MORE ABOUT MULCHING.

Golden ripple cherry tomatoesTo see a former post called Mulching Matters go to the Organic Gardening category in the November archives. I use several methods of mulching but they are all intended to serve these purposes.

• To stifle weed growth
• To prevent evaporation of moisture
• To keep the ground cool
• To prevent erosion

In that post I showed how I had used clippings from a fallen wisteria vine to mulch an area around self-sown Golden Ripple cherry tomato seedlings. I bought the first packet of seed from the Diggers Garden Club about 1994 and ever since then these tomatoes have volunteered to grow each year in my garden. All the fruit eating birds feast on them and then spread the seed throughout my entire garden. Mostly, I weed them out, but I always leave some plants to bear fruit each summer.

Wisteria mulch

Eight weeks after this green wisteria mulch was laid around the tomato seedlings we could begin harvesting these little cherry tomatoes for salads or for my favourite Lemon & Tomato Marmalade.

Read the rest of this entry »

PICKING FRUIT WITH THE BRUDERHOF

After camping overnight in their swags on the bank of our Severn River the ten youngsters and their two teachers were awakened by a chorus of kookaburras – sometimes called the laughing jackass. The adventurous boys gathered fresh water mussels and boiled them in a billy over the coals of a fire, determined to try real bush tucker.

“What did they taste like?” I asked.

“River water,” was the consensus.

Meanwhile, Tabatha and the girls were busy preparing a stack of breakfast pancakes in our kitchen. Nancy on accordion and Joe on guitar led a round of singing to keep us entertained and everyone occupied.

Joe plays guitar

After breakfast as Nancy stripped her bed and cleaned house for me, while Tabatha packed Bruderhof belongings into the back of their bus, two girls reminded me that I had promised they could pick our elderberries. In past years I’ve made elderberry jelly but these girls said they wanted to dip the whole spray of berries into batter and fry as a sweet pancake. I’ve also heard that the white flowers can be used this way, or placed in custard to give a vanilla flavour.

Ripe elderberries

Bruderhof girls pick elderberries

These berries then had to be found a space in the bus, beside the grapes that other youngsters were busily picking from our Isabella grape vines covering the terrace over the guest parking.

Tabatha loads the bus

Picking the grapes

The previous night I had phoned David Dunn whose family has grown stone fruit near the top of the ridge of hills on the western side of the Glen Aplin valley since the 1920s. He had agreed to welcome this Bruderhof group as a school excursion to the family orchard. The Bruderhof said their goodbyes to Eberhard and I accompanied them on the bus to their destination.

What a welcome they received! Brendon Dunn loaded the youngsters, all sitting down and under the supervision of Mike, into the tray of the farm utility. Tabatha rode up front with Brendon until they reached the plum orchard.

Farm utility

Ripe plums

Nancy, Joe and I travelled in comfort in a 4WD car with David and John Dunn. Nancy was delighted as the smell and taste of the ripe plums brought back to her memories of picking fruit in the orchards of Ontario, Canada where she had grown up in a Mennonite community.

Nancy tries a plum

The children were overjoyed at the thrill of picking an abundance of fresh fruit straight from the trees.

Girls gather plums

From the plum orchard we crossed a track and entered a peach orchard.

Peach orchard

Nancy kept remarking how different these Australian orchards were in comparison to the ones she had known in her youth. As David Dunn explained, his family had cleared pockets of fertile land amongst the granite boulders to establish their fruit trees. The eucalyptus forest growing in the rocky terrain around these pockets provided protection from winds, but not hail.  Much of this fruit was blemished due to hail damage and would be sold as second grade fruit.

Mike watches John Dunn pick peaches

Brendon phoned a neighbour over the hill, who said he was about to throw out fruit he had graded as unsuitable for sale. He drove off with Mike. They returned with Golden Queen peaches (the best type for bottling) and nectarines. After the Bruderhof group returned to Danthonia these could be made into jams or preserves.

Peaches and nectarines

A blue sky day

Back we drove to the packing shed where Brendon brought out boxes of second grade plums from the cold-room, which he gifted to the Bruderhof.

This is the district, the Granite Belt of southern Queensland where Eberhard and I have lived for more than seventeen years. It is the district I describe in my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine.

Book cover

Das Helwig Haus B&B owned by Eberhard and Fay Helwig is situated at Glen Aplin, near Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland, Australia.

This is a region noted for Australian wildflowers, four wilderness National Parks and sixty wineries. In 1997 Eberhard and Fay established the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies, a European wildflower.

To obtain Fay’s book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine send an email to helwig@halenet.com.au The price is $33.00 posted to destinations within AustraIia.

Internationally it is available on

http://stores.lulu.com/strictlyliterary

http://books.google.co.uk/

PICKING THE PLUMS IN 2003

The entrance road to Das Helwig Haus B&B  is marked by a prominent sign designed and built for us by Danthonia Signs, a business which is situated about 2 hours drive south of us in New South Wales. Sign making provides work and income for a Bruderhof community. Who are the Bruderhof?

