An update and a farewell

After much thought, I have decided to finish this blog. At the start, blogging was a new thing to me but as time has progressed, as per usual, I've slowed down. Most of what we are doing here at CTF hasn't changed much in the last couple of years. Some new fruit has come on, persimmons for example, for the first time. So what I have decided is that, if in the future, unless things change or something new happens, I will not be updating my blog. It is with sadness that I do this as I have had some really nice people visiting my site, offering thoughts, ideas or just generally being nice. So, that said, I shall now give you a final update.

We're well into our Autumn here on CTF and the weather has been just fantastic. We've had some lovely warm days, not too much wind and hardly any rain. Last night we had a thunderstorm but it passed quite quickly with no damage. It is still a bit breezy this morning but there is blue sky to be seen.

In the gardens I have been trying to clean up a bit. We have a lot of overgrown plants and self sown trees and plants that need to come out. I've chopped down a couple of very large rosemary bushes (trees!) which had outgrown their locations. I held off doing this over summer as the bees were regular visitors to the rosemary flowers. I do have other rosemary bushes around so it's not that great a loss (to us and hopefully the bees!).

Kaffir lime

 
We have lots of monarch butterflies around, probably a combination of both the recent mild weather and the fact we have lots of food for them. While their caterpillars like to munch on the leaves of swan plants the butterflies like the flowers. The butterflies also seem to like the flowers of our native koromiko tree (pictured below). These trees self seed everywhere and we have mostly left them to grow where they come up, in one place they formed a nice hedge.

Monarch butterfly on Koromiko flower

Monarch butterfly on swan plant

It has been an added bonus to see the butterflies up close as well as provide extra food for the bees. This is important as they do the job of pollination as we all know. The bumble bees sure enjoyed this big sunflower!

In the orchard we've been harvesting lots of apples, lots of raspberries, the first of the persimmons, plenty of feijoas (pineapple guavas) and juicy sweet mandarins.

Satsuma mandarin

This year I have frozen quite a lot of fruit as we will eat it in smoothies (especially the raspberries). I also cored and sliced up several batches of apples for the dehydrator. These make a tasty snack, although they don't last very long once they are dried and bagged up for storage! I put them in the freezer until needed as this keeps them from going moldy as has happened in the past.

Excess fruit usually gets given away, or else we feed it to the cows (and pigs if we have them).

We got a very good amount of pumpkins this year and I have been making pumpkin soup and pumpkin curry. Again we tend to give away what excess produce we can as there is only so much of one thing that can be eaten!

Pumpkin 'Musquee de Provence'

And so to close, we continue to work on the land in tune with the seasons. I make meals from the produce we have grown and/or traded with others in our local Crop Swap, and learn how to preserve it for the months ahead. We have learned from others, from our own mistakes, from what we read, and we are still learning. We have a big property and lots of work, many projects on the go and only so much time, inclination and energy to do them!

So finally, I do hope that you have found this blog of some interest and for those who have just found their way here, I wish you well in your homesteading journey and your new lifestyle. Enjoy all the happiness and pleasure it will bring you along with all the hard work!

Love and best wishes Bridget

Update

As always time is whizzing along very quickly. My blog posts are now very few and far between. So sorry for that and for this longish update.

Next year I'm thinking I may be changing the way I present this blog, perhaps just a monthly round up (might be more achievable) and possibly more photos than text.

 

 

 

The first of the Early Red peaches

Anyhow at the moment in the garden we have growing:

Tomatoes
Sweetcorn
Yard long Beans
Melons
Pumpkins
Zucchini (harvesting now)
Potatoes
Garlic
Kale
Strawberries (harvesting)
Raspberries (harvesting)
Coriander

Jocky cap flower

In the polytunnels we've got:

Tomatoes
Basil
Peppers
Chillies
Eggplants/Aubergines
Yakon

Pepino
Coffee plants
Curry leaf plant
Ocra
Galangal cuttings

All doing well although I did have a few aphids attack my eggplants, the ladybirds took care of those though! The coffee plants are ones that were planted outside but had not thrived. They are now doing really well although still a long way off producing berries!

We also had our large heifer butchered in November, and now have plenty of delicious beef in the freezer. As she was part Jersey the fat is very yellow, the meat is still just as tasty however!

Our own beef fresh from the butcher.

 In November we also enjoyed a visit to the wonderful Hamilton gardens.

The Indian garden - very pretty

The rose garden was spectacular in full bloom

The Italian garden - fabulous pergola with grape vines

This was our second visit to the Hamilton Gardens and will not be the last. The first time we were there it was pouring with rain so we didn't stay all that long. However, the Japanese garden was especially lovely in the rain as it had a large pond. This time round we saw some of the other areas we'd missed previously. Still at lot to see though and I could have spent ages smelling the roses! Hoping to get back there again at the end of summer.

Meanwhile our excursions are closer to home, namely walking the dog! Not that walking the dog is a bind though as we get to enjoy the beautiful Kaipara harbour only a few minutes walk from home.

