Struan Farm

Tending to the Tomatoes

I finally had some quiet, quality time with my heirloom tomato seedlings in the glasshouse over the weekend here at Struan Farm. We've done a run for a trailer load of potting soil, and I'll use pretty much all of the recycled pots I've got stashed in the Pot Palace.

So far I've potted up 240 "Cherokee Purple," "Oxheart," "Black Oxheart," and "Big Red Heirloom" tomato seedlings. The latter are those grown from seeds I saved from particularly wonderful tomatoes last year.

Still hundreds and hundreds left to go, and several more different varieties, but it's a start. I like to hum Mozart to encourage them to grow!

Walnuts, well well

Yesterday I was popping some things into the spare fridge in our garage here at Struan Farm when I saw several ziplock bags of walnuts that I'd popped into compost many months ago now. They hadn't sprouted when the damsons and copper beech had. I'd been tempted to toss them out, but hadn't.

And guess what? Three were sprouting! Seemed they had just needed a bit more time. These are huge walnuts given to me by Hester. Hester of Mahoenui, she of the heirloom white peach and yellow delicious apple I'm also working to propagate. I'd seen and been intrigued by the nuts on her walnut tree. She'd told me I should be able to grow some trees from nuts so I thought I'd give it a try.

So now I'm seriously trying! 

An Incident at the Gate

Of course you will remember that this year's pet lambs Peaches, Fig, Pickle, Chalk and Cheese are in the front paddock near our house here at Struan Farm, separate from the "Big Three" Buzz, Sugar and Spice. It's easier to manage groups of lambs the same ages for feeding, although feeding five at a time is a challenge either way.

The "Gang of Five" have shelter under the redwood trees and are starting to wander around the wider paddock, down near the pond and the Cottage. But they know what time their bottles arrive and are back by the gate like clockwork.

It's far simpler when two of us are available to feed them. I'm able to feed three lambs at once bending down with a bottle clutched between my knees and one in each hand, while John feeds the other two. I thought we'd pretty much found our rhythm until yesterday, when I stooped down to put a bottle between my knees, the lambs banged up against the wooden gate, and the gate smashed solidly into my nose!

I dropped the bottles and sobbed out loud, accompanied by a chorus from the five lambs. They were far more concerned about their bottles than my nose. I definitely thought I'd broken it, fortunately my glasses weren't smashed. I left John to deal with the lambs on his own and ran into the house to grab a bag of ice.

The good news is that it's not broken, but I now have a bump and a bruise across the bridge of my nose. Just the thing for the wife of a candidate for mayor. Pet lambs and a wooden gate, yeah right.

Not sure I'll be living this one down any time soon. Struan Farm: never a dull moment.

Lemons on a Rainy Day

We've had a good stash of beautiful Meyer lemons in the Piopio Community Fruit & Veg Stand these past few days, with thanks to friend Paula from Papakura as well as another local contributor. And since yesterday was a rainy day, I decided to deploy some to make some pots of lemon curd for the stand. Lemon curd is easy to make and can be used in yogurt, on ice cream, in cakes, icings, etc. And homemade curd is so much better than store bought. No comparison, really.

I use Annabel Langbein's recipe, which calls for 1 1/2 cups of caster sugar, 1 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice, zest of one lemon, 220 grams of butter diced, and six eggs. Everything but the eggs are put in a heatproof bowl over a pot of boiling water (formally called a "bain marie") and heated until the butter is melted. Then the whisked eggs are poured in and the curd stirred with a wooden spoon over gentle heat until it has set. She says 3-5 minutes, I find it's closer to 13.  It's whenever the curd coats the back of your spoon and stays separated when you run your finger through it. The curd is then strained to remove any egg white or lemon bits, poured into sterilised jars and sealed. It keeps for a month in the fridge.

After the curd I kept at it, making a few pots of blueberry jam for the stand from frozen Piopio Berry Orchard berries.

Content with Compost

Yesterday nephew Mike dug out one of the two big wooden bins we have in the backyard here at Struan Farm for garden compost/mulch. John and I have robust discussions about what can and cannot go into the bins (he'd dump all sorts of seeding weeds without my intervention), also the mix of green, brown, and food matter. Some wood ash from the fire, an occasional dump of lime, and blood and bone also get tipped in to amp it up.

