June 2016

We didn’t need it to be the first official day of winter on June 1^st to know that winter had begun.  It’s that electric blanket time of year.  There have been many frosty mornings with those glorious blue-sky days that I’m always harping on about.  There’s snow on the mountain tops, making the drive out of the valley even more scenic.  We’ve been blessed with rain too, sometimes lots of it, certainly enough to revive the paddocks.

 

There’s a particularly magical period of time, usually around 11/11:30am when the sun is warm enough to burn off the frost.  As the mist rises, it creates a kind of ethereal cloak over the land.  You could be forgiven for thinking that the place is smokily on fire.

The frost is beautiful too, even if it’s quite short-lived.  These autumnal beech tree leaves will be gone soon, so it’s very good of them to hang around long enough to model themselves photogenically draped in sparkly frost.  The citrus are still cosy under their frost cloth and are surviving the sub-zero night temperatures.  Alas the poor old pomegranate tree, that valiantly overcame its brush with frosty death last year by sending up new shoots, has been again hit by the frost this year.  Yes I know I was supposed to frost-protect it too, and I did, but only for a while.  I took the frost cloth off during a warm spell and forgot to put it back.  Plonker.  Will have to come up with a better plan.

The rain has brought out the water-loving birdlife.  Pukekos are a common site in the valley, and our neighbourhood weka has been cutely tap-tap-tapping on the window.  Ducks are abundant, especially these native shell ducks that turn up whenever there’s a worthy pond.  Their quacks often echo across the property, making a very pleasant change from the chainsaw whines that once were so common.

The chooks are making the most of their free-ranging opportunities. There’s chook-poo spread far and wide, and there are no longer any parts of the garden mulched with straw.  Their saving grace has been the lack of transgression into the vege garden thus far.  The young chick is now nearly as big as the others, but unfortunately for her, she’s the last in the pecking order.  She manages to get out of the run somehow – maybe she flies out because there are no obvious breaches – and is usually hanging around waiting to be fed on a morning.  She doesn’t cause any trouble so I feed her first before releasing the rest of the flock, to make sure she gets something before they put her in her place again. 

The vege garden beds that aren’t winter cropping are slowly being tucked up.  Slowly is the operative word here, as my weeding energy seems to be petering out.  It’d be good to get them all sorted, then I can focus on gardening elsewhere.  In my support, the shorter days make it difficult to get too stuck in, as does the damp, cloddy soil and the shady places which barely de-frost after chilly nights.  Karyn is soldiering on though.  Her bed is cleared and mulched, she’s cropped her first veges (beetroot) and has even helped out with pruning the currant bushes.  There’s more pruning to be done (pear trees, peachcot) and the raspberry bed in the horse arena needs considerable attention.  Better keep her sweet.  More honey?

Several seeds are saved ready for next year.  Some are veges (tomatoes and beans mostly) and there are flower seeds too.  The flowers in the garden were shaken to spread their seeds before they were tidied up, so hopefully there’ll be lots of happy self-sown seedlings next year.  The forget-me-not and poached egg plant seedlings are taking over.  So much for imagining that the frost would see them off.  Not sure what to do with them now – it seems heartless to uproot them when they’ve been such stalwarts. 

Dionysus is not yet really integrated into the herd.  He stays nearby Hera and Athena but doesn’t appear to be one of the gang.  It’s a bit sad really, as he’s still only a baby.  Leggy the ram is still coughing, but this doesn’t appear to be any worse, and he looks robust.  The ewes aren’t looking obviously pregnant, but experience tells us that we’ve been crap at gauging that before anyway.  We’ll just keep our fingers crossed as usual.

Natural phenomena continue to be delightful.  Evidence of our clean air is abundant in the form of lichen, draped over a number of trees.  The tree in the photo is in the garden, next to the pizza oven.   This coral fungus was one of a few growing on pine tree trunks – a fascinating structure which lasted for several days before being added to the worm farm.

Billy was 16 on June 17th – old enough to get his Learner driving licence which he did on the day.  Release from more than 20 years of taxi services for our off-spring is finally on the horizon, assuming that Billy embraces this opportunity for independence.  Sam is fitting in a few shifts in a local restaurant as a waiter, working around his studies.  We went there for a family meal when Lucas came down for the weekend.  We definitely didn’t order the praying mantis that came with Lucas’ salad, and he was most relieved that it wasn’t half a praying mantis.  Years ago in the UK Lucas kept mantises as pets.  They were exotic creatures there, so it was hilarious that one just showed up on his plate. 

My favourite writing hero recently passed away.  Gene Logsdon was author of ‘Holy Shit’ (the inspiration for my article ‘Holy Meconium’) and the blog site ‘The Contrary Farmer’, among numerous other publications.  His wise and profound words and thoughts were many.  One of my many favourite concepts of his was the term 'persnickety fecophobes'.  Check out his short story ‘The man who created paradise’.  
RIP Gene, and may your farming and life-wisdom continue to influence others.