stormy weather

November26

Amazing weather. Hot, overcast and lots of thunderstorms.  One poor young woman was killed by lightening near here this week!  On Friday we had the last student workshop for the year.  Luckily the rain held off and everything went OK.  We even got the last of the wood piles moved before everyone cooked pizzas for lunch.  This month has been pretty full on and we are now trying to remember what we were doing before all the school camps started.

November 22 2017

A week ago we had a school camp and it rained half the time.  It rained so much that one day we all retreated into the house, made bread and marmalade, saved seeds and did craft work.   As soon as the camp left the weather cleared up and this week we have been above 30 C most days.  Tonight the valley is full of smoke fumes from fires in Gembrook, but the CFA has planes, dozers and every imaginable vehicle dealing with them and they are not worried at this stage.  Even so, it is an early and ominous start to the bush fire season.

Despite the weather the students got a lot done. A mountain of firewood was collected and processed. Star pickets were put around the stone pines and replacement trees put in where the deer had killed the old ones.  Several were fenced with high wire and are hopefully now protected from further attack.  We would have fenced the lot if the weather had not been so bad.  The first two days of camp were too hot and it was lucky that Edd was able to work a miracle on the pool and get the water blue and inviting. Another group of students worked on the new orchard and took out the weeds along the fence lines.  I started to clean out under the trees and altogether it looks a lot more cared for now.

One of last year’s kids, Anna, had managed to break a leg and has been isolated in a pen to heal. She had only had the splint on for four weeks before she managed to get it off but I have not replaced it because she seemed to be managing.  We are up to week five now and she is using the leg but it is still slightly week.  I normally allow six weeks but I may have to keep her penned for longer this time. The goats are all going right up the hill to graze and coming back through the gravel pit paddock. This is a long days walking and probably Anna needs to be fitter to cope.

Blue tongues are back

 The vegetables are really firing , and our friendly blue tongues are back around the ruins.

November 11 2017

We have had a warm sunny week with cool nights and the vegetables have thrived. The snow peas are delicious, and lettuce of all sorts abound. We have broccoli kale, rocket, spinach, and the first squash are starting to form.  Better still; berries are back on our breakfast menu, strawberries and mulberries at present, and maybe a few raspberries later. We dug out all the old raspberry canes because they got an infection and we have planted new ones in a different location, so sadly we will not get many this season.  The old bed is now growing garlic and broad beans that show no signs of ill health.

The goats are moulting but summer shiny coats are starting to emerge.  With the better weather they are now going right up bone hill to graze. I am enjoying the feta cheese as it goes really well with spelt pasta and wild rocket.  My basil is off to a slow start and being chewed by everything.  I will start a second crop in a pot by the house to make sure we do get a crop. The taste of basil is one of my summer favourites.

The grass is growing too and the signs point to an early hay season.  We had such a good lot last year and still have bales left but we will need new hay when it is cut. Hay making is always stressful and you end up with a shed full of hay just when we are at the peak of fire danger, rather a snag.   This year we have no cattle so our needs will be less, which is one thing in our favour.

I have started to clean up the donga. When I am done we will have a spare room for guests and a classroom for wet weather activities.  We are going to hire a cleaner to recover the carpets but I have also ordered a rug in riotous colours to jazz the place up a bit.   I can use the donga as an art studio too. There is room there to set up a Navajo loom for rug making and that sort of thing.

The next area we need to deal with is the tractor shed. It has been invaded by swallows and other birds that are making the most terrible mess.  Steve and Edd fixed the tool shed by putting in a ceiling but the rest of the shed is now worse.  I don’t think we will ever run out of work here!  I must finish the dairy floor before starting anything else but we have another camp here next week so it won’t be done then. At least the forecast is better for this camp and Edd has done miracles with the pool that he has converted from a dark mess of algae to blue and clear.

Edd is also collecting the things he needs to grow fungal food crops. He is also helping me assemble all the parts I got to try and make an olive oil extractor so we have plenty of new ventures to work on. 

school camp on a wet week

November 7 2017

Today we have a bank holiday for Melbourne cup.   We have not been invited to share this occasion with anyone, but we are rather glad of the time to be quiet.   Last week we had a school camp and keeping up with a farm full of teenagers is exhausting even though the students were absolutely wonderful. 

