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.