Peg (the amazingly charming truffle hound) had her last truffle-hunting gig of the year this morning – sniffing around a plantation of young trees infected with Tuber borchi, known in Italy as the bianchetto or marzuolo truffle.

She was good, too. I took two film canisters with some frozen black truffle inside for Carolyn to hide while I was putting my boots on, and despite the decoy holes Carolyn had dug, Peg stuck her nose in the air and hunted out the baits very quickly. If nothing else, it proves that she still knows what her job is. Hunting out truffle baits like this keeps her nose in, and gives me a chance to reward her – positive reinforcement even if there are no real truffles to find. And there weren’t.

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I collected the repaired mower last night. A shiny new engine which sounds smooth and lusty and perky. I’m not a “petrolhead” (as motor enthusiasts are called down here), but I did notice a distinct difference to the old machine that can be summed up as “more oomph”, and it’s quieter. So I started mowing the 10 days growth off the top of the lawn. Did that, then started doing the orchard. Rain decided to fall in sufficient quantities to make the grass greasy, and the slopes unmowable, so I stuck the amazingly charming Peg in the car and tootled off to the office.

A marginally productive day, but the quince flowers looked rather lovely.

Fresh off the wires, from the ABC in Australia: news of this year’s truffle harvest in Western Australia.

“Western Australian truffle growers are hoping to enter the commercial market next season after this year’s bumper crop. The state’s biggest trufferie in Manjimup has produced 100 French black truffles this season. That compares to last year’s production of just one. Scientist Nick Malajczuk says some of the truffles sold for $2,500 a kilo. “We sold all the produce to local restaurants in Western Australia – we just didn’t have enough to sell to the eastern states or overseas,” he said. He is expecting an even bigger crop next year and hopes to become a force in the global market. With about five smaller trufferies in the south-west, he is also looking to form a truffle co-operative to boost export.”

Good news for Australia’s truffle growers, of course, but why the hell can’t they call their truffle plantations truffières, not trufferies. The proper word might be a bit harder for the Aussie tongue to get round, but if they really hope to have an impact on the world market. they might find a smattering of real French of some assistance. Meanwhile, in Italy the white truffle season in the Marche is about to begin. Tuber magnatum might even be more affordable this year. I know where I want to be right now, and it isn’t mowing the lawn.

Monday dawns sunny and warm. By the time I’ve got the tractor full of diesel and hooked up to the cultivator (and the iPod firmly attached to my belt), I’m beginning to feel distinctly hot. There’s a bit of a nor’wester blowing, the sky is very blue, and the tractor is behaving itself, so I tie the amazingly charming truffle hound to her chain (to prevent her disappearing, tail up, in pursuit of me, but mostly rabbits – for hours) and chug off to the truffière. The tillage proceeds well. The tines (see first entry in this category) are supposed to loosen up the top 10 to 20 cm of soil, generally aerating things before the truffle mycelium begins its spring growth. This is supposed to encourage the formation of truffles. I live in hope.

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“Are you having a good day?” I refrained from telling the girl at the petrol station the full story. She would have murmured polite commiserations, then glazed over and gone quiet. So I lied. A little white lie.

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I have a Google News Alert set to email me whenever something truffle-like pops up on the net. Ninety percent of the time it’s stuffed with restaurant reviews where ambitious chefs are overusing wholly artificial truffle oils to be trendy, or chocolate is involved, but sometimes it comes with a gem like this one from the BBC. Not only does it feature an English village straight out of Miss Marple or Midsomer Murders – Little Bedwyn – but it reports the finding of 10kg of summer truffles (Tuber aestivum) on one farm.

Not much time for musings on this – too many bills to pay – but I rather hope my T uncinatum are as prolific…

Let us suppose you are fortunate enough to get your hands on a truffle. A lovely fresh Perigord black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) of decent size. It doesn’t need to be large if it’s a good one — and with this season’s NZ selling price steady at NZ$3,750/kg (roughly E2,000/kg or US$1,100/lb), it’s unlikely to be a very big one, at least for personal use. I emphasise the words “good” and “fresh”. It is possible to spend a lot of money on little jars of preserved truffle, but though they have a role in cuisine, their flavour is a pale shadow of the fresh truffle. Many of those jars also contain truffles other than the echt melanosporum, but you might need a magnifying glass to discover that from the label.

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I don’t like using “chemicals” on the farm. I’m sometimes asked if we farm organically (as our neighbours do, with their cute little Dorper lambs gambolling around at the moment), and I usually reply “nearly”. Organic except for Roundup. Roundup is brand name for glyphosate, a weedkiller that is supposed to be one of the least harmful to the environment. It doesn’t hang around in the soil for long, and is very effective. We used it to keep the soil around our trees free of weeds, so that the little plants could grow without competition from grass and stuff. It makes a big difference to their rate of growth. Now they’re big enough to look after themselves, our usage has gone down markedly. Last year, I hardly used any at all.

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It’s started again, as I said it would. The grass is growing, and we have rather a lot of it. It takes about three hours on our Stiga mower to do the garden lawns. When the olive grove, vineyard and truffière need doing, you can bank on spending a day puffing around on our little Japanese ex-rice paddy tractor with its “slasher” on the back. In spring, warming soil temperatures and plenty of soil moisture mean that you can watch the grass growing and not get bored.

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First entry in my first farm blog. I have a dim idea of what it will be about. There will be stuff about what’s happening on the farm: pruning, planting, digging, truffle hunting, pressing or picking — whatever I happen to find interesting at the time. I may also wish to wax lyrical (first cliché – someone keep count, please) about the music I’m listening to or the books I’m reading, and if I’m not very careful, I may offer comments on local and world events. And pictures too. You can get all the background to who I am on the main Limestone Hills website (when it’s finished), but for the time being consider me a middle-aged man with some minor (in my opinion) obsessions: fungi, music, books, writing.

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