Roxy enjoying 'walkies'

A healthy spring lunch and a bit of an update

Hey guys, how's your Spring going? Mine's a busy one with work, family, puppy training, gardening and cooking from scratch. Also getting a bit of a health kick going with some 'clean eating' and exercise. Booya!


Walking and running with the dog is great for weight loss, but doing yoga and weights/exercise/aerobics not so cool with doggie jumping on me during my workout!!

Being a bit of a sucker and not putting her outside in her kennel.......!

Anyhow, here's what I had for lunch recently:

Homemade roasted red pepper hummus with wholemeal pita and some nice greens, plus a few herbs and some nastutrium flowers. Yum.

I'm still doing well with avoiding cane sugar (as much as I can) and trying to kick the cravings for sweet food. In fact, the times when I have given in to my cravings I have instantly regretted it and found the sweet 'treat' all too sickly. A good sign huh.

Next up is green smoothies. I'm currently researching a suitable blender, although I have a gutsy stick blender that will suffice for now. I fancy one of those blend and go machines with sipper cups.. Bought this recipe book to get me started:

With green smoothies in mind I now aim to harvest the kale and celery doing great in the garden, blend it up and freeze in ice cubes. With warmer weather on the horizon (although you wouldn't think so today with a cold southerly wind and rain), these crops may soon come to an end. Some of the celery I spied yesterday trying to flower/seed and the kale might follow suit soon. Time to harvest these babies before they spoil.

Also on the gardening front, D wants to have a vege garden this year so we have got him his very own garden bed. On the weekend we sowed spinach, basil, carrots, and radishes. Indoors he has sowed some sunflowers in newspaper pots, and we 'repurposed' a plastic food container as a mini greenhouse:

This year I used my heat pad to help raise the tomatoes and it did seem to make a difference to germination - they now need potting on and moving to my small outside greenhouse.

Tons of stuff still to do outside, it never ends. More mulch to apply to the garden and orchard, and loads more weeding. As always these things will get done time and weather permitting!

Driveway improvements sneak peek

and a touch of Spring colour

Lazing in the sun today

Well not me exactly.....guess who?

Although I did sit down to relax a few times...! So nice to enjoy the sun and lack of wind in the middle of winter.

Spent the day tidying up a lot of gardening 'stuff' (seedlings and planters mainly) and moving it from where it was to where the potting shed will go.

We are also getting some earthworks done which is great, widening the drive, putting in drainage and repairing the surface. It's been sometime since we had the driveway formed (from grazing land) and there's been a certain amount of wear and tear since then. Here are some then and now shots.

2007

2015

Still a bit more work to go before it's done.

Frosty weather over the weekend

Just sharing a few photos from over the weekend. Here in the "winterless north' we don't usually have many frosts and they aren't usually very heavy. This weekend however, we had 3 in a row and they were very heavy. It was cold! Yes I know if you are further south in NZ it was REALLY cold. We just aren't used to it here!

Big carrot and a few photos from around the farm

 

We are so lucky living here. Especially at this time of the year which is "officially" winter (although the winter solstice is on 22nd).  I say lucky because this morning I have been sitting outside in a T shirt (and pants!!) enjoying my morning coffee. The sun is out and it is so nice - calm and warm.

Just sharing a photo of a huge carrot I dug up the other day as I was clearing the carrot bed. I had no idea this biggy was lurking there! D found it very amusing!

It will probably be turned into carrot soup. I picked up some kaffir limes the other day (I do have a tree but no limes on it at the moment), so I am feeling a Thai inspired soup would work well, with some coconut,  lemongrass, ginger, garlic and chilli. Mmmmm.

Talking of citrus, the mandarins as I mentioned in my last post are producing super well right now:

We're having no trouble at all eating these and they also keep relatively well (although we don't need them to keep!).

 Here is the soap I made recently. I'm really pleased with how it came out, and it's lovely and creamy, lathers up well too.

Lastly, here's Polly the goat enjoying the sunshine. D took this photo and I think it's really good.

A very long time away from the blog...

Hello everyone!

A post as last. Gee it has been a very long time since I did any blogging, sorry about that chaps.

We've had a busy time here with G being pretty unwell - he was in hospital for a week and then laid up at home for a while with me running round playing nurse. He's now back at work (on blood thinners), not 100% better but improving gradually. Makes one realise truely how much we should live for the moment and I'm trying hard to remember that it's all about the NOW - not dwelling on what's been or what's to come. I'm thankful for every happy moment on this earth.

Following on from that we had school holidays and the busyness of that. D pretty much commandeering  the computer full time for Minecraft...! Oh how he loves Minecraft. He creates some amazing things in that virtual world that's for sure.

On top of all that there have been the seemingly never-ending jobs to do around the farm! So I've been busy busy busy and to be honest I've not had the energy for blogging at all.

But, I realise it's been over 2 months now so time for a general roundup of happenings here (other than the above!).

I did a LOT of bottling this year, after all the delicious peaches came lots of feijoas so I bottled up loads of these as requested by G. They are quite delicious done like this. Now he's getting to eat them all as I've gone on a no (or as close to) sugar diet for a bit! Ha ha! I know you can bottle in water but that doesn't sound very tasty to me, and honey is another alternative, but for my purposes I'm avoiding the sweet aspect regardless of how 'healthy' that sugar is.

