March 2022

                                              

So, March disappeared and Autumn has quietly landed.  It is one of my favourite seasons (along with Spring, Winter, and Summer), and I'm loving the morning chills.  The land is being all productive and bountiful, but time to work on it has a habit of being very hard to find.  Peter had another paid week off work as part of covid-planning, and managed to achieve the monumental job of painting preservative on the house and deck.  I did the gaps between the decking planks, a very thankless task that just has to be endured and I'm now in the process of treating the outside furniture.  Might as well get it all done in one hit.  Peter's mowed the thistles in the meadows (after a lengthy process of fixing the mower) and cleaned out the water pump.  We've had the septic tank emptied - the same company as before that has 0800 FARTED as their logo - and the chimney sweep is coming in a couple of weeks.  I'm writing this in my blog so that we'll have a reference point when we later forget when these maintenance tasks were done.

The biggest event of the month was the epic return of Lucas and Laura.  After months of waiting, disappointments with MIQ places, and heaps of finger-crossing, they finally arrived safely.  It was almost too easy in the end.  Their flight landed early and there were very few passengers on it, and there were no other flights at the same time.  That meant a swift transit through customs and out they popped to greet me and meet their new car (very cool indeed - a Mazda Demio just like mum's!).  Within a few short days, the sleepout was re-configured, up went their desks and the 75 inch TV, and in they settled.  Their dog, Woody, took a later flight and is currently in transit from an Auckland quarantine facility with Laura.

 We took them out in Gladys for their inaugural fishing adventure, and though the fishing was pretty tragic (total: 4 sharks), the day was beautiful. We launched from Waikawa into the stunning Queen Charlotte Sound.  Blue skies, calm waters, and hardly any other boats.  Probably everyone else knew that the fishing would be hopeless.  Laura is really keen to have another go, so we'll probably head out soon while the weather is still pleasant enough.

                                     

The fruit has been ripening and we have the delightful problem of what to do with the excess.  Several kilos of assorted apples will go into the annual Apple Cider Vinegar batch.  There are 4 batches of cider/perry on the go now and I'll be gutted if they don't live up to my expectations.  I recently bottled the blueberry mead and it's quite acceptable.  We've awarded it 3 stars (out of 5) but quietly I hope it'll mature into an even more pleasant tipple.  The elderberry wine was racked.  It has retained its amazing purple colour, and it tastes pretty good already.  Better not gloat too soon though, not out of the demi-john yet.  

Figs are just starting to ripen and it's an enormous crop.  The tree has been blown right down to the ground more than once, but it's so resilient, coming back bigger and better each year.  Also yet to crop are the feijoa.  I'll be obliged to turn them into wine of course, and also I'm going to have a crack at feijoa cider (though being non-apple, it wouldn't be called that - ideas on a postcard please).  I want to see what happens when I put the whole fruit through the new crusher.  If it works it'll save bags of time that would have otherwise been engaged with cutting them in half and scooping out the juicy inside.

 The main honey crop was tutin-tested and it's absolutely fine so has been bottled.  There have been several happy recipients, including the 0800FARTED guy who was well chuffed with his honey bonus.  It made a lovely wedding gift for Jenn and Jules too.  2 out of 4 hives have had their autumn miticide strips inserted, and the others will get them in a couple of days when the forecast is particularly good.  It's an ideal opportunity to do a thorough disease check, and so far so good.

  

Vege crops are also abundant.  Heaps of tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, greens, onions, and chilies to hand. The foliage of the pumpkin plants started to die back, so I harvested all 52 of the gorgeously petite and bright orange 'Baby Bear' globes.  I'll definitely grow them again if they're as delicious as they look.  Their diminutive size makes them perfectly portioned for me (Peter is a pumpkinophobe).  

I was thinking about including some shocking pictures of the vegetable garden in its current, pre-tidy-up state.  It might have shamed me into actually getting my arse into gear and getting on with some of the million tasks that need to be done before winter.  But somehow, I haven't even found time for taking photos.  At least this way I can continue with the old denial mindset.

                           

Our rural peace and tranquility were disturbed by a noisy chopper hovering over the forestry land just next to our boundary.  We soon realised it wasn't a rescue helicopter, but it wasn't until someone was dropped down on a rope, and a shrub was pulled back up that we worked out it must be a cannabis seizure.  Duh.  Apparently, the Defence Force help the police out with these aerial missions.  They pulled up another plant from just over the road and looks like they were spraying in both zones.  Amazing that there were 2 crops of marijuana within spitting distance of here and we didn't know about them.

