Sweet Christmas

After all of the normal Christmas traditions we made one of our own. A family honey harvest. Yum.

Everyone helped harvest the honey from dad's top bar hive. Most important job being taster.

Note the fancy new honey extractor (colander and bucket) we use for straining honey we are not saving as comb honey.

Net full

One of the favourite places for children of all sizes is our net hung high in the trees. Cool, shady, quiet or a great place to jump and yahoo if you are brave.

Honey for the teacher

Toby collected a jar of honey for his teachers thank you present.

Comfrey mulch

The tomatoes recieved their Christmas present today.

Compost tea and a sprinkling of woodash followed by a thick layer of comfrey mulch around their roots and a raw milk spray for their leaves before the sun got too high.

Cheese for Christmas

Lilly is providing us with soooo much creamy milk we have been making cheese. Feta, Gouda, Mozzarella, Panier, Ricotta.......

Let the adventures begin.

Next step some proper molds and a cheese safe to fill.

Holiday

What a holiday. 2 weeks of;

Catching up with old friends, making new ones.

Meeting potters, carvers, goldminers, glass blowers, children who go to school by boat, gardeners, woodworkers, archivists..................

Exploring new places..........snorkeling down rivers, crossing rivers, cooking on campfires, goldpanning, greenstone hunting, paddling with dolphins.....................

We kind of had a plan, kayaks, tents, a map book and a list of some great DOC campsites.

Macadamia

Today I had the opportunity to visit an amazing orchard with my classmates. Inspirational. A time to dream and appreciate some amazing mahi.

The macadamia flowers blew me away -and the bees visiting them.

Cob wall

Just about finished the cob infill in our small wooden shed.

First we put up lots of battens to help hold it in place then mud.

Well not just mud this mix is equal parts clay, sand and pumice with as many pine needles as we could mix in.

Plaster

The finished plaster in our small shed.
Sieved clay, sand and cow manure. Applied by hand and smoothed with an ice cream container paddle.

It was a little green to start with but turned creamy when dry.

Shady stream

The shelter around our stream is just about completely shading out the water. The bank has been stabilised and the water is a lot clearer after rain. We have been finding lots of native fishes in the pools and the children spend hours playing in the cool while I am in the garden.

The shelter is a diverse range of species with multiple functions.

Timber, food for us, stock, birds and insects as well as building soil.

Crimson clover

The digger driver thought I was mad. I followed him around with a pillowcase scattering seeds.

A few weeks later the ground was covered just as nature intended it. But it was my mix to prepare the ground for planting and nurture the many pollinators and other small creatures that like cover.

Not to mention beautiful.

Crimson clover has deep taproots and flowers for a very long time.

Seedlings

I love the energy of seedlings. One day they are not even there and a week later the seed trays are all green with life.

I am growing most of my plants from my own seed this year. It is very powerful to grow with seed over a few years.

Selecting out what you desire and seeing changes to the seed line.

This is my second try as mice ate the first lot I planted. Thanks to an amazing neighbor for a tunnel house I now have a mouse free seed raising place.

Diversity

The grass is growing and we are enjoying the diversity of stock using it. Lilly the cow goes first, then the sheep and pigs, followed by the chickens, ducks and starlings who are busy in all of the nesting boxes.

And that is just what we can see above ground!

Duck eggs

We are eating a lot of these yummy eggs lately.

The ducks free range and like the nesting boxes around the farm.

Soon we will start leaving the nests so we get a few ducklings.

Chicken tractor

The chickens get cooped up as needed. These ones are clearing up the garden beds ready for summer corn.

Succession

The bamboo is going to finaly take over from our rasberries -hopefully after a good feast.

Milking shed

Lilly loves her shed. A place to keep out of the sun and rain. She is often found here munching on a mouthful of hay or just chewing her cud.

Except however when is is full of children.

Shed

Yay!!!

We have finished the floor on our shed.

We chose recycled cobblestones for the floor and are just finishing the edges with a little concrete.

Next step walls and then who knows what we will get up to in there. Everyone has ideas already of what they want to build.

Puha

Puha thrives as an understory under our winter lupins. A great green for our winter casseroles and stews.

Bamboo

October always heralds the begining of the new seasons Bamboo shoots. The life force in bamboo is so powerful. Each year it blows me away how much bigger the culms are getting and the speed growth.

This is a three year old Moso plant. When mature its culms will be up to 250mm across and will reach up to 20 meters high. We are lucky enough to have a mature stand down the road that we use for scaffolding, our giant teepee, climbing frames................

Tee - pee

What a morning. I love creating things with children. I worked with a great group of homeschooling families and we planted loads of fun seeds, build a bug house for pollinators and other garden helpers and then created this beautiful tee pee for the plants to climb.


Well I should not really say we as once the children knew how to use some of the tools they did it all themselves!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who knows what sort of structures they built when they got home.

I am now inspired to make mine.

Ladybird, ladybird.

The ladybird population has been exploding!!!

