On our first day of picking we had quite a large team of friends and family and we mostly picked by hand, with the assistance of a backpack harvesting machine we have christened ‘Fingers’ that shakes the olives down.

The second day helpers were a little thin on the ground as it was a week day so we experimented with hitting the trees with old broomsticks to shake the olives off. It sounds brutal but it doesn’t seem to harm the trees and is quite traditional. We brought in a bumper crop that day in record time and managed to get the olives to the press before a rather nasty southerly swept in.

All photos by Nicola Forrest-McLernon and Arabella.

Olive tree on a beautiful Marlborough day

It was an absolutely beautiful day for our first pick. I stepped off the plane from Wellington (where it was windy and rainy) to a clear, crisp and sunny South Island day.

Simon and 'Fingers' the olive harvester

Olives shaken or picked onto the nets for collection.

Jane empties olives from the net into a bin

Freshly harvested olives

Delicious harvest feast of bacon and egg pie, buffalo sausages and pumpkin soup

Who's this mystery woman? Come back next week to find out!

Who’s that girl? Visit the blog next week to be introduced to the latest addition to the Durvillea team…

This is a risky business and we need the weather to be just right. We are also wondering if the weather as affected the mushrooms. For some reason the mushroom harvest this year has been particularly poor. Yesterday Simon and wandered about “shrooming” but we only gathered enough to add to the lamb shank casserole.
It has been a wet Easter weekend so there has been little activity outside. A couple of days rest means I am now eager to tidy up the veggie garden. My vegetable garden has been quite unproductive this year. I still can find potatoes and a few cherry tomatoes from the glass house. However the focus this year has been on growing flowers for Meg and Henry’s wedding. Although that was 6 weeks ago we have marigolds, salvia and dahlias galore.

Dahlias have been an absolute highlight for me this summer. They have flowered continuously for weeks.

Marigolds

More dahlias

Dogwood

The Dogwoods are now dropping their leaves. They have been very showy this year. Indeed the autumn colours are lovely. The pear tree is laden and the swans have made a little track across the pond paddock to feast on the windfalls.
We have removed many of our feijoa trees to make way for my firewood coppice but we still have enough to ensure a good supply for eating and cooking . Our good friend James Hall from SPQR was down visiting a week or so ago and he sent me a feijoa cake recipe that has lived on his fridge for some time. Today I made it and include the recipe here for you. I am not sure who created this recipe but it has probably came from the NZ Herald.
The Best Feijoa Cake
125g butter
200g white sugar (approx ¾ cup)
2 eggs 
165g flour (approx 1 1/3 cups)
2tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
30g ground almonds (about one packet)
225g sour cream
1tsp almond essence
Approx.500g ripe feijoas – skinned and cut in a half or thirds
1 Tbsp heaped coarse grained sugar (demerara is ideal)
A generous pinch of ground ginger

Pre-heat oven to 200C. Prepare a 22cm cake tin. Cream together the butter and sugar very well. Beat in the eggs one at a time until well combined, then lastly the essence. Sift the dry ingredients over mixture and add at the same time the sour cream and ground almonds. Fold in carefully until well combined. (Mixture is quite thick). Spoon into prepared pan and very lightly press in the fruit cut side up. The fruit should be in a single layer. Sprinkle sugar and ginger over fruit. Put the cake into the oven and reduce heat to 180C. Bake 50 mins, turn oven off and leave in oven for an hour or overnight. Serve warm.

(The cake is quite pudding like but very tasty and a change from other recipes I have tried which are more carrot cake in style.)

So Easter is almost at an end. Arabella is back to university tomorrow but has taken all the photos for my blog. We will have to pack away all our Easter chicks until next year. However we love autumn, the perfect season for redheads, and there is nothing quite so nice at the end of the day as drawing the curtains to sit in front of the fire with a glass of pinot noir .

Jane

We are back. It has been a slow start for us at Durvillea Wines on the blogging production line. However the lives of the Durvillea Women have been action packed.
Before I begin filling you in on what the Durvillea’s have been up to, I have to acknowledge all those suffering in the world. We have family in Christchurch and they are all safe and facing the future with resilience. Our niece Louise is an English teacher in Japan and thankfully she too is safe. We are very fortunate here and I think that all the economic turmoil and now devastating earthquakes have helped us all remember what is really important.

The end of 2010 was a whirlwind. No sooner were Simon and I back from Canada, Ireland and the UK than we were packing for Brisbane. Libby graduated from University of Queensland with a BA and LLB(hons).

Libby graduates

We had a great time as Dad joined us. Then home for Christmas with the McLernon ‘s here as Astrolabe Farm. Food, family and dancing.

However the big event was just building up. On the 5th March we held Meg and Henry’s wedding here at Astrolabe Farm. It was a wonderful day full of happiness, love and fabulous dancing. There were many elements that we created ourselves. We sewed the bunting and the tablecloths.