Sam is heading to Gallipoli in a few days.  He'll stop off in Wellington for a few days to practice with other musicians and then head out to Turkey from there.  He's started to study for a degree in Music Production with my old employer Ara, in Christchurch.  He'll be able to do much of his study online but will probably take more than 3 years to fit in all the study around his army work. Molly has finally got her NZ Resident visa (yippee, such a long time coming), so they could go ahead and get a mortgage if only house prices weren't so steep.  

We're hoping to take a little holiday to the North Island to visit relatives Shena and Doug after Easter but will wait until nearer the time to put plans in place.  Covid might yet scupper that -  Omicron cases and deaths have risen exponentially in the last few weeks and are yet to peak in Marlborough.  Hopefully, they will diminish in the next few weeks, but who knows what's next? 

The clocks change at the weekend so our evenings will be cut short.  Better brace myself to start tackling the backlog of garden jobs before Jack Frost puts in an appearance.  Honing my mini chainsaw skills on Peter's neck is at least a start.

February 2022

It's the end of summer and the vege garden has had relatively little attention beyond what's necessary to keep things alive.  The weeds are doing an amazing job of protecting the soil from the sun.  That said, it's not really looking any worse than usual.  Either that or I'm not really looking.  Yep, that's probably it.  If pushed, I'd probably call it a delightful sense of disorder, with the pumpkins and gourds rambling wherever they like.  The pumpkins are a variety called Baby Bear - I thought their small size would be more practical.  There are mountains of them, gorgeous little globes of bright orange popping up everywhere.  Outdoor tomatoes, greens, courgettes and beans are also on tap.  

The large tomatoes are a beefsteak variety called 'Tie Dye' - very well named.  There are heaps more to come, so plenty more can be cooked and blitzed to make tomato sauce.  Even the nibbled carrot tops look to have staged somewhat of a recovery - here's hoping there are actually carrots under there.

 

Madame Cholet is literally a hot-house of activity and a joy to enter.  Fresh tomatoes, peppers and basil are available anytime.  The rockmelons were picked and cut up, with most going in the freezer to be used in smoothies.  The aubergines are gorgeous, and the ginger and turmeric (particularly stunning) are looking great above soil level at least.  Chilis are starting to ripen - the little red rocket in the picture is a Bird's Eye Chili.  There are a few green Scotch Bonnets, the Jalapeno are fruiting and the Carolina Reaper is flowering.  Should be enough heat there to keep us warm for a while. 

The freezers have been emptied, transferred and cleaned, so we have a good idea of what's in there.  Right now not much meat, but heaps of plums.  The Red Bartlett pears ripen first and some of them have been chopped and frozen.  There were even enough cranberries from my one bush to justify freezing.  I think they were ripe.  They'd been red for a while but went from totally, disgustingly hideous to slightly edible so I guessed they were ready. 

My new toys - a fruit crusher and press - have been put to good use. They were trialled with a batch of windfall apples, and the resulting juice was more delicious than anticipated.  Clare came round and helped and that made it so much less of a chore.  The crushing bit is relatively easy, but manually winding a press down is quite a workout.  You have to remind yourself how grateful you are that you can't just press a button.  Karyn helped with the next batch of Nashi pears, and that juice is now bubbling on its way to becoming Nashi Perry.  Clare - aka glutton for punishment - came back to help with the next batch of Broxwood Foxwhelp apples (with the addition of the small Slack Ma Girdle crop).  That's also reinventing itself as cider.  It's the first time I've had the luxury of making cider from real apple juice, so very exciting and an appropriate nod to my Somerset roots.  Clare's agreed to return for batch 3: Cidre Bisque apples and batch 4: perry pears.

Another gin purchase resulted in 3.5 litres of damson gin and 1.5 of rhubarb gin.  Al usually orders the gin and we split it, but this time he wasn't in need.  So I did the order and split it with Clare, who also took a haul of damsons.  Amazingly it arrived at its destination (Jane's work) the very next day from Kaiapoi.  Damsons and rhubarb (gifted by Clare) were ready in the freezer and viola!  I've also racked the triple batch of elderberry wine and it's looking promising.  Surely the most beautiful colour of any wine ever - fingers crossed it's got the taste to match.  With my track record of one fabulous batch versus several less-than-fabulous, it's not very likely, but I like to remain optimistic on the home-brew front until proven otherwise.

