The washing machine waltz

There are times I really enjoy being a woman. Especially when it comes to no longer having the oomph I once was used to and being married, what's more, to a man who has triple the muscle power I have. So when it comes to moving a washing machine that is in a tricky place, of course I defer to the Department of Brawn.
However, this week even I had to wince when it came to the third time in as many weeks for the dratted thing. And let's be perfectly clear here - there has to be an evil little house gnome living in the corner where the machine goes, because this is also the third washing machine in five months.
Now granted the first was a Haier front loader that arrived with the bus, with a cracked/glued door and in a not-going condition. The learned advice from the mechanic was "Haier? Don't bother. Dump's the best place for it."
So on the basis of a)we live a fair way out of town and don't want to have to pay excess travel costs to use a repair man and b)we don't want to have to drag it out of place and take it into town ourselves, we bought a brand new Samsung front loader. Now, I am enamoured of their cellphone, wouldn't be without it and the portable office it gives me. So, I thought that given the work-horse abilities of the phone, surely that would mean the same would apply to the washing machine.

First off, we had to take the handrail off the entry steps into the bus so we could inch machine in. (I had measured the space it occupied, but not the door to get it INTO the bus...) It then had to be carefully levered up the stairs by Ken, before we discovered the toilet door had to come off so that we could slide it into place.  But, we got there. Even if I had to think seriously about whether I'd have to learn to knit to add some extra rows to Ken's jerseys. He ended up thinking his arms had been stretched a few extra inches.
Now, I have a fairly good IQ. Ok, a very good one. I am told it sits just inside the genius range, even. Except that for the life of me the dashboard on this thing looked like the interior cockpit of a spaceship. And I am not a rocket scientist. Be as that may, I managed to decipher how to put a load on; switched the thing on and sat back with a  thankful sigh that at long last, poor Mum no longer had to put up with my washing littering her floor anymore.
Wrong. With rolling r's even.
It got  just 10 seconds - yes, 10 whole seconds - into the cycle and *yawn*, sorry, no can do, no wanna know, not happening. It broke down. Irretrievably.
So, down came the toilet door, down came the handrail on the stairwell and Ken's arms got stretched a wee bit longer again. I'd had enough with that. Did not want another one and told Harvey Norman I wanted to get something else. Washing machines obviously are not Samsung's forte. (Neither are their laptops, as it turned out, but that is another story...)
So I went and handpicked a great looking Electrolux. You know those old vacuum cleaners that never gave up? Yep, that brand.
And for the first four months it worked really, really well.
But on our return from Aussie, we were told it wasn't spinning. So I pulled out the book on "How To's" and found myself head-on-the-floor, butt-in-the-air, eyeballing the floor orientated emergency water release and drainage pump, which, it informed me needs cleaning at least once a month. After pulling everything out, I was amazed. We must have had the cleanest dirty washing ever. It didn't need cleaning.
So I had to ring HN's again and somewhat tersely let the poor sales person whose fault all this wasn't, know that I wasn't happy at all at this turn of events. Which of course was when we discovered that living in the country does have at least one major drawback. The 'appointed appliance repairer' of Electrolux didn't make calls out here. To HN's staff members credit, he managed over a three day period, to get Electrolux to agree to using a repairer who is based out here.

I had to wince here, because in between times, I had bought a convection oven to replace the microwave oven. n being larger, it meant we could not access the power point to the washing machine easily. In fact, what had to happen was that the convection oven had to be pulled right out and the shelf it sits on slid out. :) Well I didn't think I'd have to pull the damned machine out again THAT soon! And Ken, who arms were still tweaking themselves back into shape from pulling it out to see if he could fix it, wasn't going to do it again.
So, poor Rob had to pull it out to find out what was wrong. It turned out that  the thingamajig that holds the belt on the watchamacallit that spins the drum had come off and in doing so, had flung the belt off.
Oh great - but easily fixable, yes? (And phew, not a stuck sock or bra, so the cost of repair was not ours!)
Er no,  said Rob. "I can put it back on for you, but by the looks of it, it'll only come off again. I might need to talk to the manufacturers to see if others have had the same problem and if they have upgraded a part for it. Because I don't think this part would do the job for any length of time." He was dead right about that. We got one load done, then halfway through another, I heard the telling 'Punk' as something came off at speed inside the machine cavity. And yes, the washing was dripping wet at the end of the cycle and no, the spinning action was not working once again.
Great news not.
By this time, I am not a happy little camper at all.
I am currently waiting to see what HN are going to come up with next. I certainly have no wish to take up one one kindly friends idea of getting Ken to "knock up a scrub board".My answer to that was, "Are you kidding?? Why would I give him such a dangerous idea? He'd want to keep it! He tried to get me to use an ancient wringer at the beach last year that he had found under a mate's house!" He still hasn't quite given up the idea off being totaly of the grid one day.
And no - this is NOT a picture of me!!

