Wild Hope Homestead

I came back from a weekend in Christchurch, full of love from time spent with family and fond, well-deserved memories of my late Nana, who was farewelled with a lovely memorial service that would have made her proud. If I can touch half as many lives as Nana did I will be doing well.

I had plentiful time to think. Indeed, too much time alone with my thoughts on an aeroplane. What difference am I making with my life? What do I need to do to finish the chicken coop? Are trellises along the paddock side of the vege garden really going to help with shelter or can I fit in an edible hedge? Yes, the thoughts flitted around wildly and I was without the ability to expand and research my ideas on the internet. I’m not used to sitting still. Ideas for the garden threatened to burst out of my brain if I didn’t write them down. What I really needed to do was just weed the garden but I was dreaming up plants and structures for shelter, counting how many seed potatoes might fit in the raised vege bed that we might be able to build in time and speculating about how to incorporate a chick-raising area into the new chicken coop now that I can’t house the big cage under the woodshed roof anymore.

A day after my return, I was most surprised to encounter something. It started when I was looking at the weather forecast, which had become more about looking up the temperature than whether we were going to have showers, heavy rain or rain and wind. There were yellow things on the forecast. Yellow things for five days! It was the sun! The Aussie Auntie came to visit and seems to have brought the sunshine with her. The provident sun returned! And about time too. The sun had shunned its duties long enough and I have been exceedingly happy this week, catching up on some of the things that needed dry weather in order to be done. The sun has done well. And so have I.

Daffodils in the garden…

Daffodils in the vase.

First of all, I finished the chicken coop. Finally! It ain’t the greatest masterpiece the world has ever seen, but I built it myself, I used mostly what we had lying around and it fits all the chickens in it with space for more. I spent under $100 on this coop. That was for one sheet of treated plywood, three plastic nestboxes, four strap braces for the door and two packets of screws, which I didn’t use all of. Most of the screws I used we already had. We already had the rest of the wood, the T-braces, the latch and the chicken wire. I will buy at least one more nestbox, but I’m pretty stoked with my achievement for that price.

The chicken coop is finished! It is narrow but long.

The door braces may not have been put on the right side, but it works…

The pop hole. I will make a little cover so I can shut the hole when needed.

The nestbox end.

The far end. I covered over the little window because it was letting too much light in.

The far end of the coop on the outside, complete with cover for the pre-existing ‘window’.

The chickens have all learnt to use the roosts now. Sookie and Lorelai did not learn by me removing them from the nestboxes every evening and placing them on a roost. The following evening they would go straight back to the nestboxes. But a mere black rubbish bag laid over the nestboxes before bedtime was enough to deter them and now they’re roosting like they were never cheeky nestbox sleepers.

After I finished building the chicken coop, I cleaned it out, sprayed it with Miss Muffet’s Revenge and sprinkled mite powder around to keep the mites under control. It is more work cleaning this coop than the old coop, but I certainly don’t have to do it every three days now! I can do the deep bed method, removing the worst poopy bits when needed and keeping the rest topped up with wood shavings to decompose nicely until I need to do a full clean.

The first three exciting things I did under the influence of the sun were weeding, cutting up some of the pile of wood near the house and mowing the lawn. These aren’t normally exciting things, but it has been too wet to do much of any of them lately, so being able to get them done is better than eating chocolate right now. Things are starting to look more tidy. The Little Fulla and I weeded the vege garden and we just need to finish weeding around it down the far (soggiest) end. There are a lot of weeds in the compost area too.

The chickens have been getting thrown a lot of weeds on the ground since I don’t have a compost bin for them in this pen. They like weeding.

The Little Fulla and I weeded in and around most of the Vege Garden.

The too-big pile of wood is getting smaller and smaller as it gets cut up for the fire, leaving a brown patch in its wake.

The lawn is re-growing already, but it looks a lot more tidy than it did before. We still can’t mow some of the bits out the front as they’re too wet.

After mowing The Mound out the front, I did something that I was supposed to do rather a while ago: I moved the big bronze flax beside the gate. I’m not sure what I was thinking planting a Phormium tenax so close to the opening side of the gate. I mean, they only grow to 3m high and 3m wide… I think I was thinking that I could keep it under control, but no. Nooo. By the time I got around to digging it out, it had put on a ridiculous amount of growth. It was quite a mission digging it out by myself. I replanted it nearby, along the paddock fence, where it will have a bit more space to lollop about and hopefully not get too insane. I started weeding under the flaxes and hedges too, but there is a lot more to do around there.

The big Phormium tenax flax that was right beside the gate latch got dug out in a grand effort and moved to the far left. I will need another corokia plant to fill in the gap near the gate.