It was very cold and rained all week but all the set tasks were completed willingly and the students even managed to stay cheerful and enjoy themselves.   Sometimes we had to do wet weather activities instead of the morning work, but this meant that I got all the lemons harvested and the juice frozen.  Another group used the wood splitter in the shed to tackle all the logs that were too large to burn and I found some wool workers who learnt how to use the weaving looms.

For main tasks we had the old water tank painted, the cellar cleaned out and the blackberries cut down around the old woodshed and cactus garden.  One lad found an old pigeon medal that will be a good keep sake for Josh from the time we kept pigeons. The goats were thrilled because they love eating blackberry leaves but could not reach them.   The goats actually worked side by side with the students which looked amusing.

The weather was sad because it had been so nice the week before.  Edd had worked hard to get the pool clean and blue too. We had spent the week getting ready for the camp and tiling the dairy floor.  Most of the floor is made of large white tiles but we had buckets of tiles made in the sheltered workshop in Lilydale that had some how survived the fires and we have used them as well.

This week I have started to prepare for the next group of students who arrive for a week’s camp on Monday.  The forecast is for hot weather so we will get a whole new set of problems.  Edd had better get working on that pool again!  I am doing a whole new set of paper work and trying to make sure we have the right equipment and materials at hand.  

Spring rush

 Down by the ruins the scent is devine with Jasmine , wisteria and pawlonia all in flower.
The goatlings look very alike this year.

October 20. 2017

This is a very busy time of year.  Plant life is having a growth spurt and the return of hot sunny days and purple flowers are a balm for the soul.  People are on the move too. Last week we had good friends from NSW staying and had two years of news to catch up with. The goatlings are trained now and come in to the milking shed mixing with the older goats.  Learning to tell them apart was harder this year as they all looked alike. The chooks are laying well and the kids are settled into a routine.   We are hoping that the cow, Josie, will move to her new owners next week end along with Phantom, the goat with horns, who has terrorised her young herd mates.

We have had a new plastic tank for dam water delivered and are now in the process of tiling the dairy floor.  I have already tiled the walls behind the benches and completed the painting.  Edd is working hard on the floor. I tell him it is his penance for causing all the mess in the first place.

October 7. 2017

Stevo and Edd set up the new small water tank to provide water for the sink in the ruins.  We have an underground pipe from the tank over flow to the old concrete tank by the mulberry trees but it is not connected yet, still, we are half way there.  This week Edd and Stevo worked on the donga.  They built a new base for the wood stove and put corrugated iron under the eves to stop the swallows nesting above the windows and making them all shitty.  Luckily we had corrugated iron left over from building the shed in a suitable light colour that gives a good clean look.

Whilst the men worked on the donga I finished the painting work on the dairy walls and ceiling.  It was not work I enjoy but it was work I could do.  The next job in there is to lay the tiles on the floor and above the sinks and then we can move the furniture and fridges back in.

 I have also been working in the vegetable garden.  Everything has started to grow fast so there were weeds to dig up and new seedlings to plant. We are enjoying the last of the turnips and beetroot and starting to work our way through a glut of cauliflowers. Lettuce, rocket and spring onions are doing well and so far the cabbages look fine.  The snow peas have started to crop and today I put in climbing beans.  I am keeping a wary eye on the cockatoos who pulled up lots of my parsley and are waiting to do more damage. 

The goat kids are almost ready to go down to twice a day feeds.  Even the small black one is sucking well now. I have plenty of milk spare and have made the first two hard cheeses but I need to get the dairy back in action so more production can go ahead.  I have still not decided which vacuum sealer to buy. Josh found a good one but it comes from America and would be difficult to take back if it went wrong.

