Sandbox
Bitcoin in our neighbourhood![edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 3 November 2016 at 21:22 |
|---|
This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
|
 |
At last a bit of rain![edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 17 October 2016 at 19:58 |
|---|
This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
|
Finally had a bit of rain today, but Beth doesn't let that get in the way of her morning stroll! The plants are all looking very happy as well (the ones we can see at least) This is the view from our window this morning, and the state of the road to our house through the forest!
|
Ants and Raspberries[edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 9 October 2016 at 11:23 |
|---|
This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
|
| We thought we were going to have a good crop of German raspberries this year because the cutting we planted that we got from Arca Verde really took off! But then the leaf-cutter ants found them :-(
They completely decimated over half of them in a couple of days (along with the lemon tree). We found that PVC pipes with habanero oil on the sides stopped them so I protected the lemon tree and the most healthy raspberries, but there are too many stalks to protect them all, and they're a lot of work too maintain with oil, so we had to let the ants have the rest :-( Then a few days ago we had some unexpected visitors - Maneco's neighbours decided to come and see our place and introduce themselves which was nice :-) Just as they were leaving one of them noticed the PVC pipes and asked if we had ant trouble - he told us that ants don't like to cross sheep wool and to just wrap a piece around the bottom of each plant and it will last for ages with no maintenance required! So we went to Ziza's the next day to collect a bunch of old wool off the ground and gave it a try. It's true that they really don't like it, but they're incredibly persistent and still crossed over it. But I found that it's the small hairs in the wool that cause them trouble and that if you part the wool a lot to fluff it up it becomes too difficult for them to traverse. It seems to be working so far, I can see most of them carrying clover again now :-) 
The first photo shows the pipes, and you can also see the wool at the base of the un-piped ones. Notice how much leaves the piped raspberry on the right has? That's how they all were before the ants got them! The second photo shows a close up of the wool around the base of a raspberry, and the final one shows an ant that crossed over before I had started puffing them up more - even un-puffed you can see all the tiny strands getting in its way. Remember you can click on the pictures to see a large version. |
We HATE cows!!![edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 21 September 2016 at 12:38 |
|---|
This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
|
 I chased them out and they went back the way they'd come in - this time they'd pushed their way through the south-eastern gate. They've destroyed the entire new vege patch set up that we'd been working on to replace the last vege patch they destroyed! Beth was just starting to get some hope and inspiration back about planting and they've succeeded in destroying that too :-( She wants to get a gun to shoot them whenever they enter, and I feel like stopping being a vegetarian just so I can feel like I'm making a daily contribution to their suffering!!! It's a constant battle trying to keep those hideous bloated monstrosities off the land. It looks like we really need to put another fence around the planted area since the main fence is so long that they're likely to regularly find a problem along it somewhere no matter how well we try and maintain it. |
Just enough too much[edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 15 September 2016 at 19:36 |
|---|
This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
|
| You might remember my post a year or so ago entitled Too hot to handle! about my home made red Habanero sauce. Beth's Dad's just sent down a bunch more for us in the mail from his tree so I can make some more soon - I'll wear gloves this time!
When we went to Nova Petropolis a few weeks ago I found a commercial one which was pretty hot and had a nice flavour, but yesterday when we went to Caxias I found a new one which you can see in the right-hand picture below (my home-made one is on the left, and the one from Nova Petropolis in the middle). It's quite innocent-looking and it's only because I happened to recognise the name "Bhut Jolokia", which is one of the hottest kinds of chilli pepper in the world, that I even thought to give it a try. 
It turns out it's the hottest sauce I've ever found from a shop before, it's at least as hot as the one I made myself, but has a good flavour as well! You can do a search for "Bhut Jolokia" on YouTube to see what happens when people eat them pure, but it usually goes something like this: 
|
