Xmas celebrations

Breakfast after the feast

relaxing

28.12.2019

I am totally exhausted but we have survived Xmas for another year.  Edd brought a new

un- leaking tap and solved the sink problem, and everybody helped with food and cooking to make a perfect feast.  Dani, Wayne, their kids and Danni’s mother stayed with us on Friday night.    It had been a very hot day but by evening it cooled a bit and we all had a meal in the gazebo.  Wayne had put up a string of led lights around the gazebo roof and the sun set red through the smoke and dust making a quite magical settling.  

Luckily Saturday was cooler, but I still cooked the turkey in the oven in the dairy. Six hours of stove heat would not have helped in the house.  As usual it was unclear exactly how many would come but I think we fed about 40 a full xmas meal. There was not much left of an eight-kilo turkey, or anything else for that matter.  All Wayne’s mates from work and their families came, and Ben’s parents, Pia’s parents plus all our kids and grandkids and great grandkids, except Josh and Bobby.

They are busy packing up for a move to Perth where Bobby has a new job at the WA university as a lecturer.  It is a great start to the career she is after but getting there to start mid-January is another matter.  They can fly there but they have to get the car on a train and get their six rats over and into a new rat tolerant home.  We missed them but everyone understood why their focus was not in the holiday.

Al and Pip brought their own tent for Saturday night so we could all have a family breakfast in the morning.  Then we all parted, and the kids went onto the next set of parties.  Yesterday it was Edd’s birthday, so Al organised a meal out near his house.  Bo, Simon and Sylkie caught the ferry across the heads from Mornington where they were on holiday and I got up very early to do the farm work and leave to drive down at 9am.  This all worked well, and we had a great meal out at a winery with views over the sea.  We even had time for a beach walk before we had to drive home. The goats tolerated this disruption to their milking schedule but everything else was calling out for food when we got home.

It would be nice to think we could relax now but the first of our hay paddocks has been cut and the land is bone dry.  I had to water the trees this morning because they were looking very stressed.  The vegetables get watered twice most days, so they look OK.  The corn and pumpkins are larger every time I do them, they grow almost fast enough to see.  We have our first cucumber and some large strawberries, but the parrots have eaten the last of the loquats. No worry, there is still plenty of things we can eat.

19.12.2019

Water has appeared under the kitchen sink!  Why do these things always happen just as I am about to host the Xmas family gathering?  Everything was fine yesterday, but by the evening Edd noticed water on the floor and this morning everything in the under-sink cupboard is wet.  There is nothing I can do now, Edd has already left to get on a train to Melbourne where he meeting friends for their annual get together and I am picking up the turkey and other food, having my hair cut and taking the bins to the brewery to get the last barley before the holidays.

Yesterday it was over 40C, it was hot all over Australia and the fires continue to burn out of control.  The big fires started in Queensland and have worked their way down the coast. They are now in the North of Victoria and heading our way. Even our rulers now have admitted that this is climate change in action.  The hot weather means extra work to keep animals and plants alive.  We have mulched all the garden beds and water them twice a day. Growing vegetables need a lot of water.  Yesterday everything survived.

Tomorrow Danni and her mother are coming to help with the party preparations.  What a wonderful daughter in law Danni is.   She successfully runs her own business, rears to young kids and still finds time to think and do things for others.    It is predicted to be over 40C again on Friday, so I am very happy that I am getting some help.  I have worked this week cleaning everything up.  I have washed and resealed the house floors. De-cluttered the rooms and sorted out the flower beds and pots.  I have even polished up the horse brasses and copper pans because I like the place to gleam.  I really did not need a plumbing problem.

Edd has been whipper snipping down all the grass the mower can’t reach, so it looks much tidier outside too.  I am hoping he will find time to sort out the top of one of the outdoor tables that has collapsed.  I am hoping Danni’s mum will make up the Xmas crackers. Yesterday I went to the chocolatery in Yarra Glen and brought lots of delicious chocolates to go in them.   I hate the way the commercial ones have silly plastic tokens that all end up being thrown away.

8.12.2019

We have been very busy, too busy to write the blog or much else that was not essential.  Now I have two weeks of relative peace before our seasonal celebrations take place.    The school camps went well, despite some difficult conditions. The students coped unexpectedly well with heat, storms and rain and remained cheerful.   Our Finnish work away couple returned for the last week of camp, so we had people everywhere.