A growing concern

Every gardener knows that starting from scratch with a bare canvas, is in theory, a cool idea. In practice however, I'm sure that the term 'tennis elbow' would be more appropriately named 'gardeners elbow'.
I know that the one I have is directly a result of hauling more wheelbarrows of soil, mulch, potting mix than I have ever done in my life to date. Which is no bad thing, given that I am  - just - over 50 and any excerise is good for continued longevity! And that established gardens have been the norm till now. Expanding on those doesn't count.

Given that the brawn of the operation has been flat out working (so much for semi-retirement!) since we got here five months ago, it got left to the usual supervisor to get out there and ensure the gardens were in and preferably, at the height of summer so that I could catch at least some of the autumn bounty.
And, as every gardener also knows, it takes time to get the soil biology up and running to the point where you will get the big 10 pound cabbages I used to get from a green-fisted friend's garden the year after she'd moved out after being there 22 years.
So trying to juggle getting a healthy soil going on top of topsoil that was primarily a thin, sandy layer with alkaline tendencies and getting produce from newly set combinations wasn't as easy as it sounds.
I also had to decide how I wanted the gardens to look and being that over 50-year old who has a crook back from falling off a horse 10 years before, meant I now needed to have something that I could sit on while I worked in the garden. Bending like Beckham simply isn't in the possibilities pile any more.
I've always loved the idea of potager gardens; potager being a French translation for an ornamental kitchen garden for growing vegetables that were most often used in soups. And given that as I write this, the first winter vegetable soup is bubbling away in the slow cooker behind me with such veggie ingredients as carrots, celery, parsnip, turnip, kumara, peas, beans and whatever else I had on hand this morning, it shows just how versatile these raised garden beds can be.
So I used the cardboard box I had saved from the new washing machine and a couple of other large purchases and laid that flat before soaking it for 24 hours with the sprinkler. On top of that went sandy topsoil, then went well rotted horse manure. Next was bark mulch which had almost broken down into soil. Then went in a six inch layer of good quality potting mix and some additional blood and bone that had been well mixed in. All of this was well saturated. For the asparagus beds I went a bit  further and used old seed raising mix as well.
This then is the basis for all the gardens we have put in, knowing that this first year probably wouldn't give us a great deal of produce; the soil biology has to take time to really kick into action.

However, we have been pleasantly surprised by what has happened. The first of the seven gardens was built in late December. Two more happened in January. The remaining four, including three large tractor tyres, were completed in March.
Here in the final days of May, I look back on what the gardens have given us and it has been pretty good:  lettuces, carrots, silverbeet, spinach, celery, cucumbers, gherkins, beans, tomatoes, onions, (red, brown, spring and shallots), asparagus (although that's a while off being used) beetroot, radishes, cabbages, brocolli, brussel sprouts, plus a very large herb garden as I like to dry my own herbs, as well as use fresh ones for most meals I make.

