Warding off Jack Frost- Cromwell

Catch-up (early October, 2019)

After I'd completed my mega road trip from Winton to Cromwell & Lawrence return, to photograph the fruit blossoms, a photography acquaintance mentioned that I should do the trip again, at least to Cromwell, to take photos of the blossoms after the frost protection sprinklers were switched on in the orchards. 

Sunrise over Cromwell

How do frost protection sprinklers work? Coating a tree or vine with ice to protect new buds & blossom from frost may seem counter-intuitive but there is a science behind it.

Overhead low pressure sprinkler systems provide a high level of protection, the key is to form clear ice on the plant. Sprinklers deliver just enough water to glaze the plants in layers of ice, rather than soaking them and forming one massive layer of ice that may cause more cooling before it freezes.

Clear ice means that an endothermic reaction is taking place and the warmth of the plant is being trapped inside it. If the ice starts to become cloudy, the plant is losing heat and that’s when damage can occur. Water spraying starts well before the frost forms and continues until after the ice has completely melted from the trees. If water stops spraying on the clear ice, it goes from being endothermic to exothermic, and the heat loss and ice can then damage the fruit.

Drive back to Cromwell? 'What a good idea', I thought, the seed was planted. It would mean a 4am start to cover the 200+km from Winton to Cromwell but I was up for the challenge. Like a hoar frost, iced blossoms had been on my 'must capture' list for awhile, I'd just never been in the right place at the right time. Now was my chance. 

My friend had access to a Cromwell orchard's temperature gauge and he informed me by text late one evening that there was a predicted frost the following morning and I should be ready to go.

It turned out to be a very light frost and the sprinklers weren't needed but thankfully he was able to text me before I had left Winton. The next time I heard from him was a week or so later but unfortunately we had left Winton and were exploring the Milford Road by then, so I missed out again.

But as luck would have it, and after our short visit to Mavora Lakes, we were unexpectedly back in Cromwell parked in the NZMCA Park at Lowburn when very early one morning, around 3am, I woke with start to a very loud noise filling the air.

Once I figured out where I was- you get that when you're constantly on the move, it's sometimes takes a few moments to visualise where you're parked and in what direction you're facing- I realised that I could hear wind turbines and helicopters roaring into action, preparing to fight off a frost. 

How about that! I had no need to drive 400km this time, I was a mere 4kms down the road from the orchards! I was ready to go and out the gate well before the sun came up. The first orchards were still in darkness but I could hear the soft click, clack of the sprinkler heads turning and the gentle patter of water falling through the trees to the ground.

I carried on to the far end of Cromwell and then around onto a back road; sprinklers swishing back & forward everywhere I looked, a helicopter down very low in one orchard, weaving back and forward along the ends of the rows and the roar of wind fans and turbines in others.

All three methods obviously work but I'm not too sure how the orchardists decide which is the best way to go; sprinkler systems seemed to be most numerous.

Perhaps it's money, helicopters would cost a fortune, maybe there isn't access to water or perhaps the wind turbines can be shifted around the orchard more easily.

I had overlooked one major difficulty which now seems rather obvious. I was soaking wet within minutes of getting out of the ute- even with a rain jacket & gumboots on.

It didn't matter that I was ducking in and out of the passing overhead sprinkler trying to shoot a blossom before the sprinkler passed over again because if the sprinkler next door didn't get me the neighbour on the other side would. They were all out of sequence. 

Luckily I had an extra jacket in the ute and there were a couple of large towels packed into the back seat. I used one to cover the seat as I was climbing in and out in my wet gear all the time and the other one to wipe down my camera and dry my hair! I looked like a drowned rat. 

I was a little worried about my camera though, it's weather proof but not water proof and also, as I was zooming my lens in and out, water was tracking inside the lens.

Later when I arrived home and had dried my camera and lens out as much as I could, I left them on the bed in the warm sun to dry them out. I opened the window a little so any water would evaporate rather than condensate in the warmth. It worked although it did take a few hours each day to get rid of the moisture. Next time I need a waterproof cover for my camera.

