chronicles
Wow . . . two months since the last update. Just confirms what I already knew: we have been busy! Muntanui is exploding with life at the moment -- baby animals, rampant weeds and the beginnings of what looks like a bumper season of produce. Our trees have been laden with more blossom than we'd ever seen before, we desperately need to cut hay before everything bolts to seed and my vege garden's assuming triffid-like proportions. The mild winter and very wet spring seem to have triggered a massive mast (flowering en masse) in the surrounding beech forest. Our hills are tinged with gold and red -- a palette you'd normally associate more with a New England autumn than an alpine Kiwi spring. It's an incredible time of year. Bleat If there's one thing we managed to nail properly this year, it was lambing. Waiting until May to let Spidey in with the girls was the best thing we could've done. We had a higher pregnancy rate, more lambs born and the mortality rate was halved. The weather, although very wet, was a great deal warmer than it was last year and we used a paddock with plenty of shelter as the nursery. We had a no-interference-unless-absolutely-necessary policy this year. It paid off -- no ewes rejected their young'uns, And, to top it all off, Farmer Wan became a dad, delivering two lambs all by his big, soft-hearted self. If you'd like more of a blow-by-blow account of this year's lambing, including numbers and stats, check out our 2013 Lambing Diary. Spray We remain committed to converting Muntanui to biodynamics, so on Sunday 17 November we stirred and sprayed our second lot of Preparation 500. We distributed it over a paddock we're re-vegetating (more on that in the next post), with some left over for the orchard. This time, we managed to get through the entire process without arguing, so we're counting that as a win. It's way too early yet to know how successful our biodynamic practices are, especially when the conditions generally have been so ideal for rampant growth. The grass in the orchard is the lushest it's ever been and while it's true that we sprayed Prep 500 over it in autumn, it also got the benefit of drift from all the soil amendments we spread back in June. So it remains to be seen but we're very happy to persevere with the process for the foreseeable future. Gloves The vege garden is totally full of plants for the first time since we arrived here and I'm feeling smug about that. Planting it all out was set back by a month because October rained solidly and I couldn't work the saturated soil without risking damage to it. We won't have our own tomatoes for Christmas, but we should have them by late January, which is better than this year, when we didn't get them until May. The warmer weather means we've had our first wave of visitors and they've willingly donned gloves to help us out, for which we're very grateful. Big thanks to Kim and Jan, who cheerfully assisted with everything from tailing and rubber-ringing the ram lambs to weeding my woefully overgrown knot garden. Thanks also to Big Lil, weeder extraordinaire and best mate of St Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. I'm still not sure how much he had to do with Farmer Wan's sunglasses turning up again but hey, we're very grateful nonetheless. Last, but not least, this: Posted by Farmer Nik
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Posted by Farmer Nik There are many different kinds of "hot beds" in the world and all sorts of instructions for "making" them but here I'm talking about using the heat generated by a compost heap to germinate seeds and grow plants very early in the season. Sorry. France: a hotbed of horticultural excellence I first read about hotbeds in The Winter Harvest Handbook by American organic market gardening guru, Eliot Coleman. He referred to the incredible 19th century market gardeners around Paris who used hotbeds to supply the city with fresh vegetables and fruit all year round These growers also exported vast quantities of produce over the pond to Britain. Each market garden was usually no bigger than one or two acres but they were very intensively cultivated and extremely productive. I filed this information away in the back of my head until the NZ Biodynamic Conference back in May, where I spotted Hot Beds, a great little book by British horticulturalist and hotbed expert, Jack First. There are detailed instructions in the book on how to construct, fill and maintain hotbeds and I thought I'd like to give it a try. (Translation: I bullied Farmer Wan into making one for me.) Step-by-step instructions on how to build a hotbed 1. Build the outer frame The bigger the outer frame, the more raw material it will hold and the longer the hotbed will stay warm. Farmer Wan made ours from untreated eucalyptus, 2400mm long (the sun-facing side) by 1800mm deep (or 8 ft long by 6 ft deep). The height varied at each corner because the land was sloping but on flat ground, it would be 750mm (approx. 2 ft 5in). 2. Fill the outer frame to the top with manure mixed with straw Horse stable sweepings are best for this because horses produce copious amounts of nitrogen-rich urine, which is great for getting the composting process started. We settled for red clover straw, cow manure and Farmer Wan peeing on the heap whenever he felt the urge. 3. Build the growing frame This should fit comfortably inside the outer frame with room to spare. Farmer Wan made ours 1800mm long by 1200mm deep (6 ft by 4 ft). As you can see, it slopes. This prevents seedlings from being shaded out. 4. Make the lights These cover the growing frame and keep in the heat. They should extend just past the growing frame so that rain runs off and doesn't flood the seedlings. Farmer Wan made three separate, lightweight frames. Traditionally, these were covered with glass but he used polytunnel plastic to cover ours. 5. Fill the growing frame with growing medium We used a soil/compost mix with good drainage. 