Divine weather and a young cassowary

A teenage cassowary is out on its own roaming on the farm. We were thrilled to have it come and visit during the fruit tasting, which made a great day for the tasters.

 

And just to show what great weather you are missing here is the early morning shot taken when I walked the dogs a few days ago. Calm, sunny and a great day to remind me why I live here.

 

January - bits and pieces

January weather has been sunny and the fruit is ripening rapidly. We decided to set up a fruit stall at the farm gate, with an honesty box. This has been quite a lot of fun, particularly collecting the money - usually all in 20 cent pieces. The bank is going to love us.

 

 

The dragonfruit harvest is amazing. Like picking little aliens off the cactus!

 

With the heavy rains last month I decided to try and grow kang kong - a tropical swamp spinach which grows in water gardens - as nothing else was growing very well.

 

Oh mangosteens! Wherefore art thou, mangosteens?

The first day of 2011, and it looks like it will be a year for NO mangosteen crop. Heavy rains and warmer than normal temperatures are predicted until April, with the La Nina effect. This means the trees are very happy thank you very much, and have no need to burst into flower. We must now pin our hopes on a dry cold winter with an early flowering for a harvest in November- December.

And you get to eat the jakfruit too!

Dig in - best to use gloves - yummy jakfruit.

You don't need to jump off tall buildings to be adventurous.

Find out more about jakfruit 

 

Photo-shoot for 'Adventurous by Nature' campaign

Our neighbours, Amy and Jasmine Davidson provided the talent, along with their dad, Pete and friend Jy. These photos will be used to promote Tropical North Queensland as an adventurous destination.

Breeding tiny jakfruit

This wheelbarrow tells a long story that has taken more than 6 years to unfold. Manipulating fruit characteristics is not something that happens overnight. Fruit growers need patience. 

Digby  is proudly holding a wheelbarrow full of tiny ripe jakfruit weighing 1-2 kg. Most jakfruit we grow on the farm are big - over 10 kgs and sometimes up to 40 kgs. Six years ago we found a baby jakfruit and decided that this would have much more marketing potential - nobody wants to buy a 40 kg fruit - they will never eat it all. Unless of course you grew up with it in Sri Lanka or Malaysia. We want to be able to sell our jakfruit to our fruit tasters - this is the fruit that we think will work.

Now we are saving the seeds to grow more small trees and as our old jakfruit trees reach senescence, they will be replaced with trees growing tiny jakfruit. Will I live that long? Who knows!

Read more about Jakfruit

Diving back into the orchard

I am now back to being a farmer, after 6 months away in the US, hiking the Appalachian Trail. Dirt between the fingernails is something that hikers and farmers have in common! I spent some time today digging and weeding around the dragon fruit plants. Some of them have died from neglect - the weeds were too high for the young newly planted ones to survive. As I moved the weeds away, a Children's Python was curled up against the post of one plant. It was really tiny and a vivid black and white stripey colour. Didn't seem too disturbed by me. The dragonfruit is just starting to set tiny buds.