Minutes before commencing the weekly blog essay, Ollie and I headed outdoors so he could do his ablutions. It’s a particularly dark and clear evening, which makes for good star gazing. There’s something out there in the inky blackness of the orchard. The big dog is pulling on his lead and that’s communication in its simplest form. Usually the Bull Arab is a pleasure to walk, unlike his two ratbag friends, love ’em. An LED torch provides handy illumination. Shines a light on all manner of things. And what do we have here? A mid-sized wombat glaring back at the two of us, with a surly expression which can only convey the idea: “What!”
Except for a few choice crops like the grapes, berries and citrus, the place is open wide to the wildlife. Possibly an unwise invitation. Earlier in the year, the hugest Brush tail possum I’d ever seen (who can forget Kuato?), munched his way through several hundred kiwi fruit. Basically the entire crop. It took him a while to achieve that feat. As winter arrived, tree cover declined, and the owls finally took the pesky critter out, and simply ate the greedy possum. Can’t say that I shed a tear for the sturdy marsupial.
The owls have more or less been hanging around the orchards and garden all winter. Rats are nervous. Rabbits have disappeared. The other evening I spotted a much smaller ring tail possum, who was observed climbing through a still deciduous fruit tree. Probably consuming the buds, the cheeky scamp. The critter looked nervous as well it should be, because nearby a Powerful Owl was performing a staccato hooting sound nearby. The average person would have better odds for survival against fast moving zombies, than that exposed marsupial.
It’s always interesting to learn what eats what here. Over many long years, we’re attempting to work out some sort of rough balance. That means food for us, as well as all of the other critters here. That sweet spot is always changing, so it’s hard to get a fix upon. The complicated aspect is that as the soils become more fertile and the volume of edible produce increases, we enjoy the company of a more diverse collection of wildlife. I guess not much land around here has had 18 years of coffee grounds, plus all the rest, applied to the soils. The feeding is good.
Occasionally strange events do occur. Inexplicable things. For some reason the bee colony appears to have died during the winter. The colony was doing well last summer, but I’ve seen no activity with them for almost two weeks now. They went in to the cold season with plenty of honey stores. However, they are all now deader than a dead dingoes bits, as I’ve heard said long ago. A real mystery there. That’ll be it for me with bees, and baring a miracle, the hive will soon be burned off. No point living surrounded by a cemetery of failed projects.
About two, or maybe three years ago now, some numpty imported honey bees carrying the varroa mite into Australia. They would have known of the inherent risks of that act, but still they did it. The mites clearly spread, although I don’t know whether that is the case with our hive. It might be, although there are plenty of other possible reasons. The thing is, the treatment for mites involves applying miticides (mite poison) to hives is not my thing, so I’ll wait this episode out on the sidelines. I believe the chemicals are either formic acid, or oxalic acid, both of which are some nasty customers. Based on what I’ve read, smaller colonies of bees which swarm more regularly, are about the best natural solution to the mites as it breaks the life cycle of the pests, and that sounds to me like small wild colonies of bees.
Earlier today in the warm-ish spring sunshine, I headed down into the orchard just to take a look and see what is pollinating early blossoms. After all, it’s a good food source for insects and we’re still very much in the early part of the growing season. Usually there aren’t that many insects around. Here’s what I observed in only a few minutes.
The greatest number of insects were by far the European honey bees, but it’s heartening that they weren’t alone. Other insects were also out and about enjoying the spring flower food bounty. Even the tiny little red bodied native bees were harvesting from the blossoms as well. They’re just super hard to take photographs of because they move too fast from one flower to the next, flitting about the various plants offerings.
Longer term, the wild colonies of bees will also have troubles with the mites for sure, and that may already be happening. But the ones which make it through that challenge and adapt through sheer good luck, they’ll be the survivors. And the early spring plants here, well, after having walked around today just observing the flowers, I’m now less troubled about what is going to pollinate the fruit trees once the bees eventually succumb.
Every year, and around this time, vast numbers of hives are trucked around the country so as to pollinate massive commercial mono culture orchards and fields. Honey, which I really enjoy, is a by-product of those efforts. Even with the mite risk, I’ve no doubts that the bee-keepers will valiantly struggle on. That’s been the case in other parts of the world for decades now. A lot of big agriculture depends upon that humble insect and their keepers.
