seasons

Escape the Heat

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2017-03-02-15-12-14I love my office. The northeast and northwest walls are formed almost entirely by large sliding glass doors. I have sunlight in the office all day. On warm days I can throw open the doors and enjoy feeling like I’m working outdoors.

In winter, I rarely have to run my heater–even ten minutes of sunshine can heat up the room. The insulated and windowless south-facing walls keep the room cosy and draught-free, even in howling storms.

That’s all great…for most of the year…but when the outside temperature climbs above 30°C (86°F), all that sunshine becomes too much. No matter how nice the breeze through those open doors, sitting in the sun becomes unbearable. My attention starts to wander. My brain become sluggish. My hourly word count plummets. At some point I have to either give up work for the day or take it elsewhere.

A pool of shade, a grassy seat, and a clipboard, and I’m back in business. It’s officially autumn here, but it’s still hot enough to need to escape the heat. I’m looking forward to cooler days when I can appreciate my office again.

And the Winner Is…

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2017-03-01-19-04-27It’s Oscar season in the garden–the time of year when I start reviewing in my head how various crops performed over the summer. I plant a wide variety of vegetables, because some do well and some don’t every year, and not always the same ones.

This year, for reasons known only to the plants, the black beans produced spectacularly well. I spent two hours harvesting yesterday and haven’t picked them all yet. I’ve easily got twice as many per square metre as I did last year. Add to that the fact I planted more this year than I did last year, and we’ve got a heap of beans.

You won’t find me complaining about that. Black beans are one of those staple foods for us that I can never produce enough of. I can already taste the burritos, chilli, and plain old beans and rice that will warm our stomachs through the rest of the year.

Of course, shelling them will take ages. I managed to shell about three-quarters of a bucket last night before the boredom got me. My secret to shelling without going crazy is movies. Movies I’ve watched before are best, so I don’t mind having to look away now and again to grab another handful of beans. I can settle in for the whole evening of shelling with a good movie. By the time I get to the final credits, I realise I’ve shelled a bucketful.

Perhaps I should watch Moonlight? Two winners together in one evening.

Ecological Weeding

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment
A parasitised aphid (the bloated brown one), and an unparasitised one (the green)

A parasitised aphid (the bloated brown one), and an unparasitised one (the green)

As much as I enjoy weeding, I can’t possibly keep up with them all. There are always weeds on the property.

In truth, I don’t try to eliminate all the weeds. I take a ‘live and let live’ approach with many of them. I also recognise the utility of many of the weeds on the property–or at least their utility to other organisms.

Except in the vegetable garden where they are, literally, a pain, I allow nettles to reside in the yard. They provide food for our native yellow admiral butterflies and, in a pinch, can be used to make rennet for cheese making. Even in the vegetable garden, I don’t mind seeing them–they hate dry soil, so they’re a good indicator that I’m watering the garden enough for the vegetables.

Weeds like yarrow, clover, and dandelions are good food sources for beneficial insects, so they, too, are allowed to grow wherever they’re not in direct competition with crops.

Weeds are also sometimes good ‘trap crops’, attracting pests to plants (themselves) I don’t mind pulling out and destroying to get rid of the pest.

Sometimes, though, the ‘trap crop’ idea backfires on me. Today I noticed that a sow thistle I’d allowed to grow was covered in aphids–it was a great opportunity to destroy thousands of pests. Except that as I bent to pull the weed, I noticed that a large number of the aphids were parasitised by wasps. I depend upon these wasps to deal with my springtime aphid problems. Short of painstakingly picking off every parasitised aphid and caring for them until the wasps hatch, killing the aphids on the weed is going to kill the wasps, too. What to do?

So the weed has gotten a temporary stay of execution. I’ll keep an eye on it. When the wasps have emerged from the parasitised aphids, I’ll pull it and kill the remaining aphids.

Losing Soil, Making Soil

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

img_3148This time of year is always dusty. The soil is dry. The air is dry. Farmers harvest the summer crops and turn the soil to plant the winter’s grass. It’s not unusual for a wind to kick up, sending newly-turned soil into the air.

I don’t know how much soil farmers in Canterbury lose this way (they’re also getting soil from the farms upwind and loess blown off the mountains), but I do know that where my back yard meets the neighbour’s field, my property is significantly higher. At least some of that soil is being lost.

Interestingly, there seems to be a place on the neighbours’ farms where soil is being made.

A hundred and fifty years ago, farmers in Canterbury were planting gorse hedges for shelter and fencing. Many of those gorse hedges remain (indeed, they’re hard to get rid of). The original plants are almost certainly long gone, as gorse is a short-lived shrub, but new plants are continuously growing from seeds cast by the mature plants.

It’s quite possible that my neighbour’s gorse hedges have been here since Joseph Price took up the original 5000-acre run number 79 in 1853.

Gorse is dense when pruned into a hedge. New outer growth shades out growth in the middle of the hedge. Thorns and branches fall and form a dense, prickly mass at the base of the plant. Over time, this detritus breaks down and forms soil.

Quite a lot of soil, by the looks of it.

Some gorse hedges were planted on ridges–ditch and dyke, it was called–the farmer dug a ditch to help drain the land, and planted a hedge on the resulting pile of soil scooped out of the ditch. Some hedges were just planted on the level ground. This is how the hedges along my lunchtime walk were planted, but today it looks like they were sown on a tall, narrow wall of soil.

