Saturday night marked the end of an era. Edd and I fought desperately to save the property but it all happened too fast. A tiny flume of smoke kilometers away on above the distant hills was the only warning. The TV, radio, and internet were already swamped with reports from other areas and the fire moved too quickly for anyone in Steels Creek to have time to prepare.
As we had got our guests off to what we hoped was safety a loud roaring heralded the fire its self. It swept down the surrounding hills in a sheet of flame three times taller than the gum trees. In seconds it had roared up from behind us and engulfed the brewery. The power went off and the Studio cottage blew up , literally. I called all the animals and fortunately all who could came instantly and I led them to safety in the paddock with the big dam. Edd got the fire pump working and I bucketed water from the pool.
When the house lit we opened the doors to call out the dogs who Edd heard barking. Sadly the house was full of swirling smoke and we could not reach them or them us. We have buried them under a big rock next day. When we knew the house was lost we joined the animals in the big paddock and watched years of work vanish in an instant.
Luckily we had camping gear in the cellar and managed to find a tin opener and cans of baked beans . Our poly igloo under the big gum had survived so it now became our new house. Next day it was confirmed that our neighbour and over 20 others in Steel Creek had perished. Hargreaves road is an unrecognisable moonscape of ash covered land and blackened trees. I feel so lucky that we and most of our animals survived. If any guests that are booked in contact me once we get a phone again I will try and sort things out but I see but I see no way we will be in business again this year or in the forseeable future.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Heat Wave
This has been the hottest week we have experiences in Southern Australia. It has been over 110 C in Melbourne but I suspect it is much hotter out here away from the sea. It feels cool in the house but the thermometer says it is 35C . Having so many plants die is heart breaking . I have nursed an avocado tree I was given for years but one evening I found all the leaves had burnt dry and were dropping off. Josh has rigged up a shade cloth for it but I suspect we are too late.
A clever man with a back hoe dug all the manure out of the sheds loaded it on his truck and took tons of this useful compost down into the paddocks. I got one area cleaned and white washed but it is too hot to complete the job. At least the goats are happy to sleep outside in the paddock. They are still producing lots of milk so we went to an auction and brought three dairy calves to rear. It took a week to settle them onto bottles of goats milk but they are happy now. Sheila has a white shied shape on her face , Grace has a white elongated love heart and Betsy has a brown face. I tie different coloured baler twine on their bottles so I can feed them the right amount over each session in two halves and make digestion easier.
The worst problem is with the chooks who really find the temperature impossible. They all have shady tree and plenty of water but this is not enough. We have to hose them or bath them at intervals and keep an eye on individuals. I have had suffering chooks in the house to try and save them. So far we have lost 10 birds , all over three years old.
Edd brought new Polish and Houdan chooks last week . It is really hard on them adapting to a new home and the heat. Our own youngsters are suffering but so far surviving. My daughter Bo took her boys out to a pool and came back to find her budgy had died . Her house has no air conditioning or much insulation so she has to go out. She brings the kids here some evenings where they love our little above ground pool.
A clever man with a back hoe dug all the manure out of the sheds loaded it on his truck and took tons of this useful compost down into the paddocks. I got one area cleaned and white washed but it is too hot to complete the job. At least the goats are happy to sleep outside in the paddock. They are still producing lots of milk so we went to an auction and brought three dairy calves to rear. It took a week to settle them onto bottles of goats milk but they are happy now. Sheila has a white shied shape on her face , Grace has a white elongated love heart and Betsy has a brown face. I tie different coloured baler twine on their bottles so I can feed them the right amount over each session in two halves and make digestion easier.
The worst problem is with the chooks who really find the temperature impossible. They all have shady tree and plenty of water but this is not enough. We have to hose them or bath them at intervals and keep an eye on individuals. I have had suffering chooks in the house to try and save them. So far we have lost 10 birds , all over three years old.
Edd brought new Polish and Houdan chooks last week . It is really hard on them adapting to a new home and the heat. Our own youngsters are suffering but so far surviving. My daughter Bo took her boys out to a pool and came back to find her budgy had died . Her house has no air conditioning or much insulation so she has to go out. She brings the kids here some evenings where they love our little above ground pool.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
/Users/amandawilliams/Desktop/IMG_0020.JPG
Imogen has kidded. Two boys , an heir and a spare from the brown buck. She delivered her babies easily and carefully, licking one off before settling down to birth the second one. Usually it is only the older goats that do this so I was very surprised . One boy is almost all black with a white splash mark on his side and the other is mostly brown . They both seem very healthy and Imogen is letting them feed and stands still when I milk her with out being tied up .
