calm and clear

A couple of excursions into the world outside Whanarua confirmed the suspicion that it's very dry out there. We are lucky to have a green lawn and (some anyway) healthy plants. A number of macadamia trees are dumping nuts containing dried up kernel, and the ground is like concrete. On the plus side there are a lot of good days for fishing with the sea like a mirror and blue sunny skies. At the end of this month we will close the shop doors and get on with the nut farming. First job will be to tidy up the leaves and early nuts from under the trees in readiness for picking. The second to make the rats lives so miserable (killing them off and removing their platforms) that they will emigrate. Faint hope, but we win the occasional skirmish as they move into shelter for the winter. They love a challenge. I found a nest of 9 babies in a stored box. In the time it took me to decide what to do, Mama rat had spirited them away to a safer place.

iresine loving the dry

The sunny dry weather continues, but with just enough rain to keep the lawn green. The bananas reached perfection by the month's end. What do you do with a bunch of bananas? The impatiens wilt and revive each day and the summer vegetables have collapsed except for the ratatouille vegetables and chillies. The basil has been kept going by extra watering - we don't want to risk running out of pesto. We don't sell macadamia nut pesto in jars anymore; a fair price for us didn't look like a fair price for customers. Panini with pesto are still very popular in the cafe. The prevailing anxiety this month was coffee supply. Our Espresso machine uses a very special variety which is imported from Italy. A shortfall in imports kept our supplier busy scouring NZ for top-ups to keep us going. Thank you Morag. The ship came in eventually and peace was restored to the kitchen. The macadamia trees soldier on, as they do, showing little sign of hardship. The usual shedding of nuts has been more prolific and provided recent visitors (mostly younger ones) with entertainment. Despite being reared in a society where ad-lib food is the norm, most of the kids that visit are enthusiastic foragers. I have included a picture of our much admired and sampled Iresine plant. It really draws attention to itself by the shop door. If all the cuttings that have been dispensed take root and grow, New Zealand will be a rosier place. According to the nurserymen it is best grown from seed.

bug!!!

plan B

Now that most children have returned to school we have a rest from ice-cream making. The addition of a new flavour, macadamia and double chocolate, appeared to go down well. Our extra workforce returned to university and now we are on our own again. Older people are now our main visitors, and an air of calm is discernable in the cafe. Anxiety over the stink bug (nezara viridula, to those find these little monsters interesting) reached fever pitch this month. The sunny dry days and occasional wettings were perfect for insect proliferation and off they went. Following up on a suggestion, we decided to put on our pyrethroid insecticide by helicopter. It was interesting, to say the least, but probably not something we will repeat; if only out of concern for the blood pressure of our neighbours. Back to the drawing board really. As usual we are full of hope that our crop will not be too badly affected, but time will tell.

in safe hands

Ably assisted by family, we coped with our biggest summer yet. Over New Year, our best laid plans tofeed cafe customers were starting to wobble as the flow of hungry customers increased beyond our ability to feed them. We were rescued by a student on holiday who liked the idea of washing our dishes! Thank you Clare. There was a day or two of rain but on the whole visitors had a pretty good run of holiday weather and 'the Coast' was beautiful as always. One unexpected visitor was a runaway stallion, rescued from the continuous stream of traffic on SH35. No doubt he started out with some firm idea of where he was off to, but resigned himself to a feed of macadamia farm pasture, reassured by Eric and Siobhan, until his owner came to pick him up somewhat later.

pohutukawa

Busy getting ready for the summer onslaught as is usual for December. Labels, containers, processing finding packaging, lots of baking, orange squeezing and roasting. As to the latter; disaster fell when the roaster was set to the wrong speed (too slow) and 20kg of beautiful macadamia kernel was smoked. Tried to think of inventive ways to market the smoked product but there was no way around the burnt toast aroma. Other than that, preparations went well and the ice cream mountain in the freezers grew to the right size. The number of visitors increased as did the variety of their means of conveyance. The swallows had babies, who then had babies of their own, warmed up by the roaster,

a couple of holidaymakers

Duck population alarmingly high. A customer sitting over her coffee sported a fluffy day old duckling in her shirt, found at the beach. She couldn't believe it was ours and took it home for a pet. A whole sitting of them disappeared and in hindsight we can say they fell down a steep gully and rode the stream to the beach - quite a distance but not the first time this has happened, some of our older ducks have ended up there before.

Later on in the month it became evident that we are heading for a major show from the pohutukawa along the East Coast. A few travel operators brought busloads of people out to enjoy the show. Some of them came for lunch with us. Otherwise November has been tied up with processing nuts for Christmas orders. The coffee machine needed a trip to Wellington to see Sean, who gave it a much-needed overhaul. Anything to avoid a grouching barista over the summer.

we miss her so much

A black day - October 8; entered in the annals as the day Sam died. It was unexpected for us we thought we'd have our faithful dog for longer than this. She was nearly nine years old and was overcome by congestive heart failure. The days are now full of gaps where she used to be. She was central to our life here. On the plus side, long after we'd given up hope, a man with a digger came and was keen to tidy up our garden heaps. It was all over in a few hours, but what a difference. Instead of a wilderness of acacia, fern and blackberry there will be lawn. This operator also fixed up the drainage problems which came hard on the heels of the logging operation and all we have left to fix is our entrance way which is pitted with holes from a combination of misdirected water and heavy machinery. Nearly there though and the scarred hillside is already clothed in green (not saying what, but green is better than brown as a hill colour).