The main honey season is here.  We harvested another 10 litres from Jane's hive and 23-ish from mine.  Both honeys are darker and thicker/more jelly than the spring honeys, but obviously just as delicious.  This batch will need tutin testing. Sting count so far - Jane 1: me 3.  I just managed to get my rings off before my finger swelled like that.

The cows are all in together after Peter gave up trying to keep the girls apart.  Too many munted fences and gates. At 18 months they're about old enough anyway, and are very sturdy beasts.  Not beyond a little scratch and tickle and particularly attentive when pressed apples are on the menu.  We thought Nike was pure white, but her summer coat reveals black splotches over her hide.   

Jill and George got permission to chop up a tree that was already cut down at George's golf club.  They invited us along and we got another load of firewood for our stash.  It'll need seasoning for a few months so probably not ready for this winter.  Peter has already split it so it should dry quicker.  We have lit the fire a couple of times recently, more because we could than we needed to.  Tonight's forecast is for 6 degrees and autumn officially starts tomorrow, so not long until that need does actually arise.

Jane and Al invited us round for croquet.  Peter was the winner of the last game of the previous season, so technically the reigning champion.  This year Al claimed to have crafted an actual trophy, and I should have been suspicious about that from the off.  Somehow Jane and Al played pretty badly and I won.  When I was presented with the said trophy, all the ducks lined up in my head.  Can't deny that COC could stand for Croquet Onamalutu Champion.  Well, I guess you've gotta just take those wins, however spurious. That trophy is definitely one for the mantelpiece.

Lucas and Laura should be with us in 2 weeks.  The border opened to Kiwis in Australia yesterday, so this time it's way more promising that they'll actually get into the country.  The sleepout has been ready for some time, just a few finishing-off jobs to complete.  Sam and Molly are good, and Sam is heading to Turkey (Gallipoli) for ANZAC day.  Billy has found new work with a family near Barcelona.

Omicron is ravaging its way through the population and there are several hospitalisations and sadly, a few deaths.  The health service is coping so far and it's nearly business as usual, but that could change at any moment.   Peter is having another week off (his 3rd) because his company has divided their workforce into 2 on/off teams - if anyone gets Covid then in theory at least the other team can continue.  It'll be his last week off like this, and he hopes to get a little fishing done among the many life-sentence block tasks that are building up.  I'm grateful to have paid work coming out of my arse for at least the rest of March, after which it should ease up a bit.  I'm still waiting to hear if my hypnotherapy portfolio has passed, but it's a relief not to have the work hanging over my head.  A little free time would enable me to do the remaining preparation tasks for my planned 'Mind and Body Approach to Labour and Birth' classes.   

The days are getting shorter and we're ready for autumn.  There are still a few crops yet to ripen, so a bit more processing time to account for.  Otherwise, it's just the big garden tidy-ups to get started on.  Plenty of time for that, so I keep telling myself.

January 2022

                                                          

It's been a hot and dry kinda summer so far, limiting opportunities to do much outdoor work.  Temperatures above 25 degrees are intolerable, especially without shade, accounting for most of the vege garden.  Paid work coming at me from many angles is also reducing potential garden time.  Yep - already rolling out the excuses for uncompleted tasks before even being accused of anything (except by myself).  Honey and fishing have been amazing this month though.

  Gladys has been out and about a few times, whenever we think there won't be too many others around to scoff at our limited boat launching and retrieving skills and our dodgy reversing.  Peter took a weekday off work (unbelievable!!) when there was a good forecast, and we launched from Waikawa for the first time.  The Queen Charlotte Sound put on a glorious show - all sunshine, blue calm waters and native bush.  The fishing wasn't too bad either.  I caught my first shark (aaaw) and we took home kahawai, perch and gurnard for the table.  Peter has been practicing throwing his cast net (Christmas present) on the lawn, where it looks very much like a giant placenta and cord.

 Escape boards went onto 2 out of 3 of my hives and Jane's hive on December 31st, and the boxes were removed the next day.  Jane came to help extract, which was an absolute joy.  Solitary honey extracting really loses its appeal after a couple of hours.  We extracted hers first, then mine, and ended up with around 26 litres of light, floral spring honey - quite different from my usual robust honey.  I've bought some new honey boxes, having thrown a few out that were really munted.  They've been paraffin-treated but should have also been painted.  No time for that though - those bees needed more space.  Painting can happen when they're taken off the hives over winter.  My 3rd hive (pictured), one of Derryn's late swarms which had a few bees scattered over about 4 frames when it was first set up, had multiplied to fill 2 boxes by the end of December.  No spare honey at that point, but I've since added 2 extra honey boxes as I've watched the hive volume grow.  Here's hoping that the main honey season will be as successful as the early harvest.