6. Monitor the temperature of the hotbed This was a good excuse to buy a great new gadget -- a digital thermometer with a metre-long probe. The hotbed temperature should be stable or starting to decrease before it's sown with seed. For the first couple of weeks, we took temperature readings every two or three days but we slackened off towards the end. It took a while for the bed to get cranking but at peak, it reached just under 40degC -- more than 20 degrees higher than the ambient temperature. 7. Sow seeds On 19 August, I made shallow furrows in the growing medium and filled them with seed-raising mix. I sowed three rows of lettuce, a row of English spinach and a row of corn salad (a.k.a. lamb's lettuce). On 24 August, I sowed four rows of a carrot/radish mix. 8. Water and cover with lights Once the seedlings are up, they need adequate ventilation. The lights should be raised on calm, sunny days to provide airflow, and replaced before the temperature starts to drop in the afternoon. I'll give you a progress update soon. Posted by Farmer Nik
Bantman and Robyn, a perfect Pekin pair
The second anniversary of our permanent move to Muntanui quietly slipped by last Wednesday. It rained. Farmer Wan worked on our sheep yards and I spent the day inside, writing. Because there's always so much to do here, we're always looking ahead. We don't often take the opportunity to reflect on what we've already done. Usually, that's done for us by people who have visited more than once and remarked on the changes. Our biggest struggle so far hasn't been our ignorance of farming -- that tends to sort itself out whether you want it to or not. Stuff happens and you deal with it and the outcome isn't always good, so you work out how to prevent it from happening again or how to handle it better if it does. The farm shows us what our priorities need to be and we just get on with it. No, our biggest struggle over the last two years has been learning to work with each other. That, for me, was a huge surprise. I thought we'd be great -- some kind of super-team, charging implacably, successfully, from one farming challenge to the next. Nah. Not even close. In reality, we've probably fought more over the last two years than in the previous 12 years combined. Neither of us likes being told what to do -- at least, not by each other. We think differently. We approach things differently. We have different levels of energy, stamina and patience. It's a wonder we haven't strung each other up. But when we're trying to solve a problem and we're on the same frequency and it's working -- ahh. It's magic. Until one of us tells the other what they should do next. So it's a work in progress. Muntanui itself continues to delight us. We both love this place so much and we have no regrets about moving here. We're firmly embedded in the local community, now. We've learnt a bit about farming and livestock and, once we get some remaining infrastructure sorted out and a bit more experience under our belts, we'll be better equipped to roll with the punches. We're not kidding ourselves that it will get easier (one word: weather) but we'll at least have the basics in place. Some of the stuff on our To Do list from two years ago still hasn't been started, and we've done a lot that was never on the list in the first place. In our third year, we're getting serious about both renewing our pasture and practising livestock husbandry. We'll be making more changes to the landscape and should also be a lot closer to feeding ourselves. There might even be some surplus to sell. So plenty to be getting on with, then. Lucky that we love work -- and each other! Posted by Farmer Nik Muntanui Solar Power Station produced its first 1MWh of electricity at precisely 08:00am on Tuesday 13th August. 1MWh is just under a quarter of our annual usage. It has taken one third of the year to produce it, but we will be producing well above our requirements for the remaining two thirds of the year. It took slightly longer than anticipated originally -- in fact, twice as long, due to it being the middle of winter. Power production is once more on the rise as we head into spring and we are looking forward to being in credit with the power company until next winter. Posted by Farmer Wan
"Now that you've got a freezer, how would you like half a pig?" It's not something you hear every day but around here it's not that uncommon. A friend in the village with a bush block in the Marlborough Sounds shoots a lot of pigs and had offered me one before. I was unable to accept last time because we had visitors coming and no freezer. This time: no excuses. Those of you of a squeamish nature (or any vegetarians) may want to look away and avoid the remainder of this post. I collected the back half of the pig (minus the legs) and returned home to work out what I was going to do with the carcase. I set up our trestle table, covered it in plastic sheeting and found a suitable piece of surplus untreated eucalypt timber to use as a cutting board. I laid out two newly sharpened kitchen knives, a borrowed meat saw, found ziplock bags of a suitable size and stood looking at the bloody mess to work out where to start. Slicing between the ribs seemed to be a good way to go and once that was done it was a matter of using the meat saw to cut through the backbone. Not as easy as it seems, trying to hold on to a slippery hunk of meat sliding around the place, and sawing at the same time. Once that was done I started to see some recognisable cuts of meat - pork chops. I carried on slicing and sawing until all of the chops were done. I then found a couple of juicy looking tenderloins which I was able to cut off quite cleanly. The last pieces of meat worth taking from the carcase were a couple of what could be described as rump steaks, at least that is what I'm calling them. The sum total of the exercise was as follows:
