rural life

When is a zucchini not a zucchini?

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

img_2757The zucchinis (courgettes) started producing over a week ago, so I’ve been spending more time among the plants. I noticed that one of the varieties was behaving in a very un-zucchini-like fashion—sending rambling vines out in all directions and forming round fruits. I checked the tag and noted the variety, then looked it up in the seed catalogue. Maybe it was a weird variety I was trying out—I’ve been known to buy some strange plants.

I didn’t find the variety among the zucchinis in the catalogue, and it didn’t take long to realise what I’d done. “Squash” can be winter or summer squash, and when it came time to planting out, “Squash—Jade” sounded like a summer squash. It’s actually a huge sprawling winter squash that replaced my favourite, Kurinishiki, in the seed catalogue this year.

I don’t know whether to be thrilled or annoyed. Winter squash germination was awful this spring, and then the plants got hit by frost. But the summer squash bed escaped the frost. So instead of having none of my favourite pumpkins, I have half a dozen healthy plants. And it also means I have six fewer zucchini plants, which is most definitely a bonus, because I always plant too many zucchinis.

The problem is, they’re growing in the middle of the zucchinis, and I’m going to be tripping over the vines all summer.

*sigh*

The only sensible thing to do is laugh at myself and make the best of it…and write a note on the seed packet, so I don’t make the same mistake next year.

When the pests are cute

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

img_2765A month ago, I saw a perfect little bird nest in one of the fruit trees—incredibly tidy, and woven from grass and lichen. It was so pretty, I couldn’t bear to remove it, though I knew it must be the nest of a non-native bird (that’s about all we have here). Starling and house sparrow nests get the heave-ho as soon as I find them. This one…well, I couldn’t possibly disturb something so cute.

I forgot about the nest for several weeks, but today my husband noticed it was chock-full of chicks. Five grey fluffy European goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis)—so ugly they were adorable.

We don’t really need any more goldfinches, but since we don’t grow grain, they’re not much of a pest to us. These five chicks, though, will likely join the flock that descends on the neighbours’ fields in late summer. Sorry, guys. If you’d seen this cute nest of chicks, you’d understand.

The Christmas Calzone

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-12-24-19-21-34-smGrowing up, Christmas eating was strictly traditional stuff—lots of cookies, turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, a token vegetable, and lots of gravy. I remember Christmas day as being a frenzy of cooking, starting with my mother putting the turkey in the oven in the wee hours of the morning, so that by 10 am the whole house smelled like turkey. It truly was glorious from a kid’s perspective.

At Crazy Corner Farm, Christmas eating is about as far from traditional as it gets. Except that it has become our Christmas tradition, and as such, it is traditional.

Our big holiday meal is on Christmas eve. With all the wonderful vegetables from the garden, we make calzones. We enjoy them with a fresh salad, or fruit from the garden.

In the evening, my husband makes up sticky buns and puts them in the refrigerator to rise overnight. I pop them into the oven in the morning before I go out to feed the animals, and they’re ready for breakfast by the time everyone else is awake.

We feast on sticky buns throughout the morning, then have leftover calzones for lunch. We hardly need an evening meal Christmas day, so our tradition is a big salad, broad beans, and the first of the season’s new potatoes.

All very low-key and relaxing, yet wonderfully decadent.

Christmas eve eve…

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

img_2742Surprisingly, a day of calm. It was overcast and rainy. The garden is reasonably well weeded. The berries and peas were picked yesterday.

Tomorrow I will clean the house (because Santa doesn’t visit dirty houses—I’m sure my mother taught me that one), and the peas and berries will need to be picked again, but today there was remarkably little on the to-do list. I’m not sure what happened, because usually the lead up to Christmas is a frenzy, just so I can feel free to take the whole of Christmas day off.

So, I gave myself an early gift—a day of sewing. I managed two new desperately needed t-shirts for myself, and did the finishing by hand while listening to a recording of my far-away family reading A Christmas Carol. Then I picked roses, and played a game with my daughter.

Such a lovely, relaxing day, I hardly need Christmas at all…

Fabulous Flax

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-12-14-13-33-57-smAbout two weeks ago, a paddock we drive past nearly every day suddenly turned the unmistakable blue of flax. Not New Zealand flax, but linen flax.

At first, I thought it must be something else, because the plants were short—only about knee height. I’d never seen linen flax so short.

I also didn’t think linen flax was grown in New Zealand any more. During WWII, linen flax was introduced and promoted for wartime needs. The first planting was in 1939, and within several years, there were seventeen processing plants in the South Island. But by 1948, it was all over. As far as I can tell, there is no flax grown commercially for fibre anymore in New Zealand.

But flax seed and flax seed oil are a different matter. And, naturally, the varieties grown are shorter and bushier (with more flowers/seeds per plant) than the varieties grown for fibre production. The largest New Zealand processor of flax seeds is just down the road in Ashburton, so it makes sense that one of our neighbours might plant flax.

I hope they find it an economically viable crop—it’s one of the most beautiful crops I’ve ever seen. For the past two weeks, it has been a sea of blue on sunny days (the flowers close when it’s cool or wet). A wonderful addition to the colourful array of crops grown around us.

After Dinner Stroll

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-12-19-19-04-24-smI am alone at home this evening. After dinner (eaten at the picnic table while reading a book), I went for a stroll around the property. Part of my path wound through the tall grass between the hedge and the vegetable garden.

Setting aside my normal reaction (This is so overgrown! I’ve got to get out here and cut this down), I did what my ten year-old self would have done, and lay down in the grass, holding still until I began to notice things.

I noticed that the ground was delightfully warm against my back.