The shop opened on Labour weekend and while we are not rushed off our feet it's business as usual. This is the time when Christmas orders are made so we need plenty of spare time for processing and packing. Nuts have gone for this year's chocolate coating. Most of the droppers are picked and dried; It's getting harder to find time to go out and get the last of them. The flocking birds are no longer with us - no idea where they went however the macadamia trees are free again and we now have a pair of Welcome swallows nesting in the roasting shed. It took five attempts but finally their mud nest on the roof timber stuck and was prepared for baby swallows. These are a very brave or completely insane species of bird - I observed one repeatedly dive-bombing the cat. The latter was unperturbed and with each attack shot up a paw to ensnare the silly bird. Fortunately the bird gave up before death or glory prevailed and we didn't end up feeding baby bird with an eye dropper. Just as well - we are no match for a swallow at catching airborne insects).

sorting the kernel

At the end of August we took our macadamia products to a Gift Fair in the ASB show grounds in Auckland. What a revelation; consumerism at its zenith. Needless to say the nut peasants from the wilds of Whanarua were beguiled by all the glittering and glamorous goodies and barely had time for entrepreneurial endeavours. Still it was fun, and after we learned the difference between a buyer and a seller, some progress was made. One memento of the big city we could have done without was an injured car. It was taken in the night from a hotel car park to a nice big grassy park and made to do stunts all night by persons unknown. The police produced the poor battered vehicle the following day - abandoned by her new chums after she ran out of petrol. Still, we got home, wearing new woolly hats to withstand the wind coming in the broken window.

Later in the month we were able to start cracking the dried nuts. This year our crop is a more modest one - we will probably have just enough to fulfil obligations. We have three people helping with - the havoc caused when we pass the macadamia nuts through the cracker. Bits and pieces pour down a shute relentlessly to a grading table where these nimble fingered people pull out all the shell fragments and damaged kernel.

The ducks are preparing to take over the community. There are 20 or so females, each one lays about 20 eggs, and that's just in one round. The math is frightening. Nature will take her toll no doubt but it does make you wonder, perhaps we should be duck farming.

binful of beaumonts

The Taupo half marathon that was to have sorted the problem raised by all the experimental confection studies never happened. The other 3000 or other poor souls did get to run or walk 21 kilometres through the wind and rain but not with us. A twin dose of swine flu put paid to that. The moral of this tale probably is 'Take care when visiting Te Papa in the winter school holidays.
Still no digger man! He was to have tidied the apiary so that we could have spring bees. Let's hope the greenfinches have left us a moth or two for pollination.

The dropper varieties have been gently dropping since April; first the GT 207's then the PA 39's followed by the Nelmacs, A4's and loosely identified Hawaiians. It takes about one day a week to pick them up. Good exercise if somewhat prone to aftermath. The number of muscles brought in out of retirement doesn't bear thinking about but after a while the aches go away and we notice we have become more limber than hitherto. August however means time is up for the Beaumonts, a variety which only gives up its harvest to a good tug or clip. This year we had a good crowd of pickers and almost reasonable weather so the job was done efficiently. One of the nice things about picking is the morning tea under the trees and the excuse to buy special treats like raspberry buns and lemon creme biscuits. It's difficult scrambling around in a spiky brittle tree or standing all day looking straight up, wielding a long wobbly rake, so the teas are a welcome break. Our pickers make short work of a task that could take the two of us all year (by which time the nuts would have started germinating or worse). So thank you all.

We are still waiting patiently for the Bobcat to come and tidy up some messes, but alas he cometh not. Perhaps it has something to do with the recession. The messes don't mind, seedlings of this and that are popping up out of the clay and will have the place covered in no time.

It's a commentary on the mildness of the weather here this winter, that we are still eating home grown tomatoes. True the vines look a little weary but the fruit are still ripening and enjoying a respite from pestering insects and microbes, which seem to stick to the seasonal timetable. Capsicum plants are still in business too. The gentleness of the season makes you wonder if that's the reason for the bird plague. There must be a billion greenfinches in residence and more than a few sparrows. When they start twittering and settling in the trees for the night it's quite deafening. Trying to stop them roosting used to be one of the dog's best mindless activities but she has 'put away childish things' in the face of these biblical numbers. They swirl around in huge clouds on excursions up through the old pine forest. The sparrow flocks find it hard to compete and have had to settle for the camellia bushes leaning against the house. Bit upsetting for them coming face to face with humans so close at hand. Where the silvereyes go is a mystery and the bellbirds have trouble making themselves heard at dawn. There are huge tracts of land in the environs used to grow contract maize, now in a fallow state, which may explain the population explosion. It is unnerving wondering whether they are consuming all the good bugs (lady birds, mantis, and pollinators) and ignoring stink bugs (our nemesis). The trees are probably enjoying the nightly snowstorm of guano around the feeding roots and the cat is definitely putting on weight, however we will be relieved when they move on.

The first heavy rain of the winter happened in our absence and didn't cause too much trouble. The next round of heavy rain warnings and deluges showed up a few breaches in our defences. Slips and washouts to tidy up in the wake of the forestry operation up the hill, nothing like the havoc in other parts of the country. We summoned a man with a Bobcat and returned to person sized tasks like hacking back the jungle (bananas, cannas, busy lizzies, seedling macadamias, ginger, elephants ear - the list continues but that's what you get for living in paradise, the *** Garden of Eden. Picking up continues, and we can't help but notice we are being spared all the excessive rain that keeps causing property damage and worse in other areas. The macadamia nuts are in good shape. The ones waiting to be picked in August are nearly mature. The dropper trees are flowering.

