Autumn Abundance?

The above picture is the sum total of our market garden's Autumn abundance. The yellow cucumbers are great and there are a slew of them. The tomatoes - not so much. In fact that is all that have survived the great bug infestation. Out of 12 plants the harvest is, to say the least, puny!

The reason can be seen in the picture below. See that huge black rot spot? All the tomatoes (save the 6 in the above picture) have it. I can't control it with the only option available to me as an organic gardener - squishing the predators with my fingers. Where is good ole RoundUp when I need it?

Oops, I forgot. It looks like I could get cancer from it. Since I've already had more than my fair share of that disease, thank you very much, I think I'll pass. So back to organic squishing. I just don't see how the pioneers ever got enough produce from organic farming to survive. Perhaps I'll go to Amish country and see how they do it. There has to be a way; I just haven't found it yet.

It's possible that Alessia (granddaughter age 6) has found the way. The picture below is of her 1 tomato plant which is growing (dare I say thriving) in a raised bed in front of the living room. Now she does nothing but come out and pick the ripe cherry tomatoes. She planted the seed and babied it through infancy to teens and now I do the weeding and most of the watering. There has to be something she's done that I'm missing.

BEETS

The picture of beets comes from the green thumb of my 6 year old granddaughter. Her mother loves beets (or as they say here beetroot) and so Alessia decided to give her a gift. This gift took months of dedicated watering, transplanting, and care but they are quite literally the largest beets I have ever seen. I was worried that they would be 'woody' but they were delicious.

Unfortunately that is the only crop we have. My 14 tomato plants are producing well but some kind of black spot thing is ruining each and every tomato. I have gotten a total of 6 yellow cucumbers from 6 plants. Hardly worth the effort.

I am going to reconsider my whole approach. I think that I might switch to blueberries, asparagus, beet(root) and other such delicacies. The blueberry bushes should do well under bird netting and I don't mind waiting 3 years for asparagus since I can't get anything else to grow anyway.

My rose bushes have managed to stagger through the worst of the drought. They are nothing to write home about (although that is precisely what I am doing right now) but at least I only had 1 fatality. It helped to move the grieving companion bush to the front of the house. Perhaps this Fall I will do the same with the roses that are now in pots.

When I say "I will" I hope you realize that the true digger, mover, transplanter is Dan. I am, however, a crackerjack supervisor. I am brushing up on my "No, no, a little to the left. Are you sure that's deep enough? Perhaps we could pull it out again and try the purple in there."

Dan never says anything but his looks are exceedingly powerful. Oh, and he keeps right on planting where he thinks the bushes should go. Oh well, if I want it done right, I need to pick up a shovel myself.

Til next time.

Breeding Season

The picture above is of our ewe lambs. These are females born last July/August/September who are destined to provide us with cute, cuddly lambs in 2016. The problem is that they don't want to wait that long.

Their mothers and aunts are frolicking in other pastures with our borrowed ram. Our shearer has lent us a fine specimen of ovine masculinity and our ewes are mightily pleased. Our ewe lambs are envious. Downright green-eyed with jealousy.

We think they're too young to mate and far and away too young to be mothers. They might reluctantly agree that motherhood should be postponed but they have quite definite ideas that some practice mating this season would be a good idea. Teenagers! They're all the same.

So we separated them out from the flock. As you can see, they are in what we call the front paddock which is directly in front of the house. There is a far paddock (aren't we clever with our naming?) that opens off the front paddock and we moved them in there as far from the ram as possible.

This worked fine until they ate down the far paddock and we moved them into the front one. From there the catcalls of satisfied ewes across the driveway echoed all day long. Our ewe lambs couldn't stand it. They bolted. They knocked down the fence rails,  burrowed under the gate (see below picture with the gap on the left gate), and headed for the testosterone laden ram.

They didn't make it. The ram was busy elsewhere and they couldn't find a gap in the fence into his paddock. So they made do with an al fresco buffet on the main driveway. Obviously they had to be moved. Who got that chore? Guess. A  subtle hint: I was the only one at the farm at the time.

So I got in my car, shut all the gates along the shared driveway and then tried to figure out what paddock to put the ewe lambs in. Notice my optimism that I'd get them in. One side of the driveway was off limits - filled with mating sheep. The only other paddock was filled with our 2 steers. 

Now they could share the paddock but I would have to leave the gate open for an unspecified amount of time while I rounded up the lambs and herded them into the paddock. Not a good idea since the steers were quite likely to amble out to see what all the fuss was about and I'd never be able to get them back in.

That left the front paddock again. The far paddock is still grazed down. I eventually managed to get them back in the paddock. The key word is 'eventually'. Then I was faced with the prospect of them getting out again. So I wrapped the fence in rope and bird netting. Ditto with the gate. Finally I called Dan to report in.

We agreed that the best plan was to shepherd the lambs into the far paddock at night and let them into the front paddock to graze during the day. So that is what I have been doing. Luckily Dan is up here now and can reinforce the fence so they can't get out. Because I have to tell you, this herding stuff is getting old - really, really old. Or perhaps its just that I'm getting old - really, really old.

Til next time.

The Hedgehog

As you know we wage a never-ending war against possums, rats, rabbits, etc. And the humane cage I talked about earlier has been great for catching these destroyers of vegetables and fruit and roses.

