Saffron

Saffron petals and stamen, zoom view.

My first saffron flower opened today!! 

Quince and seedballs

Harvested quinces waiting on the mushroom straw

Here's some quinces waiting to be taken up to the house after harvesting. They're lying on the straw I put down for the giant mushrooms to grow in. Anyone know some good quince recipes? I read that they keep well so all the unblemished ones can be boxed until I work out a good strategy to deal with them. Maybe I could make a tub full of quince paste... Maybe a bathtub full.

The picture underneath are the seedballs. I made them for the first time today to see if it would work with the clay at my place. And it did! The idea is that the seeds are 'planted' into the balls which means that the soil need not be tilled. Its a genius idea of Mananobu Fukuoka. He is the Mr Miyagi of permaculture.

The mix is 1 part seeds, 3 parts compost and 5 parts clay. Next time I'll add blended chilli to keep out the bugs. The compost is a bacterial innoculant which hopefully will aid to build the soil wherever the seedball lands.  I didn't need to add any water as the compost was already moist and the balls formed up easily in the cement mixer. Its an optional extra.

I chose barley as geese love gobbling barley. By the time it grows I may have got around to getting a flock of them! 

Seedballs drying in the sun after a tumultuous time in the cement mixer.

Barrow of spuds

I dug up these spuds yesterday, so I could keep them over winter. There are many different types of spuds in there.  I knew the forecast was for rain and wanted to get them out before they all got wet and muddy. I'll pack them in boxes between sheets of newspaper and keep them at the bottom of the pantry. There's more spuds in the garden still They'll have to wait until the next dry spell. And by the look of it today, its not coming for a while....

Honeydew melon

Sweet and delicious, look what grew in the hothouse! We cut it into segments and savoured every sweet juicy mouthful. I think there's one more of these in there, next year we will have to plant a whole lot more...

Muscovites

They arrived today in a grey and a red box. 4 ducks and a drake. He's the big one sitting there in the corner. He makes a great hissing sound, a bit like Smeagul. One of the ducks is brown and the others white. They all look like superheroes with their red masks. They've had their wings clipped as they all flew away from their previous owner (who eventually caught them again) except the drake who is too big to fly. Luckily I have a big enclosure for them in the cherry orchard and they can cruise around in there until they make it their home. I fed them a bunch of ripe plums and they were fully disinterested and went around, munching instead on the clover. 

Grover and Mrs perch in the apple tree for the night.

Introducing the new rooster Grover and his new Mrs! He's moved into the orchard with a Mrs. Its evening and they are perched in an apple tree. You can see Grover through the rooster shaped window in the apples. Mrs is harder to spot. We were walking all around the orchard enclosure looking for her and thought she'd left and gone to join Foghorn and his crew. Finally we saw her, sitting quietly next to Grover in the apple tree! You can see her there, rather better camouflaged than Grover.

I hope they are happy together. Grover certainly seems to have calmed down a lot and is less fussy than when he was in a little cage waiting for his enclosure to be finished. Mrs seems ok in there so far. There are so many plums for them to much on, and grubs in the apples and pears. Next year the fruit will be healthier if those chooks eat all the grubs...

The all new all recycled solar dehydrator!!!

It looks like a cross between a children's slide, a rocket launcher and an outside shower.  A big welcome to the solar dehydrator that we just built from all recycled materials based on the very informative videos on permies.com. Its for drying all the fruit which is coming thick and fast this time of year.

The dehydrator works in a counter-intuitive way. The sun facing, glass fronted solar collector heats the air and it rises up the sealed black gutters into the top of the box. Then the air becomes humidified and drops to the base of the box. While this is happening the mat-black chimney which enters at the base of the sealed box heats up in the sun and also makes the air rise; effectively sucking it out of the bottom of the box. So air rushes over the thinly sliced fruit and dries it out! 

Well, thats the theory! Its night time now so, sorry, can't test it yet. Plus, as the more astute of you will have noticed the door isn't on the back yet.... But when we were building it the metal at the back of the ramps and the chimney were getting hot in the sun.  The minstrel insists that we put an insect blocker on each end to prevent invasion and the Captain wants it sealed from the inside. As for me, I think insulating the ramps will make it work even better.... and of course a gutter to collect rain caught on the roof and glass...

All I can say now is, watch this space!!!