Harakeke

The colours in our old flax leaves are beautiful. These guys are growing beside the drive so we get to see them every day.

This plant is my one soft weaving flax. The others have a much higher muka content and the bushes are a lot more upright.

Abundance

A quick gathering session around the farm to show off some of the abundance.

This is the photo used for our first Crop Swap advertising. Thought I would make it authentic by using crops grown in this bio-region in this season.

Kumara harvest

During the growing season Kumara vines should be lifted or they put down roots where they touch the soil. These roots turn into small Kumara and stop the main Kumara from fattening up. The more roots the smaller the Kumara.

I did not do a good job of lifting the vines that were on the beds. I think next year I will put down a thick layer of newspaper in the middle of the beds to discourage these small roots and save the time untangling and lifting vines.

They were put to good use and have made a great addition to our meals.





This year I used a small Broadfork from Crafty Gatherer to dig my Kumara. It made a beautiful job and the beds were then scattered with green manure seeds raked and DONE for winter.

The Kumara were placed in a nest of Kumara vines, covered and left to cure for three days before being individually wrapped and stored in my cob food shed.

Weekend away means music

Packing for a weekend away means making sure the Cajon's, Ukulalie's, guitar's, flutes and of course poi are all packed.

Sausage time

This year we all we made were fresh sausages and bacon.

My favorite flavoring was Kaffir lime leaves, Lemon grass, garlic toasted coconut thread and coconut milk.

Avocado

Avocados.

We have been getting more and more from this tree.
It is Verde. I only brought three named cultivars.

The named cultivars will give us known fruit, an extended season and fruit quickly. The seedlings will give us more variety in time and are much cheaper.

Flood

Wow!!! The water came down and down and down.
Over the last few days I have seen water where I have never seen water before. It was surreal. We paddled our canoes five kilometers down the road. Over fences past sheds and houses all full of floating furniture, tools and the remnants of peoples lives. In some places it was over 3 meters deep.  Neighbors said it took 2 hours for the estimated 1 million cubic meters of water to overtop the stopbanks.
When the water level dropped everything was coated in a layer of silt. We have spent the last week washing, waterblasting and filling skip bins of ruined belongings.

So grateful for clean water, laughter, friends, music, good food and a lifestyle where we can be there for others when needed.

People flow

The bus flat is a people place but also a private place.

Some people come for a short stay and others stay a while. We have been designing this space for a while and playing around with these public/private tensions.

This new woven bamboo fence guides people to park away from the people areas and moves them into a main entrance area.

We are designing the space by gradually adding levels of permanence so we can change things as we feel our way into the space.

Living design, gradual stiffening.

Brick yard

An impromptu design session at the brickyard.

I have been using pallets, hay bales and bamboo to mock up a corner cob seat with drying shelves and a mini rocket stove/kai table.

They were making pots and chatting. I was watching they way they moved in the space and then getting some great feedback.

Shelves moved higher, seat backs turned into a leaning wall and cob seats became wooden storage boxes for clay tools, tea making basics and kindling.

 I will not start this project until spring but it is great to be able to consider the design and see it being used before it becomes final.

Rendered beeswax

The house still smells of honey.
This is the wax harvest for the year.

We have enough hand cream and candles so this will probably be turned into furniture polish, floor wax and I would like to make a set of natural crayons with the colored clay and earthen pigments I have been collecting.

Soup again

Soup again. I love the routine. Light the fire. Everything in the pot. Mornings work then jars in the oven and bottle just before tea time.

Note the cool wooden spoon from Crafty Gatherers. Thanks Marco and Tess -so good not to loose your spoon at the bottom of your soup pot.

Last of the summer peaches

We have peaches from January through to the end of March from local trees where we have collected the seed.

This is the lucky last. Beautiful and juicy.

These ones are on one of our higher paddocks where they get a lot of breeze so miss the fungal diseases some peaches are susceptible to.

Summer harvest

Thanks Crafty Gatherer.

This tray of yours was given as a koha when
Catherine and Neville from Plenty Permaculture visited with their latest Permaculture class.

It is very beautiful. I could not use it as a seed tray. I oiled it and am using it to ripen tomatoes.

Brickyard

A good mornings work. 155 bricks.
Total stacked is now 1929.

Enough for our new bathroom, lounge extension and maybe enough left over for a pizza oven/rocket stove.

So grateful to all of the wonderful people who spent time mixing mud with me.

Garlic fiber

Garlic pulp made from cutting one of my garlic plaits up, putting it in a pot of water and leaving on the wood range for a day.

I think I might try paper or maybe add it to some plaster. What an easy way to get fiber.

Carding

Carding our wool.

It is a little harder to felt than some but we have been learning.

This basket full will be a pair of slippers or boots.

Summer garden

Lettuce

Lettuces growing after potato harvest.

Friction fire

Fire by friction - Thank you Caleb.

It is addictive.

Our front porch is now covered in tinder and our wood range has only been lit once since we started with matches.

Honey

Our stash for the year.

Liquid gold. It is a currency we trade with regularly with all of our friends and family.

Think I am going to print small please return jar labels this year as we have left jars all over the country.

Harvest bowl

My new harvest bowl. Thanks Mike O'Donnell.

To honor the bowl with garden harvest or was that to honor the harvest with a beautiful woodfired clay vessel built with that in mind.

It graces our table at most meals with harvest.

I have just used it to sort my broad seeds.

Guava

Chillean Guava are a great in between fruit.

These ones are in between my citrus and are fruiting heavily in their first season.

They are growing with an annual understory of
Kamo kamo. The Kamo kamo act as a screen so that there are some Guava left when I go foraging.

Bee boxes

I added a little oil based art paint to our natural oil. The colors are still bright after a summer in the sun.

Rat Traps

This is one of our trial rat boxes.
We are going to set up a rat trap line past the garden and orchard and through the bush. The first stage will be around 50 traps.

So far we have had wonderful help with timber off cuts from The Shed Shop in Tauranga. track making and marking from a wonderful woofer and trap monitoring from a friend.

We hope to see better seed strike on the forest floor, an increase in bird life and less grains/seeds taken from the garden.

Te Urewera

One of my favorite places. A three day tramp.

Hay stack

Most years we only have the hay cut. We then sped a few days with our pitch forks tuning, wind rowing, and then stacking.

This year we had lots of helpers so the stack grew quickly..

Then went for a well deserved swim.

It is always satisfying to pass the haystack.

Peripatus

People think this amazing creature is a link between worms and centipedes.

And we found one while digging on the garden track.

Fill

And all of that fill was compacted into the bathroom.

Digging

Digging patrol.

We needed some fill for the new bathroom and to widen the track.

Had lots of people over so..............Thanks!!

New years kiln

Over Christmas we all made whistles, pots, beads and figurines. On New years eve we built a simple kiln and fired our work. New years day we re-discovered our treasure.