Our shearer came with is family the next weekend and stayed in the donga with his family, we all co-operated to get the sheep shorn and drenched and we even strapped the alpaca down on a table and did him as well.   He complained bitterly throughout the procedure, but at least he did not spit at anyone.  

 The goat kids are now in small paddocks where they have grazing and space to run and jump. Only the boy, Nicky is still in the shed as it is time he separated from the girls.   He was not happy with this arrangement, but his mother Dixie stayed in the shed next to his pen when the other goats went out to feed.     This is amazing when she was separated from him when he was under a week old.     She was happy to leave him when he was relaxed with the other kids but obviously got worried when he was upset.    Luckily, he has settled down now to the new arrangement.

The Finnish couple stayed about three weeks and helped us with farm work.  They took over from us one day and let Edd and I spend a night away.  We went to the hot spa near Mornington and relaxed in their wonderful bush land setting.  You can now walk quite a way along well-made paths and dip into various different pools.  It was so nice to walk barefoot and soak in hot mineral water. We had an evening meal on their restaurant too, which was great.

Back on the farm Edd is building a new bed for vegetables. We need extra space for the pumpkins as they sprawl everywhere.  The broccoli and cauliflowers are all gone now and today I picked the last cabbage.   We still have abundant lettuce and snow peas and have started eating the zucchini. The tomatoes and beans have flowers and the cucumber have started to put on size.

The school kids harvested and froze lots of lemons and made marmalade, but we still have spare citrus Our loquats are dripping with succulent fruit and the mulberries, straw berries and raspberries are producing berries. There is even fruit on some of the young trees in the new orchard. The kids put us up a new chook shed so we have chickens at work controlling the grass under the trees.

The weather is warming up but there is still a lot of green.  We are so lucky.  Fires still rage all down the east coast and many homes have been lost.  Sydney and Brisbane have dangerous air pollution from the fires and dust storms have affected the glacial ice in New Zealand.  We had dust here and all our vehicles ended up with red spots.  

Back to winter

Simon's brewery and King parrots

10.11.2019

It seems as if we have gone back into winter. A wind from the southern seas is blowing wet, cold weather over Victoria. I should be happy about this. The vegetables and other plants are loving it and we seem a world away from the horrific fires to our North that are destroying homers and taking lives. These fires have been raging for weeks and it is not even officially summer yet!

I managed to nip out between showers and mow all the grass areas and Edd found a rain free day to drive north and fetch 2 ton of oats, but preparation for our next camp, starting tomorrow, has been hard.  We are still hard at work trying to get everything done.  I took time off yesterday to man a stall at our community flower show. It was freezing cold, and bad for women not wearing puffer jackets, but the sun did come out and we had a good turnout.

There were lots of tempting plants and I came home with two roses and two bromeliads. One of my friends had to borrow a wheelbarrow and make two trips to her car she brought so much.  I could have done the same, but I exercised restraint as much as possible.  I admit to being a bit of an addict as far as plants are concerned.  I planted an orange tree, a lemon tree and an elderberry tree this week.  I hope they can get a bit established whilst the ground is still moist. I still have more trees that need to be planted but getting some in feel good.  The raspberries I planted are looking very settled and fruit are starting to form.

We are eating several meals of snow peas a week and the cauliflowers and broccoli are abundant. The zucchinis are just starting to have flowers and the runner beans have sprouted. We have more vegetables than we can eat.  I have moved the chilli peppers outside with the egg plant. They have survived the winter in our sunroom jungle but now that the frosts are over, they will be better off in the fresh air.  Mostly my gardens look under control for once which gives a good feeling to the place.

unicorn has special powers

2.11.2019

The school campers have gone home but luckily it only began to rain again this morning. It has rained all day, but we have had a week outside in glorious hot weather and it is nice not to water vegetables three times a day.

We had one male goat kid that did not sell when we first advertised them.  He had a horn that despite our dehorning efforts had started to grow and I think it put buyers off. He was pure white in colour and very friendly, so I decided to try again to find him a home as a pet. After a lot of thought I advertised him as a baby unicorn, goat, and that got a very good response. 

Yesterday a very nice young man came to pick him up. He had an old ute and was happy to just put the goat kid in the passenger seat. He shut the goat in so he could have two hands to pay me. This turned out to be a mistake. The goat kid stood on a button and locked himself into the vehicle with his new owner outside, and the keys inside! Luckily the man was able to phone his wife and arrange a rescue, but it involved a long wait at our place until the spare keys arrived.

