The big water tank appears

26.3.2010
I am in hiding again. We have got to another scary bit. This time I can hear everything through the donga walls so I can’t pretend it isn’t happening. Ben is operating Craig’s huge digger and trying to extract the tank moulds from inside the tank with out breaking it or killing Josh and Edd who are helping. Judging from what I can hear the process is not going well! Worrying bangs and shouts are regular and so far there is no sign anything is rising out above the outside level!

31.3.2010
They did it! Actually, Craig, (the neighbour from heaven,) turned up at just the right time and drove his over sized Tonka toy himself with his usual mega skill. With Edd, Josh and Ben helping all the moulds were separated from the tank and loaded on the truck with minimal drama. Now we have a very new looking concrete water tank just needing fittings and a roof. This is a really big step forward for us all. It is a first for everyone so a big sigh of relief is expressed. It should hold about 13 thousand gallons of water which is will push up our water reserves and enable us to last longer in the next drought.
I have now completed the milk room painting and am laying out its fittings. A second hand commercial sink has been added to my demolition finds, which gives me a fantastic bench top area with two separate sinks. Now I just need someone to help me put it all up.

In the house I have done my post summer clean in preparation for the hour change next week and the return of the darker months. My second hand pine dresser is in place and loaded with pottery. It is big enough to help enormously with the storage space problem. It even looks good. I am beginning to feel very much at home in this donga. I am beginning to wonder if I will be sad if I do move eventually into a new home. Not much chance yet though. Building is nowhere near starting.

The goats are putting on weight now they are gazing in the old vineyard. It is mating season and Monty the brown buck, was put with his first doe today! Babies in 5 months time! I plan to mate six of the does this year and six the next. I have started milking again now that the splint is off my broken finger. The chooks are looking a lot happier but have not regrown missing feathers yet. They are going off lay, which is what I would expect. Usually the young pullets start laying at this time to compensate but this year we have had no opportunity to raise any.

Bo was brilliant on Monday. She and Josh went on a raid on Melbourne university libraries and managed to get a card and borrowed books for Josh to take out and use for his Audiology assignments. She dropped her 3 kids and I off at the museum where I had an easy time baby-sitting. All three kids including Sylvie who is one and a half were kept entertained. It was even free for seniors and kids! We were all home by lunchtime with the mission a total success. Now all we need is for Josh to get his work in on time.

21.3.2010
Josh managed the long drive back from Perth arriving on Tuesday evening. We did not see much of him as he soon dashed out again to see long missed friends and then got up at 6.30am next day to work at Beni’s loading grapes for the pickers. How great it must be to be young with all that energy! It seems past even our imagination now!

Not that we have been idle all week. David H came on Monday and Tuesday and he and Edd achieved miracles. They made the temporary fence up to the old vineyard so that the goats can get plenty of fresh grazing and they put up the little tool shed the Lions club gave us so we can use it as a chook shed. This worked out really well because when the school kids came on Wednesday we enlisted their help to catch all the chooks, treat them for lice and sort them into two groups with a rooster in each group. There were twenty-one kids, which was about a chook each. Quite a few chook holders found their charges a bit much and dropped them. This was OK because we had lots of zealous chook casers bent on retrieving lost birds.

I was catching the chooks in the shed and handing them out but I left the last two roosters until we had dealt with the rest of the birds. Much to my surprise three girls volunteered and extracted the last roosters squawking and protesting from the shed. It is odd how it is the girls that tackle the difficult or big animals. I think the boys work by sizing up the aggressiveness of their opponent and backing off if they are not sure about winning. The girls just think that it is a job that has to be done and if an old lady like me can do it they should not find it too hard.

All this chook activity was very much enjoyed by the kids and it is an enormous relief to me to now have two small chook families suitably housed in separate pens. We caught all the chooks that survived the fire and put up the remains of an old shed in the top orchard for them. They have stayed there for the year but with four roosters and cramped housing they were looking a bit embarrassing.

Thursday was the only day we had no big commitments so Edd and I went off to buy things we needed. There has been a most pleasing development at Chirnside where Pete has set up a demolition yard and clearing centre. We found metal trusses for the roof of the new chook palace we are planning, a stainless steel corner bench, and shelf for the new dairy plus various tools and electric bits. Demolition yards are essential for cheap building projects and recycling and this one is an absolute beauty.
With all this new stuff I have been encouraged to keep painting in the dairy and I now only have the last topcoat to do before I can move in the gear and set up my washing machine! Edd has started to loosen the mould on the water tank so we get closer to being set up every day. I hate painting rooms but it just has to be done and everyone else is better at other jobs.

It was autumn fest at the organic market this Saturday and we were asked to take some goats along for a display. We pick two with very laidback attitudes but they had never been tethered before or taken off the property so I was not at all sure I could rely on their good behaviour. I was unnecessarily concerned. Both goats behaved as if they did this sort of thing all the time and were happy to be stroked and petted by piles of human kids. It just feels so good to be doing things for other people again instead of receiving all the help. The school kids loved their day here and it is very reassuring to be back working with them.

