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Once again they descended in the early morning mist. The concrete pump and the concrete trucks… Very early! But I guess it wasn’t like we weren’t already up and about. Grudgingly.

There was a fairly long pause in proceeding before the last of the three concrete trucks pulled in. Not sure if they got lost or whether it was down to having to calculate the remaining requirements precisely and phone that in for delivery. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt is was the latter, but…

Didn’t really matter. The kids were pretty much over it by the second truck.

So now we have a big rectangular pad. Just as well there’s no ramp so we can’t drive onto it and crack it before it’s fully set!

After a slight pause in proceedings, presumably for a council inspector to drag themselves out for a look, as well as the long weekend here, we’re back to noting some progress. Today the mesh was lifted onto the little black standoffs ready for the concrete to be poured in tomorrow morning!

Stay tuned.

At this rate I’m not sure how many updates there’s going to be! Yesterday morning another little orange digger arrived on a truck and started to scrape the foundation plot for the garage. By the time I got home after work it looked like this:

Apparently it kept the kids occupied most of the day watching the digger and the gravel trucks come and go.

And of course they left us this. Another pile of dirt to deal with. I’m pretty sure the picture doesn’t present the full scale of the mound. Luckily we’ve got the new raised vege garden beds to decant some into, and a few other bits and pieces that need a top up.

But all that was yesterday. I was just too lazy to tap a bit of a story around it last night.

Today was a whole other day, and when I got home tonight further progress had been made! Now it appears to be fully boxed, just waiting for the concrete truck to arrive.

I guess we’ll see just how good their scheduling is by how quickly it gets filled. I just hope it’s pretty poor so the kids can see the concrete getting poured, but I suspect they might not be so lucky as they are off to school tomorrow.

I guess this is actually a bit of real news too…

We’ve had confirmation that the consent has been signed off for our new garage. Wah-hey!

Good news indeed for all of you regular visitors to this site. Some construction pictures to document progress will no doubt follow.

Not sure when they’re planning to get on site and do the initial site scrape, but hopefully for all of us it won’t be long. Stay tuned!

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!

Somehow we managed to agree on an outdoor dining table and some chairs while out shopping for such today, and while I’d like to say “and with no further ado we installed them” in reality there was a fair bit of what can only be honestly described as “slightly comedic pissing around” which ended up with us having a table and half the final number of chairs on premises and erected in time for the kids dinner. So they ended up with the privilege of the first meal at the table.

So now we just have to hope the rest of the chairs find their way to us, and we can work out the best placement of all the plants in pots. And the BBQ. And the tub of ice and beer! But I am pleased to say the kids enjoyed being the first diners, and smearing sauce all over the new chairs for mum to clean off.

Ok, so it has been a very long time since we last posted any sort of update. A looooooooongg time indeed! Sorry! But it has been autumn, then winter, and a very slow start to spring. So really nothing to report for the last few months. Until now. And even this isn’t going to be that exciting, but at least it’s a start, so bear with us and try to appreciate it if you can!

Today I finally managed to get around to re-potting all of the seedlings that have been slowing popping up in the propagation trays on the kitchen table for the last few weeks. I’m not sure how they’ve managed to survive the prodding and poking of the kids, but they did. Which is good. Or will be when they start producing produce.

Speaking of prodding, I do like the propagation trays we’ve got. As well as being self watering through the germination phase they’re great at re-potting time as with a simple prod from the bottom they pop up ready to be transferred to their next home. Bliss! Much better than trying to wrestle them out without pulling leaves off.

Somehow this year I’ve managed to get a much better balance between the seeds sprouted and those that end up getting re-potted. With hopefully just enough spares to keep the workmates happy during the ad hoc seedling exchange meeting sometime this week.

First time we’ve tried to grow melons in the tunnel house, and it seems they’ve managed to grow and ripen OK.

There were even are few sneaky extras that I hadn’t spotted hiding under the back leaves. Just have to make sure we eat them all before they go off. And to try and remember which was which to know what to plonk in again next year.