Let the Harvest begin

Yummy!

The harvest has begun, zuccihin as far as the eye can see.  I've planted about 5 differnet heritage varieties, these are last nights harvest with many more to come over the next few weeks.  Unfortunatley the camera run out of life before I could get a picture opf the various egg plants we picked also.

The Cook has decided I should concerntrate on about four differnet veg just to get the whole process right before I branch out into other stuff.

It's pretty dry at the moment, not much rain to mention, but hopefully February will bring something!

This is not what you need on a Monday

So, I picked up my car from the panel beaters on Friday, the front end all fixed from my short, but deverstating interlude with a wombat.  I needed to pickup feed on Monday so I hooked up the trailer and headed off.  I got to within cooee of town when the truck began to swerve across the road flicking the trailer about and scarring the hell out of me.

I did notice one of my wheels passed me as I was trying to control the beast, also thought that this was not going to end well.  I finbally managed to pull the vehicle up off the road, 500m from where I hit teh wombat, I don't kow what the truck and dog loaded with 20tons of gravel that was right behind me thought - but he never slowed down. 

I need to go back to the spot and have a look around - maybe I'm being drawn to that spot by some kind of force that wants me to see something????

I then spent 6.5hrs awaiting a tow truck due to an adminsitrative error with my road side service, it was only 36 degs, nothing to get hot under the collar about.  It wasn't wasted - I did help a cuple change teh tyre on their trailer and they lent me thier phone to call the cook :)

I'm not sure why this came off, cold be something to do withthe wombat strike, somebody took it off and didbn;t put it back on propery during repairs, somebody trying to steal the tyre (brand new) I don;t know.  All I do know is that I'm in for another round with the insurance company from hell - QBE.

  

Forgot to mention we had a tornado - Valley View is 500m to the North of this - second one this year in our district

Getting a harvest

We've had a really good start with the garden this year, a great crop of garlic was harvested just before Christmas and we have a pile of onions we harvested at New Years.

freshly harvested garlic 

enough onions to make anybody cry

  We've still heaps in the garden, beans, beets,  cabbage, corn and a mix of various tomatoes, chillies, capsicum, kale, squash, pumpkins, eggplants and okra.  Probably other stuff but I've forgotten what else is there.  I'm putting in greens and lettuces this weekend in the vacant beds.

  The only failure in the veg department has been my potatoes, they've ended up with some fungal disease (blight) that has destroyed the whole crop.    

  I planted a few trees in late winter early spring as well.  So far I've been really happy with my Cider Apple trees, but the Chestnuts have been a disaster.  I've now lost half of the trees I planted and I'm not really sure why yet.  I know a couple got knocked by the hot winds, but some just didn't go form the outset.  I've also planted a hazel nut hedge which thankfully is going well so far having only lost one bush.

It looks messy but the weeds and clover help keep the soil moist and confuses pests

We've had a few snake drama's this summer.  Although we have a few of those sonic snake repellers we have had a huge brown snake causing problems around the place.  Flicka our white labrador was killed the other day and Little Pig as bitten and died just after Christmas.  I've since been chasing the snake from hiding spot to hiding spot - his days are numbered.

we have a new batch of Plymouth Rock Pullets growing up in the yard and soon they'll have a nicely renovated chicken coup to live in.  Our Guinea Fowl are somewhere sitting on eggs, this should be interesting, they're a bit loud at 5am in the morning - I cant imagine what the noise will be like with a dozen or more of them.

Like Queensland we are starting to get a little dry,  the river is getting low and there is not much chance of rain in the near future.  If you haven't seen it yet BOM have a new heat wave warning map - we are forecast for our first next week.