Struan Farm

Last Call

Pet lambs Peaches, Fig, Chalk and Pickle don't know it quite yet, but they'll be getting their last official bottle feed on Sunday here at Struan Farm.

Buzz, Sugar and Spice, the "Big Three," were weaned a few weeks ago, without much if any histrionics; except perhaps for Spice's vaulting escapades over the retaining wall, up onto the lawn and into the gardens.

We have guests staying in the Cottage Saturday night, and I don't want them subjected to wails outside their bedroom windows. So we're waiting to pull the plug until the guests depart on Sunday. I expect the lambs will get some random bottles over the holidays from visiting kids, but those don't count as "official." I'll be able to clean up the kitchen scale and clear off one entire bench/counter that's been the dedicated feeding station, with bag of powdered milk, measuring cups, whisk, and bottle drying rack. Affectionately known as "Mess Central."

As previously reported, feeding pet lambs is a major commitment. This year we started in August with six then five bottles a day. After three weeks it's down to three each day, but someone has to do it each and every day, three times a day, for months. 

And it goes without saying that feeding pet lambs is also a labour of love, at least for me. Much as I'm relieved when the bottles draw to a close for the season.

The Story of Jim's Hut, Continued

A number of farmstay guests staying in Jim's Hut down at the river here at Struan Farm have looked for Jim's rammer, the story of which we have on the wall, along with a photo of Jim. We've had to explain a number of times now that the rammer was given to Jim's grandson, James, when he visited us with his wife a year or so ago, staying in the Hut.

It was suggested that perhaps we update the story to explain why the rammer has gone missing. I've finally gotten around to doing that:

I'm thinking James will be happy he's now on the wall of Jim's Hut with the photo of his beloved "Koro."

Going Potty Again

We're through the Italian parsley "gigante" seedlings here at Struan Farm, next it's on to basil. It's been hot enough for the seeds to germinate and thrive in trays in the glasshouse. Now they need to be put into pots to grow a bit further.

I have stopped planting basil outside given mixed results, find it grows better for me in the heat of the glasshouse. I'll put some of the seedling plants out in the Piopio Community Fruit & Veg Stand to share, and keep some to grow on for cutting for the Fat Pigeon Cafe.

Learning Something New About Garlic

One of the many things I enjoy about gardening, growing veggies, flowers and fruit, is that I learn new things all the time. Maybe not quite every day, but almost. This past week I learned to tell when garlic is ready to be pulled from Setha of Setha's Seeds.

I've always planted seed garlic on the shortest day of the year, in June, and harvested on or near the longest day of the year in December. This is "conventional wisdom." Setha recently did a post on her FB page saying that they were starting to harvest garlic, and I queried how one knows when to harvest.

It seems when the 7th leaf from the bottom starts to die the garlic is ready to be harvested. And guess what?

A Barrier to Entry

I've been away up north over the past week, but in my absence pet lamb Spice has continued to enjoy the fruits of the Garden of Eden here at Struan Farm. She's been hopping up over the retaining wall several times a day.

When home I'd chase her back into the paddock, waving my tea towel, with Clifford watching on and laughing. She'd jump up to munch the lawn, targeting a "My Mum" rose bush nearby in particular. 

Surely this wasn't some sort of statement on her part? We've just weaned her, along with Sugar and Buzz.

Either way nephew Mike and John realised something had to be done. We began closing the front gate in case she wandered down the drive munching the griselinia hedge, and they erected a barrier with standards below the wall to make jumping up harder for her. 

She easily cleared their first effort, but John moved it out a bit further from the wall and that's seemed to have stopped her. We've had wailing outside our bedroom window, and she's paced longingly along the fence by the garden. In fact, I'm waiting for her to jump over the fence.

John tells me that in his dad's day a troublesome pet lamb would have been sent away, in an effort to "dumb down" the gene pool. Suffice it to say that won't happen on my watch!! I respect intelligent women, and that includes those of the sheep-ly persuasion.

Lost & Found

This is one of the more bizarre things we've had happen recently here at Struan Farm.

A few weeks ago one of my earrings went missing from the bathroom bench. I don't wear that much jewelry (or jewelry much) given the amount of outside work I do. Three rings, a cheap Timex watch and simple but nice earrings. I've taken to removing everything when I garden after developing a big bubble of a cyst on the ring finger of my left hand from clutching gardening tools too enthusiastically.

