What do I Write?

I have been struggling to post new entries here as I just don't what would interest you about farm living. I am going to guess you either know us and want to see what we are up to. or you may want to be a fellow refugee to a more gentle life. And so, if you are reading this you are stuck with what I want to tell you!

We have been very busy out here in the sticks. It's Spring you see and lots of good things happen in Spring on a farm. Hens start laying eggs every day with a lot of fanfare in some cases. Mostly our 5 have been good girls and have laid them in their house. Someone has decided not to for the last 2 days and so we have been hunting eggs all over. These girls get around too. They follow us all over the yard and even down to the veggie garden. We haven't found them but the dogs may have beaten us to them.

Can you see how big the 80g egg is? Eish- now wonder all the squawking! And we are so sick of eggs. At least I have a great cake which uses 8 at a time. We will never go hungry out here.

We have also been preparing a new field in mounds so I can plant the seeds I have been collecting for so long. I have 8 differnt types of tomatoes in trays already and I think I still have 4 more to go. That's besides all the other things from lime basil to pineapple tops to watercress to purple carrots. Hopefully I will have a really nice spread to show you soon.

I have a  mantra too- when at a loss, make compost. The oak tree has dropped lots of leaves so I collected these today to go into a long-term compost heap. Oak are not the best leaves for quick growth until they are well rotted. All the chicken house straw and scrapings go in this pile to chase it along.

As well as all the digging (ouch I can't get out of bed) and carting compost, manure and lime, we have been cleaning up the water furrow behind our house. There was a downed tree there over the furrow and it took quite a bit of chainsaw cutting and clearing to get it sorted.

It's a very pretty spot so we decided to make a nice path and throw out lots of flower seeds along the edges. Of course in clearing we found some new friends- a meduim-sized puff adder and a 40cm night adder. We were so chuffed with the the night adder as it was our first and such a pretty snake. We found them new homes and got on with our work.
All the cleared material we shredded and put onto the path and it really is looking nice. After a bit of rain, it will be such a great spot to sit and read.

Granny has been a super-gran- working in the veggie garden every day, pulling out wattle trees in the new picnic area and just generally helping everywhere. Not bad for a 70 year old lady! She is as tough as old boots and I hope I'll be just like her at 70.

We may be supplying seed to a small seed company and so we went off to harvest some stinging nettles- with Jan's welding gloves! Those buggers sting and I managed to flick plants back into my chin several times. A lot of blue air was hanging around! BTW, Max took this photo. He is growing up so fast now. Those first 2 years dragged but now he is a lot of fun- if 2 handfuls!

July Pruning

I have finally done all the pruning of the fruit trees. July is very late I know but other things got in the way of doing it in June. Below are a couple of pics with before and after, of the biggest trees which are plum- I think.

These trees have been really neglected and have colonies of ants farming aphids. There is a ton of sooty mould on the leaves from this. The downside of farming without chemicals is that things like this may take a little longer to sort out. I am using all the left over bottles of muti from the previous owners. So far they have had Nitrosol and Biottrossol from Biogrow. I have also fed them worm wee tea and sprayed with an anti-bug concoctions of my own (a garlic chilli comfrey mix). Today will be the Tansy wild garlic mix too. Hopefully this will help the trees get stronger and fight off some bugs. I will keep going with more composting,  feeding and spraying until the end of August and then re-assess what I must do if these measures have not worked.

Almond blossoms

 

 

 

 

 

I am raking up all the leaf litter from under the beefwoods to put on our paths. These trees are both a problem and a potential long-term crop. They make very good wind breaks and grow in marginal soil but they consume so much from that soil and travel far to find nutrients. The wood is a very useful one and boy can those leaves start a fire! They have some sort of "component" which suppresses growth of competitive plants and in their case that is any other plant including their own kind. Hence them being good on paths. As path material, it drains well and is soft for granny to walk on too. We are still deabting if we'll plant more.

Our hens have finally begun laying eggs. So far, we have had 7 from our biggest, fattest hen- Hope- and yesterday Pearl laid her first too. I am not a protein person and eggs are a push for me to eat. These eggs are delicious and the color of a sunflower! How is this dinner we had last night? 90% from the farm. We are getting closer to being self-sufficient but still have a long way to go.
 

