The week began with a public holiday – Regatta Day – but I novated this to Wednesday to play tourist with a close friend who was holidaying in Tasmania. She was also our first overnight visitor which meant that her visit spurred a flurry of unpacking, house cleaning and tourism research that had been repeatedly postponed. The Huon Valley is truly gorgeous, even on a less-than-summery day. In addition to the opportunity to catch up after several years we enjoyed cheese and spirit tasting at Grandvewe, a sculpture walk at the nearby Art Farm, lunch at the fabulous Peppermint Bay Hotel, a stroll through the township of Cygnet and wine tasting at Home Hill winery. This of course allowed us to get everything we might need to supplement the gnocchi with homegrown basil pesto that Alex was busy preparing while we were out.

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The main milestone this week was moving beyond radishes and leaves to more substantial vegetables: beetroot and zucchini. Imports are still necessary but it was still a major breakthrough. It would be remiss not to note that the zucchini in the bibimbap was almost 30cm long. Unfortunately nominations are already closed for The Weekly Times’ (“the voice of the country since 1869”) farmer of the year so we ate our big zucchini. A crop swap has just begin in Geeveston so we will hopefully be able to supplement our veggies through barter.

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Other wins this week include setting up some shelves for seedling trays in the tunnel so we don’t need to ferry trays out and in each morning and evening and setting up a nursery for pots under insect row cover, for the same reason. We still have to figure out where they prefer living at different stages of their lives. And to learn how to manage the temperature of our tunnel – some poor seedlings were cooked because we took too long to open it up one morning. In our defence, when you’re wearing jeans and a jacket in your house it’s hard to imagine how warm it could be somewhere nearby. This certainly taught us a lesson!

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