We put food waste and some green and brown waste into several black plastic bins to rot down first, before combining it into the large wooden bins. We like to think this reduces the number of rodents prowling around, but perhaps we're fooling ourselves. The bins get forked up and shovelled at least once each season so that the layers on top get put on the bottom to rot down thoroughly. If you've got limited space, those black bins cook compost really well. They're just not large enough for our purposes.

The good news is that this year's compost looks fantastic. Mike shovelled in into the veggie troughs and onto some of the beds nearby as well. I'll then turn it over, I've already put sheep pellets, lime and blood and bone in these areas to supplement the soil ahead of planting.

The adjacent second bin is full and will be turned into the now empty bin to rot away for later use this season or next year. Finally, a system that works!

Out of the Starting Gate

We've had a few beautiful sunny spring days here at Struan Farm over the past week, allowing for garden clean ups to begin. Finally!

Sister-in-law Anna came to stay for a few days to keep John company while I was up in Auckland, and she dove right in (Robertsons have a tendency to do this, she even brings her own tools). I returned home to find her head down in the beds at the house with the trailer already full of weeds and cutbacks.

And so I've continued where she left off. The work is a combination of weeding, cutting back, and trimming brick edges. Also judiciously pulling out some self seeding flowers that have self seeded a bit too much over autumn/winter. Yes, basically dealing with too much of a good thing. We've got poppies, scabiosa black knight, nigella/love-in-the-mist, coreopsis, erygium, and green scabiosas popping up in the beds thanks to last year's plants. That last one is quite spready, with a deep tap root, and I'm pulling out all but a very few.

I love our "cottage garden" look, especially having lots of flowers, but it takes quite a bit of work early in the season to lay the groundwork for the rest of the year or things end up a jumbled mess pretty quickly. Also to manage transitions as things flower, peak, and finish. As the gardens at the house have become more established I'm adjusting what I plant where.

It's always interesting to see what survives winter depending on the frost too.  I've learned it's a crap shoot with certain types of salvias and daisies. This year I lost a few huge purple salvias while others survived, as did the big daisies. And sometimes you simply need to pull things out when they get leggy and start over. Spring, time for new beginnings, right?

Pigeon in the Plum

This is the third year we've had a native wood pigeon, or "kereru" decide to munch on the largest plum tree in our orchard here at Struan Farm. Just as the blossoms are transitioning to tender young leaves.

I'm tolerant to a point, I love being able to get up close to photograph the bird, but I do want it to go elsewhere to feed. Especially since we have plenty of other options around the property: willow, poplar, etc. etc. We do not have a shortage of food for native birds. And this is my favourite of all of the plums we've planted, so I really don't want the tree decimated. Perhaps it's decided this is the creme de la creme too. 

It usually appears in late afternoon, so I will start shushing it away each day in fairly short order, once I get some better photos. They are beautiful birds.

Natives, Exiled

A few days ago I started to organise things in the glasshouse here at Struan Farm, ahead of potting up heirloom tomato seedlings and starting some other trays of veggie and flower seeds in the next week or so. This meant exiling John's growing and ungerminated native seedling trees to the native nursery out back under the tawas.

I'd potted up eight trays of flax seedlings weeks ago and transported them back. Now it was time for the hundreds (and hundreds) of kahikatea seedlings and trays of miro, matai, rimu, and ake ake to shift to their new outside world, along with an experimental tray of dawn redwood seeds and a copper beech seedling I've germinated and have been coaxing along. They're joining the totara and other young trees already settled in out back. The renga renga seedlings I grew for the first time were devoured in the glasshouse by either spiders or snails, I've kept them inside to see if they will recover. 

So it's over to you, John. John seems to think my green thumb is what gets everything started in the glasshouse; my view is that he's just trying to pander so I'll do his work. I'm onto his tricks.

At a certain point one must reclaim one's space. Especially after one's seed trays have already been pinched and one is fiercely guarding one's recycled pots to avoid the same.