Early May saw a rush on TJ's crackers. Like us, others were preparing for a promising harvest. Ours started with a tidy-up. Nuts falling early are usually damaged or immature so we collect them up for the pigs-next-door. This provides hours of entertainment for the pigs, who snuffle through the piles, deftly cracking the shells. The roof rats too are leaving tell-tale signs of neatly gnawed nuts on the floor. Look up and there's usually an old bird's nest aloft. I have a mind's eye view of rats lolling about in these cosy aerial nests, working away with incisors on nuts balanced on their furry underbellies. So, it was out with the rake and nestfuls of empty shells hitting the dirt.

The dog had a bit of an adventure on one of her walks to the beach. She met another dog who didn't like the cut of her jib and lunged, locking a good part of her head and ear in a fighting hold. After a good deal of hand wringing and a little neck wringing the headlock was undone - but not the damage. A trip to the vet ensued to patch up the holes and gashes. Sam cuts a more doleful dash nowadays and presents a rather lopsided look after a haircut on the afflicted ear in the cleanup.

Antics in the kitchen resulted in some interesting nut confectionary, such as uncooked macadamia nut butter fudge, whole nut toffees and lots of different biscuits using macadamias as an ingredient. While all research has some application, the immediate result here was an unwanted increase in body weight, exacerbated by a leisurely winter lifestyle. Picking up nuts involves a lot of flexion but is not aerobic exercise. The Taupo half-marathon looked like good way to shed a few kilograms and stave off the spectre of syndrome X; so began the nightly jogs.

Husks nuts and kernel withTJ's

The nuts are hardening up and probably now out of danger from 'the bug'. This highly successful creature is currently lying low to avoid the increasingly chilly weather. Some of them even turn an autumnal shade of purple and seek refuge in the basil, safe from blasts of pyrethrum. A few varieties of macadamia are starting to drop, although for some it's just a sloughing off of nuts maimed by insects or arcane physiological causes.
People often ask us how you can tell if nuts are ready to pick. The density of the kernel is a dead giveaway. If your whole nut (in shell) contains mature kernel it may sink or swim, however if you crack one open and scrape off a chunk of the white nut meat inside, it will float in water. Our first variety to drop, the GT 207, drops a quantity of immature nuts to start with. These are quite edible, but lack the lushness of a truly ripe macadamia kernel. This variety also produces large numbers of twin nuts, which are a nuisance to process. Excellent for hand cracking, though.
The last day of April was the last day of manning the cafe. A feeling of reprieve pervaded the air for a while. Now we can get on with all the winter chores at a pace befitting people our age. The dog too has been altering her behaviour to suit her age. 'Why run about unnecessarily when a deeply mature WOOF will suffice.' Consequently 'Shut up Sam!' is as often heard. The job of unsettling the rats is now left up to the cat, whose prowess with weasels (or stoats or ferrets - I can't tell the difference) is legendary.

pest control team

This summer will be the one we remember for perfect weather, and this continued through March. There was just enough rain to keep the plants happy and the days were mostly calm and sunny. Swimming, snorkelling, fishing and kayaking have all been enjoyed in the Bay. Ice cream was eaten by the bucket load.
The dog had a crisis and we discovered what 'hot spot' are, in a veterinary sense. She ended up having a haircut under anaesthesia (how wimpy is that!). Now that school is back, people passing through are travellers with time to explore and ask about nut growing. From Europe, Asia Australia and home, they all want to know what it's like to live in Paradise. In the latter category, a surprising number we knew in former lives, mostly forgiving.
We shortened our hours so as to get more time to catch up on things, like keeping the bees, making pesto and macadamia nut butter as well as experimenting with recipes. Look in our recipe section for biscuits made with nut butter.
In the garden the capsicums have been dazzling, red huge and tasty, probably because it was so dry. Fruit has been abundant too which has given the duck colony much entertainment. As have the green vegetable bugs which the ducks vacuum up from the orchard floor.

Business in the shop went a bit dead after the school term commenced. 'Ahh, recession bites' we said nodding resignedly. Funny thing though, it picked up again later in February. Motorcycles steam up and down the Pacific Coast Highway in a seemingly endless procession. Some are independents on holiday but many belong to groups with fascinating names, like 'The Hogs' on the way to or from gatherings of like minded souls. One rider explained to me that the SH 35 route was a favourite because of all the twists and turns, and of course the scenery and isolation. I think the good coffee, toasties and macadamia nuts had a hand in it but don't like to boast. We have a sign for bikers on the gate to warn that there are loose shells in the drive, now we need one on the road to point out that we are just around the corner. Many people remark that they overshoot our entrance and have to do a U-turn; not all that simple in a camper van or motor home. These are cruising around in larger numbers now that the road traffic is less hectic and roaming children are less frequently encountered.

gate monster

Some of the machinery used to get logs out is huge. One such machine, called by someone here a 'skyline', hauls a wire rope across the valleys with giant logs dangling from it like a handful of pick-up sticks. When the loggers left, it was parked outside the gate for ages and a customer, whilst chatting about nut farming, astonished me by asking if we used 'that machine outside the gate' to pick the nuts. In my imagination I see us swinging over the canopy on our flying fox, plucking nuts into baskets. I often think a cherry-picker would be a handy thing; you could get up amongst the branches, prune, spray and scare the living daylights out of the rats without a scratch. Speaking of scary things in branches reminds me of the owl in the grapefruit tree. Beside the entrance to the shop is a large grapefruit tree and one afternoon there was a huge racket emanating from it. Further investigation revealed a bellbird making the most unmelodic squawks. The sort of noise thrushes and blackbirds make when a cat hangs around their nests. (My illusions about bellbirds making only beautiful noise were shattered. Imagine how you'd feel if you heard Kiri Te Kanawa barracking at a wrestling match). There was, instead of a furry predator, a morepork sitting in a branch at about eye level. How and why it got there, and why it didn't flinch when a large group of humans stood gawping at it for at least half an hour flashing cameras, was unclear. It was gone the next day. The weather has been very kind to campers so far - only one 'hot chocolate day' in the cafe.

