Sometimes you decide that it's time to stop, regroup, and start with a clean slate. Sometimes, the universe decides that for you.
The universe decided it was time for us.
It's been a funny old week - aside from being extraordinarily busy setting up our new shop in Hervey Bay (yep - we've now got two shop fronts to buy our booze from!), we've also had quite a few large group bookings (a day preparing food, the day that they are here, then a few hours cleaning up).
On top of this, our rainwater tank got a little out of whack and started smelling really gross. All of our water had the stench of sewerage/pond water for about a week before we couldn't stand it any longer and made some calls. After the advice of 'chuck in some chlorine', 'buy a filter cartridge system' and 'don't worry, its probably fine', we decided to bite the bullet and pay "The Tank Cleaners" to come out and, well, clean our tank.
I am SO glad we did!
We had to drain out the whole tank (devastating), but then Peter the Tank Cleaner wiggled his way inside and for the next half hour all we saw was handfuls of leaves and gunk getting flung out of the top. When he was done, he explained that he evicted a family of frogs and there was about 8 inches of 'decaying organic matter' sludging up the bottom. That, along with the stinking hot days we've had lately, caused some serious algae and bacteria growth. It was so bad that a proper cleanup was the only solution.
After a stern talking to about proper rainwater tank management, we jumped up on the roof to give all the pipes and gutters a clean out with the high pressure cleaner and then we were ready for a fresh start.
We've had the tanks topped up with water again, and hopefully it won't be too long until we get some rain to finish off the job.
Aside from that, the new cool room that has just been built is still a tad leaky, so again we've made the big decision to accept our losses and build a big roof across the whole thing. So Josh has been up and down a ladder all day doing that. It looks surprisingly neat and tidy, and doesn't really fit in to the mish-mash of everything else on the farm!! Fingers crossed it solves our leak problem...I guess we will found out soon enough.
Finally (everything comes in threes, you know), even Betsy had a clean slate this morning. She's been getting progressively rattlier over the past few weeks, and a mechanic friend of our said she needed a new rear muffler. Eventually I got around to ordering her one...just in the knick of time! Her old one had rusted off and was hanging by a rubber thread. 20 minutes later Josh had fitted the new one, and I was off on a test drive. I can't believe the difference a new muffler makes! She's back to being fuel efficient, zippy and has lost that dirty fake-V8 growl she has had lately!
So - all in all - it's been a very expensive but productive day. Not a single customer, but never mind. There is always tomorrow!
Tuesday, 29 November 2016
Saturday, 5 November 2016
The house that Jack built
But instead of a house, it's a cool room. And instead of Jack, it's Josh and Geoff.
Today, the boys built their second cool room together. We bought a heap of refrigerated cold room panels off Gumtree (as you do) and had them trucked up to us from the Gold Coast to Childers. They sat around for a few weeks while we waited for a concrete slab to be poured earlier this week, and then the boys put it all together today.
I'm quite impressed, I must admit. There was a lot less swearing this time around than last time, and they've done a great job. We ran out of glue (again!) so it's not quite done - but they will finish off the door in the next day or two.
The whole point of building a new cool room is to be able to increase our production of wines as we head into our second season of producing fruit wines. They've been immensely popular, so much so that we've sold out of the 'first round' of everything we've made and are well and truly onto 'round two' (and three, and four) of a lot of our wines. It's great that we have been selling them so well, but it's also really time consuming to keep producing our wines in such small quantities (a hundred or so bottles at a time).
By having more space to ferment and age the wines means we will be able to produce more at once, hopefully meaning we will be able to cut some costs by filtering and bottling all at once...and simply have more stock on hand.
As summer creeps closer (and the humidity increases!) a lot of the lovely summer fruits are also ripening up, ready to be turned into wine. We are eagerly awaiting our 2017 crops of mangoes, lychees, dragonfruit and plums and can't wait to get these back on our shelves.
Today, the boys built their second cool room together. We bought a heap of refrigerated cold room panels off Gumtree (as you do) and had them trucked up to us from the Gold Coast to Childers. They sat around for a few weeks while we waited for a concrete slab to be poured earlier this week, and then the boys put it all together today.
I'm quite impressed, I must admit. There was a lot less swearing this time around than last time, and they've done a great job. We ran out of glue (again!) so it's not quite done - but they will finish off the door in the next day or two.
The whole point of building a new cool room is to be able to increase our production of wines as we head into our second season of producing fruit wines. They've been immensely popular, so much so that we've sold out of the 'first round' of everything we've made and are well and truly onto 'round two' (and three, and four) of a lot of our wines. It's great that we have been selling them so well, but it's also really time consuming to keep producing our wines in such small quantities (a hundred or so bottles at a time).
By having more space to ferment and age the wines means we will be able to produce more at once, hopefully meaning we will be able to cut some costs by filtering and bottling all at once...and simply have more stock on hand.