We had quite a good crop of apples too, but I didn't end up preserving any of these this year. We ate a lot fresh of the trees, so delicious, crunchy and sweet. Each variety a different taste. I particularly liked the Cox's orange, but also the Golden Delicious and a Japanese one called 'Akane'. G likes the Braeburn. Also the French biggies 'Reinette du Canada' which double as both dessert and cooking apples. And of course the cooking apples Bramley Seeding, which cook up to a lovely fluffy pulp. We gave quite a lot of apples away at a community group we attend 'Crop Circle'. At this group local folk meet up to swap produce and seeds etc, have a chat about growing food. It's a nice social environment and the kids enjoy meeting up to play while the adults talk food (and other subjects!). Some of the dessert apples we wrapped in paper and have tucked away in a box, we will see if they store OK like this. I've heard of people storing them in a chest of drawers but we don't have the space for that right now.

We also got a small amount of Chilean guavas, which although they are tiny, have a really nice flavour. I used them in pancakes (instead of blueberries) which we enjoyed for brunch.

Now we're enjoying the citrus, and have already harvested a heap of mandarins (Satsuma) from our trees, one in particular had a whole lot of ripe fruit. Not bad for such young trees (these only went in a couple of years ago). We had to pick most off as the little silvereye birds were pecking at the fruit. I think they've done so well because of the location they are in, it's north-facing and nicely sheltered from the winds.

I have been busy applying citrus fertliser while we are getting regular rainfall lately, and both G and I are working away steadily at the very large piles of mulch ('post peelings') we had delivered recently, putting round all the fruit trees and along the driveway hedges - edible along one length (feijoa) and ornamental along another (Griselinia littoralis). Since our Summers get so dry it is really essential to have mulch down and we've been a bit neglectful of doing this properly so I'm really pleased it's happening now. Once our feijoa hedging has filled out it should provide the much needed shelter for our rather wind exposed lemon orchard.

We've also got a huge pile of sawdust which will go on the vege garden. We prefer to use the sawdust (untreated of course) on the garden because the post peelings are quite dry and spiky. The sawdust is good both on the garden beds and on paths. I will be putting down a lot of wet cardboard first to suppress the weeds.

I'm still getting quite a bit out of the garden, beetroot, kale, Swiss chard, spring onions, plus all the usual herbs, and my Asian ingredients - lemongrass, coriander, chillies, galangal.

Indoors I've been making soap again. This time using the tallowate we prepared back in January. I used the recipe from Suburban Jubilee (see here) making half the amount at a time. The soap came out well and we are using it now, it lathers up well and is nice and creamy. Only one slight thing I used a different lavender oil which was cosmetic grade and the smell did not last! Not really a problem but next time I will go for the more expensive essential oil, obviously cosmetic grade is no good for soap! I also bought a nice silicone mould from GoNative and one of their soap cutters which made the job of slicing the soap a whole lot easier than using a knife.

I'm wanting to try out making salt soap bars too, using pink Himalayan salt. This will be happening soon as I need to build up our stock of soap. We ran out recently and I had to buy it. The soap I bought was very pretty and smelled great, but did not last very long at all (plus it was expensive!). A little reminder that home made soap is best, and cheaper too.

Will post some more photos soon.

Farm roundup early December

Yikers where does the time go......? and sorry once again for slackness in posting...!

It has been hot and very windy during the day here on CTF. Not my favourite time of the year I have to say, the wind drives me nuts and is very tiring. Everything is getting very dry and I am bad at watering my plants. Still there's no point moaning!

On the plus side everything is looking very pretty with lots of flowers out now in the potager garden.

Nigella 'Love in a Mist'

Nigella self seeds freely and makes for a pretty display

'Pinks' - these have also self-seeded

Pinks

Snapdragons

Sweet peas

I'm harvesting loads of peas, we're eating them fresh and also I'm freezing them for later.

Looking forward to harvesting the garlic next month, it's doing really well, just need to give it water now!

On the pig front, we're enjoying delicious bacon and pork from our last lot of pigs. I will be cooking one of our hams for Christmas lunch.

Sadly though the little pig died - was squashed by the big pigs when they broke into his pen. We were all very upset about this. Makes us realise how very strong pigs can be to break through corrugated iron fencing!

Currently we have no pigs but are hoping to get some piglets soon. Will update on that when it happens. These piglets will be in a grassy paddock with electric fencing and rings in their noses - hopefully will avoid the 'too much mud' situation. They have a shelter and water supply hooked up ready to go, G has been very busy with getting that all ready.

The relocation of the pigs means we have freed up the last pig pen area. This will now be a fenced vege garden. At the moment we are using it to grow pumpkins (pig food mainly) but next year I'd like to have raised beds in there - it's a nice flat area and has some hedging to provide shelter from the westerly winds. The bulk of the tomato plants are in the other pig pen (where the little pig was). Anyway, the raised gardens will be a job to add to the list for next year!

That's all for now!