It is a good thing she is such a good mother as we are busy getting in hay. This year there is lots of hay made in the valley and it is almost half the price it has been for the last two years. Our second son Wayne helped us with the first load . He is the strong man of the family and can throw bales up onto the truck in a quite amazing style. It is nice hay too. It has lots of colour and smells good, just seeing the stack building up in the shed is reassuring as it means all the animals have feed for another year.
The hard bit is that hay and xmas always come together. We did the whole turkey thing on Xmas eve and lined up tables to make a big stretch for twenty people. Bo did roast potatoes and her usual home made Xmas puddings and brandy butter, and Dave's family made chocolates. I cooked two turkeys so that we would have something spare for meals when we were too busy on the farm to cook from scratch. We have been needing it this week. It was a fantastic feast and we have plenty of opportunity to work off the excesses this week.
Today Josh flew back from Tasmania and we met him at the airport because he had twenty one kilos of honey that he and his friend Ben got from Ben's bees. Much to his relief the honey pots survived the journey with out creating a sticky disaster. We opened a pot when we got home and even the smell was fantastic. I do not think I have ever tasted such beautiful honey.
Imogen has kidded. Two boys , an heir and a spare from the brown buck. She delivered her babies easily and carefully, licking one off before settling down to birth the second one. Usually it is only the older goats that do this so I was very surprised . One boy is almost all black with a white splash mark on his side and the other is mostly brown . They both seem very healthy and Imogen is letting them feed and stands still when I milk her with out being tied up .
It is a good thing she is such a good mother as we are busy getting in hay. This year there is lots of hay made in the valley and it is almost half the price it has been for the last two years. Our second son Wayne helped us with the first load . He is the strong man of the family and can throw bales up onto the truck in a quite amazing style. It is nice hay too. It has lots of colour and smells good, just seeing the stack building up in the shed is reassuring as it means all the animals have feed for another year.
The hard bit is that hay and xmas always come together. We did the whole turkey thing on Xmas eve and lined up tables to make a big stretch for twenty people. Bo did roast potatoes and her usual home made Xmas puddings and brandy butter, and Dave's family made chocolates. I cooked two turkeys so that we would have something spare for meals when we were too busy on the farm to cook from scratch. We have been needing it this week. It was a fantastic feast and we have plenty of opportunity to work off the excesses this week.
Today Josh flew back from Tasmania and we met him at the airport because he had twenty one kilos of honey that he and his friend Ben got from Ben's bees. Much to his relief the honey pots survived the journey with out creating a sticky disaster. We opened a pot when we got home and even the smell was fantastic. I do not think I have ever tasted such beautiful honey.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Toyota Dreaming
Bonnie , the Murray Grey calf has moved back home with her aunties and step sisters and does not seem to miss us a bit. We were worried that she had not grown well enough but she looks just they same as the others and we are very relieved. I am also were pleased now we have got the young chicks out of the house into new sheds. They had begun to be very smelly so when they were relocated I washed everything in the room and repainted the walls. I wanted everything to be fresh for Xmas.
Today our guests helped us load all the young male goats and three male sheep into the back of the toyota so Edd could drive them to market at Mernda. We still have green grass but I expect it to all die off soon and it is important for us not to have more animals than we can feed through the lean months. We are hoping to give ourselves a stock crate to fit on the back of the ute for Xmas because the toyota is really too old and worn out to use in public places. We just hope no one official notices this time !
The old toyota is a bit like a family member. It lived with us in the Tanami desert for five years and we shared many adventures and misadventures . In the school holidays it transported us to the farm and back. Edd and I took turns, one to sleep and one to drive and Josh had to sit up at night and help look out for black cows on the Stuart Highway. We could get from here to Alice Springs in 36 hours. We would then stock up with food , collect our essential house stuff from the Red Centre Store and head off another four hours into the desert.
When we got our old dog Bryn he had to be the right size to fit in the back between all our stuff and he had to learn how to jump in and pack himself. When we stopped anywhere he got out and dug a cool hole in the earth under the toyota and would stay there quietly on guard for hours. Poor Bryn is now as old and frail as the toyota. It will really be the end of an era when we loose him. Perhaps we can use the toyota as a garden decoration and sit and dream in it of days gone by.
Today our guests helped us load all the young male goats and three male sheep into the back of the toyota so Edd could drive them to market at Mernda. We still have green grass but I expect it to all die off soon and it is important for us not to have more animals than we can feed through the lean months. We are hoping to give ourselves a stock crate to fit on the back of the ute for Xmas because the toyota is really too old and worn out to use in public places. We just hope no one official notices this time !