bees

As more people travel our bit of SH 35 the busier we get. The number of visitors increases gradually over the course of this month and peaks dramatically over New Year. Fortunately we have youthful help over this time. Most of our big orders to shops and other outlets are sent off by November and we can get on with bulking up our own stores for Christmas and January. First there's the nut roasting, baking and ice-cream making. Then there's the labelling, packing and storing. Chocolate macadamia nuts need chauffeuring back from the factory The garden starts demanding more attention about now as well and it has to be done before January. The weather has been very kind to us and the fishing/cray-potting keeps us fed. The bees are enjoying the relentless good weather and the hillsides are packed with manuka blossom. There should be a good crop of honey for our honey roasted macadamias. Monarch butterflies are laying large numbers of eggs and a few of these escape death or parasitism by wasps and hornets. The green vegetable bugs are no doubt beefing up numbers in the quiet corners of the garden.

Logging Operations

In this month most of our energies are directed at baking and tending the cafe and shop, as well as getting our stocks of nuts ready for Christmas orders and our January rush. In the middle of November we spent a week in Tauranga, at the Garden and Art Festival in Tauriko; something new for us. Long suffering friends at Te Puna put us up for a week. We met lots of new people and discovered that Macadamia nut trees thrive in Tauranga. It was amazing how many people harvest their annual supplies of nuts from under the Avenues or in parks. We even heard that some mature and productive amenity trees had to be removed because annoying rats had set up homes near the food supply. We did a brisk trade in TJ's nutcrackers for those with access to nuts and sold nuts to the others. After that we came back down to earth (Whanarua Bay) and set about getting our new harvest cracked. Because there was a light crop this year it was all over quite quickly and we had time to crack nuts for a few neighbours as well. Looking at the latest crop of nuts developing on the trees, we will be working somewhat harder next year. A dramatic change in the landscape of Whanarua Bay has been caused by the logging of the D.O.C. owned and managed property behind us. Some of our visitors had to wait while massive trucks inched out of the tiny right-of-way laden with pine logs, and a few witnessed the felling. This was a heart-stopping spectacle - the hills being so steep. The idea is for the reserve to regenerate in native bush.

What a show the trees put on this year! Every macadamia tree had curtains of blossom. The bees were on overtime trying to get around them all. Botanical energy busting out everywhere, the lawn mowing had to crank up a notch or two. Exceptions to all this bombast in the garden were the new basil plants, planted in a cosy bed to provide our annual supply of pesto. 'Where eez zee sun?' I imagined them whining 'You calla zees warm. Bah!' Uncooperative little weeds waited until just before Christmas then bolted, while we were too busy in the cafe to deal with them. Never mind we always get our pesto eventually. During this quieter, cooler month we are having a spring clean in the shop and processing rooms; paint and building goo all over the place, traumatised spiders; the full disaster. The Beaumonts are drying and droppers are still accumulating in bins. The cafe opened late in the month, just before Labour weekend. One of our first customers was the animal control officer for our area. Sam (the dog in case you've forgotten) went out to the car park to do her customary screening of trucks for visiting dogs, and sniffed his vehicle. We later found her trembling in one of her deep hiding places. The smells on the truck must have told some horror stories.

The best thing about spring

Three quarter of the way through the month and the Beaumonts are all picked - it was a lovely feeling hanging up the rakes. Because it was quick and clean, the harvesting barely damaged the blossoms which are now opening up. The crop is small but superb, hardly a nut has fallen through the 'too small to make the grade' grid on the husker. The machine hardly had time for any tantrums and this was our slickest harvest yet. Several dropping varieties are finished, GT207, PA39, Nelmac 1 and most of the others, but the A4s and Hawaiians are still gently dropping.

Around the orchard it feels very much like Spring is here. The scent of the blossom is powerful, the bees are showering everything on the ground with small yellow spots; bee poo I suppose. It can be quite a nuisance on windows and cafe tables, however at this early stage of the season the joys of Spring prevail. We have a pohutukawa hedge along one boundary and in it a tree which always has flowers on it. It's a seasonal mystery.

Chocolate coating has been going on for a while and now we have white chocolate macadamias added our repertoire. They are a bit more-ish and I have to keep the boxes well hidden as it is easy to overindulge. In a couple of weeks we will have finished the winter tidy up and open the shop. Then life will become more structured!

Tibouchina

Stormy weather has affected all of us in New Zealand over the last few weeks. While we have had a lot of tidying up to do, I feel somewhat guilty at being let off so lightly. True there is a layer of windblown nuts on the ground that should probably be still on the trees, most of the other damage looks mostly like mother nature having a tidy up. The tree ferns look quite neat for a change and the pohutukawa have given up dead twiggy branches that must have been sitting up there for years. The cafe lawn is knee deep in pohutukawa whiskers and we can't get in the front door for dead tree fern fronds.
We had our share of fallen trees, mostly the brittle, shallow rooted sort. A big bushy tibouchina fell down which was sad.
Yesterday the story of the swimming stag reached me, third hand admittedly but still surprising. Down at the beach, workmen restoring a bach saw a set of antlers bobbing in the waves. Behind the stag was a dog in pursuit. The deer hauled himself out of the surf to be greeted by a clutch of humans, whom he must have gauged to be more the hunter gatherer type than kindly SPCA folk. Sensibly he affected a retreat. The swimming dog, which had evidently done less training than the deer, landed, exhausted, on the beach then melted away into the bush. The stag swam the 500m or so back out through the breaking waves to the point where he tried to land but couldn't. He was last seen swimming through the channel to the next bay. Wish I had caught that on film.
The macadamia flowers are well on the way - it must be Spring.

