Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Going for a walk and ...

Going for a walk 

We were up early the other morning, so we decided we would walk up "Mt Martin", which while the named indicates some grandeur, is really little more then a hillock.  We walked up the road, through the bush and across the ridge to to north, parallel with the back boundary of our property, to the top of the mountain, spotted the Survey Station on top


Plaque on Survey Station

Mt Martin Survey Station


























Slashing
We had Dave out doing some slashing the other day, looks nice, discourages snakes etc and keeps the bladey grass down.  Took him about 90mins at $120, we though that was value for money! Also saves burning, which really does encourage weeds to grow back.


Always farm chores
Anyone who owns property and is growing their own vegetables etc will realise how the chores are never ending.  Toni went and collected all the sweet potatoes the other day, leave it too much longer and the slugs start to eat them,but it is a back breaking, thankless job.  We store them inside and use them over the months to come in lots of wonderful roasts and soups over winter,

Hard work harvesting sweet potatoes !

Several weeks ago the olives were picked, and put in brine, several times over.  Time to bottle them, adding flavours like garlic, rosemary, chilli etc
Getting ready to bottle the olives !

Some of the finished product

While I don't eat them, Toni is looking forward to enjoying them !

and this mornings bread...

Yummy bread !
including a delicious savoury loaf at the front of camembert & cheddar cheese, garlic and garlic chives

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

the garden...

Toni has been doing a heap of work in the garden, while I have been busy out on our Mountain Bike Trails, today's jobs where doing up a new bed to plant the strawberry runners we had donated to us by Jan Scott from the Wilderness Rescue group we volunteer with, thanks Jan.  All the new Strawberries were planted.

Preparing the new Strawberry bed
Plenty of other jobs getting done today as well; compost made, preparing the slug traps using old beer from the nearby pub and digging up all the Sweet Potatoes to keep us supplied for many months !

Things are looking up in the egg department, the chooks have been recalcitrant in laying eggs, most of them moulting, but we are starting to get a few more each day, up from 1 a day to 3 or 4 !   We also have another young Rooster to kill, we'll get to that in the next couple days!

Monday, May 2, 2011

Fruit, glorious fruit

We have a couple different fruits being harvested at the moment, particularly Persimmons (a non astringent variety) and Guavas. Unfortunately I don't like either but Toni is enamoured !
Persimmons
Guavas
and other fruits on the way, hopefully some Paw Paw's! yum yum!
Paw Paw, fingers crossed we don't lose them !
and one of the Mandarin trees has fruit that are colouring nicely.


Wit the huge amount of rain we had, we were convinced we'd lost two small avocados, one tree about 2 years old, the other about 9 months.  The both shed all their leaves and looked very forlorn, the larger one came back quite quickly after the rain petered out and after two months or so the small one, the one we were convinced we'd lost, has started sprouting again! Yeah!

Resurrected Avocado shrub !
The great Guinea Pig experiment
When we moved in, there where three female guinea pigs in the Orchard, the idea behind them is that they will keep the lawn trimmed and require no looking after .  One passed away and the other two could not keep up, necessitating some mowing.  So, Toni decided to find a male to mate with them.  I was against it, knowing how quickly they breed and sure enough a few months later, the place is thick with the little buggers.  I am not sure if she's hasn't created a bigger problem but I will let her deal with that!  Apparently she is going to cull the males, that should prove interesting, just trying to catch and sex them !

Breeding like, well, Guinea Pigs !