One Year Anniversary

Its hard to believe that we have been living here permanently for just over a year now. We arrived at the property late on the 26th of July, just a breath ahead of the movers. Needless to say chaos ruled, particularly since we had to move all our stuff with the trailer as the semi could not make it up the grass driveway. Thankfully out little girl slept through that episode.

The food producing plants on the property at this time was rather poor (as can be seen from the first photo). Basically we had some pawpaw and strawberry plants bearing fruit. Sure we had a lemon tree, a Hickson mandarin tree, a Navalena orange tree, and a fig tree, but it was either out of season or there was no fruit (due to the age of the citrus trees or poor site selection in the case of lemon tree).

Over the course of the year we have made some serious inroads into increasing our food production capabilities quite significantly. I initially focused most of my efforts towards creating veggie beds. This was soon followed by additional fruit producing plants, such as the two banana areas.

At present we are self sufficient in lettuce, potatoes, snow peas, silver beet, mandarins, sweet potatoes, passionfruit, pumpkins, tomatoes, rhubarb, Asian greens, eggs, and a number of herbs. In fact, there is plenty of excess for some of the items allowing us to sell it to other members of the Samford Local Growers group.

It is also worth mentioning that there is a small quantity of produce such as oranges and raspberries. But certainly not enough to be deemed as self-sufficient at this stage. And if our chooks leave the strawberries alone, who knows maybe there will be enough excess for some strawberry jam.

During the past year, we have planted out a significant portion of the citrus orchard, although there is still more planting space. In a couple of years we will have excess citrus fruit, which is a problem I am looking forward to having. Our banana trees should produce heaps of produce this coming season. We have four different varieties, so I am keen to do a taste test comparison.

There are also heaps of other fruits, gingers, and other delights (such as Yacon or Jerusalem artichoke) which I am looking forward to. I have certainly learned that there is nothing as sweet as the taste of sustainable harvest, not to mention tasting new types of delicious harvest for the first time.