The weather has turned decidedly autumnal, so while the sun is still summer-hot, the air has gotten chillier, and the weather more unsettled.
And it means I’ve gone into my annual squirrel mode—harvesting and preserving summer’s bounty so we can enjoy it all winter.
Last Saturday was summer soup day. Long time readers of my blog will know this is a key part of my gardening year. When the children were young, it was a whole-family event, with everyone pitching in to pick and chop vegetables. It’s become a more solitary activity for me in recent years, but no less important in my annual calendar.
With just my husband and me at home now, I always think I’ll make less soup. And this year, I was a little worried I wouldn’t have enough vegetables for a big batch, because January and February were so cold and wet, the heat-loving vegetables sulked.
I should have known better.
I needed both my 20-litre and 18-litre pots to cook the soup, plus the 12 litre pot for making vegetable stock from the vegetable off-cuts. In the end, I made 23 quarts of soup and 13 pints of stock. That’s Monday dinners for almost six months, plus stock to flavour 13 more meals. Not bad for 13 hours of work.
The day after summer soup day, I tackled the sweet corn. I usually sow three plantings of sweet corn, two weeks apart, in the spring. The first two plantings were desperate to be picked, so I harvested 63 ears of corn. Blanched and cut off the cob, it yielded 5.3 kilograms of corn, which went into the freezer. That’s a year’s supply of sweet corn for us, to be used in casseroles, stews, and side dishes.
I had hoped to also freeze some soy on Sunday, but I’d waited too long to harvest, and about half the beans were too mature. So we’ll save the majority of this year’s soy as dry beans instead.
And speaking of dry beans, in the last fortnight, I’ve harvested my Borlotti and Black Turtle beans, and have started harvesting the climbing beans: Blue Shackamaxon, Bicolour Peans, Bird’s Egg, and Cherokee Cornfield. The harvest of the climbers will go on for the next month as the plants continue to grow and put out new pods while the older ones mature. Not quite as neat and tidy as the bush beans, which all mature at the same time, but in the end, I’ll get more beans from the same amount of garden space off the climbers than the bush beans.
I’ve also now harvested most of the potatoes, which did beautifully this year, with the cool rain. The spuds are tucked away in a dark corner of the laundry room, and should last through much of the winter.
There are still more vegetables to squirrel away in the next few weeks: pumpkins, hopefully more tomatoes, more basil (in the form of pesto), and the rest of the beans and potatoes. As I do every year, I mourn the end of summer’s bounty, but I look forward to the ease of winter meals that come from the freezer or pantry instead of directly from the garden. There is something delightful about knowing that the hard work has been done, and the food is tucked away, ready to be eaten.
Many years ago, I posted a blog titled 50 Ways to Eat Zucchini. Since then, I’ve gotten much better about my zucchini planting—I plant half as many as I used to. Of course, that still means we have too many. We’re currently giving away 5 to 10 kg of zucchini a week, eating it in every dinner and baking it into desserts.
I don’t mind having too much zucchini. It’s a versatile vegetable that can be grated into all kinds of dishes (chilli, pasta sauce, enchiladas, burgers …) or featured in beautiful slabs or rounds (zucchini and tomato tart, grilled zucchini, frittata …).
One of my favourite ways to eat zucchini is as breaded, oven fried sticks. These tasty ‘fries’ take a little work, but are well worth the effort. I fill a large jelly roll pan with them, and they vanish, even when it’s just my husband and me for dinner.
I don’t have a set recipe, but here’s an approximation of what I do:
2 small to medium sized zucchini 1 egg 1 cup bread crumbs 3/4 tsp salt 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese 2 tsp paprika 1/4 tsp chipotle 1/2 tsp smoked paprika 1 tsp dry oregano small handful of fresh parsley or basil, finely chopped
Cut the zucchini into thick sticks, about the length and thickness of a finger. Whisk the egg in a small bowl. Combine all other ingredients in a separate bowl. Generously oil a large baking sheet.
Dredge each zucchini stick in the egg, then the breadcrumb mixture and set on the pan.
Bake for about 20 minutes at 200℃, until browned and cooked through.
Serve hot, with your favourite dip, if desired. We love chipotle mayonnaise with them, but they really need no further embellishment—they’re delicious as is.
Those of you who have followed my blog for years will know that the first three months of the year are birthday months in my family. For years, I called it crazy cake season, because I would obsess over birthday cakes all month, and spend literally weeks designing and making crazy birthday cakes.
