At the beginning of the week I set about weeding the vegetable garden. It's now 80% done and I hope to finish it tomorrow. Well, that's all the big weeds pulled out anyway. The small weeds are starting to grow again already! The potatoes are all ready to come out and I also discovered a pumpkin growing in amongst the weeds too.
The birds continue to eat the fruit off the trees before we can get to it. However the passionfruit is just about ready to eat.
I mowed the grass (using the ride-on mower) in the lavender field this week as it was starting to grow back again. It took two hours to mow the whole field. Compare that to the several days it took last time!
The following day I attempted to mow the lawn. The ride-on mower broke down AGAIN! That's the third time now! The belt that controls the lowering of the blades split and fell off. Am really not impressed. P ended up mowing the whole lawn with the push mower at the weekend and it took nearly 3 hours.
Last night we got woken up by one of our cats meowing in the hallway. He'd brought us a present. Not a mouse, not a rat, not a bird. A rabbit. Way to go Spot!
Our homemade bread is going down well. We've been through two loaves this week. Keeping it in the freezer has encouraged me to eat it more. Isn't it funny how the convenience of already being sliced makes you want to use it, or the inconvenience of having to slice it whenever you want some makes you not want to bother. When really it only takes a few seconds. It freezes well, but sticks together a bit, which makes it hard to break apart.
We were out late one night during the week. Coming home there were just so many stars in the sky. It was amazing. All the constellations were there. I don't know if I've ever seen the Milky Way before. It was beautiful.
-M
19 February 2009
16 February 2009
Week 10 - Harvesting the Lavender
We harvested part of our lavender crop at the beginning of this week. We have two different varieties of lavender - Grosso and Super. They are both varieties of Lavandin aka Lavendula x intermedia (I think that's the correct Latin term). French Lavender anyway. We harvested the Grosso only as the Super isn't ready yet.
T came and helped us using his special machine which cut the flower heads off and caught them in a big bag. P helped him with this, while I fed and bathed the girls - we did the harvesting between 5-7pm as it had been wet overnight and this gave the lavender all day to dry out. Plus it worked out well with P being at work during the day. They harvested 10 rows of lavender and we stored it all over our garage floor overnight.
The following day T and I took the flower heads to a distillery in Woodville. The process was very interesting. The lavender heads are put into a large vat and steam is run through it. The steam/water vapour then cools down as it travels out a pipe, turning back into water and oil which has been released from the flowers. The oil floats on top of the water and is syphoned off at the end of the process. There's a pretty good Wikipedia article on the process.
We had somewhere between 300-400kgs of flower heads, which gave us 7.5 litres of oil. Now the oil has to sit somewhere dark and cool for 6-8 months to age/mellow before we can do anything with it.
We also have 7 x 20 litre buckets of distilled water aka hydrosol to use. Apparently this can be used in soap making later on, or we can just put it in our baths as it has some oil residue in it as well.
We also have all the 'cooked' lavender heads to be spread over the garden as mulch.
Apart from that there hasn't been a lot of work going on this week. It has been raining quite a lot this week, replenishing the water tank and watering the garden. T said it was just as well we harvested the lavender at the beginning of the week as it would have been ruined by the heavy rain.
The heavy rain also caused us to discover a birds nest blocking the gutter at the back of the house. Water was pouring out of the gutter and onto K's bedroom windows, and straight through the gaps in the leadlights and all over her bedroom floor. At least the floors are wooden and there was no furniture there.
We have taken a break from making bread this week. The last couple of loaves have gone mouldy real quick. We think it was because of the humidity lately. I've done an experiment today and made a loaf, sliced it all up and put it in the freezer, just as I would do with store-bought bread. Not sure how well it will defrost/taste so will include an update next week.
-M
T came and helped us using his special machine which cut the flower heads off and caught them in a big bag. P helped him with this, while I fed and bathed the girls - we did the harvesting between 5-7pm as it had been wet overnight and this gave the lavender all day to dry out. Plus it worked out well with P being at work during the day. They harvested 10 rows of lavender and we stored it all over our garage floor overnight.
The following day T and I took the flower heads to a distillery in Woodville. The process was very interesting. The lavender heads are put into a large vat and steam is run through it. The steam/water vapour then cools down as it travels out a pipe, turning back into water and oil which has been released from the flowers. The oil floats on top of the water and is syphoned off at the end of the process. There's a pretty good Wikipedia article on the process.
We had somewhere between 300-400kgs of flower heads, which gave us 7.5 litres of oil. Now the oil has to sit somewhere dark and cool for 6-8 months to age/mellow before we can do anything with it.
We also have 7 x 20 litre buckets of distilled water aka hydrosol to use. Apparently this can be used in soap making later on, or we can just put it in our baths as it has some oil residue in it as well.
We also have all the 'cooked' lavender heads to be spread over the garden as mulch.
