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!
On Monday we got a note to say that Wednesday was RED DAY at Adele’s preschool in support of the Heart Foundation. The suggested idea was to wear red clothes and have red food in her lunch box. Hmmmmmmmm. What red food did we have lying around that meant we didn’t have to go to the supermarket? It required a tiny bit of outside the box thinking and a bit of quick baking, but we came up with Red Scones.
I am not sure I have ever had a red scone before, so I wasn’t sure if they should be savoury or sweet. The choice initially seemed like it was between plain or cheese scones. For some reason a cheese red scone seemed a little odd to me. But then I went further out of the box and came up with the idea of red chocolate scones instead. (Mmmmm.. Chocolate!) After adding a bit of food colouring here they are.
And after a little baking they don’t look too bad.
Then added to her lunchbox along with a tomato and a red fruit squirt. I felt quite proud of myself that I’d managed to put together something on such short notice.
I was a little confused when I dropped her off and no other kid was dressed in red. And when the teacher was getting out her lunch said “Oh, what has mum been making today?” I said “red scones”… like, “What? Why? Doesn’t everyone bake red scones?!” About then I scratched my head and thought “maybe something is maybe not quite right here…”
When I got home I read the note more carefully and realised the real RED DAY is not until some week in Feb. Duh!
Now that I’ve already used up the red scone idea I have no idea what to make for the real red day. Do I just do the same red scones and call yesterday a trial run, or try to come up with something new?!
I’ll just hope that our lack of reading comprehension doesn’t rub off on the kiddies. And luckily she is still young enough not to be embarrassed by her silly mummy!
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!
Still not oodles to report. But things to report none the less. But I’ll try not to blow a gasket doing them all in a day and string them out for a bit more breakfast reading for you all. First up though, some freebies appeared around the place – leftovers from last year.
The most colourful would have to be the poppies and cornflowers. They’ve extended their reach over the effluent field by about 300%. And extended themselves quite a long way into the grass behind them. But the mower’s taking care of them so far.
And then there’s the coriander. Lots of coriander! Half of one whole garden bed has sprouted coriander, along with random plants in the compost heap, between the pavers, and even in the grass by the gardens. I have to confess that pretty soon after this picture was taken all this coriander was dug up and dumped to make way for potatoes.
But probably the most surprising has been the explosion of self sown flowers along the front of the deck, right where pretty much no water manages to fall. But they seem to like it, so until we get the paving sorted they’re more than welcome to hang out there. According to what’s affectionately known around here as “The Daffodil Press”, I think they’re Snow Daisies (Chrysanthemum Paludosum to be precise).
My tummy is starting to rumble! There’s a couple in this state, and many more just starting to swell.
The planters in the poly-tunnel are definitely helping things along compared to the outside bunch.
Will try harder for more exciting news soon…
Ok, so it’s been a while. A very long while! But then it has been winter, and there hasn’t really been that much going on around the place to report.
Until now.
Regular readers may remember the addition of the strawberry patch about a year ago. Here’s how it looked then:
And here’s how it looked last week:
Ah. Not good. Not good at all. So a quick trip to grab a couple of strawberry pots later, myself and my able assistant filled the pots with mix, shoved a well drilled pipe in the middle to assist with watering, and potted up a few small plants that “we” located under the weeds and general detritus in the patch.
So there we have it. A couple of new vertical gardens currently hanging out in the tunnel house. Hopefully going to provide us with a few tasty morsels through the summer.
But the thing is, I thought the original patch was pretty much a goner and the idea was that the pots were to replace the garden. But once I’d dragged a few of the extra plants out, ripped out the weeds, and then weed-eatered around the plot it’s actually not looking all that bad. I think I’ll keep it there for this year and see how it goes.
The poor natives in the top corner have been a bit of a continual battle. Between frosts, weeds, snow, hares, rabbits and drought they’ve had a bit of a hard life. Every year about 25% kark it, while the rest soldier on for another year, awaiting their turn for a decent burial.
So a few weekends ago when we were trying to escape a bit of cabin fever we headed down with all the cash we could scrape up – $32 (and I was actually very surprised we could find that even that much hard currency around the house. Cash is pretty much MIA in this household now) – and headed to one of the local nurseries. Why cash? They take cheques (no cheque book here), and the hard stuff. Fair enough, but a bit limiting on occasion!
A good bit of jaw-jaw later (which was good, as the longer away from the cabin the better!) we returned home with a further selection of natives to try in the corner. A couple of days later in they went [camera reports picture taken on 11 July, so I’ll assume that’s right]. Hopefully with appropriate protection from wind and nasty critters. Although as the protection was recycled from previous failed installations I’m not going to bet the farm on them!
Let’s see how many of this lot make it through a year. Or hopefully much longer!
Well, it’s winter, so not much happening around the place. The only real news of the last month is that we finally depleted the remaining garlic stocks. So looks like we’ll have to double the crop in future to even attempt to make it through a year. Luckily the cloves we sacrificed eating to plant have started to pop their heads up, so in another four or five months we should have some replacement stocks. I’m pretty sure we planted more than last year, but just can’t remember how much more!
The netting’s been vital to stop the kitties deciding that patch was the best patch to spend a bit of time digging in…