A Year Outdoors

Crazy Corner Farm

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-04-17 11.13.55 sm“So, what do you grow here at Crazy Corner Farm, eh?” asked the man who delivered 500 bricks earlier this week.

I laughed.

“Well, it’s basically a subsistence farm. A little milk and cheese. A lot of vegetables.”

It was a good enough answer, and appropriate to the situation. But other things came to mind.

What do we grow here at Crazy Corner Farm?

A lifestyle. A lifestyle of hard work rewarded by the fruits and vegetables of our labour.

Kids. Kids who know where their food comes from. Kids who understand the work that goes into a simple block of cheese. Kids who can tell a bee from a syrphid fly, use a machete and an axe safely, and design and plant a garden.

Creativity. Creativity in food, garden, crafts, DIY problem-solving, circus arts…everything. By providing the space, materials, and encouragement to let it flourish.

Stories. Or, as my husband said it, “Organic hand-picked words available in convenient poem, economic story, and family-size novel packs.”

So, we grow a lot here on our tiny farm. More than you might guess at first glance.

Managing Water

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2016-04-22 15.51.16 smMake hay while the sun shines, they say.

They could also say fix your roof while the sun shines.

The sun shone so much over the summer (and now well into autumn), that it would have been easy to forget the leaky roof and broken gutters. And we did manage to ignore them both all summer, but one of these days (hopefully very soon) it’s going to start raining again. It was time to get the work done.

I enjoy being on the roof. But roof work is never fun—wrestling sheets of corrugated iron roofing around in the wind, pulling rusty lead-topped nails, dealing with rotting roof beams, and doing it all on an angle four metres above the ground.

Still, it is good to have roof and gutters repaired. And after we prepared for rain, I weeded the artichokes.

2016-04-22 15.50.14 HDR smIt was a lesson in dry—the ground was dust, and the poor water-loving artichokes were suffering. So I turned the sprinkler on them, dealing with an extreme lack of water after preparing for an overabundance of it.

Some day I do hope it begins raining again. It would be good to know if the roof and gutters are properly fixed, and it would be nice if we didn’t have to water the garden all winter. Either way, we’ll be managing water—either too much or too little of it.

When it rains, it pours, as they say.

Ahh…sweet love!

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
'Tis the season.

‘Tis the season.

I swear I’m going to kill my goats.

They caught a whiff of buck a couple of days ago, and all hell has broken loose in the paddock.

Last night, I barely even heard the d*#&$ cat howling at the window over the F@#$^&*ng goats in the paddock. I finally gave up trying to sleep at four this morning and got up and fed them. I figured if they were eating, they’d have to be quiet, right?

Unfortunately, love-sick goats aren’t interested in food. The novelty of it kept them quiet for a few minutes, at least. Around five, I went out and hung out with them for a while—again, it was good for a few minutes, until they decided I wasn’t nearly as interesting as the prospect of a buck. Somewhere. If only they could call loud enough for him to hear.

They’ve worn a path around the perimeter of the paddock—pacing and calling all night.

And they’ve worn a path in my nerves. I’ve warned them. Another peep out of them, and we’re having goat for dinner.

Ristras

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-04-19 12.51.22 cropHung on the kitchen fireplace mantel, a ristra of hot peppers looks beautiful, and is said to bring good health and good luck.

But mostly it just brings good food.

They’re often just used for decoration these days, but stringing chiles began as a way to dry and store them. And a string of chile peppers in the kitchen makes it easy to add spice to any meal.

I grew up in a house with all sorts of dried plant material hanging from rafters and tucked into baskets. It was all purely for decoration. My house today has a similar profusion of plant material, but for more utilitarian purposes. Ristras are convenient ways to dry and store peppers, garlic and onions. They’re also very convenient hanging in the kitchen.

Do I make sure my ristras look nice? Do I string twice as many peppers as we can realistically use, so that I can pair the ristras on each side of the mantel? Yes, of course—they do make nice decorations, after all.

Phalanx of Gulls

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2016-04-18 14.50.46 cropThey normally announce their presence with raucous calls, but these were silent but for the faint hiss of feather on feather as they beat their wings. It was the hiss that made me look up, and I was surprised to see so many gulls being so quiet. Several hundred flew low overhead.

On their way from one freshly ploughed field to another, I suppose there was no need for conversation.

One lone gull cawed once. And the rustling wings moved on.