Today the goats and the cow went through fences and got where they were not meant to be. We have put such an effort in repairing and replacing fences that this is very frustrating. The cow made big foot marks on the good bit of grass that I have just mowed.

sustainable house open day

Sept 18 2017

Yesterday was mega.  Al had organised us to have an open day as part of sustainable house day. I had spent the last week making sure the house was as presentable as possible and Edd fixed up the sign he has been working on for the front gate.  He also fixed up the last unit in the mudroom and the kitchen bench back plate.  These small jobs have been hanging around for ages with out coming to the top of the priority list so it was a real bonus to get them done.

The weather has been awful. Freezing, cold nights and sheeting rain in the day. Yesterday something completely amazing happened. The sun came out, the skies were clear blue, the wind dropped and even the mud on the roads dried out. All this made the fact that there were 170 visitors that turned up for a look possible.  Al arrived early in the morning and helped putting the signs up before he found some paint and painted the plastic down pipes.  (Another job that never made priority status).  He felt that the outside look was compromised and it obviously offended him.

Before 10am, when things were due to start, cars began arriving and just kept coming all day.  Indi greeted the guests and got them signed in and then I collected them into tour groups and Al and Barry (an architect who works with Al took groups round the house.  The guests who came were really focussed on getting information and asked lots of questions. By the end of the day Al had no voice left!  Edd took the outside tour over the roof and through the farm buildings showing everyone how the water power and light systems worked from outside. 

Indi, Barry and I also did the outside tours as Edd faded.  This went on all day and we were forced to take turns eating lunch, on display like zoo animals. On the positive side when the cars stopped arriving and at 4.30 everyone had left the house still looked squeaky-clean and lots of people had taken Al’s business cards. The weather had been perfect for showing the house at it’s best. There had been a frost over night but we had not lit the fires because I had cleaned them and wanted them pristine in the morning.  The house was 22 C when we woke and with the sun pouring in it warmed a further and staid warm even with the doors open for most of the day.  This was a very convincing demonstration of thermal mass in action. Edd and I still had the goats to milk and other animal work before we could relax, so we feel pretty exhausted today.

Three goats have kidded so we have bottle-feeding four times a day and extra milking. The machine was not working and it is only in the last two hours that Edd has got it running again.  I was threatening to go off and buy a new machine I was so worn out. We just managed to get last years goatlings trained to come into the milk room and jump up on the bale before kidding started.

This group of goatlings had attitude.  They trained to jump up all right but then they refused to leave the milk room. They could see no reason to go out into the rain and mud when they were quite happy with food in a nice clean dry room. Usually young goats shoot out and are easily hurried along by banging the brush against the bale or squirting water at them but this time Edd had to get really fierce before they learnt that rules were rules.

spring. sort of!

Sept 5 2017

It is freezing. A cold wind makes life a lot harder than it needs to be and we are suffering occasional hail fall.  In sunny intervals the lambs use the rocks by our front door as a playground whilst their mothers deal with the grass on our roof.

The trees are ignoring the weather and continuing on with spring.  There is blossom everywhere and even the buds on the oak tree are bursting.  The goats are nearly ready to kid. Phantom, the white goat with horns is causing all sorts of trouble in the goat shed. She uses her horns to bully all the other goats and keep them away fro the hayracks.  We plan to deal with this tomorrow by moving her to the yards on her own and advertising her for sale.  

We have just joined the sustainable house group, which means hosting visitors in just over a week.  Looking around there is rather a lot to sort out if things are to look there best.  I have been enjoying a quiet spell and concentrating on weaving and other wool work, and am reluctant to change mode.  Once the goats kid all hopes of relaxation will be over so I will have to get used to the idea.

mid winter

August 5 2017

We had some good rain last night and Edd is busy today pumping water between tanks so that we can store as much as possible.  With the roof on the new tank we now should have enough storage to get us through the summer months despite the fact that it has been such a dry winter.  The power bill for the last quarter has come in and even with the large freezer we have still made a profit from our solar panels.  I am pleased about this because with Indi and Ben here we are supplying two households with power.

