September 2019

It is finally feeling like spring, though it's taken most of the month, and several frosty mornings and miserable chilly days to get here.  The warmer temperatures are very welcome, the spring winds not.  The garden has been quietly just getting on with things in its serene way, gently coaxing the fresh spring growth (with a marked preference for weeds).

Madame Cholet is gradually filling up with seedlings.  Bought grafted tomato plants for early pickings are in place, and last year's beef tomato seeds are happily and numerously germinating.  They're destined to be planted outside when they're big enough.  Lots of pea and bean varieties are also popping up in some re-purposed polystyrene boxes.  Some herb seeds went in a few days ago - hopefully it'll be warm enough in there for them by now.

Heaps of brassica seedlings have been hardening off in the cold frame, and finally transplanted into the garden today.  Far too many obviously, but that should mean plenty to share.  The chitting spuds will also go out.  The vege garden beds are all ready to be planted into, after a 2nd shallow rotovation.  I'll definitely skip the peastraw in favour of green manure in future - the soil is looking absolutely fab and it seems to have been much less of a huge task this year to get the beds ready.  

Wish I could say the same for the horse arena raised beds, that I'm regretting putting on the back burner.  I have managed to make a start on my plan to dig out the herbs and strawberries, temporarily pot them up, improve the soil, apply a biodegradable weedmat, and then re-plant.  It's quite a mammoth project, but should reduce workload in the longer term (blimey - how often have I said that??).  One of the raised beds will be this year's compost pile, but the other 7 are being lined up for the weedmat treatment.  Progress so far - #1 done and lots of pink strawberries potted up for giving away (before and after photos).  At least it's a start.            

The beds that couldn't be rotovated - those with fruit - have been weed-cleared and mulched with sheep poo.  Their blossom is very pretty and abundant.  The stone fruit blossom is stunning and promises to nourish a good crop.  For the first time, the plumcot (white) is blooming.


   

In a pot on the deck, several acorns are germinating, and dead cute they are too.  No baby sweet chestnuts emerging yet, but they could be on their way.  When the bed with the peachcot tree was weeded, there were millions of peach stones on the ground.  They'll make a pretty good mulch, except for the 14 that had actually germinated.  That's a relatively tiny germination rate, but a small part of me hopes that even those won't all take off.  They're potted up (just couldn't get rid of them) and will likely end up in the new woodlot in the long run.  As they're grown from stones, the fruit itself is likely to be different from the parent plant.  Maybe even in a good way.  And fruit wood makes great firewood. 

September is birch sap season, and though last year's birch sap wine was decidedly unimpressive, tapping trees is just too wholesomely self-sufficientish to pass up.  Instead of using the sap straightaway, it was significantly reduced by evaporation (in pans on the woodstove). The idea is to concentrate the natural sugars to make the wine more flavoursome and alcoholic.  Some honey was added to up the sweetness and it's now in a demi-john bubbling its heart out.  It'll maybe taste more like a mead in the end, but I'll be happy if it's an improvement. 

The orchard is bursting into glorious life.  The sheep did a great job of chomping down the grass, and each tree has been treated to a top dressing of horse poo around the drip line.  When we get around to it, we'll also add decomposing hay left over from feeding out the cows.  This hay can't be used anywhere else as mulch because it contains grass seed - happily not a problem in the orchard.

The bees are getting very busy indeed.  The new swarm colony has been a hive of activity, so it was no surprise to find it bursting with bees, brood and even some honey and pollen stores.  The varroa strips have been inserted, and there was no evidence of any disease getting hold.  That queen rocks!  The original hive is also getting on with reproducing and foraging very nicely.  An empty brood box is set up in anticipation of swarm season.  I owe Derryn at least one colony, and Sam and Molly are interested in having their own hive.  And I'm hoping to have a crack at top bar beekeeping sometime soon...  

