With few urgent tasks on the farm at the moment we’re on the prowl for small projects to fill our weekends. One such project was born of our vigilance for ridding the place of clutter; in this instance a crappy old wire fence that served no purpose and screamed to be put out of its misery. So this weekend we happily obliged.

It appears that the fence once bordered a paddock, but now the back of the barn acts in its stead. The fence looks very old (perhaps the oldest among all the fences around the farm), and because of the placement of the barn it is now redundant. It was starting to become an eyesore whenever we went past, what with its rusted barbs and batons rotted through. Sure, you could say things like this have a certain rural charm… but only up until they look like the web of some mechanical arachnid that might ensnare young children.

Well, it wasn’t quite that unsightly, but it gave us something to do and we were quietly excited about rebuilding a portion of it in post-and-rail. First we donned some protective eyewear (can never be too careful with sharp ends of wire flinging around) and went to war with the wiry mess, yanking out fencing staples and arm wrestling with some undersized wire cutters.

After hauling the wire and batons of the beaten fence to our ever-growing trash heap, only the posts remained in the ground. Most pulled free with minimal effort but a couple were stubborn and one even decided to break off at ground-height, which proved a real nuisance to get out. In fact we didn’t get it out at all. We covered it up… Shh.

Once the old posts were out we decided to repurpose the best two for our makeshift post-and-rail fence that we needed to build to close the space we’d opened up between the barn and paddock gate. We should probably have used half-rounds but had none on hand and the posts we’d be using weren’t thick enough to split down the middle. We measured out the length, which was just less than three metres, and plotted where we’d sink the posts.

We’d come prepared for the job, equipped with post hole digger and rammer. We were dubious about the capabilities of the chopstick-like digger but it worked a treat. I don’t think those fibreglass handles will hold up for very long though (they were out of steel ones at the hardware store). If you’re not familiar with these devices, they work kind of like long tongs that pinch loads of soil, leaving you with a perfectly sized cylindrical hole for your typical fence post. (Probably a bit tougher to work with in clay – wink, wink.)

After the holes were dug (painstakingly) deep enough (about eighty centimetres) we levelled the posts in them as best we could, compromising between gravity and how it looked to the eye. The cast iron rammer worked well, too, punching down the loose soil around each post. Once jammed in, the posts looked a bit off, so we constructed a brace for one of them and slugged the other with the rammer until it lined up before nailing the rails on. Did the trick.

Once complete, we stood back and admired our handy work with hungry bellies and the feeling of accomplishment settling over us, however simple the task had been. This was, after all, our first construction on the farm. As temporary and makeshift as it is, it’s the humble activity of these little projects that remind us how much we’ve yearned for this lifestyle, soon to fill our days.

We probably won’t be constructing any garden beds until we move, so it was a bonus to find that one already existed conveniently near the cottage, albeit partially submerged in a sea of grass…

Lettuce and spinach are crops we can try to grow over winter we thought (at least some frost tolerant variants), and since we don’t have a fridge yet it might be a good idea to have some fresh salad greens on hand. The winter solstice (which occurred this weekend) is the ideal time to plant garlic, too.

So on this drizzly morning we busted out our shiny new spades and went to town on the layer of turf blanketing the old bed. The soil here is perfectly friable – not a clump of clay as far as you can dig. It seems like you’d hit bedrock before any sign of the stuff. The soil’s not only loose and loamy, but the top twenty centimetres is dark and rich with ancient ash deposits. Not like what we’re used to in Auckland, where “topsoil” is really just a higher grade of clay. No surprise then when the spades cut almost effortlessly beneath the layer of sod.

Nevertheless we worked up a good sweat. After the turf layer had been removed we set to fluffing the soil to aerate and loosen it for planting.

We unearthed these odd tubers… Could they be partially decomposed kumara from a bygone age? They were tough old things and put up a fight. We think we got them all in the end, but we’ll no doubt discover by a stunted lettuce or two that some subterranean fugitives remain.

We have a suspicion that the soil type is quite acidic, so we biffed some lime into the mix to neutralise the pH as well as a few handfuls of good old blood-and-bone for nourishment. We also added a couple of bags of compost, which we must confess were store-bought. We have a ton of the stuff back at our garden in Auckland from our own food scraps, but no way to transport it down to the farm just yet (and yes, we will be – the stuff is too precious to leave behind). There is also actually a small pile of scraps starting to form in the bush just outside the cottage… we will have to build a compost bin soon.

After mixing the goodies through the parts of the bed we’d be planting, we wracked our brains on how we might go about making a support for the cloche fabric we’d brought to protect our young lettuce from the harsh frosts. We fiddled around for a bit before opting for lengths of plumbing pipe pushed onto thin stakes that we’d fashioned from sticks. The stakes were pushed deep into the ground to hold up the pipe lengths in multiple arches.

We tenderly planted the lettuce under the cloche frame and added some spinach as well. At the other end of the bed we made thirty-odd holes and dropped in cloves of garlic, whose shoots won’t be visible until spring and not ready for harvest until midsummer. We had intended to plant potato, too, but I had picked up some Agria which is a main crop; it’s too early in the season to sow. Maybe we’ll grab some early variety spuds and throw them in next time we’re down.

We tucked in the wee babies after a good watering and mulching, hoping for the best. We very rarely get frosts in the city, if ever, so we’re unsure of how your average garden crop fares over winters as frosty as those on our new farm. Trial and error will reveal all.

Because we can only go down to the farm on weekends (until we move in November) we usually arrive late on Friday nights. When we arrived last night we snatched up our torches and went searching in the pitch black paddocks, curious if our recently felled trees had been milled. Sure enough, our beams of light illuminated tidy stacks of fresh lumber propped in a paddock near the cottage. Exciting! It was chilly outside and we’d yet to have dinner, so we dashed back and lit the fire. We’d have a closer look in the morning.

We marched back out first thing to gush over our new wood supply. The transportable mill had left a pile of sawdust which our resident sheep had decided was as good a bed as any.

In the end we got about seven cubic metres of milled wood total. About a third is from the single large macrocarpa and the rest is from the ten or so lawson cypress.

The macrocarpa is gorgeous. It’s a honeycomb orange and the grain is striking. Distinctly aromatic, we were getting wafts of it from as far away as the cottage. It’s so pungent I want to sink my teeth into it. Is it strange that I actually did give it a nibble?

Macrocarpa turns a silver grey when weathered, which has a lovely rustic look. Resistant to rot it’s great for outdoor furniture (and garden sleepers!). There might even be our future dining table in there somewhere, too…

There are quite a few logs left which weren’t milled, apparently because their lengths and shapes weren’t suitable. I think we’ll try to salvage parts of them, rather than turning the whole lot into firewood. I can see some pretty nice chunks hidden therein, as well as a couple of thick slabs inside the massive trunk end that was discarded. If for nothing else but firewood, what about blocks for sculpture carving or rustic stools and the like? Hey, if we had a lathe we’d never be short of fruit bowls!

We have firewood coming out of our ears. Holy crap. This is a good thing, of course. As I mentioned in an earlier post we wouldn’t have been able to supply our own firewood for a few years until our plantations had grown sufficiently. This bunch should last us a couple of seasons at least, so that’s a good head start. We’ve bought a decent chainsaw and splitting axe, and by the looks of things we have our work cut out for us…

The bloke who’s leasing our land for grazing was kind enough to put the fence back up which had to be taken down for tree felling. What a legend. He’s a friendly fellow and will be an invaluable asset to us newbies.