The goats are starting to look pregnant.  Nola and Petra are very wide and Olga has started to bag up.  I was worried about her because she failed to get pregnant last year. Very occasionally we get an infertile goat so you never know.  I am only milking a few goats but we have enough to make cream cheese at least twice a week.  I could have fed a calf but with Edd being away for a month we decided to give that a miss this year.  The last calf we reared, Josie, is over a year old now and ready to sell.

It is very cold at night but the wattle is in full bloom, the daffodils are forming yellow banks and the native wisteria and rosemary are toning things down with shades of purple.  The vegetables have been very slow but this week the parsley has shot up and the frilly gold lettuce seedlings have germinated. We have rocket, celery, and silver beet, mixed lettuce, Kale and mizuna ready for eating so we can wait a bit for the rest.

Luckily the sun is shining today, because Bo is busy setting up in Yarra Glen for the festival of light that she organises each year.  I have instructions to bring in the market gazebos and two fold up tables.  Last night Bo rang up wanting me to do a site map of Yarra Glen showing where the lantern parade starts and finishes plus where to find entertainment, toilets and parking.   My efforts were not exactly a masterpiece but Bo has already put them up in shop windows around the town!

A difficult day

Sari weaves her leg through the fence panel, it got worse than this!

June 9 2017

Some days sort of gather problems, and yesterday was one of those days.  It started all right, and I got all the animal work done in record time. Just as I was about to return to the house Sari, the youngest brown goat attempted to jump over the pen wall and failed.  Her rear foot caught on the fence and by trying to kick herself free she got her leg woven through the rails and ended up with only her front feet able to touch the ground.

I was quickly with her but there was no easy answer as her leg and foot were sort of woven through the metal and her own weight locked her firmly in place. I tied in vain to free her leg but it was impossible.  I then fetched a stool and lifted her up onto the stool but she was not high enough to make things any better.  I tried lifting her further with a sling but the more I tried the more I could see that to free the leg she needed to be over a metre in the air.  It also dawned on me that even if I had an extra person to help we would still have a problem.

A different approach was needed. The section of fence was to locked in with other fence sheets to be taken down easily so I searched the shed until I found Edd’s angle grinder.  I have never used one before but once I worked it out I was able to cut out the section of fence around her leg and once on the ground she freed herself.  Amazingly she walked off relatively un-scathed; in fact I think the whole adventure had left me sorer than she was!

Back at the house I discovered a young chicken had also been injured and was being attacked by the other chicks.  I sorted this out by relocating the fit chicks into the pen in Edd’s shed and keeping the injured bird with me in the house.  I cannot tell if she will survive but at least she has a chance now. From there the day improved and I had a nice lunch with Bo but on my return I discovered a buck kid had got out by opening the bars on the bale in the yards.  I caught the escapee and then fixed the bale with extra planks.  That seems to be working, at least in the short term.

Today things are going a bit more smoothly. I have planted out the elephant garlic and cleaned the house, both fairly safe procedures.  Sari does not seem to have done herself any lasting harm and the chick is still alive but not very mobile. We now have three lambs with twins born to the second dorper ewe. The lambs all play around Zulu the alpaca who they see as a family member. He looks quite happy about this too. I wish I could move their feed trough closer to the drive but it is very heavy and took a super human effort just to relocate from the dam paddock to the closest fence in the house site.

Winter arrives

June 3 2017

The sun is finally shining again after a very wet cold week.  I am still feeling very grateful that the camp was over before the weather changed.  It has not been the sort of week that anyone would choose for outdoor jobs.  I have been doing my two hours each morning, milking and feeding, and my one hour at night and been happy to stay under cover the rest of the time.

Most of the week has been take been taken up by chooks. I took Edd to the airport to set off on his Europe trip on Monday and on Tuesday I collected 12 point of lay birds, clipped their wings and put them in the olive orchard shed with Ruphus, the red rooster who rules that area.  After a couple of days acclimatising I let them out into the run and luckily Ruphus got most of them in again at dusk.  I had to catch a couple who could not work it out, but that is not bad for day one of freedom.  It is lovely to see them today scratching around under the trees and tasting green grass.

The older chooks are now settled in their retirement home and have started the job of cleaning out the weeds from under the lemon and fig trees. They also look very content.  The school kids did a great job putting up their shed and the door Edd fitted works well. Luckily these chooks did know to put themselves to bed without help.

