Spring is here

Like someone had flicked the switch, yesterday we woke up to this:

We had a full day of lovely sunshine and cool temperatures. I set out on a long-ish walk, almost 17km from the centre of Huonville to Lower Longley, where I hopped on the TassieLink bus back to Huonville. It was a little adventure of the sort I love, going up tracks and back roads, checking on my map and my phone if I'm going in the right direction to get to the desired destination.

I have (perhaps foolishly) signed up to walk in the Point to Pinnacle in November, a 21km walk from the Wrest Point Casino on the Derwent River up to the top of Mount Wellington at about 1270 metres. So I need to practice hiking up (large) hills. Yesterday's walk had a total climb of 902m, according to the Runkeeper app I used to track the walk on my phone. The big hill was up Knights Road from Huonville, plenty of huffing and puffing there.

The best part of the walk was the many views of snow-capped mountains in the sun. I saw Hartz Peak and Mount Snowy, what I think was the Picton range and Mount Snowy and then finally Adamsons Peak and The Calf in the south. Stunning views which my phone camera really did not do justice to.

For your diary: Huon Valley Business Expo

Do you run a business based in the Huon Valley? Looking for a way to make new contacts and promote your products and services?

The Huon Valley Business Enterprise Centre (BEC) is organising a small business expo to be held at the Huon Valley PCYC in Wilmot Road in Huonville on Saturday 13 October. As well as being an opportunity for local business people to meet each other, develop contacts and networks and reach potential new customers, it should be a fun and interesting day out for the rest of us.

In my brief couple of years living here I've met people from a huge variety of local businesses, from primary producers (goat breeders, orchardists), food producers (olive oil, wine, honey) to pet services, beauty therapy, automotive, accountants and lawyers, real estate agents, trade services, artists (like jewelry and glass designers), building and engineering companies. And of course our well known tourism and hospitality businesses.

Scott Dufty from the BEC reckons it's the first such event to be held in the Huon. More than 35 businesses have signed up already and Scott expects around 50 local businesses to be there showing what they have to offer. If you'd like to be involved, contact Scott on (03) 6264 3080 or email hvbec@bigpond.com or keep up with the news on this Facebook page.

A little more than a heavy frost

I'm glad I didn't plant the potatoes last weekend. I have planted some seeds in the greenhouse though to get an early start and hope it's warm enough for them in there.

Despite Sunday morning's snow dump, there are signs of spring all over. My beloved rhubarb is starting to unfurl and the daffodils are peeking out. The fairy wrens are wearing their brightest blue. Even the bare young fruit trees have new buds appearing - three whole new branches in the case of the Williams pear.

Daffodils peeking out

Garlic

Even the hothouse was cold

Raspberries probably enjoyed the chill

Snowy dog walk

After breakfast yesterday morning, we took the dogs for a walk up our road and into the forestry land to the west. As you might expect of a Swiss breed of dog, they had a great time running and playing in the snow.  Once back home, they lay down in it, rolled in it and ate it. As you do.

A photo of the dogs that I posted on Twitter ended up being used in a story about the cold weather on the ABC News web site. Famous dogs.

A snowy Sunday

Just when we thought we weren't going to get a decent dump of snow this winter... we woke up to this.

Mini-blizzard

Sunrise

Left the chooks in their shed

Front paddock

Baerli

By mid-afternoon, it had started to melt.

Raspberries - the second attempt

My first attempt at growing raspberries failed. How can that be, you might well ask - don't you just stick them in the ground in Tasmania and they grow like crazy? Well, good question.

There are a couple of reasons I think. First, I didn't prepare the soil enough. Our place is mostly clay and while I did dig out a trench and fill it with better soil and mulch, I was too scared to add manure and all those good things later on because the raspberry patch is located inside the fenced wallaby proof paddock - where the dogs also live. And anything like manure, compost or blood-and-bone is VERY tasty to our dogs. Also towards the end of the first growing season, the plants had some kind of infestation of what looked like tiny aphids, and they had done plenty of damage by the time they left. Then, I didn't weed the beds well enough and grass started to compete with the berries.

So I'm learning from all of this in my second planting. A few months ago I dug a deeper trench and filled it with manure, compost and rotting leaf litter from the rainforest on our land. I covered it with wire and rocks to deter the dogs from eating it and left it there to rot. Step one seems to have worked OK, as when I planted the raspberry canes last weekend the soil was rich, dark and full of enormous worms having a great time. Fingers crossed. Raspberries are my favourite fruit.

Winter Challenge 2012

Our marshal point for today's Winter Challenge multisport event in Franklin was a little further up Hope Hill than last year. Our little job was to open two farm gates in soggy fields dotted with large cow pats ready for the runners in the 10.7km run leg that starts the event, make sure the runners followed the correct course, alert emergency personnel if someone needed help and close the gates once everyone had passed. By the time runners reached us, they had completed more than three quarters of the run and only had a steep downhill left to go (through  the aforementioned soggy fields and cow pats followed by mud and gravel roads). Apart from one guy limping, all the runners were in amazingly good shape when they reached us. Last year there had been a few more injuries.

I am amazed how many runners were either chatting with each other or took the time and breath to say good morning or thank us. Really, no need to thank us - it's a privilege to watch and be inspired by you all. After the run, there's an 18km mountain bike, 37km road bike and 11km kayak to complete. Phew. I heard that close to 50 people out of the 500 participants had entered to complete all four sections, the rest as a team or relay. Wow. Loads of respect for you guys.

After closing our farm gate, no cattle in sight, we walked back downhill to watch some mountain bikers on a nice muddy downhill. Only a few spills this year. Later, we took the dogs down to the foreshore and saw some of the road bikers and kayakers coming in. Around the start-finish area it became obvious how much high tech gear is involved in competing in multisport events like this. Every second car had a muddy mountain bike or a kayak strapped to the roof and an entire team of supporters camped on chairs nearby to transport it all.