Das Helwig Haus entrance sign

There are, in the Eastern United States as well as the Dakotas and adjacent Canada , communities of Christian followers of Jakob Hutter (d. 1536), founder of the pacifist branch of the Anabaptists. This offshoot of the Radical Reformation, having endured persecutions, found their way to the New World, where they built agricultural communes and prospered. In the 20th century, a similar branch arose in Germany under the leadership of Eberhard and Emmy Arnold, first as a Christian pacifist collective, then as an intentional community.

The mother of my husband, Eberhard Helwig, then known as Lotte Peters, joined the Christian youth group led by Eberhard and Emmy in 1920. The Bruderhof began as just one among dozens of youth-oriented communes that sprang up in war-ravaged Germany.  Later Lotte married Irvine Helwig and Eberhard Arnold became the Godfather for my husband, Eberhard, born in 1926.

In a future post I’ll be writing about Eberhard’s youth in Germany, suffice to say now that for a period of time between 1929 and 1933, Eberhard’s parents left their four sons in the care of the Rhon Bruderhof while trying to establish a new life in Canada. It was during this period that Eberhard Arnold visited the Hutterite communities in the USA and Canada. After his return it was decided to shape the Bruderhof community in a similar manner to that of the Hutterites.

In the past decade the Bruderhof have established a community near Inverell in New South Wales, known as the Danthonia Bruderhof, and renewed their association with my husband. Read the rest of this entry »

BACKYARD VEGETABLE GARDEN

When we moved to the Granite Belt to establish Das Helwig Haus B&B we succeeded in creating a hospitality business which became famous throughout Australia and I personally succeeded in constructing the garden of my dreams.

I believe that many people would say that they spend the first 30 years of their adult lives establishing careers, homes and rearing a family. They then spend the next 20 years consolidating businesses or change direction to follow their dreams. As we did some give up other careers, sell the family home and move to a tourism district like the Granite Belt to establish guest accommodation, wineries and restaurants. The urge to change often starts when they pay a visit to a tourism district or read a book like Wildflowers, wilderness and wine. They dream of sitting on a terrace overlooking vineyards while sipping a glass of wine.

Lunch at Felsberg Winery

But, the time comes when age forces them to again change direction. Sadly, most will find that during this productive and rewarding stage of their lives, their children have taken other directions and may even be living in distant states or foreign countries.  The children are far away and not interested in leaving careers to take up the parent’s lifestyle business.  Recognizing that their bodies have aged and infirmities are starting to trouble them they consider the prospect of selling their dream businesses and retiring.  While establishing their dream businesses they had expected that one day when they sold the business the price would provide them with the equivalent of a superannuation income.

One of the reasons that this seldom happens is that younger people have their own dreams and they don’t wish to buy an established dream unless it is a profitable business, which can afford to pay labour. When dreaming they do not see the reality of how hard they must work to establish their vision, but when viewing an existing business they confront the issues of management. Which, by the time we had established our dream became the issue confronting us.

As I approach my 70th birthday this year, this is the reality which Eberhard and I must face. We listed our property for sale and held an auction in October, but no one was interested in buying our property. So, we have made the decision to down size. Read the rest of this entry »

ANOTHER OPINION

When I read this feature article on On Line Opinion I was grateful to Max Rheese for writing so succinctly on the problems we country landholders have encountered in recent years. I will illustrate his words with my photographs. Below is a photo of Das Helwig Haus B&B surrounded by ‘Remnant Forest‘. We are not allowed to clear any trees within this area.  The photo was taken from high on the hill on the other side of the valley, which does tend to condense the thickness of the forest surrounding our home and it fails to show that we had already cleared a firebreak around our buildings before the ban was introduced.

Rooftops of Das Helwig Haus B&B

It must be realized that because we are unable to clear any regrowth within this forest that it will grow more thickly until a bush fire destroys everything in its path. Read the rest of this entry »

SMOKE FILLS OUR VALLEY

We are experiencing a period of hot, dry weather. This is what the farmers need to ripen their tomato crops before Christmas. Have you ever noticed how expensive tomatoes are at Christmas time? The crops in the northern districts like Bundaberg and Bowen are finished and the backpackers are moving south looking for work. Here in the cool mountain highlands of the border between Queensland and New South Wales our tomato plants can not be planted until the frosts are finished. This year the farmers on the Granite Belt had heavy rain in May to fill their farm dams and the weirs across the creeks and Severn River. They have water to irrigate their crops and now have been blessed with a heatwave to encourage the quick growth and early ripening of their vegetables.

But last night the weather forecast for today included a severe fire warning. And yes, I awoke this morning to the sight of our valley filled with smoke.

