Farm sitters

Thank you to the wonderful farm sitters, who looked after the chickens and watered the seedlings while I was away! Without them I would not have been able to have my all too brief break from the farm. On my return I found the chickens in high spirits and the garden looking healthy after four inches of rain.

Unfortunately, the warmer weather has made most of the plants go to flower, reducing the harvest. However on the positive side, there are many self-sown baby bok choy coming up.

It's actually the most difficult time of year as it is not warm enough for most of the warm weather crops (tomatoes, eggplants, corn etc) to go in yet but the cool weather crops are bolting.

As Jackie French says, wait till you can sit comfortably on the ground with a bare bum before planting! In the meantime i'll be raising seedlings under cover.

Aotearoan magic

Spending a fortnight in New Zealand has been a great experience -- personally and professionally. I visited NZ's most acclaimed organic farmer, Tony Mallard and got to chew his ear about how he farms. He now has 18 acres of deep, finely structured rich topsoil that looks good enough to eat and he puts it down to compost. So even in NZ where they have soil that we could only dream about, compost is still the key!

Painting with Poo

Ha Haa!
My sister called me and asked what i was up to... quite truthfully i answered that i was painting poo on trees.

To explain, I was painting Biodynamic treepaste onto the trunks and branches of the recently pruned fruit trees. The tree paste is made up of fresh cow pats, sand or diatomaceous earth and potting clay or bentonite.

The idea behind it is to seal wounds from the previous year and from the pruning. It also provides a nourishing "cream" for the plant in this season's growth.

Rudolph Steiner said that "the trunk of a tree can be likened to an elongated mound of Earth, upon which plants (leaves) grow." So the tree paste carries out a similar function to compost spread on the ground.

Pruning the Fruit Trees

Well, it was well and truly time to prune the fruit trees by the time we got out there with the secateurs. The peaches and nectarines had their leaves starting to show already... naughty naughty!

So we sharpened the secateurs, and went to each of the trees and cut it back to vase shape. It seems a bit drastic cutting off so much material, but the theory goes that you set the shape in the early years, and reap the benefits in the future. I'm after a vase shape here to maximise fruit on each tree. Whereas a central leader shape maximises fruit production per area (if you pack in lots of trees). Also a vase will work better with the domes that come in quite close.

Paul and I kept the "scion" wood that we cut in readiness for grafting it onto rootstock when it arrives.

Tipi

In preparation for setting up the tipi, the poles which were cut from saplings in the forest, were sanded back and oiled up.

Then Paul and I set about creating a flat spot to put the tipi on. In a couple of days, we accomplished with great satisfaction what a bulldozer probably would have done in about ten minutes!

The tipi from Rainbow Tipis arrived a couple of days later and i couldn't help myself, but i had to unpack it all. After getting instructions over the phone, i raced over to the tipi site and set up the poles. It was hairy setting it up on my own as the poles are tall and quite heavy!

The next morning, i thought i could tie the poles better so i took it down and set it all up, including the skin in time for breakfast in the new tipi!

Of course it rained that same day so i got a chance to try out the rain shield.

Perra was a bit nervous of the whole thing, but i encouraged her in. I was going to sleep in their but didn't want to risk a bad night's sleep with a talk I was giving at the Healthy Living Expo the next day.

I did sit and admire it for a while from across the lake and saw the swallows flitting and soaring around it and just occasionally right into it.