First they came in droves and now they are starting to expand even more. I have not seen any aphids but they are all over my mustard beds. They will lay their eggs in the soil so I will harvest the mustard carefully, use it as a mulch and then carefully plant so I disturb the soil as little as possible.

Community

Another fun morning. We turned a whole lot of natural roadside resources into a beautiful house for beneficial insects.

This Kindy is very inspiring. They have;

-their own seed collection.
-an amazing comunity kai share stall for people to share surplus food and plants.
-an amazing secret (edible) garden.

I cannot wait until next year.

One of my favourite tools is this hole maker.

You bang it, wriggle it, bang it, wriggle it, then bang it again........

Then you can pick up the tallest bamboo and push them into the holes all by yourself. Easy peasy. All ready for tangling with colourful wool.

The soil was hard in Murupara but the children did it. We used turf as our garden edge, added a little compost and airated the soil with a fork.

In a couple of weeks when the seedlings are strong the children will plant purple peas and then gourds, beans, cucumbers.................

Anticipation

I love plums. The plum trees have been laden with beautiful, fragrant blossom -full of bees.

Here's hoping for a summer of sweet jucy plums.

Potato onions

Potato onions, garlic and shallots are all doing their thing through a thick layer of mulch. Onions have shallow root systems so like a thick mulch to slow weeds and water loss. Mulch also supports an amazing diversity of soil life -I cannot help having a look every now and then.

I love these Allums as you plant one bulb and they give back plenty.

Digging

Our pigs are hard at work preparing the ground under our orchards for their understories.

It is a time of change as they have been gardens when the trees were first planted and were then grazed under with our house cow. Now the trees are bigger the orchards will have a herbal ley under the drip lines and pasture in alleys between trees for sheep, chickens, ducks and pigs.

New trees

The last of our years trees are going in. There is always room

for a few more trees. The next few weeks we will be adding understories and switching our time to the summer garden.

Predators

Paper wasps have a painful sting. They also do a good job at cleaning up caterpillars in the garden -Watch out if you are trying to grow Monarch caterpillars.

These Queens are overwintering in an empty bee hive. I will soon be putting out nesting places for these caterpillar hunters so I can move them around my garden. (Yes it can be done -Carefully.)

Bumble bee houses

Bumble bee queens are out now looking for warm dry holes to build their nests in. Mouse holes are ideal.

We are making our own this year from gourds. This week we will be putting them under the long grass on a north western slope amongst the bountiful Tree lucerne.

Pollen

The bees are hard at work bring home pollen already. It is good to know you have a lot of pollen and nectar sources at hand to get the bees started in spring.

Some of the early bee food we have planted to supliment our native plantigns are; Tree lucerne, Willow, Hazel, and a good range of fruit trees starting with Almond.

Lambs

One lamb, then twins, and then another.

I love watching lambs dancing in the paddock.

The sheep are using their new mineral feeder lots to get the extra nutrition needed to feed their growing lambs.

MIlk

Fresh milk. Thank you Lilly and Peter.

Duck food

Slug and snail populations can grow dramatically over winter so it is great to see our ducks hard at work. They are continually roving the paddocks turning slugs and snails into tasty duck eggs.

Calving

Lilly was the last of the cows on the farm to calf.

Welcome Fat boy!!

Pupae

Lots of insects spend the winter as pupae waiting for springs warmth to hatch.

Pollinators

The air is full of buzzing and the sweet smell of nectar.
Tree lucerns help kick start the pollinators ready for their invaluable pollinating services.
This tree is only 3 years old.

Fantails

A perch in the garden, and they spend their days catching insects and fertilising.

I love their cheery dance and the click as they catch a meal.

Blossom

Our Almond trees are showing the first blossoms of spring.

Maybe it is beacuse they are on a warm west facing basin.

SPRING!!

Sorted!!

First step was to explore and find treasure.

Then after a little food Ari started sorting her rock collection. Once this was done she found our rock books and started trying to work out what she had.

Exploring

New places are always fun to explore with cousins.

We plan our holidays together. A trip to the beach was one idea.

Yams

We dig them up as needed after the first frosts. Carefully putting the biggest tubers from the best producing plants in a basket hanging from the ceiling for next years crop.

Fencing

It feels realy good to have time to clear out the old barb wire fences and put up new ones that will hold the sheep. Next job -hedgerows.

Broad beans

Our early broad beans are flowering and the bees are loving them. With this mild weather we may have beans sooner than I thought.

As well as making mulch and capturing nitrogen for our summer lettuce crop, they are acting as a catch crop at the moment -I have spotted the odd aphid and stink bug warming in the winter sun.

I am feeding the stinkbugs to the chickens. The aphid population will hopefully balance out when I encourage more waxeyes and earwigs into the garden.

Preparation

Getting ready for another workshop.

It is always exciting thinking about all of the new people you are going to meet and knowledge that will be shared.

This workshop will look at edible playscapes. We will be focusing on gardening with and for children and encouraging natures many gardeners.