We are still waiting fingers crossed

Three hundred and fifty mature Mangosteen trees should be loaded with flowers by now. Alas - one tree with 6 flowers and that is IT! Last year the flowering was late too, and the trees burst into bud in the first week of January.

Trees need to be stressed for several months before they flower - Digby thinks they have not had enough stress this year. The tree has to make a decision to either flower or flush. The sad news is that we now have about tweny trees flushing. So these won't be flowering for sure.

We have a sinking feeling that over the next week, all our trees will flush and burst with new foliage.

Don't count your Mangosteens before they hatch!

Digby in the solomons

For the last 2o days and counting Digs has been roaming around the solomon islands looking at fruit trees and designing a fruit tree project for AusAid which will start next year. This photo shows digby teaching a grafting workshop in Oecussi, East Timor in 2005. Looks like there will be more of this in store for him in 2007 in the solomons

Tourist torments our baby croc

It's pretty special living in a wilderness area where you can see animals living in their natural habitat. There has been a small crocodile living in the estuary of Mason Creek for at least 4 years, and all the locals have kept an eye on it over the years. Then a tourist decides to torment it.

Read the story here: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/stupid-stefaan-meets-allan-the-croc/2006/11/09/1162661802875.html

I have been rung by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sunday Mail about the croc attack. I said the croc was being tormented in its own habitat, that this is a wilderness area where seeing/ living with animals in the wild is part of being here, and that it should not be taken away to a croc farm.
Read day 2 of the story:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/allan-the-crocs-on-the-run/2006/11/10/1162661886516.html

Yesterday while National Parks rangers were in the creek area which they closed off to everyone else - a large gunshot was heard coming from the area. They are denying that they have shot it - but nobody else had a gun and was shooting at that time. I guess the truth will come out eventually.

Vanilla flowers and soap suds

Our vanilla vines have flowered for the first time.

While the bore driller was here we asked him to recondition our existing bore which has been in use for ten years. We think it has become silted up a bit with clay particles over this time and we hope that cleaning out may give us a better flow rate.


Pulling the bore pump out of the bore hole 30 metres below the surface took a huge effort. Once it was cleaned, we had all sorts of dramas being able to stuff it back into the hole. Poor Digs - he could get it back in OK but not the last metre of the pipe and in trying to force it, the wires broke so the pump didnt work. Three times the bore pump was pulled up from 30 metres below. A huge physical effort. He developed a system using the car and a pulley after the second attempt. The final solution was to cut the last metre of pipe off so it would fit back into the hole. We were using our back up system for 3 days before we finally switched back to the bore pump.

Bore Driller finds water

The bore driller arrived on the farm this week after three years of us waiting and hoping that some day soon a drill rig would make its way across the Daintree River and over the Alexandra Range.

We had to join forces with our neighbours Colin and Dawn to share the cost of freighting the drill rig over the last range on a huge semi loader, as the rig could not negotiate the grades on its own. This was a big gamble because we had to pay this cost whether or not he found any water.

We have not had enough water to irrigate our trees for the October November period. There is such a slow rate of flow coming out of our existing bore that many of our mature Mangosteens defoliated last January under the stress of the dry. We just could not pump enough water out of the bore to save them. We pumped for an hour and then we would have to wait another hour for the bore hole to fill up again and then we could pump for another half hour.

The bore site has been chosen as the old well - the place where Digby and I hand dug a well 12 metres deep in the early nineties. He drilled down through the old well to 20 metres and we found water. The interesting thing to know was that if we had persevered with our hand digging for another 2 meters we would have found permanent water. Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing!

We have been told we now have a flow of 4,000 gallons an hour at a depth of 13 - 18 metres below the surface. If this is true it means that our irrigation problems are over.

 

It's a miracle!

It has been wonderful to have Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) on the tasting again. The pulp from the fruit has the ability to affect the sour receptors of the taste buds so that all sour foods taste sweet. Watching people's faces as they discover that their taste buds have changed and that the lime now tastes as sweet as an orange. Wow! I am now collecting the seeds and hoping to plant out a large number of miracle fruit bushes. This is a small red berry from West Africa and it should make a perfect pot plant for the shadehouse. Multi national corporations have tried to analyse and synthesize the flesh to use as a safe sugar substitute, but have not been successful.


The Durian has been frozen from our crop in March and April. We are surprised how well this fruit has survived in the freezer. We know Durian is an aquired taste - but in each tasting there is a group of adventurouse folk who like the new taste and hopefully will go on to try a fresh durian.


For those of you thinking about doing the fruit tasting this month, the fruit we are offering:
Breadruit
Black Sapote
Durian
Yellow Sapote
Star Apple
Soursop
Abiu
Jaboticaba
Roseapple
Pommelo
Solo Papaya
Grumichama
Miracle Fruit

.

