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Yes, that’s right. We’ve finally been visited by a herd of cows, and boy doesn’t the paddock know it! Even with huge feeds of hay as well they’ve demoed just about everything that looks even vaugely green in the strips they’ve been confined to. Including a fair few pine branches that have been accessible.

The kids have been really enjoying watching them and the daily routine of feed, move fence, see cows run for grass/oats/whatever is there, re-install fence a bit further back, repeat tomorrow.

By the looks of it the paddock is getting a fair old dose of fertiliser, which is good! Just might need a bit of a roll and re-seed before I’d want to take the mower over it though!

I have to appologise. I knew it had been a while since I’d bothered to post anything, but here you are, still here after having to endure almost two months of silence! Sorry!

But that’s the slide into winter for you. Not much going on, especially with all the rain that’s been around earlier. One side effect of all that rain is that the ground is currently still very damp, and digging holes in it is almost an enjoyable experience for a change. You still end up with a bucketful of stones every time you dig a hole, but at least they seem to wriggle around a bit as the spade blade goes in, rather than just sitting there like an immovable object as they do in the dry.

So for the last 2 weekends we’ve taken a trip to one of the little local nurseries around the neighbourhood and crammed the boot full of various natives and plonked them up in the “native corner” in semi-random fashion. I say semi-random as I do try to think about just how we’re going to manage to get the mower around them when the grass starts growing again.

It’s a bit hard to see them all in a photo of green trees against green grass so I’ve not bothered to try to get them all in shot (though the pic is clicky for a bigger version if you want to try to see them a bit more clearly), but I think there must currently be about fifty trees up in the wider corner now, with a few more hiding out by the veg patch just needing to grow up a bit more before they’re going to be risked up in the corner with the hares and rabbits around. I suspect we’ll lose a few of the ones we’ve just installed too unless we get some tree guards quick, but they’re cheap enough that we don’t mind a couple going. But only a couple. Are you listening local wildlife?!

We also almost completed one of the many hedge rows that we’re gradually settling on. This row of pittos will hopefully assist the fruit trees from the northerly, and the vege garden from the southerly.

Yesterday was a bit of a sad day. The frosts and shorter days finally started to take a toll on the last tomato plant remaining in the tunnel house, so it was time to say goodbye.

This plant has been an oddity from first I saw it growing up though the weed-mat and gravel in the tunnel house having (presumably) self seeded from another plant last year. But none of those plants have reached anything like the size or productivity levels that is one did!

At least six feet tall, and it’s provided a constant crop of eating and cooking toms, as well as batches of chilli jam and pasta sauces.

And as a last parting gift it assisted in the production of about 2 litres of green tomato chutney today.

Pulling it up from the gravel it appeared to have about 3 roots creeping though the weed-mat that have somehow sustained it though the season. If this is what you get from that sort of arrangement then I’m very tempted to just cut a few holes in the weed-mat and plant the toms in the soil rather than pots next season…

Bye bye, supertom! We’ll all miss you!

I hear that true orchardists are fairly dismissive of the toy plantations that us lifestyle blockers call orchards, but I’m going to keep using the term. And as always about this time of year we take stock a bit and try to work out what we’re missing. And this was it this season. (We actually planted them a while ago – Just clearing the camera of all the doings. Expect a few more catch up blogs to come!)

A trio of cider apples! All the better to make some cider with. But it’ll take a few more years before they’re producing enough to make a brew. And expect to be subjected to a glass if you visit after that!

A better year than last year!

And still room on the paper for another year or two. Unless they’re bumper years!

Although I suspect today’s visit was by the same tractor, just with a different agricultural implement on the tow-bar. Or should that be horticultural? Whatever.

So up and down and round and round went the tractor and attachment. We still have no idea just what’s been deposited in there, but I guess we’ll find out when it starts to show its colour, shape, and general demeanour.

But it kept someone entertained for a long while! Big boy’s toys, aye?!

Today another tractor turned up pulling yet another complicated bit of machinery behind it, and then proceeded to go up and down and round and round for a while in the “back half”.

We really have no idea what the full plan is, but it’s interesting to watch the different stages go by! At least the latest cultivation has hidden most of the green that had started to sprout since the last big rip.