As summer creeps closer (and the humidity increases!) a lot of the lovely summer fruits are also ripening up, ready to be turned into wine. We are eagerly awaiting our 2017 crops of mangoes, lychees, dragonfruit and plums and can't wait to get these back on our shelves.
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| Slab getting poured |
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| All ready for graffiti! (and to dry) |
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| Walls going up |
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| OHS nightmare - roof going on |
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| Oh hey up there. |
Thursday, 22 September 2016
Winners are grinners
I'm absolutely stoked to announce that we won SEVEN medals at the Perth Royal Show fruit wine competition!!!!
We entered seven wines, and to pick up an award for every single thing we entered is absolutely insane. We were nervously hoping for perhaps one or two, but to get seven is incredible.
We collected:
Silver - Dragonfruit Wine (Sweet)
Silver - Jaboticaba Fortified
Bronze - Dragonfruit Wine (Dry)
Bronze - Pineapple Wine
Bronze - Starfruit Wine
Bronze - Plum Wine
Bronze - Limoncello Liqueur
To get a bronze, we needed to score 15.5 - 16.9 out of 20, a silver was 17 - 18.5, and a gold was 18.5 or higher. So, it was possible for multiple wines to be awarded a particular medal in each class (rather than in the olympics when there is just one gold, one silver and one bronze).
We are just so thrilled to know that we are on the right track and what we are producing is actually pretty good. It's been a huge motivation for us to keep pushing on, trying to improve with every batch and to go for gold in 2017.
To get the wines in on time, however, was a little more difficult than we were anticipating. We sent off our entries (two bottles of each) in two big boxes via a courier to family in Perth. The Royal Show Society is very strict with entries - if they aren't delivered between the particular hours on the nominated day, you simply miss out.
The day before the wine was due, it still hadn't arrived in Perth, and every person I spoke to at the courier company couldn't tell me where it was.
Eventually, at around midday on the due date I heard that the pallet with our boxes was at the depot in Kewdale. There was four hours to get it from Kewdale to the showgrounds otherwise it was all just a big, expensive waste of time. Luckily, Josh's dad was out and about and was able to collect it from the depot directly - after an infuriating hour watching the warehouse guys check each box (and each box again) they eventually found ours and Cooper was able to deliver them for us.
It was such a stressful 48 hours leading up to the delivery, that the next month waiting for the results to be released wasn't quite as bad. We checked the Royal Show website every day hoping that it had been updated. The day that it was, we were both so nervous to actually open the link and check the results!
Anyway - we are just so thrilled that despite all the chaos leading up to it (and despite not having ever made a fruit wine up until the start of the year!) we are just so chuffed to have a few awards and can't wait to proudly display our certificates on the cellar walls!
We entered seven wines, and to pick up an award for every single thing we entered is absolutely insane. We were nervously hoping for perhaps one or two, but to get seven is incredible.
We collected:
Silver - Dragonfruit Wine (Sweet)
Silver - Jaboticaba Fortified
Bronze - Dragonfruit Wine (Dry)
Bronze - Pineapple Wine
Bronze - Starfruit Wine
Bronze - Plum Wine
Bronze - Limoncello Liqueur
To get a bronze, we needed to score 15.5 - 16.9 out of 20, a silver was 17 - 18.5, and a gold was 18.5 or higher. So, it was possible for multiple wines to be awarded a particular medal in each class (rather than in the olympics when there is just one gold, one silver and one bronze).
We are just so thrilled to know that we are on the right track and what we are producing is actually pretty good. It's been a huge motivation for us to keep pushing on, trying to improve with every batch and to go for gold in 2017.
To get the wines in on time, however, was a little more difficult than we were anticipating. We sent off our entries (two bottles of each) in two big boxes via a courier to family in Perth. The Royal Show Society is very strict with entries - if they aren't delivered between the particular hours on the nominated day, you simply miss out.
The day before the wine was due, it still hadn't arrived in Perth, and every person I spoke to at the courier company couldn't tell me where it was.
Eventually, at around midday on the due date I heard that the pallet with our boxes was at the depot in Kewdale. There was four hours to get it from Kewdale to the showgrounds otherwise it was all just a big, expensive waste of time. Luckily, Josh's dad was out and about and was able to collect it from the depot directly - after an infuriating hour watching the warehouse guys check each box (and each box again) they eventually found ours and Cooper was able to deliver them for us.
It was such a stressful 48 hours leading up to the delivery, that the next month waiting for the results to be released wasn't quite as bad. We checked the Royal Show website every day hoping that it had been updated. The day that it was, we were both so nervous to actually open the link and check the results!
Anyway - we are just so thrilled that despite all the chaos leading up to it (and despite not having ever made a fruit wine up until the start of the year!) we are just so chuffed to have a few awards and can't wait to proudly display our certificates on the cellar walls!
Saturday, 2 July 2016
A day in the life
After losing a little blog inspiration, a friend said "why don't you write about a typical day at the winery". I complained that there is no such thing as a typical day because every day is so different!
With that in mind, I randomly picked yesterday to take some photos to have something to write about. And here it is...