Our next challenge will be to remove the colony of bats who moved into our ceiling recently without getting bitten by the boomslang sleeping below them who thinks they are his larder !

A Great Find

I have a wonderful service available for all you growing types to use

www.vingerssoiltestlaboratory.yolasite.com

This is my father-in-law's web site for soil testing. He did mine for me and I will be sending him a follow up sample to see how it has changed in the last 6 months.
You should have seen his lovely permaculture garden in Riebeck West. It really was impressive. He even grew such great olives in a very short time. Must have been doing something right.

And I know I have been very slack in updating you about what we have been up to out here, but we have had "things" keeping us busy. I need to finish a pruning task and then I post the before and after pics for you to see.

The Rain we were complaining about has come

Well as the title says...

Before- looking down Oak Alley

 After. Note the very old oak tree we were unable to pull down with the tractor but the wind blew it over for us.










Before at the lunge ring

  During- 8th June 2011

After- 9th June 2011

Below is the drift area. It's like a roughly cobbled road with water over it most of the time but it has it's dry times too.

The pic below is how it normally looks and the one below right was when we thought we'd had a lot of rain.

This was taken this morning. Jan is standing where Max was standing in the last pic and can you see the drift in the distance? It had a standing wave. Anyone for a swim? It was flowing so strongly that standing dead trees were wobbling in it's path. We will not be getting out along our driveway anytime soon either.

Goodbye Greeba

I had to say goodbye to my old lady cat today. Goodbye Greeba- see you on the other side. She was 15 and was named after Greebo in Terry Pratchett's novels. The cat who ate dogs and she did in her day.

I realised on the way to the vet, that it took me as long to get onto the road from our house as it would have taken to drive to the vet in Midrand. And after a chat with someone undergoing hijacking every month in our old street, thank goodness we don't live there anymore. I think I'll stick with the mousebirds that eat all my crops. When the bird netting is finally up, that too will be solved. That is as long as the wind doesn't take that on holiday.

Mushrooms

I have never seen such a lovely collection and variety of mushrooms- all inedible or poisonous! Bugger.

How cool are all of these?! There must be about 13 different kinds we have found so far. Pity we can't eat any. These orange tufts really looked like fairies should be close by but as it happens we did pind a pixi!

The above pic is of the Carob tree's flowers- very odd. They grow all over the trunk and thick branches directly and lots of them turn into pods. There seem to be 2 distinct shapes - male and female I suppose.




Can you see how all the trees and grass are bending? Man the wind can blow around here! This was today when we had planned to put up the bird netting to defend the veggies from the swarm of mousebirds which eat everything. We could barely walk, let alone put up netting. Hoping to get this done tomorrow to save our crop of green peppers, the last of the yellow tomatoes and would you believe, the purple cauliflowers are just sticks left in the ground? The birds ate every leaf! I don't even want to plant out the cabbages, brocolli and watercress.

The Supermoon, new test field

The Super moon- and a monkey up way too late!

"Now what can I eat before it has a chance to get to leave the garden?"
Leeks on his right, rhubarb and cauliflower on the left.
"Hmm, nothing here. Where are the tomatoes, carrots, beans and baby spinach?"
The worst critter to attack my garden yet!

Jan "scratching" the surface of a small test field. We then used another plough to make just 3 mounds, leaving enough space for the tractor to drive between. We will plant in the mounds immediately (long term crops and eventhough the soil is horrible) and continue to doctor the bits in between with all manner of worm wee, compost, cut grass, horse manure, compost tea etc. Once the soil is looking a bit better, I will post pics of before and after and what we did.
Dogs waiting patiently for some horse play.

These are the few very valuable rainbow corn seeds I got from Linda at Sought After Seedlings. Hopefully next year we will actually eat some! In front are beetroot and garlic and in the foreground some wheat I got from Lesotho. I have kept it for several years as seed wheat. See- if you store it properly, it can last a long time.
In the tyre is a sprouted potato from my kitchen.

Di & Ness- aren't you proud?! This is Tarrence- our tractor. Max was so chuffed. And 4 years old. We've made it this far, I think we'll be ok now.