A long, dry, summer

Well the plum season hasn't been as crazy as I thought it would be - two of the three trees are done. Loads of apples coming on though and the tomatoes are coming on steadily now too. Have frozen quite a few to make into sauces over the winter, and Ben has made a couple of batches of tomato chutney which is yum! Makes a great base on a pizza.

There's been no rain for weeks now - apart from a few sprinkles - and things are extremely dry around here. I have been spending ridiculous amounts of money on hard feed for the horses and using the winter hay supplies already. They are mostly doing ok except for Benhorse who is looking too light for my liking. Just moved all the horses around - poor Choc gets to go into the paddock that Oscar and Benhorse have already cleaned out - and hopefully Benhorse will pick up a bit from that. Not that there is much grass in his new paddock but it's a wee bit better than where he was.

Luckily we still have a reasonable amount of water in the tank - some people I know have had to get two tanker loads in already. Must be hard with a family, living on a tank of water that is the same capacity as ours. Plus we have a bore for the paddock tank so at least the animals are sorted for water.

The latest weather forecast is for some rain for a few days from this weekend on. Fingers, toes, eyes crossed!

Plum-o-rama

4.3kg of plums - jam anyone?

We have three plum trees in the orchard and they have been getting heavier and heavier with fruit. We've had a few plums - varying from puckeringly tart to sweet and juicy - but today the season really began. A mere 7kg.... mostly Black Doris, with a few, um, others (my plum variety knowledge is seriously limited). And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Black Doris tree isn't hugely loaded with plums but the other two are looking rather bountiful.

We took Peter Gabriel's advice and adopted the "Shaking the Tree" method of picking plums - next time a hard hat might be a good idea too. Managed to shake a few directly into the basket and bags though!

So today is plum jam day, and maybe plum sauce day if I can find an ok sounding recipe. Wondering if I should try and dehydrate some to make prunes as well....

We've also just been trying to horse proof the water pipes in the paddock at the end of the race. The water pipes run along the fence line and there is a row of trees about a metre in from the fence - the perfect spot for a horse to stand in the shade. And stand on the water pipes and pull the connectors apart and empty the tank. For the second time. Just as well there is a bore to pump water up to the tank, would not be impressed if we had to buy a second tank in a month because of a pony deciding to loiter with intent around the water pipes.

So it's now taped off, the bore pump is going and hopefully we won't lose any more water this summer. It is incredibly dry around here, no real rain for a couple of weeks and it's been hot - perfect hay making weather, ironically, since this is the first year in about 6 years we haven't done hay. Do not miss it at all! Rain is forecast for Monday, fingers crossed they are right for once - the ground is like concrete.

Resurrection of a blog

Ok so just over a year since the last post, with its optimistic title of returning to blogging. Let's try again....

Since the last post, we have moved house, away from the 80 acre property and shack we were living on, to a place with just 11 acres but it has a "real" house. Like, one with insulation and windows that open. Quite a novelty. It also has three amazing garden beds. They are amazing because they have this soil that makes things grow like weeds. In actual fact our tomatoes are looking more like trees at the moment. Some more fruit on them would be nice...

Speaking of fruit trees, there is an orchard here too and the three plum trees in it are going hell for leather producing fruit. The Black Doris tree has provided a few ripe plums so far and I suspect it'll be a matter of days until we are inundated with plums to make into jam, preserve, and gorge. There are also apple trees, a pear tree, lemons, limes, guavas, feijoas, passionfruit, tangelos and persimmons.

The vege garden is full, with beetroot, peas, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, courgettes, spring onions (that are turning into actual onions because we can't quite keep up...), beans, and broccoli. I love this time of year for having an entire dinner made up of our own vegetables and some homekill meat!

We have also been drinking some fabulous Maltese wine that Ben has been importing. First time ever into New Zealand and it is really very nice. Different to Italian, French or Spanish, it kind of takes the good qualities from all of these. Lots of yummy fruit, and they are real food wines. Amazing the difference food can make to some wines - and vice versa....