Nashi pears

Well the birds or the rats got quite a few of them despite the fact that we covered them with the nets. Two days ago there were these wonderful nashis waiting to be picked. Today only two were left and one had lost half. The one last one was utterly marvellous.

Pumpkins galore

Here they are again. No idea what variety they are, probably a seed of one which was tasty. The fruiterer shop in Otaki sells wonderful pumpkins.

Don't know why I have got fennel going to seed. Presumably I grew them to draw minerals from deep down. Anyway they have wonderful flowers attracting insects!

Silver beet, a few apples, cabbbage too

Today's harvest

Yes a big leek, a few tomatoes, lots and lots of beans, one corn not visible, and some carrots.

Pumpkin everywhere

It seems to have taken over most of the garden. And you can see there are some good ones there too. At the front is a newly planted set of rocket plants, haven't had any for a while. Actually we haven't got any kale at the moment. My idea of growing cabbages, cauli and broccoli is to plant them then watch the white butterflies demolish them, then pull them out! But today I planted some, then sprayed them with dipel the approved organic spray. Have got more ready to use in two weeks time too, which is an advance for me. And the bees are having a party in the borage and the flowers of the korean mint. I can't bear to prune it back.

Tomatoes have been abundant for a long time now

Great tomatoes this year again. No disease. The trick was to grow mustard there in the winter and it sterilised the soil. Also have used a lot of comfrey water and seaweed juice or worm juice, just whatever I have at the time. Two varieties mainly were Sweet 100 and Moneymaker, though somewhere are a couple of heritage tomatoes I got from Koanga gardens.

Kumeras amongst the pumpkin

We extended the vege garden in winter so that we could grow kumeras, which we really love. Lots of digging out stones and transporting compost and topsoil, and at last there is some hot weather to grow them. They are thriving, especially when they are watered daily. Some are growing well under the pumpkin.

Jan and Dave cover nashi pears

Jan and Dave come from Wisconsin and were with us for four or five days. We had many interesting political discussions with them.

Dagmar and Paul come from Scotland

Our first wwoofers of 2007 were from Inverness, though Dagmar is German. They did some great work.

Stephanie cleans out our pantry

Stephanie, a wwwoofer from France who has been living in Melbourne, cleans out our pantry on a wet day. What a job!

Phacelia attracts beneficial insects

Yes we have had such pleasure from watching the various bees and hoverflies in the blue flowers of the phacelia in the herbal ley.

The friend who has his beehives on our property says they are making lots of honey. Borage coming out next all over the place.

Here is Malcolm tidying up after tree pruning

It seems an age since I have posted a photo but here goes now. Malcolm has put in many hours trimming and getting rid of unwanted branches and of course we have a lot of new good material from our mulcher now. His grandson Willie Dacker came the other day and helped him put it through the shredder.

Back from holiday and have had two lots of wwoofers

Well the ability to send photos might have deserted me (I interfered with it somehow and can't get it back, I used flickr.com for a mac) but the garden continues to flourish.

I wish I could send photos of the heritage apples which are all swelling and looking so promising. We have already finished thinning them (very late I might say) and used the thinnings for stewing. In fact I had so many I had to freeze them.

Our first wwoofers were Dagmar and Paul from Scotland, wonderful people. We did heaps of work. Everything grew so much while we were away for a three week holiday it sure needed attending to. Fortunately we had had family in the house all that time and the glasshouse and vege garden had been watered regularly and the geese water changed. On arrival home we found the early plums had all been eaten by the birds, there are no more early fruit on any of the olives and disease has entered the wine grapes. Well the grapes were never disease resistant anyway. I always put off spraying them, even with Organic 100 or baking soda and it's time I was more disciplined about it. Anyway they look generally better than last year thank goodness.

The herbal ley is proving wonderful for all sorts of beneficial insects. I think I have identified a hoverfly – not sure. Bees are having a party in the phacelia and the various white flowers are growing underneath them. Borage is just staring to grow bigger. By autumn each plant is huge and the bees love it. So I had to transplant a lot of young borage plants from the vege garden (we had a very big one there last year) to under the fruit trees at the back. The coriander I put under the citrus is flourishing, wonderful for cooking with.

And that brings us to the French wwoofer Stephanie, who is with us now. She loves cooking and yesterday cooked us a delicious lunch which I am still recovering from.

My son in law and daughter noticed that the walnuts almost all have borer, so we had to treat them with a dose of kerosene and seal it with wax. Oh dear.

We have also had trouble with rats who seemed to get half our nuts. Devious brutes. So hopefully we are outwitting them now. A fisherman friend on holiday suggested using nylon fishing line to hang them from in the shed so they can't climb down it. Hopefully that will work.

The weather has been fairly awful. Spring was cool and wet and summer not very obvious. We have only had a few really hot days so the prospect of the kumeras doing well is not strong. Tomatoes are ripening in the glasshouse now, most of the carrots didn't germinate (they are germinating now as it is warm and wet) and you can say goodbye to growing broccoli in the summer due to white butterflies. They hardly grew much anyway.