But now it has reached into unknown territory. The above photo is of its latest victim – a hedgehog. A hedgehog, moreover, with a taste for roses. The picture below is of my prized coffee-colored rose bush at half its size from the night before. The hedgehog was caught by the trap which had been placed right next to the roots of the rose.

The problem is that I am a product of my times and so is Dan. We were both avid readers of the Mother West Wind series of children’s books when we were children ourselves.  Said books included stories of cuddly, cute little, you guessed it, hedgehogs!

As if that weren’t bad enough. Beatrice Potter took my heart with her hedgehog stories and drawings. Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for the trapped hedgehog, I have been reading these stories to my grandchildren.

The upshot is that neither Dan nor I could bear the thought of killing this cuddly little rose destroyer. 

So Dan lugged the cage down to the quarantine paddock which backs on a bit of wood and freed the hedgehog. Was she grateful? Did she sprint gleefully for greener pastures/wood? Nope. She remained stubbornly in the cage refusing to move.Time passed but she didn't. Finally Dan dumped her unceremoniously out on the ground and left her. My little Mother West Wind reader has grown up. I wouldn’t want to be the next hedgehog we catch.

This is a view of the market garden early, early in the morning. I had gone down there to do one of my periodic snail sweeps. Imagine my surprise when I found nary a single shell! I remember the first sweep when I captured (and fed to the chickens) well over 400 of the little devils. I assume the chickens remember it as well.

So I wandered puzzled through the garden and its surrounds until I was startled (I almost had a heart attack) by Harvey the Duck. First off, I had forgotten all about him. Second, I had assumed that after all his traumas he had scampered off to foreign climes. Well, there he was larger than life. I mean that literally. He is huge. I know where all the snails have gone and probably every other living creature in the area. 

He was not pleased to see me but he is so obese that I could have grabbed him before he waddled off into the brush if I had not been so surprised. As it was he made his getaway and I have taken ‘snail hunting’ off my calendar. No need for any more early morning raids.

Just for the fun of it, I have included 2 pictures of tomato plants. The first is planted over the carcass of a possum. The others were possum-deprived. Yet another reason for those possum traps.

Til next time!

Cat Trap

 

There are a lot of feral cats in New Zealand. Our farm has more than its share. As you know, I am a cat lover and I hate to see these scrawny animals slinking around unloved, unfed, and alone.

So when I found a wee gray kitten scarfing down the premium cat food from Smudge’s bowl, I tried – in vain – to make a friend and thereby adopt a second cat. Smudge was not in favor of this and made her obligatory hissing noises while standing at attention as the kitten eyed her nervously.

Well, the kitten hung out with us for a few hours and then disappeared. I saw it again near the barn and tried again to make friends. No deal! So I went to Dan. He knew of an extremely expensive cat trap that would humanely trap the cat thus enabling me to perhaps tame the kitten. At worst it would help us corral the other feral cats and get them off the farm. And, yes, I did have a plan for their removal. I was going to drive them to the SPCA and they could try to find homes for them.

I don’t know if the plan would have worked or not. I never had the chance to find out. As you can see by the picture, the “cat” trap only trapped rats. So far we have gotten 5 rats in 5 days. Can’t do better than that! We are ecstatic here. We’ll trade feral cats for disgusting rats any day.

 

By the way, this picture of Smudge is while she is watching the rat in a trap which is located just underneath the window of my grandson’s bedroom. This window is next to the pipe that leads  up to my rooms. Perhaps now the rat convention in the eaves over my head will stop. I can only hope – and rebait the trap.

Eggs. Eggs. Eggs

 

When I was younger – much, much younger – I thought  all eggs were clear whites and pale yellow yolks. When I got to New Zealand I was thrown by all these bright, bright yellow scrambled eggs. Little did I know that eggs were supposed to look that way.

I present to you one of the 7 or so eggs we get each day from our totally chilled chickens. They scratch happily around the paddocks after their morning feed of horrendously expensive seeds, have a morning tea break of our breakfast scraps (without egg bits; might have been a relative), an afternoon tea of more scraps and then a night feed of more seeds.

This keeps them near home, docile (no pecking or scratching at me) and producing wonderful eggs. And therein lies the problem. They keep on laying; day after day after day. I don’t much like eggs and won’t eat more than 2 a week, add about 4 for baking and I only consume about a day’s worth of production. What do we do with the other 6 days at an average 7 eggs a day? We try to feed them to the kids.

This hasn’t worked out too well. They are up to their eyeballs in eggs and have staged a mass revolt. What do you do when a 1 year old, a 3 year old, and a 5 year old revolt? Not too much. Remember, these ages are not known for their rational interchanges. Pretty much they stick to the basics.

“NO!”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I want something else.”

“NO!”

Yael and Dan try to eat their share and more but we are still left with several dozen a week. We can’t sell them; legal constraints. We can’t eat them. None of us can stomach even the thought of yet another egg salad lunch. So we give them away.  Now these are great eggs from great chickens. Organic feed, no supplements, no hormones, no additives. Just great  eggs. And they are free! So why have our friends started edging away as we come up with yet another carton of eggs? I don’t know. If I can ever catch up with them, I’ll ask them.