Thursday 30th June, 2016
We woke up at around 7am at Josh's mums house in Hervey Bay, with an impatient dog begging to be let in the bedroom. With oodles of good morning kisses, we snuggled Otto for a few minutes, before getting up and dressed. We'd been out to our favourite Indian restaurant the night before as an early birthday dinner for Josh, and then stayed the night at Von's. We do this fairly regularly, perhaps once or twice a month, whenever we want to get out of Childers for the night.
After we said our goodbyes, and gave one last snuggle, we headed to our favourite cafe in the Bay (Eat @ Dan and Steph's - the winners of My Kitchen Rules a few years back) to grab a takeaway cold brew coffee and a bacon and egg toastie for the road. Josh scoffed his quite easily, and I was left driving one-handed, while licking up dribbles of aoili and bbq sauce from the other.
About 40 minutes later (10 minutes south of Childers), we called into a roadside fruit stall/packing shed for 10kg of Lemons (for Limoncello) and 10kg of Mandarins (for marmalade). $15 poorer and 20kg more citrusy, we were nearly home.
We unpacked the car and put the fruit in the cold room to be forgotten about for a few days.
After changing into some work clothes, Josh reversed the forklift out of the driveway and loaded up a few buckets and a pallet, then drove down to the orchard. We had a star fruit tree loaded with fruit and decided that today was the day to make star fruit wine. (Literally just decided to do it today, it had been on the radar for a few weeks, but finally committed yesterday morning). We spent about an hour or so picking 150kg of fruit, then took it all back to the winemaking cellar. By this stage, it was about lunchtime.
Josh also had the irrigation all cranked up again, after two weeks of no water (they were doing maintenance on the pipes or something). So, we also had to do a quick walk through all the rows to fix any blocked sprinkler heads. It's a shitty job at the best of times, but not ideal getting soaked on a cool winters morning.
Back in the shed, we organised all the equipment we'd need for the day and gave everything a quick clean and sanitise. While that was getting sorted, Josh also quickly mixed up a batch of our amazingly delicious cold drip coffee liqueur. (It's been selling out like hot cakes!).
Bucket by bucket, we crushed the starfruit and then pressed the pulp to give us as much pure starfruit juice as possible. This liquid was put into a fermentation tank to settle overnight and we started the worst part of the job - the clean up. It always feels like the "good" part of winemaking takes about 10 minutes and the epic clean up and sanitise afterwards takes hours. We were done at about 2:30pm.
I nipped down the the shops to grab some chicken from Jamie the Butcher, and some veggies from the supermarket. I tried to buy Josh a pair of thongs for his birthday, but the only shoe shop in town was closed. We had a quick lunch, then back into jobs.
One funny part of the winemaking process is what we do with the leftover fruit skins. I checked next door to see if our neighbour was home (she sometimes likes the scraps for her chickens). They were out, so we headed to the back corner of the property, where we basically dump the scraps in a gully. Josh calls it "mulching", but I don't think that's technically what it is. (Side note: we had some university research students call in one day, wanting to collect vinegar fly samples. They nearly squealed with delight when we showed them our rotting scrap heaps, with swarms of vinegar flies hovering around.)
On the way back, we stopped by the pump shed to pause the irrigation watering, to load some fertiliser in the fertigation tank. Unbeknownst to us, the rubber seal fell off the lid and into the tank. After some searching around the tank, we figured the only place it could be was inside. 10 minutes of fishing about, Josh scooped it out and we could continue.
By this time it was around 5pm, and getting cold and dark outside. We had an online order overnight for a product we no longer stock (oops!). We still had some in a tank in the cellar though, so Josh filtered out just enough to fill a bottle. I quickly labelled it, bubble wrapped it and packaged it up for postage today.
Nearly done for the day, I put a pot of sugar syrup on the stove to dissolve (to add to the star fruit wine the next day). Finally finished, it was 6pm and time to go "home". 6:01pm I was back in the donga for a shower and to cook dinner.
So, while it may not be too exciting, each and every day here at Ohana certainly is always different!
With that in mind, I randomly picked yesterday to take some photos to have something to write about. And here it is...
Thursday 30th June, 2016
We woke up at around 7am at Josh's mums house in Hervey Bay, with an impatient dog begging to be let in the bedroom. With oodles of good morning kisses, we snuggled Otto for a few minutes, before getting up and dressed. We'd been out to our favourite Indian restaurant the night before as an early birthday dinner for Josh, and then stayed the night at Von's. We do this fairly regularly, perhaps once or twice a month, whenever we want to get out of Childers for the night.
After we said our goodbyes, and gave one last snuggle, we headed to our favourite cafe in the Bay (Eat @ Dan and Steph's - the winners of My Kitchen Rules a few years back) to grab a takeaway cold brew coffee and a bacon and egg toastie for the road. Josh scoffed his quite easily, and I was left driving one-handed, while licking up dribbles of aoili and bbq sauce from the other.