The build-up of soil under the gorse hedges is impressive. In some places, it is as high as my waist. It is most visible where the gorse has been herbicided off to make way for native hedging plants. There you can see how the twisted trunks and branches have caught the detritus and held it in place, even after it has rotted.

How important are these ridges of new soil in a landscape that is losing soil? Probably not terribly important–they cover just a tiny fraction of the landscape–but I find them intriguing, nonetheless. Our agricultural landscapes–as modified, controlled and cultivated as they are–still hold interesting stories.

She Just Wants To Be Useful

/ Robinne Weiss / 5 Comments
Artemis in her younger years.

Artemis in her younger years.

Seven months ago, I blogged about my 12-year-old dairy goat who had been diagnosed with heart trouble. The vet clearly was trying to tell me she ought to be put down at the time. I heard the message, but couldn’t bear the thought, provided she wasn’t uncomfortable.

I got a prescription of diuretics for her to try to clear the fluid from her lungs. It seemed to help a little…until she got wise to the medicine and began to refuse it. By then it was springtime, and I thought she might just be okay without the medicine. I stopped giving it to her, and she was fine. With the spring grass growth, she put on condition, and toward the beginning of summer, her udder started to fill out.

Artemis has always been a strong milk producer. In years when she’s kidded, her udder gets so full, it drags in the grass, and her kids have trouble finding the teats. I haven’t actually gotten her in kid for two years, and she still gives milk every year.

This year, she was supposed to be officially ‘retired’. I replaced all my other dairy goats with fibre goats so I wouldn’t have to be tied to daily milking.

Artemis had other ideas. In spite of her dicky heart, in spite of her age, her body decided to produce milk.

At first, I ignored it. If there was no demand for the milk, she’d stop producing. At least, that’s what the textbooks say. It’s never worked for Artemis in the past (drying her off in winter has always been challenging)–I don’t know why I expected it to work this time.

Eventually, I had to milk her. And once it milked her one time, her body responded by producing more milk. It was a vicious cycle–the more I milked, the more she made.

I’m now milking her twice a week. Not much, really, compared to the usual daily milking. I have to say I appreciate the milk, but more importantly, Artemis appreciates the milking.

She knows the signs I’m coming to milk her. When she realises that’s what’s happening, she saunters over to the gate, full of self-importance, nipping haughtily at the fibre goats. She slips out the gate when I open it and trots to the milking stand. She talks to me a little bit as I milk her, as if to bring to my attention what lovely milk she’s made for me.

When I release her from the stand, she leaps off and scampers like a kid back to the paddock, kicking her heels in the air. When I let her back into the paddock, she skips around the other goats, as if to say, “See, I’m useful, unlike some around here.”

It clearly gives her so much pleasure, I feel bad that I hesitated to start milking her.

Maybe producing milk will be the last straw for her heart–just too much to ask of her body–but I believe it makes her happy.

And so, I will milk her. For as long as she wants. After all, isn’t that what we all want? To be useful? To be needed?

Bittersweet Sweet Corn

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2017-01-24-15-16-41-smYou wait for it all summer. You watch it grow taller and taller. You marvel when it overtops your head. You cheer when it starts to flower, and you impatiently poke the ears as they grow and fatten.

Then one day–finally–the first ears of sweet corn are ready to pick. Always eaten as corn-on-the-cob, the first ears are celebrated and savoured. They cry out Summer!

They are the beginning of the end, of course.

Once the sweet corn is coming on, the green beans will start to slow down. The peas, already on their last hurrah, will give up. February’s heat and dry will begin to take its toll on all the plants.

There is still plenty of time to enjoy summer’s bounty–the deluge of vegetables won’t be over until mid-April. There is still ketchup to make, and summer soup to bottle. And lots and lots of corn-on-the-cob to eat.

But once the corn is ripe, the clock is ticking. From here on out, the garden will look a little worse each day. I’ll start pulling plants out, clearing beds, harvesting storage crops.

And in a shady corner of the yard are two trays of seedlings, sheltering from the heat and harsh sun. Waiting for the end of the sweet corn. Winter crops.

Because every season’s end is another’s beginning.

Summer Farewell

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2017-01-29-06-18-08-smSunrise over
Quiet water.
Waves roll in.

— • —

Anemones and
Starfish rule.
Snail goes slow.

— • —

Cliffs enclose
Sandy bays in
Rocky embrace.

— • —

Footprints
Tell
Stories.

— • —

Paddle slowly.
Quiet now.
Fish are sleeping.

— • —

Beach beckons
Sun is high
School threatens.

Celebrate January

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2017-01-24-15-13-32-smThe golden month is nearly over. January is the sweet spot of the year.

The Christmas frenzy is over. The kids are o vacation. much of the rest of the population goes on holiday too.

Even I get a break. By January, the plants in the garden are large enough to suppress weeds, so there’s little weeding to be done. Te early crops are winding down and the summer crops are ramping up. Full-scale bottling (canning) and dehydrating will come later. January is mostly a time to enjoy the garden’s summer bounty.

There is work to do, of course. Peas, pickling cucumbers, and green beans all peak in January, and they need to be processed. But they are relatively quick and easy crops to preserve.

Along with the garden respite usually comes sunny summer weather. We can go camping and backpacking, and take trips to the beach. January is a month of sand, sun and effortless meals.

February will come, with school, work, and a mountain of vegetables to process. The nationwide party mindset will end, and we’ll all settle in for another year at the grindstone.

But there’s still a week left. Enough time for a bit more fun…

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.