Like the octopus:
The geode:
The peripatus:
An alpine botanical scene:
And many others.
But now that the kids are adults, the crazy cake season is far less crazy. It still involves cake, of course, but the cakes are more subdued and geared toward adult tastes.
This year, my daughter said ‘surprise me’ when I asked about her cake preferences.
So, faced with a kitchen full of beautiful ripe peaches from our trees, I made her a three-tiered peach upside down cake using my favourite upside down cake recipe, from King Arthur Flour’s Whole Grain Baking book.
The cake recipe is meant for nectarines, but I’ve also made variations of it with pears, lemons, peaches, and plums, and it’s fabulous.
I recommend reducing the sugar in the batter, because it can be overly sweet, with the gooey fruity sugar that soaks in from the topping. I also adjust the spicing to suit the fruit and my own tastes. And I always use more fruit than the recipe suggests. 🙂
Here’s the original recipe:
Topping: 3 Tbs butter (43 g), melted 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/4 tsp nutmeg 1/4 tsp cinnamon 2 large nectarines 2 tsp lemon juice
Batter: 1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour 1 3/4 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 4 Tbs (57 g) butter, softened 3/4 cup brown sugar (I use 1/2 cup) 2 large eggs 1 tsp vanilla or almond extract 1/2 cup milk
To make the topping: Place the melted butter in an ungreased 8-in (20 cm) square baking pan, tilting to coat the bottom evenly. Mix together the brown sugar and spices, and sprinkle evenly over the butter. Slice the fruit (either peeled or unpeeled is fine) 1/4-inch (half a centimetre) thick and arrange the slices in the pan on top of the sugar and butter. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Set aside.
To make the batter: Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light in colour and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla. Stir in half the flour mixture, then the milk. Add the remaining flour mixture, stirring until the batter is evenly moistened. Gently pour the batter over the fruit in the pan.
Bake at 375℉ (190℃) for 45 minutes or until the cake begins to pull away from the sides of the pan and a cake tester inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow to cool 5 minutes in the pan. Then invert the pan onto a serving platter and let sit for 1 minute before removing the pan. Serve warm, with whipped cream or ice cream, if desired.
We enjoyed our peach upside down cake with homemade peach ice cream, made by my husband.
There are certain pieces of kitchen equipment that don’t get used often—the milk frother, the crinkle cut knife, the herb scissors … Most of these items are really unnecessary, and some don’t work very well, so they’re only pulled out on rare occasions when you feel like faffing around with something.
Other equipment is absolutely essential, but serves a specific purpose.
The sauerkraut crock is one of those.
This heavy, straight-sided 3-gallon stoneware crock is the perfect vessel for fermenting cabbage. It holds a large amount of cabbage, and is easy to pack and empty. With straight sides, weighting the cabbage while it ferments is easy to do, and we’ve made a custom ‘chaser’ for this very purpose.
For six weeks of the year, the sauerkraut crock is full of bubbling cabbage.
For the remaining forty-six weeks, it sits in the corner of the living room—a dubious decoration in an otherwise unused corner. It’s pretty much useless for anything else in the kitchen—it’s heavy, bulky, and an inconvenient shape. The custom chaser, too, is of limited use—it gets tucked into the unreachable cabinets above the refrigerator.
By the time I pull the crock out again, it’s full of dust and dead insects.
You might think it’s not worth keeping around. And for many items I use maybe once a year, I’d agree.
The milk frother, crinkle cut knife and herb scissors … when they break, I won’t replace them. The sauerkraut crock, I will.
Because I can’t imagine not making sauerkraut, and the crock is the only tool that will do for the job.
It is the last day of January here, my favourite month in the garden.
This January has been more difficult than many, with cold wet weather rather than the usual dry summer warmth. But the garden has still been a January garden.
December is a month of weeding, because my vegetables aren’t yet large enough to compete against most weeds. The weeding effort spans the entire month, and I always aim to have a weed-free garden on Christmas Day.
All that effort pays off in January, when, as if by magic, the vegetables are suddenly huge, crowding out the weeds and basically looking after themselves. I pull the occasional weed that manages to pop its head above the vegetables, and I keep the paths relatively clear, just so I can move easily through the garden. I water as needed. Otherwise, there’s little to do to as far as maintenance goes.
In January, the gardening effort switches from establishment and maintenance to harvesting, reaping the benefits of my hard work. It’s not that we don’t eat from the garden all year long, but the stretch from January to March is a magical one, where production vastly outstrips our ability to eat. In January, the freezer and the cupboards begin filling up with fruit and vegetables preserved for winter enjoyment. The squirrel in me chitters smugly as I stash away the fruits of my labour, already savouring the meals, snacks, and desserts to come.
