Struan Farm

On Time & Tomatoes

I'm doing my best to eke out this summer's tomato crop through the lockdown period here at Struan Farm and New Zealand. Indications from the daily briefings at 1 p.m. seem to be that lockdown could very well need to be extended, so we're not eating ourselves out of house and home but rather pacing the provisions on hand, including what we grow here. We're trying to avoid any trips further afield to the grocery store, opting if need be for our local dairy for milk and other minor essentials. Neither John nor I have left the property since lockdown.

I've pulled up and composted the tomato plants that have done their dash, with dead or slimey branches, but have left those with healthy ripening fruit. Once any fruit gets remotely pink (or yellow in the case of the Moonglow, Mini Orange or Tangellas) I pop them into the kitchen to finish ripening.

It's these little things that can lend an air of normalcy to our current situation.

Update From the Glasshouse

It's good to see that the planters I've sown in the glasshouse here at Struan Farm with veggies are already sprouting! Lettuce, rocket/arugula, spinach, spring onion, silverbeet/chard and parsley. I've also planted a few seedling tomato plants and some kale, covered with net curtain to fend off white cabbage butterflies.

I'm encouraged also that the seeds I planted outside in Veggie World and the raised bed in front have germinated as well. All except the carrots, which I suspect have a longer germination period. 

I've got enough seed left to do some sequential sowings in other planters too. 

In the veggie troughs I've got seedling beets, silverbeet/chard, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage going as well. Suspect I could be dropping bags of veggies on neighbours' doorsteps in a few weeks time.

A Hedgehog's Hero

Yesterday I went out back, beyond Veggie World, the tawa grove and the new shed here at Struan Farm, to check one of our "Huia" heritage fig trees. This one get lots of direct sunlight being on a relatively exposed point. On a clear fine day we can actually see the snow capped tip of Mt. Taranaki from this part of the farm.

The figs on this tree are almost ready, hooray. The ones on the older, larger tree in the Pet Paddock are not.

On the way I walked past one of our cattle stops (these are barriers that stop sheep from walking into an area, avoiding the need for a gate), where I discovered a large hedgehog. She'd fallen or wandered into the cattle stop and certainly wasn't going to get herself out without help.

And then I realised: it was Mrs. Tiggywinkle! She thought perhaps that going into lockdown here at Struan Farm might be a good plan. I enlisted nephew Mike to get her out and send her off into the bush. The cattle stop was not the place for her to be in lockdown. She had no food down there.

Every hedgehog needs a hero in these testing times!

 

 

On Positivity: Into the Bubble

Today is Day 1 of the Level 4 Covid-19 national lockdown here in New Zealand, John and I are hunkering down here at Struan Farm.

My first lockdown job today was vacuuming the house. Normally I just go for the "big chunks," housekeeping not exactly being the way I want to spend my time or my particular forte.

However I've decided to view this lockdown positively. Before The Hobbit filmed in Piopio, we cleaned the Homestead thoroughly in anticipation of a guest associated with the film production. John and I joked that we needed to clean for "Sir Ian," that our guest might be Sir Ian McKellen, aka Gandalf. As it turned out, the joke was on us: we DID end up accommodating Sir Ian! So I was very glad we undertook "the Sir Ian clean," and a very thorough clean has since been referred to as that in our household.

I haven't moved furniture to wash the wooden floors just yet, that will be another day. Along with tackling the linen closet and cleaning the fridge. We've got four weeks and pacing is required.

But the positive news to report is that I've found spiders and cobwebs I hadn't noticed previously, and discovered a cache of jelly beans in my "Jelly Bean Gingerbread House" stashed in a corner of the dining area for the grandkids. We'll hold those in reserve for more desperate times.

As Monty Python says "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."

 

On Nuts & Locking Down

Apologies that blog posts have been and may continue to be a wee bit spotty as we've headed into COVID-19 alert land here in New Zealand, Piopio, and Struan Farm. After tomorrow we will be at "Level 4," which means only leaving home for essential services like food shopping, doctor, vet, pharmacy in an attempt to stop the progression of the disease.

