Rasins?

 

Raisin trees are a great easy care tree.

The raisins are the very sweet swollen base of the flower stalks. Sweet and crunchy.

These trees self prune, are an amazing bee tree (buzzingly so), creates beautiful shade, fast growing, deciduous and can cope with dry.

Am propagating more this year to spread amongst my chestnut and avocado orchards.

Planting, planting, planting.

 

And another round.

Native broom, bottlebrush, wattle, and hebe as in photos.

Then rice bush, brunia, poplar, tagasaste (always) cardoon, jacaranda......and loads of perennial flowersand herbs.

So grateful to everyone who has brought flowers and foliage and has contributed.

Bamboo

It's not just  me that loves hanging out in the shady bamboo understory.

The violet patch is thriving...........and I found evidence of some one making potions.

This is one of my timber bamboo groves. As I harvest every year there is  room to move, play, set up hammocks... 

Out of the sun, next to the stream, rustling leaves... what more would you want?

Hedegrow update

 Eucalyptus doing well.

Mulched around them today.

Then planted around 50 understory plants -Hebe, caprosma, tagasaste, rose geranium....

Proudly all propagated by me. It feels so great to be able to raid the nursery and deliver wheelbarrow loads of plants around the property.

Sharp tools

Just finished doing a little sharpening on my favorite tools.

You never know how blunt they are until you sharpen them.

It makes things so much easier/quicker.

Lots of planning underway so my pencil sharpening has been a lot more regular.

New happenings

 While the digger was diggering the children where playing. 

MUD!!!

So many colors and textures usually hidden.

What a day. We have been waiting for the digger to come for a while so to be finally working with it was amazing. A full on day exploring potential and change. Being open to possibilities as they emerged. 

Now on to those trees.

Guavas

 We are never far from a snack around here -especially when you have children/harvesters visiting!!

 It's guava time and the Tamarello, mandarins and last of the apples are still around.

Scaffolding

 Need scaffolding.

Just go and harvest some!!!

This is one of my favorite plants to visit. 

Its nestled in a small food forest with; Cherimoya, Banana, Sugarcane, Kefir lime, Fejoa, Pine nut, Avocado, Passionfruit, Loquat,....and of course since we are harvesting sunlight some solar panels.

Brick yard

 How can you walk past the brick yard without spinning a wheel and getting your hands in the clay? You do not need to make. Just the rhythmic spinning of the wheel and clay moving under your fingers. And well if you cannot reach the treadle just sitting with the clay.

Wood

 

There is nothing like a woodshed full of wood.

You get warm filling it, feel warm when you see it and well for us it cooks, warms the house and hot water.

You also get wonderful bags of sawdust for the composting toilets.

End of summer jungle

 

Changes

 

This photo was taken 10 years ago when we started the first stage of our road. 

Since then this area has fed us, many friends and an ever increasing diversity of wild and farmed animals with an ever evolving succession of kai.

From the seeds grown and saved here we now have a community garden, seedling house and propagation area to distribute plant material into our community. 

Thanks to our friend Byron we have a birds eye view of this craziness.

New tree systems

Meet our new wicking tree propagation unit. Thanks to the help of our amazing Woofers Renata and Tiago we now have;

-over 20 different varieties of semi-hardwood cuttings in our unit (so will see what works).

-a dedicated area in the community tunnel house for tree propagation from seed.

-loads of air prune pots.

-a shady area for potting on our seedlings (we already have; Inga bean, Custard apple, Tree Fushia, Currents, Honey locust and are awaiting more pots for; Tagasaste, Tamarello, Peaches, Plums, Raspberries, Pawaw,..and loads of natives.)

 

Shady stream.

From a farm drain to one of the best places to be on a summers day. It's quiet today. So the native fish will be out enjoying the shady stream. 

We have just completed some rockwork to enable fish passage upstream and to stop it from eating out. Short runs and resting pools.

The stream and bamboo are a great team. Bamboo providing shade and bank stabilisation and the stream holding back these running bamboos. 
 

Out with the old - in with the new.

Just as my favorite plums are finishing my favorite early peaches are starting.  We have fruit all year round and it always seems like the next flavors are enticing you.

It is very worth while spending time planning your fruiting/flowering calendars when designing your orchard.

 

Bus flat kitchen

What a project. This space has been a work in progress for a while as we felt into the space (the landscape and how we wanted to be in it). 

The final mockup felt so good but once we got the poles up and the rafters on wow!! Over Christmas we will be camping here for two weeks with extended family so will get a chance to bed in the kitchen layout using loose parts. 

We had fun playing with new materials during the construction. The poles are New Zealand made clay field tiles filled with pumice-crete and the rafters a eucalypt milled on site. So much potential for future buildings.

 

Rat palace -The wagon

 

 

 

What a project. Just after lockdown we where given a beautiful but aptly named wagon called Rat Palace.

Thinking we would bring it home re-line and clad it we soon found out that we had to completely remake it. We managed to selvedge most of the floor the axel and a couple of windows. It was a beautifully shaped and sized wagon so ............. with many helping hands we replaced, recreated, designed and now have beautiful accommodation -just in time for the Christmas rush.

A lot of the timber was here already and was split out of bigger pieces for the framing, rafters, joinery and jams. So a beautiful wagon and a great opportunity to get creative with natural timbers. 


 

Diversity

 Regenerating soils means farming your underground livestock.

It then comes back at you tenfold -better drought resistance, healthy stock, good water absorption and retention and as amazing bird and insect life above ground. Such a beautiful place to be!!

We have a diverse range of tree/shrub species to feed the different types of fungi, birds and insects and our 'big' livestock in times of drought or when they can reach. These also give us materials for building, and making baskets, charcoal, fire starters, mushrooms, mulch, fruit and nuts........and shelter when we need it.

Our pastures are diverse too this one has; Chickory, 4 types of clover, birdsfoot trefoil, yarrow, 2 plantains, dandelion, foxtail, perennial rye, yorkshire fog, paspalum, dock, buttercup, comfrey, jerusalem artichoke, ............ 

Pulsing animals through this system supercharges it.

Spring growth and change

 

 And the corn is up. A little yellower than I expected but look at the legumes. We have peas, lentils, crimson clover and lupins emerging too. I am enjoying this experiment. The pumpkins next door are loving this rain -and their companions too.

Check out the previous part of my field garden experiment here which will explain why we have such beautiful mulch. And here and here to hear about the cover crop. 

Companion planting

 

To me companion panting includes a whole succession of diverse plants working together to achieve abundance. 

It spirals out from this garden bed to our whole farm and plants grown for other gardeners (birds, insects, worms, fungi...) what we want to eat,  and then scaled down through the farm to the whole garden rotation, annual and perennial crops, seasons, microclimates, seeds to save, earth covered for as long as possible.....A crazy dance.

Photo number 1 is of a mixed greens bed planted into the mulch of winter cover crop (Lettuce, radish, red onions, rocket, cornflower, sorrel, sweet pea, ) Last summer this was a kumara bed that was replaced with a diverse cover crop. The path is mulched with bark from the bottom of our woodshed as this path will be walked often when collecting salad.

Photo number 2 shows the rocket flowering and magenta spreen coming up. We have just planted some Hyasinth been vine down the middle to add beautiful flowers to our summer salad and shade to the salad greens. Because I will be saving the lettuce seed I will be leaving the lettuce in for a while. Next summer this bed will be a grain crop.