More rosellas, a raffle, garlic planting and a new supervisor....

The farm was back in full swing on Saturday with a variety of activities as you can see from the accompanying pictures. Lisa picked rosellas as the Rosella tea is selling well.

Anita introduced us to a new supervisor Ted who despite his stern appearance was most unobtrusive and diligently guarded the list of tasks for the day. I photographed our Easter raffle - an orange apron with an artful representation of Opal the big black hen (along with a bottle of Black Chook wine and Easter eggs)...

..and we ALL planted our 2011 crop of garlic. We put in two varieties - one the same as our 2010 crop and the other a very large variety that is sure to be popular.

As always, leaving at the end of an eventful day with a contented heart.

Change of Season

Coming from New Zealand where all 4 seasons are gloriously distinct (except perhaps summer), I often complain that Queensland has no seasons. However, there are seasons and seasons - and all of these are reflected in the farm and its current 'progress'.  There are seasons of extreme weather, and (violins please), there are the seasons of our lives. And the recent season of extreme weather in Ipswich - namely flooding - obviously led to another season of my life. That unwelcome season of getting my act together!

A lot of my stuff got spaced out during the flood and interacted most unpleasantly with mud. That involved tedious daily chores like cleaning and scrubbing - uninspiring at the best of times. Then of course, after you've cleaned what you can clean and thrown out what you can't, comes the rather more fun part of replacing it all. But, faced with the possible occurrence of another natural disaster, do you get less and better quality stuff or less, lesser quality stuff that is more expendable?*

Such philosophical (or are they practical?) questions, along with the mud-scrubbing thing have so consumed my time that I hadn't been out to the Farm for ages. So, it was with great excitement and anticipation that I returned last Saturday to see what effect the extreme weather season had had on the Farm.

Well, I should have known. As in life, some things had flourished - weeds, passion fruit vine - while other things - like saleable produce were (excuse the pun) very thin on the ground.

No silverbeet, No lettuce. None of our usual standby's. Basil going to seed. A handful of tomatoes here and there. But there was lemon grass, and aloe vera, and the paw paw orchard looked as though it couldn't wait to yield up fruit - in another season.

One thing there was in abundance however, was Rosellas. See pictures. So the current project is to pick them and dry them out for tea to sell at our roadside stall. With the consequence that now in these post-flood, post-mud days, I have the luxury of helping the farm at home by drying the rosella flowers in the bright but sporadic late March sunshine. And being at home is not just about getting things back together everyday. Thanks to rosellas, I can commence my new season of moving on.

So it is at the Farm. I weeded a garden bed on Saturday - hey, I almost combed it free of weeds, and then Anita made fine, straight furrows in my work of art and dropped in seeds. They should be ready in a few weeks, and by then, we'll be well into another season...the little veges, the herbs, me - all of us probably.

Rosella flowers modelled by Tess Lovely who should be a 'hand model'

Actually, I'm coming to realise you don't have to be hit over the head with a season - like Autumn in New Zealand, or a flood in Queensland - to recognise it. It's a subtly changing transformation sometimes and right now, I'm completely fine with that.

*Answer to everything: Move to higher ground!!










..

Rosella Magic

It's been really wet!

You know that it's been raining in Queensland don't you?  Well it has, to the point of flooding.  My house was flooded so I haven't been to the farm as much.  Janet's home was flooded too and she's busy repainting and recouping, so she hasn't been there much either.

However, on the day that I did manage to get there, here's what happened.

Lisa's car got stuck in the creek and had to be pulled out with the four wheel drive.  We  all got wet (again) when it started to rain (again) and eventually we just had to leave, all of us together so that we were there to help each other if we got stuck.

Before that though, John decided to give the chooks a bit of freedom so he put up an orange fence and let them into the paw paw grove.  Their claws are pretty strong though and they quickly started to damage the shallow paw paw roots and then the rain started again so they were shooed back into their pen in case we had to exit quickly.

Bid for freedom!

The drake has been a bit clumsy with his feet amongst the new ducklings, so he was exiled from the flock for a while.  He took up residence in the shade house, only moving to give us squishy presents in awkward places!

The clumsy drake

After some pretty heavy weeding (that nut grass is something else) I decided to take a rest and contemplate the world  above, while the sky was still blue!

I have done some work!  You can see the box of weeds! My head is resting on a bag of mulch.

Below is a view of the sky through the passion fruit vine.  If you look carefully you can see the green passion fruits.  In the background, on the left, is the duck house covered with shade cloth.  The larger green structure is the shade house where the drake is currently resting!

Lying on the ground, looking up through the vines.

Happy new year to you all.  We look forward to your company throughout the year.

cheers for now
Norid