Categories: From the Farm This Week
Date: Oct 6, 2011
Title: 6 October 2011
The oak trees are busting buds and the heavy rain and thunder has started the grass. Every time it thunders and lightning it releases the natural nitrogen for the soil that the clover builds up. This was an exceptional storm and you could just about see the grass growing. It was so heavy the dams filled up and ran over, I was worried that they would wash away but they held. But the railway line did not. The water built up and washed all the gravel onto the road leaving the lines and sleepers swinging in one place. I have never seen that. Good job the line is mothballed as we would have had a derailment and a train in with the pigs. Would have made a great pig house.
We have a Help X volunteer and a woofer at the moment. A Dutch girl from Help X and a French girl. They are fitting in well and seem to like it on the farm. The French girl is following the rugby so we have given her a TV set as we all don't follow it. But i wont hold that against her she makes up for it.
O yes got told a good thing about volunteer workers, there are three kinds - Those who turn their sleeves up Those who turn their noses up and those that don't turn up at all.
Yes i can go with that. Woofing should be win.. win, good food and good lodging for a good work.
I have been rotary hoeing most days for a couple of hours and now have the spud patch ready, the girls have the seed sorted and when it stops raining we will plant the main crop. We will also get lots of other things in to keep us fed.
We had the chicken sale at the farmers market, sold about half of what we took. On the way in i thought a strop had come loose from the trailer when i stopped at Inglewood the left hand tyre had a hole in it. Well i say a hole it was right around in fact all the centre of the tyre was totally gone, it was just running on the sides. So i just drove to New Plymouth like that and it was fine. Samuel brought the spare up and we were all go.
While it has been raining i have been working on the shepherd hut in the workshop. Its a copy of a Dorset Shepherd hut on steel wheels with a curved roof (should have been finished a year ago).
So see ya Sunday