Solstice time

                                                                        Strip grazing.

                                                        Preparing for the solstice feast

December 12, 2018

Our solstice feast was on Friday evening and we worked hard cooking and cleaning to prepare for our guests. All went well, and I have now got all the left-over food stored in the freezer with the turkeys boiled down to make stock and dog food. This leaves us free to relax a bit and it feels wonderful. The weather has warmed up and I even went for a swim today.

I am harvesting beans for food and freezer and still enjoying raspberries and strawberries for breakfast. The pumpkin plants are thriving and talking over all the space in the vegetable beds.   Each day I collect a box full of zucchini and we still have cabbages, celery and lettuce.  No cucumbers yet, but plenty of flowers.  Last night I harvested enough basil to make pesto, now I know summer has really arrived.

The grass is still quite green and Edd has rigged up a temporary electric fence so that we can strip graze the goats.  This has worked well so far.  It takes about a week between each move.  I am expecting our relaxing time to end any moment when we are called to get in hay.  Perhaps the new generation of hay makers do not work on Xmas day.  No complaints.

I have sent a message and asked if our wool will be ready soon. We took it down to be spun nearly a year ago and the last time I ASKED I WAS TOLD IT WOULD BE READY IN DECEMBER.  I think this is a very slow processing operation, but maybe it will be done before the next round of school camps starts.

Barak is still having trouble with his broken leg, but he is now with a friend in a small paddock which he is able to get around.  The strange thing is that he is very affectionate.  We have never had a buck like this before. Perhaps he appreciated all the effort we put in with regular vet trips and special care.  I just wish he would be a bit more enthusiastic about eating his food.

The young female kids are growing well.  We have had to make new holes to enlarge their collars .  They are still a bit too small to be outside at night. The foxes are plentiful and bold.  Edd saw one just outside our house in broad daylight last week and we saw one sat in the paddock watching the sheep.  It just ignored us.  Once the animals get to a certain size they are pretty safe, but I would not like to risk the youngest kids yet.

Very busy

December 13 2018

I am so behind with this blog.  We are into our really busy season and spare time is rare.  The goats are now at peak milk production and I make cheese most days. The hard cheeses are turning out to keep well and be reliably edible now that we vac Pac them. It is worth the effort to make them.

The male goat kids have been sold and Barak and his mate now have a small paddock to jump around in. The leg Barak broke looks crocked but does not hold him up much.  He leapt up and down the bank with obvious enjoyment.  This is a big relief for us. There is massive growth this spring and we are strip grazing the goats trying to stop them getting too much at once. They are accepting this form of control well, but they are still coming in each night looking very bloated.

The vegetables are also in full growth mode, too.  The zucchini glut is on and we cart boxes to the restaurant and still have some left for market. The beans have just started too.  I have defrosted and cleaned the freezer just in time to put in the new seasons crops. This year we have raspberries for breakfast every morning along with strawberries.  I have not had any left over to freeze yet.

The young chooks out grew the small cage and are now in the new chook shed on the old drive.  Edd’s is struggling to get the fence fixed because they will soon be big enough too free range.  The Easter egg glut has slowed down, but we still get plenty to eat and plenty to sell.  The sheep are now in the old hay paddock to the west. The grass is growing so fast that they are not making much of an impression yet.  We have had to mow the grass on the house roof because it was not eaten down enough.  The other fire precaution measures were done by the last camp.  They moved all the burnable waste in the garden and cleaned gutters.

I am preparing for our family celebration on the solstice.  I have started by working through the sun room jungle, repotting plants, washing and polishing the floor and throwing out dead leaves.  Most of  the plants needed repotting and many of the bromeliads had pups to split off.  The snake vines are so big that I am waiting until Edd is around to help me deal with them!  Meanwhile I have put up our long suffering, Xmas tree.  It is one that survived the fires because it was stored in the cellar, so I greet it each year as an old friend.  I have so many memories of Xmas’s past that it brings back. A kind of sweet and sad feeling.