About 40 minutes later (10 minutes south of Childers), we called into a roadside fruit stall/packing shed for 10kg of Lemons (for Limoncello) and 10kg of Mandarins (for marmalade). $15 poorer and 20kg more citrusy, we were nearly home.
We unpacked the car and put the fruit in the cold room to be forgotten about for a few days.
After changing into some work clothes, Josh reversed the forklift out of the driveway and loaded up a few buckets and a pallet, then drove down to the orchard. We had a star fruit tree loaded with fruit and decided that today was the day to make star fruit wine. (Literally just decided to do it today, it had been on the radar for a few weeks, but finally committed yesterday morning). We spent about an hour or so picking 150kg of fruit, then took it all back to the winemaking cellar. By this stage, it was about lunchtime.
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| Not exactly OHS approved, but here I am on a pallet, hoisted up into the Starfruit tree. It's much easier than using a ladder. |
Josh also had the irrigation all cranked up again, after two weeks of no water (they were doing maintenance on the pipes or something). So, we also had to do a quick walk through all the rows to fix any blocked sprinkler heads. It's a shitty job at the best of times, but not ideal getting soaked on a cool winters morning.
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| Hitching a lift on the forklift, back to the cellar |
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| About a quarter of our 150kg starfruit. (Plus two Chocolate Pudding Fruit that I picked to see if they will ripen yet!) |
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| Going all Walter White in my gas mask while mixing up the sanitising chemicals. It stinks. So bad. Even with the mask. |
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| Josh - getting sick of all the photos and mixing up some coffee liqueur. |
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| Starfruit into the crusher! |
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| About 100 litres of crushed pulpy goodness! |
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| Our beautiful bladder press! Under the bag is a metal cage and inside, a water bladder. Water (from the garden hose) pumps into the bladder causing it to swell up, smooshing the fruit between the bladder and the cage forcing just the juice through the holes in the cage (that then hit the bag and dribble in the red bit and into the bucket). |
One funny part of the winemaking process is what we do with the leftover fruit skins. I checked next door to see if our neighbour was home (she sometimes likes the scraps for her chickens). They were out, so we headed to the back corner of the property, where we basically dump the scraps in a gully. Josh calls it "mulching", but I don't think that's technically what it is. (Side note: we had some university research students call in one day, wanting to collect vinegar fly samples. They nearly squealed with delight when we showed them our rotting scrap heaps, with swarms of vinegar flies hovering around.)
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| Pressed starfruit skins! With a cameo from Betsy. |
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| Epic clean up process. :( |
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| Josh "mulching" the gully |
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| Fishing out the rubber seal :( |
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| Long day. One last ride on the forks back to the shed! |
Nearly done for the day, I put a pot of sugar syrup on the stove to dissolve (to add to the star fruit wine the next day). Finally finished, it was 6pm and time to go "home". 6:01pm I was back in the donga for a shower and to cook dinner.
So, while it may not be too exciting, each and every day here at Ohana certainly is always different!
Sunday, 3 April 2016
The Boss
So, Josh has decided to go away on a lad's trip this weekend, leaving me as The Boss.
In theory, it should've been a pretty quiet weekend. A group of 8 for lunch and tastings on Saturday, and that's about all.
On Friday afternoon I got a call from Pineapple Pete, our pineapple grower. He said that he has a bin of pines picked and waiting for us and asked what time Josh'll be there to collect them. Whoops.
Without a ute, or someone to drive it, we were a little screwed....until Josh managed to con our friend Timbo (absolute bloody legend!) into helping us out. Timbo came over and picked me up in his ute, and we drove the ten minutes out of town to Pete's pineapple farm. We found the right shed, and the right bin of pines...but there was no forklift. Luckily Pineapple Pete came to the rescue and used his massive tractor (with forks) to lift the bin onto the ute. Secretly, I think Timbo was pretty disappointed he didn't get to drive the beast...but there is always next time.
After a bit of manoeuvring, Timbo the expert forklift driver got the pines off the ute and into our cool room. A huge effort, and another job done.
My next job as The Boss was making another batch of Limoncello, our wildly popular lemon flavoured liqueur. I spent about two hours washing and peeling 90 lemons and prepared our alcoholic base for them to seep in for a few weeks. Another job done.
Saturday was supposed to be nice and easy. 8 for lunch and tastings - no big deal, I've done lunch and tastings for 50 without Josh before! Josh's mum arrived at about 11:30am and everything was prepped and ready to go. A car rolls up, then another. And another. For some ungodly reason, we were FLAT OUT busy all day. It's great, don't get me wrong, but we were both exhausted by the end of it. (I slept for 11 hours last night, and Von slept for 12. It was a big day!) Another day done as the boss.
Today has been a lot more relaxed. We sold out of most of our liqueurs yesterday, and without Josh here, it was time for me to be The Boss again. I managed to dribble out the very last of our Chocolate and Lemon Myrtle liqueur and get three more bottles on the shelf. We've also had some experimental Lychee Liqueur brewing, with some leftover lychees from our Lychee Wine batches. It tasted pretty good, so I filtered that into some bottles too - that was two more products on the shelf!
