Struan Farm

Patience is a Virtue

Things are taking longer than advertised with the new house at Struan Farm. I know, this is always the case, and anyone who has built or renovated would know the drill, but still.

Now the word is that while the house itself may (note: may?) be ready to be occupied by Christmas, the laundry room and garage will not be finished. Grrrr. Builders seems to march to their own drumbeat, and John won't let me at them to have a wee chat. What happened to 6-8 weeks?

The latest is that one section is down, the others are on rollers and should be down on the ground this week. Really not much to show you, believe me I'm sorry about this!

Stay tuned.

Licking the Beaters

Do you remember licking the beaters when your mum or grandmother baked? Apparently John was notorious in his family for hovering around the kitchen to position himself favorably. His mum always gave him the beater to lick. He remembers being photographed by passing motorists standing at the gate doing just this, they actually sent his parents a print!

This past weekend at Struan Farm I whipped up a quick batch of cupcakes for morning tea, and I needed two boys to lick the beaters after I made lemon curd cream cheese icing. Charlie and Henry hadn't actually licked beaters before, so I needed to explain what to do.

Clearly only something that needs to be explained once in a lifetime! Hopefully not a lost art either given the recent resurgence in home baking.

Another "Best Day" at Struan Farm

We had visitors at Struan Farm for the long Labour holiday weekend. Sarah, Matt, Charlie and Freya came down from Auckland to meet friends Ann, Mike, Henry and Elinor who drove up from Wellington. 

At one point Henry announced jubilantly that "it was the best day!" So we think a good time was had by all. Something about little boys, lots of room to run around and explore, plus tractors, probably. But then Ella had also announced the previous weekend that she'd had "her best day ever," so don't think this is gender specific experience. In fact, we think we're on a roll.

We like to rack up those "best days ever" at Struan Farm, we want everyone to have them when they visit.

 

Currant Update

It's the long Labour holiday weekend here in New Zealand and we're busy out gardening. Thought I'd show you one of the heirloom currant cuttings I took from Maurie's old berry patch a few months ago:

They probably won't berry this year since I was a bit late in moving them, but yep, they're all thriving.

Putting Our Gnomes on Pedestals

In true opportunistic Robertston tradition (his dad Maurie does come to mind), John scored a wee bit of fresh concrete from the truck supplying concrete for the foundation at the new house site at Struan Farm. Ringo, Tico and Stuffy, our larger than life garden gnomes, are now safe and secure on their own respective "pedestals."

So now they won't be wandering off, or toppling over on any young admirers either!

Oh. Oh. Yet Again.

Another victim of the recent wild weather discovered in the gardens at Struan Farm:

A homeless but perfect little bird's egg. Rest in peace little one..

Power to the People

This blog post recalls an old John Lennon song called "Power to the People," which you can listen to below:

We finally got the power lines to our new house site at Struan Farm this past week, hooray! 

Power to the people, right on!

Oh.Oh.

This falls into the category of "things happen" at Struan Farm. During the recent wild weather the big crab apple tree in the Old Orchard Paddock toppled over. We discovered it completely uprooted.

A few months ago John had threatened to chop it down, but I convinced him not to. This is the tree the turkeys like to climb up to gorge on the fruit, and it's somewhat humorous to watch that. Unfortunately no more!

Solving the Puzzle

All of pieces of the house, except for the decking, have now arrived at Struan Farm. This past weekend the foundation pilings went in, with the building inspector coming along to check out this part of the process too.

(These are actually hydraulic pumps above.)

The concrete truck arrived to supply the concrete needed to reinforce all of the pilings once positioned in holes.

Andrews Movers actually have this low bulldozer type truck with a drill that drives under the house and drills all of the holes for the pilings, which was pretty cool to watch.

The good news is that we're starting to see what the house will look like on the site. Monday it gets connected and put down on the ground, after which the builders take over. Stay tuned!

Innocent with Innocence

I'm sure you'd assumed that I'd start this week's blog posts with an update on the new house, so I decided not to do that! Ella, Livvy and Daniel came to visit Struan Farm this weekend. 

And guess what Livvy found down at the pond?

In addition to the croaking bull frogs, a lily pretty much the size of her face! She was very excited and happy. It replaced the flower arrangement on the dining table for our pancake breakfast.

Lilies symbolise innocence, purity and beauty. Easy to see that, isn't it?

Preserved Lemons, First Attempt

Decided to try to make preserved lemons this week after encouragement from sister-in-law Anna. I've been buying them to make La Grande Orange Cafe's Kale & Quinoa Salad. And since we have a beautiful and bountiful little Meyer lemon tree, this seems a bit silly.

So I dug out Maggie Beer's "Maggie's Harvest," where I found a very simple recipe, along with numerous ideas for using them once made.

Lemons are quartered and stuffed with coarse salt, squeezed (literally) into a preserving jar, and covered with fresh lemon juice. (Note: these are unwaxed, organic lemons.) The jar is meant to sit in a cool place for 6-8 weeks, after opening the lemons will keep indefinitely in the fridge. 

