You can tell it’s winter on the farm because the old and precious ponies get pampered in the stables at night. This is early on a sunny morning as I come to take them out to their paddock for the day. Daemar and Simone have it pretty easy if you ask me.

Here’s the pile of sawdust we’ll get through this winter. The reward for my shovelling sawdust in and poop out is a huge pile of compost for the gardens. They’re not really pooing in my clean stables, they are producing a valuable resource. That’s what I tell myself as I’m mucking out in the morning :-)

These ten beauties are our new beef calves. They are Angus Charolais cross and should prove to be both chunky and delicious in another 12 months or so.

I was hunting through the recipe books for potato recipes as we seem to be eating them for every other meal to get through the glut (it’s a tough job eating seasonally and local, but someone’s got to do it). Frittata caught my eye and as I worked my way throught it I realised we had every ingredient grown right here. Potatoes, sprouting broccoli, eggs, spring onion, parsley and even feta all from the farm. Here it is just before going into the oven. We’ve started measuring these meals in food metres, not miles.

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.

The abundance of spuds we harvested is now awaiting consumption in my very cold workshop. Don’t worry little spuds, you’ll be warmed up in a variety of delicious ways soon enough.

This meal is the epitome of what we’re striving for - 100% food self sufficiency. Lamb chops from our paddock with home made spicy tomato-chilli relish, our mashed potatoes and a helping of spaghetti squash. Washed down with my home-brew beer, it was a very satisfying meal on many levels.

Our weaner pigs have been growing pretty quickly so it was time for them to have some more permanent accommodation. Their first house was this hastily built hay bale house. It worked out really well with great insulation and it was very easy to build and expand. All we needed was some old bales of hay (courtesy of Nick and Louise down the road) and some baling twine for reinforcement.

When they started knocking it down (and without the help of a big bad wolf) I made them this house of…not sticks, but close…wood.

It’s a really simple design - just a lean-to on skids with a roof. We can tow it around with the quad bike as we move the pigs around their woodland enclosure. Best of all, I used left over timber from the stables fit-out and some old tin lying around, making it a zero cost project. Here are the wee porkers exploring their new home. Judging by the effort required to rouse them in the morning, I’d say they were pretty happy with it.

Karen’s planter pot system is working a treat with these broad beans ready to go in the garden. We thought we’d try planting a few before winter as we’d read a sneaky pre-winter bed can be up and producing much earlier in the Spring than starting from scratch then. We’ll see in a few months how this theory turns out in practice.

The wood range is well and truly part of the family after six months of continuous use. It has proven itself a winner for any cooking from the most delicate sponge or shortbread to roasts and bread. It probably gets used for bread more than anything come to think of it. My latest favourite bread is a crusty four seed loaf.

We are lucky to have neighbours with large properties (and trees). There always seem to be trees around to put away for winter firewood. This is one small piece of a tree I was able to get to. Luckily, most of the wood we collect has been down for some time so is well on the way to being well seasoned.

And here is the same tree a few hours later. It’s amazing how much wood you can get split in a morning! Those that know the size our float will appreciate just how much wood is there.