I thought that that was the end of the story but this morning the goat Eden who has given a very poor milk yield since she kidded came in with an udder almost bursting with milk. I looked on the board and sure enough she had given birth to the only white kid we had this year. Some how she must have worked out a way to feed him through the dividing fence. That has never happened before. 

Kids everywhere

8.8.2019

Goat kids have dominated our life recently.   We now have about 16.  I am not sure if Ziggie is going to kid or not.   She is the only goat still due and unless we got her mating date wrong it is well past her expected kidding date.  Luckily most of the kids are now feeding well on the feeder and some are already only having three feeds each day.   Life will get much simpler when they are all settled into a do-able routine.

We have had some warm spring days and luckily, we found time to prune the fruit trees. They are now covered in blossom and the leaves on the oak trees are breaking bud too.  We could still get a late frost but that is becoming less likely as the days pass.  If this continues, we will have a mulberry crop and the potatoes will have kept growing all winter!

Our Camelia is covered in deep pink flowers.   I always think of my father when I see this.  I remember him getting really excited about a camelia he planted by our family home at Broomfield.  He loved gardening, but mostly he paid someone else to do the work and just stuck to planning.  I really wanted an English style garden around our old house, and it took me ages to work out that without a paid gardener it would be too much work.

Wayne brought Ella up to the farm last week to see the baby animals. She is still a bit warry of them, but she did pat a few of the kids whilst they were feeding.  I showed Ella how she could draw in the wet mud with a stick and she immediately wrote her own name everywhere she found enough mud. How fast she is growing up!  Danni send regular picture of their new daughter who looks like a cute cabbage patch doll!

We have not seen Al’s youngest this week because he has spent the week with his other grandparents. Pip has terrible morning sickness and has not been well enough to look after herself let alone anyone else.  She has been put on a drip in hospital when she gets too dehydrated, but there is not much anyone can do at this stage. We are all really worried about the stress this has put on her and on their whole family.  Pip’s mother was a nurse so at least she can be well looked after when she stays with her parents, which is reassuring.

Today is a wet. miserable Sunday.  Edd and I miss Bo’s restaurant. We always retreated there on difficult days and enjoyed time with family and friends.   Bo is now just as busy establishing her music therapy business but sadly we do not see her so much.  She came over last Sunday for Father’s Day and cooked us all a delicious breakfast, so we should not complain.

Morden spends all his time doing mechanics. He has brought several cars that he is doing up and is going to college to start getting qualifications.  It is wonderful to see a young person so happy and motivated.  There is no garage or at home for him to work in, so he parks on the drive outside his front door. This makes getting into the house a bit of an obstacle course, but we are all putting up with it.

Are you kidding

28.8.2019

Goats never consider our convenience about when they give birth. In fact, sometimes it seems as if they deliberately choose the most difficult time possible.  I got up early on Saturday morning so that I could have the milking done by the time the permaculture group arrived, but Rani had twin girls. She would probably have managed fine, but Erin had got involved and kidnapped them. This meant that I had to milk Rani and bottle feed the kids to make sure that they actually got some colostrum in the first few hours of their life. Edd had to go and meet the students in Yarra Glen and then we had to show them around and feed them a morning tea with cheese tasting so it was not until they all went off to see tender break farm after lunch that we had time to build a pen and reunite the babies with their own mother.

Today Edd is teaching at the High school all day and the next two goats have gone into labour. Eden gave birth fairly easily to two huge buck kids, but Dorcas is doing it harder this afternoon. I have come down for a cup of tea because she is not far enough along for me to help her yet and it is agony to watch her struggling. I suppose we are lucky that they did not kid at the weekend when we had 24 r so guests staying.

Actually, the weekend was fun.  I cooked up a feast for everyone on Saturday night. People were very polite, and it was only after I said it was OK that various bottles were extracted from cars and the party got going.  Graeme came over from Healesville because this is his class and Indi, Ben and baby A joined us too. Ben’s family have a small bakery where they cook delicious sour dough bread and we ordered several loaves that they delivered for us. Everyone seemed very happy with the food we provided, and we found places for everyone to sleep the night. 

