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.