The developing flower garden is filling out nicely.  New dahlia bulbs (birthday present from Derryn) are in, and daffodils, cyclamen and rhododendrons are already adding some bright colour.  I've sourced some old favourites to add to the mix - pyrancantha, cotoneaster and Chaenomeles Japonica (Japanese Quince).  They'll be in a slightly shady spot so it's not too hot and dry for them.  Hope not famous last words.

Peter has a shiny new toy - an electric log splitter that can even handle the gnarly chunks of wood that are impossible to split with an axe.  It's a nod to his old age and infirmity, and has already proved its worth.  It's not fast, but it does the job.  It won't handle really big log rounds, but we can manage our woodlots so that's not a biggie.

Billy has been in touch from Switzerland, where he plans to work as an au pair and learn German.  Who is that boy?  No new news from the other offspring, so it's peaceful here on the home front.  I'm counting down the weeks of undergraduate work - my contract will end in December.  Then I'll be switching to a clinical secondment in December and January to cover staffing issues at the maternity unit.  Auntie Sally is planning another vist in early 2020.  Lots to look forward to.  Happy days. 

August 2019

The mercury hit the national high of 20 degrees today, and it's been a glorious weekend.  We celebrated our birthdays by taking a boat tour in the Marlborough Sounds, to Motuara Island.  There were heaps of dolphins en route, and the bird life was spectacular.  We hadn't been to Motuara Island for many years and it didn't disappoint.  The sun shone all day and the sea sparkled.  We also took a wander to nearby Karaka beach for a yarn with dad. 

 

Back on the farm and the spring tasks are building up.  We've made a start on cleaning up the outside of the house, beginning with some water-blasting of the house eaves and garage.  What a difference that's made, though there's still lots of stubborn lichen that will have to be tackled another way.  Karyn always has first dibs on the water-blaster, just a case of pointing her in the right direction, then getting out of the way sharpish.

The land is still pretty wet as it has rained every few days.  Getting hay bales up from the main hayshed closer to the house can only be done when there hasn't been rain for a few days, and then only with the ute in 4-wheel drive.  We're still feeding the cows twice a day and they're still demanding.  Hera went through a phase of being a bit aggressive - taking gates off their gudgeon pins and mooing very noisily in long continuous spells at all times of the day and night.  As she seems to be perfectly fit and well, the only other conclusion is that she was on heat...finally.  Maybe just maybe the selenium supplements are kick-starting her fertility. Another month should confirm that, but she'll have to wait longer for Noddy to be up to the task of impregnating her.  He's about half her size.

Birdlife around the property is unendingly joyful.  Pukekos arrive when the ground is wet, usually in a small flock of 5 or 6.  They sometimes come right into the garden, like the adventurous one in the photo.  They like you to keep their distance so photographing them is challenging.  I'm still waiting for Kingi to find a new fave branch nearer the house.  And my mate Blacky (the blackbird) and his missus are often bickering - she usually gets the upper hand in their fights and hangs onto the prime territory.   Tui and Kereru are often around too.  Relatively recently they've been joined, on sunnier afternoons, by foraging honey bees and less-than-welcome sandflies.  A recent check of the beehives (when we had winter guests in the sleepout) found 2 healthy and thriving colonies.  Yeehah!

Madame Cholet is poised ready to host this years tender crops.  She's a far cry from the jungle of overgrown tomatoes and weeds that she was by the end of summer.  I've managed to germinate some chilli and pepper seeds, so hopefully they'll be big enough to plant out in a few weeks.  They've been germinating in the house to keep them away from slugs and snails.  Slug pellets and bait traps are down, but am thinking it's wise not to tempt those slithery critters too soon.  The soil/compost is watered most days, in the hope of regenerating the microbes and beneficial creatures and resuscitating the old soil.  There's plenty of horse and sheep poo in there, plus the new compost.  I'd like to grow more ginger and turmeric this year, and have another crack at aubergines and rock melons, but will start with a couple of tomato plants.