After flitting back and forward through town and up and down down many of the back roads chasing sprinklers and easy to access orchards, I stopped at the Wooing Tree Vineyard, right in the middle of town. The sprinklers were also working overtime here and...

...at River Rock Estate, a little boutique winery across the road...

...where I managed to do a few close up shots...

...without getting drenched as I could keep outside the sprinkler's reach. 

Then with the sun climbing higher, the ice melting and enough blossoms photos to sink a ship, I thought I might just add a few more before I headed home. 

I'd passed this row of beautiful old crab-apple trees numerous times during the last couple of hours, now I stopped to take some photos of the gorgeous blossom.

Never satisfied and always striving for better photos, I can't wait until the next frost event. If you're passing through Cromwell next spring and you spot someone with a camera, ducking & diving around the fruit trees on the edge of an orchard covered from head to toe in ocean going wet weather gear, you'll know who it is! 

A Fairlie Big Bang- Part 1

Real-time

We left Weedons, south of Christchurch, and headed west towards Darfield, we'd decided to take the scenic route to MacKenzie Country. SH77 runs along the foot of the mountains that form the backdrop to the vast Canterbury Plains. 

We've spent quite a bit of time exploring along this road previously, today we just enjoyed the open road with very little traffic. Mt Hutt, with very little snow for this time of the year, filled the view ahead of us for quite some distance as we passed through Glentunnel, Windwhistle and dropped down into the Rakaia Gorge before popping back up onto the straight roads past Methven, Staveley, Mt Somers & Mayfield.

Just past Staveley we stopped for lunch at a very wet Bowyers Stream rest area...

.... this is also a free camping area but it's often boggy or flooded during winter. 

Back on the road and there we were crusin' along at 90kph on a gloriously sunny day without a care in the world when there was an almighty huge boom followed by 'whack, whack, whack', the rig wobbled a bit and a large cloud of blue smoke poured out behind us. David quickly brought the rig to a halt, I jumped out to check and saw that we'd had a blow-out on the back left hand side of the 5th-wheeler. 

There was nowhere to pull off the road on our side of the road but luckily there was a wide grass berm on the other side. David carefully drove the rig over to it. 

Yes, that's definitely a blow out, there'll be no repairing that tyre! Our first (and hopefully last) blow-out to add to the two punctures on the ute & one on the van in over 88,000kms and 7 years on the road. The ground underneath was soft and it took several stages to jack it up, block, release, jack, add another block, release, jack.... Eventually there were enough blocks under the axle to get the wheel off and the spare back on. And in case you're wondering these aren't retreads, they were new tyres 3.5 years ago.

At least 100 vehicles passed us while we were changing the wheel,  many of them work vehicles and farm utes with burly young men in them, yet not one person stopped to offer help or check that we were ok. It didn't matter because David had it under control (with some help from yours truly) and if we had needed help I would have flagged someone down but it did surprise me that not one person stopped. I know any motorhomer passing would have checked on us but unusually not one of the vehicles passing was a motorhome. 

Ninety minutes and a few nasty scratches from the protruding wire later and David had it changed and we were back on the road. 

We were very pleased to see Carters Tyre Service as we rolled into Fairlie township just before dusk on a Friday afternoon. David popped over to see them Saturday morning and they were able to order a replacement tyre and would have it for us on Tuesday morning which we were very pleased about. As it happened, we were intending to stop in Fairlie- the gateway to MacKenzie Country- for a night or two anyway, a couple more nights wasn't going to be a problem.

Fairlie Holiday Park is part of the NZMCA (NZ Motor Caravan Association) new CampSaver winter camping initiative where members can stay at participating campgrounds for $20 a night, this includes power. This has to be a win/win situation; members get cheaper camping sites and in return camping grounds get some winter turnover. Hopefully camping grounds will find that it's worth their while being involved, I know that during our week long stay at Fairlie there were two to four other members staying each night that usually wouldn't have come to a campground.

