July 25, 2010
Frantoio olives (click to enlarge)
Podcast available.
“They’re all still green,” Rick said.
We were standing in the middle of the olive grove on a cold morning in the middle of May. Nearly five hundred olive trees surrounded us, and there wasn’t a single ripe olive to be seen.
The frosts would be starting soon, but the grove simply wasn’t yet ready for harvesting. We didn’t know what to do.
Frost damage can completely destroy your crop, because it ruins the taste of your oil. We needed more time.
I looked around at all the green olives. “We have to delay the harvest. There’s no choice. We just have to hope the frost doesn’t get us.”
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20 Comments | 
Neighbors, New Zealand, Olives & olive oil, Podcasts | Tagged: city friends, gratitude, kind neighbors, olive grove, olive harvest, olive oil, olive press, satisfying work, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine | 
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Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
April 4, 2010
Lucy noticed her purse was missing just as the tsunami warnings came across the kitchen radio. It was early on Sunday morning, and the horrible earthquake in Chile meant that New Zealand was expecting a giant tsunami.
Lucy was one of our four good friends visiting from Chicago – including Russ, Joel and Louise – who had together enjoyed our earlier wine tasting at Escarpment vineyard.
We’d all been looking forward to spending the day at the coast visiting the seal colony and exploring the Cape Palliser Lighthouse. Should we still go?
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16 Comments | New Zealand, River & sea | Tagged: Chicago friends, city friends, country walk, Lakeside Gang, Rapaki Hillside Walk, tsunami | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
December 5, 2009
Our roast turkey
Rick called me at work on Thursday morning in a panic.
“Did you see the weather forecast for Saturday?” he said. “It’s horrible. Rain all day. Should we cancel Thanksgiving?”
For most people, the idea of canceling Thanksgiving on account of a little bit of rain would seem a ridiculous idea, but they’ve never been to one of our Thanksgiving parties.
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16 Comments | Country dinner parties, Family, Food, Neighbors, New Zealand | Tagged: city friends, gratitude, kind neighbors, olive grove, rimutaka hill road | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
October 10, 2009
Podcast available.
Rick and I had been living in the country for only a couple of months when Rick’s city friend Fiona came to visit.
Well in the olive grove
Fiona is like a graceful, exotic bird you feel compelled to pamper and adore, and Rick had promised her a relaxing country weekend far away from her stressful professional life. So it caused us great concern when, just hours after her arrival on Friday evening, our tap water suddenly stopped running.
I was in the kitchen preparing to cook dinner when I turned on the kitchen faucet and nothing came out. I checked the sink in the guest bathroom and found the same thing there.
Out on the deck I made the announcement.
“There’s no water.”
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20 Comments | Neighbors, New Zealand, Podcasts | Tagged: city friends, gratitude, kind neighbors, olive grove, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine, well | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
July 11, 2009
There are many ways to make your own olive oil. This is my own personal recipe. Feel free to modify it to make it work for you.
- Pre-heat your life. Marinate in thoughts of living overseas for years and years.
- Before your heart becomes hard, go.
- Count your blessings when the one you love agrees to join you.
- Wander the globe together. Live in Northern Japan, then big city Tokyo. Stir in trips to China, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines. Flavor to taste.
- Meet friendly, warm New Zealanders everywhere you go.
- Move to New Zealand. Because, why not? Read the rest of this entry »
8 Comments | Guest posts & media, Neighbors, New Zealand, Olives & olive oil | Tagged: city friends, kind neighbors, olive harvest, olive oil | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
June 27, 2009
The day after our big olive harvest with the city friends, the weather took a turn for the worse. It didn’t matter. Four of us in the harvest gang were determined to hand pick some olives for pickling and preserving. We weren’t about to be put off by the weather.
Olives and macrocarpas in the mist
Everyone that morning was sore from the day before. Inside the fire was going, and outside the temperature had plummeted. The mist across the hills had thickened. But we four intrepid olive harvesters put on winter coats and gloves, left behind the others who were reading by the fire, and headed down into the grove with a couple old plastic buckets.
It doesn’t snow in the Wairarapa valley, except for occasionally up in the mountains, and the coldest days in Martinborough are nothing compared to the serious, snow-filled winters of my native Michigan. But my body seems to have changed.
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8 Comments | Food, New Zealand, Olives & olive oil | Tagged: city friends, gluten free, manzanillo, olive grove, pickling olives, recipe, satisfying work, table olives | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
June 6, 2009
Mist on the hills beyond the bottom paddock
The first of the city friends arrived on Friday night, driving over the Rimutaka Hill Road after work in the dark, ready to settle in for a three-day weekend full of food, friends, olives, and a lot of hard work.
There were big hello hugs all around and bags deposited in guest rooms.
We operate a B&B here, so the extra bedrooms come in handy at harvest time — and also throughout the year, when friends and family occupy the rooms between paying guests.
As they arrived, everyone was talking about the horrible weather that had been forecasted for the weekend.
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7 Comments | Neighbors, New Zealand, Olives & olive oil | Tagged: city friends, frantoio, gratitude, kind neighbors, leccino, nets, olive grove, olive harvest, olive oil, olive press, satisfying work | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
May 23, 2009
Podcast available.
House and the footbridge to the top paddock
A group of six of our city friends helped us move out to the country. That was back in October 2006. It was a beautiful day, and it felt like a party.
Nobody wanted to drive a rented truck over the treacherous Rimutaka Hill Road, so Rick and I hired movers to move our big things like the bed, sofa, washer and dryer. The rest of our stuff we piled into everyone’s cars and drove over the Hill together, convoy style.
Our city friends were all people we’d met since arriving in New Zealand two years before. They were an odd mix perhaps, but went together well – Kiwis and Brits, straight and gay, Quakers and not religious at all. To them we were the gay Americans from Tokyo, city boys through and through. What were we doing, they wondered, moving out to 20 acres in the country?
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12 Comments | Country dinner parties, Neighbors, New Zealand, Paddocks, Podcasts, Sheep & cattle | Tagged: city friends, gratitude, kind neighbors, moon, rimutaka hill road, tractor | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
May 13, 2009
I just wanted blue eggs. That’s the reason I’m out here in the dark this morning, as a bone-chilling autumn rain pelts me furiously on all sides. I’m carrying a red bucket in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
The girls in a line-up
I trudge forward. Already it’s 6:15am. I have to be in the shower by 6:30 to get ready for work. I have to be quick.
Six months before, I decided I wanted chickens. But not just any chickens. I’d read about a breed called Araucana – an old South American breed that lays pale blue eggs.
Blue eggs! How fantastic! I imagined a bowl of farm-fresh, blue eggs on the kitchen counter as I chopped veggies for omelettes on a Sunday morning.
I never thought about the dark, cold mornings of fall and winter, or the icy rains.
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11 Comments | Chickens, New Zealand | Tagged: blue-green eggs, chicken coop, Chickens, chook house, city friends, gratitude, lavendar araucana, light sussex | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