The compost is from the big pile at the back of the horse arena, that has been breaking down under the cover of an old trampoline mat.  As usual, it hasn't been turned, ever, but simply leaving it long enough seems to work.  It's dark and crumbly, and I'd guess, totally delicious.  I'll use some of it to make a big batch of seedling potting mix, along with river sand, vermicompost and coir.   

I'm waiting for my ordered seeds to arrive, and in the meantime have got some of my existing stock started.  So far so good - lots of brassicas, swede, onion and beetroot have germinated.  The pleasure of seed-raising is always utterly awe-inspiring, and definitely one of most favourite garden tasks.  All the promise and none of the inevitable disappointment rest with those tiny seeds and their delicate shoots.  New life and amazing potential.

There's still lots of work to be done getting the main vege beds ready.  Those with green manure (left photo) need to be dug over, and it's likely I'll use the rotovator on a shallow setting to chop up and bury the growth.  The other beds will be weeded (a huge task - the photo on the right shows one nearly completed that has taken about 6 hours and numerous sore muscles to get this far) and nourished with a top dressing of compost and sheep poo.  The green manure seems to be a better alternative to using pea straw.  It's much cheaper at least, though the comparison of soil quality remains to be seen.  I wouldn't use a rotovator in a bed full of weeds, but using one to disperse non-weed organic matter should work well.  Here's hoping.

The flower beds have gained a bit of height in the form of 2 standard Lace Lady Robinia, that used to live in half barrels at Karyn's place.  They were outgrowing their pots and there was a very good forever home for them here.  One is in the main flowerbed and the other in the new zone beyond the pizza oven.  They're staked already, and even been perched on by a tui.  The rescue plants will be transplanted in a couple of weeks, after the next forecast cold snap.  They should fill that bed up nicely. 

The elderberry and greengage wines had long stopped bubbling and were finally bottled.  The greengage wine was first up, and frankly disappointing.  I used a yeast for plum wine and wonder if that was a mistake.  Though technically a plum, it's quite different from its red and juicy cousins.  Maybe it'll mature in the bottle.  The elderberry, on the other hand, is, unbiasedly, triumphant.  It's a gorgeous deep colour and tastes like a 'bought boxed wine' (thank you Peter for that complementary analogy).  Peter took it into work to see if anyone could guess its origins.  They couldn't but were suitably impressed that it was a non-grape elixir.  Sometimes referred to as 'Englishmen's grapes', elderberries have been used to make wine for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years.  And at 12.8% alcohol, this batch is in the right ball park for commercial wine.  Right now, Peter is experimenting with the concept that homemade elderberry wine is more sleep-inducing than any other wine.  I'll report on that study in due course.

Instead of birthday cake, Peter got a giant pork pie.  I dug out a traditional recipe with hot water crust pastry, and used the last of our pork mince from the freezer.  It looked impressive and didn't taste too shabby either.  Just me to sing him Happy Birthday as all of our off-spring are out of the country.  Lucas is still living and working in Melbourne, Sam has just finished a month of performances at the Edinburgh Tattoo and is spending a bit more time sightseeing with Molly.  Billy bombed Marcus' family holiday in Athens for a few days before flying to Switzerland for a few weeks of work.  A weekend in Picton doesn't quite compete, though not without its charms and it works for us.

On a final note, we received some hilarous birthday cards this year.  The one from Kaja (below) is perhaps the most depressingly entertaining.  Yeah....thanks for that Kaja!!  Didn't really need the reminder.

 

July 2019

It's muddy, damp, cold and sometimes more than a bit miserable, but it is the middle of winter.  The beauty is there, just in different guises.  The beautiful lichen-draped logs in the picture are from the silky oak tree - the branch that I was talked into chopping off.  The same branch that was the favourite landing spot of my old pal 'Kingy' the kingfisher.  She or he (not sure which) has been hanging around on that special branch in wet weather, but now is obliged to linger on the power cables instead - much further away.  Hope s/he re-considers and finds a new perch where s/he can be seen without binoculars.

