Abundance in the country estate

Arriving after two weeks away, we are greeted by lush roses, the last of the gladioli, raspberries, strawberries, lavendar and loooooong green beans. 35cms in fact. Have a look at these! They are lush and delicious. Sliced longways with my bean slicer they are bean spagettis, and served hot with butter and pepper.

We have a big decision this weekend, to make wine or not. A couple of weekends ago, Richard, David and I did the first leaf pluck of the grapes so the morning sun can get onto the fruit. The affect of this over the next few months will be to increase the number of bricks (read sugar). We want lots of bricks! Virgil, our wine maker came to see the grapes. to our great delight he was positive and encouraging. We are doing OK and have enough grapes to make wine. Each bunch weights 250gms so there are several kilos to each vine. both Saturday and Sunday saw us up at the crack of dawn, pulling the leaves from the central part of the vine to get as much sun on the grapes as we can. The picking date has been set as the third week in April. the plan from here is to do one more spray of sulphur to stop powdery mildrew, and then next weekend we will put on the nets which David has ordered. the nets of course are to keep the birds off the grapes. as soon as the grapes begin to turn to colour, the birds are in, so nets on. apparently last season the birds became wiley and dived into the nets and pecked fruit madly. Our deterrent to this is to peg the nets out to the middle of the rows. We will see if it works. Now we need to find a name for our pinot noir! I am keen on Blackrock Rd, Richard's choice is Resurrection vineyard, and David is keeping quiet, so far. We have discovered we now need to buy 3 barrels to store the wine in between making and bottling which is usually around 8 months. The barrels costs around $1200 each so we can easily see why wine costs what it does. We are hoping a lot ours will taste fabulous. Neither David and I drink much red wine, so Richard will be our taste expert. We are feeling delighted that our long hours and hard work is beginning to show real results. It is deeply satisfying to see the grapes looking like grapes should and the vineyard almost looking like a vineyard! I tasted one of the tiny grapes which had gone purple and it tasted sweet and delicious, a good sign.
We are watering both the grapes for four hours a day. Grapes need 1900 hours of sunshine to ripen ready for harvest. So now its a race between us and the birds, whether we can get the nets on before they munch through our potential wine cellar!!

Here's a shot of David and Virgil deciding to make wine with our grapes!

Christmas greetings

This is a year of many firsts, including this e-letter which comes with warm greetings, wishing you a wonderful festive season, full of good friends and heartfelt times and more best wishes for a great year in 2009.

Our year began with the shearers quarters upgrade and including putting in a road and sewerage system. Planning for the future included a second water tank to gather water from the barn roof. Supervising from a distance proved one of the greatest challenges of my life as I discovered trades people promise the earth but deliver in their own time - eventually. However I survived with my hair intact, the completed cottage is gorgeous and we have hopes that paying guests will help us cover the costs of running the farm. Most of the year ‘the farm’ has been running us ragged, however we are now proud owners of a tractor and a sprayer which can apply nutrients into the olive trees, deal to the dreaded peacock spot which has been plaguing the olives, and keep botrytis at bay with the grapes. Our vines are beginning to look like regular vines, and we raced in August to put in a frost system and a second pump for the well. David and his team at work, created magic and when the temperature drops to 2 degrees the water sprayers go on. All the leaves and buds are covered with a fine mist which then freezes over. The water turns off when the temperature is back up to 10 degrees again, and the ice is rinsed off, leaving the buds intact and not burned by the frost. Experimenting before we put this system in had me up one morning at 2am reading outside temperatures at ground level and 10metres up. Yes, devotion - or madness?

We are home gardeners now and self sufficient in lettuces, strawberries, onions, beans, tomatoes, herbs, rhubarb, roses and lavender. Masterton District Council has us recycling so we keep bottles, paper, plastic and inorganic stuff in separate bins and head off to the recycling centre once a month. We both overdosed on mowing this year, with the incessant rain, we could almost see the grass growing, and the trees and vines slowly disappearing. Now its summer, everything has slowed down again, and we are about to as well, at last. We are almost organic, and are rewarded by tons of ladybirds this year. We failed organic under the vines and just had to spray as we couldn’t keep up with the fast growing grass.