Now it's the Nellie's turn to be picked up. This variety (Nelmac 1) has a statuesque trunk and gorgeous pink flowers in October. The big shiny fruit do not split when ripe and make picking up easy. I cannot say the same for the PA39's which, while productive, have all sorts of annoying characteristics which I won't bore you with.
A few cold nights had us wondering whether the much heard about global weather changes might deliver us a frost. But no, the bizzy lizzies are flowering still and silver beet remains on the menu. The wintering green vegetable bugs are bruised by the storms but defiant. At night we can see the milky way, and meteorites and satellites zigzag around the sky. The night birds are pretty active too. A ruru (morepork) parks itself on a post in the garden to wait for the puriri moths that invariable hurl themselves at our windows. Occasionally the owl makes an error and hits the window with a bang. Very hard to photograph, owls. You get two shiny reflections of your flash and that's it.

You'd think that winter coming on and the closure of the shop would bring on floods of words for the diary. Not so. Life goes on in the rural idyll; birds singing, waterfalls rushing, dogs operating a nightly telegraph (I wish I knew what they were saying.) The incumbent dog takes part in these jungle drum sessions and looking at her I sometimes suspect the innate overwhelms the intelligent. Unkindly I'm thinking that she has no idea what's happening, but passes the mysterious message on anyway. Am I judging her harshly? Perhaps, but her hobby of mindless bird-chasing doesn't suggest intellect. The silvereyes and finches are here in enormous flocks - feeding on fruit, nuts and seeds by day and sleeping in the trees at night. Round dusk, the dog charges around the roosting trees driving the birds from tree to tree by barking incessantly until someone stops her. It must be quite rewarding for her to cause all that twittering and formation flying. Her best birds are the pheasants; so deliciously noisy in retreat. One put a hole in the nuthouse after some confusion about a flight plan. Life is just a glorious game for an ex-cattle dog. Now and then she is allowed to 'get-away-back' the muscovy ducks but I fear her farming skills are dwindling as times goes by.

Macadamia nut butter

At the end of April we were picking up the first droppers, namely the GT207's. This variety is famous (notorious) for its habit of producing 'twins', consisting of two hemispherical nuts inside a husk. Our cracker has trouble with these, but they are a sweeter nut. May saw a determined effort to crack the remaining nuts from last year and our expert graders were very busy. We celebrated the end of the last season with a barbeque on the beach, no nuts involved. May also reminded us that winter was imminent with one or two heavy falls of rain. Took advantage of fine days to do cement and pave the husker yard. Wet days forced us to face up to the accumulated chaos inside.

As a matter of curiosity, I am offering to send a jar of our delicious nut butter to 10 people who write and ask. I often wonder if anyone actually reads this and I am assured this will tell me. An article in the Journal of Nutrition (April 2008), quite clearly states that eating macadamias reduces cholesterol (LDLs) in humans so I'm going to eat even more nut butter.

Nights are getting cooler, but the weather remains sunny and kind. I was grading some kernel yesterday at a trestle table outdoors and enjoyed being serenaded by bell birds. I don't know what is on their seasonal timetable at the moment, courting perhaps, but they were tuneful and inventive. I had that 'nice work if you can get it' sensation.
Cracking is a noisy business. Our cracking machine is working like the hammers of hell (well sounds like it anyway). It's a simple and violent method; the nuts are channelled down a chute to be struck by a ridge protruding from a heavy metal disc spinning around at great speed. The best result is a neatly halved shell and a whole kernel. Worst case scenario is a smashed shell and shattered nut. Also we get caved in, semi-crushed and shell fragments embedded in kernel. Given that industry is close with its secrets, it's been hard to ascertain whether or not there is a better way. Hand cracking, as practised in China and Thailand gives the tidiest result. Vague promises of rotary prototypes and machines that neatly score the shell into hemi-spheres lurk around the internet, but we are stuck with our wasteful messy process for now. The machine is capable of cracking eight hundred kilograms of nut in an eight hour day. In practice we do three hundred (in five hours) because of the time taken in sorting and cleaning up.
A by-product of the sheering force is a chip of kernel; disc shaped, thin and eminently roast-worthy. These are rescued from the other debris and end up in our ice-cream and baking. The macadamia tarts pictured are a more-ish example that you will find in our recipe selection.

...is a dead one.

The beautiful weather continues through March and people keep coming to tour the Pacific Coast Highway in the sun. Visitors from Waikato are surprised to see luxuriant green grass here; farms elsewhere are having a hard time keeping the earth covered and animals fed. Not that we've had lots of rain, it just seems to go further.
The nutshells are now hard enough to resist the probing of the Green Vegetable Bug, but the bugs themselves are still multiplying so we felt obliged to blast them again. Very satisfying to see them feet up on the litter under the trees.
Possums seem to be about all of a sudden, making derisive noises outside at night when all within are too tired to work up enough adrenalin to go out and shoot them. They seem quite keen on the jelly baits so perhaps they will fade away without too much cordite being spilt. Speaking of pests, the rats and mice are also being very discreet with just the occasional unfortunate wandering into a trap. Honey nut butter is unbeatable mouse bait and I hope people will feel the same when we launch its new label. Not that I'm planning to drown customers that are irresistibly attracted to the nut butter - just improve their breakfast experience.

