Stephen

It’s been warm, but very humid, which makes for some really nice lighting!

We’ve had an exciting few days. On Wednesday afternoon lightning struck the power pole at our front gate and one of our neighbour’s circuit breakers didn’t trip, but instead caught fire.

It looks like their oven fused on (it was glowing orange and then went bang) and overloaded the breaker, which was 20 years old and hadn’t been tested for a long time, so instead of tripping caught fire.

Their entire board is toast, including the meters, so the whole neighbourhood has pitched in to supply freezer space, water etc. Their insurance has been slow, but finally delivered a generator today, so we spent a couple of hours getting their water and sewerage systems back on, and now they just need the gas checked out and they’ll be mostly up and running.

My takeaway is that #community #resiliance is going to be more and more important with the #climate #disaster.

And also, test your circuit breakers regularly.

Sometimes I look out the window and am so grateful I live here!

The #goats are in a section that was previously a trial vegetable patch.

I had grown some potatoes and broad beans, but it’s too far from the house and I tended to forget it, plus it’s very rocky, so I am letting go back to grass. I sowed some cover grass here, and the goats are really enjoying that!

I grow both bush beans and climbing beans in a bed, one row of bush and one of climbers.

The bush beans fruit more or less all at once, so I get a huge pile of beans in about 10 days, then they’re done. We eat quite a lot, but I’ve also made 11 jars of dilly beans for later in the year when we want a crunchy dill-full bean to remind us of summer!

The climbing beans fruit as they grow, so they’ll keep fruiting for many weeks, until the weather turns cold.

The bush beans have finished fruiting, but they still have two important roles at our place.

First, the tops go to the #goats, who really love them. They’re still very green and full of fibre and protein.

Second the roots stay in the #soil and as they break down their little nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria in their roots will die and release the nitrogen into the soil.

Veggies are coming along nicely.

I’m doing a “two sisters” thing with the corn and beans and I was starting to worry I’d planted the beans too soon and they’d stop the corns’ tassels from opening up, but it looks like it’s working out.

I did a few odd jobs, including properly levelling the bird bath. The new veggie garden is coming along really well, those beans etc are growing in about 10cm of my compost over cardboard and the grass.

I’ve been doing lots of gardening this past week.

I picked 4kg of cucumbers and 1.5kg of green beans today! I’ve made 20 jars of dilly beans and about the same of various cucumber pickles and I’m starting to run out of jars.

The tomatoes, on the other hand, are coming along quite slowly, and so far I’ve only made a few small jars of salsa (as a test batch). I’m hoping the green tomatoes will all ripen soon so I get enough to bottle (as well as us eating as many as we can).

Otherwise, the popcorn is starting to cure on the plants, the sweet corn is starting to swell, the carrots are picking nicely, the zucchini continues to produce steadily and we’ve more leafy greens than anyone could possibly need, thanks to a me forgetting to thin them properly!

The pumpkins are spreading widely around but so far I’ve only seen a few maturing pumpkins.

After 70mm of rain yesterday, today is going to be #compost pile turning day. I have three big piles going presently (about 5m² together), so it’s going to be a good workout!

I dug up the first row of the potatoes which were spare seed potatoes planted in a bed that I am abandoning to grass (it’s in poor soil, and not in a great location). I did almost no preparation and I think I only watered them a couple of times.

I got enough new potatoes (about 1.5kg) for a *big* potato salad, so that’s lunch taken care of, and about 8kg of other potatoes, which is a pretty good return for the effort I put in.

I checked on the big turned #compost mound yesterday evening, and it has gone from 32ºC when I turned it back up to 48ºC! So that worked nicely :)

Came out to find a large branch had dropped off a gum near our outdoor fireplace. It was still in the night, so it just decided to fall.

It crushed one of the chairs we often sit in, which means that “project relocate the fireplace” is now a much higher priority.

This is why I dislike having gums anywhere near the house or sheds or where people like to hang out. There’s no sign of rot or disease at the break, it seems to have just got bored being up. It’s the second time this tree has lost a big branch, but the last time was during a gale, so I forgave that.

Anyway, that’s what I’m cleaning up this morning!

The #goats are finished with the grass. It took about two hours for them to eat it down to this!

It’s funny how none of the ancient books of wisdom and rules that various gods gave people ever said anything like “Don’t burn anything you dig up from below 10m down or you’ll really regret it”.

You’d think that’s the sort of rule that’d be important to mention if you were an all-knowing deity.

Two piles turned, this one is the biggest. It has lost about 1/3rd of its volume since I made it eight weeks ago. I had to add quite a lot more water since the middle layer had dried itself out. This is the heap that was above 70ºC a few weeks ago.

I’m hoping this will kick it back into gear, it had cooled down to only 45ºC.

We’ve been getting some beautiful sunsets lately.

In other news, we had the second driest month last month since 2019, I hope this is not La Niña turning off the rain already!

I got a photo of my neighbours’ electricity board post lightning and fire. I’ve blacked out the NMI, those blobs aren’t part of the damage.

They have power partly back now, after almost a month with generators and many extension cords.