The chicks in the house were more of a problem. (I am not at all happy that Edd hatched them just when he was due to go away for a month). They need to be kept warm, but late at night their bulb stopped working. We did not have a replacement so I had to get up in the middle of the night and refill a hot water bottle for them.  I brought a new bulb next day but once again, after the shops had shut it broke so I had a second night of chook duties. The following day I drove down to Bunnings and brought four bulbs and even the first of these is now working fine.  Last night was a lot more relaxing and at least they all survived.

So, I was just thinking life was about to get easier when a lamb turned up with the rest of the sheep for their evening feed. This means our lambing season has begun a month early, bother.  Yesterday I moved the horses back onto the hill and moved the sheep into the new paddock below the dam.  In this area they are in view most of the time so it is possible to check them several times a day with out a lot of extra walking.

The other drama this week has been with Rosa, Indi’s dog. She found a large packet of rat poison in Indi’s donga and scoffed the lot. This of course meant another trip to the vet and lots of bright green poo everywhere. I think that dog must have more lives to risk than a cat but so far she has lived through every drama.

school camp

 The vegetable garden has been replanted and tamed after the pumpkins were harvested

New pens have been put up for the goats in the big shed

A retirement shed has been put up for the older chooks

The school camp week went well helped by really good weather and willing workers. The week went so fast it was over in a flash for Edd and I.  The dairy milk room has now been painted and at last the smell of burnt milk has gone. The students also took down the temporary fence that kept the goats and horses from reaching the hill.  This is almost the last of the temporary fencing that we put up after the fire to go.  At last we feel that we are getting on top of the rebuilding process.  It has been a long eight years.

preparing for winter

May 14 2017

We picked up the chook shed yesterday.  It came in 5 pieces and we need to build a floor of concrete to put it on so that it is easy to clean and foxes can’t dig in.  I hope to get this done when the camp is here a week tomorrow.   The trailer is ready to collect.     It comes with a stock crate so that now if an animal is sick we can take it to the vet easily.  The last time we did this was when Josie was a young calf and we put her in the back of my little car.  This was not ideal for the calf or the car.

The weather has been warm and sunny this week and we were all outside as much as possible.  It is a much duller, damper day today and I have lit the stove so that we get hot water for washing.  It will also help dry the olives before they are packed in glass jars under oil.  Last week they were in big jars with salt to leach out the bitterness. I now have at least a years supply so perhaps it is time to try and produce olive oil.  Ben and Indi are already getting oil from an olive grove they are managing, but they have a set up already to use which helps.

Edd is pretty much ready for his trip over seas at the end of the month.   He has a complicated timetable visiting lots of friends and family members all over the UK and Europe. I am staying to manage the farm this time and I have been trying to reduce the work that needs doing every day.  Edd has not helped by rescuing some eggs he found outside the chook shed and hatching out four chickens.  They are now in a box in the kitchen.  Just what I needed!

The sheep are starting to look very pregnant, which is also a worry.  They are doing a great job mowing all the grass on the house roof and in the house site. The vegetable garden is much more of a mess but I am leaving that so the school kids can harvest the last of the crops they planted. I have also started to make feta again now that the kids are weaned. Feta and roasted pumpkin go very well together. A friend told me this week that she gets into her pumpkins with a hammer and chisel.  I have not tried that yet.

pumpkins and kangaroos

May 5 2017

We have woken to a frosty landscape twice this week. It seems early for this but perhaps the summer just went on longer this year.  We located the new owners for Feta and Wilma and they have now been relocated.  I am confident that they will be happy and well cared in their new home, which makes parting with them easier.  Now there are eighteen adult female goats and seven doe kids so the shed looks unusually empty.  Strangely this has encouraged rather than stopped bullying behaviour and I have to give six goats their hay first before the others come in to make sure they get their share.

