Living In the Present ..... Living In The Future ....All At The Same Time.

 Whilst I said our challenge was building a tourist establishment by Christmas...the real challenge is making sure that everything is home made and self sufficient by the time our first guests arrive. We want to create a place with very few store bought goods and most things provided by the farm.
We often can go almost a week without shopping with our vegetable garden at the moment and most of our groceries consist of fruit , flour , sugar and eggs.But we do get tired sometimes and then out come the bought biscuits , etc . It is okay to do that too , because true self suffiency can be exhausting if you over do  it and it should always be fun.
For our farmstay guests , though we aim for a weekend of everything out of our oven or our garden for the time they are here. Just to get in touch with the idea of self suffiency and try it for themselves.
This weekend we bought a tangello tree, a blood orange tree , a navello orange tree and a emperor mandarine tree . We planted them in the back yard which is at the top of a hill. Our soil is good but the house area is over a rock and gravel shelf , so you can get caught with planting trees when the roots hit a rock shelf and go, 'hey there is no more dirt here!' and the tree up and dies.Every planting is a risk in the citrus area as no matter how deep you dig you wonder if there is a giant rock just under the tree. But it is okay to take risks, that is what life is all about. My back is sore though from pulling all these big rocks out  !
At the same time , it is best to follow permaculture principles where everything is planted centrally and you can keep an eye on your crops. Our garden is near the clothes line because it means you are visually connecting with the plants at least once a day. Although, sadly the clothes don't always get hung out on time if you are like me and get distracted by dropping the basket in the middle of the yard so that you can weed or plant!
We also considered planting an orchard down near the creek as that would make more sense waterwise and soil wise . We thought about our visitors though would be  mainly from urban areas, so decided to create something that will go in a backyard instead.Hopefully all we do would be doable in some way in a suburban backyard.

The citrus orchard now consists of eight trees, all of different types to stagger fruiting periods. They do well on this side of the yard and appreciate the gravelly texture of the soil to a point because it allows good drainage.
This is also where we have our chicken tractor . Chicken the rooster(scaredy cat rooster ) and his four wives create a new garden bed for me in the citrus area every 4-6 weeks . This is working well for crops that don't do well in my raised beds.I also let them out on afternoons when I am working in the yard ...in no way can they be trusted on their own though.

 Our lemon tree is full of fruit at the moment due to all this lovely rain.This Eureka lemon wasn't fruiting well previously until I realised that it simply wasn't getting enough water.

This was a lime tree and I have been telling everyone it is a lime tree. It is now a lemon tree....it used to be a lime tree but the graft got away on me and I didn't notice the other part died. I actually needed a lemon tree that fruits at a different time to the Eureka , so mistakes can often work out well.
Never be afraid of mistakes in the garden.

 Our raised beds are going well. There is nothing like the Autumn flush to get such lush growth.
It also fools gardeners into thinking they can get away with a summer crop going (which is why I planted corn last weekend just as an experiement ...crazy I know).

 The passionfruit vine and the sweetpotato vines are going well and it is prime time for picking our sweetpotatoes.
Every gardener has one thing they grow really really well for some reason. For us it seems to be sweet potato.
We went to Tocal field day on the weekend and bought some heritage Italian seeds. Planted Kale yesterday and some red lettuce which will look gorgeous in winter salads.

And lastly this half dead area here is the place for the perpetual farmstay garden.Oh dear, it doesn't look so good ! It doesn't look like much now,but it will . One thing about gardening is the promise for the future. You cannot not be sad when you look at a bare patch of soil like this and wonder' what work of art can I create with this?'

The perpetual garden is a garden purely for the farmstay guests. It is a place where each guest gives a future guest a gift by planting a punnet of lettuces , or kale or snow peas so that the following family can enjoy them. We will provide the seedlings , but for the guests it is a way of getting them to understand that growing your own food is about living in the present by holding the soil in your hands and enjoying the moment , and the  future at the same time ..knowing that planting corn now might result in a fun family barbecue with corn on the cob in a few months time.There will be a guest book for families to write in and each family will write what they planted . They will also be able to check online how their plants went when the farmstay blog starts.

Hopefully when I post next there will be some progress on the perpetual garden. There may also be a spa bath in the main farmstay bedroom fingers crossed!