Week 29

The weather has been a bit overcast and therefore warmer this week. Warmer, in this case, meaning "not freezing but still cold". The children have been back at preschool and I've been back out in the garden.

I had an encounter with an unknown assailant on Friday. I put on my gumboots and went to take the compost out. Got about 15 metres before I felt a sharp pain on the top of my right foot. Shook my boot out but found nothing. Hobbled back to the house and found a small red mark on my foot and something very, very small sticking out of it. My whole foot ached for the rest of the day but luckily it didn't spread so wasn't poisonous, whatever it was. I believe it was definitely an insect sting as opposed to being prickled by something sharp. Prickles don't hurt for days.

That'll teach me to keep my gumboots outside. Now I'm too scared to put them back on again. They were only cheap Warehouse boots which I bought last year and are already falling apart anyway. So I think I'll just buy myself some new ones instead.

Have been very busy in the vege garden. Finally got it dug over for winter. Never mind that winter has already begun. I used the tractor, put the plow attachment on it and drove up and down the vege patch. It was actually a lot easier than I expected. Found heaps more potatoes but left most of them in the ground for next year (is that the way it works?).

Then I divided the garden into four sections, approx 3m x 4m each. I laid weedmat down inbetween each section to provide a visual break and a walkway to allow access all around the plot. There is also a fifth plot along the back of the garden for tall things like tomatoes.

- - - Plot 1 - - -

P A T H

- - - Plot 2 - - -

P A T H

- - - Plot 3 - - -

P A T H

- - - Plot 4 - - -

Once I had it all laid out I had to stop for the day. That night we had a bit of a storm with high winds, and it nearly undid everything I'd done that day. Except that I'd noticed the weedmat was starting to come loose so I put various spades, forks, rakes, etc down on top of the weedmat to stop it blowing away overnight.

The next thing I did was to lay compost down on top of my plots. I'd forgotten to do this earlier, I think I was supposed to do it before I turned over the soil.

Then I spread leftover lavender clippings all over my four plots. The point being to provide a bit of a mulch but also just to protect the ground over winter, to stop the weeds growing so much, until I'm ready to start planting things in spring.

I'll upload some photos shortly, but I have to say I'm really pleased with how it's turned out. Laying down the weedmat to separate the plots was (to me) a stroke of genius (even if I do say so myself). It provides a visual break between the plots and provides something to walk on (and stops you from getting so dirty). But the best thing about it is that it has gone from being one huge, intimidating plot, into five smaller, manageable plots. Psychologically I feel a lot more comfortable about dealing with five small gardens than one huge garden. The other beauty of using weedmat is that it can easily be pulled up again when it is time to dig over the garden again.

I don't know if the lavender clippings were the right thing to use or not. Someone suggested they might be too woody. My main intent is not to have them to encourage growth, but to inhibit it, so I think it will work well. And if not, well I'll still have the best smelling vege garden anyway!

-M

Week 28

Cold, cold, cold. Haven't done anything this week. The weather was fine today, could have gotten out into the garden but had sick children at home instead.

Have had several more frosts.

It's so cold in the kitchen nowdays that the olive oil has started to solidify.

The mandarin and orange trees are in full fruit. The grapefruit tree is getting there. However something is eating the grapefruit directly off the tree. There was one grapefruit in particular that I noticed. The first time I saw it, it looked like it had some teeth marks in it. Now each day when I go out and look at it I see more and more has been nibbled away. I suspect it is possums.

-M

Week 27

Not much has been going on this week. I am in hibernation mode.

Today the weather forecast was for a very cold southerly change. I got home from dropping the girls at daycare and the weather was quite nice. I considered getting out in the garden to do some work. Then I figured the southerly snap would probably hit in about an hour and I'd have only just gotten started and would have to stop again. So I spent the day inside catching up on other stuff. The cold weather didn't hit till 2.30 this afternoon. And, boy, is it cold.

Earlier in the week I attempted to make some feijoa sorbet using this recipe. I didn't follow the recipe exactly due to the time of day and not having the proper equipment. It doesn't look exactly like I would expect it to. But, it still tastes pretty good.

We also made some pretty good feijoa and orange muffins. So now all our feijoa's are used up for another year.

-M

Week 26 - Cold and Cows

Had our first frost of the year this week. And our second. And our third.

We have a thermometer in our dining room. It has been around 9 degrees (Celcius) most mornings. The thing about living here is that the mornings are very cold but the afternoons are usually alright. The clear, cloudless days are when it is coldest in the mornings but the sun gets quite warm by afternoon. It's been getting up to around 15/16 degrees or more in the sunshine. But as soon as the sun goes down I have to start closing all the curtains to keep the warmth in as much as possible.

The house really does not heat up very well. I've been worrying about this for a year now (even though we've only been here six months this week, we actually bought the place over a year ago) and still haven't come up with any solutions. I'm disappointed to find that the woodburner doesn't heat the house as well as I thought it would (unless I'm doing it wrong).