Winding up the year

November 30.  2018

Last Saturday we had a group from our local Permaculture Group for a day looking at goat keeping and how it fits in to our way of life.  We made feta and cream cheese and some goats milk soap.  We also showed everyone the wonderful job the goats have done getting rid of the blackberries in the big gully , and how well vegetables grow in the compost the herd generates. I decided not to prepare a dish of goats’ meat for lunch and this was fine as there were lots of vegetarians. ( Better not to upset any one.)

Now that  this day is over we can  concentrate on trying to work out exactly what we were in the middle of doing a couple of months ago, before the camps started.  Also, a whole new set of issues had come up that had to be dealt with.  Yesterday Edd went to Warragul and picked up the spare pump we have for the milking machines and some other bits. The machine had totally ground to a halt and there are a lot of goats for hand milking!  Once Edd had replaced things and got it all back in one piece the machine has been a dream.  It works much better than it has for ages , which is a great relief.  It had got slowly harder to use and I had forgotten  that it could ever work without continual adjustments.

The kids are now drinking enough milk to let us feed them just twice a day after milking.  This makes our lives much easier.  They are all growing well so we will have to get outdoor pens ready for them to move into.  I have advertised the last two male kids this week end.  They are really lovely kids and I hate to see them go but this is their chance to have a home where they can live as  pets.    Barak is now getting stronger on the leg he broke.  He has another kid with him for company and they are now ready to have a paddock pen.  I do not like them being outside when they are small enough to be taken by foxes or eagles.  

The good news is that there are now fresh strawberries and raspberries for breakfast each day.  We are trying hard to eat our way through  all the cauliflowers and the zucchinis are producing more and more.  The corn and the beans are flowering, and the pumpkins are well established.  Ben’s purple potatoes are producing lots of leaves, but the tomatoes have not ripened yet. It does not matter, we have plenty of different vegies to choose from for our meals.

Queensland still has terrible fires and Sydney was flooded but we just had a wet week down here. Today school children are striking to try and get our Government to act about climate change.  People are realising how devastating natural disaster can be and really do not want things to get any worse.  I am pleased that children are taking notice after all they are going to be the ones affected by what we do next.

Kidding season

Annie with her new kids.

November 6, 2018

We have done well so far, finding homes for the baby male goats.  I think it is because it is a good time of year to sell them. Not too close to Xmas, but well into the time when everyone’s land is getting huge weed growth. The babies look pretty cute too.

Last week we had another school camp and we are getting ready for the last camp of the year which starts next Monday.  This time the weather stayed dry all week and the students were great.  The shearer came on the Monday and managed to get all the sheep shorn without a bad word.  Edd and I had a laugh yesterday when we heard a sheep calling out in distress. We found her looking at her reflection in the glass of our windows.  Maybe she was horror struck with the look of her haircut!

The cat used up another life when it accidently got shut up in a teacher’s car that was left in the sun. Luckily the car was opened in time for a very hot and angry cat to leap out.  He has been gradually learning to hunt and has got several small rabbits. Rabbits are definitely unwelcome pests, so we are pleased with his progress. 

Our vegetables are powering away.  The zucchinis are just starting to have flowers, but we have a massive crop of snow peas and several sorts of salad vegetables we are eating.  We have had a meal of parsnips and the broccoli are still growing heads.  I am worried that the caterpillars will eat the cabbages before we do. 

Now that some kids have been sold I have enough milk to start making hard cheeses again. The soap does not take much milk, but we still had enough for the students to make chocolate icy poles.  I was surprised that they preferred these to the fruit ones we made the day before

Babies everywhere

October 3, 2018

The goats have started kidding. Yesterday Ninki had twin boys and this morning Xena also had twin boys. They are beautiful healthy kids, but it is sad that there are no females, both mothers are really good goats. Ninki abandoned her kids and went off to graze with the herd but I have left Zena shut in with her babies.  I offered Ninki’s boys a bottle of milk at lunchtime, but they were not hungry enough to suck well.  My life will now sort its self out around the goats feeding and milking times until the season is over.

I also picked up 12-day old chicks from Wagner’s today.  They are now in the warm box in our mud room and look as happy as possible.  The eggs in the incubator are due to hatch tomorrow night.  Edd thinks he has heard some cheeping from the eggs but I have not heard anything. We will just have to wait and see if any hatch out.

