A very wet spring

 3.10.2021

 

Everything is water logged. We have never known it quite so wet.  Josh had to drill holes in some plant pots to stop things drowning.  It is actually quite warm, so there has been lots of growth and today when it is sunny all the pumped-up vegetables are looking deflated!  The snow peas are shooting up and I try to help them cling on to the supports as mostly they are not very good at doing this themselves.  No flowers yet but it can’t be long. 

 

Also, I have planted out the first of the zucchini seedlings. They have been growing in pots, but today I made clearings in the mizuna patch and put them into the ground. It will be so good when we actually eat zucchinis again. They seem to have so many uses. I think the last broccoli crop will be ready first. The heads are now almost harvesting size. Meanwhile we use lettuce, silver beat, celery and various lettuces. We ate the last cauliflower but there is a second planning on the way. The asparagus have started to shoot too. Most noticeable are all the fruit trees that are in full flower and the oak trees that have now a full canopy of bright young leaves.

 

Our preserved vegetables in the freezer are depleting too. This is good because I need to get to a point where an almost empty freezer can be cleaned out and ready for the next years’ crops.  The beans and tomatoes are almost all gone but we still have fruit that we eat with our muesli for breakfast. This year I have frozen cauliflower which has worked a lot better than I thought it would. 

The animals are not really happy with the weather. The sheep have wet feet and resulting problems and the goats are staying in the shed for much of each day.   This week Bo has come up everyday and helped us do the farm work so that we could get an odd sort of at home holiday.  It is at least 2 years since we had any break at all, so this has been very welcome.  Edd and I are both feeling age related problems this year and even getting an appointment with a physio is almost impossible.

 

We have not seen any of our great grandkids for months and it is feeling a bit too long an interval. We are lucky that Josh and CB live on the farm or we would feel much too isolated. The good news is that cases in NSW seem to have peaked and there is hope the same thing will happen in Victoria as the numbers of vaccinations mounts.  There have been anti vax protests in Melbourne and we got a surge of cases after football grand final parties but most people are trying to do the right thing.  We are just keeping our fingers crossed.

 Our two Persian lambs have staled in well.  They come running up to get their bottle of milk twice a day and eat gay and Lucerne chaff along with their greens.   We are building a sheep handling area next to the cattle yards so that we can manage our small flock with less work.

The male goat kids have now been sold and the females are managing on twice daily milk.  This is great progress.  The adult goats give enough milk to feed the kids and lambs and give us some.  Selling the males usually gets the milk production balanced with what we use so that there is enough but none is wasted. 

Good and Bad news

 

The solstice has passed and though the days will gradually get longer, the coldest days of winter are yet to come.  This week has not been too bad. We are into he third dry day with sun shine, not that the mud has noticeably started to dry up yet.   It was dry last week too and the machinery arrived and put all the earths back around our new carport. It was too wet to do the top soil but the back hoe was able to lift the car port roof beams up into position.   Luckily Edd and Stevo had got all the measurements correct again, and the bolt holes all lined up perfectly.  It was all pretty worrying, especial having machinery on the slope behind the carport. I chose not to watch!

Indi is moving house. She and a friend who also a single mother are renting a mud brick house on a small holding,  She is even able to get her horse back again.  Moving with a toddler is hard and she is very stressed but we will all go and help later in the week.  She also plans to move her bee hives but luckily Josh is very keen to get his own hives here so we will still have the benefits of pollinators and honey.      Indi has brought her caravan here and left it by the ruins so Josh could move in to it. I am sure he likes having his own space but I am missing having him around the house already.

This morning we had sad news from the UK because Edd's brother in law has passed away. He has been in hospital for weeks but took a sudden turn for the worst this week.  We feel so sorry for Edd's sister. At present Edd can not even phone her because she can't hear us.  We are not sure why but think there is a problem her end as we can phone every one else in the UK.   Luckily Edd's niece is keeping in contact with us.  We just feel so bad about being unable to help or offer support.