The mornings have often been particularly beautiful.  Mist rises in the warmth of the sun, forming ribbons of clouds across the landscape.  Those days are the best - sunny and blue skyed - and also the coldest.  Maggie, who will celebrate her 98th birthday in December, gets indulged a little with a warm blanket during the chilliest spells.  

This month's blog comes to you from sunny Westport.  A work opportunity came up hot on the heels of Greymouth shifts, but the West Coast magic still lured me in.  So did the thought of a few more dollars to put towards our bathroom upgrade.  It has meant that I've only had 2 days off work this month, so very little has been done on the farm (though I'm guessing this blog won't be any less verbose).  I managed to do a spot of Christmas shopping in Hokitika, and of course a bit of sourcing more Granity rocks for the vines.  Hope I can get this lot home without damaging the car...

                                                          

Derryn Scissor-Hands came to scalp the orchard.  Peter joined us, so we could hack off the bigger branches straightaway.  We got lots more firewood as those trees are now quite formidable.  Derryn always manages to make them dance, and they seem relieved to be free of their burdens.  The newly planted Cider Slack Ma Girdle and Perry Pear are looking promising, and all of the trees are budding up.  It always seems way too early but nonetheless a reassuring harbinger of spring.

The cows are enjoying their twice daily hay feeds, even though they're obliged to nag if it doesn't come on time.  Noddy is always last to the table but has worked out that there's always a new pile of hay especially for him, for a while at least.  He has quite an unusual moo - deep and penetrating.  I think the others encourage him to moo if dinner is late.  They probably think that we're more likely to respond to his demands than to theirs. And they're probably quite right.  Poseidon is looking cute in the photo, even though he's ankle-deep in mud. 



Some garden tidying has happened.  The step-over apple trees have been pruned, as have the raspberry canes in the same bed.  Karyn has kindly completed all the raspberry pruning.  She has done the other bed in the horse arena while I'm away - how about that for a garden fairy!  I've also tackled the nettles, and am absolutely regretting planting them out uncontained.  Their roots are fabulously fleshy and profuse, and realistically I may never be rid of them.  I will try though, and replant some of those roots in a half-barrel.  I will definitely make sure I have decent gloves next time. 


Garlic has been planted too, about a month after the shortest day.  That should be OK as there'll still be plenty of frosts to activate them.  It's elephant garlic and I'm hoping that last years crop will also self-seed via bulbils left in the ground.  Daffodil bulbs have been planted, courtesy of Karyn, in the half-barrel by the pizza oven and in the flower garden.  The new shoots are already popping up - a truly delightful sign of the sunnier days ahead.  I've potted up all the rescued plants and they're now poised to be planted out in the new bed when the temperatures rise.

I'm trialing a new composting system - bokashi.  I'm trying to reduce our use of plastic, and getting rid of moister bin contents means we won't need bin bags anymore.  Most food waste can go into the bokashi buckets where it is fermented before being chucked on the garden.  Guests in the sleepout will also have a newspaper-lined rubbish bin and a separate collecting box for their food waste.   



Honey has been potted up and lots have been given away as gifts.  Some reciprocal trade includes awesome soap (thanks again Gaylene) and chili sauce. Several demi-johns of wine are still maturing in the airing cupboard, some ready to be bottled.  That'll have to wait until the next rainy spell.  The strategy to remove and hide at least 3 bottles of each batch so that it can develop properly before it's quaffed seems to be paying off.  Either that or I've made so much wine in the last few months we haven't needed to resort to opening wine before it's ready. 

This gorgeous candle was a gift from Molly.  It's a serene alternative to electric lights on cold evenings.  Sam is on his way to Edinburgh to perform at the Tattoo, and Molly will be joining him soon.  Billy is back in the UK after a brief break in Mallorca.  With Lucas still living and working in Melbourne, it means that all our kids are out of the country!  I'm feeling an equal measure of excitement and alarm.  I'm looking forward to living my life vicariously through an assortment of their best adventures.  In the meantime, I'll just wake up and enjoy the sunrise.   