I noticed that some of the grass was still in flower—anthers nodding in the wind—and other grass had already gone to seed and been stripped by the birds.

I noticed that the smaller flies meandered around among the grass stalks while the larger flies zipped overhead.

I saw a velvet mite gliding up and down a stalk of grass.

I noticed that a house sparrow nearby was chirping at just the right frequency to be irritating to my ears.

I noticed that the clouds weren’t moving across the sky as I thought, but rather were simply growing and coalescing in place.

…

Next thing I knew, I was starting awake, with the clouds, the grass, the birds, and the insects all still doing their thing around me.

Through Fresh Eyes

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_2137-smAll week I weeded and tidied the yard in preparation for a pizza party on Friday night. I tried to make the sad, tired parts of the yard look less decrepit and free the nicer spots from their mantle of early summer weeds.

It’s a Sisyphean task—by Friday, the spots I had weeded on Monday were already sporting fresh weed growth.

So as the first guests arrived, I fretted over the shabby state of the yard and garden. As I looked around, I saw weeds, flowers that needed deadheading, outdoor furniture that should have been hosed off…

But no one noticed my weeds, aside from those guests studying particular ones (it was a party of ecologists, after all, and they were thrilled to find their research subjects ‘in the wild’).

Instead, they saw the musical instruments, the blooming flowers, the fish in the pond, the cat playing with a grass stalk, the places for playing and relaxing. They saw all the things we love about the yard, and never noticed the twitch sprouting in the paths and the flecks of bird poo on the deck chairs.

“This is awesome!” cried one guest as he beat out a rhythm on the outdoor drum set.

“It all looks so fresh…like it’s all new,” said another.

Throughout the evening kids and adults alike wandered around, feeding goats, playing outdoor instruments, grazing on raspberries, sitting on the benches tucked here and there, climbing trees, playing lawn games, and feasting on produce from the garden, baked in the new bread oven. Everyone smiled. Everyone relaxed.

It was good to see the property through their eyes for the evening. I focus so closely on the work that needs to be done, that sometimes I forget that, even with weeds or grass that needs mowing, the place is a haven. Sometimes I forget to put away the to-do list and just enjoy the place. I struggle to stop and smell the roses without also noticing they need to be pruned.

So thank you to all the guests who joined us Friday night. You gave me a fresh perspective and gave me permission to slack off a little this weekend—to just be here.

You have got to be kidding me…

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-12-16-15-35-55It frosted Saturday morning. Yeah. It was 30C Friday afternoon, and by Saturday morning it was 2C. It was back up to 30 degrees by Saturday afternoon, and today we went to the pool.

I didn’t even think to check the garden Saturday morning. It never frosts this late in the year. That’s the seasonal equivalent of frost on June 16th, for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere. Even in St. Paul, Minnesota, it never frosted that late. It was a rude surprise when I went out to the garden in the afternoon to pick some vegetables and found the pumpkins and beans blackened.

The plants will survive—it was a light frost and the growing tips of the plants weren’t hit—but it will knock the pumpkins back significantly. They were already behind, because the first planting didn’t germinate, and these plants were my second try at them this year. A frost this late might be the difference between mature pumpkins when the first autumn frost hits or pumpkins that still need a few weeks of growth to reach the right stage for storage.

Unfortunately, the only thing to do at this point is shrug and be thankful the other frost-tender crops weren’t damaged…after the obligatory grumpy farmer complaints are through.

I’d Rather Be Weeding

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

dandelion-smWhen I tell people we grow almost all our own vegetables, I get a lot of comments like, “Wow! That’s impressive!”

I shrug—I think if they really knew, they wouldn’t be impressed.

Truth is, I think I grow so many vegetables because I’m just not cut out for the modern world.

I drove into town today for groceries and to finish (do) my Christmas shopping. I had already put the job off for several days while I found other, more important things to do in the garden. Then I timed my arrival in town with the opening of the shops, so the crowds would be less. I came armed with multiple lists—a list of destinations, and a list of items to be purchased at each location. I ticked them off, one by one, feeling the stress level mount as the morning wore on.

Noon came and went, and I was still working through my lists. The crowds grew. I got stuck in traffic. I didn’t stop for anything to eat or drink, lest the whole trip take longer.

I finally made it home just before 2 pm, exhausted, irritable, and completely stressed.

A little lunch and an hour of hard physical labour in the garden restored me.

Growing our food means I don’t have to go for groceries as frequently. I don’t have to deal with parking, stores, financial transactions, deciding what to buy of the endless array of products on the shelf. Sure, it may take four months to get a tomato, but at least I don’t have to go to the store to get it.

Christmas-lite

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-11-30-17-31-25-smIt’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Strawberries, gooseberries, black currants, red currants, cherries, and peas—ah! The signs of Christmas! They’re red and green, just like those in the Northern Hemisphere, but the greens are brighter than pine tree green, and the reds more succulent than holly berries.

They are just as festive as the colours up north, though in a different way. While you look inward, gathering around the hearth on long dark evenings, we look outward, sitting with friends on the beach on long summer days. You dream of white snow, we dream of white sand. You have visions of sugar plums dancing in your heads, we have visions of fresh strawberries dancing in ours. While you sing ‘let it snow’, we sing ‘let us go’ (to the beach).

Now and again I miss the cosy dark of Christmas in the north. And every year, I wish summer gardening, Christmas, and the end of the school year didn’t happen simultaneously. But I’ve grown to appreciate the summer Christmas. I appreciate not having to plan Christmas dinner, but letting it spring from whatever is abundant in the garden. I appreciate being able to sit outside on the porch in the sun after gifts have been opened. I appreciate the barefoot, short-sleeved, nature of Christmas here.

It’s like Christmas-lite.