I searched everywhere. After doing a complete clean of the bathroom on my hands and knees I even had John remove the trap from the sink to see if it had fallen down the drain (ick). It hadn't. I was pretty sad, these were my one remaining pair of "everyday" earrings. I'd lost the others in New Plymouth at the hairdresser, think they dropped out of my wallet onto the street. 

I look after things and rarely lose anything. And at a certain age you stop buying things like earrings, you're content with what you've got. That would be me. In this instance I said a wee prayer to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost causes. I learned it as a child: "Dear St. Anthony come around, something's lost and can't be found." He usually does come around when I ask, but hadn't answered the call on this one.

Guess what?

St. Anthony came through after all! He must have been busy elsewhere on more urgent jobs. John found my earring stuck in a new tube of toothpaste in his medicine cabinet. Neither one of us has any idea how this could have happened. I guess we'll just have to be happy the earring has been found and leave it at that.

I am wondering a wee bit if this might be John's idea of a practical joke. But don't think he would have cleaned out the drain if it had been, that was a messy job.

Back to the Garden

I'm reminded of lyrics in the song "Woodstock," written by Joni Mitchell: "we've got to get ourselves back to the garden." It seems that pet lamb Spice has no problem doing that here at Struan Farm. The other day she leapt up over the retaining wall onto our house lawn and garden area, and this now looks to be her new party trick.

We arrived home from town over the weekend and found her munching away on the lawn and nibbling the flowers in my gardens! Oh.Dear. We'd just decided to wean the Big Three this week and thought they were doing so well given very few complaints, and even a willingness to try apple treats.

I'm not especially worried about the gardens. Rather I'm concerned about Spice doing this when we're not around to escort her through the gate and back to the paddock. I don't want her waltzing down the drive and onto the road. So until she gets through this exuberant leaping lamb phase we may need to close the front gate. 

 

Lamenting a Lamb Named Cheese

The day before yesterday I returned to Struan Farm in the late afternoon from a day trip to New Plymouth and went down to feed the "gang of five" pet lambs in the paddock behind the Cottage, near the Wool Shed. Only four lambs showed up for bottles: Peaches, Fig, Pickle and Chalk. Cheese was nowhere to be seen or heard.

So I fed the four their bottles and went off with bottle in hand, calling out for Cheese. I figured she'd gone with the mob into the front Pet Paddock, or had gotten through a fence and into another paddock, maybe all the way even down to the river. But after wandering and calling for awhile I couldn't find her. When John got home he hopped on the quad bike and did the same thing, looking in the bush areas as well.

No Cheese. It was really odd. And she didn't turn up for breakfast this morning either.

Later today Mike found her, dead under the trees near the Tree Hut. We won't know if she ate something she shouldn't have or what happened. The other four lambs know something's a bit different, but otherwise are happy and healthy. The Big Three are fine too. Farmer John and I had a chat, and he tells me these things do happen.

Life goes on for everyone else, but still. I'm overtired and lamenting a lamb. A lamb named Cheese, one who liked to figure out her way through holes in fences and tiptoe over cattle stops, with her twin sister Chalk tagging along.

A Fresh Chapeau for Henry

I've just been reminded by Lulu H. that her son named this scarecrow "Henry" last year. In fact, he said "Henry Danger," but I don't remember the "Danger" part. Henry was part of our Piopio Community Fruit & Veg Stand float in the annual Piopio Christmas parade. And we won a prize!

After the parade Henry did his duty looking over the raised tomato bed at Struan Farm, then went into a shed for a winter's nap. I've just dusted him off and given him a fresh chapeau for the season, decorated with a sunflower and chiles.

He's told me he likes his new look, change keeps the birds guessing!

Growth Spurts

The gardens here at Struan Farm are happy, I can feel it. We've had hot, sunny weather followed by a good solid rain, which we'd needed. It was time. And the gardens have responded, with major growth spurts.

Out in veggie world it's visible, pretty much daily. At least to me. Everything I've planted from seed has germinated now (beans, carrots, spring onions, peas, corn, lettuce/mesclun), and even the potatoes have popped up through the mounds. The tomatoes are inches taller, and yes, I'm pinching laterals and re-tying as required.

While it may be like watching grass grow for you, it's very exciting for me! Can't wait to be able to go out each evening to pick fresh veggies and/or salad greens for dinner.