It’s as much work as the establishment and maintenance phase of the year, but the reward is immediate and tangible. By mid-March, I’ll be exhausted by the harvest, tired of making sauces, jams, and preserves. Tired of having to deal with overflowing baskets of vegetables every day. But here in January, the novelty hasn’t worn off. The excitement of each new crop coming on is palpable. The thrill of lining up jars of preserved food on the shelves banishes any fatigue.
So I say farewell to January with reluctance and look forward to several months more of deliciously exhausting harvest. And I’ll take you on a tour of my January garden. Enjoy!
Meet Katie Cochrane, budding restauranteur. She has no idea what she’s in for when her crazy Aunt Rachael gifts her the burnt out Rifton Pub for her birthday. Before long, it’s clear that renovations are the least of her worries. She always knew running a restaurant would be challenging, but she never expected it to involve witchcraft.
This cosy urban fantasy can be read as a standalone, but, Rifton being a small town, it includes many of the characters from book 1 of the series. I was excited to have a chance to spend more time with the quirky ladies of the Rifton garden group and Rifton’s demonic felines.
So pull out your gardening gloves and secateurs, and pop on down to the Rifton pub for some supernatural fun!
Preorder today, and be the first to read Demonic Summoning for the Modern Gardener!
Release date is 31 January, so you won’t have to wait long!
Our daughter wanted to go to the west coast for professional reasons (to photograph mosses for a project she’s doing), so my husband and I happily agreed to accompany her for a weekend getaway.
We left Friday evening, stopping at Lake Pearson (Moana Rua) for a lovely picnic dinner, and then carrying on over the mountains to camp at Goldsborough Campsite near Kumara. We pulled into the campsite around eight o’clock and set up camp. With the light already fading, we decided to wander up one of the tracks that followed old gold mining tracks through the bush.
Old mining water race tunnelling through the hillside
We started up German Gully Track, thinking we’d just go up a little ways, then return. The track passed an old mining water race that looked like a cathedral-shaped tunnel as it snaked steadily up the hill. Soon we were close enough to the end of the track that, of course, we had to finish.
We popped out onto a broad, modern gold mining road. The sign at the road indicated that we could either return to the track the way we came (30 minutes, according to the sign), or return via Goff’s Track (65 minutes). It was 8.55 pm. To take Goff’s Track would, theoretically, have us arriving back at the campsite at 10 pm. After ascertaining we all had our head torches with us, we powered up the road towards Goff’s Track.
German Gully track–an old mining road
The west coast was unusually dry, for which I was glad as we picked our way down Goff’s Track in the gloom—while most of the track was easy going, the steeper sections would have been slick and no fun in low light.
Knowing we were racing the light, we kept the pace up, and didn’t even need to use our torches, arriving back at the campsite around 9.30. A nice little evening hike!
The following day, we got an early start and hiked up Mount French, near Lake Brunner. None of the track descriptions have much to say, except that the hike is a steady climb of over 1000 vertical metres. Telling, however, are the listed track length and times: 7 km return, 8 hours return. That’s a walking speed of only 875 metres per hour.
View from the top of Mount French towards the Tasman Sea
We did slightly better, making the 3.5 kilometre trip to the summit in 3 hours forty-five minutes, for a walking speed of 933 metres per hour. Most of the hike up is through dense west coast rainforest, so other than the forest itself, there’s not much to see. When we hit the alpine vegetation near the top, the views opened up and it was spectacular. At first we were a little worried we’d struggle to find our way across the multiple false peaks to the actual summit, because clouds obscured the tops. In hindsight, I’m glad the cloud was there, because when it did clear and we finally got a view of the summit, I was disappointed at how far away it still was. LOL! Though the elevational change from the bottom to the top is officially a bit over 1000 metres, there are several significant dips along the ridge, so I suspect the actual amount of climbing you do to reach the summit is more like 1200 metres.
Looking back down the ridge from the summit of Mount French
But we made it, and by the time we were on the summit the clouds had cleared entirely. We had stunning views to the Tasman Sea on one side, and to the mountains on the other. Lake Brunner glittered in the sun far below us.
We had lunch on the peak and spent a good bit of time enjoying the view and exploring the plants and insects at the top before tackling the descent.
