Hi LSB, I'm Kelly AKA Das

Right, I've been trolling the forums for weeks now, introduction time, background first. I'm not yet on a lifestyle block but have known for 2 years that my partner (Ahu) and I would be taking over his parent's 20 acre farm in West Auckland. 6 months following that bombshell, I was offered redundancy after 7 years in the same office and accepted almost immediately, thinking 'retirement'. I took a year off work, sharing a tiny rented 3-bedroom flat in the city with Ahu, our 3 cats and our neighbours upstairs of 5 years.

My inlaws have lived at the base of the Waitaks for 35 years and it's been about that long since anything has been pruned. 75 persimmons trees, an acre of macadamias, a vineyard (which has yielded a few years worth of Cab Franc), an orchard of grapefruit, lemons and apples, a few quinch trees, 2 large vege gardens and gorse everywhere. There's only 23 free range chickens and a rooster on the land, we'll be taking over 4 cats and 2 goldfish and we've had a friend approach us about putting one of his beehives somewhere and we're keen. There's a huge concrete pig sty doubling as a filing cabinet so that has potential.

We're weeks away from moving and that is how I find myself here. We know nothing about farming, except what I have been able to obtain via the net and from the BBC shows Victorian & Edwardian Farms (we love our docos!). I'm a social butterfly at heart so isolation is gonna be interesting and I'm hoping this forum will be enlightening and able to take my babble. I'm also going to give blogging a go as I love to yap and it was really hard to find information on 'how to prune a persimmon tree for the first time in 30 years'.

That'll do for now, wouldn't want to hurt myself in my first post. Thanks for having me LSB, I look forward to meeting you in due course.

Welcome! Sounds like a lovely place to be starting from, lots of things to learn on and lots of space to explore what else you'd like to do. It sounds like it's already quite productive, or at least has the potential to be.

Enjoy!

Greetings Kelly. Pruning persimmons is simple. You prune them to shape. Oh, and welcome to the LSB

Hi Kelly and Welcome! Good luck with the pruning, remember to drink lots of water and wear a hat and sunscreen!

Hi ya kelly
welcome to LSB cyber family
LOL social butterfly will be fun from a farm .. good on ya keep up the great work
oh and chainsaws are great to trim those persimmon trees

You are really lucky that there are so many things already happening on the block and lots of fruit trees.
You might want to wait until winter now to prune the persimmons as they will have fruit on them. winter is usually the best pruning time. If you need help with eating them, well...
You might like to joing the Kumeu Small Land Owners group, its not confined to Kumeu but is centred there. A very active group with a wide variety of interests, field days and often like minded people.
Just google KSOL and their meetings will be starting in Feb again

great start for you having something already in the ground - luck devils - persimmons, yumm
i am envious, enjoy the lifestyle, i believe it is a great way to learn
by having something to play with already
magpie

wow... sounds like you have your work cut out for a while knocking things back into shape!
But... 75 persimmon trees!! I dont know what you'd do with even one!!

What are persimmons used for and how do you prepare them?? It is not a fruit I'm familiar with...

So weeks turned into months but we finally moved onto the farm in August and have only just gotten used to the chickens routines (not to mention remembering their names...) and still emptying boxes.

Next month I will be making my way out to the orchard to see what I have to work with.

In short, you'll be seeing me on here more often...and thank you all for the warm welcomes.

Das :cool:

Now the real fun begins.

Welcome Das [^]....hehehehehehehehe sorry for laughing but you really don't know what isolation is ...the foot of the Waitak's just does not come close to being called isolation ...now ..we have lived in the woop woops ...and that was close to isolation[][}]
Enjoy your block ..LSB's are so much fun[:0] and social butterflies can flit all over the place in peace
Cheers

Yeah Terralee, maybe I was a little apprehensive before I moved in about not being a 2 minute walk from Auckland City but my perspective has changed dramatically since. I'm shocked at how little I was prepared for the farm, even as I reread my first post, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I am completely besotted with the chickens and fascinated by the way my partner's mother has let them roam free. My fulltime job is now to listen out for the chooks to do their 'I've just laid an egg' song, collect them while they are warm, put the layers name and the date on the egg. That is how the Outlaws did it, so I must follow suit.

I can't wait for Summer, Ahu has promised some heavy artillery training so I can take care of business while he is at work. The tractor and the ride on mower for starters, then the weed wacker, scrub cutter and if I survive that, the chainsaws. Then I'm hunting macadamia trees all Summer...there are 150 of them somewhere under all the growth...

As Igor said, now the real fun begins.

Hi Das, it sounds like you are about to start a wonderful way of life, I like the way your place has such a diversity of trees, if one crop fails you have plenty of others to carry you through.

We don't do much to the persimmons just keep them to a pick-able height, they recommend keeping them to 8ft, taking out crossing branches and water shoots and that's about it.

We use an electric chain saw and pole saw and take a generator down the field to do our pruning, much easier than trying to start a petrol chain saw and very little noise and no smoke and fumes.

Welcome to the good life.

Bryan

Love the sound of your place. Would love to see pics!!!!