over.  Billy took this photo showing the size of the hail stones next to a marble.  I escaped Christchurch the next day as the roads were beginning to flood.  They continued to flood until roads became rivers, and rivers became roads.  Many buildings and structures were waterlogged.  A one-in-a-hundred-year flood apparently, that Christchurch could do with like a hole in the head.  Lucas, along with many other Cantabrians, didn’t go to Tech or to work because both places were closed.

The bees look to be battening down the hatches for the autumn.  Each hive has its varroa treatment in situ (Bayvarol) and there’s less brood.  Upwards of 7kg of honey was extracted from 6 frames – too much for us to eat, too much even to give away.  One obvious solution came to mind – mead.  There are plenty of recipe ideas on the internet, so now I’ve got plain mead, vanilla mead and orange clover mead bubbling away in demi-johns.  They should be ready for racking in 4 months.  It’s really exciting to be back making wine again. 

Alongside the plum tree is a peach tree, which also had a great crop of fruit this year.  A big storm was forecast (from cyclone Lusi) so we stripped most of the peaches.  The storm didn’t match up to the severe weather warning, but we did end up with 19.4 kg of fruit.  Quite a haul.  Around the same time I picked all the remaining orchard fruit – nashi pears, Bon Chretien pears, eating apples and cider apples.  The pears have been preserved in honey syrup in jars and the peaches have been transformed into a few things – jam, jarred peach slices, and of course, peach wine. 

Whilst looking through wine recipes I came across a few old favourites.  Peapod wine was particularly memorable and it’s an ingredient that is and will continue to be, abundant in the veg garden.  Pumpkin wine might also have to be brewed, in the interests of using up what’s available.  Vintage (grape harvest) is about to begin in earnest.  Peter will be working night shifts as a MOFO (mobile operation field officer) on the vineyards, which could give him access to surplus grapes.  In the last few years, wineries have been buying a specific volume of grapes, rather than all the grapes on a site.  Any excess might be left on the vines if they don’t have the capacity for more.   Fingers crossed that Peter can bring some home, and then I can take the unusual step of making wine from grapes.

The chook house/run is complete and occupied by the young Rhode Island Reds and the Cochins.  We’ve decided to keep the Cochin rooster (Cornelius) and some of his harem.  Hopefully in spring we’ll get a variety of chicks, some pure and some mixed breed.  Derryn came round and we plucked 4 chooks (including Bob Jnr) that Peter killed.  Not a pleasant job at all, and we only used the trick of plunging them into boiling water for the last one.  It worked a treat – the feathers came out much easier.  We’d tried using hot water before, but it didn’t work then.  Boiling water is obviously the key. 

The other half of the converted box has now been transformed into a storage area.  There’s space for firewood, which will provide us with a good dry supply relatively near the house, and a huge shelf, wire-netted to keep the contents safe from rodents.  There are also a couple of bars which we can hang sacks from.  Right now it’s home to some of our (credit where it’s due - Peter’s) vast potato crop, but in future it should be good for fruit and veg (root veg /corn/
pumpkin etc) storage.  There’s also the potential to extend the shelf if needed.  An interior fly-netted space will eventually be added for meat hanging (salamis, prosciutto).  

 

During construction Billy laid down on the shelf and in a crappy Geordie accent declared that there was ‘loads of room and I’m 6 foot 3’.  Gorgeous Geordie George Clarke’s series ‘Amazing Spaces’ has reached NZ and I’ve been transfixed and full of ideas for Lazy Mazy the caravan.  It seems that I’m not the only one in the house to enjoy it – Peter had laid on the shelf a couple of hours earlier and come out with exactly the same quip (only with a slightly better accent).

 

Talking of prosciutto, I finally plucked up enough courage to open up the prosciutto from one of our pigs that I salted and hung last July.  It was a worry that it might have gone off and a huge slab of meat wasted.  As the muslin cloth was opened, the delicious aroma of prosciutto became apparent.   Happily it’s absolutely delicious.  It was a difficult job slicing it, but the $25 meat slicer that Peter bought from a 2^nd hand shop proved its worth.  Billy helped to pack the thin slices into vacuum bags.   The salami was less successful, way too salty.  That must be down to my lousy maths – you have to carefully calculate the volume of salt to meat.  A shame, but I don’t intend to get it wrong again. 
 

The freezer’s getting decidedly sparse, and Butch is next on the home-kill list. I’ll definitely have to be absent for the event – he’s become part of the farm and endeared himself into our affections. Despite his threatening stare, he’s mostly a big softie and definitely a big character. However we don’t have the capacity to feed 6 cattle over winter, so it has to be. If we end up with 3 pregnant cows then hay supplies will need more careful targeting. So far Aphrodite and Hera have been inseminated with Speckled Park semen (mistakenly for Aphrodite who was supposed to receive Galloway semen). Hopefully Persephone will be on heat soon – if so, both her and Hera’s calves will be due around Christmas.  Zeus is growing bigger by the minute, with no sign of his damaged leg from birth.  Though it was an unpleasant thing to do, I'm mighty glad that we castrated him when he was young or he'd already be a formidable bull. 

Yet another tragic rabbit story to report this month. Security in the hutch housing an adult female and 3 kits was breached, and they all escaped into the night. When I went to feed them in the morning, one was lying dead in front of the hutch, mutilated. A second was dead in the next paddock and a third in the animal shelter. The adult rabbit returned whilst we were taking in the carnage, and practically ran into my arms. She looked like she’d been in a fight but seems to have recovered. Peter believes it to be the work of wild cats, which we sometimes see. It was so excessively cruel and unpleasant, and deeply upsetting. At least I feel a little bit more justified in keeping them in hutches/runs safe from predators. 

The veg garden is still beautiful, but still only to me.  It’s untidy but productive, though there has been a little bit of clearing up.  The potatoes are harvested and the beds thickly sowed with pea seeds.  The hedge cuttings have now been planted around the beds, even the box which is painfully slow growing, so the cuttings are still tiny.  Hopefully they’ll take off.  There aren’t enough lavender plants so I’ll take another batch of cuttings to complete the circle.  The globe artichokes have been stunning, and many of them have been left to flower to be enjoyed by the bees.  Beans have been picked and eaten or blanched and frozen.  Pumpkins are maturing and carrots are BIG (eat your heart out Karyn!).  Tomatoes have been roasted with onions, garlic, herbs, seasoning and a sprinkle of honey, then blitzed into sauce and frozen in jars.  Courgettes and marrows persist, mostly being fed to the appreciative chooks.  The asparagus ferns are still alive, maybe even flourishing, so hopefully will crop in the next few years.  It’s indeed a busy time of year and I’m looking forward to putting a big chunk of the veg garden to bed over winter. 

 

My academic leave is just beginning and hopefully that means there’ll be a bit more time to spend on the farm.  Autumn tasks like food preservation are kind of on track and we’re prepared for winter in terms of firewood and animal feed.  Still lots of sunshine, but the days are definitely drawing in and there can be a chill in the early morning air.  Maybe, just maybe, this will be the year when we get organised and on top of the work.  Yeah right….dream on.