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