Hobbs Family
We Are Closed
We are closed for the Season.
Thanks to all of our customers for another wonderful Fruit Season.
We look forward to seeing you all again next year!
In the mean time check out our latest photo gallerys.
Summer 2010/2011
Autumn 2011
Also remember to stay tuned for future updates by checking out the blog and if you just want to see how life is going on the Orchard, feel free to give us a call on 03 446 8585 or email us at sandralex@xtra.co.nz
Cheers
The Hobbs Tribe
Sandra, Alex, Sam & Ruby
Sam’s Guide To Planting Garlic
On Saturday I conducted my annual duty of planting garlic.
Yes I know it’s not the winter solstice yet but down here in the barren wilderness commonly referred to by many as Hercules Flat, I have found that by planting my garlic in late April I get a much better crop as it establishes itself before the freeze of winter sets in.
So here’s my guide (with pictures!) to planting garlic.
Firstly gather up some disease free garlic and carefully divide the bulb into individual cloves.
Next you organize your rows.
I plant my garlic in rows 40cm apart with the garlic plants spaced 13cm apart.
Take some short stakes, place one at the end of each row and then string up a tight line of twine between the two, thus marking your row.
Then take a small piece of bamboo (or some other type of narrow stick), push it into the ground about 6cm and then rotate slightly in order to create a hole wide enough to fit a garlic clove.
Take the cloves and place one (point upwards) in each hole deep enough to just cover with soil.
Having good soil fertility and regular water is important as a lack of nutrients and water will result in a substandard crop.
And so concludes this episode of Sam’s Guide To..
Stay tuned for future episodes on other gardening activities.
It is Freezing!!!!
It is freezing.
Thanks to a cold southerly currently rolling up the country the current temperature stands at 6c with a wind chill of about 3c!!!!
We have even had a close call with hail on Sunday when we just got the tail end of a band as it passed through the Valley!!!
Too close for comfort!!
As you can imagine we have our fires on full bore so at least the house is warm and toasty.
Just a bit of a shame that the Fruit Stall don’t have the same level of warmth!!
I don’t recommend boxing up Apple orders at 6am when the temperature is this cold.
Lets just say after 1 hour Mum and I couldn’t feel our hands!
Just so you guys can see how cold everything is at Hobbs Orchard here’s a couple of photos taken at 9am this morning of the Benger Range.
Enjoy!!!!! 😉
Winter is On the Way!!!
It is definitely safe to say that winter is on its way!!!
When we got up this morning at 5:00am the temperature outside was 2c!!!!!
Just a little bit chilly!!!
Still perfect conditions for fruit packing(not!!).
In other news, we have finished our Coxes Orange Apples but we still have Royal Gala and Golden Delicious available on the Stall, 5kg bag for $5 or 10kg for $10.
Within the next week or so we should have Red Delicious available.
By the way, you may notice now that because the Fruit Season has slowed down I haven’t been updating the blog as much.
From now on and throughout the rest of the year you can expect a post every few days (at the very least once a week).
Believe me, if anything interesting happens here on Hobbs Orchard, you guys will hear about it!!! 😉
Another One Bites The Dust
For the past few weeks we have been catching several large ferrets in our ferret trap.
Some big, some small but yesterday we were greeted with something different.
A white ferret!!!!!
That’s right, a snow white ferret!
Don’t think for a minute though just because its all cute and white and fluffy that it isn’t a marauding killer!
We caught it just outside the chook house door so if we hadn’t had the trap set we very likely would have a repeat of the last ferret related incident.
As you can imagine we have reset the trap just in case more ferrets decide they want some chicken to go.
Rain Rain
Yep, you guessed it.
It’s raining!!
In fact it has rained for the past 7 hours without a break for a biscuit or a cup of tea.
I don’t really mind the rain at this time of year though.
The Apples don’t get affected by it and it’s good to have a nice amount of moisture in the soil before the ground freezes in winter.
It would be nice though if it didn’t decide to pour down when I’m in middle of my garden with an armful of dried bean plants.
Why??
Because trying to run across a freshly cultivated garden while attempting to keep an armful of bean plants dry from the torrential rain is not really on my list of things I enjoy to do.
It’s all fun and games until you trip over a cabbage.
Cold
Yep it is definitely Autumn!
The days are cooler, the nights are cooler and the days are getting shorter than a Pygmy with a hunched back.
Thankfully there is a wonderful invention commonly referred to as a fireplace.
These are marvellous things which allow you to light a fire inside the house thus warming it up!!!
Brilliant! 😉
In other news:
We have Royal Gala Apples and Coxes Orange Apples available for $5 for 5kg or $10 for 10kg.
We hope to have Golden Delicious sometime in the next week or so.
Apples
We are well into the swing of things with our Royal Gala Apples.
We sell them in 5kg bags for $5 or 10kg bags for $10.
The Royal Gala are our most popular eating Apple due to their sweet flavour and crispness.
They are great for school lunches and are also good keepers.
We also started our Coxes Orange Apples last week.
At this stage they still have a tarty taste but they will definately sweeten as time goes on.
They are being sold in 5kg bags for $5 or 10kg for $10.
The Coxes Orange are also very popular amongst our customers.
They have a crisp texture with a very distinctive flavour that is balanced between sweet and acidic/tarty.
Their sharp taste (early in the season) appeals to many although some prefer to wait until the sharpness is counterbalanced by sweetness.
Our Omegas Have Been Wiped Out
All our Omega plums have been wiped out!!!!!
We had massive winds come in last night and this morning when we went out to check the plums we saw that every single one had been blown off the trees!!
As you can imagine we are not very happy right now and we apologise to all the customers who have missed out.
Mom didn’t even get a chance to bottle any!!!!!
Wind
Oh yeah wind is such a joy.
Yesterday we had gale force winds hit us like a ton of bricks.
We’ve lost quite a lot of Omegas but by some miracle there are still some on the trees!
Only downside is that all the “survivors” are 2nds hence only 2nds are available on the Stall at $2.00/kg.