Late Summer Busy-ness

I know I’ve slipped a little with my blog.  I made a commitment to myself when I started it that I would write a minimum of one blog post each day.  The holidays and houseguests put that a little out of whack, but then we reached this time of year.

Normally, once I have kids off to school, animals fed and washing out I sit down on my deck with a cup of coffee and my laptop and write.  Sometimes I have to spend half my day doing what I’m writing about so that I can take photos of what I’m doing.

At this time of year though, the plums were ripe, the blackberries are coming ripe, the elderberries are ripe, but the days are still very hot.  The best time for me to be out foraging is first thing in the morning before it gets too hot - something I learned the hard way, there’s nothing quite like a dose of heatstroke and sweat running into your eyes (I had never before appreciated just how painful that can be) to make you rethink how things are done.

So lately, I get back from the school bus run (it doesn’t come to our gate sadly), feed the chooks and pigs, let the puppy out and we go foraging until the heat drives us back to the house.  Then I usually have several kg of fruit to deal to before the sun comes around into my kitchen making it a hellish place to work.

By the time I’ve finished with this, I’m usually quite exhausted and still have a lot of jobs on my list to get through and somehow, sitting down with my laptop just hasn’t been happening.

We’re starting to get dew in the mornings now though, so I’m not particularly interested in being thigh deep in damp blackberry and long grass, so any berries I’m picking today will happen tonight when it starts to get cooler rather than this morning.

I’ve got a swede patch to do some work on, it’s half dug and as the ground is a little damp, this is much easier at times like this than in the middle of the day when it’s drying out.

The strawberries are spreading, with their runners going everywhere, so if I’m going to move them (I have a cunning plan) that needs to happen fairly soon.  I’m moving the whole plants, not breaking off the runners by the way - that shouldn’t happen for a year I’m told.

The other thing about this time of year is the early preparations we make for winter.  There are things that we need to be looking at now.  The herbs that die off over winter need to be picked and dried now - I use comfrey and lemon balm in my eczema cream which comes into use more in winter, so I need to make sure I have enough dried to be available for making creams in winter. 

Fire wood needs to be stored in the woodshed to keep it dry for winter.  As the mornings are getting to be a bit damp, this needs to start now.  The chimney needs to be swept before we start using it, the mortar on the bricks on the chimney need checking and tidying up before the roof is too slippery to stand on.  Gaps and draughts taken care of.  The holes in the driveway need filling with gravel before they become messy mud puddles.  The days are noticeably shortening, it’s dark nearly an hour earlier than it was 6 weeks ago which makes the time we can spend outside shorter too.

It’s a time when the vermin seem to be active too.  Last year we lost 12 hens in the space of a week to a ferret at about this time.  I’ve already trapped a hedgehog that was stealing my eggs and think I’ve got at least one more to deal with.  Time to fill the bait stations with rat poison, although, with four cats and a puppy, I’ve seen and heard little evidence of their presence.  Well, except for the odd dead and half eaten mouse on the lawn.

It all seems quite strange to be talking about winter preparations when we’ve been having such stinking hot weather, but out here it can change quite quickly.  I know this is the lifestyle I want and I’m thoroughly enjoying being flat out living it. 

Flying Pigs

George, our boar, was escaping every night.  Every night I was finding something to entice him back into his run.  This is more difficult than it sounds.  He cleaned out the pig pellets and I haven’t had a chance to buy more, I’m out of apples and most of the spuds we dug up I’ve now cooked up for the pigs.  If he doesn’t really want to go somewhere, it’s very difficult convincing him to.  I’ve rearranged the electric fencing, we’ve staked down the wire fence, we even tried putting him into another paddock.

Each time, we’d look at each other and say something along the lines of “that’ll fix him” which soon turned into “let’s hope this time it works”.  I became convinced that George really could fly.  Maybe there was some basis to the saying “pigs might fly” that wasn’t entirely sarcastic. 