 

June 2019

We returned from a balmy British spring to a chilly kiwi winter.  June's been a mixed bag of some rainy dull days interspersed with frosty mornings and sunny days.  The best days are always those that follow the coldest nights, and the morning feed-out is a tinglingly refreshing wake-up.  Only a few outdoor tasks have been completed, and though this is because nothing is urgent, I'm acutely aware that spring won't be so forgiving.



A little sweeping up of leaves and some general tidying has happened in the flower bed and vege garden.  All the compost zones had been tucked up for winter, so some creative thinking was needed to work out what to do with the leaves and trimmings.  As there's more than enough planting space, I figured that adding a few compost zones among the vege beds would be a good idea.  A few bamboo sticks and some mesh should hold in the decaying matter.  Et voila: compost in situ - very permaculture.




44 cuttings each have been taken off the two varieties of hebe hedge plants, in the hope that they will eventually replace the lavender.  It'll be sad to dig the lavender up, but the hebes will also provide pollen and nectar for the bees.  The lavender is patchy and leggy and never wanted to stay as a low hedge.  Hopefully, the hebes will be more obliging.




Frost protection for the citrus this season has been solely the organic frost spray that needs to be re-applied every 6 weeks.  So far so good - it's a pretty impressive product.  The 4 citrus that were transplanted from the horse arena to near the sleepout have not only survived but thrived.  The original lemon tree has never fruited as well as it is right now.  That savage haircut courtesy of Karyn may just have been responsible for its fine form.  Please don't tell her though.  The new lime tree in the half barrel under the eaves is also hanging in there.  It has the added benefit of its own puffer jacket to keep it warm on cold nights.  I bought the jacket to keep me warm in the UK but never needed it.  I'm happy to gift its services to the lime.


The beehives had their final wintering down inspection on a sunny 16-degree day.  The new swarm colony is doing great - loads of brood, plenty of bees and adequate stores should see it through the winter.  The original stalwart hive was also healthy, with heaps of bees and stores, but not so much brood.  This was the hive that ended up with miticide strips in the honey box because I'd managed to trap the queen above the excluder.  I took out the newer replacement miticide strips, and guess that the reduced brood is because the varroa mites got away.  Hopefully there were stopped in the nick of time; I'd hate to lose this long-standing colony.  Finally I got to the Queen Bitch hive.  Silence.  No bees at the entrance, and no bees inside either.  Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead!  Unfortunately so are all her offspring.  Though these bees have taunted me mercilessly and stung me numerous times, I felt a little emotional about their loss.  Gotta love feisty females, and they did bless me with fabulous honey.   

The new zone by the pizza oven seems to be rotting down into soil nicely, though despite being buried in horse poo and mountains of weeds, the woody sticks at the base are surprisingly intact.  I had to dig down to clear space to put in a half barrel that Karyn gifted.  Its base had rotted out so it'll be perfect to sit in the garden where whatever's planted in it can also access the ground below.  No decision yet what that will be, but it will probably include some spring bulbs.  Peter took a huge limb off the tulip tree to allow head space for the small copper beech to expand into.  He also chainsawed a side branch off the silk tree, to open up the new zone to more sunshine.  It looks like major surgery.  It is major surgery.  It feels way too radical, but I do tend to pathetically err on the side of caution when it comes to pruning.  My advisors (you know who you are) have no such qualms.


Karyn joined me for a currant pruning session.  Heaps of pruned branches later, we could finally see where we'd been.  We charged up Karyn's chipper and began the process of feeding the branches through.  Unfortunately, they were a little moist and supple so didn't chip well.  Should be ok once they've dried out a bit more.     


The sheep are just being their usual sheepish selves.  It's possible - though I wouldn't dare believe - that the ewes could be pregnant, as they have received a couple of doses of selenium.  Walter has grown into a magnificent specimen, and young Junior is fast catching him up.  Lambs would be an absolute joy, so here's hoping that selenium is the answer. 
We're feeding out the cows twice a day.  The girls are always first to dive into the hay, and Noddy is always last.  But he does get there.  He looks nearly normal now, just an occasional stagger that occurs when he tries to run quickly.  Erebus is increasingly affectionate, demanding a stroke and a scratch even before he tucks into the hay.  His demands can err on the slightly aggressive side, but he seems to have genuine intentions.  Neither Poseidon nor Noddy have any need for this kind of contact and generally give us a wide berth.