Jack-o-lanterns

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-04-17 11.17.03 smWhile you folks in the Northern Hemisphere are cleaning out your pools, dusting off the barbecues and planting seeds, we in the South are enjoying all that autumn has to offer.

And something we always look forward to is carving pumpkins. Growing up in the US, it was one of my favourite Halloween activities. Here pumpkin season falls inappropriately near Easter.

That doesn’t stop us from celebrating the season with jack-o-lanterns.

All my pumpkins are grown for food, but the edible part of the Austrian oilseed pumpkin is its seeds—the flesh is only suitable for goat food (and even the goats aren’t excited by it). So once I scoop out the delicious seeds, I have no problem using the shells for artistic purposes.

A nice crop of Austrian oilseeds this year means there is plenty of raw material for our artwork.

Naked Ladies

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-04-14 08.43.56 smDo I need to say more?

These are some of the most delightful flowers in our yard. When we first moved in, there was a row of non-descript green plants in front of our hedge. They were uninspiring. I planned on removing them.

The plants died back over summer. We mowed the remains down.

Then one day I looked out to see a row of gorgeous pink blooms! What a lovely surprise! When I described them to my mother, she immediately said, “Oh! Naked ladies!” My response was, of course, to giggle. But the name is apt, as these lovely ‘girls’ bloom long after the leaves have died back.

We did end up removing the naked ladies…in order to put them in a better spot, as the hedge was smothering them. Every year, I forget they are there, and every year I have the joy of heading outdoors one day and finding them in bloom.

They make me smile. What more can you ask from a flower?

Touched by Frost

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

2016-04-14 08.42.53 smIt happened. The first frost hit the vegetable garden. Not hard, but enough to show. Most of the tender and unprotected plants were already done for the year, anyway—the tomatoes had largely succumbed to drought, the cucumbers had given up, the melons were done, the pumpkins were already harvested, and the basil had gone to seed. The summer squashes were only lightly touched—a few of the leaves browned, but most of the growing tips in good shape.

Of course, at this time of year, any day could be the last.

So we savour each day—enjoying the tastes of summer while they last.

Daylight Savings Cat

/ Robinne Weiss / 3 Comments
None the worse for wear.

None the worse for wear.

The cat has been particularly annoying lately. Usually he meows at my bedroom window around five am to be let in.

But when we came off daylight savings time last week, he refused to change his schedule. And out of spite, he even started meowing earlier, which means he’s been waking me up before four am for a week.

Ignoring him only makes it worse. If I don’t get up and start my day when the cat calls, he hurls himself at the front door until I do.

I can ignore a meowing cat, and even fall back asleep if I try. I can’t ignore seven kilos of fury rattling the front door for an hour.

So this morning when my eyes opened at 4.30 am I was surprised it was so late. All was quiet, and for ten minutes I lay blissfully thinking the cat had finally gotten the message about daylight savings time. I was just drifting back to sleep when I remembered…

About 4.30 pm yesterday, I was balanced on the top of a ladder, hanging a sack of pumpkins on a rafter in the shed. The cat was slinking around in the shed, and the wind blew the door shut. I remember seeing his tail slip in, just before the bang.

I never let him out.

Darn cat. Even locked in a shed forty metres from the house, he was able to get me out of bed early.

Because, once you realise your daughter’s cat has been locked in a shed for twelve hours, you can’t lounge around in bed enjoying the quiet.

Stormy Weather

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
Somewhere out there...

Somewhere out there…

Don’t know why
There’s no internet or wi-fi
Stormy weather…

Rural life is great, but these days, when so much of our lives revolve around connecting with others via the internet, rural living can be a lesson in frustration.

Not only does our normal “broadband” speed make us wax lyrical about dial-up, but on rainy days, we’re lucky to connect at all.

Our internet comes to us via a transmitter on the Port Hills, about 50 km away. The receiving dish on the roof must have line-of-sight access to that transmitter in order to receive a signal. Installing it required cutting down two trees that were in the way, and involves regular trimming of a bush that threatens to grow too tall.

It also means that when there’s a lot of rain between us and the transmitter—particularly if it’s a fine, misty rain—we get no internet signal. Compound that with the fact that our phone line now goes through the internet, and rainy days cut us off from the world.

Enter today’s weather—exactly the sort of fine, misty rain that isolates us. Want to do some research? You’re stuck with whatever books you’ve got in the house. Want to ring the vet? Not today. Post your blog? Not likely. Check your e-mail? Forget it.

Makes it a good day for writing, I suppose.

And if I’m lucky, the rain will clear briefly so I can post this blog…