We are letting the sheep out to graze on the house roof during day light hours. The grass is lush and green up there and the sheep love it.  So far they have not made any dangerous forays onto the parapet.  The goat would be up there in no time at all if we let them into this area so Edd is working hard to repair the hill fences so they can graze there this winter.  The fence he is working on crossed the main winter water flow and then rises almost vertically up the hill.  This makes fencing slow and difficult, so the job is taking time.

 We have ordered the new chook shed and a trailer but it takes time for them to be ready for pick up.  This means that we have to wait before we can get any further with some jobs.  The school camp is due in about two weeks so I am preparing for their arrival.  It does not seem a very easy time for camping but we might be lucky. The long term forecast is for dry weather.

There are kangaroos most of the day in our neighbour's paddock. A mob of thirty or so kangaroos bouncing over a hill is quite a spectacular sight if you are not used to it.  The kangaroos always come out of the forest even in the daytime during the winter and they are increasing in numbers.  Where our lane makes an L shape around the property below us there are always several by, or on the road.  We call it kangaroo corner and take great care driving round it.  Some of the roos are enormous and are not the sort of thing you want to bump into with a car.

The deciduous trees are now displaying their autumn colours.  Even the sugar maples down the drive have some red leaves this year and the gingko tees are golden.  The olives are ripening and I have several clay crocks in the kitchen containing olives and salt to remove the bitterness. 

The tomatoes were killed by the frost but the pumpkins are still going. These are pretty vigorous, determined, pumpkins but luckily the taste ok.   We grow the sort of pumpkin that stores well but they are also very tough to cut up for cooking.   Some times I do not even try and put them whole in the wood stove oven but you cannot collect the seeds for next year with this method.   A friend once told me you could get into pumpkins by dropping them onto a brick floor and I even tried this today but the pumpkin was totally unscathed by my efforts.

autumn harvest

April 29 2017

The grass is growing vigorously with the abundance of rainfall.  It has been fairly controlled here but Al tells me that down on the Geelong way there have been floods and high winds doing all sorts of damage. The garage in his new house is not waterproof and the gutters are not adequate.  He tells me the plan is to convert his new property into an example of Permaculture, showing what can be done on a suburban block with retrofitting.

On our farm autumn has definitely arrived.  I light the wood stove every day to keep the water hot now that there is not enough sun for the solar system and I am finding excuses like “accounts” to stay indoors once the morning milking is over.  The quinces and figs have gone to Bo and today I started to harvest the olives.  The pomegranates are ripe, and this year we have more chestnuts. Last year’s crop was not hard to beat because there were only 3 nuts!

It has been over three weeks since the first goats were mated and they have not come back into season so by all logic they should be pregnant. Feta and Wilma are now ready to move to their new home but I was pretty stupid and forgot to get the number to phone their new owners.  We are now trying to find them through friends.

Last years kids are all due to be off milk. They are looking well at the moment and are mostly the mixed colouring that I like.  The chooks are also coming off lay and we are due to buy extra point of lay birds to provide winter eggs. The problem is that we need another chook shed to retire the older birds. We now have a big pen ready for them under the trees on the old drive but we will need to buy a new shed and put it up.

Al stayed with us last night and this morning we discussed the plans for Toby’s garden.  Al has already located some interesting plants and I brought some saltbushes and another type of native shrub at Garden world.  We went down there this week on a lightening tour of things we need to get.  We looked at trailers, brought tiles for the dairy and ordered bits for the tractor lights.

We also called into the spa place and decided on the colour and other details. We had a spa for the business before the fires.  Water is scarce most of the time and it makes sense to soak in a hot tub and treat the water rather than waste loads soaking in a bath.  I would like the school kids to have the use of a spa because they work so hard and must need ease for aching muscles as much as the rest of us.

My idea is that you walk into Toby’s garden through a seating area with a fire pit before you get to the spa house.  Al is going to design me a spa house that fits in with the rest of the house and completes the far corner.

rats both friends and foes

April 24 2017

The days are really short now. It is really dark by 6pm. We are getting some rain but also sunny quite hot days.  The pumpkins are only just starting to get mildew and are still enlarging young fruit so I have left them in place.  The same thing goes for the tomatoes; this year’s crop is going on forever.  The first round of wintergreens is in the ground but we need more space before we plant any more.