In my absence, Peter was instructed to pick 5kgs of feijoas.  You'd have to ask him how that ended up as 15kg, but there they were, filling every last crevice of the freezer.  The feijoa wine recipe used 5kg of fruit, so with much reluctance (yeah right) a triple, insteead of the planned single batch was commenced.  I re-checked the recipe as it was steeping, only to realise that the 5kg recipe was already a double batch.  A little re-interpretation has finally resulted in a quadruple batch (20 litres).  I'm keeping everything crossed that the cold temperatures don't stuff up the fermentation completely.  The Red Bartlett pear wine had to be bottled to free-up demi-john space.  6 bottles were put aside (for posterity...or at least a few months) and we're drinking our way through the remainder.  It's quite a pleasant little tipple.   

The orchard has had a big clear out.  It was getting worryingly overgrown, particularly along the boundary where the brambles were getting away, and also in the former chicken run zone.  Our neighbour Craig did lots of the grunty work along the fence line, and Sam did the mowing.  There's still a little more clearing to be done, and the trees need a decent prune, but otherwise, it's looking quite tidy.  Come spring that'll probably be a different story.

The giant pumpkin weighed in at a phenomenal 46kg and needed Peter and Sam to shift it.  It was gifted to a local kindergarten.  I don't know what happened to it there but hope that much fun was had.  Some seeds were saved for next year.  Several other more edible, chunky pumpkins were harvested from the garden at the same time, probably Queensland Blues.  They were from 2 vigorous plants that had self-seeded, and are absolutely delish.

Maggie takes her walks down the forestry road, close to the end of our driveway.  She never recovered from the experience of getting stuck in the electric fence soon after we arrived, and won't step a paw beyond the fence around the garden.  We have to walk her off the property - 8 acres and nowhere to go eh Maggie?  The forestry road goes down to the river, which is possible to ford when there hasn't been much rain.  One of the trees in the photo is dead but draped in lichen.  The other is a native black beech covered in honeydew.  The photo doesn't really do them justice - they're a stunning sight under a deep blue sky.  It's likely that my bees partake of that honeydew.  The bee club ran a workshop on honey tasting and the presenter (a honey judge) could taste honeydew honey in my offering.  


We finally traded in the old Subaru for a small and fuel-efficient car (a Mazda Demio).  To be honest, I'd been trying to drive the Subaru into the ground for a couple of years, but it admirably refused to submit.  With no sons at home (yippee!!!) we don't need a spacious car.  The new car (Gine - short for Aubergine as that's her colour) uses about half the fuel of the old one.  I did feel oddly emotional when I drove away.  That Subaru has been with us for many years and absolutely doesn't owe us anything.  Hope it goes to a good home.



June 2nd was a truly awful day.  My awesome buddy and colleague Tai (Dixon) was killed in a head-on car accident.  She leaves husband Scott and two beautiful daughters, Iona (6) and Lucia (3), to face a future without her.  I put this poem in a memory box created for her girls.                                                                                                                            RIP Tai.  
  
                                         Tai

We don’t love you because you were an inspirational and fabulous midwife.

We don’t love you because you were a beautiful, outstanding, proud mama and wife

Though you were all of those things in spades.

We love you because you were you. You were real, you WERE life.

Warm, vivacious, cuddly and passionate

Enriched with deep integrity and a wide-open, intelligent mind

All wrapped up in an immense bundle of humanity

And a heart as big as the earth.

Your amazing spirit lives on in your gorgeous daughters

Who are both blessed and bereft

To be part of you yet parted from you.

The world is a lesser place without our precious friend Tai.

We grieve for the tragic magnitude of all that is lost.