This has been a bad Covid week too.   Most states are in some form of lockdown now that the Delta strain has got loose in the community. Victoria is OK for the moment but things could change fast. The problems are that hotels have been used to provide suboptimal quarentine accommodation and there does not seem to be enough of the recommended vaccine. Al and Josh have had two shots but the rest of us only one. There are long waits for appointments.

bad gets worse

14.6. 2021

 

This week has probably been the hardest one we have experienced recently. On Wednesday night the state of Victoria was hit by horrific storms.  The electricity went off in the night as trees fell and took down all the power lines. After a few hours all the phone lines went dead too. There are electrical connections on the mobile phone towers and thel nodes on the landlines that have a limited time of battery backup.

 

We were already under covid lock down rules and so when we lost communications it was illegal to physically visit anyone. To make matters worse the torrential rains caused the flooded rivers to overflow into the surrounding land and closed the main road into Yarra Glen, among many others. 

 

Indi had a friend who lived in a yurt by a river. On Wednesday she gave birth just before the floods started to rise. The midwife, (who we all know), was worried about the family so she ended up swimming through the water next day so she could check up on how things were going. The water was just below the platform supporting their yurt, and she was worried that the whole set up was in danger of floating off in the flood. The baby’s father was not worried and felt that if the worst happened, he could load his family into his canoe!  Somehow the danger of being afloat in a raging flood had escaped his thinking.

 

When Indi heard about this, she tried to ring the SES, but of course the phones were out of action and even the triple zero emergency line was not working. She thought about going to the police but as the living arrangements for the family were not exactly legal, she decided to mount her own rescue.  She could drive through the water to a certain point but then she had to wade to get everyone out. They all ended up at her mother’s house, but I don’t think anyone got much sleep.   Some candle wax got on the carpets too, which did not go down well.

 

We were all very relieved when our power was restored, and we could communicate again. We are the lucky ones and only had this situation for 4 days. Other areas with more trees down are still waiting and it might take another three weeks. Our house works OK without power too. The water still flows by gravity, the stoves are wood, and gas and our toilets still work without the pressure pump. We also had brought a generator so we could keep the freezer and fridges cold, but everything still took more effort.

 

Progress with the car port, at last.

 27.5.2021

 

We have been lucky. The weather managed to stay dry and warm enough to allow work on the car port.  Josh dug the mud out of the trenches and he and Edd laid down the drainage pipes and covered them with chippings. They then fixed Drain cell to the walls and put in the down pipes that will take water from the future guttering.    Then it was a matter of getting Skiddy, our geriatric skid steer loader and carefully tipping scoria behind the walls.    Edd worked the loader and Josh got behind the walls and raked it into the correct places. My job was sweeping up spilt stuff and painting water proofer onto the front of the wing walls.

 

The result pf all this effort is that we are no longer worried about mud being washed down into the cavity between the walls and the earth cut out. Actually, we now need mud there and hopefully a bigger, younger piece of equipment will arrive next week and move the huge pile of dug out mud into its final location.  We can now park our cars in this space, but we cannot put the roof on until the steel beams arrive.  Edd borrowed Josh’s car and drove up to Shepparton last week to put in the order for the steel, so that is on the way too. 

 

We just got our work done before a storm hit us. Lots of rain turned the drive into a muddy mess and the power was off for most of the evening.  We have candles and Josh has all sorts of torches so with the gas cooker we could do all the usual evening stuff.  The water can run by gravity, even without pressure pumps and the fires use the dead wood we have collected. Josh has set up a way we can have music on our speaker from our mobile phones, so we had a very relaxing evening.

 

Edd is still feeling very sore after running into the glass door at the post office last week.  

