To Do List

Since I am going to be showing you some market garden pictures, Alessia wanted you to also see some of our beautiful flowers. So she took my camera and here is the result.

The Friday after Christmas found me being driven to the other side of Auckland to have a tooth extracted. The word 'extracted' means major pain but I had been numbed up the whazoo and Dan and I headed back to the farm in fairly good spirits. And then we hit what turned out to be a 12  1/2 mile backup on the two lane road we HAD to travel. It took us almost a half hour to travel one mile. I was trapped!

In order to keep  my mind off my increasing pain as the numbness receded and the armies of pain marched into my mouth, I made a to-do list. Not for myself, you understand, but for Dan. After all what else did he have to do on his yearly vacation?

I will skip all the little things like being with the kids, tackling the ant infestation, removing vast numbers of spider webs, spiders, and cocooned insects, mowing the lawns, clipping the lawns, etc.

And, of course, there were the unexpected treats like the geyser (hot water tank) in my apartment leaking down through the garage and having to be drained. It is the holiday season and there is literally no one available to come fix the darned thing for 6 days.

But the list grew despite extraneous events. The market garden needed to be weeded. Those are not edible plants you see, those are various weeds that have thrived under our protective netting. The fruit trees needed to be weeded and mulched.  All the soon-to-be produce in the garden needed to be weeded, the dirt loosened, and mulched.

Anyway, you get the idea. I am showing you some of my success stories; cherry tomatoes, corn, and squash. Everything else is dead. I think we are going to be eating a ton of succotash. And I hope to can at least 48 jars of tomato sauce. Haven't got a clue what to do with all that corn (besides eat it fresh). I just can't see myself hulling the kernels and canning them. We are talking major work there.

The Bug

The Lord family has been laid low with a malevolent stomach bug that ran right through all of us (pun intended). Naavah got it first but being the last of the 2-year-old Stoics, simply reported that her stomach hurt. Since she continued playing, etc. we didn’t pay too much attention. That is until we saw that she had been vomiting into her quilt. Not a word, no complaints, just soldiering on.

Her sister, on the other hand, made sure the entire family knew when the bug bit her. This was at 1 in the a.m. and from then on, she stayed in my bed with me. We quickly got into a routine. She would vomit, I would take the basin and clean up. I would return to the bed, continue the story I was telling her until the next episode. Once she realized that we were very sorry she was sick but that there was little we could do, she settled down and was as stoic as her sister.

She was over it within 12 hours. Dan and Yael took 2-3 days and I was flat out for 6 and have been staggering around ever since. This getting old stuff is sooo much fun!

What with the bug, etc. it was 5 days before I could drive around the farm to see how things were doing. The answer is: not too well.

First, the steers took advantage of my relaxed vigilance to kick over their water trough and so were without water for several days at least.

 

Next up were the bugs. No, not the bacteria type; the eat everything that grows type of bug. As an example, most of the corn is gone. Not a trace. There are a few scattered stalks and you can see from the picture how well they're doing.

The possums have totally destroyed my roses. I am livid but there is nothing to do but wrap the plants in netting and pray.

However, there is some good news. This hot, humid weather has been great for my tomatoes. I should make a ton of tomato sauce from these glorious specimens. Most of the plants are heritage tomatoes so I am looking forward to finding out what the taste differences are. Probably the difference is that the heritage tomatoes actually have a taste. 

Shearing Season

It is shearing season once again and I thought you might like a quick view of our miracle lamb. She's the one in the center facing us. Remember, she was born during the last shearing and everyone thought she would die. Obviously she didn't. I feel a special affinity for her and love to see her hopping and leaping in the paddock (running away from me as fast as she can just like all the others).

The rest of the family was back in Auckland so it was up to me to "supervise". This always elicits a few chuckles from family and friends. John is more than capable of doing the whole operation on his own. In fact, this time he almost had to. He didn't call me went he got to the shearing shed so I had no idea he had started.

On a vague whim, I drove down to check on how the sheep were doing since they were cooped up waiting. John was there and so were 4 sheep already shorn. I told you he was more than capable. Anyway, my heart stopped as I saw one ewe with blood trickling down the side of her face (see picture). I stuttered as I asked John if that was something I should be concerned about. "Nope," he answered, "Sheep heal quicker than about any other animal."

