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.

up a gum tree

Wednesday 17.1.2018

Ted, the cat, is now in training to be a farm cat.  I have been letting him run free during the day and shutting him in at night.  He is actually very friendly and purrs when I stoke him.  Yesterday I took a family on a farm tour and he came with us.  He jumped off the top of the house roof onto the lower tin roof where the solar panels for hot water are and I had to climb over the parapet onto the roof to lift him back just in case he was stuck.

He also tried a straight-line approach to our route and was rebuffed by various fences that failed to bow down before him.    He is probably better informed about farm fences now.   The big question is will he be any good as a hunter?   He showed some signs that he was not totally without instinct yesterday when he spent the afternoon chasing fluff balls in the shed.   Today he was rather more ambitious and decided to hunt chickens.  The chickens were alarmed but intrigued so that it was difficult to decide who was hunting whom.   I saved his dignity by going into the pen and rescuing him.

His next experiment involved shooting up a big gum tree.   He got well up too and the small branches were shaking alarmingly under his weight.    He soon decided that he was not actually very happy about his position and had to work out how to get himself down.   At one stage he stretched between two tree limbs and was stuck for a few minutes looking very comical but he worked his way out of this dilemma and once on terra firma dashed off to Edd’s shed.

harvest begins

Monday 15.1.18

Food is very plentiful just now.  Today Edd and I ate sweet corn, cucumber and lettuce for lunch and I have been talking bucket loads of zucchinis to Bo so she can make preserves for the restaurant.  The amazing thing is that the grass is still fairly green. Even the paddock we got hay from last night was green underneath.  Usually at this time of year everything is colourless and burnt crispy.

I wonder if this is part of the climate change experience.  We hear that America is having cold storms like we saw in the movie “the day after Tomorrow’ and California has killer mud slides where the winter fires removed all the vegetation.  We know all about this because we had a river through our property after the bush fires removed all the vegetation on the hills. Our river was very wide and had black waves that carried away whole trees.  Luckily our house was well clear of the danger.

The goats, not being prone to speculation, are loving the odd conditions.  They come home every night looking alarmingly round.  They are all beginning to look glossy in their new summer coats now that the cashmere undercoat and dry faded winter hair has dropped out.   Milk production is staying up but there is a reduction in the cheese yield that is normal for this time of year.  The tomatoes are large but still green, so I expect they will be the next glut I have to process.

The best news is that we now have a shed full of hay.   Various friends and family helped cart the bales and stack them in the shed.  How amazing it is to have people like this around.  The teenagers kept their distance and stayed glued to the virtual world but they are missing out.  Hay making is a time to show your strength and skill and feel good about being part of a group effort. 

New cat applies for a job.

Saturday 13.1.18

The storms from our North coast reached across Australia and hit us at the bottom corner today with heavy rain.  We have been hearing rumbling thunder since Friday night, but the weather stayed hot with insignificant showers.   I feel very relaxed now that the hay is in the shed and the accounts done, so we drove up to Woodend, near hanging rocks, today and picked up a farm cat from the vets.  He was advertised via our Face book friends’ network with uncanny timing.  He even looks like a younger fitter version of the cat we lost and they were so desperate to re-home him that he was a gift. 

I have been worried about how we would cope with out a cat. Before the last one arrived we had rats and mice in plague proportions.  All our tomatoes and pumpkins got chewed and rabbits multiplied. I was most surprised when the message about this cat came up on the computer.  It was a weird co-incidence, as I have never had this type of message before.   It will be a bit before we know if the cat is pleased with his new circumstances.   I have put him in the Donga so that he is safe and gets a chance to settle down.   Luckily Edd had a bag of kitty litter from his fungi growing capers.

He actually is much better looking than his advert shows, I am not sure he knows much about being a working cat, but he enjoys a stroke and was very tolerant of a young child's advances yesterday.  I let him out for the morning and he came back to base without problems so we can progress to total freedom next.  I am not used to house trained, docile cats!

A sad loss

Officially we do not own a cat, having both agreed that they did too much damage to the local wild life.   After the fires some cats survived when their owners were burnt out, and they had to fend for themselves.   One cat visited our shed at intervals and we found kittens one year that my grand kids found homes for.  Then one evening a cat (possibly the kitten producer) turns up at the dairy with a large wound on its neck.  I gave it a dish of milk and from then on the cat stayed.

It was actually a very useful cat.    It dealt with the rat and mouse population in the shed and then started to work on young rabbits, bringing them to the dairy to show us before eating them.   All that the cat asked for was a bit of milk morning and evening and it worked tirelessly to protect the shed and vegetables from vermin.   Sometimes it attempted pet behaviour but it was a grizzled old thing and was difficult to even stroke. It would rub against my legs mewing when it wanted me to hurry with the milk often almost tripping me up.

Where ever I went the cat was there.   It was there whilst I did the milking, it followed me to the vegetable garden when I worked there and we just sort of did everything together.   The cat did not like school camps and would be off to better hunting grounds when the school groups were here.     At first when it was missing I did not worry but it got to the time when we were pretty sure something had happened.   Today when I was mowing I found a dried up body by the big water tank.   It was the cat, its grey and black striped coat all dull and lifeless.   I feel as if I have lost a best friend with out the chance to say goodbye.

This cat chose us and did enough to help us that we were glad it was around.   It looked after itself and mostly led a very independent life.   A cat like this cannot be replaced. I feel we need a notice on the gate declaring a vacancy for the farm cat position so that any passing homeless cat knows there is a job going but I will still miss this particular little animal.