We thoroughly enjoyed our extended stay, we had a relatively sunny spot in an area that didn't see many other campers; most preferring to park on the hard on the otherside of the small stream that ran through the campground. 

With heavy frosts every day, temperatures at -5c to -8c overnight and hovering around zero for most of the day, with the occasional morning of fog, and bitterly cold temperatures all day, everyday, we began to wonder if we'd made the right decision to come south again for winter. 

We wondered if we were getting soft in our old age; 18 months has passed since we were last down here. Or maybe we'd acclimatized to the brilliant 6 months of warm sunshine we'd had up north over the long hot summer. All I can say is thank God for out diesel heaters, they certainly earnt their keep keeping us toasty warm inside, and also for the luxury of being plugged into the grid. The electric blanket kept the chill away overnight.

But we did have frozen water pipes three days running which didn't defrost until early afternoon. I think we've only had frozen pipes for 3 days in total over the whole of winter previously. We always turn the water off and open the taps at night so no damage is done but it's frustrating when you don't have water when you want it. And even colder when you've got to visit the campground showers instead of your own one in a warm van.

We were a bit perplexed about how cold is was until we read about a very unusual weather system at play. The severe cold temps were caused by very high air pressure which went as high as 1036hpa, this was well above the average for June and nearly a record. If it had been summer it would have been a very hot week. The highest air pressure ever recorded in New Zealand was 1045.9 in Wellington in 1889. Since then the closest near record was 1040hpa recorded in 2010. Little did I know it but this weather system was also hard at work mixing up a hoar frost in Twizel. A hoar frost that I am determined to photograph this winter and one of the main reasons we are in the South Island.

Over the weekend David decided that we really should replace all four tyres on the 5th-wheeler; the remaining three had a fair bit of tread on them but he wanted to keep the tyres uniform & consistent. So on Monday morning he called over to Carters again and ordered the other three tyres. Unfortunately two of them had to come down from the North Island and wouldn't be here until Wednesday morning (which actually wasn't too bad a service) That was ok by us, we were happy to wait. We had power. And we had pies to sample! 

Fairlie Bakehouse is well known for it's tasty pies, 'Bakers not Manufacturers' is their tag line. Ask on-line where the best pie is in New Zealand and you're not only bound to start a riot but everyone thinks they know who bakes the best. Fairlie Bakehouse is consistently up there at the top of the list with one or two others. And especially their signature pie (actually they have a few)- Pork Belly with Apple Sauce & Crackling. And yes, that is a piece of crunchy crackling on top of the pastry. 

In summary, let's just say the Pork Belly wasn't our favourite, it came a close third behind the Venison & Cranberry and the Salmon & Bacon Pie (an odd combination but it works). Although the traditional mince & cheese was pretty tasty too....then again, the butter chicken or creamy free range chicken.....

Suffice to say we were all 'pie-ed' out by the time we left Fairlie. And I don't even like pies!! 

While in Fairlie we spent most of our time in doors keeping warm, catching up on computer work (and sampling pies!) We did try to walk some of them off by taking the riverside track beside the camping ground but found it to be rather muddy and not too inspiring with bare willows, overgrown blackberry and old mans beard covering everything in sight. The walk was over 6kms long to the end and then you could walk back along the main road to the town. 

After a couple of kilometres we turned around and walked back the way we came although we did loop through the Domain on the other side of the campground and found a frozen ice skating rink which doesn't look like it's been very well loved in recent years.

In fact the last time the ice was thick enough to skate on was 2015 and that was three years after the previous time.  The rink needs a constant -10c to keep a solid base, which, with the temperatures we'd been having, explains why it was quite firm at the moment. The stuff you can see on the surface is  weeds of some sort that were growing in the base of the pond and are now stuck in the ice. 