Maybe so, but she bled the whole 3 hours. Not only that, by the time John finished, the place looked like an abbatoir. You can see how closely they are confined. As she moved around, she wiped her blood all over the pretty shorn coats of the rest of them. Not a pretty sight. I was just glad the girls weren't here. I have no idea how I would have put a happy spin on that one.

I checked on the flock this morning and the overnight rains have washed the fleeces and I can't even figure out which ewe got nicked on the ear. I guess they are quick healers. Lucky for them!

Market Garden Update

It has been a few weeks now since my last blog on the market garden (MG) so here is an update. A few weeks can be a lifetime in the Spring garden and I wish I could say that was the case for the MG. But it’s not.

The bugs continue to win what I now consider to be a very unequal contest. As you can see, the tomato plants in the foreground are struggling to survive. Only one bean plant (in the back of the tomatoes) is growing and that is a replacement for its 9 dead relatives.

 

I have scattered tomato plants throughout the garden and most of them are still alive which I guess means the battle is still being waged. But they are obviously in some distress. I water every day which is a worry since it is very early in the season to be using so much water. I read somewhere that beneficial bugs live under soggy logs so I have started importing some. We’ll see.

The only area in which I can claim success is as a possum burial site. Dan and I inter our possum kills right in the soil. Dan thoughtfully makes sure that the tails are left exposed (that is what you can see directly below the corner of the white board). This is so that when I plant seeds or seedlings, I don’t inadvertently dig into a carcass.

 

There are so many things I never dreamt I’d be doing. Burying possums; catching snails and using them for chicken protein; cleaning out barns and chicken coops; hauling water, etc. etc. I look back on the Suburban Terry with some astonishment. Did I really expect to go through life never being in touch with the reality of food production? I guess so. I honestly never thought about it. This adventure has truly changed my life. I hope I am more humble. Losing the ongoing battles to a bunch of insects surely is humbling enough to do it for me.

How Did They Do It?

 

Now that I am struggling with the organic garden concept, I look back on our evolutionary progress (?) with great puzzlement. How did they do it? I can’t get a lousy 9 bean plants to survive in the natural environment. How on earth (pun intended) did our ancestors move from hunter/gatherers to farmers and survive?

I am not saying that I share my beans and peas with the earth and all its critters and insects. I am saying that I am ceding my beans and peas to them. Look at the picture. Where do you see 4 and ½ plants surviving to feed me and my family? Nowhere! The critters and insects have demolished the whole crop and have moved in on the peas. How did those ancestors manage to grow enough for them to survive?

I am still faithfully (and it takes a whole lot of faith let me tell you) planting my cherished seedlings in the market garden. They are protected by wood plank walls and bird netting and still they are nothing more than a portable feast for whatever.

I am also planting seeds directly in the soil. The soil, by the way, which is overrun with weeds.  Remember all the paper we smoothed out and then laid out?  How about the top soil, compost, and mulch? Remember them? My aching muscles do. Dan and Yael’s aching muscles also vividly remember. But the weeds were born without shame and continue to thrive in our organically correct market garden. I just pray that enough of our plants thrive to feed us this Autumn and Winter. But I’m not too optimistic.

Organic Hand Care

Before I give you my soon-to-be patented recipe for hand care, a little background is required. It is now Spring and the torrential rains have pretty much petered out. So in our never ending attempt to conserve grass, Dan has come up with a complex grazing system. This system includes polytaping (electrified fencing) off parts of the tree sanctuary in front of the house (see above photo). The blue box in the lower right covers the battery. 

But the important part of this picture is that round, blue container set in the paddock. It is filled with water. How do I know? Because I filled it just before I took that picture. The down side of this grass conservation system is that the water troughs are often not located where the fencing and cattle are. In comes the intrepid grandma, hose across shoulders, climbing the fence and dodging cow patties on her way to the trough. Still it's better than last week when the hose system failed and I had to haul buckets of water to both the steers and the sheep - twice a day!

That aside, it's time for the first part of my recipe: get splinters in your hands from the rough wood fencing.

The second ingredient comes from my love of flowers; in this case roses. I have planted 5 different rose bushes in containers around the house, wrapped them in chicken wire (possums also eat roses!), and walked out to see if there are any blooms at least twice a day. There aren't any blooms but there are aphids. Not my favorite pest but there they are.