Lounging Lambs

Well, I'm certainly not doing a lot of lounging around here at Struan Farm at the moment, but it seems the lambs are! I'm a bit jealous.

It makes me smile to see them stretched out sunning and napping in the paddocks, or enjoying John's Awanui flowering cherry trees.

p.s. I've taken these photos with my phone rather than my proper Canon camera. The colour is quite different, hmmm.

Free At Last!

Of course "free at last" is part of the closing line of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech. The "March on Washington" recently celebrated its 53rd anniversary, so perhaps that's why it floated into my mind.

But here at Struan Farm I'm appropriating it to provide an update on the pet lambs. Pickle, Chalk and Cheese have been liberated from the confines of the Pet Pen in the backyard, joining Peaches and Fig out in the front paddock. John laughed as they all went running and leaping around in their new found freedom. We're keeping them separate from the bigger lambs, Buzz, Sugar and Spice, thinking this will keep bottle times a bit easier. Hopefully. At times things approach Armageddon regardless, especially when it's pelting rain.

Right now they're hanging in a cluster by the gate. They know this is where the bottles magically appear at the appointed times. Peaches and Fig have figured out the shelter provided by the nearby redwood trees, so they will teach the newbies the lay of the paddock. I had to laugh seeing them jockeying to stick their heads through the gate to say hello.

My only problem at the moment is trying to tell which lamb is which. Peaches has a black spot on her leg and Chalk has black spots on her nose, but I'm going to have to spend a bit of time sorting out the others so I don't call someone by the wrong name, prompting an identity crisis and years in therapy. We've recently removed Peaches and Fig's collars since they are growing fast, and catching them to loosen collars starts to get tricky.

With this number of lambs at this gate feeding is fine with two people, but it's going to get messy for one person (Karen) to try to cope on her own. So I'm thinking about engaging nephew Mike to construct lamb feeder #2 on this gate. It might not be pretty, but it could make feedings over the next three months easier for me if we can get them to settle into using it.

Plenty of Peaches

A blog presents itself when I least expect it. Given many balls in the air, I am grateful. Perhaps it is a reward for good behaviour?

When I make my way out to the backyard here at Struan Farm to feed pet lambs Buzz, Sugar, Spice, Chalk and Cheese, and Pickle I check the glasshouse. (I'm not forgetting about Peaches and Fig, they are in the other paddock at the front, so in another direction). To make sure the tomato seedlings are damp and anything else in pots or trays that needs water gets it. I'm way behind on my garden clean ups, cut backs and weeding, but at least I can say I'm on schedule and on duty in the glasshouse.

We now have "Hester's Heirloom Peach" trees growing from both a stone and a cutting. The cutting has started to bud with pink flowers, a very good sign. A second stone started to sprout this week, and I'm still hopeful about one or two of the cuttings that have tighter buds but don't look dead. This is a beautiful white flesh peach that came many years ago from an original settler tree in nearby Te Awamutu. Hester's husband was gifted a seedling tree as a present. The large tree right beside the house was going to get the chop, and Hester thought it would be good to try to preserve this special, old variety. Seems we're close to pulling that off.

This week two NZ heirloom "Black Boy" peach stones I planted in pots have also started to sprout. These peaches have a grey fuzzy skin and beautiful red, sweet flesh. There is some thought they came to NZ from France, but no one really knows for sure. We have one growing in our orchard currently, it fruited for the first time last year and I decided to see if I could grow more from the stones. It seems that I can.

So the good news is that we have plenty of peaches growing away here at Struan Farm, heirloom and otherwise. I plan to keep one of Hester's for our orchard (am keeping one each of any heirloom fruit trees from the area I manage propagate one way or another). My intention is to propagate and share them with the community over time, since these are varieties acclimated to wider Piopio. I will give some of these peaches away once I know the seedling trees are surviving and thriving.

Peaches, at least for me, are relatively easy to grow from stones and/or cuttings. I won't waste any more time trying to graft them onto rootstock, messing around with sharp knives. Will only do that when I absolutely have to, i.e., apples and pears...