A lady from Europe spent quite a bit of time in the cafe, as backpackers do; writing in a journal, composing letters, scribbling on postcards, reading Lonely Planet and studying maps). She was interested in everything about the place and asked lots of questions. One of them intrigued me. 'Why are there so many nuts lying about - aren't these most expensive nuts in the world?'
Entirely true. The orchard floor is currently littered with nuts - all of which will be picked up and composted or chopped up in the mower. And she didn't know the half of it, last year the trees produced so many nuts that the average size was smaller than usual and an alarming proportion of nuts were too small to go through the cracker. These too were wasted. Our trees shed nuts all the time, but we only pick them when we know they are fully mature and good to dry and crack. Macadamia trees have a long history in a tough climate and every step of the way, seed production is fraught with hazard. Over-producing seed is common in the plant world, probably a compensating adaptation for Spartan conditions. In a favourable season the macadamia tree can produce a ridiculously large number of flowers. Each raceme has around 200 flowers and a tree can produce thousands of these. Only a small fraction of macadamia flowers make it to fruit. If they all developed fully I am certain the trees would topple over with the weight, branches would snap and the orchard would become a giant compost heap. Ah, bountiful nature. Darwin and generations of his followers had plenty to say on this apparent wastage, but it seems we still await the definitive truth. The way I see it a nice big hammer mill (and a set of good ear muffs of course) would see to the waste issue.
An extra thought - walking around the orchard, the story of Sleeping Beauty often comes to mind. The part where the subjects buzz off and leave the comatose damsel alone in her tower. The royal estate regenerates so healthily that Prince Charming has difficulty hacking his way in at a later date. If a macadamia orchard were left alone for a few years, no amount of hacking would get anyone anywhere. The nuts are very fertile and our cute nutshell drive would end up a Byzantine thicket. All the other weeds, the elephant's ear, busy lizzy and ginger would disappear under the forest.

Macadamia nuts are expensive to the consumer because of the handling required to sort and process them. In other places machinery is being developed to get around this. Perhaps one day the technology will be affordable for smaller scale operations such as we have in New Zealand.

Happy holidaymakers

This summer the pohutukawa trees have put on an unprecedented show. 'The Coast' is an avenue of crimson grandeur. Just before Christmas most of them had produced flowers and the Pacific Coast Highway was the eighth wonder of the world. Presumably weather conditions were the cause of all this abundance and other species, notably manuka and kanuka, are all flowering madly, changing the colour of the steep hills plummeting to the sea. The jacaranda tree in our driveway covered itself in glorious blue blossom. We had thought it unable or unwilling. It just seems to be one of those seasons when every plant is busting to reproduce. Except for our beaumonts. After the heavy crop this spring most trees are resting and it is hard to find a developing macadamia nut. The droppers are flowering normally - they will have a good crop next year.

Keeping our eyes open for green vegetable bug and not seeing many; one or two on the beans. That said, the PA39's are showing signs of having been got at. So when the GVB's get time to do all the damage is still a mystery to me.
Lots of people have visited us; visitors from all over the world as well as plenty of familiar faces. The weather has been all a holiday-maker could ask. No nasty storms, fine sunny days, no persistent westerly winds; they don't how lucky they are.

It's Anniversary weekend as I write this. The demographic of our visits by NZers has swung from Wellingtonians to Aucklanders - two quite different sub-races of the New Zealand coffee drinking public. From the former we expect to hear the familiar 'double shot in that thanks' and from the Northerners we expect instructions relating to temperature and percentage of foam in the coffee. All of which we try to do!

The month has gone by in a blur. The huge crop produced by the beaumonts kept us busy harvesting until November and nothing much else got done. Cracking and processing nuts for the big demand of Christmas and the holiday period took up most of the month. Lots more companies used our products in their Christmas gifts to clients and we had a special box made for just that sort of thing. Pacific Coast Macadamias also made it onto quite a few gift hamper websites.
A couple of customers living in Europe had a great idea for Christmas shopping. For their friends in New Zealand they had us mail a present with card and greetings - so much cheaper than mailing something from Europe; which costs frightening amounts of money.

Christmas day, the one day of the year the Nut House is closed, marked the end of a furious session of packing up orders and freighting nuts all over the country and heralded the beginning of our holiday frenzy. A relative frenzy for a shop that averages less than ten customers a day most of the year. Suddenly we are a cafe and all orchard chores are shelved except lawn mowing. The weather has been so kind that had we not mown the grass our visitors would probably not been able to find the cafe. Having a hundred or more customers a day is now the norm for patronage, sampling such specialities of the house as our macadamia/manuka honey ice cream, pesto and spicy nuts.

This month found us still harvesting nuts, eventually abandoning the job as the urgency to prepare for summer grew. Four trees remain unpicked and it will be interesting to see if they are still hanging on next spring. Cracking began in earnest and went smoothly for a change. Our expert graders, having hung up their nut picking gear put on nut sorting hats. We've been trying various sorts of headgear and soundly rejected the blue 'shower cap' kind for having a negative effect on morale. Everyone feels more the part in cotton snoods, colour coded to avoid ownership mix-ups. The cracking machine worked so well we didn't have to hang up the 'No hot food, we're cracking' sign.