Initial Weaning Woes

We're starting to cut back on the pet lambs' bottles here at Struan Farm. At a certain point the three bottles per day regimen gets hard with busy summer work schedules outside and elsewhere. More importantly, the Class of 2019 is looking pretty happy and fat and eating lots of grass.

This week the "Gang of Five," Chalk and Cheese, Peaches, Fig and Pickle, got cut back to two bottles per day, their bottle at lunchtime has been suspended. And the "Big Three," Buzz, Sugar and Spice, were cut back from two bottles to one per day yesterday. The Big Three especially are big, healthy lambs, John claims they look like hoggets! They are about a month older than the Gang of Five. The lambs' condition drives our decision as to when cutbacks start, at least for me. John always wants to cut the bottles back much sooner than I do. I'm rightly suspicious, since he tends to be motivated by a desire to reduce our expenditure on powdered milk and eliminate his involvement in the morning feed.

The Big Three are getting their one bottle at the end of the day now. And I am getting accusatory looks and baas any time they know I am in the vicinity, especially outside our bedroom window. The Gang of Five is hanging out down behind the Cottage, so if there are any moans from them the Cottage farmstay guests would be treated to those, a true rural experience.

Final cutbacks on bottles will be made after Christmas. I'll start testing apple treats shortly, since when they're moaning for Mum they'll usually give them a try.

 

Worming In Under the Redwoods

The past few days I've been working on seasonal cleanups under the redwood trees down the drive here at Struan Farm. It's a nice shaded area, and we've had a heat wave this week, so it's been a good job to avoid the hot, direct sun.

I'm raking up heaps of dried redwood "fronds," for lack of a more technical term, also weeding. During my raking I uncovered an absolutely HUGE earthworm, which prompted me to go grab my phone to take a quick photo before it wriggled away. Also to do some homework to try to learn more.

This worm was about 12 inches long, and very fat! It looks to be a native variety, of which there are 171 different "Megascolecidae" species (23 non-native "Lumbricidae"). The former tend to hang out in native bush and tussock. It looks like we must have enough native trees in this part of the property to attract the natives, which this one looks like. Read more if you're interested here. Apparently they can get as long as 1 1/2 metres, I'm relieved I didn't uncover one of those.

Struan Farm: where one continues to learn things, even about earthworms!

Deciduous Azaleas, Who Knew?

You might be like I once was. Blissfully unaware that there are both deciduous and evergreen (non-deciduous) azaleas.

But I've learned about them here at Struan Farm. I've learned that the azaleas that I prefer are, in fact, deciduous. Their colours are amazing, and they grow over the years into spectacular shrubs. Just what we want here in the gardens. And just what we've got in the established Homestead gardens, with thanks to John's parents.

The vibrant gold, orange, red and pink just pop, at a time when pops are needed. Deciduous azaleas, who knew?

Plums & Peaches, Despite

Yes, we have fruiting plums and peaches here at Struan Farm, despite those marauding kererus/native wood pigeons! I'm relieved to see immature fruit hanging on several of the trees that the wood pigeons targeted, phew.

Now my next challenge: to keep the other birds away.

Bumbling Along

I had to laugh, watching a bumblebee trying to work away in one of our heirloom poppies in the gardens here at Struan Farm yesterday. He would get up into the flower, only to slide down and needing to start all over again. I admired his persistence.

He got there!

Redeployed Cutbacks

Given the beautiful weather yesterday afternoon, I was out continuing clean up efforts in the gardens here at Struan Farm. Before everything well and truly gets out of hand. Cottage gardens look like they're just left to it, but I can assure you that's far from the case. A considerable amount of work needs to be done early in the season, and during transitions, to keep things looking good.

I'd noticed that one of our leucadendron "Safari Sunset" shrubs was listing to one side, and had something woody coming up from the middle that looked suspiciously like nightshade. It was the sort of thing that wasn't going to pull out, so I decided it was best to give the shrub a good prune and then cut and paste the woody weed with a poison gel. You will know I don't use chemical sprays around the place for various reasons (two bouts of cancer mainly). But I do use this gel tactically when I have to for things that can't be pulled out, since it's easy to apply and control.

The next decision was what to do with all the leucadendron cuttings. I decided to put together some bunches in jars and a tin to put out at the Piopio Community Fruit & Veg Stand, and of course kept one for our table. They last a long time and when flowers are in short supply are a reasonable substitute or good to mix into the equation.

They're a bit of an acquired taste, but hopefully people will enjoy them.