As you might expect we are relatively self sufficient here, certainly in terms of growing our own fruits and vegetables. I bake bread, and we have a large, well-stocked freezer. We certainly won't starve, and would expect to share what we do grow with others in our community.

Today I went out to the Old Orchard and Pet Paddocks to pick Granny Smith apples and see what was happening with the walnuts. After three hours I returned with this:

The walnuts caught me by surprise. We had such a bumper crop last year, and with this year's drought I didn't think we'd harvest all that many nuts. Clearly I hadn't received the memo from Mother Nature, who is telling me to gather these nuts and get them dried to use and share asap.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this does have me wondering what she knows that perhaps we don't? 

Kia Kaha: On Hunkering Down

My current mantra is "When the going gets tough, the tough get growing."

I've gotten increasingly nervous over the past few weeks as coronavirus has decimated various countries around the world following the initial outbreak in China, and made progressive inroads here in NZ, basically via people returning from overseas. 

Most people who know me know I'm a contingency planner. I'm a bit of a worrier in the best of times. Global pandemics shift me into overdrive. I haven't been hoarding, toilet paper or anything else, but I have bought more food than normal for the freezer and pantry. Anticipating, as someone with a compromised immunity, that at some point I might not be able to go out. 

That point arrived on Saturday, when the Prime Minister asked people like me to stay home, not to go out unless absolutely necessary.

So here's the good news. As part of my contingency planning I'd ordered vegetable seeds and purchased seedling plants last week. I've planted silverbeet, spinach, rocket/arugula, beetroot, lettuce, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, spring onions and parsley. In Veggie World and in the glasshouse here at Struan Farm. (Note: the net curtains are to deter white cabbage butterflies from laying caterpillar eggs on the brassicas.)

Our Monty's Surprise apples are ripe, so we have heaps of apples, some peaches still, quince, ripening pears, fig, walnuts and feijoas. We won't starve. I've got books to read, one last needlepoint stocking to make, and knitting yarn and patterns. We can go out and walk around the farm, it's not the same as being stuck in an apartment or small house in town, we're very lucky.

And we'll share surplus fruit and veggies with the Piopio Community Fruit & Veg Stand, somehow, some way, of course!

Kia kaha, we're all in this together.

 

Quietly, with Quince, Continued

It was another quiet day yesterday here at Struan Farm, as the quince crop landed in a big way, along with an announcement that several people and their whanau are in self-isolation in nearby Te Kuiti, with coronavirus test results pending.  There are Golden Queen peaches still, too. 

I decided to browse through a number of cookbooks from my pantry shelves. In an effort to evolve from my usual but limited repertoire given the quantity of quince this year. 

My experiments for the day were "Quince Butter" from Sophie Hansen's "A Basket by the Door," and "Poached Quince" from Tessa Kiros' book "Falling Cloudberries." The latter was bequeathed to me by my friend Glen when I last visited her, she had a bit of a book clean out with her recent move from Doone Cottage into town. I can tell she used this book quite a bit, it's been much loved!

It takes hours to work with quince, but they magically transform into melting, fragrant deliciousness when cooked.

For both recipes the fruit is peeled, cored and quartered. For the poached quince it's put into a boiling syrup of caster sugar, water, lemon juice and lemon peel for two hours, covered. The water is topped up as needed, since some syrup is required to serve (with ice cream or yogurt). For the quince butter sliced fruit is put into a deep roasting pan with the cores wrapped in muslin, and drizzled with a syrup of sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice and vanilla paste. The pan is then wrapped tightly with foil and left at 150C for 3-4 hours. After this the cooked fruit is processed when cool. The pureed fruit is then put back into the roasting pan to bake for one hour before then put into jars and sealed.

Yes, a five hour+ exercise. I started to worry that perhaps dinner last night might be a bit late!

 

Quietly, with Quince

I suspect I'm not the only one out there a bit overwhelmed by the progression of coronavirus, and the seemingly hourly updates of bad news from around the world. Yesterday I decided I needed to have a low key day here at Struan Farm to calm down, mostly.

