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Just a Wee Bit of A Flood!!

Just a wee bit of a flood in the Apples and Plums after 36 hours of rain!
Lucky for us the water is draining away steadily so there shouldn’t be any damage to the trees.

 

Sandra’s Worcester Sauce Recipe


Here’s Sandra’s recipe for Worcester Sauce.

2 kg brown or raw sugar
7 onions, chopped
3 kg apples, roughly chopped (don’t peel or pip them)
9 litres cider vinegar (white also acceptable)
3-4 Tb ground ginger
6 Tb sea salt
4 oranges or lemons, roughly chopped (don’t peel them)
1 Tb ground cloves or
3 Tb whole cloves
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tb molasses

Put all the ingredients into a large pot or preserving pan and bring to the boil slowly.
Simmer for about 3 hours.
Take off heat.
Then put a clean pot in the kitchen sink and a strainer over top.
Cup small amounts of the mixture into the strainer and rub the liquid through with the back of a soup spoon. Run the spoon along the bottom of the strainer to get all the thickening that hangs on!
This really makes the sauce.
Mix all together at the end of straining and then bottle into scrupulously clean bottles, using a stainless steel jug or a jug and a funnel.
Put the lids on when warm or cold.

Hobbs Orchard Update

Gidday folks

Time for an update on life here on the Orchard.

We, the Hobbs Tribe of Hobbs Orchard, managed to survive the winter months relatively unscathed.
I will admit that there were several occasions in which we almost froze whilst venturing outside to perform necessary tasks and duties but thanks to two wood burners (which ran 24/7) the house remained nice and toasty!

We didn’t let the sub antarctic weather stop us from getting out and about though.
As usual we ventured to Queenstown several times over winter (in between the snow dumps) and despite the fact that it was colder than a penguins rear end, we still had a loads of fun!

Here's me and Ruby trying not to freeze to death on a -5 morning!

You can check out our Winter Photo Gallery here.

 

Once the snow melted and the days began to warm up, the buds on the fruit trees began to move faster than a caffiene addicted rabbit so before long we were in full blown frost fighting mode.

Ah good ol frost fighting.
Yep, nothing says good times like running around an ice covered Orchard at 1am checking every sprinkler to make sure there are no blockages.

Funnily enough though, this Spring has been rather non-eventful when it comes to severe weather; a welcome change considering the last couple of Springs have been full of weather related turmoil!!
You can check out our Spring Photo Gallery here.

So apart from a cold winter and a reasonably normal spring (so far) things have been ticking over nicely here at the Hobbs HQ.

I’m going to be updating the blog more regularly from now on so stay tuned for future updates!

Wild Weather of Central Otago

Yes it is official, the wild weather of Central Otago is as wild as ever!

A week ago we had a massive downpour of rain and we had to quickly dig trenches around the Packing Shed to prevent a torrent of water from flooding it.

Below is an example of one of our emergency trenches!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that wonderful event we thought the weather wasn’t going to get any worse for a little while longer.
That is until this morning when we awoke to this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow on the Benger Ranges.
Yet another sign of the approaching winter.

Yes it is safe to say that we are in for some cold days!!
Thank goodness for that marvellous, combustable stuff commonly referred to as FIREWOOD!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s all for now folks.

Stay tuned for more Hobbs Orchard news in the coming months!

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.