 The lambs are growing beautifully, though it's still easy to pick out Sunny and Snowy from a distance because of their respective sizes.  Clover is shaping up to be as solid and rugged as her mum.  I'm feeling bad that much of their pasture is thistle-ridden.  That flood brought in heaps of thistle and dock seeds and there are small forests through most of the paddocks.  Peter's desperately trying to fix our crapped-out mower, but without success.  That leaves the dilemma of 'to spray or not to spray', with the debate further complicated by the bees who seem to love thistle flowers.  No decision yet.    

  Many vegetable crops are reaching maturity.  Madame Cholet's cache has been religiously watered every day.  The two beefsteak tomato plants are showing off.  The first 4 I harvested weighed a total of 1.3kg and have been transformed into delish relish.  Several more have been consumed or are ripening on the kitchen windowsill.  There are at least 7 good-sized rock melons that should be ready soon, and the single aubergine plant (that infiltrated the tub of tomato seedlings bought at the Linkwater Plant Sale) is fruiting beautifully, such a gorgeous purply plant.  Peppers and chillis are forming, basil is popping up everywhere, and the ginger and turmeric in the tubs are suspiciously promising.  

  Veges in the beds are also productive.  Greens like cabbage and silver beet are being eaten or going to seed.  Courgettes are go, also providing marrows for next door's pig 'Polly".  Potatoes need digging up in their entirety, not just the few at a time that I've managed so far.  Outdoor tomatoes are blushing, and the corn that wasn't destroyed by rabbits has silky tassels. Most of the garlic has yet to be dug up - so far not too much to brag about.  They're fairly small bulbs and will be a big task to process.  The few elephant garlic that popped up of their own accord are fairly big and will be a delight to process.  Pumpkins are going to be market-stall volume, probably the same for gourds. 

 The fruit has also come to the summer  party.  Plums are now ready and way too many to shake a stick at.  The original plum tree (possibly Omega) that we chopped the main trunk out of has fruited amazingly, with most fruit at reachable height.  The Hawera plum has its usual mammoth volume of fruit, and the Black Doris is also laden.  Sadly the greengages are not so abundant, so those that are there are strictly mine only.  The soft fruit has been absolutely epic - strawberries, blueberries and raspberries ready every 2-3 days, and joined by wild brambles that grow alongside the forestry track.  Grapes are looking impressive too - we're going to peg some brown paper bags over the bunches to deter bird activity (not sure how effective it'll be, but probably no worse than previous attempts with actual netting).  

Newcomer Yacon (gifted by Sam and Molly) is now nearly as tall as me, but I've read it usually grows higher than 2m.  I'm really excited about what the fruit/vegetable (the jury's out) will taste like.  As it's food-candy for the Aztecs, I'm sure it'll be good enough for me.  In the UK, a gardening programme described it as an 'underground pear'.  It's also known as Bolivian Sunroot and Pear of the Earth.  

The forestry have been busy upgrading the track by our  - house and have re-built a bridge over the Ohinemahuta river.  Guessing that means more truck traffic.  This bridge is much bigger than the previous one, so likely more permanent.  We walk Maggie down there most days.  It's only a short walk, but enough for her at the ripe old age of 112 (16).  And now we can play competitive pooh sticks in the river. 

The 'Almond Cow' that was a Christmas present from Lucas and Laura has been put to use.  Almond milk has been successful , but oat milk needs a little more refinement to remove its chalkiness.  There are heaps more recipes to try. It's incredibly simple to use, and handy when you run out of milk and live in the wop-wops.  

Billy had to leave Spain and re-enter to renew his visa, so he took a jaunt to Paris.  He returned to Spain with a a little covid virus.  Enough for symptoms but not too bad.  He's fine now, and plans to au pair for a different family near Barcelona shortly.  Lucas and Laura are still awaiting a golden egg in the form of an MIQ place.  Unless the government opens the border for long enough for them to get back. 

We're just waiting for the spectre of Omicron to take hold.   There are several cases in Motueka and elsewhere in the country, but not here that we know of.  Around 60% of the eligible population have received their booster vaccine and good progress made with 5-12 year olds.   So lots of vaccine work, and lots of clinical midwifery work too.  My Nelson Educator counterpart, Ash, resigned at the end of last year, so lots of education work there until a new person starts.  It's fair to say there's lots of hay to be made while the sun is shining. 

“Believe me my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”