August - blue skies and warming up

This month reminds me of the reason why I love Cape Trib and choose to live here. Great swimming and sunbaking weather. Even the chooks are sunbaking.

The vegetable garden is thriving and the fruit trees are starting to bud. The Jaboticaba are flowering, the Malay Roseapples are feeding the bats, and the first Durians are now budding. We are eating our first Abiu for the season - beautiful creme caramel flavours that I had nearly forgotten.

The young cassowary teenagers are now starting to appear around the house on their own. Dad is off courting the female in the next valley. The teenagers seem very vulnerable, and nervous.

The large lace monitors are now stalking the chickens and raiding the chicken house for the eggs.

Big rains in July - an unusual event

Last wednesday it started to rain and continued through the night, into Thursday night. 312 mm in 48 hours. The causeways flooded and the road was cut for most of Thursday .

We had a German family staying with us, who were due to depart, so we rang their hire car company Hertz, who were quite happy for them to leave the hire car at Cape Trib, so that Digby could take them to Cairns in the 4WD, and then get another hire car for the rest of their holiday.

The other guests - Anna and her son Ian were not so lucky. They had hired a car with Thrifty who said that if they left the car at Cape Trib, they would still be charged for the hire, and that there were no cars available to replace the car at cape trib anyway. So we offered them the Granny Flat, so that we could get the cottages ready for the next guests in case they arrived through the day driving a big 4 WD. Anna and Ian went off to explore and made the mistake of crossing the first creek, and then couldn't get back to the farm, when the river came up, so they finished up staying at Coconut Beach Resort for the night, and came back to see me the next morning.

Our new guests for Thursday night failed to appear, and then rang to say they were staying the night further south at Daintree Wilderness Lodge. This meant I had Thursday night to myself - all alone with the dogs - what joy.

Now the creeks are running again, the sun has started to peak out from the clouds, and the weather forecast looks promising.

Cape Tribulation is a rainforest wilderness, remote and the weather is unpredictable. That's why this area has never been settled into suburbia before. That's the attraction - the reason why we live here. The orchard is thriving - after such a long dry last year, this is a wonderful bonus. It might be a record breaking July - maybe the wettest July on record. I checked Hans' rainfall record which go back to 1980 and for July - and the biggest rainfall 222 mm in 1997, so it looks like this could be the case.

(This photo has been taken by Deep Forest Lodge and shows a photo from the wet season)

Birds battling it out

The Macleay honeyeater defends its food source - the very ripe and squishy black sapote - from the attacking Lewin honeyeater. The fruit has been picked and the orchard food supply is finished, so they have moved into the house to get the ripe fruit here. Some great photos.

Honey Eaters at the house eating Black Sapote

 

Mamey Sapote Dessert Sauce is Yummy

Experimenting with Mamey Sapotes, I have made up a sauce to go with banana pancakes. The guests can't choose between the black sapote sauce and the mamey sapote sauce - they think both are wonderful.

I have started selling it to the fruit tasters, but they are not sure how to use it, so I have taken a photo of the pancakes - just looking at it makes my mouth water - and will post the photo above the sauces, just like in a japanese restaurant where you get to see what it looks like before you choose.

Party time in the Black Sapotes

We are currently harvesting Black Sapote - and so are the Pied Currawongs, Pale Headed Friarbirds, Spotted Catbirds, and several species of honey eaters, and Spectacled Flying Foxes (no they dont actually wear specs - it's a ring of pale fur around each eye. This afternoon we picked about 6 cartons - and left some of the fruit at the top of the trees too high for us to reach for the bird gang. It's a small crop compared to previous years - caused by the tree being stressed last year.

It's great to have Black Sapote on the fruit tasting. The name 'chocolate pudding fruit' captures everyone's imagination - people are amazed at the texture (yes it really is puddeny) and the colour (yes it really LOOKs the colour of chocolate) - and we cannot keep up with the demand for our fruit leather of Black Sapote mixed with coconut. Which is why we have picked as much of the fruit as wevcan today, before the birds and bats finish the crop for us.

The sad story of the vegetable garden

This year, the vege garden has been replanted THREE times so far - first in March, as an optimist before we left for the UK I thought it might be possible to get the veges going early - you never know what the weather is going to be - of course they were washed away with the heavy april rains. So Diane our house sitter tried a second time - she did not realise what she was up against and once again little survived. Now dad has been up here for a week and has put in a complete replant. This morning I woke up to a heavy downpour and thought - oh damn - the tomato seeds will never survive this. We are now talking about how to roof the vege garden beds with plastic to protect them. Time will tell.