The old toyota is a bit like a family member. It lived with us in the Tanami desert for five years and we shared many adventures and misadventures . In the school holidays it transported us to the farm and back. Edd and I took turns, one to sleep and one to drive and Josh had to sit up at night and help look out for black cows on the Stuart Highway. We could get from here to Alice Springs in 36 hours. We would then stock up with food , collect our essential house stuff from the Red Centre Store and head off another four hours into the desert.
When we got our old dog Bryn he had to be the right size to fit in the back between all our stuff and he had to learn how to jump in and pack himself. When we stopped anywhere he got out and dug a cool hole in the earth under the toyota and would stay there quietly on guard for hours. Poor Bryn is now as old and frail as the toyota. It will really be the end of an era when we loose him. Perhaps we can use the toyota as a garden decoration and sit and dream in it of days gone by.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
My silly accident
My gardian angels definitly deserve an Xmas bonus. On Friday afternoon I was wizzing around on the ride on mower trying to make the place look presentable for our week end guests. I had just about finished and was doing the tricky bit between the water tank and the gully when the mower lost traction and began to slide backwards towards the gully. Now at this point the gully is about 40 feet deep and full of trees and blackberries so I slammed on the brakes but the mower continued to slide backwards towards into the gully.
I sort of assumed we would bump into a tree but instead the mower lanched off a sort of cliff and began to fall. I have very little memory of what happened next. I assume either my old skills learnt from a life time of falling off horses clicked in subcontiously or there was divine intervention. Anyway , both the mower and I fell into the gully. Some where in mid air the mower passed me and it landed upside down a bit further down than I did. There was no way I could pull it up right or even reach to turn the fuel off so I just climbed back to the top and treated myself to a cup of tea and some chocolate . All I suffered was some black berry scratches on my back and a graze on one leg.
Today Al came over and helped Edd to rescue the mower. They put planks down the over hanging cliff bit and towed the mower out with chains , the tractor and pulleys. It was a tricky job but the odd bit was that Edd was able to start the mower up and drive it back to the shed! The whole episode has to be some sort of minor miracle. I am not sure why I risked going so close to the edge. I do it every week but this time it was more slippy than usual and I was more tired. We have had four young ladies from Hong Kong staying this week and I have spent extra energy working with them. They are here for two weeks doing work experience for their vet training course at melbourne University and are great fun. They are a good help with the milking and other animal work but I think just keeping up with young people is getting harder as I age.
On Wednesday Bill came at 6.30 am and shore the sheep. They are very upset when they first loose their wool because they do not recognise each other. After a bit they work it out and settle down. The wool ws good this year and the sheep were too fat . if anything. They had been making such a fuss trying to get us to give them more barley that I was worried they were hungry. Now I know they were just greedy !
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Chooks
The house is full of little chicks kept warm by light bulbs ( the old type). We sit at each meal and watch them whilst we try to decide what breed and sex they are. So far we think the yellow chicks are faverolles the black ones are faverlolle /aracana cross and the brown ones are welsummer cross, but we could be wrong.
They are all very cute still. the older chicks have grown feathers and at four weeks old look about quail size. They don't look at all cute now.
We have started to sell excess animals and another five goats were sold this week. Saddly japaljarri had to go too as the new brown buck will be used this year. It is always sad to see animals go but they are now looking in lovely condition and we hope their new owners value them.
The Murray grey calf ,Bonnie, is also going home next week . We have weaned her off her twice daily bottles of goats milk and she is still looking fat with the Spring grass so her owner has arranged to pick her up next Monday. We have phoned the shearer as the sheep are in need of a hair cut . He is getting old now and each year we are worried that he will have retired but it looks as if we are still lucky this year. He comes really early so we have to run around getting everything organised at first light but he gives us a few hours warning before he arrives.
They are all very cute still. the older chicks have grown feathers and at four weeks old look about quail size. They don't look at all cute now.
We have started to sell excess animals and another five goats were sold this week. Saddly japaljarri had to go too as the new brown buck will be used this year. It is always sad to see animals go but they are now looking in lovely condition and we hope their new owners value them.
The Murray grey calf ,Bonnie, is also going home next week . We have weaned her off her twice daily bottles of goats milk and she is still looking fat with the Spring grass so her owner has arranged to pick her up next Monday. We have phoned the shearer as the sheep are in need of a hair cut . He is getting old now and each year we are worried that he will have retired but it looks as if we are still lucky this year. He comes really early so we have to run around getting everything organised at first light but he gives us a few hours warning before he arrives.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)