 Luckily it was sunny in the morning, so the house was warm and welcoming. We made a cooked breakfast and then everyone had to leave to go to Graeme’s place for the day. If it wasn’t for the goats kidding, I would now be very relaxed.

18..8.19

The air felt and smelt of spring for the first time this year. Yesterday the rain finally ceased, and we had a warm sunny day. This morning it was even warmer, but the chill is back tonight. The dry weather was most helpful because we were able to clear everything out of the old site office donga and clean it inside and out. Everyone has been dumping excess gear there for years now.  We had to remove bins and bins of old clothes, a spare car wheel, coils of barbed wire and endless pots, jars and IT goods.  Some things we just couldn’t identify.

It is a great relief to have everything dealt with and the extra room it gives us.  We are expecting 26 or so people to stay next weekend on a field trip for their permaculture design course, so every spare space we can get is important.  Next I have to organise food for everyone, but it all seems possible now we have the donga sorted. We still have loads of pumpkins and heaps of meat in the freezer. The wind has brought down oranges and mandarins that I have collected up for breakfast fruit too.  At this stage I have no idea if they are vegan, vegetarian or what, but I usually make an array of dishes to cater for all comer.

Bo is having terrible car problems. Her mechanic had totally failed to get the car going right so last week Edd took it to our man.  He found odd foam through the engine and sensors not working. After a week he got it back to normal but a day later it was playing up again.  I have been very blessed with my little old Toyota corolla, I hope it will last out until electric  cars become the norm.

The sad situation season

Al.s youngest

10..8.19

This is the third time I have wiped this page and started to rewrite it.  Basically, winter has now arrived with the side effects of mud, flu and misery.   My friend Merrie is in the process of selling up and moving north to Queensland. At this time of year, the climate above Brisbane seems very tempting.  Indi has just got home from visiting a friend in Darwin and I think she went a bit too North.  Her baby got sick with the humidity and they had a very sleepless time.

A quick look at the news here today depicts most of Australia as one big disaster area. The football in Canberra was won by the snow, in SA two truck drivers collided and died in a dust storm, NSW has floods, drought and wind taking rooves off and a poor lady was killed locally when a gum tree fell on her car.  We are relatively well off. The house is warm, the mud is outside, and we have not caught the flu off Bo’s kids yet!

There are now 14 lambs. The bottle reared pair are doing well in the shed and the rest are growing despite the conditions. We are lucky that we still get the spent grain from the brewery. It compensates the sheep for the poorness of the grazing. It is still a few weeks until the goats start to kid and then the real work begins. At least there is enough rain so make watering the garden unnecessary, but I am having another go at the asparagus.  My plants mostly died when I tried to move them a couple of years ago. The problem is that the beds get more and more weedy and cannot be dug over and replenished properly with out disturbing the roots. This time I have planted my corns in very large pots.

Edd is now teaching building at the high school every Wednesday.  They could not find anyone else to do this term with the right teaching qualification who new anything about building.  A lot of the course is done on computers but hands on work with tools us also required. Edd comes home exhausted having had to stretch his skills in every direction.  My job is to take over all the farm work, so I do not get a let out either.

Edd did the farm work yesterday because I baby sat Al’s youngest while he visited a client.  The weather was wet and cold so I (and a lot of others) holed up in the library at Eltham for the morning. It was an excellent place to be. It was clean, warm, had toilets with baby changing tables, and an endless supply of books, we were even treated to a preschool style entertainment, so the time passed with no stress for anyone.  I do think that good public spaces are what is needed now to help the population cope in a distressed climate. Shopping malls provide a refuge from the heat in the hot times and if they have libraries, coffee shops and play spaces for kids lots of people can use them rather than try to keep individual homes at a liveable temperature. 

It would also be cost effective to set them up as disaster refuges. For times of fire and flood. 

Lambs indoors and out

7.31.19

It is just plain beautiful today.  Warm, sunny, crystal clear blue skies and little white lambs bouncing round the paddocks. We had another one born today which makes a total of 13.  The orphan lamb is now in a pen next to the young does in the shed, but I have a little ewe lamb in the house. Her mother, the big grey ewe had triplets and I was not brave enough to leave them all with her, so I took the smallest indoors before night fell.  It seemed a bit much to expect her mum to protect all 3 from foxes. 

