Mushrooms are go!!

 Our Strophoria have left the mushroom patch for our garden paths. And wow there are so many.

A trailer load of harvest

 Corn harvested and ready for hanging. Thanks to all of my helpers!!

We dreamt up a harvest party while shucking corn and collected corn silk for rongoa too.

Brownies in the garden

This afternoon I had a wonderful group of brownies in the garden. We wandered tasted and wondered. It is amazing what is edible and how much fun you can have mixing it up.

It is amazing how much of a jungle the garden is at this time of the year.
 

And thank you to Pam Pearse for taking the photo. It is not often there is one of me!!

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

 

Tomato seeds

 The best of the best.

This is the time for tomato seed saving. I choose from the healthiest, tastiest, highest producing plants. Let the fruit ripen fully on the plant and then squeeze some seeds into a small jar to ferment.

This sits on our kitchen windowsill until the seeds fall down and we get a beautiful white lactobacillus bloom on top. Then I rinse and hang above the wood range to dry before storing.

This year we a trialing a range of yellow and orange tomatoes from Mark Christensen's Heritage food crops trust collection and will save our favorites to go with our long standing bunch.

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.

Summer garden

 The Kumara is the only wide angle shot I can take at the moment. Most of the garden is so high you cannot see very far.

That is until you have a friend with a drone visit.

Thanks Byron . What a cool perspective. And you can see the whole garden. 

The job of the day was harvesting potatoes (bare ground). A day later and winter cover crop is sown, soil mulched and it should be green in a few weeks.

Bee watching!!

Watching bees.

First you have to sneek up to flower. 

Make sure your shadow is away.

Slowly hold flower and if you are gentle you can bend it towards you and get really close! 

Tagastaste are up.

 These seeds are sometimes hard to germinate.

Lucky me. I had a whole heap of little fingers to help me collect them and then we made a worm cast potion for the seeds to soak in for a week before planting.

Germination success!!

These are some of the most valuable trees on our place. Tree fodder for Kereru, Tui, sheep, and cows, mulched for compost shelter for emerging trees....

Community garden

 And we are off again...........

It feels so good to be gardening together again after a bit of a break. The tunnel house is once again full. These are our first lot of winter seedlings (evicted from the tunnel house as it is full!) hardening off before planting and distributing around the community next week.

Some of these seedlings we have grown from seed saved from some of the first plants we grew at the start of our community gardening.

  

Waikawa

 I love making Waikawa. Every step a new form emerges.

Weaving the base, making the corners, bringing up the sides, fixing the top and then my favorite plaiting the ends and making handles.

On the farm Pa Harakeke are beside drains and ponds and as an understory under larger deciduous trees for; animal habitat, bird food, self help rongoa for my animals and are all good weaving varieties.

My Pa Harakeke has been neglected for so long so as I 'clean them up' Waikawa making begins. These quick functional baskets are great for washing baskets, onions and potatoes, harvesting fruit.....and giving away to friends.

Compost is the key.

Only plants can photosynthesize and since sunlight is an amazing form of free energy then I use plants to capture as much as possible. Composting is a way of keeping all of that sunlight energy in your system.  

In my gardens anything that is not mulched to cover the soil is composted. A good compost will not smell (smells can indicate the loss of energy and certain nutrients) and will be full of composters (visible and invisible) working to cycle this energy. I usually make compost with these guys in mind.

 

 

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.)

 

Sunflower pruning

This year I have been pruning my sunflowers and wow!!

After pruning they grow fast. It is simple I run my hand down the stem and the leaves snap off. This is great as I often plant sunflowers in amongst corn and curcubitae so this allows a lot more light into the understory. 

Next year I will do this more regularly as I noticed some of the pumpkin leaves got burnt as they went from shade to bright sunlight too quickly

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. 
 

Good morning!

Bed with a view. Took our hammocks for a short walk last night and look where we woke up!! Was so good to see the sun go down and then rise again in the morning.

Over night the tide had washed away all traces of human footprints so mine where the only ones on the beach.

 

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.

 

Hammocks for christmas

Woke to Kokako singing and Robins chattering next to my head. Our hammock camp for the night was perched on a ridge in Te Manawa o te Ika a Maui (Te Urewera) with views out to Maungapohatu.

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.