Lake Brunner seen from the summit of Mount French
Going down was faster than going up, and we reached the car shortly after 3 pm, hot and sweaty and ready for a swim. After a quick dip in Lake Brunner, and a change of clothes, we headed to Hokitika for dinner and a short stroll on the beach.
All of us were in bed and asleep early Saturday night.
Sunday, we packed up camp and headed to Lake Kaniere to hike the Lake Kaniere walkway. We’ve done part of this walk several times. It’s a mostly flat, well maintained track that follows the entire western edge of the lake. There are multiple stony beaches to stop at along the way, and amazing lowland rainforest vegetation.
A reflective early morning Lake Kaniere
On Sunday, it was also really hot (28 degrees by early afternoon). And even on the flat, we were sweating. My husband turned back about a third of the way into the hike, in order to drive the car to the end of the one-way track. My daughter and I continued on, stopping for a quick skinny dip at Lawyer’s Delight beach, before meeting my husband walking back towards us from the far end, about a kilometre from the end of the track.
Carové’s giant dragonfly at Dorothy Falls
We had lunch, a stop a Dorothy Falls, and another swim in Lake Kaniere, then headed home.
The entire weekend on the west coast was hot and sunny, so it was a bit of a shock to hit Porter’s Pass and drive into drizzle and 12 degrees. It was a chilly 15 at home under overcast skies. Poor Canterbury—this summer has been anything but summery here. It’s no wonder the west coast was absolutely packed with vacationing families.
And now I have one week left before returning to the day job. My summer to-do list is getting shorter, but I will definitely not accomplish everything on it. But it’s been a good summer for getting out and hiking, so I can’t complain. Now I just need to knuckle down and get some writing in while I can.
I love sorrel, with its succulent texture and bright sour flavour, but I don’t often think to use it. I occasionally use it to fill out early spring salads, when the lettuces aren’t quite big enough to make a full salad, and that’s generally about it.
But last night I wanted a salad to go with quiche. The spring lettuces are long since bolted, and the fall lettuces are still baby seedlings, so I turned to sorrel, this time to make the bulk of the salad.
I got inspiration from a few different sorrel salad recipes, but then simply used what I had on hand. The result was a spectacular salad—one I will definitely make again.
Here’s my ‘recipe’, for what it’s worth:
1 handful sorrel leaves, chopped into thin strips (maybe 2 cups, chopped) 1/4 cup walnut pieces, toasted in a 190C oven until aromatic and beginning to darken 6 small olives, chopped (I used my own olives, and they are quite small. If you’re using big commercial ones, you probably don’t need more than 2 or 3) 6 cherry tomatoes, cut in quarters (I would have used a lot more tomatoes, but this was all I had) 1 Tbs olive oil 1 Tbs balsamic vinegar 1 small clove of garlic, crushed dash of salt
Whisk together the oil, vinegar, crushed garlic and salt in a small bowl.
Place all the other ingredients in a bowl, and toss with the dressing. If you want a little less knock-your-socks-off fresh garlic flavour, strain the garlic out of the dressing first.
“Gardens are fashioned for many purposes with many different tools, but all are collaborations with natural forces. Rarely do their makers claim to be restoring or rebuilding anything from the past; and they are never in full control of the results. Instead, using the best tools they have and all the knowledge that they can gather, they work to create future environments. If there is a lesson it is that to think like the original inhabitants of these lands we should not set our sights on rebuilding an environment from the past but concentrate on shaping a world to live in for the future.”
–Charles C. Mann (1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus)
Many years ago, I wrote this quote into a sticky note on my laptop. I look at it regularly, and it resonates with me every time. It expresses a mindset my husband and I employ on our little plot of land.
As I sit here on the porch on a warm summer afternoon, I can’t help but think back to what this section was like when we bought it—a bare paddock so devoid of nutrients that even the weeds were sparse. Sitting here today, I am surrounded by a mix of food crops, beautiful flowers and native plants. Five years ago, this plot of land could barely sustain the scraggliest of grass. Today it feeds us, provides food and shelter for native insects and birds, and is a welcome escape from all the ills of modern life. In time, as plants grow, it will hopefully become more sheltered, more resilient to temperature and rainfall extremes. In time, it will hopefully take less effort to maintain. In time, perhaps we will see native bellbirds and tūī as often as we see non-native blackbirds and starlings in the garden.
This is what we aim for. But, as Mann said, we’re not in full control.