I harvested more Golden Queen peaches and the first wave of quince, hooray. 

As previously reported, John is not a big fan of quince. But he will eat quince paste, or "membrillo," with cheese and crackers. Like most fruit pastes, making it is tedious but worth the effort. I use the quinces that have on the tree cracked first, so they won't rot. And I use Kylee Newton's recipe for membrillo from "The Modern Preserver."

1.5kg of quince is peeled, cored and roughly chopped, then put into a pot with the peel of one lemon and a split vanilla bean and covered with cold water. Once this is brought to the boil it is left to simmer for 30-40 minutes, until the quince is tender. After draining, the vanilla bean is removed and fruit and lemon peel pureed in a food processor. This pulp then gets measured, and 150 grams of sugar is added into a pot for every 250 mls. of fruit pulp, along with the juice of that lemon.

Then the real fun begins: once the sugar is dissolved into the pulp this boils until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon. The recipe says 1- 1 1/2 hours, but sometimes it takes considerably less time. It should be stirred constantly to avoid burning and sticking. The thick pulp has a tendency to erupt, spewing hot globules around the kitchen. I've bought a screen mesh splatter guard to try to minimise the mess and hot flying paste, you could use a tea towel in a pinch. It's best to be prepared.

Once the paste has reached the right consistency it is poured into a lined, buttered loaf pan or buttered muffin tins and baked for 40-60 minutes at the lowest oven temperature possible, then cooled, wrapped and refrigerated. It will keep for months in the fridge.

p.s. I did watch the Democratic presidential debate and follow up commentary while doing this!

 

Afternoon Harvest

Yesterday afternoon I had to recruit a helper to get the next wave of White Diamond grapes picked from the grape arbor/pergola on our front lawn here at Struan Farm. Even with my sturdy step stool I wasn't tall enough to clip the clusters of grapes off the vines. Enter John, with Clifford staying beneath to gulp up any random grapes.

While we had some grapes last year, this season the crop has been incredible, from one vine. And the red grape on the other corner has started to come around as well. 

There are still more to harvest on the vines, we're pacing ourselves. Just don't suggest wine-making, okay? We've got more than enough going on at this point!

On Dogs, Guffy and Guffaws

John and I were having a discussion over dinner a few nights ago here at Struan Farm about our much loved, increasingly ancient dog, Clifford. We're at the point where we don't like leaving him on his own without one of us around, even if Mike's here to feed him.

He's 17 this year, which is rather hard to believe. He takes more naps, sleeps in the garage now, and doesn't chase rabbits and turkeys like he used to. Although he can smell eau de rabbit when they're around. And he manages to race to the workshop for breakfasts and dinners, still, as if he's starving. Lately he's been running out with me when I go to pick grapes, a fruit he loves along with nashi. He knows when John is about ready to turn on the BBQ by sheer instinct.

For some reason John and I got onto talking about other dogs in my past. Guffy was the only one of these that was my dog, the others were family dogs. John had never heard about Guffy before, didn't know what "Guffaw" meant. 

I ended up bringing Guffy home from the dog pound in Middletown, Connecticut while I was spending my junior year at Wesleyan University. A roommate in the town house where I lived off campus wanted to adopt a dog, and I went with her to the pound. She did get a dog, Pookah. Guffy made the smart move of licking my hand, I suspect he knew a soft touch when he saw one. He left the pound with me, Cheryl and Pookah. That town house was never the same. Another flatmate, Bonnie, had a dog named Ginger.

Guffy knew I saved his life and was eternally grateful. When I returned home from school that year my parents inherited another family pet. I remember I used to get rides home to New Jersey from a lovely guy named Brian who lived in Wharton, I helped pay for his petrol. He had a beautiful vintage Mustang that was his pride and joy, and although he was a complete sweetheart to me he wasn't so sure about the prospect of my dog barfing in his beloved car. So I sat with Guffy with a big towel on my lap the entire way home. Once home Guffy slept on the floor of my room, and barked at anyone who dared to open that door when I was sleeping, even my father. Who laughed at this fierce little mutt, appreciating his loyalty.