(This is dead true; I swear I did not hit him).  He got two black eyes, a massive scab on his nose and a sore hip and wrist from when he fell backwards.  The people around him wanted to call an ambulance but he just came home and has been going a bit slowly.  He found that working on skiddy made his head woozy and his hip painful.  He has stayed at home until he has begun to look a bit more presentable.

 

This meant that it was only Josh, Bo and I who went to the opening of a friend’s exhibition in town.  The traffic was awful, and it took ages to get there but we had a good time to talk and enjoyed the exhibition when we finally arrived. The art was all these pastels still life works that vibrated with colour.  Josh liked one of sunflowers the most. Sadly, our friend’s husband was not there due to worsening dementia, that was just starting when we were last together about two years ago.

 

The big news is that Bo’s family is considering buying a Tesla car. Simon is test driving one this week. We get together with Bo’s family most Sunday evenings for a family meal around the huge table in her new house.  The whole family is much happier in the new place.  The boys are both in trade apprenticeships and only Silky is still at school. 

 

 

Edible fungi.

 We have field mushrooms and pine mushrooms growing this year.

Easter celebrations

4.10.2021

 

Time passes so fast. The figs are almost over now, and it is the quinces turn to ripen.  I need to get them netted but last week I had a bad cold and really did not get much done at all.  Luckily, I was well enough on Easter Sunday to go to the feast party Bo had in her new house.  It was both Easter and my birthday, so I sort of had to be there.  Bo put in a tremendous effort and the food was fantastic.  Roast turkey and lamb with lots and lots of different salads and vegetable dishes.  All the family members of our age were there and most of the kids and grandkids, Wayne’s two girls loved swimming in the pool with him and sitting in the spa.  Indi’s daughter also had her first go in the spa and very much approved.  We all had a wonderful afternoon with family and friends.

 

The week before something happened that we have never experienced before in 50 years of goat keeping. Almost all the does came into season on the same day and stood in front of the buck’s pen screaming out to him.  We did our best to take goats in turn to be serviced but we tried hard not to overload the young buck, Ronan.  He was just learning his purpose in life and had only just worked out which end of the doe to mate.  This will probably mean we have several goats kidding on the same day if they take, which could be interesting.

 The hardest bit when this happens is making sure that we know whose kids are whose.  Last year we collared and labelled them all, but they sucked the writing off the tags which made everything harder.

 

I am still working on processing tomatoes and finally we have egg plants to eat as egg plant parma.  I think there are now some parsley seedlings sprouting and the pumpkins are about ready.  This year the Queensland blues did nothing at all but the balloon shaped bright orange ones I grew from saved seeds have been most prolific. I will have to buy replacement QB seeds and see if we do better next year.

 

Last night our TV viewing was interrupted by a news team announce the death of Prince Phillip.  Whilst I was listening and watching the news readers Edd looked at the news headlines scrolled at the bottom of the screen.  One read that the zookeepers in Sydney were horror struck at the sudden death of their chimpanzee.  Edd did not think this was a good look so he phoned the ABC.  At first, they thought he was one of the hundred who had rung up complaining about the interruption to the show they were viewing but when Edd finally got them to listen the reaction was “Oh shit, I’ll ring then”!   A while later the headline was replaced.

 

As someone pointed out for most people listening the queen and her husband have been a constant all their lives.  It makes you wonder how long the queen can keep going and how things will change. With our present politicians I don’t think a republic of Australia would be an improvement.

 

 

Permaculture students

 3.21.2021

 

It was the equinox this weekend, but Autumn has already started. The Virginia creeper has covered the ruins with trailing banners of scarlet leaves and the zucchinis have begun to get mildew.  For the first time we have had a good crop of apples from the trees in the new orchard and the pears and nashi pears in the ruins garden also cropped heavily.  Now it is the turn of the fig tree and we are giving them away by the bucket load to friends. 

