Humble (re)Beginnings

Its time for a new chapter in the life of Adventures Not So Far North. Instead of traveling and having adventures, its now time to have adventures in agriculture! I hope it won't be as boring as that sounds...

So, an introduction.

The Place: my parents' farm, and hopefully a few other farms in New Zealand and abroad.

The People: me and my family, plus other colorful (or colourful, as they spell it here) characters from time to time.

The Reason: I want to learn more about agriculture, and now is the perfect time. Besides, and you'll believe me when you see the pictures, my parents can use all the help they can get!

The Blog....

Its now my fifth day on the farm, but it feels much longer. Time seems to go much more slowly here – the pace of life is incredibly unhurried, aided in large part by the isolation of the Farm; going anywhere means really going somewhere, so often there isn't enough of a reason to leave. There's so much to do here, anyway, that leaving is both unnecessary and uninteresting.

At this time of year its late spring in New Zealand, so its planting time (last weekend, Labor/Labour Day weekend, is traditionally when Kiwis put in their gardens for summer, after all danger of frost is past). In our garden, where my parents were away for three months, its weeding and then planting time. So far we've cleared and planted four beds, and today we'll plant the greenhouse. We've put in cucumbers, radishes, carrots, lettuce and peas from seed, and butternut squash and sweet potato transplants. The beds we've planted so far, however, are the easy ones. Next up are the vegetable beds that are nearly indistinguishable from the paths that run by them since everything is covered in weeds, weeds and more weeds. Including the dreaded Sheep Sorrel, the Scourge of our garden. The Scourge is actually quite charming looking, with little red seeds pods on the top of talk stalks, but one can't let oneself be fooled! Even the smallest root left in the ground will multiply. Most of the other weeds aren't nearly as bad, and some - like the gorgeous orange poppies, are even pleasant. Sometimes we even discover edible plants that we didn't know still existed, like the occasional onion or chard. Some 'weeds' are edible as well, like dandelion greens. You never know what you'll find in our sea of weeds, but the results are sometimes pleasant!

Enough about weeds. In addition to garden work we have actually left the farm (proving that my prior claims about never leaving false). This sunday was the Ngatimoti School Fair, the school that my sister and I briefly attended when we were eleven. My dad spent the Fair volunteering at the White Bait Fritters (a Kiwi specialty) booth, flipping fritters (and snacking on them) with our family friends Aamon and Wendy. Mum and I went with a few of her friends and puttered around in the beautiful spring weather, browsing books, chatting with neighbors and buying a few plants for the garden, most notably a dozen soybean transplants. Maybe we'll get to make our own tofu, who knows!

We also went to Nelson yesterday to catch the end of their Arts Festival, most importantly an Urban Art exhibit featuring - among others - the UK artist Banksy and US art collective Faile. The exhibit included work by Kiwi artists as well, including a mysterious individual who anonymously submitted his paintings re-working Kiwi classic images. The exhibition was excellent, ending while we were there with an auction for the art pieces displayed. It was an entertainingly ironic ending to an exhibition with a decidingly anti-consumerist message. The exhibit took place at Nelson's Foundry Park, which is a kind of recreation of Nelson's past using old buildings that have been brought to the site. An interesting place for an urban art exhibition, especially since there was quite a bit of yarn tagging around the property - my favorite was a lawnmower completely covered, although wagon wheels were also quite excellent (unfortunately we forgot the camera, or there would be pictures here).

Finally, here are some everyday-type adventures that I have had so far. On Friday, a swarm (I keep wanting to say flock) of bees flew up the hill and over me as I was gardening. Apparently this is a pretty special and sometimes much-desired event, since its the prime opportunity to capture the Queen and start a hive on your property. Going for a run, I saw the first trees in bloom, as well as lambs, calves and even baby alpacas! So cute (and growing more popular as farm animals around here, it seems). We cracked open a four-month old batch of sauerkraut yesterday, finding it entirely edible under the thin layer of pink scum on top - apparently scum is okay, mold is not.

Stay tuned for more adventures! Cheese-making, weed wacking, cardoon harvesting... its all in a days' work on the farm.