A summer party in the ruins

January 25.1.17

The land care visit went really well. We had over 30 people turn up and they all had a tour of the house and ‘helped’ with the goat milking before having a BBQ that Angie had organised. Everyone brought a plate and some drink and sat around tables in the ruins.   It was a great community event and everyone had a good time.  The vegetable gardens looked magnificent with pumpkins and tomatoes leaping out of the beds like boiling milk from a pan.

Edd and I had spent several days cleaning and manicuring the place so we were totally exhausted by the time darkness fell and everyone went home.  The ladies had kindly put all the crockery in the dairy dishwasher so cleaning up was minimal.

The snow pea crop has been huge but it is now coming to an end.  We can still eat them everyday and luckily we never tire of them.  Everyone has had enough zucchinis by now but they just keep coming.  The beans are cropping well too. I have been blanching and freezing them for winter use.  The tomatoes have just started to turn red. Not enough to preserve yet, but we are getting some to eat. I have harvested the garlic and frozen the chopped cloves into ice cubes.  It is very convenient for use in this form. Sadly the basil has not done so well but I now have more to plant.

Edd has been at work in the shed. Yesterday a neighbour helped him clean out the back of the shed so that the baby goats can move to outdoor pens. Once that is done we can get the deep litter in the main shed moved down to the hay paddock where it can slowly mature into compost. Now that is done Edd is back trying to sort out the water systems. The tank by the shed needs cleaning out and a roof fitted so that it can be used for drinking water.

January 20 2017

There was a thunderstorm last night and today it is raining.  I should be thrilled because the plants have really been suffering during the last few days of extreme heat. The snag is that I have a landcare group due here tomorrow afternoon and I was relying on today to clean up the ruins and around the veggie gardens so that things look good.  Bother.

The house is quite good for tidiness. Last week Edd put up more shelves in the cellar at the back of the house and I sorted through all our stored stuff and loaded it on the shelves in labelled boxes.  We brought a second hand bookcase too, so that now all the books that were accumulating in piles on every flat surface have been marshalled into order out of the way.  All this has helped restore order in the living areas of the house.

I work in the garden for about 2 hours every night whilst I do the watering.  I have hacked out weeds on the banks and pruned back plants encroaching onto plants.   Unfortunately I have not cleared away all the resulting dead matter yet. Perhaps we will have time tomorrow.   We were out a lot recently.   Edd fetched a load of straw one day and we picked up the new freezer we had ordered on another.  Then we had to get the bookcase and do the usual runs to the brewery for barley.

complicated weather

January 3 2017

We are having unusual weather in that there has been tropical storms and other rain events that have complicated hay making and kept the grass green.  The blackberries that usually die off in the summer dry are having a field day and springing up lush and fast everywhere.  Today I have mowed the fire breaks round the old house site and the sheds. The blackberries in the fence lines need to be dealt with later.

In the garden the pumpkins grow about a metre a day! We have had a glut of zucchinis that go to the market and Bo’s restaurant, and the tomatoes that have formed a thicket. Yesterday I harvested more beans for freezing and the garlic which needs processing and freezing as ice cubes.  The physic garden is doing well and the plants are mostly looking strong.

Edd moved the wood from the tree that came down in the camp area and I began mowing where it had been. We can see right back two the fence now but there are several tree stumps and still more logs to move before we can prepare to reclaim the area as grass. 

The goats gave huge amounts of milk up to Xmas but they have just passed the peak and are slowing down.  We will not have much surplus until we wean the kids in March.  Vesna had a bad accident yesterday and injured herself trying to squeeze through too small a gap.  We have put Mona in the yards to try and reduce the pressure on her because she has not recovered properly since having triplets. I am trying to dry her off but she keeps producing lots of milk and we cannot let her get mastitis.

The buck, Turnbul, is now in the refenced buck paddock and the horses have eaten down the grass left in all the small crofts. They now need mowing and then we can move the goat kids out doors.  At this stage we have 7 female and 7 male, but we will not keep all the males.  I am planning to send all the goats down the big gully to tackle the blackberries once we get the hill paddock fenced again.  The young neutered males can keep at this jib all winter.

We have been lucky with the hay. Indi and friends helped us get bales in and we dodged the un-forecasted rain.  We still have bales to pick up from the shed we put them in and we have round bales to sort out down Steels Creek road. Other people have not been so lucky and lots of hay has been ruined.  Still it is a bumper year with round bales thickly covering every paddock.