The corn, beans and squash are working well together. Three sisters the Hope Indians call them. Beans climb the corn and the squash is creeping underneath, beans create soil for all of them.

Bryan my son in law did all the shredding while we were away and many little mechaical jobs fixing things.

Oh and I forgot, I love tradesmen. Our plumber came this week and sorted out the filter and now we have good water pressure again. What a relief. Now we need an electrician again for the caravan as it is shorting out too often. Must go for a swim.

Fruit are ripening now and veges are all planted.

Well at last. The broad beans have been good but are now finished. Red currants are great and black currants are just starting but don't look as plentiful as the reds.

Loquats are good too but require a ladder to pick and then they aren't exactly user friendly. A great taste but such a lot of pip, in fact 3-4 pips in each. And we have to share them with the birds, plenty for all of us actually.

The cherry isn't having a good year at all sad to say.

Yesterday I started poking round the early plums and found some ripe. I had a good feed and brought some in too. On the way I picked a couple of leaves of Vietnamese mint and chewed one and lo and behold it went beautifully with the plums. So I made some more up. Delicious.

Elderflowers have finished but their cordial is still going, and the apples have been thinned a bit but maybe we should have been more ruthless. The herbal ley is looking really great under the apples and figs and I look forward to a whole bloom of white flowers later. And of course all the apples.

As for the geese, well they get out a lot. Not sure that the electric fence is doing much at all. And tonight Malcolm was mowing and broke the mower when he hit a big root. A big bolt was sheared off, and we hope we can get a borrowed mower for the holidays from the Levin firm KC Motors. If not... Sounds an expensive accident.

And the corn is growing up, with beans and squash. The kumeras are hopeless because it hasn't exactly been a tropical spring. In the glasshouse the tomatoes are swelling and I finally finished picking off laterals and tying them up before we go away on holiday and have family look after the place.

The tamarillo has now recovered after the awful spring and even looks healthy. Peaches are generally quite useless and macadamia are all finally picked. Well guess what? The rats have eaten all the hazelnuts we had stored in the storeroom and have taken half the macadamias to high places and scattered them everywhere including in the garage roller door. We had one onion bag stored in the mower shed and thought we were clever because we tied it from a rafter. And the darned rats climbed up there and down the string, demolishing half the bag. So next year it is 2-3 bags from the rafters and lots of early rat poison. All that work picking and dehusking and drying them and mostly to feed rats. Darn.

Ther radishes are up and the carrots have finally germinated after several failures in the spring. Good greens always means we have had salads every day and the herbs are extremely plentiful and varied. Peoppermint tea is great. I have peas and beans planted everywhere.

The wine grapes are still holding their own and the table grapes look healthy thanks to all the Organic 100 sprayed on them (fish waste and seaweed) They love it

A happy moment during our property blessing and wedding

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Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Well after six years of living together we finally got married on Dec 2nd, which was a very happy event. I think what we are laughing at here is the wee dog that Winsome brought chased the cows in the next door paddock. It wasn't long till the cows thought there was something wrong here as the dog was diminutive and they were big. So the cows turned round the chased the dog back to our property. He scuttled in so fast we all burst out laughing. We went from here into the clearing in the native bush for our wedding ceremony. And of course it was a brilliantly fine day after weeks of rain and indifferent weather...

Malcolm rides the mower at full speed

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Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

He was keen to get it all mown before the weather broke and sure as eggs today has been very wet and windy. This is Malcolm with his head down going for it. You can see the red currants in the distance with nets over them. We picked a good bowlful yesterday and there are plenty more.

Matze and Peggy plant the Wedding Bells rose

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Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Yes it is true, we did get married last Saturday and Wendy and Russell gave us this lovely climbing rose. After considerable discussion, and rejecting five other sites, we settled on this one. It is visible from the dining room window, next to the green tea and can climb on the framework set up for the kiwifruit. It looks as though we will have some fruit this year though it is a strange variety and has a bad history, so no doubt it will be well pruned back in the future. Matze and Peggy are from Berlin, East Berlin actually, and have been very helpful to us during the week of our wedding preparations. They looked after our place for three days while we went away to find some sun (it wasn't there in Napier at the time either!).

Boys clean up the branches that Rupert cut off

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Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Yes it is Rupert, Malcolm's 25 year old grandson from Dunedin. He visited complete with chainsaw and trimmed a great number of branches under Malcolm's guidance. Here he is transporting the branches the day after our wedding. In the trailer is Temmy (Malcolm's great grandson and Daniel (Deirdre's grandson) They had a ball.

Rupert fells a diseased almond tree

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Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

We have been told there are two almond trees with silvery leaf and since this virus affects the tree fatally, it might as well be got rid of.

Well today was the day. Malcolm's grandson Rupert has arrived from Dunedin (he is a student there) and he very kindly brought all his tools, chainsaw etc for felling trees, which, like his father Graham, he loves to do.

So it was a sad day for Malcolm who hates to see the end of trees. But a relief as they have not produced any nuts. Only one produces nuts actually. We will have to burn the wood as we can't compost it.

Of course our next big event is that Malcolm and I are getting married in the clearing in the bush on Saturday.