I am meant to be cleaning up in the house today because we have a school group coming tomorrow but I could not resist doing a bit of gardening as well. Edd is teaching at the High school on Wednesdays this term so I have had the day to myself.  The lambs need 4 bottle feeds a day, so I have kept pretty busy.   Now the season is changing we start all the tours and camps again.  This is usually the coldest time of year, but the weather Gods do not seem to know it.

The wattle trees are now in flower and the big tree in the chook pen was covered in yellow flowers and bees.  The Lucerne trees are just about to burst bud too. I have trimmed the tree by the small donga and Edd is putting up a fence so it can be reached without going through the chook pen.  I have started to clean it out. Everyone has been using it for storage and most of the stuff in there needs taking to the op shop, tip or other storage areas. Once it is empty, I can clean up and make good again.  We will need it for guests to stay in when the Permaculture group come in August, so I need to get a move on!My winter knitting

Oh deer

28.6.19

We have had a glorious week. Cold clear nights changing into warm sunny days with clear blue skies.  Luckily there is plenty of outdoor work as an excuse to enjoy working with the sun warming us and stunning views to make life even more enjoyable.  Why would we want to go on a holiday somewhere else unless it was to visit someone?

It is 6pm and dark now but still warm.  As I chop kindling to light the evening fires, I can hear a neighbour with a chainsaw, no doubt also with fires in mind.   Tonight, I have lit the wood stove to give some extra heat to the water.  This is the first time in three days because the sun on the solar panels has done most of the work.  The fire lighters have mysteriously disappeared, but they are not essential. I just have to be more careful without them.

Today I resumed a digging project to enlarge the growing space in the vegetable garden. I now have a flat area under a high bank that needs some sort of terracing. I am waiting for Edd to fix the fence before we can plant out this space because I am still worried about deer. Yesterday we found a huge samba deer dead by the old wooden shed. We could see no sign it had been shot or killed by violence. It had been scouring for at least a few days so was it sick, or had it been poisoned?

The next problem was what to do with it. It was far too big to bury, and anyway foxes dig things up from quite deep holes.  It took two of us to drag it onto the carryall at the back of the tractor, and I have now shut the goats away from that paddock in case it had some disease. We will have to do a bit of research.

Strangely enough Edd and I had gone to a Landcare meeting about deer last week end. They are breeding massively and are now in big enough numbers to do damage in the forests as well as farms and gardens.  The samba deer are the worst pest and have caused several road accidents locally. Driving up the road from Yarra glen after dark has now become a hazardous venture with the deer adding to the menace caused by kangaroos and wombats. I drive very slowly and carefully, with this in mind.

The next task is to prepare for the midwinter feast on the first week of July.   I have ordered a turkey and will do masses of vegetables to go with it.  I can make a crumble from the fruit I froze earlier in the year. Indi has not been well this week but hopefully she will have recovered by then.   I am eyeing off some mistletoe on the old drive. It has not got white berries like the UK plant, but I plan to remedy this by a cunning addition of some fake pearls I have harvested from a necklace I got at the charity shop.

winter in the valley

 Pumpkins ready for eating

MidWinter sun

Ella and new sister

Another new baby

May 11, 2019

Winter has arrived with the usual sudden change. After months of dry heat, we now have non-stop rain and chilly winds.  The good thing is that the water tanks and dams are filling fast.  We were getting dangerously low with our water supplies, but that problem is over.  We were lucky and got the goat shed cleaned out whilst the paddocks were dry enough to drive over with the truck carrying the deep litter. The restored ramps between the goat shed and milking room are now doing their job and keeping the goats feet out of the mud.

I have planted more vegetable seedlings, but we have had a setback. A kangaroo has discovered the garden and eaten all the straw berry plants.  I am really worried it will start on the vegetables next.  Edd and I blocked the openings into the ruins, but we need a whole extra fence to protect the garden on all sides. It has been such a bad time for plant growth that everyone is finding their garden has been under attack.  A friend down the road even had the leaves of her rhubarb plants eaten!

The really big event has been the birth of our next grandchild.  Bo, Sylkie and I drove down to Melbourne to greet her on Monday evening a few hours after she was born. She looked very peaceful and has lots of dark hair and her dad’s eyes.  Indi  , Ben and their baby came to lunch today when Al came with Pele to see me with mother’s  day flowers. Al was very thoughtful and brought Indi flowers too.  Arden, who is staying in the donga, also joined us so we had a big family gathering.  I was not sure how many were coming so I made a big pan of soup and a plate of cheese. Al brought bread, olives and meat so there was plenty to go around.  