The woodburner is in the dining room, which is the central room in the house. Off it is the living room, the kitchen, and the hallway. It's all sort of open plan apart from the kitchen which has a door. We've hung a curtain (blanket) up between the dining room and hallway to save heat loss in that direction. It has made a big difference in terms of heat loss, but heating the dining room alone is still difficult. The woodburner really only heats up the immediate vicinity, and even then the most I've gotten the room to is 14 degrees. No way it's going to heat the living room at all.

When we're at home all day we eat three meals plus snacks in the dining room, so it's good to have that room warm. But I've pretty much given up on using the fireplace since it makes so little difference to the room temperature.

We have oil column heaters in the bedrooms, and I find that those are the warmest rooms in the house. So when we're at home we tend to spend a lot of time playing in K's room. Which isn't such a bad thing because we've had to move all the toys into her room anyway to stop the dog from destroying them.

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Now here's a funny story. And like all funny stories, it wasn't particularly funny at the time.

As I've mentioned before, the neighbours have been grazing their stock in our fields. This week they've been in the field closest to the house. Which is cool to be able to look out the window and see cattle.

Now last night they were particularly noisy, mooing in the middle of the night. I got woken up by it but went back to sleep, only to be woken again by V crying at 1.30am. I went and cuddled her and she insisted she wanted to look out the window. I said to her "you won't see anything there, the cows are on the other side of the house". So we looked out and lo and behold there were three cows* there, nibbling on our lawn. And the one still in the paddock was making a heck of a noise calling out to these three to return.

K woke up soon afterwards and started crying as well. I had a bit of dilemma, given that P is still away and I was there on my own with the girls. Stay inside with the girls and spend the whole night awake listening to the mooing. Or go outside to try and shoo the cattle back into the paddock but leaving the girls inside crying.

I figured it was worth a bit of short term pain for the long term gain. I quickly got dressed and ran outside, looking the part in my Swanndri, gumboots and jeans. The first thing I did was to shut the gate from the yard to the driveway, to prevent any possible escapes. They were now fenced in on three sides, with the fourth side being a steep bank downwards to I don't know where as I haven't been down there yet.

I took a look at the fence to the paddock. It seemed intact. There is a "Taranaki Gate" between this paddock and the house. The gate was leaning slightly. I figured they must have trampled over it. I opened the gate and then tried to herd the cattle back through.

There were three cows in our yard, two brown and one small black/white. In the paddock were another 4 small black/white cows and one big white bull who was the boss and kept calling out for the others to return.

I grabbed a stick and tried to get around the cows so that they were in between me and the gate. By doing that I hoped that they'd move away from me towards the gate (and hopefully not run towards me instead!). I managed to get them going in the right direction and got them into the corner of the yard next to the gate. But then we had a bit of a standoff. Meanwhile I could hear lots of screams coming from the house as two little girls cried and cried for Mummy to return. And lots more mooing coming from the big guy in the paddock.

Eventually the small black/white cow decided to make a run for it back into the paddock. And at that point I decided to give up as the other two showed no signs of wanting to follow and once again tried to make a break for it in the wrong direction. I closed the gate and went back into the house to cuddle my girls.

As we were cuddling we realised the mooing had stopped. Obviously the bull had just been concerned about the little one coming home. At that point I decided to just leave the two brown cows in the yard, figuring there wasn't much harm they could do.

I finally got back to bed at 3.30am.

This morning after I dropped the girls off at creche I went to see the neighbours and told them their stock had escaped. M came straight up and together we herded the two brown cows back through the gate, and then M took them all away to a different paddock. I was pleased to see him using the same technique as I'd done (i.e. big stick). Maybe I can learn to be a farmer after all.

The good bit is that there wasn't a lot of damage done. They've trimmed the lawn so I won't need to mow again quite so soon. A few cow pats on the lawn, one on the vege garden and a couple on the driveway. Nothing to really worry about.

Just two very tired little girls and one very tired Mummy. And a very exciting story to tell.

-M


*I'm still a city slicker so I'll call them cows even though I don't know if they were male or female.

Week 25

Haven't done much work on the farm this week. The girls and I have all been sick, and P has been away.

Last weekend P got the chainsaw out and got stuck in chopping up one of the trees that came down in the storm a couple of months ago.

I've done the odd bit of weed-spraying and weed-pulling in the garden.

Took the dog to the local dog park in Levin for a run around. He enjoyed it a lot. So did K, who loved running in and out of the trees and bushes. Timmy (the dog) has just graduated from four weeks at Puppy Pre-School. During that time he got to know the other dog in school and went from being very shy the first week to being all over the other dog by the last week. He learnt to sit. He has not learnt how to stop jumping on the children, or chewing on their toys, or pulling on their clothes with his teeth. I have learnt that the distraction technique only works for a couple of seconds. I have also learnt that if he is to be inside with the girls he has to stay in his cage. However, when there are no children around he is mostly pretty good now.

I made up a batch of feijoa juice today. Couldn't find any recipes so made it the same way I make passionfruit juice. It turned out quite nice. Very refreshing. I think it would make a better sorbet than juice so might try that out later in the week.

Also made a loaf of bread for the first time in ages.

-M