Guffy was my protector until he died many years later. His formal name was "Guffaw," which means a loud and boisterous laugh. The word has Scottish origins. I'm not sure why John had never heard of it before, but I'm working on his vocabulary, obviously.

Figs, Not Yet

Apropos of my post yesterday on the quince, I've been checking our two "Huia" fig trees here at Struan Farm every few days. Especially the one on the point out the back from our house, which gets more direct sunlight and tends to fruit earlier than the much larger one down in the Pet Paddock.

I've had nephew Mike deploy some of the netting removed from the Luisa plum tree in an attempt to discourage the birds. He's tossed the net over the top, we'll see if that proves any deterrent. 

Figs droop/sag down when ripe, and ours aren't anywhere near that just yet. We tend to get figs, feijoas and walnuts all at about the same time, but who know what will happen this year! 

It does look like it should be a good harvest. I'll make some Spiced Figs in Brandy, but will also try dehydrating some for the first time this year. Only so many boozy figs one can eat, right?

Quince, Almost

I'm in the orchard areas here at Struan Farm every day at this time of the year, sometimes two or three times, to harvest fruit. Right now it's the three peach varieties, Golden Queen, Blackboy, and Piopio Heritage White, fast and furious. Whatever is on the ground gets collected, plus each tree gets a shake. Not too hard, since I really don't want too much fruit raining down on my head that needs to be put to use or shared before it goes off. Even so, I've been gathering 30+ peaches each day, with plenty still on the trees.

I've been keeping an eye on our quince trees, Monty's Surprise and Granny Smith apples, and Winter Nellis and Comice pear trees too. Everything has been so early this year that it doesn't pay to operate by last year's schedule. The fruit needs to be checked.

And the quinces on one of our two trees are just about ready.

I've asked an experienced commercial orchardist who grows quince along with other fruit how to tell when quince is ripe. First and foremost, it's yellow, not green. And it's definitely ready if fruit has fallen on the ground. The latter hasn't happened here at Struan Farm, but the fruit on that one tree is pretty yellow. 

Given the peach frenzy still happening I'll give the quince some time. The birds don't go after it because it's rock hard, so there's no race on in that respect.

John does not share my affection for quince, but he does enjoy quince paste. I'll sneak some roasted quince past him for dessert or mixed with apples in fruit crumbles once or twice this autumn to keep testing that. Maybe they'll grow on him, like green beans.

Peachy Keen

It was lovely to have a much needed rainy day this week here at Struan Farm. The gardens, lawns and paddocks were dancing in relief, as was I.

While it was raining I took to the kitchen, roasting another batch of heirloom tomatoes and putting some of the peaches from our orchard to good use.

I made two more batches of Blackboy and Golden Queen peach ice creams, roasted rhubarb and Blackboy peaches drizzled with my homemade damson red wine vinegar glaze, and knocked off a few simple peach tarts using Blackboy and Piopio Heritage White Peaches and frozen pastry dough. (Cheater's tarts, really.)

The Blackboy and Piopio White Heritage peaches are easier to work with, being "free stone." To avoid any confusion, this doesn't mean they are without stones, rather the stones don't stick to the flesh like they do with "cling" peaches, like most Golden Queens. They also peel easier. 

I'll keep going with batches of the ice creams, which seem to be very popular at our house. Although John was circling the warm tarts wanting to know when he could eat one, with peach ice cream on the side of course!

On Getting Dehydrated

I've learned something from making my first batch of damson prunes here at Struan Farm. Where, after 24 hours of dehydrating, the damsons still weren't dried. Okay, a few were.

I'd purchased a Sunbeam dehydrator from Briscoes. Basically, one that was easy to find after my first stop at Noel Leeming, who have stopped carrying them and referred me to Briscoes.

After this failed batch of prunes I sent out an SOS to my friend Heather at Country Trading down Nelson way. Heather grows, preserves, ferments, makes cheeses and dairy/non-dairy yogurts, and has a wonderful innovative online business selling products focused on such. I asked her where I went wrong, and about the different NZ made dehydrator Country Trading sells.