The big flax is at the back of this photo, complete with peeping steer in the neighbour’s paddock. You can see the little path where I dragged it. There is a lot more weeding to do out the front and I’m supposed to be getting The Mound prepared for growing giant pumpkins…

My pruning to-do list is enormous. Almost all the fruit trees need pruning of some description, well, the big ones anyway. I pruned the white-fleshed peach tree in The Orchard and sprayed copper fungicide on both peach trees, the two almond trees and the two apricot trees. I was supposed to do the first copper spray for the peach trees back in June, but the ‘r’ word kept getting in the way. I won’t be surprised if they get affected by peach leaf curl this season, but hopefully it won’t be too bad. I couldn’t spray the two Billington plum trees because they’re in flower at the moment and copper is toxic to pollinators like bees. Once the flowers are spent I will spray them.

The white-fleshed peach tree has been worked so high that I have to keep pruning it down to get the growth lower.

The ‘All In One’ almond has been sprayed with fungicide but I still need to prune it.

The mature ‘Billington’ plum tree is full of blooms.

I think we’re all looking forward to the plums that will follow these pretty white flowers.

The Little Fulla, The Husband and I have all been cleaning up the great grapefruit massacre. Most of the grapefruit fell within a short space of time, which, of course, was the away/busy patch, some of the fruit on the tree have been affected by brown patches, which I’m guessing are a bacterial thing thanks to all the ‘r’ word, and the wet ground in The Orchard compounded the problem into a carpet of rotting grapefruit. I hate chucking out so much fruit. We will have to get more onto it with using the grapefruit. I might need to spray it with a fungicide as well, but first, it needs pruning, as it is far too big and it is getting up in the face of the white-fleshed peach tree. The lemon and tangelo need more pruning too. They are going absolutely bonkers with vegetative growth and fruit. They have evidently enjoyed the mild winter.

I sowed my tomato, capsicum and chili seeds a couple of weeks ago, but the tomatoes had a problem. They germinated while I was away. In the hot water cupboard. I forgot to check them until the next afternoon following my return and most of them were stretched beyond usefulness. I was pretty annoyed with myself. If I could manage to get my seedlings out of the hot water cupboard when I was in labour, how could I fail any other time? It’s clear that I need to build a greenhouse of some description. I re-sowed all my tomato varieties but since the chillies and capsicums are slow to germinate they are ok. Indeed, they are germinating well on the dining room table as I write. I also have a tray of lettuce germinating.

This is NOT good. These are the stretched tomato seedlings that were left hankering for light in the hot water cupboard. They are no use because the fragile stems will collapse and/or break as the main stem and leaves start to grow from above the seed leaves.

The cayenne chillies and colour mix capsicums are germinating well. Hooray!

Saturday was the day of great work in the vege garden. The Great Vege Garden Expansion Plan is back underway! The Husband helped me to dig out the last old fence post by the garage and I cleared away other bits and pieces that had gathered in the area. And weeds. This allowed me to get busy flattening out the dirt and siting where the next raised beds will go. I am so pleased with the progress here. The pile of stones by the corner bed were spread out on the path and covered with dirt to raise the level there. The rest of the dirt and the compost remnants (and worms) that I dug out of the area by the garage were put into the Climbing Bed in front of the orchard. It had a good layer of old wood shavings from the chicken coop as a mulch, which I shoveled to the side before adding the dirt, then put the mulch back on top to protect the soil and suppress weeds. Now it is nice and full in preparation for tomatoes and cucumbers. A bunch of the other raised beds need to be replenished before planting too.

After looking like this for so long, this area got some attention.

The work site, complete with a small child’s earthmoving equipment. The fence post that was in front of the window got dug out.

This was a pretty sturdy fence post, with two sections of concrete.

All the bits and pieces were cleared away, the hole was filled in and a great deal of leveling was done by a Twiglet with a shovel. Now I can figure out how big to make the next two raised beds.

So much work happened this day.

The Climbing Bed got replenished with all the excess soil and compost from the work site and covered back over with the wood shavings mulch.

If that wasn’t enough, I also planted 41 onion seedlings into the vege garden yesterday, in the showers, because the ‘r’ word couldn’t stay away for too long now, could it? I also transplanted some meadowfoam (Limnanthes douglasii) into the roots (onions, carrots, etc.) bed. The meadowfoam self-seeded very well and has kept the vege garden with dashes of lush green throughout the winter. I am transplanting the plants around to where I want them now, although I have rather too many. They are for the pollinator insects to feed from when they flower. Speaking of flowers, I got a couple of burgundy pansies when I was at Bunnings, because it’s nice to have even just a little bit of colour around. Especially if it’s burgundy.

The garlic are the bigger plants in this photo. They are doing well so far. Meadowfoam plants have been transplanted along the plank at the top of the photo and there are four rows of little onion seedlings in among the bamboo poles.

Meadowfoam on the right and little onion seedlings on the left. The lush mound in the background is some of the self-seeded meadowfoam.

They may just be pansies, but there’s nothing like a little splash of burgundy.

And now we get to the bad part. There is an egg thief. Eggs have been going missing and the mystery is still unfolding. Stay tuned for the investigation.