We’ve had a bit of an understanding that there are two parts to our section. The front half that we’ve been looking after and developing. Planting trees, making garden beds, adding some irrigation, regularly mowing, etc. Slowly we can see some progress as the orchard manages to get though the growing season with leaves still on the trees (we’ll worry about not actually getting much of a fruit harvest some other time when we finally get irrigation to the trees), the vege gardens are providing more produce, and the number of weeds in the lawn is slowly diminishing.

And then there’s the back half.

Frankly that back half has been a bit of a disgrace for a while now. Other than fencing it off and occasionally having it chopped for hay, or on one memorable day just running the ride on over it. Oh, I guess there was the welcome alpaca invasion of 2013 too. But really it’s been left pretty much to its own devices for at least the last 8 years, give or take a bit of early sheep grazing. But we didn’t feel too bad, as our neighbour’s property had pretty much the same history.

But all that has just changed. Yesterday our neighbour spent many hours going up and down and round and round his plot on a bloody big tractor that he’d managed to borrow from a mate who’d apparently been given the job of testing it in NZ conditions. And trying to do anything in what passes for soil around here is a pretty good test indeed!

Luckily for us, when he’d just about had enough of going round and round he was still prepared to pop over and go round and round a bit more, just for us.

The pictures don’t really do the size of the machine justice. The front wheels were about my shoulder height, while the back wheels towered over me. Just trying to get to the bottom of the ladder to get up to the cab to have a word was a major stretch! It made pretty short work of the “back five” really. Not Rocks nor stones nor old hay bales made even the smallest difference in travelling speed or engine note. And it provided us all with the nice view normally entitled “watching someone else work” as we cooked and ate our dinner. I did run him out a couple of sausages in bread at one point, just to ease the guilt slightly (and a care package when he left).

And so now we have a ploughed paddock ready for the next stage in its transformation.

Stay tuned!

Ok, ok, ok. So it’s been a while since we last gave you an update. At least long enough for this:…

To turn into this:…

Cucumbers, gherkins, tomatoes, chillies, peppers, basil and eggplants all merrily growing away. Basil in particular has been pretty successful so far this year. Enough that we’ve made three batches of pesto to both eat fresh and freeze (tip we learnt – if you’re going to freeze pesto, don’t add the Parmesan until you’re going to use it). And everything else is looking good so far.

We also managed to finally get around to making and filling the two garden beds that have been sitting around in bits since we built the first batch of them a long time ago now.

So that makes a reasonable size vege patch so far. Now we just have to work out how to maximise production from it. But I can also at least see where the next beds will go. Just need to get motivated enough to measure, build, and fill them. But I suspect that might wait a while yet. We need to at least get this lot ticking over first.

In other garden news, the dwarf sunflowers in a pot have been a bit of a success this year. Made for a bit more colour on the deck over summer. Next year I think I’ll have a few more staged in smaller pots to replace those almost done, but they have lasted pretty well so far, and still more to come fully into flower. Not bad for a single pot.

And I think the only other news is that the 2013 garlic harvest has been and gone. Fifty bulbs in the end. Which is more than double last year. Those that have good memories, or do a little link surfing will remember/find that I only planted 45 cloves. But five of those were those tricky cloves that appear to be a single clove, but are actually two or three instead. But anyway, it was perfect timing to be able to use nice fresh garlic for the pesto making too. Not at all as hefty as last year’s harvest, but pretty good still. Let’s see how far through the year it’ll get us. Hopefully further than last year! And no, it appears I still can’t work out a decent way to plait garlic, so it just ends up being tied in bunches. Any tips appreciated!

So that’s it. An update on proceedings at least. We’ll try to be a bit more regular again, but no promises!

For the last two years I’ve been planting broad beans, trying them once and then giving away all the rest of them. This year I planted broad beans yet again. But I swore to myself that if I didn’t like them this year then that was it. All over. Never again.

So trying a different approach the very young pods were picked with some trepidation, cooked with some fried onion and bacon with even more, then eaten.

Let’s just say that between the 3 of us with teeth we managed to finish not just the plateful, but the whole pan of them. And would even make it again.

Maybe there will be some growing next year after all.

Though I’ve still got a lot of big pods that I’m not going to go near to give away this season yet!