I’ve known for quite a while that it was really more good manners than good management that stopped my pigs from getting out.  I’ve heard enough stories from sheep farmers that border on forest about how (especially during lambing) the wild pigs just walk through fences and destroy them.  But while I had friendly good mannered pigs, it was something I didn’t have to be too concerned about.  Besides, the fencing all seems to be intact.

The girls stay put.  They’ll pace along the fence line ‘talking’ to me and asking for food, or a scratch or just to say hello.  But George is different.  I don’t know if he’s tired of being kept with the girls, which I do know can’t be a long term prospect anyway, or if this is just his way of pushing boundaries - literally.

I wouldn’t mind so much if he stuck to the lawn, he’s saved us from quite a bit of mowing already, he loves the clover growing there, but our George has found the vege garden.  He hasn’t dug up the roots to the newly sprouted silverbeet and spinach, but the leaves are extremely sparse now.  Fortunately, (frantically touching wood), he hasn’t found the grey water garden (where there are more goodies that pigs love) and doesn’t seem to have much interest in the tomatoes, potatoes, beans or peas that are growing in the garden he has raided.

It’s now been two weeks since his last escape.  I’m cautiously ready to say we’ve got him contained.  Sadly, I need to find or make somewhere else to put the pigs.  As they’re getting bigger (all three are over a year old now) they’ve eaten down all the grass in their paddock and I don’t normally feed them much over summer as there is usually plenty of grass.

The local restaurants and food shops all have people who collect pig buckets, so that’s not going to work for me as a food source.  The last person I spoke to, the owner of the local fruit and vege shop, has his own pigs that he takes the spoiled food home for.  My neighbours were doing a pig bucket for me until their son got pigs.  I don’t begrudge them that at all. 

I was speaking to a friend yesterday who has far too many apples for them to eat on their own and asked for their windfalls and apples that are no good. He turned up shortly after with a large bag for me.

I think I need to seriously look at growing a crop purely for pig food.  I bought swede seeds a while ago, but have yet to remember to put them in anywhere.  I’ll have to hunt it out and find out what time of year I should be planting them, I’m fairly sure it’s not spring like most of the veges I grow.  While we like swedes, we don’t eat a lot of them, so planting them as a crop could work.

With the added bonus of letting the pigs loose in that patch when they’re ready - the pigs could dig them up themselves too.  I remember as a small child, doing a working bee with my Dad’s rugby team.  We pulled up a large paddock of turnips.  The ones that were too small, or whatever was left after we’d all finished was left in that paddock and the pigs were going to be let loose in there.  Turnips and swedes are fairly closely related so it’s worth thinking about.  Actually, thinking about it, turning them loose in a swede patch might not be such a good idea.  I can just see them gorging themselves in the first day or two and then having nothing left.  Perhaps I should dig them up and choose how much to give them.

It’s now nearly a month since I started writing this piece.  Gorgeous George hasn’t escaped in all that time.  I’m still not going to say anything about having it sorted because I’m sure I’ll jinx it.

I have started planning a better piggery though.  One where I can separate them if and when I need to.  Watch this space.

Hot Dry Summer

The North Canterbury Summer is treating us to it’s full glory.  Well, not quite it’s full glory, local wisdom tells me that it often doesn’t rain between November and May and we’re still getting a little rain at least once a week.

Most of our days lately have been in the mid 30s temperature wise and very humid.  My paddocks are turning brown and my animals are spending their days finding a shady spot to lie down in attempts to escape the blistering heat.  It’s funny driving down the road and seeing the large trees in paddocks - their shadows are entirely filled with sheep.  It’s become a joke between Miss Seven and myself, we look for the “sheep shadow”.  I’m finding temperatures inside the house of 30 degrees Celsius at midnight difficult to deal with and making it hard to sleep.

Our main water pipe lies on top of the ground for about 200 metres down the hill.  It’s been on the list to bury it so that it stops freezing in winter, but it’s a problem in summer too.  Passive solar heating means that on days like we’ve been having, I can have a shower without adding any hot water.  It’s not so good when I want a drink of cold water though.