Had fun experimenting with a new product, honey and macadamia nut muesli. It has more nuts in it than any commercial product and tastes wonderful.
The packaging and posting going on this month has been unprecedented so we made sure we had plenty of boxes. Trouble with that was we lost a whole room to boxes..

Due to extreme busyness, the diary has been neglected so this is a retrospective effort. The harvesting went on and on and on. We finished on the 26th to rejoicing all round. It was a very heavy crop which has taken its toll on the Beaumonts. Last year they were festooned with gorgeous blossom but there is not such arboreal jollity about now and one has to look hard to find a flower. The droppers, which are noted for their non-conformity have lots of flowers but are nowhere near as productive as the Beaumonts when it comes to actual nuts. Like the trees, the rest of us are thinking a light crop next year will be a relief, the pickers were only too ready to hang up the rakes and tarps and go home for a rest. My hearing loss increased by the time the husking was over. Started using ear muffs part way through but it's probably about 3 years too late. The drying is under way but the prospect of cracking all those macadamia nuts still looms.

Inside the nuthouse we've been concentrating on getting Christmas stocks out to the shops. The macadamias did a little tour of the country to get their chocolate coating, whilst back at home the roaster has been working overtime. Not many visitors to the Coast just yet, although we nearly ran out of ice cream in the school holidays. Those who come seem to enjoy the spicy macadamia nuts; we find we're making 10 times as many as last year.

I'd like to be able to say that harvesting began without a hitch and to a point it did. Our trusty team made a great start filling bins at great speed but when it was time to de-husk the mountain of fruits the machine wouldn't perform and had to be dismantled, tightened and reassembled to make even an attempt at the job. It rained, to add insult to injury. It's very wet today which has put a stop to picking. In the wet, tree trunks become treacherously slippery and the logistics of handling the crop don't bear thinking about.

Time then to write another diary. Last weekend was the Beacon Trade and Leisure Show in Whakatane and we were there; ourselves and our products on display. The event was judged a great success and twice as many visitors as the previous year passed through. Apart from us, the star of the show was a piglet, in the Vet's stand. In case you are wondering she was dressed in a nappy and coat and spent the three days either sucking on a bottle or napping in a basket. For an orphaned baby from the bush she was pretty social and despite the close attentions of police dogs mingling with the crowd, unfazed by celebrity. As for us, we offered lots of honey roasted and chocolate macadamia nuts for people to try. Hardly anyone said 'No thanks'! We also answered questions about macadamias, most common of which was 'how do you crack them?' Should have brought our TJ's and given demonstrations, but we would have needed more space and HR for that.

To judge from remarks made on Sunday, everyone in Whakatane saw 'Hunger for the Wild' on TV1the night before, with ourselves (and the TJ's famous nutcracker) on display to an even wider audience. To clear up a misconception, we do not actually crack every nut by hand. I did the calculations and it would take one person over a year of full-time handle-cranking to do that. The prosaic truth is that we have a motorised contraption to do the job. The show did give viewers a glimpse into the business and if it was ephemeral, well the star was after all the magnificent kingfish. Sorry Logan and Brown but that fish was more prodigious.

The days are lengthening, all of a sudden it seems, but that was probably because of a long spate of gloomy weather. Now it's fine again it seems almost summery. The macadamia blossoms are developing. They're so slow, like the proverbial watched pot, sitting there growing ever longer and more numerous but never really flowering. Just as well, as the great picking event with lots of activity in the trees is timed to start next week. We have a team of pickers who will climb trees and wield long rakes until all nuts of the Beaumont variety are down. Quite a few flowers are sacrificed in the process, however the longer we can leave the nuts the better they will be.

Usually by the time we finish the harvesting, the trees are in full flamboyant bloom. People who like lots of flowers would find late September/October a good time to visit the orchard. It looks like there will be masses of blossom again; lucky bees. On the weekend of September 1st we will be at the Beacon Business and Leisure show in Whakatane - armed with heaps of macadamia nuts to sell as well as our collection of pictures. A basket of macadamia nuts (in the shell) will be on display for a 'Guess the number' competition. Hope I don't have to do the counting.

Meanwhile the droppers keep dropping and we are keeping very limber picking them up - who needs Pilates out here. Fantails seem to find this activity interesting and flutter very close indeed, perhaps in the expectation that we will put up game for them like beaters at a grouse shoot. I'm trying to teach the bellbirds a bit of Deep Purple. Like the boffin in the Dodge Avenger advert on TV. They've got the first two notes of 'Smoke on the Water' off pat and we're working hard on note three of the riff.

July has been interesting. The shop closed on July 17th to allow repairs and maintenance to proceed. The garden has been ransacked for tricky weeds sneakily establishing underneath the constant cover of busy lizzy plants. Elephant's ear, wild ginger and macadamia seedlings have been ripped out in the thousands. (The definition of a weed is a plant in the wrong place and macadamia nuts are enthusiastic weeds). The bananas and cannas and spider lily have all been culled drastically to allow space for tables in the cafe. Real pioneering stuff. Of course the macadamia nuts keep dropping and have to be picked up; four varieties are gently raining down. After the recent bouts of rough weather the nuts on the ground were touching by the time things dried out enough to pick them up. Looking up into the trees, you wonder where they all come from. Not that I'm complaining about the weather; in England and Kaeo the rain lapping around the windowsills is on an altogether different scale. It's enough to make you feel guilty for not being flooded. True, the beach at Whanarua Bay is barely recognisable after being renovated by the stream in flood. There's a sandy beach which wasn't there before and a new mountain of shingle at the other end. This winter we've been trying to be more business-like. Writing an operational plan and looking up the definition of marketing seemed like a good start but it was all too confusing for me. To take my mind off all that I have been trying out new products in the kitchen. A delicious surprise was marzipan made with macadamia nut butter. Makimarz and marzimac don't do the resultant comestible any justice at all so I'm stalled on that enterprise. White chocolate dusted honey roasted macadamias is a similarly cacophonous name but the product is dangerously irresistible. The thought of labelling and marketing is too daunting altogether so I'll probably post these two as recipes and let macadamia fans prepare their own.