However, when great risks are faced, having a plan B is not a bad idea. The other insects observed here today are there because of the deliberate planting of diverse plants and habitat. Commercial orchards and fields don’t look like that. But it’s not all fun and easy times for me though. Sometimes the strategy doesn’t work, like when Kuato the super chunky brush tail possum ate all the kiwi fruit. The thing is, nobody really knows the future, and maybe the bee-keepers may even win the war against the mites. Given the uncertainty of the situation, it’s probably not a bad idea to have a tested plan B, just in case.
Earlier the week was quite wet and cold. One afternoon, we constructed a new steel rock gabion cage. It’s a good job to do when you only have a couple of hours break from one rain event to the next. Weather radars are an awesome technology for timing the arrival of storms.
The steel cage was placed in a long double height row of gabions. Completing that second row now only requires two more. That’s a job for the future.
Those cages are a good use of all the smaller and oddly shaped rocks we’re finding about the property. However, other projects around here require larger and sturdier rocks, and those have to be split from boulders. We broke apart a few boulders this week which produced about ten usefully sized large rocks. Unfortunately, the Makita rotary hammer drill decided to die. Smoke oozing from within the motor casing is probably a bad thing. There are a couple of repair videos found on the interweb, and when I have nothing else to occupy a few hours, I’ll dismantle the machine and see whether it can be fixed – and at what cost. In the meantime, we splashed some mad cash for a replacement drill.
One project which will require lots of large rocks, is the extension of the path up above the house overflow water tank. Previously the path ended up at a dead end with heaps of thick woody Echium plants in the way. The water pipes were all dangerously exposed and at risk of being broken. The plan is to both widen and extend the path, whilst creating a proper spillway on the off chance that the inlet filter on the water tank fails during a big storm, which can happen. Here’s what the project looked like last week:
A day was spent removing the many Agapanthus plants which can be seen in the above image to Ollie’s left hand side. About 20ft of plants were dug up, and that required the electric jackhammer.
The path extension will end up connecting to the large path where the large yellow power wheelbarrow can be seen positioned in the above photo. An enormous quantity of material was removed that day, and it was all used as organic matter to fill up two large holes discovered in the loggers mess area. Presumably the holes were created when bulldozers pulled out trees, roots and all, leaving behind deep depressions in the soil.
By the end of the day, a long line of Agapanthus had been dug up.
In order to extend the path which runs along the top side of the water tank, and also to fix a few issues in that large garden bed, we needed soil from somewhere. The intention is to dig up a large flat site next to the water tank, and those excavations will provide all the soil we need. An old timer earth moving bloke once said to me: “You always have less soil than you think you do!” Wise words. A couple of hours were spent digging and moving soil up the hill so that the pipes can eventually be buried and the path widened. It’s a start on the project.
The shape of the path, garden bed and the spillway, are slowly beginning to reveal themselves.
Some of the storms earlier in the week were feral windy. At one point during a particularly strong gust loud crack, rip and the smoosh sounds were heard. Didn’t see where the incident occurred, and it would be foolish to venture out in those conditions merely to satisfy one’s curiosity. Wouldn’t have wanted to be underneath that large tree when it crashed back to Earth.
This week’s video is on the subject as to why it is a bad idea to camp underneath Eucalyptus trees.
In my spare time (which is rare), I take the chainsaw out and slowly convert such fallen trees into firewood discs. They’ll slowly dry off in that condition – even if left out in the weather – and eventually we’ll split them into firewood logs. Depending on where the location of the cutting, the discs may have to be moved to a sunnier location. The sun does all of the drying work. The most recent processing of a downed tree was in a shady spot, which is no good for drying purposes, and so all of the discs will have to be laboriously moved.
In breaking produce news:
The many trees in the sunnier orchard are beginning to break their dormancy. Many of them have produced blossoms. Hope the windy conditions recently don’t blow the blossoms onto the ground.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 10am is 14’C (57’F). So far for this year there has been 575.6mm (22.7 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 568.6mm (22.4 inches)