This has created a few extra jobs though.  I have to work to make sure that my garden is adequately watered and I regularly have to check that my animals are getting enough green grass.  The brown stalky stuff is okay (so I’m told) but it’s mostly fibre and not quality feed.  I’ve added extra mulch around my fruit trees in an attempt to retain moisture around their roots.  But I think I’ve lost a few veges - quite a few are bolting straight to seed.

One very real concern is the fire hazard.  Because I don’t have a lot of livestock, there are paddocks that are quite long.  Now they’re also rather brown and dry and a stray spark could cause them to take off in what would be a horrendous fire for us.  One of Hubby’s workmates had hay contractors in recently.  They’d almost finished when a blade hit a rock, which caused a spark and all the hay they’d cut was burnt.  They lost the lot.

A neighbour told us that there’s going to be drought.  I’m not sure if this has come from local wisdom and experience or if there has been predictions by meteorologists.  Either way, it means we have to keep a good eye on a lot of things.  The cattle get moved regularly so that they don’t eat the grass down too far - enough to take the tops off and allow the clover to grow up.  We may go back to the gorse project I started a while ago.

I took this photo after bringing the thermometer out of the sun.

Last week, we were predicted to reach 40 deg Celsius.  It was 10am and my thermometer on the deck (in the shade) was already showing 35.  I found it noticeably cooler on the deck than I had been 20 mins earlier out in the paddocks.  Out of curiousity, I put my outdoor thermometer in full sun. Just to see what they get to.  At 10am, it got to 43 C, at 1pm however, it maxed out the thermometer and was over 50 C.

It was a day for hiding somewhere in the shade.  After I’d made sure the pigs had a good wallow sorted and the water troughs were all working.

Wild Blackberries

We have plenty of blackberries growing wild in patches all around our little farm.  We have places where there used to be thick gorse and now there is thick blackberry.

Last year, I asked a friend who grew up on a Berry farm, what the difference was between wild and commercial blackberries.  He said thorns.  The commercial varieties have been bred to be mostly thornless.  There was a disease called Dryberry introduced as an attempt to control wild blackberry.  It affects them sometimes and also affects the commercial varieties.  We saw a little bit of it in our wild berries last year, but not so much this year.

I went for a walk on Sunday to have a look at the blackberries.  I was quite surprised to see that there were some ripening.  I started to pick them, not entirely sure how much I’d find.  One berry from each bunch, just in one patch, gave me 240g of berries, which was more than I’d thought.

I decided to try making blackberry cordial and set out on Google to find a recipe.  The first 6 or 7 recipes all sounding truly yummy but contained vodka or brandy.  I wanted something I could give to Miss Seven.

I finally added the words “alcohol free” to my search terms.  I found one that was pretty straight forward.

Blackberry Cordial (alcohol free)

400g blackberries

1 litre water

300g sugar

Wash berries and place all ingredients into a heavy based pan.  Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 mins.  Strain and bottle.

It tastes very nice, we all liked it.

The alcohol based version was to soak the blackberries with cinnamon, cloves and/or allspice with sugar (half the volume of the blackberries - so 4 cups of berries was 2 cups of sugar) in 1 1/2 cups of vodka or brandy for 2 - 4 weeks. Strain and bottle.

I may yet try this one too - a grown up cordial and a child-friendly cordial.

Yesterday, I went berry picking again.  This time I picked half a kilo of wild blackberries.  I’ve made a second batch of child-friendly cordial - this time I added the juice and peel of one orange.  It’s a little sweeter and tastes better than the first batch.  I’m considering adding apple peel to the berries for my next batch.

We’re also considering growing the blackberries up the fences.  That would keep them controlled, more easily accessible and provide shelter in the paddocks.  Multi-purpose is always good.  I don’t think they’d require a great deal of care either.  They’re taking over the more untamed land we have quite successfully as it is, with no help from anyone.