Two weeks On

Pigs are having a nice time
There is major pig damage throughout the orchard - digging up areas under the breadfruit and on the edges of orchard with the neighbours who have long grass. Rod - a neighbour - was driving past and saw the pig - a very large boar - in our orchard and completely unconcerned by the traffic. He rang us when he got home - Digby was just getting breakfast for the guests, so he got the gun and went off to see if he could shoot it. Alas, long gone.

Fertilising after the mangosteen crop
The mangosteens have now finished - there were the odd small ones still to be found scrabbling around under some trees. So now we are concentrating on feeding the trees to replace the nutrients from the fruit which has been picked and removed from the system. Last year, DPI researchers were able to give the exact nutrient breakdown for a mangosteen, so we could actually calculate the weight of fruit, and then the exact fertiliser load. Our main problem is we need large amount of potassium, which does not come easily in organic form. However we have managed to find a premixed blend which is organic certified which will fill the gap.

New mangosteen seedlings refound
Before we left to go overseas in April, we planted out 20 small new mangosteen seedlings in the back corner of the farm. We had tried to grow Salaks there, but they were not happy in the red clay soil, so we pulled them out to replace them with the mangosteens. All these seedlings were now hidden in 2 metre grass, and it was difficult to find them. One tree was accidentally slashed in the search and will have to be replaced. I guess I should be happy it is only one. I have been spending time down at the local grocery store digging around in their rubbish to extract the cardboard to use as mulch. This should keep the grass at bay for 12 months.

Pruning the breadfruit
Digby is madly pruning the breadfruit. I can't bear to look - high up the tree, hanging on with one arm, and using a chainsaw in the other. The pruning needs to be done now to give the trees time to recover before the next harvest in 2007. The idea is that by cutting the tree from a 20 metree tree to a 3 metre tree, the fruit will be easy to pick. The worry is that there will be no fruit at all.

Wanderers Return to the Cape

It is great to be back - 8 weeks is a long time to be away and the work to bring the orchard under control is huge. The grass is about 2 metres tall and apparently it hasn't stopped raining since we left with the annual total now up to 6 metres for so far for 2006.

We have launched into the farmwork with great enthusiasm, and we managed to get the first fruit tasting running last Monday, searching for fruit amongst the jungle to discover what there was to put on the menu. so now we are all systems go with both the B&B and the tasting operating again.

Digby climbed the Yellow Mangosteen tree to pick Mangosteens and the Cassowary and two chicks appeared while he was up the tree to browse underneath for the fallen fruit. They must be hungry. An interesting viewpoint looking down on them - one not many people have!

The beehive looks like it has had problems - only a few bees left and they appear very sluggish, though it is cold at the moment.

We are still picking Mangosteens and able to put them on the tasting - this must be one of the latest crops - normally they are around in March/April.

Cycling the Great Glen Way

We decided to cross Scotland from west to east on bicycle via the Great Glen Way which goes from Fort William on the west to Inverness on the east - about 80 miles, a lot of it along a very old canal built in the 1830s which is still used for boats today. Bicycles seemed a better option than walking along the canal for miles. We took three days to do it, and had some great moments flying down hills - the cycle track detoured off into the nearby mountains and used forestry tracks whenever the opportunity arose. Some of the memorable moments:

The deer in the ditch - still alive and alert. We assume it had been hit by a car and we rang national parks who were going out to check it - I still wonder what the outcome was
The traffic on the main roads - no shoulder on scottish roads so absolutely scary to cycle
The steep hills to push the bike up - sometimes a 60 degree slope
The exhilaration of the downhill runs which went for kilometers - and getting scared at the speed - jamming the brakes on and hoping they hold
The ness islands on the outskirts of Inverness -

However it was really hard work - not sure that I see myself as a cyclist with a future. I prefer a bit more luxury

Scotland - the west highlands

Digby and I have just walked from Glasgow to Fort William along the West Highland Way - 153 kilometres over 8 days. We averaged 15 - 20 kilometres a day - a slow pace compared to other walkers. I like to think that we were savouring the experience! What things stand out?

The sheep/lamb/dog thing
All the sheep are lambing in May and the newborn lambs were endlessly entertaining. We watched a farmer use two sheep dogs to shift new lambs and mothers into an adjacent paddock. He used separate whistle commands for each dog. As all the lambs panicked and lost their mothers it seemed like pandemonium. They were very small only a week old - but each had a number on their back - which matched to their mother. We spoke to the farmer after the shift as all the lambs were bleating to relocate their mothers. "I'll give them half an hour to 'mother-up' and then I'll go and sort them out"- which meant matching numbers

Digby is famous
We found the warden at the YHA hostel at Rowardennan had been to Cape Trib two years before and done the fruit tasting - he recognised digby - small world isnt it.