A Few Pickles in the Pet Pen

We've actually got two different sorts of pickles in the pet lamb "Pet Pen" here at Struan Farm right now.

This week our newbie pet lamb was christened "Pickle." Mostly because she's behaving like someone who is going to get herself into a pickle of trouble regularly, trying to grab the other lambs' bottles. It's taken me awhile to come up with the right name for her, something out of character for me. Normally I can look at a lamb, size it up, and decide on a name right away. Perhaps this year after losing Mamie my naming super power needed some recovery time. But "Pickle" it is. "Cheeky" was the other contender.

The other pickle I've got right now is that Chalk isn't drinking her bottles. She starts to drink, then gets spooked off by Pickle and Cheese bunting her. She's walking away rather than coming back to finish, even with me running interference for her. This is definitely not normal lamb behaviour. I've had this happen once before, with Trixie, who was a very gentle and hyper-sensitive lamb. I ended up having to put Trixie with younger, gentler lambs so she calmed down and didn't starve herself. In this instance I'm hopping into the pen and sitting Chalk on my lap to get her to drink as much of her bottle as she will (I won't call this force feeding, but sitting on my lap would not be her choice). After that she stands and quivers a bit, the poor anxious little thing. It may be that we put Cheese and Pickle out in the paddock with Peaches and Fig, leaving Chalk to feed up by herself in the Pet Pen. But then that risks isolating her even more from the other rambunctious lambs.

Aside from the possibility of having a neurotic lamb on my hands, this could mean Chalk isn't well. She might have an infection or some other type of health problem or congenital defect. I put out an SOS to Farmer John, who came over to give her an injection of antibiotics. I suspect he sometimes rolls his eyes when I fret too much about the pet lambs, but over the years I think I've shown him that I pay attention to little things that sometimes signal a major problem, like contagious pink eye for one. And lambs not drinking their bottles is usually a sign something or other is wrong.

Lambs are far more complex individuals than most people realise.

Stay tuned.

Around the Gardens

I'm on the verge of hyperventilating about the amount of work that's accumulating for me in the gardens here at Struan Farm.

I've been waiting for the rains to stop long enough to get out there. Over the past few weeks there just hasn't been a decent break in the weather, at least one sufficient to dry things out, and the forecast through October isn't promising. 

Amidst the weeds and plants crying out for seasonal cutbacks there are some promising signs, however. Fruit trees are flowering, along with the tulips and daffodils. The native "kākābeak," or "ngutukākā" we planted last year is flowering for the first time. Also called "Clianthus," it is a member of the legume family. Its bright red flowers resemble the beaks of a native NZ parrot, hence the common name.

And John's avenue of Awanui flowering cherry trees are getting ready to pop too.

 

 

 

Hey Lambies, Lambies, It's a Wild World

Playing an old Cat Stevens song in my head as I think about putting pet lambs Peaches and Fig out into the side paddock yesterday here at Struan Farm. John helped to carry them over from the Pet Pen in the backyard, where they were rapidly becoming big lambs in a small pond.

With three other younger abandoned lambs in the Pen, Chalk and Cheese, and our newbie ewe lamb, feeding times were starting to get a bit rough for everyone involved. Peaches and Fig were running around, wanting to jump and play in a bigger area. We could see that even if they didn't know that themselves.

The first day out in the Paddock is always a bit scary. We feed them an extra bottle or two so they get used to knowing where "home" is. John also walked them over the redwood trees, where there is good shelter.

Before long they will be wandering all over the paddock and I will be needing to call them home to the gate for their feeds.  I use an especially high pitched voice to call the lambs, something they all get used to hearing and associating with "mum." What we haven't done is put them in the same paddock with Buzz, Sugar and Spice. They are much bigger lambs, a tight trio at this stage, and I didn't want any of us trying to cope with that.

Now I need to come up with a good name for the newbie. Who isn't quite so new now at five days old. 

A Pest Waiting to Happen

I have seen this bunny out on our front lawn here at Struan Farm for the past two days now. Nibbling the grass and posing. Taunting me, really. It's putting me on notice that my flowers and veggies will be next if I allow him or her to stay around or, heaven forbid, procreate. It's living under our house.