I'll report back in due course...it seemed too easy, but lemons and salt, what can go wrong?

An Unexpected Journey

No, not a post about the first Hobbit film by Sir Peter Jackson. This is about the arduous journey of our new house from the Lockwood show home site in Hamilton to Struan Farm in Piopio.

I don't believe there were any battles with trolls or skirmishes with dragons along the way, but as our good friend Gandalf once said, all good stories deserve embellishment!

Yes, our house has landed, almost. While we had expected that the big move would happen in darkness, in the wee hours of the morning when the roads were empty of traffic, life clearly became more complicated, things were delayed. John had a call reporting that our house was moving down SH3 passing through Piopio village in the morning, and I received a second one via Facebook. Sister-in-law Anna ran out to Struan Farm twice to check on things firsthand. At some point we'll have a full download on the particulars from the parties directly involved. 

Apparently it was quite an event. And we weren't even there to see it!

Due to the weather and power line installation several pieces of the convoy were deposited temporarily at the entrance to our neighbour's farm. This wasn't the plan, but fortunately I had alerted him that things were happening next door. The movers had intended to leave a piece of gear at his entrance, it just ended being far more than that. And (fortunately) in the country people tend to roll with these things. This section below was still there when I left to come back to work.

So the story continues, will report back. It's meant to be put on the foundation pilings this weekend and connected back together, at which point we'll heave a huge sigh of relief! Then repairs  and re-painting commence, followed by construction of the laundry room, garage and workshop.

Overlooked

The numerous tuis around the gardens at Struan Farm seem to have missed our little kowhai tree flowering for the first time. They love kowhai nectar so much they've stripped our larger tree bare, hardly giving it time to bloom. 

Perhaps they've decided to give this little one a break, for now!

Let the Journey Begin

I couldn't resist stopping by Waikato Living's Lockwood showhome site to see the "Piopio" getting ready for its move to Struan Farm. 

Safe travels!

Wisteria Lane

Definitely no Desperate Housewives to be found at Struan Farm!

Really happy to see the wisteria planted around the Perfect Pergola start to bloom this year. Particularly after I dug them up and moved them all around this winter.

The "White Silk" seems to be blooming earlier than the "Pink Ice" as advertised.

This Makes Lego Look Like Child's Play

This past week and weekend we had absolutely diabolical weather around most of New Zealand. Major rain and gale force winds. As a consequence not much progress was made at the new house site at Struan Farm, but here's what I can report:

The "Piopio" has ended its almost three year gig as Waikato Living's Lockwood showhome in Hamilton. It has been de-constructed into bite size pieces for transport to its permanent home at Struan Farm, something that has been planned since its original design and construction. This past week the smallest piece of the house was moved to the site for a test run. This sort of thing is done at late night/early a.m., requires all sort of permits, etc. etc. WIDE LOAD! 

Once all of the pieces of the house have been relocated to the farm, pilings will be driven into the ground and the house put down and "re-constructed." The current game plan is for this to happen this week, weather permitting. After all that is completed the laundryroom, garage, and workshop will be built.

Makes Lego look like child's play, doesn't it?

Monty in Flower

Good to see my Monty's Surprise apple happily in flower in the orchard at Struan Farm.

You will of course know that these heirloom eating apples have quercetin flavonoids and procyanidins that inhibit the growth of cancer cells. And also remember that the apples are HUGE! Larger than softballs!

Our Monty gave us his first apples last year, so really is just getting started. And there's a certain dog who loves them...

Firewood Coming Out of Our Ears....

We've needed to take out some (non-native) trees for awhile now to get power lines to our new house site at Struan Farm. Several huge Australian blackwood trees were felled a week or so ago in preparation for this to happen, finally. (And we won't talk/sob/scream about a few of my fruit trees in the orchard now, will we? Particularly since replacements have already been planted. These things happen.)

Australian Blackwood, or Acacia melanoxylon, is also known as "Sally Wattle," "Black Wattle," and "Tasmanian Blackwood." In South Africa and California it has been designated a noxious weed given that it self seeds and spreads, so not a bad thing we've taken these trees out. The tree is used by indigenous Australians to make an analgesic, while the wood is used to make musical instruments (guitars, ukuleles), furniture, boats and kegs.

All I know is that John has a heck of a lot of firewood to chain saw and split!

Continuing Old Habits

This past weekend at Struan Farm I got stuck into trimming hedges and weeding under and around them. It's that time of the year, before everything takes off.

After I finished up with the photinia hedge at the back gate, I remembered that John's dad Maurie always used to toss his trimmings of photinia out for sheep as a bit of a gourmet treat, they love nibbling these leaves. 

So I did the same, and yep, the ewes skedaddled over. The pile was cleaned up in no time. 

The Calm before The Storm

This next week will be an eventful week at Struan Farm. Our new Lockwood house "The Piopio" is starting to happen! Here's a photo of the site "before," unfortunately taken on a somewhat grey morning:

Suffice it to say I'll be reporting on progress as it happens. This is a big deal for us, really big!