First of the Season's Sowing

First sowing for the coming Summer. We've been experiencing a very early warm spell, so, despite, a day or two of cold and (hopefully) wet forecast, I've taken a chance on an extra-early sowing of Chillis and Eggplants. Since I'll be in Cape Town for two weeks starting next week, I'll miss my usual Chilli/Eggplant/Tomato sowing window (3rd week in Aug.) With a bit of luck the weather will stay warm enough to get this batch going.

In any case I'll sow again in about 3 weeks' time when I return. For this sowing I've taken no risks, and only sown varieties that I have plenty of seed stock. Others - Rocoto Amarillo, Tobascos, Corno di Toro, Aji Dulce and a few more - where I only have a very few seeds have been held back for later planting in warmer weather.

Every year I swear that I will build a greenhouse, but it hasn't happened yet.

Tomato sowing next...

Early Planning for Summer

Time for me to get busy preparing for the coming Summer. Yes, I do know that it's still the middle of Winter.

I have some contract (software) architecture & design work over the next few months which will see me spending quite a bit of time in Cape Town, starting in mid-August, so if I don't get off my duff and start preparing veggie beds now, I'm going to be hopelessly behind schedule by the time October comes around. The only real problem I face is a huge shortage of compost! There simply hasn't been the water for making compost from the stable-sweepings I usually use.

As it is I'm going to run a week or so late with seed-sowing, but it shouldn't do any real harm. As ever we'll be optimistic over rain this coming Summer, but I really must try and concentrate my efforts on fewer varieties of Chillis and Tomatoes, and on increasing the sheer volumes. Still, it's so great to be getting my hands back into the ground! I can't believe how much I've been missing the dirt under my nails.

Need I say that the veggie garden has been badly neglected, so it is a jungle of weeds. I wish the rotovator was working, then I'd make short work of clearing the beds. Perhaps we'll be able to spare enough money for a new rotovator motor if things go well. The old one bent something vital in the engine, and, given that the motor is a foreign make with no local agents, the cost of repair is up there in the same region as an entirely new motor. When we visited the Barley Breeding Institute, I noticed that they use the same make of rotovator as I have (BCS), and asked them where they source parts. The chap there laughed and said, "Oh no! We replace the motors as soon as we get the machine. The motors they come with are useless. Fine machines otherwise, though!" I can't help but agree.

We're also planning on acquiring a couple of Piggies. Brother-in-law has a mild-tempered boar who has been quite (cough) busy... and they receive a piglet from each litter he's responsible for. They've offered to let us have some, and I am very keen. I just don't know that keeping only two sows justifies the keeping of a boar of our own...

Busy times!

Rain and Snow

Just a short update, as there's not much to tell... Brilliant rain for the month of June. Hooray! We got a wonderful 71mm - fully 65% above the mean for June. This meant that there was sufficient water in the dam to warrant re-priming the pump. Before the rain the inlet pipe was high and dry.

Now here we are only 1/3rd into July, and a rainfall of 45mm over the past couple of days means that we're already reaching the mean rainfall for July. It's plenty cold, so there's been quite heavy snow on the surrounding mountains. We first saw the snow while returning from a trip to Cape Town for the past week, and, although snow on the local mountains is not unusual for Winters, I doubt we have ever seen snow so low down the slopes! Of course it mostly melted in last-night's rains and today's follow-up sunny and warm weather, but it's still pretty early for snow around here. Small surprise for our many (many!) foreign visitors who thought of Africa as The Hot Continent!

Notwithstanding this great rain, we're still far from confident that the drought has broken. Optimistic, yes. Hopeful, always. But the fact remains that the rainfalls we're seeing still represent "abnormal" weather patterns: Winter is "usually" our dry season.

Oh, well. In hope and optimism I've planted some Swiss Chard, Carrots, Shallots and Salad Greens (Lettuce, Red Mustard and Rocket, semi-mixed-up.) All are up except the salad stuff which still needs a few more days.It's far too late for Cabbage tribe, Broad Beans or grains, so we've mostly missed out on the Winter growing season. Just holding thumbs for Spring. I guess that means I should get busy preparing Spring beds and making compost.

PS: Hard luck, Netherlands! I was rooting for you guys. Spain played brilliantly, though!

Bread and Stercus

With the Soccer World Cup about to explode upon us, I was just wondering: Does anybody know what is the Carbon Footprint of the World Cup about to explode on us poor dumb wogs collonials?

I mean, our local(ish) airport is now open 24-hours a day, instead of the sleepy 7-to-7 operating hours they normally keep, and I have certainly noticed a huge increase in the amount of air-traffic overhead in recent days (and nights.)

Knysna - our closest town - is hosting two international teams (Denmark and uuuuhhh... France?) their managers, masseurs, trainers, tranquilizers, hookers and hangers-on. Plus another 4 teams in other towns in the immediate region. All of whom need to use the same airport. I wonder where they're parking all those charter aircraft...

But seriously: If any of you know of someone who has figured out the Carbon Footprint of this boondoggle (and, as much as I enjoy a game of Soccer, this is just pure Bread and Circusses) please drop me a line and let me know!

Oh well,
Stercus accidit.

Efficiency, Water Logic, Permaculture and Chainsaws.

The first icy blast of Winter-to-come has hit. Happily it's brought a little rain - 7mm last night, and a bit more (3mm?) through the day. And a good lump of what passes for cold in these parts. Cold enough to want a fire, anyway, and we've had one burning all day.