Last week we went up near Strath Creek to get a new ram.  A very nice family have a stud of English Leicester sheep there and we had a great afternoon talking to them and being shown around their property.  There were a bewildering number of young rams to choose from and selecting ours took some time.  Luckily the one we chose has a good attitude and has settled in with our sheep as if he was born part of the flock.  We have called him Rombald after the giant in the Ilkley dreaming story. I found a funny rhyme about him too.

Barak Obama joins the Brockspur goat herd.

September 17, 2018

Yesterday, we had almost 200 people walking through the house and property for sustainable house day. Luckily the rain held off and the sun came out, so everything fitted into the “possible” category.   Last week we had a camp for students who love animals. They did a wonderful job learning how to care for farm animals, and we even got some to inoculate sheep.

The students also helped clean up the area where Josh had his cubby and put the compost in the spaces left by the paving in Toby’s garden.  It all made the place look cared for when the visitors flocked in yesterday. For which I was very grateful.  It is a bit daunting having so many strangers through the place and I feel much more comfortable about things if I have everything clean and ordered.  It must have been OK because we got some very positive feedback.

The week before the camp arrived Edd and I took the old milking machine down to Warragul to be checked for life and called in on some friends to look at bucks they had for sale. They have stock bred from American Alpine goats that have been brought into Australia as embryos.  This is a very costly and involved process that I have stayed clear of, but I was very keen to benefit from other peoples’ efforts.  We chose a buck kid who was carrying the looks and colour of his American ancestors and he travelled home in the car on my knees.

Once home he got very lively and was reluctant about taking milk from a bottle.  We raised the fence height of his pen but he somehow managed to leap the raised barrier and must have landed very heavily.  The vet took an X-ray and found he had a compression fracture in his back leg from landing too hard.  We have had to give him a lot of care this week, but he now seems to be feeling much better.  He is drinking milk from his bottle fast, eating, and even starting to bounce again.  I am praying that this time we can keep him from doing himself further injury.

After much soul searching he is now called Barak Obama. Barak was also the name of a local Aboriginal leader and The Obama bit gives reference to his American heritage.  Over the last 2 years we have named bucks after political leaders, so the name carries on that theme too.  

The horses and dogs are very disappointed that our students have gone home.  Whilst they were here the dogs got long walks and the horses got groomed every day. Yesterday with all the visitors around all non-essential tasks got neglected. Today Edd went off early to collect a ton of oats we are buying. The farmer who supplies us has been on holiday so for the last month we have been paying for very expensive feed local oats.  The price of grain is going up fast as drought effects crops.  We are lucky we can still get the barley free from Simon’s brewery.

Action in the west

Today we had 22 permaculture design course students for a site visit.  This event spurred me to do a very thorough house cleaning and cooking session on Friday.  I was very glad I did the cooking bit.  I made a large cinnamon and pear cake and a big cheese cake and prepared several cream cheeses and other nibbles for morning tea.  Edd met the students who were dispensed across ten cars and did a talk about the ecology of the valley before escorting them up here for morning tea and a house and farm tour.

I had been warned that there were vegans, vegetarians, glucose intolerant people and every other dietary problem in this group but the food disappeared with such speed that no one would have noticed!   It had been a cold wet night but just before everyone arrived the sun came out and the house was flooded with sunlight and winter warmth so (much to my relief it looked great.  Eventually everyone had finished eating and we took them on a tour of the house and surrounding out buildings.

After everyone left the sky darkened and we had a heavy rain shower.  It is so good when the weather is on our side.  Actually, we have been lucky for most of the week. Andrew and his mates have had mostly fine weather and the new west wall is up. It curves round and down so the house now has a tail end which is a big improvement.  The blokes are now using pavers left over from the house build to landscape the enclosed area.  They are really doing a very good job.

Whilst this work has been going on outside I have started working inside on the splash back in our kitchen.  Over the last few months I have been collecting tiles of the various colours I need and Edd has fixed the stainless-steel edging above the granite for me to tile up to. Starting this work was a bit daunting, but I am now underway and enjoying myself.  So far, Edd likes what I have done which is a good start.