 

For the last two Saturdays we have had Permaculture students for site visits.  Yesterday it was a group from Ceres in Melbourne.  They were all interesting and very varied people from a large age range and asked lots of questions. Edd and I were exhausted after they left. We have to get up early to have all the animals fed and milked and morning tea and cheese tasting prepared for when they arrive at 9.30, and it is full on after that. It is so good to have new people coming again after last year’s shut down.

 

Whilst we were showing the group of students around Morg arrived with his friends to continue work on his boat. He has moved his cars off our property but has replaced them with a boat that he is fixing up.  Ollie was also here but is very tired after getting up early in his new role as a roof plumbing apprentice.  It seems a big step to go from being a child at school to a working an adult job. I think that a few years in tertiary education makes the transition more fun.

 

Today Stevo is back fixing the unfinished edges in the back passage.  Edd has been working on the car port and has filled in all the rough edges on the outside of the walls ready for water proofing. We have tried to find someone with a machine that can dig a drain round the back but have had no luck so far. This is a problem because with every heavy session of rain more earth falls down where we need to dig, and the job gets harder.  The East coast has had terrific storms and around Sydney many have had to evacuate due to extreme flooding, but the storms have not reached us, yet!

 

My work has been to do with food.  I have been harvesting the summer crops and when I can plant out new vegetables for winter.  My first silver beat are doing well but so far, no parsley seedlings have come up.  Beetroots are the next things to go in when I get a space.

Today I have blanched and frozen sweet corn and tomatoes. It is a good thing we have a mega sized freezer as it is rapidly filling up!

 

The goats have started to cycle, and we mated Rita to Barrack last week.  She has not been kidded for several years because her milk production just kept coming but I think it is wrong to leave them too long.  We have no ram so we will not have to worry about lambs this year. That will be a big relief and give us time to work on the paddocks and fences.  There is a lot that needs doing, but then there always is.

 

 

getting ready for winter

the second trailer of sheep gets loaded

 3.8.2021

 

We got a lot done in February.  We finally got the sheep shorn and then last week Edd and the shearer drove them to the nearest market which was hours of driving away.  This was such a relief. We were over stocked all winter due to virus shutdowns and the sheep were getting through fences and causing all sorts of problems. The paddocks are in a terrible mess and the fences all need replacing. We sold 31 sheep and kept four here, two because they were too old to sell and two younger ones to keep them company.  Rather to our surprise we got a good price at the sale and have actually made a profit!

 

Another good surprise was our friend, John, turning up sooner than we expected with his digger and truck to clean out the goat shed.   He does this every second year, and we all get loads of goat manure mixed with straw that helps the soil grow vegetables.   The deep litter was almost a metre deep in places so now the pen walls are again high enough to stop the goats jumping out.   Edd has collected another ton of oats and we have a good stock of hay and straw, so we are all set for winter. 

 

We are sad because Edd’s dog, Janner died last week.  He has always had a fault that made him hop rather than run with his back legs but over the last month he got much worse. He was about 12 years old but really, he has done well to last that long.  Our other dog, Flynn, is very sad. We are not sure how to help him at this stage.  We try and keep him with us a s much as possible.

 

In the garden the tomatoes are turning red, at last, and we have the best crop of juicy capsicums we have ever grown.  We grew far too many cucumbers. I was hoping to sell them but everyone else brought lots to market and ours were not early enough this year to beat the rush.  I have discovered that goats will eat the zucchinis, so we avoid wastage there. I have not tried them on cucumber yet.  The sweet corn is almost ready, and the beans have given a huge crop. I have stocked up the freezer with runner beans, round beans pears, apples and the first of the tomatoes.  

 

My storeroom is looking more organised. Bo moved her furniture out and into her new house and stevo build me some shelves where I can store glasses and tother things.  I scrubbed the floor and redid the floor surface and also painted the areas of floor and ceiling that had been hidden behind the furniture.  It feels good to get things cleaned and organised. I have brought a small dish washer to go in the kitchen. It will fit in one of the cupboard spaces.  We need it for days when the solar does not heat the water and it is too warm to light the wood stove which also supplies hot water. There is an electric booster on the tank, but we have never put it on because the water is almost always hot enough to shower.

