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Blog feed

The simple chronological feed of all the blog posts published on this site.

From the most recent to the oldest post, follow the entire journey.

Mulched garlic on a frosty morning

Caring for garlic

Avoiding rust, fertilising, mulching, and harvesting scapes. Everything you need to get your garlic through the season, to a good harvest.

Takahue garlic

Everything I know about planting garlic

When to plant garlic in New Zealand depends on your garden’s climate. Here’s what nearly a decade of growing in the Far North has taught me.

Looking across the sinking valley, with our Airedale terrier Hine in the shot.

The sinking gully

We’ve noticed something sinister happening in one of our paddocks, and we’ve come up with a plan.

Hine and Roxy playing in front of the fence we installed in 2024.

The lost fence post

The post was abandoned, but the fencing project was not.

Kat pruning an apple tree with a pair of loppers.

Pruning fruit trees

Everything you need to know about pruning stone and pip fruit trees: equipment, technique, tree shapes, and the golden rules.

A bunch of green bananas beside a jar of green banana flour.

Green banana flour

An experiment in making a prodigious banana harvest last longer. More useful than expected, with some caveats

Our fifth herd of cows the morning after arriving at The Outpost.

Surprise cows

We weren’t expecting them, but surprise! We have a new herd of cows.

Marilyn Fulton, Kat Jenkins, Shirley Fulton, and Tot Retter, circa 1985. This photo has been AI-restored.

My mother’s mother’s mothers

How the women who came before me have shaped my life at The Outpost today. The story of my matrilineal line.

A selfie of Kat and the 1.5 kilogram kumara she harvested in 2026.

Harvesting the kūmara

After ignoring our māra kūmara for several months, we dug it up!

A brown cow with white horns stands in the rain above a small waterfall of flowing water.

Preparing for a cyclone

A look into what we do to prepare when the warning comes.

An old WW1 photo featuring 6 men and captioned 'Rangiotu Camp F.B. Hughes'.

Albert (‘Snowie’) Charles Schaeffer (WW1 23/903)

Albert “Snowie” Charles Schaeffer served in World War 1, and returned home, broken.

Five mixed cattle look at the camera on a hilly paddock.

The price of beef

A frank look at what we do with our cows.

Common kitchen foods you can grow fresh food from

Growing food from kitchen scraps

You don’t need to buy seeds to start growing food. Your weekly grocery shop is full of ways to get your garden pumping.

A stainless steel bowl containing washed peanuts.

Poor peanut performance

Turns out, peanuts don’t much love being ignored for the entire growing season.

Swan plant against a blue sky.

The dangers of weeding

Gardening isn’t all butterflies and rainbows. And even when it is, that isn’t always a good thing.

Paprika fruit on a charcoal barbeque with smoke drifting over them.

Smoking paprika

A bumper paprika crop means it’s time to make one of my best decisions so far and smoke it.

A monarch butterfly perches in a blooming sunflower.

Snapshots

A few things that are happening, or will be happening.

A solitary red and yellow tulip blooms amongst spring bulb leaves.

Lifting the spring bulbs

It’s time to refresh and re-plant the spring bulbs.

View of the full garden with a loose rooster in front of it.

A real look at the garden

An honest look around my garden beds and how they are doing right now.

The Safe H2O truck backed up to our tank.

Cleaning the water tank with Safe H2O

When we noticed our tap water was acidic, we decided to get the tank cleaned. Here’s how it went.

Shadow of a man in a hat and a woman against rocks.

On grief

A poorly-timed accident sends me spinning.

A white Dragon Fruit flower in the sun.

More things I’ve been liking

Some things that have made 2025 bearable.