We have also got the tire treads back on skiddy.  I tried to help Edd and ended up cutting my knuckle on a chisel that was in use to try and lift the heavy rubber tread over its wheels. Luckily Andrew was able to help Edd complete the job and there were no further injuries. Edd was planning to use skiddy to move a heavy blackwood tree trunk that he wanted to use for timber. Sadly, some friends of Ben came up last weekend and took the tree in question along with the timber for fire wood.  We did not even know they were on our property so Edd is not happy.

We have let friends get the fallen timber for their fires, but they usually come to us first to ask what to take.  We need the timber moved and have enough fire wood for ourselves, so we are OK about this bit, but we wanted to keep the black wood as it was too good to burn.

New ventures

Making cheese from frozen milk  worked out well.  My next venture is to try soap recipes and work out one that suits what we have.  I am actually rather challenged by the idea of starting a new project.  It took me years to work out a good method for hard cheese, I just hope soap is easier. I have the goats milk, and Indi has a good supply of olive oil, so we have the main ingredients to mix with the caustic soda.

Spring is here, and the wattle and daffodils are in bloom and everything is very yellow. The Lucerne trees are starting to shine with their white flowers and the native wisteria has purple beginning to show.  We have eaten the first planting of broccoli and are working our way through the cauliflowers and swedes.   The snow peas have finally begun to produce edible pods too, but kale and spinach and rocket are still our most used greens. We have lettuce, but it is not quite lettuce weather yet, though we did have a very warm day last week.

Edd spent one day fetching concrete blocks and second-hand bricks to make the west end wall and is now trying to fix the metal at the base of the kitchen splash back.  He refuses to let me start with the tiling until this is done. I would have just left it loose but Edd likes things to be right.  I am now waiting for other people to do their bit before I can continue with my projects which is a bit frustrating.

I was lucky enough to find a tall glass fronted cabinet in the recycle yard and on Monday Lyn helped me clean up the relics from the fire and arrange them for view. The school students dug up all these relics and they have been stored in an alcove opposite the camp toilet, which is not ideal.    They are an interesting collection because they demonstrate that when glass melted, and heavy brass pans collapsed, cheap ceramic balls survived unscathed.

two lives gone!

Experimenting with tiles for the splash back

The cat has been in trouble again.  Edd came rushing in saying that something terrible had happened. He had started his ute and then saw cat fur stream out of the engine.  We lifted the bonnet with trepidation and yes, there was a lot of fur and the fan belt was off its mountings.  No cat bits were obvious despite a thorough search, and thankfully no blood or blood trails were in evidence. Much to our relief the cat turned up at the end of the day with a patch of missing fur, but no other damage.  That is the second of its nine lives it has used up since it has been here!

The goats that are not pregnant are still coming into season, but we have moved the bucks back into their pens because we have enough pregnant girls for this year.   Our big alpine doe, Quetta, has been sold.  This time she is went to join other goats we had sold earlier, so she was met by friends when she arrived at her new home.  It would be impossible to keep every goat, but we do try to send them to places they will be happy. They often go to smaller herds and get more attention than we give them here, which is nice.

I am trying to dry off the remaining pregnant goats, but we are still getting enough milk to make cheese twice a week.  The hard cheeses turned out so well last year that I am encouraged to make more. The vac packaging system worked fantastically.  I have now used all the olive oil I made, but luckily Ben and Indi are keeping us well supplied from their trees. Indi and I are planning to use some of their oil to make soap, so I am searching for recipes.  I ordered a book that I thought might help but it was so useless I returned it with a killer revue. I hope I might save someone else the bad experience.

The seeds I ordered for dyeing plants have arrived, but I have not yet sorted out the area where I plan to grow them.  They will be sown in pots in the spring, so this is not a problem yet.  It will make a good task when the school camps start. The book I brought on plant dyes was excellent, much to my relief.  This week Edd and I drove down to the Mornington Peninsular with a car full of wool that I am getting spun.  The plan is to have yarn available from our own sheep to dye with our own plants. That should make a good learning experience.