It turns out the motor on the less expensive one I bought is on the top, while the motor on the New Zealand made EziDri one she sells is on the bottom. And it turns out having the motor operate from the bottom works better to dehydrate food. Otherwise dehydrators are pretty much the same, with stackable plastic trays. It seems I should have done more homework. 

I've ordered the EziDri dehydrator. With the tsunami of figs about to land I simply can't mess around. I also learned from a Country Trading FB post on prunes that they should be dried until hard and then rehydrated in tea or brandy for use.

We haven't wasted the semi-dried damsons, not entirely. While still quasi fresh they taste reasonably good with cheese and crackers. It makes me feel somewhat better. This is how one learns things, right?

 

A Good Deed Gets Rewarded

A few days ago Farmer John arrived here at Struan Farm to drench my five remaining pet lambs following Chalk's recent unfortunate death. A drought provides the conditions for all sorts of bad things to happen to pet lambs and sheep, and we're doing what we can to minimise that.

Only one problem: pet lambs can (sometimes) be discipline problems. They tend to ignore working sheep dogs entirely, knowing better of course. When Farmer John tried to round up the five lambs from the paddock into the yards for their drench, pet lamb Spicy decided to jump over the fence and into another paddock, the one with the ewes. You may remember that Spicy has been a jumper from her early days, when she used to jump up over the retaining wall onto the front lawn and into the garden to munch my roses. It was her party trick.

Farmer John dealt with the four well-behaved darlings and left Mike and me some drench to deal with naughty Spicy. We found her hanging out under the trees in the shade with the ewes. She came over when called, but wouldn't move along down to the Cottage paddock and yards until I convinced (former pet lambs now pet ewes) Rosie and Cookie to help me, lured by a huge bag of apple pieces.

I also had to recruit nephew Mike on the quad bike to open the gate at the yards and keep everyone moving along from the back while I was leading them down the track in front. We finally got the three into the yard, Mike drenched Spicy, and we released her into the paddock with Sugar, Peaches, Fig and Pickle. I led Rosie and Cookie back up the track to join the ewes.

Quite the operation, phew! The things I get myself into here at Struan Farm. I suspect if someone had witnessed this parade they would have laughed themselves silly. But now the pets are drenched which should help them resist anything else bad that comes along.

And as I walked back to the house through the garden (panting somewhat after trotting around up and down), I was thanked for my efforts: a Monarch Butterfly drifted by! Not many of those around at all this year; I took it as a sign from the universe that good deeds do get noticed and rewarded.

 

Pomegranates, Pretty Please?

I'm very excited to see my pomegranate bush in the backyard here at Struan Farm flowering this summer, and flowering in considerable volume. Last year as I recall there were about eight blossoms, none of which turned into fruit. This year the number has increased to almost twenty, so I've got my fingers crossed.

I may get out a cotton swab and see if I can pollinate the flowers by hand, since they may need that to fruit. Research required. The bees don't seem terribly interested in them either way.

Damsons, Doused & Soused

I've been gifted enough surplus damsons this year here at Struan Farm to play, hooray.

Enough are now squirrelled away in the freezer for winter Syrian 7 Spice damson jam making, my first batch of red wine damson vinegar is still percolating away in the panty, and I've had a positive test run dehydrating them to make prunes. I'm about to make a second batch of the vinegar and de-stone considerably more damsons to make a real batch of prunes shortly.

And then I thought: damson gin, why not give it a try?! Apparently this is the most popular thing done by people with damsons, although I clearly march to a different drummer. John enjoys an occasional G&T, and I would have one in the interest of research. Lynda Hallinan has an easy Damson Gin recipe in her wonderful book "Damsons: From Hedgerow to Harvest."

Washed and dried damsons are pricked and then packed into a one litre glass jar, into which 1/2 cup of sugar is poured. The jar is then topped up with gin, lidded, and shaken gently to help the sugar dissolve. It is then put away out of direct light for six months or longer. I've just made one jar to avoid depleting John's entire stash of gin (we're not big drinkers, obviously!). The boozy fruit can be used on ice cream once the gin is strained off.

