Made at home

Our turn came around once more and we had the pleasure of hosting PLAGGA (Pappinbarra Ladies and Gentlemen’s Gardening Auxiliary) on Sunday. Friends descended on our place intent on adding willing workers to whatever gardening task took our fancy. This time we used our workforce to wire up the orchard, plant the fruit trees and collect bracken and horse poo for mulch and compost.


My head has been so full of getting ready it was hard for me to switch my brain off and enjoy it but it was a real pleasure, as it always is – good friends sharing work and yummy food. An especially appreciated effort is made by the people who do the childcare. I didn’t see Noah for most of the day and yet I could relax knowing he was being well looked after.


Now all our fruit trees are in the ground, the first layer of wire is up, there is a tap in the orchard for watering and we have a trailer load of bracken and a trailer load of horse poo. The trees look so good in the ground, finally growing and full of potential. I’m desperate to make a new compost heap using the bracken which is high in potassium and I’m willing to cheat and use both the shredder and blood and bone, just to get it composting fast and hot - I have lots of new trees that need good compost and you can't buy the best stuff, made at home and full of life.


If I get a good result I’m going to try and compost the bracken without shredding it – hopefully mowing it with the slasher on the tractor will be sufficient, and I would like to move away from having to buy in blood and bone but we need to build up our chook numbers first. The eggs Gladys is sitting on are due to hatch in the next few days so we should have a lot more little peepers soon.


“I’m grateful that we got that bracken.”
(Confused? Look)