Given that I have had no training or experience I was reasonably pleased with the results. We are yet to taste them -- that will be another post. Next time it will be a lot more real. I will be killing one of our wethers. I'll definitely need some assistance for that one. Luckily, one of our neighbours is a retired butcher and has offered to show me the ropes. Look out for another butchery post in the future. Posted by Farmer Wan
You know that feeling when the dentist is picking through your mouth and not tutting at you and not poking at anything that sends you half out of the chair and you're almost convinced that maybe this time there'll be no work required and you feel all weirdly excited? That's how we felt in early 2012 while we waited for the results of our soil testing. We knew our dirt was acidic and would need liming but had no real idea about all the other elements that make up soil and in what proportions they'd arranged themselves at Muntanui. If we re-visit the dental analogy, it turned out we needed a root canal, a wisdom tooth extraction, three additional one-hour appointments and some serious anaesthetic. The damage
The fix We should've had our soil amendments spread in autumn last year but we kept getting distracted by saffron harvesting and livestock emergencies and Farmer Wan working in Oz, etc. The spreading finally took place this year, on 12 June -- a bit too close to winter but again, there were other priorities. On the day, a nice man rocked up in a big truck, opened a valve in said truck and drove up and down our lumpy paddocks releasing white powder until it ran out. Then he headed away to where his trailer was parked, re-filled, came back and drove around again. This went on for about an hour. The air was so thick with white dust we couldn't see anything else. The tiniest of breezes sent it wafting down the road to our neighbour Helen's place. She later thanked us for the free fertiliser. I was working in the tunnel house at the time, feeling smug because I'd had the foresight to wear a mask. It made no difference -- I still ended up with the worst sinus infection of my life. I was sick for three and a half weeks. So important safety tip, people: when your paddocks are being spread with 18.42 tonnes of bacteria-inoculated fertiliser, go and play somewhere upwind, preferably a few kilometres away. Spring will show us how effective this process has been. We'll probably have our soil re-tested in summer and I'll get to experience that dental chair anticipation all over again. I'm hoping for a quick clean and polish. Fingers crossed.
Posted by Farmer Nik Over the course of a weekend back in May, our minds were blown, our senses were bombarded and we set off on a new farming tangent that will change the way we do things here forever. A nice, big steamer for the compost heap. Thanks, guys! The catalyst was the New Zealand Biodynamic and Gardening Association's 2013 Conference. Yep, biodynamics. What's that? you ask. Well, it's basically turbo-charged organics; very concerned with building up soil and fertility. It treats properties/farms as unique, living entities, just like the people who inhabit and work on them. Biodynamic teachings also recognise, and allow for, influences coming from outside the planet: not just the sun and moon but also the planets of the solar system and the constellations. Then there's the stuff to do with burying manure-filled cow horns for six months and sticking other stuff in deer's bladders and hanging them in trees, etc. So maybe you think that's extremely weird. No worries. Lots of people do. My logical, scientific, atheistic Farmer Wan definitely struggled with some of the more "out there" conference sessions and we met a lovely wine grower who sat scowling with her arms and legs crossed for most of the weekend. The more esoteric the subject matter, the further down in her seat she slumped. Yet all the committed biodynamic practitioners we met and spoke with were grounded, intelligent, practical people. And really nice. And party animals. We made some wonderful new friends at that event. "It doesn't matter if people believe in it or not," a successful farmer and one of New Zealand's biodynamic luminaries told us. "Biodynamics is a system. If people follow it, they'll get results." Alrighty, then. So less than a week later, we'd stirred up our first batch of Preparation 500 and were trundling it around one of our paddocks in a wheelbarrow, spraying it over the ground with a small manuka branch and bickering over the right way to go about it. Not the most auspicious of starts but a beginning nonetheless. The conference set a lot of things in motion for us, with the decision to finally get a tractor being the first. At this stage, I can't see any major conflict between the permaculture design plan for Muntanui and the application of biodynamics for our soil. Neither philosophy is meant to be dogmatic, so they should be able to live with each other. We'll see. Posted by Farmer Nik
Listing slightly to port there, birches.