14.3.2010
Big steps forward this week! Great drama too, as all manner of big gear arrived to pour the new concrete tank. It is cheaper and easier to buy polythene tanks that arrive all set up on a truck but the water quality does not compare with the stuff you drink from a concrete tank.

Various family members turned up for the bank holiday working B. The old concrete mixer that Edd repaired after the fires was put back to work and together we rendered the first layer onto the dairy building. In effect we are making a building of ferro cement. It was a lot easier than we thought it might be and with so many workers it progressed rapidly. It looks much better with the blue paper covered up.

We all stopped work at midday and set up a long table for a shared meal in the milking area of the dairy. This room doubles as a classroom and dining room when we need extra space. We cooked meat on the BBQ and ate fruit and salads with various breads. Bo had made an orange cake for desert and I had sliced up watermelon so no one went hungry.

Al’s kids had arrived on a bus the day before and spent an interesting night in Josh’s donga. It rained and they woke up to find their beds stood in an inch of water. Whilst we worked next day all the kids got together and made a mud slide into the big dam. Experiments with this took up most of the day and when it started to rain in the afternoon they washed the mud off under the gutter spouts. It seems such a good thing to see all the cousins playing together and getting pleasantly dirty.

Tuesday we were back to building again. This time the big metal that makes the doorframes for the hay shed had to be set in place. On Wednesday we had the first of the class groups from the High school. I was surprised at how polite and well behaved all the kids were. They even helped us move the cows back to the gravel pit paddock. (We hope the fence is fixed enough to keep them in there this time.)

Ben came back on Thursday with a mate. They spent the night in Josh’s donga (I had mopped up all the water). They wanted an early start on the tank in the morning. The concrete and concrete pump had been ordered for midday so everything had to be ready by then. Luckily the weather did exactly what was predicted and we had a dry, cool, day to do the pouring. We will have to wait for the concrete to cure before we see the results.

Friday was also the last day for the builders on this latest stint of work. Johno has a sore back and Edd and I are getting worried because other jobs have had to be put off. I think we all need a change. Now Edd and I have a few days of relative peace before the school kids are back on Wednesday and Josh arrives home from Perth. Josh has completed his first weeks of training and been tested in a placement to make sure he has taken it in. Now he has to do several weeks work experience and write up assignments. I am looking forward top having him home. I might be able to persuade him to help me build wicking worm beds in the big polyhouse for winter crops.

6.3.2010
The sheds are nearly usable. The builders have one more week in which we hope will complete the two smaller sheds. The walls on the big animal shed will have to wait until we have a clearer idea of how far our insurance money will stretch. Quotes coming in at present for aspects of the house are really alarming.

Our animals are well. The sheep keep escaping from their paddock and joining us in the building section of the farm. They have plenty of feed where they are but they were all reared on recycled barley from Simon’s brewery and they miss it. The goats are fat, as they should be coming up to the mating season. Only two goats were mated last year because the fires left us without means to give them adequate care but we will have to mate about half this year.

Ben has set up gigantic metal moulds and plans to pour a new concrete water tank between the top two sheds next week. It will catch all the rain from the big roof and is well above our new house site so should supply us water by gravity. None of us has ever made a tank before so the whole process will be interesting! We have laid pipe underground so that all the tanks are joined and water can be exchanged between them. The idea is to also lay purple pipe so that we can transport recycled or dam water the same way but separate. We have relied on hosepipes trailed along the ground so far.

Mentally we are pretty strung out. There is so much thinking and effort needed every day and so many big decisions to be made that we are feeling over whelmed. It is hard to get in a space where we can just relax and laugh about things. We both feel that our past way of living has ended and as yet we have not replaced it with anything that has meaning. This is probably not really true but our plans are so embryonic that we hardly dare acknowledge them even to ourselves.

The issue is that in order to retain a sustainable life style we have to keep animals and they need constant attention. This makes it difficult to do hobbies and trips away from our property. When we ran the host farm we had contact with wonderful people who came to stay every weekend and sometimes wwoofers as well. Now we hardly see anyone and when people do come it is a bit like someone looking at you whilst you are naked. The bare essentials of our life is all that is left to see and there is no opportunity to dress things up and present the sort of image that we feel happy with as a first impression.

One thing I do feel good about is the kids. They have all been a fantastic support and live lives that make us proud to be related to them. Al has even organised a working B on Monday to get us going on rendering the shed walls. Steve and Johno have covered the wood and metal shed frames with foil paper and stretched chicken wire to take the render. At present the sheds are a vivid shade of blue which is a bit confronting. The builders say that sometimes the foil can be shocking pink that stands out much more. Well. We have not had to suffer that horror but I will still be happier when our sheds tone into the background a bit more.