Indi’s baby has a little knobbly chin, but Wayne’s baby has the family chin dent.  This is the wrong way around, because it is Indi’s baby we are genetically related to and not Wayne’s! Pele, who is one year old,  is the uncle of Indi’s baby so we are getting a family web rather than a family tree structure.  In the end it is just wonderful that all  the babies are healthy and have arrived safely. 

The end of the dry season

May 5, 2019

We have made it through a week that could have been disastrous and come out triumphant.  Our first Great Grandchild , a little girl as yet un-named, arrived safely on Friday evening.   Indi started labour on Friday morning when we still had twenty students here.  Luckily, the fence posts in gravel pit paddock were laid out and put in on Thursday, so work had finished around Indi’s house. Another lucky thing was that the weather was perfect so that a blow-up birthing bath could be set up on the veranda. 

The weather had been fine and dry until Wednesday evening when we had a big Thunder storm and massive rain fall.  We all woke in the night with the loud thunder claps. I got up and put the house lights on in case any campers needed a refuge, but the kids stayed put and actually seemed to enjoy the storm.  They were even cheerful next Morning.   Most were able to continue their main tasks out-side, but I took my gardening group into the house and we dyed wool and made biscuits.  This time the dying was much more successful. The artificial dyes made the wool strong blue and light teal and the onion and avocado skins turned the wool a lovely gold colour.

This round of camps has been really good. Lots of work has been done cheerfully and willingly and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  Last week the ramps in and out of the goat shed were taken up, cleaned out and relayed so that now the wet weather has arrived the goats can come and go without tramping through mud.  The big tank there was checked and found to have doubled the amount of stored drinking water we had.  That was just in time because stores of water were worryingly low.

Now we can relax a bit. The kids are weaned, the big goats are drying off, the trees and gardens are getting enough water without extra  work.  We have no more bookings due and the hour change means we can get the evening work over by 5pm if we get going well. I can now spend time on craft projects and Edd can learn how to use his new welder.

Wall art

April 8 2019

Wall art from the conference and camp 1

Dusty and smoky

March 10, 2019

The valley has been full of smoke from the bush fires in the ranges and all of Victoria has been under health alerts for air quality. The distant hills are invisible, and the close ones are blurred.  There is still no rain and the paddocks are turning to dust that whirls upward with each gust of wind. Many houses have been lost in these fires but luckily no people. We have not been under threat, but we monitor all that is going on very closely.

All we can do is try to carry on as normal.  Edd has plumbed up the dam water system so that we can now pump dam water into the new plastic tank.   We can  then use it for watering the plants by the house and the fruit trees.  It makes the job of keeping plants alive much quicker and easier especially as now two people can water at once.   I would love to put plants in Toby’s garden around the new gazebo, but just at the minute they are safer in pots. 

Edd’s next job is to fix the fences so that we can move the horses and goats up onto the hill. There is no feed left in the gravel pit paddock and they are driving Indi mad trying to raid her vegetables.  She also has to open and shut the paddock gate every time she goes anywhere, and this is a big ask at now she is so close to giving birth. The dam in the hill paddock is broken and empty so we will need the horses to have access to the small dam . This means having an electric wire on the top of the fences below the dam, so they do not knock them over.  The hafflingers do not like taking “no” for an answer and barge right through fences if it is possible.

Today Dan and I pulled out most of the zucchini because they were going down with mildew.  We also need somewhere to start the winter crops.  We also pulled out the sweet corn which has also been harvested.  It was not as good a crop as last year even though we put in more plants.  On the other hand, the pumpkins have gone mad and taken over everywhere.   This year some are very large, green and warty.  They are probably from our saved seed and may or may not be edible.  Pumpkins are inclined to cross pollinate with anything, so we often get unexpected results.

At least one of the sheep is bagging up and looks heavily pregnant.   We have just started feeding them brewers grain which they are very happy about.   Even the sheep who turned their noses up at grain last year have dived in with enthusiasm today.    We have now weaned the buck kids  and are winding down the milk for the doe kids.  The goats are producing much less now, and it will soon be possible to go down to once a day milking. None of them has come into season yet so it looks as if we may have another year with late kidding.

