It was quite cold last night - we had a fair bit of snow. To our Auckland friends, complaining about the frost all I can say is “harden up!” :-)

Morning gave us a beautiful view of snow on the Tararua Ranges.

We had a very busy Sunday in the garden, carpeting over weeds and planting a bunch of new native trees. Here is a section of our native garden after I cut back the out of control weeds (yay spring flush).

Next we laid old wool carpet pattern side down (to protect the plants from the 70’s [...]

This is what 300 poplar stakes look like. We’ll be planting these around the farm over the next couple of weeks to provide shelter from wind and sun to the animals and pasture.

Our Tree Lucerne is bursting into flower. This will become a great source of Winter forage for the bees (we’ll be getting them in Spring). I’m establishing a nursery to grow a few hundred new Tree Lucerne each year as a nursery crop for all the native plantings we want to do. Tree Lucerne is [...]

We’ve got a little dip near a new track we’ve put in. It looked like it might collect water but this is the first time I’ve seen it wet. The lie of the land makes me think it’s an important collection point for run-off from about half the front bowl so we might have to [...]