Our box hedges are flourishing, including, at last, the ones in the apartment garden. Dianne Hall helped us to re-pot them midyear and they are now a luscious green and growing profusely. This year I made a garden scene, inspired by Paul Bangay, outside our bedroom doors.

I have loved my work this year and found deep satisfaction as executive coach to a number of private and public sector leaders. Next year I plan to expand this work, and I am publishing a small book on moving from silos to collaboration in organisations. David has had his share of dramas and at last the baby identification system designed for Wellington Hospital is being installed on time. Phew. David’s business goes from strength to strength and he has a wonderful team of creative and productive people.

Our life has been governed by a series of lists: here’s one from August 22^nd: Plant the courtyard garden around the Shearers Quarters, put in the frost system, buy the sprayer off trademe, begin the spray regime for the olives, get the gas fire working in the Shearers quarters! (All have been ticked off). Summer list is: swim in the river, drink lots of wine, laugh a great deal, have time with friends!!

Greatest thrills this year has been the growing of a white Romance rose hedge from cuttings rose guru Anne Erwin taught me to do, eating plump strawberries covered by a netting cage Mum made last year, pouring leccino oil over everything from Paul’s olives that Jane and I picked and had pressed mid year, and of course the fab shearers quarters. One of the biggest challenges has been to reconcile our city life with our country life: moving between bright lights, cafes and consultations, to warm winds, shining stars and rustling trees, from meetings to mowing, not an easy transition at times.

David’s daughter Pirimia has been living with us since August as she makes her transition from Auckland to Wellington and from portfolio work to being employed in the public sector. Peter joined us for three months too when he was in Wellington making the docu-drama ‘Until proven innocent’, the David Doherty story, which is compelling. We saw it the other night and fully recommend you see it. It will be shown on TVNZ. So we have had many family dinners and good times.

In between all of this, David and I went to a couple of painting workshops with neighbour and artist Jane Sinclair and we are both thrilled with the results. The experience is frustrating for most of the day and yet in the last hour something wonderful emerges on the canvas along with great feelings of accomplishment.

Frost and cold and wet and hail

We have discovered we are in a frost valley. And...the frost system we slaved to put in works!!! Woken by the vintners instinct, David had already gone out to see what was happening at 5am. The spray system was working. All the leaves and buds were covered in ice and water dripping off them. It is meant to be like that! At 5.30am Dennis (neighbour and irrigation guru) rang to let us know to leave the system on until all the ice had melted off and not leave the melting process to the sun, as this can damage the fruit and leaves. So David heads out again, this time with the camera! David has set the system up so the water flippers come on when the temperature is 2 degrees, and goes off when it is back up at 4 degrees. However we are learning it is not so much the temperature, more to know when all the ice has been washed off. We are keeping an eye on this today to see how that works. We had a few clues that it may be a frosty night. Hail had poured down for several minutes during the day. I rushed out and put a foil blanket on the citrus trees in the courtyard, hoping to save them. It worked! We are learning more on the perilous life of being horticulturalists!

The earth moved

Labour weekend and it is two years since we bought the farm! And we have done a lot since then, I know as I can feel quite a bit of it in my bones! George and Marianne were with us for the weekend, and bought our dinner with them on the first night. They had dived for these. How amazing it is living in New Zealand. We began with squid, light fried in butter with chilli, corriander, spring onion and fish sauce (from Cuisine), then the beautiful crayfish were served with boiled potatoes, mint and butter and rocket with avocado and our oil of course, simply divine. Next day we headed into Greytown for breakfast, and Marianne and I bought the table for the bathroom in the shearers quarters, it was good to have a look around. Greytown is fantastic for shoppers! Next day dawned sunny after two cold wet and windy days. We moved earth. To do this George and David had to put the front end loader onto the tractor. All new. Two huge piles of earth left over from the road and water being put into the shearers quarters had been gathering heavyduty weeds. So I weed-eated the main weeds, David shifted huge scoups of earth. George was chief scout finding the sites to dump the earth, Marianne raked it out, and I dug more weeds out. Late in the afternoon Marianne took on the tractor and precision work was evident. She moved earth, smoothing over the area where the pile had been with fine and delicate movements of the front end loader. Lunch was mid afternoon and divine. George and Marianne had bought paua with them, so this was fined sliced and cooked with butter garlic and onion. And of course a few pinot gris and the odd beer here and there. It was a great weekend with good friends.