I've got a batch of Apple and Lemon Myrtle jam bubbling away on the stove now, so all in all a pretty productive day as The Boss again.
I'm not quite sure what Day 4 will hold, but I'm pretty keen for Josh to get home on Day 5!
In theory, it should've been a pretty quiet weekend. A group of 8 for lunch and tastings on Saturday, and that's about all.
On Friday afternoon I got a call from Pineapple Pete, our pineapple grower. He said that he has a bin of pines picked and waiting for us and asked what time Josh'll be there to collect them. Whoops.
Without a ute, or someone to drive it, we were a little screwed....until Josh managed to con our friend Timbo (absolute bloody legend!) into helping us out. Timbo came over and picked me up in his ute, and we drove the ten minutes out of town to Pete's pineapple farm. We found the right shed, and the right bin of pines...but there was no forklift. Luckily Pineapple Pete came to the rescue and used his massive tractor (with forks) to lift the bin onto the ute. Secretly, I think Timbo was pretty disappointed he didn't get to drive the beast...but there is always next time.
After a bit of manoeuvring, Timbo the expert forklift driver got the pines off the ute and into our cool room. A huge effort, and another job done.
My next job as The Boss was making another batch of Limoncello, our wildly popular lemon flavoured liqueur. I spent about two hours washing and peeling 90 lemons and prepared our alcoholic base for them to seep in for a few weeks. Another job done.
Saturday was supposed to be nice and easy. 8 for lunch and tastings - no big deal, I've done lunch and tastings for 50 without Josh before! Josh's mum arrived at about 11:30am and everything was prepped and ready to go. A car rolls up, then another. And another. For some ungodly reason, we were FLAT OUT busy all day. It's great, don't get me wrong, but we were both exhausted by the end of it. (I slept for 11 hours last night, and Von slept for 12. It was a big day!) Another day done as the boss.
Today has been a lot more relaxed. We sold out of most of our liqueurs yesterday, and without Josh here, it was time for me to be The Boss again. I managed to dribble out the very last of our Chocolate and Lemon Myrtle liqueur and get three more bottles on the shelf. We've also had some experimental Lychee Liqueur brewing, with some leftover lychees from our Lychee Wine batches. It tasted pretty good, so I filtered that into some bottles too - that was two more products on the shelf!
I've got a batch of Apple and Lemon Myrtle jam bubbling away on the stove now, so all in all a pretty productive day as The Boss again.
I'm not quite sure what Day 4 will hold, but I'm pretty keen for Josh to get home on Day 5!
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| Lemon peeling for Limoncello |
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| Timbo having a play on the forklift/tractor/beast |
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| Pineapples!! (On Tuesday we will be peeling, chopping and pressing these bad boys - if anyone wants to come and help, you're more than welcome!) |
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| The cellar shelves, looking a bit bare and pathetic! |
Tuesday, 29 March 2016
Learning from the best
A few months ago, I submitted an Expression of Interest form with our local tourism board for some free one-on-one business mentoring.
A week ago, we found out that we had been selected to participate!
Danielle and Robbie, tourism experts from the Fraser Coast region scheduled their first session with us last week and it was awesome. We sat down and had the chance to explain where we are at with our business and where we would like to go. In our next session, they are going to go through our products (i.e.. group tours, wine tasting) and help us promote these through avenues we haven't even considered yet!
In our first session, they were gobsmacked that we hadn't created a mailing list for Ohana Winery and so I've promptly set one up. I printed out a little sign up form to keep on the counter at the cellar door and we already had like ten people sign up!
I've also got it linked to this blog now (On a computer? Look to the left! On a mobile/tablet? Scroll to the bottom and click "View web version"!) - so if you can spare a minute to sign up, I'd be so grateful!
A week ago, we found out that we had been selected to participate!
Danielle and Robbie, tourism experts from the Fraser Coast region scheduled their first session with us last week and it was awesome. We sat down and had the chance to explain where we are at with our business and where we would like to go. In our next session, they are going to go through our products (i.e.. group tours, wine tasting) and help us promote these through avenues we haven't even considered yet!
In our first session, they were gobsmacked that we hadn't created a mailing list for Ohana Winery and so I've promptly set one up. I printed out a little sign up form to keep on the counter at the cellar door and we already had like ten people sign up!
I've also got it linked to this blog now (On a computer? Look to the left! On a mobile/tablet? Scroll to the bottom and click "View web version"!) - so if you can spare a minute to sign up, I'd be so grateful!
Tuesday, 22 March 2016
Holy Guacamole!
The reason I haven't updated this in forever, is because we've just been too busy. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!
Along with running the winery (and orchard tours, and wine making, and jam making, and everything else...) we also have 217 avocado trees. Doesn't sound like too many, but its enough to warrant a little of our time every few weeks.
Around the middle of last year, we had them all pruned and tidied up. Since then we've been watering them regularly. Since fruit set, Josh has been diligently getting up at 5am to spray them, every two and a half weeks.
