Shock to the system

The nice telco company sent me an unsolicited email the other day. Sometimes bad news arrives unasked for, yet turns up all the same. The words in the email: ‘what this may mean for you’, had a rather ominous tone, don’t you reckon? Turns out the nice company was increasing the monthly interweb connection plan costs from $90 to $110. It was a bold move on their part, and who knows, some people with less free time than myself, may pay the demanded increase.

Being the crafty and resourceful person that I am, gentle soothing words formed in my mind: The statement in the email should more properly have been written: What does this mean for you, nice telco provider? Everyone needs a long dead guide for the finer points of strategy. Sun Tzu, who penned the treatise: The Art of War, several millennia ago, is highly regarded in this here household. Taking a leaf of interpreted advice from the most astute, but also somewhat long ago deceased dude, Sandra and I visited the local nice telco bricks and mortar shop. Try the unexpected is a strategy Sun Tzu suggested! Trust me, previously I’d tried their software application to sort the problem out, and was totally bamboozled. My befuddled brain logged out of the service in a state of utter confusion.

They say that pride is the devil, and that may be true. In these days of a genuine cost of living crisis, pride was dumped by me long ago. Nowadays when confronted by such corporate extortion, blunt language seems the most successful strategy to date: I can’t pay this increase, what can we do here? You’d be amazed at the placating reception such words generate. It doesn’t need to be said aggressively, nor despondently either, just stick with a matter of fact approach, yeah!

The results achieved at the bricks and mortar shop, well they speak for themselves. Somehow with a bit of adjustment to the three various telco device plans, we’re now paying them $100 less per month. Like, what the f#$%? But it’s true. The entire story makes no sense to me whatsoever. If the nice telco hadn’t poked me with the price increase (for no additional services), I would never have looked further into this matter, and they’d be earning a $100 a month more.

A curious mind wonders how a household where both adults are working full time jobs, and with school age kids, can find the time to head into the nice telco shop to sort out this sort of billing weirdness? It’s possible that they’re simply paying the increases? Who can say, it’s all a bit of a mystery. Regular readers will recall that Sandra spent an hour on the phone to the nice insurance company a month or so ago to sort out a similar 60% price increase mess. After that incident, by default, all bills from large corporate entities are now treated with total suspicion, which they probably deserve.

There are many things nowadays which no longer make sense to me, and I was having this exact conversation with a friend the other day. He’s experiencing a different sort of pressure though. Long ago he was wise enough to purchase an old post WWII house on a large block of land near to a major railway station in an outer suburb. It was a bold and very good move, at the time.

All things change however, and nowadays he’s finding himself living in an ‘activity zone’, which is code word for easier development processes to get those larger blocks of land converted into multi-unit dwellings. The street he lives on is ever so slowly being converted into just that sort of multi-unit development environment. The increase in traffic is astounding, because just like here, few amenities are within walking distance. He recounted the poignant story of an old oak tree in the street being cut down so as to make room for a new development. Candidly I remarked that: “You’ll be moving up to the bush soon, dude!” He seemed unconvinced.

One of the things I really like about living up in this remote location, is that there are very few of the usually expected services provided for people living in cities. I love that challenge, and it’s a total myth that it’s cheaper to provide your own infrastructure. That’s simply not true. However, the thing with installing your own infrastructure is, other than maintenance and repairs, also not to forget the eventual replacement, there are no regular bills associated with the systems. So we don’t tend to see a lot of regular bills.

The few bills we do see up in the bush, are increasing at a chaotic rate. It’s really weird that trend, and I can’t even begin to imagine how other households are dealing with such economic pressures. It’s also very strange because the serious news reports suggest that inflation (a measurement of increasing prices over time) is falling. That story just doesn’t make any sense to me, especially given what the ever increasing bills are suggesting as to the underlying reality.

When living up in the bush though, there’s a very real risk that the pace of change in the city can be confronting and confounding. I’ve long acknowledged that risk, and so regularly travel into the city with the intention that it remains a familiar place. But sometimes, and it feels like this to me recently, that the pace of change in our society has been too much and too fast. At such times, there’s no harm in taking some time out for the systems there to catch up with all the changes.

The week has been warm and sunny, with one or two nights which got very close to freezing. There were even some patches of frost in the paddocks those mornings, but not where it matters, like in the orchards. Earlier in the week we spent a few hours breaking apart some boulders. Recently, we’d run out of rocks to use in the various projects, and breaking apart boulders is one way to obtain them.

A good collection of rocks was made

The smaller of the rocks were used as fill in a steel rock gabion cage. There was however not enough time that day to move the larger rocks to where they’ll be used on the new rock wall below the line of water tanks. A job for next week!

It’s a difficult time of year balancing the various activities, but we’re managing. There’s a lot of paid work to do. Plants explode with growth once the UV rating reaches ‘Very High’, which it is right now, so there’s heaps of farm maintenance activities. And growing plants, need feeding, lot’s of feeding. Here’s a photo of the various minerals which are getting added into the regular coffee grounds and distributed around the property.