Native skinks seem to have disappeared from the garden, despite the abundant food and shelter we’ve provided. Perhaps the influx of domestic cats is at fault. Or maybe some other factor outside of our control. Unwanted weeds continue to invade from neighbouring properties. Plant diseases take advantage of favourable conditions to decimate crops from time to time. Hail, floods, droughts, and wind all take their toll.
So the resulting garden is a compromise. What can we reasonably grow this year? What needs to be abandoned, either temporarily or permanently? What new opportunities are presented by quirks of nature or chance?
Guiding every decision is the question, what do we want the place to look like next year? In five years? Because, as Mann said, we’re shaping a world to live in for the future.
Incidentally …
If you haven’t read 1491, do it. It will shatter all those Eurocentric views of the world you’ve been steeped in since birth and change your whole attitude towards the history of the Americas.
This year was something of a milestone—it was the first year in about 16 that we didn’t do a pre-Christmas backpacking trip with the kids. It was bound to happen sometime soon, since the kids are all grown up now and doing their own things.
Instead, my husband and I had a post-Christmas hike all on our own. Let me say right now that I loved tramping with the kids, but doing the Christmas hike with just my husband was REALLY nice—just like old times … except that we’re a lot older. It was nice hiking at 54-year-old pace (instead of being dragged along by impatient 20-something kids), and we could also go places that appealed to us, without considering if the kids would enjoy it.
So we stayed relatively close to home, but took a route we hadn’t ever explored.
Day one began with dropping a car at the far end of our hike, near Kelly Creek. There was a bit of faffing around to charge the electric car (with the charger in Arthur’s Pass out of order, and the one in Otira busy), but it gave us an excuse to have a coffee at the Otira Hotel, which is an experience of its own.
Then we drove back to the Waimakariri River, parked car number two at Klondyke Corner, and hiked up the Waimakariri to Carrington Hut.
This hike is a bit of a slog and involves crossing the river a couple of times. In fact, the first river crossing comes within the first five minutes of hiking, which was fine—we were going to spend four and a half days walking rivers. There was no way we were going to have dry feet.
In spite of the dull nature of the actual hiking up to Carrington Hut, the scenery is fabulous, and only improves as you go further up the watershed. We were lucky to have a tern hunting the river alongside of us for a while, and we scared up a pair of banded dotterels, too.
After passing Anti Crow Hut, we left the riverbed to follow a track over a couple of roche moutonnée—rocky mounds left behind by glaciation. A series of tarns on the mounds give them a magical sort of quality, and the short break from river walking is nice.
The last time we were at Carrington Hut, it was incredibly crowded and unpleasant, so we carried a tent this time, just in case. But the 36-bunk hut housed only five of us that night, and we barely saw one another.
Day 2, we hiked over Harman Pass—up the Taipoiti River (click here for a video), then down Mary Creek. Again, the first act of the day was crossing a river, and then it was river crossings all day, back and forth across the Taipoiti as it rushed through a narrow valley which at times could be more properly called a gorge. It was another fabulous day, weather-wise, and the scenery was spectacular. So were the alpine plants. It seemed like EVERYTHING was in flower, and it was a slow hike up to the pass, because we were photographing all the way.
At the pass, we took a little jaunt up to see some tarns higher up, and then hung out for a while with a curious kea (click here for a video). Kea are an odd mix of highly endangered (there are 1,000-5,000 of them left), and incredibly pesky, thanks to their intelligence, curiosity and a beak shaped like a giant can opener (their peskiness is unfortunately part of the reason they’re endangered). The world’s only alpine parrot, it’s common to encounter them at elevation near Arthur’s Pass, but it never gets old.
Mary Creek was more of the same—river crossings, beautiful scenery, endangered birds. We spent some time watching a pair of whio (blue ducks) having a nap on a rock in the middle of the stream. There are only 3000 whio left and unfortunately the population is skewed strongly to males, because females are vulnerable to introduced predators when sitting on the nest. We were lucky enough to encounter two pairs on our trip.
After a 3-wire bridge crossing at the bottom of Mary Creek, we arrived at Julia Hut. The hut is relatively small, and with another couple there already, we decided to tent. After setting up the tent and settling in, we had the rest of the sunny afternoon to explore. A natural hot spring was our destination. Only five minutes walk from the hut, next to the icy, swiftly flowing Julia Creek (click here for a video), the hot pool did not disappoint. It was initially too hot to sit in, and we had to redirect some river water into it to temper the heat.