To be continued... Part 2

Snow Over Ashburton Lakes- Canterbury

Catch-up

So, the conversation the next day went something like this... "Lets pack up a lunch and go for a tiki-tour to find some snow......I know where there's a lot!"

Which is how I found myself  back at the snow covered road to the Ashburton Lakes for the third time in a couple of weeks! There'd been a fair bit of traffic over the road since yesterday, if it had looked like this I might have carried on.

A winter wonderland with snow as far as the eye could see. 

And we were worried the other week when there was a sprinkling of snow on the road between Lake Camp & Lake Clearwater.

Much of Lake Camp was frozen.

Here's a panorama shot of Lake Camp- click to enlarge

The village at Lake Clearwater also looked very different.

And Lake Clearwater looked absolutely spectacular, with just a tiny section yet to freeze.

We had lunch at the picnic table overlooking the lake and village... 

...watching families play in the snow...

...and tourists on this LOTR tour exclaim in amazement at the view and snow when they surrounded our picnic table for a 10 minute break. They couldn't have picked a better day to to do the tour to Mt Sunday. This is the vehicle we saw driving to Mt Sunday's lookout when we travelled to the end of the road.

We watched as a couple of ice walkers crossed the lake in one direction and then make their way back again. We held our breath when they looked to be getting very close to the unfrozen water on far side at one stage (See the tiny black dots dead centre? No? Then click to enlarge!)

I couldn't quite twist David's arm to head to the end of the road again so after lunch we headed back down the road...

...where I convinced him to take the 17km road to Lake Heron, another one of the Ashburton Lakes.

Well, we did have a bit of time up our sleeve and we hadn't been able to fit it in when we visited the Lakes the first time.

We had a short interruption when a NZ Falcon/Karearea flew ahead of us for quite some distance before landing on a fence post. I carefully crept up on him along a farm driveway, while David fielded questions from a lovely old gentleman who stopped to see what we were doing.

And then we carried on through some stunning countryside...

...past untouched paddocks of pristine snow...

...until finally Lake Heron came into sight.

We drove past a couple of cars that could go no further due to an icy section through some trees and then past Arrowsmith Station's Lake Heron camping site which is closed for winter. Which is just as well....brrrrr!!

And on past a fishing hut down in a dip opposite Arrowsmith's farm buildings and Lodge...

...and out onto the edge of the lake again, where David backed the ute into the snow and we sat on the tailgate having a cup of  coffee and taking in the beautiful white and blue landscape spread out in front of us. It wasn't long before another couple of vehicles decided we must have the best view and stopped too...

Once they left, I was able to walk to the edge to take photos of the lake including this 'bad' panorama of the lake- it doesn't have such a pronounced curve in it! Although someone must have liked it because it was 'Explored' on Flickr, my photo sharing website and had over 99,000 views!

More photos of Lake Heron...

Further up the road I spied a whole lot of what I call 'tussock sheep', a weird phenomenon we've seen several times before...

...but none with so much snow weighing them down.

While I took photos, David drove up the road to find a turnaround, unfortunately we didn't have time to drive to the top of the lake.

 We headed back down the road just as this side of the lake disappeared into the shade as the sun dipped behind the mountains behind us.

We had one more stop on the way out at another of the Ashburton Lakes; the Maori Lakes, a series of small lakes and wetlands that form a nature reserve and wildlife refuge. Going by the amount of rocks and broken ice we weren't the first to check them out.

And one last photo, can you see the car on the road across the way? Proving yet again that New Zealand is such a small place, it was driven by a photographer acquaintance of mine, Francis, who we last saw in Arthurs Pass a couple of years ago when he saw our rig parked on the side of the road and stopped to say hello. Today he was out taking photos with his wife and at first wasn't sure it was us because we weren't towing the 5th-wheeler. His suspicions were quickly confirmed though when he saw me get out with my camera!

And that was high country Canterbury, it was time to return to Christchurch.