This morning Tom and I tidied up the nursery. A lot of seedlings had weeds in them, so we had to pull the weeds out. Some seedlings needed to be re-potted, and other pots were only full of weeds, a bit upsetting that a lot of my precious seedlings were overruled!
Sorting the macadamias, from left to right: two unsorted boxes, 1 box waiting for outer shell to burst, 1 box inner shells only
After morning tea Tom did the cream separating while I started sorting the macadamias. They come in one of three ways: full outer shell, broken outer shell or just inner shell. I leave the full outer shell to ripen a bit longer, as the outer shell is too hard to break away from the inner shell at that point. Once they go black they burst open by themselves and it is easier to pull the inner shell out. The broken outer shells I pulled off the inner shell and put the inner shell (with nut inside) into a separate box. I sorted out a couple of boxes, two more to go. The next step after that is shaking the inner shell, if it rattles the nut is ready to come out and we need to crack it with our manual nutcracker… Most macadamias are not ready to come out yet, but we may have a couple tomorrow to eat!
Our first olive picking…
Tom and I then went down to the food forest to harvest the olives that Tom found on the trees last week. Very exciting as this is our very first olive harvest! We had some ladders, but ended up using the tree as ladders as well (especially Tom, he was pretending to be a monkey 😉 We had a nice first harvest, they will need at least 3 months of processing now before we can eat them though…
Not bad for our first harvest!
©2016 Zaia; permeco.org, incorporating Permaculture Research Institute Sunshine Coast, simplicity, permaculture, self reliance, food, health and homesteading, tidying the nursery, sorting macadamias and climbing trees to harvest olives
Author: Zaia Kendall
Zaia grew up in a family of musicians in Holland, and has a background in top sport (snow skiing) and web development and design. She co-founded the PRI Luganville and PRI Sunshine Coast Inc (now PermEco Inc.) with Tom, and runs the “invisible structures”, like finances, business administration, website design and maintenance, writes articles and records and edits videos. She assists Tom in running the Kendall Permaculture Farm and supervising other volunteers. She is an active member of several musical projects and bands, involved in community music and runs percussion and marimba workshops, is the percussion leader for the Woodford Folk Festival People’s Orchestra and composes as well as plays music. She is passionate about community music and loves seeing people discover that they can play!