Apart from that there hasn't been a lot of work going on this week. It has been raining quite a lot this week, replenishing the water tank and watering the garden. T said it was just as well we harvested the lavender at the beginning of the week as it would have been ruined by the heavy rain.
The heavy rain also caused us to discover a birds nest blocking the gutter at the back of the house. Water was pouring out of the gutter and onto K's bedroom windows, and straight through the gaps in the leadlights and all over her bedroom floor. At least the floors are wooden and there was no furniture there.
We have taken a break from making bread this week. The last couple of loaves have gone mouldy real quick. We think it was because of the humidity lately. I've done an experiment today and made a loaf, sliced it all up and put it in the freezer, just as I would do with store-bought bread. Not sure how well it will defrost/taste so will include an update next week.
-M
09 February 2009
Week 9 - More Weeding
More Weeding. That just about sums it up really. Weeding among the lavender. Weeding the vegetable garden. Spraying the weeds around the outskirts of the yard.
At least all of the lavender field is done now, even though it's taken 17 hours over the past two weeks. Doesn't sound like much, but it was incredibly time consuming, fiddly and boring work.
And about a quarter of the vegetable garden is done too. Last week I mentioned I thought we had tomatoes growing too. Now that turns out not to be the case. After reading several gardening guides (including Yates), none of whom mentioned it, I finally stumbled across this quote from the NZ Vegetable Gardening Guide 1976 "Quite often after the potato flowers, small tomato-like fruits appear on the tops, these are poisonous!" Gosh you'd think some of the other gardening books might have mentioned that! Seems even growing something as simple as potatoes isn't quite as simple as it seems.
The lavender is now ready for harvesting. We were planning on doing it on Monday, however now it appears the weather might not be right. So we will just have to wait and see.
-M
At least all of the lavender field is done now, even though it's taken 17 hours over the past two weeks. Doesn't sound like much, but it was incredibly time consuming, fiddly and boring work.
And about a quarter of the vegetable garden is done too. Last week I mentioned I thought we had tomatoes growing too. Now that turns out not to be the case. After reading several gardening guides (including Yates), none of whom mentioned it, I finally stumbled across this quote from the NZ Vegetable Gardening Guide 1976 "Quite often after the potato flowers, small tomato-like fruits appear on the tops, these are poisonous!" Gosh you'd think some of the other gardening books might have mentioned that! Seems even growing something as simple as potatoes isn't quite as simple as it seems.
The lavender is now ready for harvesting. We were planning on doing it on Monday, however now it appears the weather might not be right. So we will just have to wait and see.
-M
02 February 2009
Week 8 - Weeding
Weeding, weeding and more weeding. If I never see another weed again it will be too soon. Unfortunately I'll be seeing lots of more of them because I'm nowhere near finished.
I've been pulling weeds out of the lavender and it is incredibly time consuming work. There are heaps of bees hanging around the lavender too. Luckily I've stayed away from them and they've stayed away from me. I even spent half a day weeding in light rain but it was so warm that it didn't matter. It did keep the number of bees down though.
K and V are now going to daycare one day a week to enable me to do things like this. The rest of the time I sandwich it around V's naps and K's quiet time.
The lavender will be ready for harvest early next week.
The potatoes are ready for harvesting too. (I think). I weeded a small portion of the vegetable garden and discovered we also have what looks like tomatoes growing there too. They just weren't visible beneath all the weeds.
The citris trees are covered in small green fruit which hopefully one day will grow into large orange fruit.
Our only fruit tree bearing fruit so far (not including the lemon tree), a nectarine tree(?), has about half a dozen fruit on it. All of which have been half eaten by birds.
The other night I went to sleep to the sound of a morepork outside. One of those great moments about living in the country. Lately I've been too busy to stop and smell the roses (or is that because the rose beds all need weeding too!!!).
-M
I've been pulling weeds out of the lavender and it is incredibly time consuming work. There are heaps of bees hanging around the lavender too. Luckily I've stayed away from them and they've stayed away from me. I even spent half a day weeding in light rain but it was so warm that it didn't matter. It did keep the number of bees down though.
K and V are now going to daycare one day a week to enable me to do things like this. The rest of the time I sandwich it around V's naps and K's quiet time.
The lavender will be ready for harvest early next week.
The potatoes are ready for harvesting too. (I think). I weeded a small portion of the vegetable garden and discovered we also have what looks like tomatoes growing there too. They just weren't visible beneath all the weeds.
The citris trees are covered in small green fruit which hopefully one day will grow into large orange fruit.
Our only fruit tree bearing fruit so far (not including the lemon tree), a nectarine tree(?), has about half a dozen fruit on it. All of which have been half eaten by birds.
The other night I went to sleep to the sound of a morepork outside. One of those great moments about living in the country. Lately I've been too busy to stop and smell the roses (or is that because the rose beds all need weeding too!!!).
-M
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