Flax, Passover, and a Piano

Hello, I figure its about time for an update.  This past week was Passover, and thanks to Mom, a box of Matzoh and some lollycones (passover candy) showed up here on the first night of passover.  Since no one here knew anything about passover (other than Nico) I led a short and simple seder, telling the story and talking about some of the food symbology and sharing the matzah.  It was cool that everyone was interested and that Nico was there to back me up on some of the "facts" as she has actually read the bible before and i have not.  Matzah has been a small part of every meal since until we finish it up.

We have also done a third round now of harvesting and planting flax, bringing the number up to about 600 flax plants that we've harvested and planted in the valley.  After the first time we did this, I wrote about it and why flax is so important.  So if you missed that one, check it out here:  http://nomaddave.blogspot.com/2010/01/flax.html. This time we also planted some by the ocean, right across the stret from the valley.  I think a flax god dressed as an old man stopped by... Laura, Hannah, little John, and myself were planting off the side of the road and suddenly a couple old guys walked by wondering if we lost something.  They came from the sea and it is a dead end road, so basically they appeared out of nowhere.  When I told them that we were planting some flax, expecting to explain why, the one old guy who asked replied something along the lines of "Good on ya.  I planted over 30 flax plants just yesterday."  Then just as they appeared, they went on their way, with no vehicle, and no where to go within walking distance.... random.

And.... a piano!  On our way back from getting flax we stopped by the storage in Thames to bring back a big piece of furniture.  There was also a piano in there that is quite out of tune, but works just fine.  Jon was going to donate it... but then I played "the luckiest" by Ben Folds...  messing up quite a bit and didnt even finish cause its been so long since i've played, but it was good enough!  We all convinced Jon to bring it back to the house instead and now we've got a piano.

Oh, and while we were in Thames we stopped off at the community pool where they had this huge blowup obstacle course floating in the pool.  There was a line of kids, probably none older than 13, waiting to get on, and we just hopped in with them.  I was the only one out of our group to actually make it all the way to the end, mostly cause I used the leap-frog method learned from some scrawny 10 year old kid.  It was good fun.

Flax

On monday we harvested and yesterday we planted slightly over 200 flax plants.  Listening to Jon talk about it, it sounds like we are saving the NZ ecology by doing this.  Its flowers are an important source of food for the birds here cause they are too deep for the bees.  Then more birds eat the seeds that grow after the flowers are gone.  It is also really good at getting its roots deep to get water and stabilize the ground.  Then with the leaves of the flax you can weave to make rope or linens.  Dont know if we'll get to do that since we just transplanted them...

This is flax

Harvesting was one of those things were you just have to accept that you are going to get wet and dirty and then it becoms a lot of fun.  But until then it kinda sucks.  It was a rainy morning and we stop on the side of the road somewhere that Jon knew about, and cut our own path through the thick wet brush.  At this point all of us had on our raincoats and were pretty cold and miserable.  Once we got started though and warmed up, we all didnt care it was raining and had a good time cutting up these plants.  It is amazing how brutal you can be to it and have it still survuve.  We had spades and would cut up one fan from the rest of the plant, keeping some roots intact.  Then you cut off all of the leaves except for the middle one.  The "brains" of the plant according to Jon.  Then just throw it in the trailer until two days later when we got to plant them.  

Like I said... a dirty job.  That shirt was blue and green to begin with.

Then planting was relatively simple... dig a hole, put in the plant, fill it back up.  Of course we decided to put 2/3 of the plants in swampy areas, where digging was more efficient with our hands.

 

Hence we got dirty...again.  Left to Right: Laura, Hannah, Dani, me, Rich