Sewing bee

Invitations in progress

The finished effect

Arabella designed the invitations and we screen printed them here. Libby made the little figures for the top of the cake. My sister and Henry’s dad did the flowers. Simon’s sister made the cake. So many people helped out. Here is a little album of Meg and Henry’s Civil Union.

Then to top it all off Sophie decided that she would hold a fundraising auction for Christchurch. If I had not been distracted by the wedding I would have been a bit of damp squib. How can you pull it together in time was in my mind. Well she did.

Sophie at work

It was a terrific event. Sophie and her co-organiser Kate Cameron raised $33,618. We are very proud.

So we are very proud of the women involved in Durvillea Wines. They are an astonishing bunch of young women.

Another festive thing we get a bit excited about is the food. Although we love traditional Christmas cuisine, being in Marlborough we also have lots of summer produce ready for eating at the farm. There are always plenty of berries, new potatoes and peas from Jane’s vegetable garden. One of my favourite Christmas dinner dishes is peas and pancetta. This salad looks lovely and green on the table and is a delicious interval to rich ham and turkey.

Peas and Pancetta

Olive oil

Pancetta (100 grams or so)

1 cup white wine

1 small onion

5 cups fresh picked peas

1 clove garlic

Cook chopped onion and pancetta in olive oil until brown. Add garlic and keep cooking until it smells nice! Add wine peas and black pepper and simmer until peas are tender and wine is absorbed.

We already have some delicious entries into this week’s draw: Danielle’s mushroom and bacon pate, Kathie’s Ham with Spicy Plum and Mustard Glaze, Erin’s Meat Sauce, Lucy’s Sultana Cake, Cynthia’s Christmas mince and Claire’s Parsley Butter. Check them out on last week’s blog. To enter your recipe see the info below.

- Arabella

Competition details:

Post up your favourite Christmas recipe, meal, or serving suggestion on this blog and we will do the second draw this coming Friday3rd Decmeber for the next two bottles of Durvillea wine (your choice)

Terms and Condition to Enter:
* Must be over 18
* Comments must be posted on this blog, not our facebook or twitter accounts
* Only those in New Zealand and Australia are eligible for this competition
* One person’s recipe a week will be drawn from a hat each Friday until the 17th December and that lucky person will win 2 bottles of their choice of Durvillea wines
*Everyone who posted a recipe will go in the draw for the Durvillea Sauvignon Blanc magnum to be drawn 17th December

I’d like to share a recipe with you – but it isn’t for food! I got sick of buying exfoliating scrubs that were too harsh or not effective so I decided to make my own! Here is the very difficult recipe:

1 cup white sugar

1 cup Olive Oil (I used Astrolabe Farm olive oil of course!)

A drop or two of any essential oil if you feel like it (I used lemon)

Add the ingredients to a container of your choice

That’s it! Now you have a lovely natural face or body scrub. You can make it in bigger or smaller batches too. It seems to last really well. The olive oil leaves your skin feeling lovely and soft. It would be a good cheap christmas present too!

- Meg

It has been a sad winter in the chicken coop. My dear old Wyandotte Winnie died and a couple of months later my little red hen Hettie dropped dead too. These hens were quite elderly and, while I love River Cottage, I ain’t no Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and I have to bring in hired assassins if a hen needs killing. However, hope does spring eternal and I now have four young hens housed in the dog run until they get a little bigger and can be introduced to the older girls. They are brown shavers. My aim is to have continuous egg production throughout the year. The others all went off the lay over winter. I want egg production units! These plain but oh so charming girls are, I hope, the answer. As if in fright the others are all producing again!

It is also asparagus time. Alas the crop is poor. The crowns in the bed are over 20 years old and it is time for new ones. The potatoes are sprouting and the weeds are flourishing. I am so keen to get out there. I had my foot reconstructed 5 weeks ago and my gardening has been curtailed. I have my King’s seed catalogue at my side and oh so many plans.

The ground is finally drying out after a very wet winter. The Chardonnay is budding out. We gave Simon Cider Apple trees for Father’s Day with the glorious names of Sidero, Broxwood Foxwelp, and Kingston Black Semi-dwarf. Apple blossom, pear blossom, cherry blossom, quince blossom…….. Hope springs eternal.

Mother's violets in my garden

In memory of my mother Ruth Forrest who died on 26 August, the Durvillea girls’ Nana.

Mother’s Sweet and Sour Pork (a trip back to 1970′s)

1 1/2 lb lean pork cut in strips

2 tablespoons fat

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup vinegar

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup green pepper strips

1 med. can pineapple chunks

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons cornflour

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/2 cup thinly sliced onion

Brown pork in the hot fat, add water, cover & simmer until tender – about 1 hour. Drain pineapple, reserving syrup, combine sugar, cornflour & pineapple syrup (3/4 to 1 cup), vinegar, soy sauce and salt. Cook over low heat until thick, stirring constantly. Pour over hot cooked pork and leave to stand 10 minutes or longer, add pineapple, green pepper & onion. Cook 2 to 3 minutes. Serve with rice or noodles.