Two weeks ago, it was go time. We had the fruit maturity tested on a Tuesday, Wednesday morning we were given the all clear to pick, Wednesday afternoon we started. We guessed we'd get about 4 bins of avocados picked (about 250kg per bin). A few people told us that we would get heaps more than that...and they were right. We upped it to 8 bins. We ended up picking 10 bins!
For the start of Day 2, we hired two backpackers to give us a hand. With six people picking, we managed to smash out all of the easy to get to, low hanging fruit and quickly fill four bins. Day 3 we managed to finish the 'easy stuff' and fill another two bins with the harder to reach stuff, by standing on crates and ladders. Day 4, Josh and I were in Kingaroy (2 and a half hours away!) for a food and wine festival. Day 5 we were back and finished off our ten bins with the cherry picker. There is still a little bit of fruit hanging around up there, but we will end up picking them and either sell them from the winery, eat them for brekkie or use them when we have groups here for lunch.
Once picked, Josh drove our baby avos to a nearby packing shed to be washed, graded and packed into boxes. Surprisingly, we had about 70% of our fruit classed as 'Premium' and 'A-Grade', meaning they're all of a good size, haven't been stung by fruit spotting bugs and didn't have any blemishes. Another 20% of the fruit was second grade - maybe a bit deformed or it had a few bug stings. The remaining 10% was all shit. The upside, we still get money for them! (Albeit only around $1/kg). The little baby shitty ones all get turned into frozen guacamole - ironically, the exact same brand I purchase over winter, when fresh avo's aren't available! I'll be buying my baby avo's back!
We just found out that our avo's have made it down to Melbourne, where they are finishing ripening, and will be bought at market this later this week. Some have already been allocated to Woolworths, and the rest will be sold to the highest bidder. We should have an estimate of how much we will be paid in about two weeks, and then actually receive the money (minus the selling fee, the packing fee and a heap of freight) another two weeks after that.
It's been a loooooong process, and avocado picking for five days straight wasn't always peachy, but hopefully it will be a handy little side business to our winemaking!
Along with running the winery (and orchard tours, and wine making, and jam making, and everything else...) we also have 217 avocado trees. Doesn't sound like too many, but its enough to warrant a little of our time every few weeks.
Around the middle of last year, we had them all pruned and tidied up. Since then we've been watering them regularly. Since fruit set, Josh has been diligently getting up at 5am to spray them, every two and a half weeks.
Two weeks ago, it was go time. We had the fruit maturity tested on a Tuesday, Wednesday morning we were given the all clear to pick, Wednesday afternoon we started. We guessed we'd get about 4 bins of avocados picked (about 250kg per bin). A few people told us that we would get heaps more than that...and they were right. We upped it to 8 bins. We ended up picking 10 bins!
For the start of Day 2, we hired two backpackers to give us a hand. With six people picking, we managed to smash out all of the easy to get to, low hanging fruit and quickly fill four bins. Day 3 we managed to finish the 'easy stuff' and fill another two bins with the harder to reach stuff, by standing on crates and ladders. Day 4, Josh and I were in Kingaroy (2 and a half hours away!) for a food and wine festival. Day 5 we were back and finished off our ten bins with the cherry picker. There is still a little bit of fruit hanging around up there, but we will end up picking them and either sell them from the winery, eat them for brekkie or use them when we have groups here for lunch.
Once picked, Josh drove our baby avos to a nearby packing shed to be washed, graded and packed into boxes. Surprisingly, we had about 70% of our fruit classed as 'Premium' and 'A-Grade', meaning they're all of a good size, haven't been stung by fruit spotting bugs and didn't have any blemishes. Another 20% of the fruit was second grade - maybe a bit deformed or it had a few bug stings. The remaining 10% was all shit. The upside, we still get money for them! (Albeit only around $1/kg). The little baby shitty ones all get turned into frozen guacamole - ironically, the exact same brand I purchase over winter, when fresh avo's aren't available! I'll be buying my baby avo's back!
We just found out that our avo's have made it down to Melbourne, where they are finishing ripening, and will be bought at market this later this week. Some have already been allocated to Woolworths, and the rest will be sold to the highest bidder. We should have an estimate of how much we will be paid in about two weeks, and then actually receive the money (minus the selling fee, the packing fee and a heap of freight) another two weeks after that.
It's been a loooooong process, and avocado picking for five days straight wasn't always peachy, but hopefully it will be a handy little side business to our winemaking!
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| The start of Day 1. We didn't know what we were in for. |
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| Breakfast on Day 2. Josh is eating a bacon and egg toastie, and wistfully dreaming of the lobster and caviar he'll be eating when we get paid for the avocados. |
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| Geoff up on the cherry picker we hired. Ultimately, it was too big and clunky to use effectively, but at least we know for next year. |
Friday, 12 February 2016
My little jam sweatshop
So, it appears that my jam making prowess is starting to spread. I've recently gained a 'contract' (of sorts) where a local car yard wants to buy about 80 jams per month off me for their gift packs they give away when someone buys a car from them.