The last of the summer crops have to go

Drying bay leaves in the sun room

4.6.2018

We have been waking to heavy mist but by lunch time this has cleared, and the sun fills the house with warmth and light.  Edd is off on the tractor clearing up in the top paddock.  There are still dead trees there that were cut down after the fires and not tackled because they were mixed up with wire from the old fence line.  Edd is organising everything into piles that can be burnt. We hope it will then be easier to extract the wire.

I have spent the morning pulling out old tomato plants and pumpkins that were killed by last week’s frost. It is a very odd year, usually mildew kills all the pumpkin leaves long before the frost gets them.  There are still tomatoes ripening but the taste has gone out of them and they are often too damaged to be worth collecting.  We have a good choice of winter vegetables, so I thought it was best to ditch the summer ones and gain more planting space.

I also pruned the pear trees on the fence as they had already lost their leaves.  LYN made a good job of rescuing the young fruit trees from kikuyu grass that was trying to strangle them.  Last week I harvested what was left of the olives and made my first oil.  We had only one jam jar full from 3 kilos but it tasted fantastic.  I think I need a different system of pressing.  The cheese press was not ideal.

The goats are gradually all coming into season, about 2 months later than usual.  Lorna was mated yesterday but Imogen, Rita, Angie and Cassie are not showing any interest in the buck yet.  We have let the young buck into the croft next to the does so that they can smell each other directly through the fence, but still mating is going very slowly. 

slack time on the farm allows unexpected travel

18.5.2018

My mother died just over a week ago age 97, and, much to my surprise I am off to her funeral in the UK tomorrow!    I never dreamed I would be able to go but much to my amazement my kids presented me with a workable plan on Mother’s Day.  Al and Bo are coming with me, so we have three businesses and three families to sort out before we set off.

 Luckily, we have entered our slack period on the farm.  The goats are drying off as they get pregnant and only need once a day milking by hand. The chickens have been amalgamated into two groups, and the rains have cut out the need for watering.  Most of the fruit and summer vegetables have been harvested and preserved and the winter crops are mostly planted.

Today I have been making the cheese, writing stuff Edd needs to look after the permaculture students, paying bills, sending out invoices and I am about to start cleaning the house.  Al has spent the week trying to deal with a computer problem that has stopped him printing out plans and is sorting out who can care for his dog.  He is bringing Pip up to her parents tonight so that they can look after her and help her with baby P.  Indi is driving Bo and I to the airport tomorrow where hopefully we will join up with Al.  Indi and Edd are going to share looking after Bo’s kids and doing school transport.

This is all pretty major, so I had better stop writing now and get back to work.

clever cat

He looks innocent , but this cat can open that latch.

hot and dry

Sunday 12 March

It is a lot cooler today but we have had the hottest driest weather for days and everything is suffering.  I have been watering the vegetables and trees twice a day but the olives look wrinkled and the vegetables are not producing so much fruit.  The fig tree is the exception and I get a bucket full of figs everyday.  Bo’s restaurant staff are complaining about the amount they have to deal with! Bo has given me a fig and nut cake she made that was too crumbly for restaurant use.  It is delicious.

One good thing about this weather is that the sun starts to heat up the sunroom at this time of year. I have been able to dry various leaves for herbs and teas just by spreading them out on the table in there.  Perhaps I should try to dry some tomatoes.  The freezer is full and the restaurant over supplied.

Edd is working to fix the fences in the gravel pit paddock.  He has nearly made the fence on the gully side and will then need to work his way up past Indi’s area.  The horses have eaten everything they can off the hill, but we cannot move them to the gravel pit paddock until at least the bottom fence is done.  This fence will enclose all the zone 5 land where the fern trees used to grow. In Permaculture zone 5 is left for nature to do as it pleases.

The new cat has settled in but shows little interest in catching mice.  He has one odd skill in that he has learnt how to open the latched door from the mudroom into the rest of the house.  He kept escaping from the mudroom and I could not work out how but I actually heard the latch open last night as he got out for the second time.  He does patrol the big dam and the wood ducks have gone but I am not sure if these two facts are related.  I am very happy the wood ducks have gone, they are really geese and make a terrible mess whilst eating all the grass.

Shearing and harvest

                                                          This mornings harvest.

                                                  Cucumbers behaving oddly.

