A Year Outdoors

Gonna Feel That Tomorrow!

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Einstein smI put it off as long as I could.

I waited until the new goats were happily eating out of our hands, enjoying (or at least tolerating) a good scratch.

Then I found other excuses for a couple of weekends—excuses to put off trimming the new goats’ hooves.

I knew it would be a circus the first time I trimmed their hooves.

I’ve been spoiled by the dairy goats so used to the routine I didn’t need to even hold onto them when I opened the gate—out of the paddock, onto the milking stand, stand calmly while I do whatever needs doing, then trot calmly back to the paddock.

But of course the three new boys aren’t used to the routine. For them, hoof trimming means being herded up, and slung onto their backs. I could have done that, but training them to stand nicely while I trim their hooves will make life much easier in the long run.

For today, though, it was killer. It was a day of many firsts for the new goats—first time on a lead, first time on the milking stand, first time to have their hooves trimmed standing up.

Their personalities came out. Newton was the timid one. As soon as he found himself on a lead, he stood stock still and refused to budge. I practically had to push him all the way to the stand. Einstein was a bucking bronco, lunging and twisting to get free of the lead. He sent me sprawling to my knees, and then cracked me soundly on the chin with his horns. Darwin was happy to go, but not ever in the direction I wanted him to.

In truth, it was exactly as I expected, and no different from a dairy goat her first time on a lead and on the milking stand. I was thankful that angora goats are small—nothing like being dragged across the yard by a 70 kg saanan. Still, my chin is black and blue, my back is sore, my knees are skinned, and I have a rope burn on my arm. I have a bad feeling that tomorrow morning, I’m going to feel every bruise and ache even more.

Tell me again why I do this…?

My Love/Hate Relationship with Yarrow

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-06-24 13.33.30Growing up, yarrow was a flower to be dried for arrangements. An innocuous plant that grew along the roadsides. I liked the flowers, and I loved the insects and spiders it attracted.

It wasn’t until I moved to New Zealand, where yarrow is a pernicious weed in my garden, that I began to consider yarrow more closely and learn more about it.

Yarrow is native to Europe and parts of Asia, but has been spread widely, because of its many uses.

It is referenced in Homer’s Iliad as being used for stanching wounds, and has been used all over the world for many other medicinal purposes—from reducing fevers and soothing earaches, to curing urinary problems and head colds.

Yarrow was probably originally brought to New Zealand as a medicinal plant, but it has other uses that are more valid than the medicinal ones.

Today yarrow is a common pasture plant. Its deep rhizomes make it drought resistant, and it is higher in certain key nutrients than either ryegrass or white clover. I discovered this when I began to worry about the goat paddock. After two dry summers, the yarrow was taking over a big swath of the paddock. I worried, knowing that to remove that much yarrow would be a Sisyphean task—dig it out and any bits of rhizome left in the soil will simply resprout. Even herbicides are largely ineffective against yarrow.

So I was thrilled to learn that its virtues went beyond pretty dried flowers, and that I could ignore it in the paddock.

Of course, it grows everywhere, and isn’t bothered by mowing. But that has benefits, too. This past summer, when all the grass of the lawn was brown and dead, the yarrow remained some of the only spots of green.

And then there are the insects it attracts, which I naturally love.

And so, I love yarrow…and I hate yarrow. Either way, I have to live with it.

Evaluating the garden year

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
A jumbo pink banana squash--one of last year's winners.

A jumbo pink banana squash–one of last year’s winners.

The new seed catalogue will be out in a little over a week, so it’s time to consider which new plants did well and which didn’t last summer.

It’s difficult to really evaluate varieties I hadn’t tried before, because last summer was so devastatingly hot and dry, but I got a feel for them by how my tried and true varieties did.

Tomatoes were a bust—all varieties—it frosted extremely late, and then was just too dry. But I did find that one of the new varieties I tried—bloody butcher—was extra sensitive to the neighbour’s herbicide overspray. So that one’s off the list for next season.

Same went for the yard long red noodle beans—they didn’t recover from the overspray until March, and then it was just too late.

The blue corn was preferentially eaten by the rats, and none survived past seedling stage. Doesn’t mean I won’t try again next year, but I’ll need to protect it better.