Another month slipped by without our noticing. Nuts are busy dropping and we are busy picking them up; between showers. Visitors are rather sparse but it is no trouble keeping the shop open as there's lots of nut roasting and packing to do. Today we only had one brave couple visit us, on their way to a weekend at the beach despite very stormy weather. Working upstairs in The Nuthouse today I looked out the window at the wild surf thrashing the rocks. I'm lucky to have such a view. People enthuse about million dollar views but sometimes you'd rather not see all that wrath and fury.

It is the middle of winter so such is normal but I look at the puddles and small lakes forming and can't help but wonder how everyone in England is coping with the deluges falling upon them.

The water lying on the ground under the trees has a dismal look but I know that it will only take one sunny day for it all to evaporate and allow the place to resume its park-like glory. The bellbirds are having trouble making themselves heard against the racket going on at the foreshore, but they are out in force warbling fit to bust, it must be coming up to mating season. Readers might be amused to know that a customer sitting with a cappuccino in the garden (before all this rain) asked for the music to be turned down so she could hear the birds. We felt suitably humbled at being so blase about the birdsong as to come between the birds and those who appreciate them. There are so many different sorts, some very tuneful and mostly quite trusting, like these hungry silver eye, captured by a passing traveller.

This is supposed to be our quiet time, and indeed the shop has only a handful of customers each day (not sure about that collective word for customers). It is nice though to be able to spend more time talking to people about nuts, the weather and sundry other things. A couple of busloads came to lunch and our retailers and bulk nut buyers keep on sending in orders, just when we though it was hibernation time. Now of course is when we are supposed to catch up on all the tasks shelved earlier on. Like the interesting water leak deep in the wall, tidying up around the garden, checking out mysterious toothaches and giving the dog a shampoo. We took the coffee machine on an expedition to Wellington to have a major plumbing repair leaving the cafe coffee-less for five days. Sorry if you visited us then.

Apart from that, the seasonal task which keeps us at home is the picking up of this year's harvest. Three varieties have been dropping over the last month and the continuing dry conditions have made this bendy task positively joyful. We have 400 trees, 50 of these are babies and only produce a few nuts. There are nearly 200 Beaumonts which require plucking by hand (this happens in August) The remainder are droppers, which means the nuts tend to fall off when they are ripe, which goes on for about three or four months.

For those who were asking - we have the magnificent TJ's nutcracker in stock again. Find it on the products page.

I hope all our visitors appreciated the amazing good fortune of flawless weather over the Easter break as much as these ladies. We were not quite so lucky and had to work, changing gear from sleepy autumn mode to visitor avalanche mode. It went reasonably well (mostly thanks to the weather, people are so forgiving when they can look at the Pacific sparkling whilst eating ice-cream, panini with the works or a coffee). We nearly ran out of coffee, which would have been stressful. Wondered who would have been more stressed; the customers or the baristas?

More vintage cars than you can shake a stick at; nearly wore out the camera. There was a motor convention somewhere hereabouts.

The 2007 crop passed out of the danger zone for Green Vegetable Bug with the hardening of the shells and will be starting to drop soon. For some reason the rats have waited until now to make a move, possibly as other food sources dwindle, and more gnawed out shells are dropping from the canopy than before. The possums (not to be left out) have methodically eaten the growing points out of most of our newly planted trees, leaving a snapped off shoot, and are tossing half-dehusked nuts about the place. Skirmishes in the orchard are imminent.

Despite the ups and down in weather, plenty of visitors still travel the SH 35 East coast road and most want to know all about macadamia nuts and harvesting them. It makes us think of the F.A.Q's you see on websites. We're thinking of composing a list for when there is too much going on to explain in detail. So far the most F.A.Q. is 'when', followed by 'how, do you harvest the nuts'. Another F.A.Q. is 'How do you crack them?' This one provokes a long, boring account of the drying process. But it's the single-most important part of the whole process; damp nuts are doomed nuts. The beauty of the coast never fails to draw comment, that and how lucky we are to live with it.

In the picture files are accumulating, an increasing number of images showing exotic vehicles which have brought people here to eat macadamia nuts or drink espresso. Latest ones include the Mustang GT 500, which featured in 'Gone in 60 seconds' (or one very like it) and a 1950's Rolls Royce Silver Cloud (on duty for a wedding at Maraehako). Motorbikes of all persuasions (from elderly Indians and Nortons to the swankiest Ducati touring bike imaginable, have wobbled up our tricky nut shell driveway and we have been educated regarding the number of different ways people store gear and passengers on a push bike. At times all the available parking space and half the front lawn has been occupied by motor-home convoys and a couple of 60 seater buses not only managed to gain entry without destroying the avocado trees, they also achieved the seemingly impossible task of turning around (on the proverbial sixpence) and exiting. Finally when a 1911 model A Ford turned up in company with a 1936 Ford coupe and a geriatric Daimler we decided to stop taking photos! Not wishing to show favouritism, no cars feature in this diary page.

Aside from ogling visitors' vehicles we have been occupied with gardening, making espresso, making ice-cream, shifting bags of kernel and finishing the new kitchen with paint and a heat pump.