 

The steeling of a cupboard for the dish washer made me clean out and re-organise the other cupboards so that everything we needed still fitted in.  All in all, I feel very happy to be so well sorted.

 

A new year begins

 3.1 2021

stuff in Edd's shed needs sorting

The car port needs a roof

The new storage shed is great
 

The new year has begun, and the virus is once again a serious concern for everyone. The border with NSW is now closed and the authorities are desperately trying to contact trace the new cases here in Victoria.  On the farm things are OK. It has been an exceptionally wet year and the grass is still green.  A lot of hay has been made and we loaded our shed up with small square bales before Xmas. 

 

The grass is so thick that we are strip grazing the second goat croft.  The goats have a large area of grazing up in the old vineyard paddock, but they eat the crofts on their way in and out. We have 23 goats in this herd. Two very old goats are in a retirement croft and 6 female kids in the croft by the front gate. I make feta cheese and cream cheese every week and most of the remaining milk is used to feed the goat kids

 

 This year we will need to get the deep litter cleaned out because it is about ¾ of a metre deep in some places.  The litter will be used to enrich the soil in the paddocks and vegetable garden. The vegetables are doing well at the moment. We have lettuce, kale, Warragul greens, runner beans, round beans, squash, basil, zucchinis, and cauliflowers to eat, but the tomatoes are still green, and we have eaten all the mizuna and silver beat.  The pumpkins are forming and the sweet corn, egg plants and capsicums are still quite small.

 

During the long winter lock down Stevo came and helped us put up a big storage shed.  We are in the process of moving the shelving into this shed and sorting out stuff from Edd’s shed into it. This time things are sorted, Paint on one shelf, fencing gear on another etc.  Edd wants more space in his shed so that he can get the vehicles in it to do repairs.  I can also reclaim space in our house.  Already I have paid Ollie to move all the tiles I use for mosaics in under the paint shelf and I plan to move out the big boxes of accounts that we are supposed to store for 7 years.

 

We also started work on a car port next to the house.  It is a very complicated car port as it is earth covered on three sides. At present we have the floor and the walls but no roof, so it is not much use yet.  We had to dig it back into the hill so that it did not shade the house and reduce the effect of the sun that keeps us warm in winter.  Our house has settled at around 22 C all year.  This suits us well and we have never felt too hot or too cold indoors.  I love underground living and would hate to leave this place.

 

This means tackling problems whilst we still have the energy.  Our biggest problem is that we are overstocked with sheep.  The markets we could use closed down because of the virus and have not yet reopened.  The shearer promised he would come before Xmas and then didn’t, so we have an ever-growing problem.  We have the sheep in the old hay paddock for now so they have lots of feed but it won’ last for ever.

 

 

26.5.2020

 

Edd and Stevo have raised the sides of the vegetable beds by adding planks of timber above the corrugated iron.  This became essential because rabbits worked out how to get into the raised beds and then eat all our seedlings. Since this work was done the replacement seedlings that we put in are doing better, though the cabbage white butterflies are still causing problems with their hungry caterpillars.

 

We are having the wettest year we have had for years. The mud is horrible and torturous to walk on. I have spent a lot of time spinning and knitting indoors out of the damp. I have lots of grandkids who need winter woollies, especial the ones that do lots of windy beach walks. I should really be working on the accounts but that is not half as much fun.

 

Like me the goats prefer to be indoors when it rains. We still have plenty of hay so they can feed without walking anywhere if they choose.  The sheep are not so lucky and are having a pretty rough time.  We are feeding them barley, but we will have to do more. Normally we would have sent them off to market by now, but all the sheep markets are closed due to virus worries.  We need to get them salt licks with extra selenium. They need extra selenium in wet years, or the lambs get white muscle disease which kills the