Jumbo pink banana squash was a winner, though. Not only was it a spectacular plant in the garden (anything that can grow half a metre in one day has my vote), but the fruits were equally spectacular. They have good flavour and texture, too. The only real drawback is that it’s difficult to fit one in the oven, because they’re so big.

The purple carrot, pusa asita, was also a winner, though its germination was spotty, like all the purple carrots seem to be. The colour was worth it though, as the purple goes all the way to the centre.

And the fire candle radishes were fantastic—delicious, spicy, and slow to bolt.

I’m looking forward to the arrival of the new catalogue and the chance to try out some new varieties for the coming year!

Preserving the Harvest

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

About a third of the harvest.

Gardening is a never-ending struggle against the elements.

Seeds must be stored cool and dry to maintain viability.

Then they need to be kept warm and moist in order to germinate.

But not too moist, or they’ll rot, or damp off once sprouted.

Then the plants need to be nurtured with just the right amounts of sun, shelter, water and nutrients so they will grow and produce. They need to be protected from pests.

With luck and hard work, the gardener can nurture the plants all the way to harvest.

But even once that produce is harvested, a gardener continues to fight—some foods can be canned, dried, or frozen so they keep longer, but others can’t. Or, maybe they can, but they’re better fresh. Or maybe there’s no room in the freezer for them.

It’s about now that these fresh foods begin to show their age.

Members of the onion family—shallots, onions, garlic—are stored as living bulbs. When the solstice is past, they want to grow, so they begin to sprout, even hanging in their riestras in the shed or the kitchen.

Then there are the pumpkins. In theory, some can keep for up to six months or more after harvest. That is, in ideal conditions—cool and dry, sitting on dry straw and not touching one another. I don’t have ideal conditions, nor the space to spread out my pumpkins. They hang in mesh sacks from the rafters of the cool, but damp shed—the only way to protect them from the rats.

Three months from harvest, the first pumpkins are beginning to rot. I discovered them today when I selected pumpkins for a galette for dinner.

Now comes the race to bake as many pumpkins as possible and freeze their pureed flesh before they go bad, and before the freezer is full.

I can fit about eight pumpkins at a time in the oven, unless they are jumbo pink banana squash or musquee de Provence, which only fit one at a time . There are sixty-six pumpkins left in the shed. That’s a lot of baking!

Light in the Night

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-02-24 20.57.32Last night was the longest night of the year. It’s fitting that we all overslept this morning. Everyone left for work and school in the dark, and will come home in the dark. To add to the dark of this winter solstice, the day is overcast.

But all is not black and bleak.

Yesterday, we saw the first of this year’s lambs bouncing around in the neighbour’s paddock.

The young blackbirds and magpies are already singing and vying for territories.

The breeze is from the north today, soft and gentle.

And from here, the days will only get longer.

At the bottom of the well, there is only one way to go.

So we’ll enjoy the sun while it lasts, light the table with candles this evening, and look forward to our slow climb toward spring.

A happy solstice to you, whichever one you are enjoying today.

Mud Run

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-06-19 13.24.31 smCould there be anything better calculated to appeal to kids than a mud run?

Today’s certainly brought them out, despite the drizzly 10-degree weather.

The question is, why?

It can’t be for the muck in your eyes, nose and ears. There were plenty of kids spitting mud throughout the course, and wiping it from their eyes with filthy hands.

It can’t be for the chance to get hypothermia. Even after a 5k run, at least a third of the kids hit the finish line shivering.

It can’t be for the smell. The reek of swamp at the finish line was enough to make me take my photos with a zoom lens, rather than get too close.

It must be for the fun of doing something they’re not ‘supposed’ to do—get so thoroughly filthy they need to be hosed off, even before a shower. Add the silly costumes most of them wore, the requirement that they enter in teams, and a chocolate bar at the end, and it’s a winning combination.

For my part, I was happy to stand on the sidelines today in my hat, scarf and gloves. Maybe a summertime mud run, ending at the beach—that I could go for.

Mysterious Lights

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-06-17 13.12.38Ordinarily, I stick to the natural world here, but I learned something today that I thought was pretty cool.

Months ago, I began seeing strange flashing lights when I was feeding the animals in the morning. They seemed to be coming from a copse of trees about 500 metres down the road. The red and amber lights flashed sometimes with a pattern, and sometimes just once, and they weren’t always there.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what would be up in those trees flashing away (the sci-fi writer in me had all sorts of fun ideas, though!).