I go to my handy gardening magazine and it tells me to spray with a fish emulsion mixture. I do that. My hands get liberally coated and stink to high heaven for days. I usually sleep with one hand under my pillow but until the mixture wears off, I find myself sleeping as far away from my hands as possible. Not an easy feat.

So fish emulsion is my second ingredient. The splinters have opened up wounds in my hands and wrists and the emulsion is able to penetrate beneath the skin. So far all is working well.

The third ingredient is the aphids themselves. Oh, didn't I mention that the fish emulsion had absolutely no effect on the aphids? So I moved on to Plan B which involves manually crushing the aphids and squooshing them off the buds and leaves. This puts the squashed aphids on my hands. The aphids then enter beneath the skin by sliding in on the fish emulsion.

Dan and Yael have now screened off the whole market garden. It is quite an accomplishment. I am able to walk around in there standing upright. And it is big, really, really big. After an incredible amount of discussion, we decided to locate the garden there in the middle of our fruit orchard. Any number of reasons but there is water nearby, it is flat, it is not taking a grazing paddock out of circulation. An excellent decision but there is one drawback (of course).

The drawback is snails. They are all over the paddock, the grass, and the trees. So the girls and I go out to catch snails. And (this was my idea, I'm thinking of writing it up for some agricultural journal) we take the snails back to the chickens for their weekly protein. Everybody wins! Well, maybe not the snails.

So the girls and I go out and we average about 40 snails a trip. Not bad? Ha! I read this reminiscence from a woman who tells of being hauled out of bed by her father so that they can go snail hunting at night. It seems the little slimeballs are nocturnal. I hadn't known that. So the next morning I go down right after feeding the chickens. The girls are back in Auckland and I bag 412 snails. I'm not kidding: 412. My chickens have erected some kind of golden idol to me and genuflect when I pass. I have not reached that height again but I average way past the old record of 40 snails.

And that brings me to the final incredient. Remember, we have the open splinter wounds, the fish emulsion and the aphids. Now we have snail slime. This coats the hands and keeps them moist. So what do you think? Any takers for investing in my hand lotion company? Well, let me know.

Chickens Are Not Cheap

Chicken feed is even more expensive than cat food. Wood shavings are pretty darn pricey too. My cat uses the great outdoors so I don't have the kitty litter bill to compare but all in all, chickens are not cheap.

They are also expensive in terms of time and emotional energy. We'll take the time element first. In order for them to get the maximum daylight they require for optimal egg laying, I have to let them out of the coop at sunrise and return them at dusk. So what's the problem? The problem is that I occasionally (like always) prefer to stay in bed past 5:45am and as dusk falls I prefer eating chicken to chasing chickens.

As twilight creeps over the mountain, here I am darting to and fro chasing our feathered friends. I am convinced that chickens are really very bright and I read an article recently that confirmed it. In some areas chickens out think human toddlers! It's for sure that all 6 of my chickens can outthink me. They can also outrun me.

For a few days I thought I had trained them to come into the coop at dusk as I poured that dearer than gold chicken feed into the feeder. Then just as I was congratulating myself, 3 showed up and 3 were AWOL. I spent about a half an hour searching in the gathering gloom before they magically appeared at my feet. I still have no idea how they do that, but it is becoming a regular thing now.

Emotionally they are very taxing. They seem happy enough but they won't leave me alone for a second. I can't weed the garden because they hop up onto the beds and peck away right next to my trowel. I can't walk with my granddaughters because both of the girls are needlessly terrified of the chickens and Naavah's screams could pierce the clouds. Alessia runs for the fence, bolts over and dodges into the garage. I don't have to do anything to protect the kids since the chickens are totally uninterested in any human being but me. They walk with me weaving dangerously around my feet and chatter constantly.

And that brings me to another thing, my 8 month old grandson has perfected the chicken squawk and I am constantly whirling around thinking that one of the hens has gotten into the house. Why not? They get into everything else. Frankly it has been a nightmare. There is chicken poop everywhere. The gardens are a hen scratched mess and I back out of the garage at 1/2 mile an hour because they KNOW I'm in there somewhere and are determined to flush me out.

So far the fences and the gate have not been enough to confine them so on Sunday we pulled out all the stops. We clipped the wings of every last one of them. Now perhaps I'll get some peace.