January '10

It's still cold

We had been hoping for some warmer weather for January, but it has been a continuation of the miserable cold and windy winter that we have had up to Christmas. Everyone had colds and coughs. Eeugh. Unfortunately our flat was only designed with hot weather in mind and it is very, very cold in Winter unless we kep two radiators on permanently. Hence PG sporting the 'refugee' look.

The weather has made it impossible to do any real work. It is too cold and windy to prune the trees and if you sit on the tractor or digger, you turn to a block of ice within 1/2 hour due to the wind chill. At least the log burning stove we put in the barn last year has been able to earn its keep and on a secondary note, our new 26,000 litre rainwater collection tank which was empty in October is now well over half full.

With water in mind we are preparing to clear the front of the aqueduct down from the barn to the moli, so we can dig in the main water supply line, which will come from the water tank. This gives us a useful head of water down in the moli for free.

Party Time

Pondgirl went back to the UK for a big family party. All her relatives were there and there was too much to talk about with everyone, but it was a brilliant party and PG loved seeing all the family.

Farm Kit

I rather fancy getting one of these. I'm hoping that using one to keep the soil clear of grass & weeds between the olives.

We will need a Viga (Beam Scraper) as well, to flatten the soil after ploughing it up. After that it should be rolled to give a nice smooth finish to roll up the olives from. We will forgo the last stage, as we hope to produce virgin olive oil which means the olives need to be collected undamaged, so we will have to collect the olives a different way.