It's great to have such a regular demand...but it sucks having to spend so many hours sweating away in the kitchen!
Jam-making fruit is a little scarce at the farm at this time of year, so I've been scouring local farm gates for other offerings.
I picked up three dragonfruit, two bags of mandarins, two bags of passionfruit and 6 bags of apples this morning...so I have a big day ahead of me.
If anyone is keen to join my little sweatshop (emphasis on the sweat - it's really humid here this time of year!) feel free!
It's great to have such a regular demand...but it sucks having to spend so many hours sweating away in the kitchen!
Jam-making fruit is a little scarce at the farm at this time of year, so I've been scouring local farm gates for other offerings.
I picked up three dragonfruit, two bags of mandarins, two bags of passionfruit and 6 bags of apples this morning...so I have a big day ahead of me.
If anyone is keen to join my little sweatshop (emphasis on the sweat - it's really humid here this time of year!) feel free!
Sunday, 31 January 2016
Rainy days
On the upside, our rainwater tank is completely full and over flowing.
On the downside, it hasn't stopped raining for like a week now. Everything is stained with muddy red footprints. The grass (lets be honest, weeds) are all ankle height because we can't mow the wet grass. I'm down to my last pair of undies because we can't dry the clothes. We've barely had any customers because no one wants to be outside in this weather.
It's pretty relentless.
Josh and I made a trip to Brisbane on Thursday afternoon, to pick up 300kg of Queen Garnet "super plums". It was nice to get away for the night and have dinner in Southbank. It wasn't so nice driving in the bumpy old ute, who's only redeeming feature (the killer air-con) died about an hour in to the eight hour return journey.
Despite a few dramas, we managed to pick up the plums on Friday morning, and sweated our way back to Childers.
It was grey and cloudy, and incredibly humid when we arrived home - yet we started processing the plums. Since we have no forklift, we were packing the plums into smaller boxes, carrying them to our cellar and crushing them.
The crusher broke.
So - we have 150kg worth of plums processed and fermenting, the other 150kg are sitting in the cool room to ripen up a little more before we subject the crusher to any more torture.
In summary, this week has been a lot of rain, sweat and plum juice.
On the downside, it hasn't stopped raining for like a week now. Everything is stained with muddy red footprints. The grass (lets be honest, weeds) are all ankle height because we can't mow the wet grass. I'm down to my last pair of undies because we can't dry the clothes. We've barely had any customers because no one wants to be outside in this weather.
It's pretty relentless.
Josh and I made a trip to Brisbane on Thursday afternoon, to pick up 300kg of Queen Garnet "super plums". It was nice to get away for the night and have dinner in Southbank. It wasn't so nice driving in the bumpy old ute, who's only redeeming feature (the killer air-con) died about an hour in to the eight hour return journey.
Despite a few dramas, we managed to pick up the plums on Friday morning, and sweated our way back to Childers.
It was grey and cloudy, and incredibly humid when we arrived home - yet we started processing the plums. Since we have no forklift, we were packing the plums into smaller boxes, carrying them to our cellar and crushing them.
The crusher broke.
So - we have 150kg worth of plums processed and fermenting, the other 150kg are sitting in the cool room to ripen up a little more before we subject the crusher to any more torture.
In summary, this week has been a lot of rain, sweat and plum juice.
Friday, 8 January 2016
Famous last words.
So, remember how I said I was pretty much back to normal? Famous last words.
Yesterday, I woke up worse than ever! At about 5:45am, I bundled myself in the car and took myself down to the hospital again. You know it must be bad if I'm up before 6am!
The same nurse that saw me the first time was back on duty, and she was surprised to see me back again. She couldn't believe that it had come back, and definitely worse this time!
Again, she took some vitals, doped me up on steroids and sent me back to the GP for a prescription and allergy testing. I'm on a stronger course of steroids this time, and for twice as long. So far, they seem to have had a minimal effect. It reduces the puffiness, I guess, but certainly not the redness, heat or itchiness.
I've also had blood tests today to try and identify the cause - it's for all the usual things (pollen, grass, pesticides) and for some unusual things too (mangos that I never eat, shellfish that I never eat). The general vibe is that it's something that I've developed an allergy to, but don't realise - so, it's just kinda come out of nowhere and I don't realise that I'm ingesting it, because I always have. Or that it's something in the air - some new tree that's flowering, or some spray that either Josh or a nearby farmer is spraying around.
Fingers crossed that we find out soon, I can't deal with this itchiness for much longer!!!
Yesterday, I woke up worse than ever! At about 5:45am, I bundled myself in the car and took myself down to the hospital again. You know it must be bad if I'm up before 6am!
The same nurse that saw me the first time was back on duty, and she was surprised to see me back again. She couldn't believe that it had come back, and definitely worse this time!