Rannoch Moor
The walking on day 5 was superb - surrounded by mountains covered in snow, wide open spaces and no vehicle noise - we walked across the moor and into Glen Coe to stay at the Kingshouse, a hotel which has been there since the 1500s. It still looks the same landscape - large glacial U shaped valleys - high rounded mountain tops on all sides and no other houses.

Companionship of other walkers
We walked over several days with Bill and Stacey, on their honeymoon from Colorado, and Roger and Wendy from Cornwall - we all travelled at basically the same pace and kept meeting up each night. The comaraderie was great. At the end of the walk in the middle of downtown Fort William, Wendy and Roger had arrived first and were waiting for us to stagger in and appeared with whisky and glasses to toast the end of the walk, at the 'end' sign. This seemed surreal, surrounded by traffic, pedestrians, and all the other bits of civilisation.

Walking across England

18 days and 205 miles later Digby and I staggered into Robin Hood's bay on the east coast of England. We have walked the whole way from St. Bee's on the west coast through Cumbria and the Lakes District on to Yorkshire through the Moors to the coast.

Staying at B&Bs most nights has given us some interesting insights into the business. In general English B&Bs quarantine you from the family into a separate part of the house - you dont meet the family - the husband is usually never seen. There are exceptions and these are the places which we will remember the most: watching the grand national steeplechase in front of the fire with a local sheep farmer; talking about the long distance walk with the host who has also completed it. The B&B breakfasts are usually 'full' english breakfast which includes a huge fry up of eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans, fried bread and black pudding. Not much fruit to be had - and usually out of a tin - stewed prunes, grapefruit. The highligh of fresh mango this morning for breakfast - the last thing we expected!

Cyclone Larry gives us a miss

Cyclone Larry crossed the Queensland coast in the early hours of Monday 20th March, between Innisfail and Mission Beach, 2 hours south of Cairns. It was a category 5 cyclone with wind gusts over 280 kms per hour.

Our farm is two hours north of Cairns at Cape Tribulation, and we breathed a sigh of relief as the cyclone headed south, away from us. We were on the very edge of the cyclone and suffered destructive winds, less than 150 km per hour, which started at about 3.00 am and lasted about 4 hours. We sat on the verandah in the moonlight, watching the trees bending and whipping with the wind, and listening to the roar. It is the sound that frightens you.

We had two German guests staying with us in the bed and breakfast. The night before the cyclone they had asked about going out on the reef. By this time, the dive boat was heading for safe harbour in Cooktown. By 9.00 am the next morning, the road was open and they headed out to Cairns hoping to catch an international flight the following day.

A farm tour of inspection showed that damage to our orchard was minimal. About 6 fruit trees had fallen over and snapped off. And that was it! So different to the previous cyclone - Cyclone Rona which had scored a direct hit on the farm in 1999, and created 6 months of clean up work.

As we listened to the radio, we heard the damage reports coming in further south. We had been in Innisfail the day before for the Annual General Meeting of the Rare Fruit Council of Australia. The motel we had stayed at on Saturday night, lost its roof in the early hours of Monday morning. The annual feast of the senses held on sunday in the main street of Innisfail had been fantastic - a great display of rare fruit and vegetables of the local area. And now all those farms destroyed.


This link below - Serious Weather Events - Bureau of Meteorology will provide the summary of the event, once they get round to putting it up.
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/sevwx/

First Taste of a Velvet Apple

This fruit looks and feels magnificent - it really does feel like velvet, deep rich red velvet, which is a rough velvet rather than the smooth nap we are used to.

Our tree had produced its very first fruit and I had never tasted it before, so a great sense of anticipation. Cut a wedge - smooth texture like a firm avocado, with a smell similar to rockmelon. And the taste?
Well at first sensation you think of apple but it is much smoother and waxier than an apple, then the rockmelon flavour cuts in.

Finally a taste which you can't quite put your finger on - not that pleasant either - perhaps a tang of cleaning fluid or something similar. It is this final part of the taste which makes you realise why there are not thousands of hectares under cultivation. An interesting fruit to grow and to have and to eat on the odd occasion, but not one that you would rave about.

Oh well - it will be great to have on the fruit tasting anyway, just for the texture and the rich red colour.

Driest December in three decades

"This has been the driest December since 1972, which was also a 31 mm month. But this has not broken the December 1950 record, when 9 mm fell."

This quote is from the Cairns Post, December 30th 2005.

The big dry broke on December 23, when our farm received 165 mm over 24 hours.