Yes, it's cute. But it will need to move on or we all know how this story will end. 

The Newbies Named

I'm hoping we've waited long enough to make sure our latest new lambs, temporarily christened "the newbies," are going to survive and thrive here at Struan Farm. They've settled into the Pet Pen with Peaches and Fig, and are now both coming to the fence for their bottles after some initial trepidation on that score. I'd been having to catch one of them and sit with her on my lap to get the bottle down. While it's a good bonding experience fortunately we're past that now.

One never knows, hope I'm not jinxing them, they're still a bit skinny. But they've been renamed "Chalk" and "Cheese." "As different as chalk and cheese" is a very old English expression, dating back to the 1300s. 

Now just to decide who is who and keep them on the programme. I think the more feisty of the two will end up as Cheese, once that personality trait surfaces.

Meeting at the TeePee

Nephew Mike has erected a rather dramatic burn pile in the old "Bull Paddock" here at Struan Farm. We can see it out from our house, and I had to smile when I noticed sheep going over to nibble the brush, obviously before he sets it all alight on a dry day.

When I was a Girl Scout many years ago now we learned to build smaller versions of this style of fire, called a "teepee," named after the Native American pole tents made with wood and stretched animal skins that are this same shape.

It looks to me like the sheep have decided to gather for a meeting at the "teepee." No doubt to talk about someone babysitting the lambs.

Intrepid Plums

The plum trees in our orchard areas here at Struan Farm all decided to flower this past weekend. While this is good news in terms of cross pollination, they should all flower at the same time, I'm just a wee bit worried they might be jumping the gun this year given the weather forecast. The forecast is for a major weather event, related to unusual warming in the atmosphere above Antarctica, to travel up to us, with an accompanying prediction for wet, cold weather.  Read about it here.

The plums tell me they will do their best to hunker down if this forecast comes to pass. I did manage to get a copper spray or two on the plums, peaches and nectarines on the two sunny days we've had before recently, just in time before they started to flower. 

After last year's bumper season these trees may need a break this year, but I won't tell them that. I'll keep encouraging them to deliver us with as much beautiful fruit as possible.

Heirloom Tomato Teaser

Houston we have germination! Of heirloom tomato seeds in the glasshouse here at Struan Farm that is. I won't bore you with too many photos of trays of tiny seedlings that look mostly like dirt, here's just one:

So far Oxheart, Black Oxheart, Purple Cherokee, some of the Big Red Heirloom, and Vintage Brandywine have popped through the surface. Now the trick is keep the trays moist, not overly wet or dried out in the warm sun.

In Mourning for Mamie

I had hoped to tell you more of a happy, fairy tale ending on this particular pet lamb story here at Struan Farm, but that's not to be.

Our newest pet lamb Mamie took a downturn Saturday afternoon, shortly after her twin brother Wilbur went off to a new home. John docked the ewe lambs' tails that morning (we use the old school method, rubber rings), but she'd been fine after all that if still a bit thin around her haunches after being abandoned by her sick mum three days ago. 

When I first noticed her languishing in the Pet Palace I thought she might be missing Wilbur, and was having quiet time away from the antics of Peaches and Fig.

But she then stopped drinking her full bottles, and had problems standing up. An infection most likely. We gave her quiet time in the warm sun and tested small bottles as/when of colostrum (which has immunity). 

At a certain point when it seems more likely than not that a lamb is dying I put them on a blanket in the garage. It's protected, quiet and private, they can be at peace. Obviously if there were evidence that a lamb was in any pain we would take measures to end their suffering, but in this case Mamie wasn't moaning or crying. (I've had that happen once with a little ram lamb, and it was terrible. His anguished cries broke my heart.)  If by chance they turn the corner and recover I can hear the baas and run out with a bottle, I also keep poking my head out to check them. But we won't force feed someone who isn't wanting to drink either.

In this instance Mamie died peacefully in the garage overnight. She might have contracted an infection from her mum, we'll never know why this happened.  I've sent a message to check up on how Wilbur is doing, just in case.

Pet lambs, the joys and the sorrows. You love them and do the best you can.