Bushfire smoke

With visibility reduced by this pall of smoke I do not yet know where the fire is situated and if it is headed in our direction. What I do know is that thanks to our foresight in clearing trees in close proximity to our house and undertaking a controlled burn of our country at the end of winter, we will not need to evacuate our home. Read the rest of this entry »

EUCALYPTUS FORESTS = HOT BUSH FIRES.

As always happens when people people join a FORUM to support a person or project they start to discuss other matters. Thus while I’m writing these posts in support of Peter Spencer I can not do much more that let people know why this courageous man has gone on a hunger strike. It must also be noted that every time I write the words Peter Spencer the powerful Google search engines will recognize his name and give it more prominence.

I posted my words yesterday on http://fayhelwig.com supporting the stand of Peter Spencer, who is on a hunger strike to draw attention to the lack of compensation for Australian country people who have had their rights to utilize their land, as they see fit, taken from them by Qld and NSW Government land grabs. I gained inspiration to write another post after reading comments on http://agmates.ning.com/group/peterspencerhungerstrike

Despite the fact that CO2 is a potent plant food, and that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would only result in a rise of 1 degree Celsius, why are we tying up vegetation? Wouldn’t it sequester more CO2 if trees were grown, the timber utilized, and then more trees grown in their place? Instead we have the ridiculous situation where vegetation is grown until senescence, then it falls down, cant be harvested or collected and adds to situation such as the recent ‘Black Friday’ here in Victoria? Comment from Colin J. Ely

Saplings clean much more CO2 out of the air and produce more O2. A plantation of new trees will help, rather than leaving the existing trees. Perhaps a compromise could be reached, a part of the land could be used as a plantation which could be used for logging once it has reached maturity. Just a thought. Comment by Leith Carnie.

Bushfire at Glen Aplin

This was the view from our farm boundary fence in October 2002 of a bush fire, on the other side of our Glen Aplin valley, which took the life of a local woman. The little clearing on the hill in the centre of this photo above is the Felsberg Winery. Read the rest of this entry »

OUR GLEN APLIN HOME

Our 14 hectare (32 acre) farm is situated at 113 Mt. Stirling Road, Glen Aplin, Queensland, Australia. Glen is a Scottish word for a valley and the first Government surveyor who came through this region was a Scottish born man with the surname of Aplin, who named this pretty valley after himself. It became a valley of small land owners growing stone fruits or vegetables and grazing a few head of cattle. Within the past 20-30 years tourist enterprises like wineries, restaurants and guest accommodation have brought changes to the region.

Our home, Das Helwig Haus B&B, is situated in the forested area at the centre of this photograph, which was taken from the Felsberg Winery on the eastern ridge of the valley.

Valley view

To give you a greater appreciation of where we live, below is a view taken with a telescopic lens. Try to place that road, directly above the cluster of trees. The roofs of our buildings are barely visible behind the forest of eucalyptus trees.

Das Helwig Haus B&B

Over beside the road, you can just see the golden wildflowers above our entrance drive way.

Entrance wildflowers

Read the rest of this entry »

THE HEN HOUSE

Throughout most of my life I have lived on farms where the previous owners had constructed  poultry pens. These were rough structures with some form of shed cover, like a rusty iron tank split in half to form a roof, and a wire netting run where hens could forage during the day. Due to the prevalence of foxes in country regions poultry must be securely penned at night.

This year I needed to use the existing poultry pens for my growing flock of geese which led me to the decision to create a new enclosure, but where? As my readers know I’m always looking for ways to recycle materials and my projects usually serve more than one purpose.

When we purchased this farm 17 years ago it already had an igloo garden shed frame. I bought a plastic cover to go over this igloo frame, with thoughts of having a hot house in the winter. Although I have a beautiful garden, I’m not good with pot plants. Even my seed raising beds are established directly in soil out in the larger garden. This shed sat idle, within my garden begging to be put to use.

Igloo garden shed

When my infant granddaughters came to live with us, the idea occurred to me that I should convert this igloo into a hen house where the little girls could feed the ‘chooks’ and gather the eggs. Read the rest of this entry »

MULCHING MATTERS

During the past weekend when we opened our garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B for the Australian Open Garden Scheme, I was frequently asked about my mulching methods. I use several methods of mulching but they are all intended to serve these purposes.

• To stifle weed growth
• To prevent evaporation of moisture
• To keep the ground cool
• To prevent erosion

Most green ground covers serve the same purpose, provided they have sufficient water to encourage their continual growth.

Ivy as a ground cover

I planted this ivy in 1993 to grow over an old tree stump situated in the garden at the rear of the house. This is the western side and after soil and rocks had been moved to build the guest wing of our house this spot looked like a dessert with white dusty soil and raw boulders. I hired Frank and his bobcat to create a rocky upper terrace above this portion of the garden. My priority was then to green my summer view by planting deciduous fruit trees and to cover a couple of old tree stumps with vines. Read the rest of this entry »