Winter Gardeners at Fyffe Lodge

Winter at Fyffe Lodge   Like everyone else throughout New Zealand at this time of the year we have heads down and bottoms up with pruning and trimming.   With some 60 roses on site it takes us a while not to mention the grape vine and the stone fruit trees.   Stringing up the…

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Winter Ramblings from Sails Ashore, Stewart Island

Winter is Here, or Ramblings of an Island “Batchelor” The last couple of days have been savage. We have a really nasty weather system sweeping across Southern New Zealand. Yesterday was steady rain from a very low cloud base, and gale westerly. This morning after a night of heavy rain and occasional thunder I was startled…

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Southern Wild Food and Old Cars

Wild Food Event for Southern Region Early Ford V8 Club On the 10th August 2013 Ray and I held a ‘Wild Food Competition’ for the Southern Regional Early Ford V8 club of America. We created our own gourmet sausages from Wild Duck, Rabbit, Hare and Venison which Ray had personally shot and prepared. We served…

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Winter Sunrises, What’s in a Name, Venison Recipe

Just Winter Things Winter can be a depressing time of year, short days, colder, and often extended grey bleak periods. But we do also get those wonderful clear calm sunny days that make such a difference. And one of the really neat things winter gives us is marvellous sunrises. Well we get great sunrises throughout…

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Clearview Lodge, Harvest Season

 Clearview Lodge Autumn Harvest The Grapes Autumn has been a busy time at Clearview Lodge this season. In April, after a marvellous sunny warm summer, we harvested our Pinot Noir. We are currently drinking our 2011 and 2012 Pinot Noirs and for something a little special, our  2010 Pinot Noir Port which has proven very…

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Fyffe Country Lodge – Kaikoura

Cabin fever was starting to set in and thankfully we had the Olympic Games to enjoy over the past 2 weeks of downpours. The ground so soggy and small lakes everywhere. Alas… we woke to the pristine snow capped mountain vista of Kaikoura.  It was absolutely idyllic.  We drove our Russian guests to the water…

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Dunedin: A winter treat

We are half way through the winter and here in Dunedin for the last several weeks we have had wonderfully warm and sunny weather during the day just cooling down a bit at nights. Unbelievably national TV admitted a couple times that Dunedin was the warmest spot in the whole of NZ. Unbelievably, because temperatures…

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