The day dawned wet and gloomy so we delayed our start to 9:30. We pick the bulk of the olives by hand but this year we borrowed a machine to help us reach the very highest fruit. The machine is basically a large vibrating fork that shakes the fruit off the branches. We lay out nets to catch the fruit and then empty it into small plastic bins and then tip those into a larger bin.

Although the trees were wet picking was pleasant and social as usual. Olive trees are a good height for hand picking. As someone pointed out the downside to olive picking is that it is one of the few fruit crops that you can’t snack on while picking. Olives off the tree taste terrible! Its amazing how delicious they are once pressed into oil or marinated into table olives.

Arabella was on kitchen duty and prepared a delicious lunch of scones and soup. After a half hour break we were back at it and we finished up by 3 pm which we were very pleased with. Our bin was full to the brim with 406 kgs of olives and while Simon drove it off to be pressed the rest of us enjoyed a cold beer. As I write today Simon is off to pick up the freshly pressed oil.

Today is fairly wet in Marlborough and we are pleased that we got the olives in yesterday! It is really satisfying knowing that the fruit is picked and pressed and we can look forward to having another year’s supply of delicious home produced olive oil. You can see more photos on our Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/durvillea/

- Meg

Last weekend Sophie came up to Wellington to do two tastings at Thorndon New World with me. I really enjoy the chance to do tastings, it is definitely a skill and I am feeling pretty confident with them now. I think the supermarket tastings are really worthwhile – it is such a competitive market at the moment and consumers can feel overwhelmed with the sheer volume of wine available. Having a chance to taste and have a chat with us will hopefully inspire them to pick up a bottle next time they see us on the shelf. The Pinot Grigio was very popular, lots of people who weren’t big Pinot Gris fans were surprised by how much they liked it. I also think customers really appreciated the fact that we are a family business rather than just merchandisers hired to sell the wine (not that there is anything wrong with that either!). As usual our Durvillea aprons made by Jane went down very well. Sophie also did an Astrolabe tasting at the City Market which she really enjoyed – although it is a pretty hard sell getting the public to taste wine early on a Sunday morning! I personally love the City Market – it gives Wellington a proper city feel I think. Gusty Gourmet is a terrific blog which has some recent entries about the city market – well worth checking out.

This weekend I had another go at making Quince Jelly. Last time I had my mum to help me out but I went solo this weekend. I used the instructions from our own quince jelly post. It is a real family tradition for me – my granny is very good at making it and she was taught by her mother who was in turn taught by hers. This time I used more apple and it worked out well. It is lovely and clear and set quite firmly. I think that the extra pectin and the clear apple juice helped. I also strained it through three layers of stockinette which may have kept it clearer. It is also a deeper ruby red this time. The quinces were brought up from Astrolabe Farm for me by Sophie.

The other main news in my life is my lovely new bike. It is going to help me cut down on my car use especially for short trips. I’ll write more about it later but will leave you with a pretty picture of it.

- Meg

It has been a busy easter weekend here at Astrolabe Farm. Arabella is home for the university mid-term break and Meg arrived home on Good Friday. We got straight into some chores – waterblasting, mowing, harvesting the quince and picking up walnuts. This was all in preparation for Saturday which was a full on day as Jane and Sophie were hosting a wine tasting at Astrolabe Farm for some American visitors off a cruise ship and Meg & Bella were scheduled to pick some of the Pinot Noir grapes.

It was beautiful weather so picking the Pinot Noir was not too difficult a task. We were picking what we call the “sandybank Pinot” which are grapes from a small section of the vineyard that grow on an old creek bed. The soil is very sandy so it doesn’t retain water as well as other parts of the vineyard. It was easy to see which grapes needed to be picked as the vines had started to yellow and defoliate. The Pinot is under nets as that part of the vineyard is very attractive to the birds who populate the hedges that border the property.

The first task is to lift the nets so that we can pick under them. This is quite difficult for some of the more diminutive members of the family! Simon came out to double check the fruit and confirm the rows that needed to be picked. We pick using snips and wearing gloves. You end up with pretty sticky hands by the end of the day. Although it looks a bit silly we often pick in cotton dresses and skirts as they are nice and cool to work in. We often add a flowery apron to hold our snips in too! We place small yellow bins out along the rows and when the row is finished Arabella drives the truck along and we empty the small bins into a larger one that then gets driven out to the winery.

We had almost finished when the visitors from the cruise ship came out to see what we were up to. They were very interested in the whole process and we even managed to get them to help out with some picking. When we had a pretty full bin Dad came to pick it up and we cycled back to the house for some refreshments.

On returning home Arabella was straight into the kitchen working on a spectacular easter cake. We will post a recipe later in the week but until then here is a preview!

There are heaps more pictures from the Pinot Noir picking on our Flickr account here – check them out, it will make us happy!  – Meg & Arabella.