Muntanui, being situated at the top of a mountain pass, can get a bit breezy at times. Winter's the best season to see the evidence of this. Without all their leaves, it's noticeable how hammered our deciduous trees are by the prevailing westerlies. We also get smashed by freezing easterlies. And southerlies. The northerlies would probably have a go too, if all those hills weren't in the way. View from the other end of the diveway "Bracing!" we said to each other when we first saw the special note on our official house and land information report: "Wind Zone: VERY HIGH". "How interesting!" we exclaimed when locals fell over themselves to inform us that our property was known around these parts as "Pleurisy Point". Apparently, sheep drovers used to graze their animals here before taking them over the Rainbow Road through to Canterbury. The sheep died of exposure by the score. And finally, at the risk of labouring the point about the ferocity of our turbulent air, this winter we've had four,10 metre-high eucalyptus trees uprooted by gales. Eucalypts aren't deep-rooted trees, it's true, but the woodlot is situated on one of the more sheltered parts of the property. Botanical bullies have a hard time too Previous owners of Muntanui planted shelter belts around the house and orchard. Most of them struggled and continue to struggle because of ... yeah, you've guessed it ... the wind. Even Leyland Cypress, a thug of a tree if ever there was one, has a dismal growth rate in the more exposed areas. Apart from sculpting our trees into Pisa-like formations, wind causes problems here because of its chilling and drying effects. These stunt the growth rate of our pasture -- with shelter, the grass grows long, lush and green. Without it, grass growth is painfully slow. The obvious solution is to have more shelter belts so, back in April, we planted what we hope will be one of many. It was a huge step for us because it was the first, big alteration we've made to the landscape. Natives, please! There were plenty of good reasons to plant a shelter belt composed purely of natives:
Although I've been propagating native plants for a year now, none of them were big enough to survive in our most exposed paddock. We wanted something a decent size and preferably eco-sourced. Enter Bevan and Rachael from Hill Top Native Nursery in Wakefield -- lovely folks who supplied us with 10 varieties of stunningly healthy native plants which, at 70cm high, were big enough to stand a half-decent chance of surviving at Muntanui. The plan Given the seriousness of our wind situation, we'd asked Bevan to draw us up a planting plan for a shelter belt three rows deep. The toughest and fastest-growing plants -- flax and kanuka -- would face the prevailing westerlies. A couple more varieties would be added to those two to stare down the easterlies. The middle row would contain the climax species -- mountain beech, totara, kowhai, etc. With permanent fencing to protect the plantings from stock, rabbits and hares, we'd be losing 840m2 (less than quarter of an acre) from the paddock. It's a fair bit of land to take out of grazing but we know the increased pasture growth will balance it out. In the ground and staked Marking, digging, planting We spent a day over Easter measuring and marking out the 200 planting holes. Then Farmer Wan hired a Bobcat with an auger and spent two days happily digging. Planting had to wait until a couple of weeks later, when we knew we were due for some rain. With help, we managed to get the lot done in half a day. Farmer Wan had plenty of opportunity to hone his fence-building skills after that. With the fence complete, he then had to rabbit-proof it. And lastly, he hewed over a hundred manuka stakes, using only his mighty hands. And a small chainsaw. So far, the trees have endured gales, snow, driving rain and last week's swarm of earthquakes. A few of the pittosporums are showing signs of leaf burn but it's nothing too serious. Soon, we'll have an additional 600 native trees and plants that we've propagated ourselves as part of a horticulture course we're both doing. So expect further posts about shelter belts over the next couple of years. And if you want to come and help us dig holes and plant out, all offers of assistance will be gratefully accepted! Posted by Farmer Nik Thanks, as always, to our generous helpers: Ciaran for measuring and marking out, Jan and Robbie for planting, and wee Nat for lots of hand-watering. Muntanui and some of its residents have been experiencing a noticeable growth spurt over the last three months. Take young Flora McFauna, for instance: nine months old and looking like a proper wee heifer. Although they're not very apparent from the image above, her horns have started growing, too: Yours Truly also seems to be experiencing a growth spurt, if all those suddenly teeny-tiny clothes hanging uselessly in the wardrobe are anything to go by. This isn't anything to celebrate and will be dealt with over the next three months, once the weather warms up a little and I don't need quite so much chocolate.
There'll be more on the subject of growth spurts soon. Right now, though, it's snowing and the whole house is shaking with the force of the gales we're getting. I've lit the fire. Farmer Wan has moved the cattle. Time to hunker down with a good book -- that's what lazy, cosy, winter Sundays are for, right? Posted by Farmer Nik |
About Ewan and NikiFarmer WanScottish mechanical engineer with a deep and abiding passion for good food. Outstanding cook. Builder of lots of stuff. Cattle whisperer. Connoisseur of beer. A lover rather than a fighter. Farmer NikKiwi writer and broadcaster who hates cabbage, even though she knows it's good for her. Chook wrangler. Grower of food and flowers. Maker of fine preserves. Lover of dancing and wine. Definitely a fighter. Archives
November 2016
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