Visit Tara 22 May 2016

On Sunday 22 May the Food Garden Group visited Tara's property near Richmond:

The visit of the season to Tara's property near Richmond was a great example of how every food garden visit is different.

Here Tara (blond hair in middle) welcomed everyone, told us about her property, the effect of the drought on her farm, and that she has not been able to do as much as she would like to, because of problems with her wrists. Luckily she is recovering and looking forward to being able to do everything with two arms and full strength again soon.

The first subject covered was wicking beds. Tara explained that the advantage of wicking beds over normal irrigation is that you save water and need to water less often. With the help of a small wicking bed from her hothouse (the white box in the middle) Tara explained how wicking beds are created. Tara uses just simple and inexpensive materials. This was a subject that had rarely been discussed at previous food garden visits and many questions were asked.

Tara and I concluded that it would be good to put together a blog post on this subject, so people can build their own in their own gardens.

Here Tara showed a simple cover she made for a raised round bed to keep the birds out, while in the background people were all over the ground collecting walnuts. Thanks to deep roots the walnut tree (on the right in the photo above) survived the drought really well. In fact, it had a bumper crop, and Tara was happy for people to take home as many as they could find on the ground.

Here (photo above) we take a look at yet another wicking bed.

Tara grows a wide variety of berries and fruit in a large area completely surrounded by nets.

What I took to be a nice ornamental tree (photo below) turned out to be a Pepperberry (not the Tasmanian Pepperberry, but some other variety). One can dry the berries, and then grind them to a fine powder that can be used on any food that needs pepper.

Tara has quite a few large old pine trees on her property. She sells pine nuts. In the photo below Tara explained how pine nuts are harvested from the trees in the background. It is a time-consuming process that explains their high price.

Tara has a vineyard and will produce 500 - 600 bottles of wine this season. The grapevine shown in the picture below produces table grapes and Tara showed how to prune it. Some of us went home with grape cuttings we hope will grow into new grape bushes.

A special thanks to Tara for making this a memorable food garden visit! Everyone was amazed at her knowledge and experience on the many subjects she covered, and her energy and enthusiasm.

Taking care of this property in addition to running a family and a farm-stay business would not be easy at the best of times, but to do that in drought conditions while having problems with your wrists, is 'pretty gutsy' (to quote one person).

Many thanks everyone for your great contributions to the morning tea and produce table.

A very nice, interesting and informative morning was had by all.

This text was previously published on the Food Garden Group blog. It was written by Max Bee.