We’ve just had the driest summer anyone around here can remember. It’s been a challenge on the farm but our overall design and management strategy over the last ten years has been to manage for drought and flood. It’s paid off, but still requires a bit of work.

Our heavy soils turn into baked concrete in summer and this year was worse than any other. While most New Zealand native trees are used to these conditions, most fruit trees are not. We have irrigation in our two main orchards but had to run hoses to the two small orchards. The apple harvest is a good one but some apples got sunburned this year.

The avocados have drip irrigation and have loved the sunny weather.

Other heat-loving crops like basil did well but still required lots of water.

On the other hand, the grapes thrived with hardly any watering, although that watering was directly to the base of the vines.

The lack of rain meant that the grass stopped growing, but we have plenty of trees to provide daily fodder for the goats. Their favourites are tagasaste…

…and poplar.

The kune kune pigs are good grazers, but did require a lot of supplemental feeding as well, mostly in the form of windfall fruit from the orchards and veggie scraps from local restaurants.

This fat and happy boar is waiting for a treat.

Probably the hardest aspect of the drought conditions has been looking after the 600+ native trees we planted last winter. Although they are hardy to New Zealand conditions, the first summer is critical to their survival. Last summer we had plenty of rain so no watering was required, and lost none of the 600 trees planted that year. This summer’s drought has had a handful of casualties but still only single digits.

I was able to catch most trees before they died once they were showing signs of stress.

I ran hose lines to areas over the hillsides and then used buckets from there to water individual trees.

We’re now up to 4,000 native trees planted over the last eight years and only have lost probably a dozen or two in all that time.

We got just under 30 mm of rain earlier this week so that helped the situation while not breaking the drought. The rain brought lower temperatures with it and there is a crisp autumn nip in the air. We’re not home free yet but the real pressure is off for now.

Pretty soon I’ll be complaining about too much rain!

Kia Kaha!

Estwing