This is clearly one of those stay tuned situations.

 

The Slightest Relief

The night before last we had some much needed rain showers here at Struan Farm, also during the morning yesterday. Not much, but we are very thankful for what has been received.

I checked the rain gauge we have on the fence in the backyard, and it looks like 9 mls. fell.

The gardens, sheep, and we are jubilant for some moisture. Pretty please, Mother Nature, can we have some more? We promise to behave, we really do. We've got a long way to go to recover from this drought. Hopefully a corner has been turned with weather patterns and ocean currents.

 

Dabbling with Damsons

I've been fortunate this season to have been invited to pick damsons from two different heritage damson trees in our wider area. It's been a good season, and people who have trees seem to have more than enough for their own use plus then some.

One of the trees is in an original settler orchard (now a farm paddock) in nearby Mapiu, the other is behind a farm homestead in Piopio. Fruit from this second tree was used by an Italian immigrant to New Zealand to make his grappa! It seems he also had a "still" back in the day.

I smile thinking about the history of these special fruit trees.

Not everyone knows what to do with damsons. They make incredibly delicious jam and fruit paste. Many people use them to flavour gin, but that wouldn't be me. I have put a stash in the freezer for winter Syrian Seven Spice Damson jam making sessions, but am also experimenting making a red wine damson vinegar. This inspiration came after sampling a friend's first batch. She'd made both red and white wine based versions following a recipe in Lynda Hallinan's wonderful book "Damsons From Hedgerow to Harvest." (We both preferred the red one, it was both sweet and tart if that can possibly be.)

The fruit is washed and chopped, then put into red wine vinegar for several days to macerate (one pint/two cups per pound of fruit). I didn't remove the stones, too time consuming. This is then strained through muslin/cheesecloth and boiled for ten minutes after adding sugar (with one pound of sugar per pint/two cups of juice). After cooling it is strained again and decanted into bottles.

I am at the second stage in this process right now:

The other wee experiment I've got going on at the moment involves making prunes from damsons, after reading recently from my friends at Country Trading that damsons are indeed a prune plum. Yes, this falls into the category of learning something new every day, doesn't it? I'd purchased a food dehydrator a few weeks ago in anticipation of this year's fig harvest. There are only so many figs one can bottle in spices and brandy, and I figured drying them with a dehydrator expands my options. If the test prunes taste good I may be making a larger batch of home-dried prunes as well.

I'm also saving stones from both trees to grow seedling trees to share with the community. This year I'm giving the one seedling tree I grew from "Grandpa's Grappa Tree" last season back to that family, while I managed to grow about six seedling trees from the Mapiu fruit. I'll plant one of those in our orchard and give the others away. Hopefully this year I'll manage to grow more of "Grandpa's Tree," for us and others. The stones are put into a plastic ziplock in the fridge with a few handfuls of compost to chill for 6-10 weeks, really until they start to split open and sprout. Then they're potted up to grow further.

It's special for me to have trees with an historical connection to the area growing here at Struan Farm and around the wider district, sharing them with people who appreciate that too.

You've now got a finger on the pulse! It's all happening here at Struan Farm.

Gobs of Grapes

With this continued drought I'm not doing much wandering around the flower gardens here at Struan Farm--it's simply too upsetting.

But a few days ago I did walk over to the grape arbor to check on the vines. Our purple grape "Festivee" is fruiting for the first time this year, after struggling to survive rabbit attacks its first year. And good news: while its grapes are few this season they're delicious. I'm glad I gave this vine the TLC it needed to recover.

But this post is really about the "White Diamond" grape on the other corner. It's laden! Clusters of beautiful green/white grapes hang down. They are hidden until one walks underneath, so I was totally surprised. The fruit isn't ripe just yet but we'll keep a finger on this pulse for sure.

This reminds me that we had a grape "arbor" at our house when I was growing up, near an old fashioned fieldstone BBQ. And we called it that. No home should be without its very own grape arbor.