February 11  2019

The weather is much cooler this week, hardly reaching 30C.  I have taken the opportunity to plant seedlings. I found enough silver beat for a row, but I had to buy snow peas and beet root.  We get this time in late summer when the soil is still warm, and seedlings can thrive.  It is too early for broccoli and cauliflowers with white butterflies still looking for caterpillar homes.

On the farm Dan is proving as good at painting as he is at gardening, and much to my delight unfinished jobs I that have been annoying me for ages are now getting done.  The sparrows have been evicted from our house entrance, the ceiling has been painted and the walls have been washed. This really needed doing but somehow it never got on the priority list.  I just tried to avoid looking every time I went outside.

I am picking and treating food for freezing.  Tomatoes, nectarines, sweet corn and all that sort of thing freeze well.  The zucchini just sit in piles hoping someone will need them before they get soggy.   We must have eaten zucchinis and cucumbers  every day for months now.  We are still eating strawberries for breakfast, but I should make time to pick blackberries.  We cook them with apples for winter.

We have started to wean the goat kids, starting with the boys who are the eldest.  The evening milking can now be done by hand and it looks as if we can drop it altogether by the end of the month.  Barak is walking much better on his leg that was broken and is showing a healthy interest in the females.  Mating season could arrive early this year.  The does are all looking fat and sleek in their shiny summer coats and we will soon start drying off the does who have milked for two years. It is sad, but Nola and Petra are on my selling list this year.  They are the oldest goats after the three golden oldies and if we keep them longer they will be too old to sell.  Petra was one of quads and has the habit of diving behind the bale looking for oats that the others have spilled. She is a big brown goat and we will miss her. I hope we find her a good home.

accidental success

9 February 2019

At last the weather has broken and we have rain and coolness.  The long hot spell got harder as it went on once all the moisture had been driven out of the air.  We have been really worried about friends in Tasmania who are close to huge fires burning there, but hopefully the rain has saved them too. They went to Tassie to escape the climatic problems here, but it seems that with a warming earth there are no safe places to escape to.

Today I am cooking the first pumpkin of the year and preparing sweet corn for the freezer. This week has been hard because it is the tenth anniversary of the big bush fire that caused so much destruction in our valley.  We would have just let the date slide past, but money was given to put on events and it has all been talked over on radio and TV.  Edd got roped into a radio interview and altogether the only way to escape would have been to go on holiday.

At least we had a distraction in the week when we did a day for a group of Montessori Students from Taiwan. They were a delight and with staff numbers almost equal to students the day went really well. I did learn though that we will have about 60 kids here when the school has its orientation day for new kids , which is rather a worry. It seems as if we have launched ourselves into another business by accident.

Another good accident is down between us and our western neighbours.  I brought various cheap native trees and planted them along the fence line as a way of preserving our view. One of them is now covered with red flowers. Edd has been trying to grow a flowering gum here for 40 years without success but it seems that one of the cheap trees I brought has turned out to be better than I expected.

Help from Finland

January 18.2019

We had a Montessori conference booked in here that coincided with hay making so we joined the “workaway” scheme to get extra help.  So far this is working really well, and we are getting through a back log of work that was stacking up worryingly.  This week a lovely young couple from Finland have joined us.

Now that all the hay is in Edd is working to get the young female goats into their own croft at the back of the hay shed.  We also have to complete the new chook run for the pullets who are developing red combs and look like laying will start soon.  My main task is keeping everyone fed and the business and bills dealt with.

I am having a problem buying butter muslin because my usual supplier has run out and so has spot light. They had small packs of cloth, but it is very inferior to what I usually use. We use quite a bit of this cloth to make hard, soft and feta cheese because it drains the curds and stops the cheese sticking in the moulds.  

Heat and hay

January 7 2019

We are very relieved, we have got the first paddock of hay bales stacked in the shed without too much stress.   It was cut and baled on Thursday and we got enough help to cart it from Healesville to our shed.  I drove the ute to pick up the first load and Indi drove for the last one which included the hay she needed for her horses. Edd, Graeme and his helper managed the rest with some very welcome help from my friends son and back pack worker.

On Friday the temperature soared into the high 40’s. None of us could have worked hay in that heat so we were very glad the job was done.  The plants suffered but as the temperature cooled next day most survived. The big, and very unexpected loss was the cat.  He was fine in the morning, but he staggered down to the house in the evening, collapsed and then died.  There was no time to even think about getting him to a vet.  We can only assume that he must have been bitten by a snake.