My baby just turned 3

He and the other children enjoyed little cupcakes at Playcentre to celebrate.

But wait there's still more!

While G was looking at my last post I suddenly remembered I'd forgotten to mention our other fridge!!! So at the risk of boring you all silly.....here it is:

As you can see, we mainly use it to store a lot of fruit as we buy in bulk from a good green grocer (Huanui Orchards in Glenbervie, near Whangarei).

What's in my fridge/pantry?

Laura at Our Wee Farm showed everyone what she had in her fridge and pantry, so I'd thought I'd post a few of pics here of mine:

Main fridge - looks a bit sparse doesn't it!! - has milk, jug of filtered water, bread, mayo, chutneys, my preserved lemons and baking stuff (apricots etc), seeds in boxes at top. But wait, there's more:

The door has my jams at top, sauces, verjuice, jars of chilli, ginger, mustard, Asian curry mixes etc. Eggs, greek yoghurt, cream, milk, fruit cordial, Heinz tomato ketchup.

Pull out meat draw has bacon and delicious home-made pork pate from neighbour (thanks D!).

Other draw has cheese and butter stash, no marg in this house thanks! I do lots of baking hence all the butter in case you're wondering...

Pull out veg drawer currently looking good with Rangpur limes (the orange fruit top left), a Rocoto chilli in need of eating, some wild onion also needs eating, Brussell sprouts, carrots, parsnips, a swede, a leek, some corn and some of our own squash.

The pantry has spices in elegant ice-cream containers (keeps them fresh), oats, puffed rice, honey (complete with Pooh Bear to guard it..for my 3 yr old son!), almond butter, cans of beans, corn, tomatoes, tuna, rice, dried pasta, couscous, corn chips, pulses, popping corn etc

These shelves have crackers in boxes, baking stuff, my homemade vanilla essence, yoghurt raisins, orange and rose flower water, flour, sugar, tins of more baking stuff, dried fruit, decorations for cupcakes, cookie cutters etc

PHEW! looks like quite a lot of food eh!

Progress in the veg garden

We've been steadily working on the garden (in between some down time over Easter when fishing was on the agenda!).
I cleared all the old plants out, we've rotary hoed several times and added peat, fertiliser and more soil to build it all up. Doesn't look much but compared to the hard clay it's a whole lot better. Still needs more work before any planting can commence, but I will post photos as and when we make more progress.

Potatoes

G dug up some more of our potatoes and while they are not all that big in size due to lack of water, we got a reasonable crop from the area he cleared. Here is a barrow full of Rua:

The first of our cooking apples

Here is the first harvest of our cooking apples. The variety is Reinette du Canada, which is a heritage apple originating in France prior to 1800. I read that it is supposed to be a good dual purpose apple with medium sized fruit, esteemed in France for making apple tarts. Also keeps very well apparently (although these 4 won't!). 3 of our 4 fruit are quite big though, (see photo) so we'd probably only use the big ones for cooking.