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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.

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.

The 2025 garlic harvest laid out on a garden path immediately after puling it up.

Garlic harvest 2025

Results from my much-smaller 2025 garlic crop.

A black cow with a mostly-white face and black nose stands in a paddock of long green grass and looks towards the camera.

Spare cow

In the face of a mystery, we find ourselves examining our morals.

Actual garden, November 2025

Garden planning with GardenBox 3D

Creating a map of my garden using GardenBox 3D, and how I’m using it to plan my upcoming gardening adventures.

The planted māra kūmara with completed frame, and covered in bird net.

Māra kūmara

This year I’ve re-introduced kūmara into my garden.