Hello everyone its been awhile since my last blog, in fact its been over a month but I have been quite busy with a lot of Winter work that needs to be finalised before Spring is upon us.  We have only received around 18 mls of rain this month but that was enough to top up our tanks and dam and also bring on a bit of winter green pick in the paddocks.   Ajax has been going along well with his halter training and we have also been leading Bert around to keep Ajax company during the training.

Hugelkultur Bed

The Hugelkultur Bed has been getting some more

Halloween Pumpkins

attention with us adding more branches and heaps of manure to make the bed much larger for this Spring.  The vine climbing structures have also come along with one completely finished and Halloween pumpkins already planted in the bed.

Pepino Flower

Trevor has been using the rotary hoe on a small space of ground that will be used to trial my Pepino bushes.  For anyone who doesn’t know what a Pepino is, they are an oval shaped, yellow with purple stripe fruit that can grow to the size of a softball.  In my personal opinion the fruit should be left to ripen on the bush which it is then full of juice and flavour.  The whole fruit, skin and all, is eaten and depending on your taste buds it is like a fruity cucumber or juicy pear.

Tagasaste

My Tagasaste plants are coming along extremely well and I have my fingers crossed that they get to the six month mark as they then should be right to survive.  I also have some more seedlings and will be planting them out in the next couple of weeks.

Blueberry Bush

My raspberry bush is still producing and the blueberries are also tasting beautiful.  I have dug up my  raspberry runners and have planted them along another fence line.

Ducasse Flower

The most exciting news for this month is that one of the bunches of bananas ( Pisang Ceylan variety) has ripened and taste beautiful.  As we don’t use any chemicals here on our foods it does take longer for the bananas to ripen as we also don’t gas them like the non – organic commercial banana farmers do.  Also, quite to our surprise, we have one of our banana trees from our other variety ( Ducasse ) flower with a huge bunch now showing. The Ducasse is also known as the sugar banana.

Jody Reeves – Genesis Novel Pastures and Agriculture

Some of the self ripening bananas