Winter on the farm

Its well into winter now, having passed the shortest day. Its normally a quiet time on the farm, where we catch up on maintainence chores, and get ready for spring. A month ago Paul bought a ride on mower off Trade Me, and after some initial mechanical hiccups, it's now going great. He's been taking every opportunity to try it out, so our lawns are now manicured, and the vineyard is no longer a jungle.

Its actually quite speedy, and fun to ride like a little red dodgem car...

You may remember last winter I talked about milking sheep in the spring, to make gourmet sheep's cheese. Never got around to it, but it is all on for this spring. Paul and I built a milking stand out of wood we had lying around. We tried it out on a couple of the ewes yesterday, and to our amusement (and delight), they both jumped on, stuck their heads through and ate out of the bucket. I'll have to get some photos, as I know there are probably some sceptics out there!!

The vege garden is looking good, we haven't had too many frosts, so all the winter greens are growing (broad beans, broccoli, purple sprouting broccoli, carrots, cabbages and siver beet). Also looking forward to our first harvest of asparagus in the spring.

Broad beans - yum....

For the first time since we moved to the farm, the mandarin tree is producing sweet, juicy mandarins (instead of hard sour orange bullets). A result of 4 years of compost and fertiliser - and very satisfying.