We are slowly getting the goats mated as they come into season and we have sold two of the young buck kids.  We have put the seven girls in a pen together and will wean them any day now. I am working on the milking herd to dry off as many off as possible. It is working and we will soon be able to switch to hand milking.  All this is part of the usual autumn program.

Now that Stevo has done the shed wall Edd no longer has to be chippies mate and he has been able to get back to fencing. The professional fencers have done a great job, but we still have some left to do. The next objective is to complete the hill boundaries and then the goats and horses can use the high ground during the wet season. There is not a lot to do but it is complicated work and takes time

I have just returned from Queensland where I went to spend a few days with our youngest son.  It was his birthday and his partner was away visiting her family so I thought it would be nice to keep him company. He has to stay at home because he has a geriatric rat that needs medicating twice a day.   There is not room in their town house for much in the way of a garden or pets but Josh has an amazing under water garden in his fish tank and Bobby has a luxury apartment for her very well cared for rats.

Indi has also had dealings with rats.  She is busy trying to sort out her stuff in the donga and has discovered that she shares her home with rats that have used anything available to build nests.  Last week we moved the units that she and her friends have been building so she is getting closer to having her own place for her stuff.  This involved a crane truck and was fairly scary, but with a combined effort we moved everything without any drama. 

lovely new fences

April 12 2017

Our beautiful warm sunny autumn has been interrupted by storms last weekend. On Sunday it absolutely poured and ground water accumulated behind the goat sheds making gumboots essential.  It is only today that the whole area becomes navigatable again.  This is important because now all the goats are coming into season and we need to cross this area to get them to the buck.

I feel sorry for the goats.  Unlike us they cannot just put on winter clothes when the weather changes this suddenly.  I have put down lots of fresh straw for them to bed down in and made sure they have stomachs full of roughage to create internal warmth but there is not much else I can do.  They are not complaining and the sun is out again today which helps.

With better weather the fencers have returned and are now working on the new fence below the big dam.  We hope they will also have time to put in the posts for the fence at the bottom of the gravel pit paddock. Whilst we are fenceless we have had the horses shut in one of the small crofts, which they have churned up into mud.  We are desperate to get them onto the hill where they will have more space and shelter.

Stevo was due this week to put up the end wall of the goat shed but he has flu. At least this means we can concentrate on the fences first. Yesterday it was too wet for any workers, even us, so we drove down to Warragul to pick up a new motor for the milking machine. Our old one is on it’s last legs and we are afraid it will collapse and leave us hand milking all over Easter.

Sunny autumn days

April 5 2017

Rosie the large black goat went off to her new home today.  She left in a trailer covered with a tarp this time, which I felt happy about.  Wilma and Feta are going to the same home once they are mated so she will be joined by her friends soon.   We are selling several of the older goats this year because we have too much milk now that the kids are almost weaned.  Usually we buy a calf but this year they are very pricy so we are just trying to slow milk production down instead.

We are still having warm dry sunny days but the valley has been a bit smoky from controlled burns in the forest.   So far they have stayed well under control too, which is good.  In the garden the tomatoes are dying back but the pumpkins are showing no sign of mildew yet. We are still harvesting a few zucchini and amazingly we still have Tuscan black Kale to eat from three of last year’s winter plants. We have lots of beans stored in the freezer and with them a huge amount of tomatoes so we have plenty to eat.

Indi’s bees have not done well at all and she tells me that other beekeepers are having the same problems.  It has just been a really bad year for honey with plants in flower and the weather not working together well.  It is also a strange year for goats.  I have not noticed any of them coming into season yet, and it is well after the usual date when they start to cycle. 

We are now on winter timing and with the hour change it is dark at 7pm instead of 8.  We now do the evening chores at 4pm and have a much shorter working day. Today we have Chris and Edd moving the dangerous trees opposite the ruins before we replace the fence down the gully.  The fencers start at 6am tomorrow, so they are pretty serious about doing the job.   Steve might come soon to do the shed end.  We have been waiting weeks for the people we needed to do this work and now they have all come at once,…typical.

