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Just 2015 though. Yesterday seemed like a good day to fork up the garlic crop and get it under cover before the promised showers. Can’t recall any showers, but it was time to pull it up anyway.

Hopefully this year we’ve got enough to get us through both the planting season and the eating season. Think we were about 8 bulbs short this year and had to do a bit of a garlic splash and dash to get us through.

I suspect it’s going to be a bit interesting sitting on that outdoor furniture for a bit though!

They might not look like much, but what you see is a giant leap forward in orchard production. The first time we’ve managed to get a handful of anything much in all the time the trees have been in. It’s only taken four and a half years to get to this point!

I suspect it’s a combination of all that time, some extra watering this year, and so far at least a particularly light year for the dreaded grass grub beetle. Pity about a couple of hail showers, but we’ll take that.

There’s still peaches, pears, nectarines, a plum or two, and some apples to come this year. Assuming they make it! Here’s hoping.

Long time readers of this blog will no doubt have previously been informed that the ground around here is slightly on the bony side. Any more bony and we’d probably consider opening a quarry! So the thought of trying to drag a spade or shovel through a few hundred meters of trenching has not had great appeal to date. So every time we’ve mowed the outer reaches there’s been a long sigh as we’ve had to go move the irrigation pipes out of the way first.

But no longer!

A little orange digger came to play one day,
When Nan and Big Kev came up to stay,
It chugged and it chugged up and down the land,
And cut through the ground as if it were sand,
On the day the orange digger came here to play.

Well, truth is it took a little longer than a day, but then it did have to assist with the creation of a couple of larger raised beds than has been the norm around here. Hardwood ex-power poles take a fair bit of effort to manoeuvre into place, even with the assistance of a little orange digger. And a fair bit of spoil from the BBQ area and the decking needed to be pushed around down the back too. So all in all a hugely productive long weekend.

So now all we have to do is get the pipe settled in the bottom and shovel the dirt back over. A job that’s almost enjoyable. Much more so than trying to get the dirt/stones out of the trenches!

A huge amount of thanks to Kev, Nan and Tom!