Again, she took some vitals, doped me up on steroids and sent me back to the GP for a prescription and allergy testing. I'm on a stronger course of steroids this time, and for twice as long. So far, they seem to have had a minimal effect. It reduces the puffiness, I guess, but certainly not the redness, heat or itchiness.
I've also had blood tests today to try and identify the cause - it's for all the usual things (pollen, grass, pesticides) and for some unusual things too (mangos that I never eat, shellfish that I never eat). The general vibe is that it's something that I've developed an allergy to, but don't realise - so, it's just kinda come out of nowhere and I don't realise that I'm ingesting it, because I always have. Or that it's something in the air - some new tree that's flowering, or some spray that either Josh or a nearby farmer is spraying around.
Fingers crossed that we find out soon, I can't deal with this itchiness for much longer!!!
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| Old boof head over here! |
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| It seems worst around my eyes, but my whole face and neck is itchy! |
Tuesday, 5 January 2016
The time I overdosed...
Not to be outdone by Josh's medical dramas, it seems 2016 might be my year to shine.
The other day, I woke up with an itchy eyelid and nostril. Weird, hey! I took a Telfast (antihistamine) and tried not to scratch it. An hour or so later, it was still super itchy, so I tried rubbing on some ointment - still no relief.
I toddled down to the local pharmacy to see if they could help.
"I'm dying!"
"You look pretty healthy for someone who's dying...?" the pharmacist enquired.
"Well, I am. You just have to look closely. At my eyelid."
I explained what was happening, and he seemed very surprised that the Telfast didn't solve it. He said that it was probably a contact allergy (so, I touched something, then rubbed my face) and that I should take these pills.
"Now, it says take one three times a day, but instead, I want you to take four at once, about an hour before you want to go to bed. You'll have the best nights sleep of your life and wake up good as gold tomorrow."
Nervously excited about my impending 'best sleep ever', I gulped down the pills and hit the hay.
I tossed and turned all night. I couldn't get comfortable. I was hot, then cold, then hot again. I slept in til 9:26am, when Josh couldn't stand it any longer and kept beeping the tractor horn right outside the bedroom window.
Groggily, I scratched my face and peered in the mirror. I was not good as gold.
I was blotchy, itchy, red and miserable. I couldn't think clearly and felt like death.
I stumbled around, complaining, for about half an hour or so before Josh told me to go to the hospital. I sat there for about an hour, listening to some old guy dribble on about needing his blood pressure checked, how the Chinese are buying up all the land and how much rain we were supposed to get this week. I politely ignored him and tried to keep my eyes open.
Finally, it was my turn to see the nurse on duty.
She took some notes, and all my vitals, then declared that I'd overdosed myself.
Whatever was wrong with me the other day was pretty irrelevant, as all the symptoms I was showing was from an overdose of the anti-allergy medication the pharmacist prescribed. She gave me a steroid pill for three days and said it would clear up soon.
Sure enough, I'm back to normal today. My skin is still a little dry, but (thank GOD!) the itching has stopped.
Moral of the story? Always listen to my mother. She said that taking four pills seemed like too much.
The other day, I woke up with an itchy eyelid and nostril. Weird, hey! I took a Telfast (antihistamine) and tried not to scratch it. An hour or so later, it was still super itchy, so I tried rubbing on some ointment - still no relief.
I toddled down to the local pharmacy to see if they could help.
"I'm dying!"
"You look pretty healthy for someone who's dying...?" the pharmacist enquired.
"Well, I am. You just have to look closely. At my eyelid."
I explained what was happening, and he seemed very surprised that the Telfast didn't solve it. He said that it was probably a contact allergy (so, I touched something, then rubbed my face) and that I should take these pills.
"Now, it says take one three times a day, but instead, I want you to take four at once, about an hour before you want to go to bed. You'll have the best nights sleep of your life and wake up good as gold tomorrow."
Nervously excited about my impending 'best sleep ever', I gulped down the pills and hit the hay.
I tossed and turned all night. I couldn't get comfortable. I was hot, then cold, then hot again. I slept in til 9:26am, when Josh couldn't stand it any longer and kept beeping the tractor horn right outside the bedroom window.
Groggily, I scratched my face and peered in the mirror. I was not good as gold.
I was blotchy, itchy, red and miserable. I couldn't think clearly and felt like death.
I stumbled around, complaining, for about half an hour or so before Josh told me to go to the hospital. I sat there for about an hour, listening to some old guy dribble on about needing his blood pressure checked, how the Chinese are buying up all the land and how much rain we were supposed to get this week. I politely ignored him and tried to keep my eyes open.
Finally, it was my turn to see the nurse on duty.
She took some notes, and all my vitals, then declared that I'd overdosed myself.
Whatever was wrong with me the other day was pretty irrelevant, as all the symptoms I was showing was from an overdose of the anti-allergy medication the pharmacist prescribed. She gave me a steroid pill for three days and said it would clear up soon.
Sure enough, I'm back to normal today. My skin is still a little dry, but (thank GOD!) the itching has stopped.
Moral of the story? Always listen to my mother. She said that taking four pills seemed like too much.
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