The design of the house makes it difficult - verging on impossible - to make the house Toasty Warm, but the fire does at least keep it livable. Really this is not a problem; we optimised the house design for passive cooling rather than heating, the former being a more serious problem in our climate.

The firewood is all harvested from our own land. We have many Australian Blackwoods (Acacia melanoxylon) on the property, and they keep us well supplied with kagelhout (firewood; as opposed to braai wood forbarbequeue barbacue BBQ. Blackwood doesn't make really good coals for cooking.)

---

In general I try my best to avoid messing with petrol motors. They're smelly, noisy and dirty things that need endless maintenance and care. Really, I can't understand the attraction these things have for petrolheads.

But I will confess that, reasonably well looked after, my chainsaw is a Great Boon. I would not relish the idea of having to cut firewood by hand (even if it would warm me twice.) 30 Minutes with the chainsaw will saw up enough wood for a good number of fires and braais, and keeps us warm for many, many hours. I'll get my twice-warming from splitting the logs, anyway!

And this brings me to the subject of efficiency.

Many times I've heard and read about the terrible efficiency of small petrol engines such as power our (currently defunct) weed-eater and chainsaw. This may be (and probably is) true in the very narrow sense that the measure of work coming out of the machine, as a ratio of the energy going in (mostly in the form of refined hydrocarbons) is probably very low. But this view - being typical of linear, bounded design thinking - hides a deeper truth. A truth about Water Logic. Water Logic asks us to consider "and then what?" Water Logic demands that we think about consequences.

Just like sustainable design does. Just like Permaculture does.

So consider that a few hours with my chainsaw produces enough fuel to warm us for... pretty much an entire Winter! And consumes... perhaps 2 or 3 litres of petrol in the process. (To be honest I lack the stamina to cut more than 2 petrol-tankfuls of wood in one session. The chainsaw tank only holds about 250ml.) So 2 or 3 litres of petrol produces a full Winter's house-heating fuel.

I happen to think that's pretty efficient.

The fuel - at current prices - costs me (say) R25. About €2.5 (2.65865 at today's rates, if you care!) For a Winter's worth of Warm.

I'd call that a bargain.

Climate Change and Science

Just a quick shoutout to Climate Change and the Integrity of Science - a short read, so you've no excuse. Go on, click the link!

We can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act ... But delay must not be an option.

Update: Only one small nit to pick with that article: "For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet." Sorry, but that's just not terribly realistic, in my ever-so-humble opinion. The planet, and much of the life on it, will roll right on without noticing much. It's just us, and probably quite a lot of the larger life-forms, that will be vanished. And they will soon be replaced by other, newer species. (For some value of the term "species".) Explosive post-catastrophe respeciation has happened enough times before.

Cows Week

Yes, I'm afraid we have Cows.

Eight of them, to be precise. These poor cattle -- a weird mix of cows, heifers, bulls, tollies and even a month-old calf -- have been wandering around the neighbourhood, up and down the roads, for several days, now.

Not only are they a Hazard To Navigation, but they tend to wander into our garden (and, I suppose, everybody else's, too) and trample small trees, wander into the septic tank causing spectacular damage, nibble at fruit trees, and generally do Cow Stuff. Gods alone know where they've been getting water. We are 99.873% certain that they belong to the folk who live in the Forestry Houses, most of whom work for the local forestry company, MTO. Up to now the Forestry Folk have been allowed to graze their cattle in the firebreak between our smallholdings and the forest. But recently they were warned that, as part of a Fynbos rehab project, all the fences surrounding the firebreak were being removed. So it looks a lot like another case of people going, "Oh, it'll never happen." Only it has.

I decided to put these poor cattle -- and they really are in very poor condition -- to work. Not serious work, but work they'll benefit from and enjoy. I want them to eat off the long Kikuyu grass that infests what we refer to as the "Top Field" -- an area of around 25000m² (about 30x90, but it varies) along our North border. The Top Field is relatively flat, though the topsoil is very thin, and I've long harboured ambitions of turning it over to field-scale crops -- grains, legumes, chiles on a larger scale -- in some sort of animal tractor/rotation system. Perhaps a Fukuoka style of thing. Not too fussed about the details.

So I ran the electric fence around the Field. Happily the cattle decided that they liked the look of the grass there while I was busy, so, by the time I had cleared tall grasses and branches from the path of the electric fence, planted a decent Earth pole, and set the whole thing up, they were all in the right place. And they've learned the Delights Of Electric Fencing pretty quickly.

I've informed locals so that if someone starts looking for their cattle they'll quickly find out where their cattle are being sheltered. I hardly want to be charged with Cattle Theft! The problem is that I really don't have a good supply of water for them. Right now we're managing by carrying buckets of (precious) house-water to a large bucket in their enclosure, but things cannot go on that way for too long. Then, too, these beasts really are in a very sad, parasite-infested and neglected state, and I would not like to leave them in that condition for too long, either. So that means I'll have to spend money on dips and such. Money I don't have... I guess I'm going to have to call Animal Welfare for some help if someone doesn't come and fetch them back in a day or two...

Still, I am enjoying having a bunch of Cows wandering about the place being useful. And once the grass is mowed shorter, I can, perhaps, invest in a couple of Pigs to root out the rest of the Kikuyu. Just a thought...

Sorry no pics. We left the camera with No.2 Son on the theory that it is better invested helping him earn his Honours degree than shooting happy snaps of the farm and sunsets.