Wednesday 28.2.2018

We are very much in harvest season and I am swamped with buckets of produce. The freezer is about full to capacity and we take bucket loads of vegetables into Beth’s restaurant each evening.  I am trying to find out how I could run the freezer from a generator if we had a long power cut.   We produce more solar power than we use and the power company still pays us but unfortunately our system cuts out if there is a power cut, which is maddening.

We have asked about trying to fix this but if we alter the power system we get cut off the good rate we get for power sales.  The contract lasts till 2024 so we are hanging on hoping storage batteries will be cheaper and better as that year gets closer. Putting a generator in as a back up is hard because we have two-phase power (what ever that is). My latest idea is to get a smaller portable generator and plug the freezer straight into it in an emergency.  I would hate to loose all the food I have grown, carefully packaged, and stored.

We had a big weekend. On Saturday morning Edd met twenty permaculture students in Yarra Glen and they followed him out here in a long string of cars for a site visit.  We spent the morning explaining all that goes on here and then we ate a shared lunch in the ruins.  As soon as they left we sprang into action because the shearer was coming.  We have waited for him for weeks so we were not going to argue about the timing.

He was a lot later arriving than he though he would be and it was starting to rain so we had to put the goats into the small pens and get the sheep in the shed under cover.  This man is very good because he does the sheep’s feet, worming and anything else we need at the same time and also does the alpaca.  It is a great relief to have someone else do all this now we are older.

Getting the sheep in was easy.  Last week a committee of sheep accosted me and made it very clear that the time had come to supplement their diet with barley.  I had started to do this so they were all primed to come when I called and follow me.  They went out with equal ease.  We have them in the house site at present and they are doing a great job grazing the roof.

At last I have done the dairy floor.

                              I have finally completed the mosiac work on the dairy floor.

I should have moved the plant pot away from the cucumbers sooner!

heat and harvest

Monday 29.1.2018

We have had temperatures well over 30C for several days now and even our house has warmed to 25C.  Keeping the plants and animals healthy is quite a challenge.  The chicks have grown too large for the small shed under the oak tree but we dare not move them because the other locations are not so well shaded.  Chooks die easily from heat so we are checking them regularly.  The larger shed is all ready for them and we are just waiting for a cool change. Already the older chooks are laying less eggs and we will need this new batch to keep up supplies in winter.

The plants also need extra care and they are rewarding us with buckets of produce.  The beans have done very well this year and the tomatoes are now cropping.   I have already harvested most of the sweet corn, and stored what we did not eat in the freezer.   We have far to many cucumbers and zucchinis, but so has everyone else so we can rarely even give them away.    Today I picked the nectarines and some black berries.  They will make good breakfast food for the winter months.   For now we have strawberries, but they won’t be around for the colder months.  I have so much food here that I have not been shopping at all this month, but I will need to go soon because things like toilet paper are running low.

The new cat has settled in but he is a real sook.   He wants to be with us all the time and is most happy when we let him in the house so he can sprawl on the carpets.  He follows us everywhere we go on the farm, but so far there is no evidence of hunting.   The episode with the chickens seems to have curbed his adventurousness.   He is definitely more inclined to be a pet than a farm cat but he is a great character.

The extra hot weather has slowed down our work on the farm but today Edd used the tractor and blade to level the ground by the new water tank.  We have an underground system of recycled water pipes but they are not connected up so we have no link yet between the tank and the dam.  I am hoping that we can get the system ready to use soon because it is part of our defence against bush fire.  When we have heavy rain the area around the hay shed and dairy floods but I think this might be a good thing. If a fire was about to hit us we could open the taps on the tank and quickly get a mote to help protect the sheds.

We think about bush fires in this weather but this year we have had unusual humidity and intermittent storms so that much of the grass is still green, even on the house roof! It is probably why the trees have fruited so well.  The ride on mower is in need of serious repairs but we need it to keep everything under control.   The poor thing has been used for the sort of rough ground it was not designed for with all the work it did after the bush fires.  I call it the “yellow peril” after a controversial piece of street art that was put up in Melbourne. My daughter in law pointed out that the name was racist.  Oh dear, I keep failing the politically correct requirements of modern communication.