Weekend country retreat:

Attractive one bedroom cottage in Masterton, the heart of the Wairarapa.

A delightful cottage to quietly relax and recharge your batteries; a tranquil retreat to read, and to discover the attractive environs of Masterton, Carterton, Greytown and Martinborough. Simply stunning!!

$165 including gst per night, breakfast included. Sleeps 1-2 people, two nights minimum. To book email dianaj@orgdev.co.nz

Furnished french style with beautiful linen, claw-foot bath, warmed floors, open gas fire, french doors opening to a courtyard and garden planted in box trees, lavenders, red poppies and rosemary.

You can walk to the Ruamahunga river at the back of the property, and discover in nearby Masterton, cafes, Aratoi art gallery, Moore Wilson’s fresh market, Saturday farmers market, Sunday street market, Henley Lake and Queen Elizabeth park. Greytown, Gladstone and Martinborough are the nearby towns.

The restoration

Built in 1924, this cottage has been lovingly restored and now includes a luxurious bathroom and easy to use kitchen. The rimu walls have been rubbed with linseed oil and the wooden floors polished. The living room and bedroom remain original.

The lean-to was demolished and rebuilt on the existing footprint and includes a new bathroom and well-equipped kitchen.

History of the building

The original shearers’ quarters consisted of a kitchen, laundry, dining room, bathroom, and four bedrooms off the porch. In its recent history, the building was cut in half and one half taken to a neighbouring property where it is also used for

accommodation. In the summer evenings, shearers lay in their bunks and wrote their names on the walls. Some worked out their wages, others left messages. In the 1950’s the walls were used to write telephone numbers of local contractors. Many of these notes remain on the walls.

Over the years, family and friends slept in this building. Abandoned in early 2000’s the building became a haven for birds. The current owners bought the property in 2006 and restored the building as inviting accommodation. Bordering a working olive grove and vines, there is a private courtyard and, views of the Tararua ranges, an ideal haven from which to explore the Wairarapa.

Putting in the frost protection system

The race is on. Will we get the frost system in before the spring frost hit? We have a new approach. The fan system, while great in our expriments, was drawing down frozen air, even from 10m up, the neighbours complained, and asked did we have resource consent. They hated the orange tube soaring skyward to draw the air down. So down it came.

Now we have kms of 19mm pipe. We clip this to the lower wire of the vines, at 1m intervals, hard on our fingers. The trickiest part is unravelling the pipes, it is so easy to bend and fold in half and then the pipe is stuffed. We have dug a trench for the 30mm pipe and the 19mm pipes go for 3/4 of the row and then we join 13mm pipes off that. This weekend, Jeanette came over from Raumati and lay out all the flipper pipes at each post, then helped me clip the 19mm pipes to the wire. Backbreaking stuff, bending down every paced step to clip the pipe to the wire, standing, taking a step and then puting the clips on the wire. Close to the ground work, and remembering to bend at the knees is a challenge. We completed five rows, three more than we thought we would.

Billie and Tamai pictures from their July visit

Billie and Tamai came to the farm in July. We swan in the pool, whizzed down teh long and twisting slide, made a swing under the gum tree, played at Queen Elizabeth Park and had heaps of spa's.

These pics are from bath time in the bucket

















And Tamai took to the farm bike like a duck to water.