I've even grown yams this year and that was by accident. I had put the young yam plants into a hot water cylinder that had been cut lengthways prior to the Big Shift (along with a few handfuls of garden soil) and as time went by, it sat snugly behind a small compost bin and I forgot about it. When I finally remembered it, I had a look to see how it was doing and found I had leggy yams that had produced in three quarters of the cylinder - and a healthy bush of going-to seed puha in the last quarter. So I will definitely be replanting yams early next spring, but in  a much larger container - being a member of the oxalis family, they need to be contained or they will take over the garden.
Although I do have one inadvertent crop - I used some Tui's straw mulch and now have a full barley crop in most of the gardens! I have left it there simply because it works as a greens crop that can be worked back into the soil much like mustard greens for example.
In between times I have added a little bit of nitrophoska, because the bark mulch component requires it, but to be honest I do like using Seasol's products; natural and working well within the system we prefer. Outside of this, the only added extra we have needed has been Derris Dust for the cabbages; local farmers grew brassicas as a stock feed in recent years and the white butterfly is of plague proportions.
If there was a problem to be had, it is that the gardens should be rotatable for a few years; that is, whatever you plant in one one year, gets moved to the next garden in the next year. The problems is that one bed is a dedicated asparagus bed. Another is solely for herbs. That leaves five, three of which have a good percentage of them filled with onions which will not be ready for harvesting until almost next summer. So the two brassica gardens are going to have to be rotated into.. you guessed, some new gardens. When my elbow has recovered!

We be-leaf!

I had to admire the smooth way Ken managed to get out the door yesterday to go fishing. We were on our first day back from an Australian holiday and as always, there are a million things to do on a lifestyle block after one has been away for a wee time. Before I could turn around with my arm-length list, he had slithered out the door like an otter and was gone.
I forgave him; he did bring home a 6.5 pound rainbow trout a few hours later

 which found its way into the smoker after I'd seasoned it with lashings of brown sugar, tarragon leaves, sprinkles of worcestershire sauce and a capful of good rum.
But today was another day and the three big trees that line our road frontage have lost most of their leaves - leaves I want in my compost bin.
We are great believers in recycling and we try hard not to use too much chemical stuff. Except for on the rampant blackberry canes. And broom. And gorse, although none one that dared show its face this last summer. But outside of those, the idea is that we build up from the soil a kind of biological harmony that creates a longterm beneficial effect starting from soil composition and worms through to plants that relish that and of course, the animals we have on the block that benefit from that - and as a result, we benefit also.
It is the reason we have not put animals onto the land for the past 12 months. The grass has been grown and mown and left to lie to encourage self-fertilisation. We have reseeded the paddocks in an open sowing method and that too has paid off. The land is looking better than it has in many years.
That isn't to say that the land is getting enough. But I have been doing a lot of reading about people whose farms are producing much more (and sustained) than those who are using traditional chemicals which can force growth to suit. Their way is the way we want to go here and so we'll continue to work away towards creating not only top soil for our orchards and vegetable gardens; we also want the same for the paddocks that will be home for the animals that will sustain our wider family over time.
The trees are huge; 20 metres or more high and so they provide a lot of compostable leaves, which in turn make great soil for the gardens.
One shed its leaves very early and did get quite drought stressed, so that one we left alone - it will needs its golden winter blanket of nutrients to help it next spring. The one closest to the driveway is also being left this year.

The first tree however, we have taken two thirds of what it has or will shed. It will still have some to see it through winter and early spring and we also have left alone those leaves which fell from the canopy into the paddock - this provides a great fertiliser.
We had a lot of fun with this; stomping in the leaves in the trailer to squash them (to get more in) and ditto in the compost bin.
Although it must have looked hilarious as I have a crook ankle and getting into the trailer was quite a production. But not, it must be said, as much of a one as it was getting out. Ken was nearly rolling in the leaves laughing.
I am the photo taker of the family - I dislike being in front of a camera. But as one wit remarked recently, "You need to be in there or everyone will think Ken does all the work by himself." So for those who think that, this next pic is for you. (Just don't expect to see too many more!)

 We have very large composting bins; with each bay at a different stage in the breaking down department. These leaves, which will be mixed with an old mulch to help speed up the decomposition, were stamped down and will be covered with an old piece of carpet. This filters the rainwater down, providing a dark environment for nature's little helpers (and the worms) to do their thing. In three to four months time, I'll be adding  in a good sack of blood and bone (as well as the one I add now) and the whole will be added to the mulch mix which has almost broken down into soil at this point - by early spring, it should be good enough to add to the gardens.  And finally, I did like this picture. Almost 12 months since we first put the tender on the property (June 6), it has changed a great deal from the sad and uncared for land it once was.