After a sweaty hike, I have to say I wasn’t all that interested in sitting in a hot pool, but I took a dunk in the river first, and then the hot pool was pretty nice. You couldn’t fault the setting—two days hike from a road, on an absolutely stunning mountain stream in the bush. It beat Hanmer Springs by a mile!
There is clearly a lot of geothermal activity in the area—the smell of sulphur was prevalent all along Julia Creek—and I suspect if you fossicked around, you’d find more hot pools.
Day 3 was a lot of river walking (again), punctuated by a couple more three-wire bridges. We hiked down Julia Creek and the Taipo River to Dillon Hut. Well, we intended to stay at Dillon Hut, but when we arrived we were informed by a very cute four-year-old that there were ‘no more mattresses’ (Dillon hut is only a 2-hour hike from the road, and is clearly a great destination for a short family hike). So we moved on to Dillon Homestead Hut, just 500 metres down the track.
Dillon Homestead Hut is just that—an old homestead. Built of hand-hewn timber and clad in whatever the original owners could scrounge, it is quite the historical experience to spend the night there. It’s clearly beloved by local four-wheel drivers and dirt bikers, but is in sore need of some upkeep. Still, it was shelter when the skies opened up and dumped rain all night, and if it had been cold, there was a big open fireplace surrounded by three tatty, 1950s-era armchairs. And once you brushed the rat droppings off the sleeping platforms, tables and chairs, it had everything you needed to spend the night.
Fortunately the rats weren’t as active inside the hut as I had feared, and we spent a reasonably comfortable night (if a bit smelly) in the hut. In the morning, however, I trudged out to the long drop through soaking wet, waist-high grass. The loo is as old as the hut, and was stocked with three mouldy, rat-poo-festooned rolls of toilet paper. I didn’t stop to investigate the myriad spider webs (there may have been some interesting native spiders), but in retrospect I should have inspected my surroundings a bit more. Leaving the door open for light and ventilation, I dropped my pants to do my business.
A scuttling overhead was all the warning I got before a rat leapt out of the rafters and landed on my head. I may have sworn. But the four-letter word had barely left my lips before the rat was off again, leaping for the toilet seat and then the floor before racing off into the bush.
So, a warning to you—the Dillon Homestead Hut loo is guarded by an attack rat.
After that exciting start, the rest of Day four was a hard climb. From Dillon Homestead Hut, we followed Seven Mile Creek briefly to a track that climbs steeply through dense west coast forest up to the Kelly Range. It was dark and humid in the forest. At one point, the track passed through a narrow gorge that was almost tunnel-like. It felt like we were crawling uphill, and often it was literally true, as it took both hands and feet. Pīwakawaka kept flitting around us, taunting us with their darting flight and chittering voices—what was so difficult about this slope, they seemed to ask.
At one point, the track met a huge slip hundreds of metres across and hundreds of metres tall. A blaze remained on a lone tree suspended at the top of the slip. The rerouted track scrambled precariously around the top of the slip, and I breathed easier once we were past it.
After 700 metres of elevation gain, we reached tree line and got a view back down to where we’d come from that morning—it was a long way down, and we still had more climbing to do.
The tops were dotted with tarns, and even where there wasn’t standing water, it was wet. We walked through fields of sundew plants, and took our breaks amid alpine orchids and daisies.
Clouds prevented us from having great views, but turned the views we did have into a dramatic, ever-changing landscape. By the time we’d reached the top of our climb—a thousand metres above Dillon Homestead Hut—the clouds were swirling around us.
A relatively short descent brought us to Caroll Hut just as the first raindrops began to fall. We had a late lunch of soup and peanut butter crackers as the wind picked up and the rain lashed the hut.
We shared Caroll Hut with a UK expat who lives in Wellington, a pair from Whanganui, and a fellow from Adelaide. It was a great mix, and we had a nice afternoon and evening chatting with them all. The best of hut life.
All night the wind howled, and I was thankful for the steel cables tethering the hut in place. Although the rain ended before dark, the wind continued through to morning, so it was a cold and windy start to Day 5. An early morning treat at the hut was a family of weka with fluffy chicks fossicking around the hut.
Day 5 was a short (hour and a half) jaunt out to the road from Caroll Hut. The ‘jaunt’ involved a good 800 metre elevation change, steeply downhill, but not bad going, with some nice views from time to time. And just when we thought we were done with wet boots, there was a stream crossing in the last 20 metres.
We were home by lunchtime, wet and tired, but having had an excellent five days. It was a fabulous way to spend the Christmas-New Year gap.
Robinne Weiss 