Autumn moods ...

It is good to be back in the Huon after an enforced month’s absence in Brisbane to teach my last course as a full-time academic. While I was away, autumn arrived and has brought with it some very nippy weather. It is not yet mid-April and already the fire has been called into action of an evening to ward off the chill. The weather has also brought spectacular mood changes with the views from the house, orchard and the paddocks subject to constant change.

Looking east from the apple orchard on successive mornings

They say that autumn is the season of plenty because the harvest starts to come in. This is proving to be the case for us this year. The apple orchard has continued to astonish us with the amount and quality of the fruit we are getting from trees that are not yet 2 years old. We have particularly liked our Freyburg apples, a cross between Golden Delicious and Cox’s Orange Pippin. It was developed in New Zealand in the 1930s and 1940s and was named after Lord Bernard Freyberg, the Governor-General of New Zealand from 1946 to 1952. I read that it is `a very nice apple, but perhaps not a great one’ and that because it is not readily available you have to grow your own, but that `it is a reliable tree and fairly easy to grow’! Talk about damning with faint praise!

In addition to the apples, we have had great output from our small temporary veggie patch. Our lettuce and spinach have been green staples for some months now, the broad beans have been super tasty, and we are getting some lovely heirloom tomatoes. We are currently waiting on harvesting beetroot, a second crop of potatoes (planted quite late but with great optimism in one of our compost bins) and some big `Red Kuri’ pumpkins.

Heirloom tomatoes

While I was away there was major progress on infrastructure projects. Our man with a digger finally arrived (after waiting for over a year) just as I was leaving for Brisbane. He did some excellent work cleaning fence lines, flattening our veggie patch, and generally moving huge rocks around in very creative ways. Then the fence man came and put up about 450 metres of wallaby-proof fencing. We are really pleased with the result. Much of the property we want to protect from the local fauna is now enclosed. Finally, a concreter came to lay the footings for our greenhouse. Said structure has subsequently arrived and is lying in the shed in flat packs awaiting construction. Cath handled all this activity with her usual aplomb while I was in Brisbane, so I felt a little superfluous when I arrived back.

Luckily for me, however, we soon got back into the swing of things. Our next task was to build the base for a new 22,000 litre water tank for the veggie patch. Cath channelled her inner water engineer to get the levels of the base correct – thanks to a clear plastic tube, water and some red food dye.

Getting the levels correct

Once we had the frame in place it became a simple equation of fetching fine crushed rock and 7mm gravel in about equal quantities to provide a solid, level base for the tank. The end result is pretty pleasing. 

Packing down the fine crushed rock

Pepper and Knut inspecting the final product

I need to end on a sad note. This morning as I walked up to feed the geese their breakfast, I disturbed two absolutely huge but magnificent wedge-tail eagles. They had taken Maverick, our gander, and all that remained was a pile of white feathers. The geese had recently discovered the pleasures of the neighbour's dam and made their way across the fields in the morning and back in the evening. This morning was particularly foggy and we can only surmise that the eagles took the geese unawares. An untimely demise, but also a timely reminder of the constant threat to all our animals posed by predators ...