All those soil mineral additives cost me $300. The coffee grounds at least were free

The above lot cost around $300 and should provide soil feed for the fruit trees and vegetables over the next month or so. Don’t believe the hype, it’s not cheap to produce food organically and maintain decent levels of soil minerals.

As well as feeding the several hundred fruit trees, at this time of year I also cut the grass away from the trunks using a line trimmer. It’s easy enough to do, and if you’re slow and careful, the bark around the trunk doesn’t get damaged.

The grass has been cut away from this apricot, and the soil has been fed

Observant readers will note that in the above image (to the right of the tree), the coffee grounds mixed up with all of the various minerals ends up as a nice sandy light brown mixture which soon disappears into the soil.

With several hundred fruit trees to do (and only one third of that job done), it’s a lot of work to clear the grass away from the trunks.

Fruit trees grow faster when the grass is removed from around their trunks

The four rows of potatoes continue to grow well. And I’m yet to water those plants. Each day, I’ll add a bit more soil around the plants so as to ‘hill them up’, as they call the process. I have no idea whether this system will produce good yields, but we’ll all find out sooner or later when they’re being harvested. Even the saved and replanted potatoes seem to be growing now.

Looks neat! Rows of hilled up potatoes

The lowest of the six rows in that area was planted out with radish seed. They’re doing well too, although this week I began thinning out the seedlings. I’m soft and it’s a painful process to thin out seedlings, but sometimes the needful must be done.

Japanese ginger at one end and a row of radishes

The sugar beets are in the next higher up row, and they seem to be growing at a slightly faster rate than the radishes. Again, it broke my heart to thin the seedlings, but sometimes a proper bad-as gardener just has to be ruthless.

Sugar beet seedlings were also thinned out this week

A careless parrot managed to break into a minor hole (now repaired) in the grape enclosure. That is a job for Dame Plum, who in this particular case lacked all interest in the subject. The timing was poor, it being just after breakfast and all, and so the canine job was bungled. The parrot was deliberately allowed to escape, and hopefully the awful experience will deter other parrots from trying a similar trick!

A rather foolish parrot meets a rather bored Kelpie

Anyway, the hole was repaired, and the weeds growing in the enclosure were also dealt with.

The weeds were blitzed in the grape enclosure

The soil in there is superb. And it all looks rather neat now!

Plant growth has gone crazy over the past week. The decision was made on Sunday to mow the orchards and paddocks. We’ve got two low centre of gravity ride on mowers, and used them to zip around the property neatening the place up.

The sunny orchard was mown
The shady orchard was also mown

It’s worthwhile noting that both Sandra and I both became bogged in very wet ground whilst mowing. The machine I’m using is the lighter of the two, and so I was able to physically move the beast out of the wet ground before Sandra even noticed. Sadly, when Sandra’s much heavier machine became later bogged in the same area, the matter had to be brought to my attention! We used the lighter ride on mower with a strong tow rope to pull Sandra’s machine out from where it had become stuck. It almost feels like I got away with not getting caught in a similar sticky situation!

The wet weather last week left some boggy ground, but the various ferns growing here love the conditions. The very large tree fern in particular is rapidly unfurling new fronds.

Tree Fern CamTM tells no lies

It’s good to see that there are heaps of insects around now doing whatever it is that they are doing. By comparison, the city is almost devoid of insects. It’s quite eerie and few people seem to notice or even comment upon this matter.

A lady bird hunts yummy insects

In breaking produce news: We now have a good supply of chives again. Those green spears are my favourite variety of the onion family, and are most excellent with fresh tomatoes, salt and pepper. Yum!

The chives look after themselves and return during the growing season, every year

Despite snow, hail and several frosts, the apricots seem to be hanging onto the trees. In earlier years the trees were not so tough.

Apricots are continuing to put on size and ripen

The peach tree blossoms pollinated despite the very wet weather last week, and now all trees have tiny fruit. Of course the damp conditions produced the usual curly leaf fungal dramas. That seems to happen every year, so I now don’t even bother with sprays, the leaves grow back just fine.

There are tiny peaches on many trees now

Apples are still producing blossoms, but some of the earlier varieties have tiny fruit.

Tiny little apples now hang off the trees

The earliest stone fruit of the lot are the cherries, and you have to be fast to harvest them, because the bird predation is unrelenting.

Lots of cherries on the tree

We grow a lot of different types of Asian and European pears, and most of them are quite tasty. The birds like them too, but the trees produce prolifically so there is plenty to share. Plus the birds do the useful work of thinning fruit from the trees.

This is a red variety of European Pear

This week’s video is on the soil mineral additives:

Onto the flowers:

It’s Rhodie time!
Bluebells are lovely and are also spreading about the property
There are lots of spider orchids at this time of year
This Sapphire Dragon tree really puts on a great show, and has never flowered before

The temperature outside now at about 10am is 10’C (50’F). So far for last year there has been 779.4mm (30.7 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 776.8mm (30.6 inches)