The blues are trying their best but we’ve just not had enough sunshine. It’s looking like we’re still at least 10 days off the first crop. Watch this space.
Rain rain go away….
Close to finishing a cabin on the hill overlooking the Bay
We’ve been beavering away over the winter months to create a cabin experience on the edge of the Kaimai-Mamaku Forest. It has 360 views of the mountains, bush and ocean out past the harbour.
We’re putting the finishing touches to the kitchen set-up and few other treats like an outdoor fire and wrap around deck, so many nails to hammer.
The first crop of blueberries should be ready mid-December, we just need some dry weather!
We have our early fruiters looking good and we’ve dropped some bird netting over them to keep the birds away. The recent sunshine has been great to move them on but we have to pick them dry so the outlook isn’t great for the next week or so.
There are heaps of raspberries starting to turn now too so we should have those out around the same time as the blues:
Our Whitu’s are looking really good this year but they’re a month or so away from being ripe at the moment:
We will update our status on the website and Google Maps when berries are available, you can message us directly through our Google listing too, easy peasy.
Busy bees
The cold weather in October didn’t seem to slow the bees down too much. On the calm sunny days the extra daylight has meant the hives have grown and grown. They have found all the flowering Rewarewa out back as well as our blueberry out front. Happy days!
Plenty of water this autumn
it’s definitely been good weather for ducks and Labradors this autumn. Plenty of water in the rivers, saw some really high levels in July that stripped all the moss and plants off the big bolders in the main channel. Big rain.
Amazing what you find wandering the bush
Found some great looking fungus, this is the second blue coloured species we’ve found near the river. We found some Entoloma hochstetteri or werewere-kōkako last autumn. Always something cool to see when go slow enough to notice….
The blueberries have finally ripened
And the first raspberries are here!
We took some of the early raspberries to test and they’re so vibrant in colour and flavour, such a tough plant that produces so delicate fruit.
These are in punnets of 250 grammes at the roadside. Head up the drive to the caravan and say hi for any larger volumes. We have them kept cool and ready to go with 500 gramme biodegradable containers too. If you want more bring your own reusable container and we’ll happily fill them up!
The berries are coming soon!
Such an exciting time of year around the orchards. The bees have been super busy around the place and we’ve left parts of the tree orchard to grow wild with plenty of variety for them. The fruits of their labour are plain to see… so good.
Spring blossom all over the farm
Now the orchard trees are getting their leaves and blossom we can clearly see what each tree is. When we took on the farm we listened to what each one was then promptly forgot and didn’t make any notes…. thank you nature for the clues.