I’ve seen them off and on for the better part of a year, but it wasn’t until a few days ago, while walking the road at night, that I discovered that the lights aren’t coming from the trees at all, but from strobe lights mounted on the powerlines between our house and that copse of trees.

Of course, that didn’t solve the mystery of what the heck those lights were, but it did give me something to google. I’m not the first one to have wondered about those things.

It only took a moment to discover that they are fault indicators, and the pattern and colour of flashes indicates the type and magnitude of the fault.

Thinking back on it now, I realise that the first time I noticed them (when they were flashing constantly for a long time), the power was out.

What is surprising, now that I know what I’m seeing, is how frequently they flash. Though perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised, given how frequently our power goes out. But even when the power is on, the fault indicators flash remarkably often.

Apparently, they clip right to the line and monitor the electrical load. Some of them can even wirelessly relay information back to the lines company. They make perfect sense for those linemen out on a windy, rainy night trying to pinpoint a fault.

But, of course, now that I know they’re telling me something, I wish I knew how to ‘read’ them.

Throwback Thursday: Tramping the Abel Tasman

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_1198 smThe Abel Tasman was our first Great Walk as a family. It was also our first family tramp longer than two nights—the kids were still at the stage where they sometimes needed a prod to get to the top of a hill (or more accurately, the promise of chocolate at the top).

The Abel Tasman was the perfect trip—long enough to give the kids a ‘real’ adventure, and easy enough that they didn’t struggle with it. The distances between huts were short enough that the kids could spend hours playing on the beaches along the way and still get to the hut by mid-afternoon.

I’ve heard that the track is miserable in bad weather—all those exposed beaches can’t be fun in the wind and rain—but we were blessed with perfect sunny days. Though it was April, the weather was warm enough for lots of swimming along the way, and the whole experience felt more like a frolic than a tramp.

For me, the best part about the trip was gaining a greater appreciation for tides. The surges of water, so different from the normal waves, that fill the estuaries, bringing schools of fish and rays with them. The rippled and exposed mud flats of low tide. The twice-daily rhythm of inundation and exposure of the coast.

It wasn’t a wilderness experience—the huts were filled to capacity, and boats stopped at most of the beaches—but it was a beautiful chance to explore a rich and dynamic coastline.

 

Adventure on Kaitorete Spit

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-06-11 11.10.09 smSaturday morning, we took advantage of the lovely weather to take a walk out on ‘our’ beach. Not just any old walk, but one that would take us beyond the lake opening onto Kaitorete Spit.

I can’t believe that in the eleven years we’ve lived here, we’ve never done this before. We’ve walked to the lake opening many times, but always when the lake was open to the sea, to see the dolphins and seabirds that congregate there eating the fish migrating in and out of the lake.

But our goal this time was the wild tip of the spit.

You would think that a mere couple of kilometres would make little difference in the beach, but the change was positively stunning.

On ‘our’ part of the beach, the dunes are covered in non-native shrubs and ice plant. Not a native plant to be found.

An hour’s stroll out onto the spit took us into a different world. Non-native plants all but gone on the dunes, replaced by pingao. Behind the dunes, native broom, Raoulia (vegetable sheep), and Muehlenbeckia.

The shape of the dunes was different. The whole effect less verdant and more windswept.

Naturally, we searched for kātipo spiders among the pingao, as this is one of the few places this endangered spider can be found. We found none, but we did find a number of other spiders, lots of spider egg cases, and a couple of sand scarabs (including an adult, which was a first for me).

We knew all this was out there, but knowing and having experienced it are two different things.

And now that we understand what’s out there, I’m sure we’ll be going back again soon.

My Best Day

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I gave a writing prompt to a few students yesterday—describe your best day ever (real or hypothetical). Here’s my response in poetry:

100_4209 cropOn my best day, the sun shines
But it’s not too hot.
I get up before dawn
And the air is soft
The moon full
Sinking gently to the mountains.
I am outdoors all day
With people I love
Or alone.

On my best day, I sweat
And get my hands dirty.
I see endangered wildlife
And pick tomatoes.
I stay out late to watch
Orion rise
And see the aurora australis.

My best day stretches into night
And I sleep
Without dreams.