Cleaning the goat shed

March 28 2017

I was hoping for a bit of relaxation at the weekend but I was out of luck.  John turned up with a truck and a digger and we spent all Sunday scooping the deep litter out of the goat shed and trucking it down to the hay paddock.   We now have a mountainous pile of compost that will have to last over the next few years until the shed is full again.   We had to take down the pen fencing to do this, and then we had to put it all back again before the goats came in at night.  It meant a long day of work but we managed.

On Saturday we cleaned up and did the washing, which sounds OK but we also had people here to buy goats.   Mellissa, Qantas and Hatti have now gone to their new home.  The couple that brought them were very nice but I was worried about how well the goats would travel as they were in an open trailer.  I hate selling goats but we need to make room in the herd for the new ones we have bred.  It is much nicer when several goats go together because at least they have friends to share the experience.

The remaining goats look very happy and smaller now that the shed is back to ground level with only one layer of golden straw.  Edd fixed the fence round the closest paddock so that they could go further to graze, and that pleased them too.  We had to leave the fence down until we picked up all the posts from the old vineyard but the students did that last week which was great.

The next thing to do is to repair the fences so that we can let the horses loose into a larger area.  Edd has started working on this today but I am back at the house trying to restore some order.  We have UK friends coming to stay at the weekend and I want them to feel comfortable. 

The hour changes next week so our long summer workdays are coming to an end.  It has rained well enough to get us some water in our newly roofed tank and the grass is going green again. Luckily there are still very warm days so the grass is also growing and we look to be getting a good autumn break.  

Rain at last and school camp

March 25 2017

This week we have had a school camp here with 22 teenagers working on the farm and practicing their farm and camping skills.  The students take over all the routine jobs for the week and then tackle set projects, know as major tasks.  This time we cleaned up the paddock between our eastern neighbours and us by removing the burnt fence that bisected this area and collecting up all the old vineyard posts that Ben and his gang had pulled out with the digger.

The second group of students worked on the old drive where they removed dead and dying trees and dug out blackberries.  They also took down the temporary fence by the gulley because this is to be replaced by our local fencer.  The plan for the old drive is to use it as another chook run.   It already has netting on two sides and established trees for shade and shelter.  Both major tasks were completed so we are now ready to go on to the next stage.

If this sounds like really hard work, then that is pretty accurate, but these kids are very good workers and enjoyed the tractor rides that were part of the proceedings.  Edd had also worked really hard fixing the filter on the pool and getting it all working so that everyone could cool off if they got too hot. The students cooked their own food in the ruins were they have an open-air kitchen. I noticed that they cooked really healthy food with loads of fresh vegetables.

We had one problem when half an hour before lunch it was discovered that the chicken was still in a big frozen ball when it should have been all ready for a meal of butter chicken. With a bit of encouragement it was decided that a vegetable curry and rice was the only alternative and everyone ended up well fed at the right time.  This year people are starting to use the herbs and vegetables from the garden, but we made no impression on the glut of tomatoes.

We started the week hard with a thunderstorm, heavy rain, and suffocating humidity.   Amazingly everyone coped really well and it mostly rained when the main farm work was over.  The subject for afternoon study was maths, which does not sound too exciting. We set tasks of measuring how much water was stored in the tanks and the pool, trying to work out how big a net was needed to cover the new fruit orchard and working out the economics of goat keeping.

I was most surprised how enthusiastically these problems were tackled. One group measured the pool from the outside and one from the inside. It has two rounded ends and various methods of calculation were tried. The average of the results was pretty accurate and we could even work out how much it would cost to fill if we brought tanker loads of water.

Gradually, over the week the weather got dryer and cooler and on the final night we were able to have the usual bonfire to get rid of the old tree branches and other waste that had been collected up into a burning pile. The pizza oven was also fired up and heated to very high temperatures so that this year lots of really wonderful pizzas were made very quickly.  From our point of view the camp was a good one, no one was injured, work got done and mostly everyone looked happy. I hope the people from the school felt the same way.