How Time Passes

I have been on holidays for the past week and definitely did not get everything done I wanted, but it was one of the greatest weeks I have had, spending time with the family (the kids were on school hols as well). One of the downers was as I am in the middle of a project at work so I had to log in for a few hours each day. My eldest daughter Lynsey also got out of the house for a few days, spending time at friends houses.

So what did we do this week? Well we planted two apple tress this week. Just some standard varieties: PInk Lady and Golden Delicious. We plan on getting 4 apple trees but the last two will be of heritage nature and hopefully one of them good for make apple cider.

I’m off to catch the XPT back to Sydney now (suppose to leave at 4pm, but now its running late so 6.30pm) – I will finish updating later.

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Six Months ON

Well just over 6 months, and what have we discovered. Well to start I have not accomplished everything I would have liked to by now. We still have our house in St Peters and I am still working full time. But the big question are we happy? And the answer has to undeniably YES.

The kids seem to have settled into school here OK and both have a nice set of friends, Lee Ann has lucked out on a new contract and working three days per week, that allows 2 days to get the house in order and now we hit the acre on the weekend.

I am still traveling between work on the XPT, it does now mean that I am going thru a book a week (haven’t done that for a long time).

One thing that I am hoping to change is I am trying to get on my bike more often. You see I am a mad bike nut (bicycle). I love riding my bike. I am currently VP of Bicycle NSW and Pres of BikeSydney and since being down here I have been on my bike twice to the shops – not good enough, so over the past week I have been on the bike at least three times into town and one bike ride on some dirt roads around town. I have to say how unfit I am now.

The other thing that goes with riding less is that we have been driving more. One of the reasons that we bought this piece of land is due to the fact it is less than 2kms to town. When living in Sydney the car gathered cobwebs and was only driven once every few weeks. In 10 years it had only done 90000 kms. Here it seems we are always in the car, even for the smallest item. Well no more.

So far I have the three vege patchs, hopefully vege patch number 4 in a weeks or two. One crop that does look like won’t be as good as I thought is the garlic, I am not sure how many cloves I will end up, but I was expecting 50- 60, now it will be between 10 -15 cloves.

Another thing is that Lee Ann and I have discovered we find it hard to do the same task for more than two hours, whether it be building rock logs or digging a trench.

So the next six months, what to expect? Well I hope to have our St Peters home rented out in a few months, just doing some repairs and patch ups at present then onto the rental market. That should free up some cash and I can start planning the garage and the chicken coup/run.

As far as the vege patches hopefully have at least another 6 in before Spring hits – we really want to become semi self sufficient by then.

We have now seen two seasons here and so far only a small surprise with the location of the winter sun, Lynsey’s room gets no direct sun in the winter so it is the coldest room, not sure what we will do about that. Anyway to the next 6 months.

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Other half of the plot

Well, in the other half of bed three (which has the garlic) I planted two rows on onions. These were purchased from diggers.com.au – they were Onion Creamgold and Heirloom Onion Red, so hopefully we will have a harvest of onions in approx 3 months. Also now 6 garlic have sprouted.

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Refresh Vege Patch 1

Well it has been a few weeks since the update, the reason is that I have been in Sydney for that time. I have to say it felt good coming home to the family and house on Thursday nite. Anyway as winter is approaching and I thought I would revitalise vege patch 1. This was the patch that gave use the kg’s of zucchini, a few lettuce and the corn never really developed. So today we removed it all, putting the old plants into the compost.

So to revitalise the patch I added a bag of mushroom compost and a bag of sheep manure, plus I dug in the old lucerne that was on top over the last of the summer months.

Vege patch 2 is going well with everything sprouting, except only one of the red cabbage came up. Not sure why.

In bed 3 some of the garlic has started to sprout (5 so far) hopefully we will have a few more over the next few days/weeks.

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Olives in the Ground

Well this weekend we purchased our first fruit producing trees, olives (purchased three). In fact they are Olive Frantoio. This is a cool climate olive and one that our nursery has growing on their property. Never undervalue a good local nursery for variety of plants that will grow in your area.

This months ABC Organic Gardening magazine had a piece on olives and here is what they say about this variety.

“This olive is often sold as Paragon and has small to medium fruit and very high oil yields. It is self-fertile but, like Correggiolo, yields may increase with cross pollination from varieties like Leccino. Very resistant to extreme cold.”

Anyway we have planted these up towards the front fence. First we cleared away some of the grass and weeds.

Then we dug the hole.

We used newspaper to suppress the weeds

And finally mulched around the tree

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