good fire bad fire

April 1. 2014

It is still very hot
and dry. For once this is a good thing because we have at least 20 school kids
and their three teachers here for a weeks camp. They all work very hard every
morning helping us on the farm and then they swim before cooking their own
lunch. The school arrived with a log splitter and one of the groups is attacking
the big log pile we stored up after the fires from all the dead trees. It is an
ideal time to do this because it is so dry.

A second group are
helping to move the dung from the pony’s paddock. It is all being carefully
packaged up in bags to use in the school garden. A very sensible group of kids
elected to clean up the potting area and can work in the cool under the
trees.  One of the teachers is
having a battle with the blackberries that have surrounded the large old water
tank.  The idea is to clear every
thing back so that we can fence off the gully and let the goats into clean it
up.  We even have a group moving
the old worm beds from the lower orchard and levelling the ground there. All
this help means that I can now maintain everything with the ride on mower so it
all becomes possible again.

For the first time for
years I am beginning to feel that our life and land are coming back under
control. It is such a good feeling that it is giving me more energy and I have
tackled jobs that have been stacking up for ages. I have cleaned the weeds from
all the garden paths and have extended the brickwork to the drive. Behind the
repaired walls the soil is covered with mulch and growing new plants.  Steve and Chris came last weekend and
built pagodas at the ends of the shelter shed and put up a pool gate. I built
the walls either side of the pool gate that also work as a fence for the veggie
beds.

Today we have lit the
pizza oven for the first time to try it out and I have prepared some dough to
Al’s recipe.  It is much wetter
than my bread dough and it has to be stored for four hours in the fridge. It
has other ideas and keeps escaping out of the bowl into the vegetables.  I am not sure I am doing things right
but Al is meant to arrive this evening and he has done it all before.

We have just had an alert
because some of the kids spotted a fire building up to the northeast.  The internet had a warning about a
grass fire at Murrindidi but Beni checked and says there are two planned burns
up there that are under control. Let us hope she is right because she lives
surrounded by forest much closer to the fire than we are.

more dry weather

March 20. 2014

It is hot again today
but we are getting cool nights and dew falls every morning, which is helping
the grass go green again. The ground is still terribly dry and we are feeding
hay and barley to all the stock to compensate for the lack of grazing. The new
chooks have settled down with the young ones we reared and they are all
learning the joys of dust baths.

Today Edd has gone
back to Lee’s farm to buy more straw bales. They are needed to make the seats
for the guests at Al and Pip’s wedding. Pip’s parents came here last weekend
and we all worked together to complete the clearing of the polyhouse and build
a pizza oven in the ruins. Al also put up one of the cheap tents he ordered to
extend the under cover area. It worked out well and even came with special
white bags to fill with sand for stabilization!

I am putting in a
special effort with the garden to try and get it as neat as possible. It is
amazing how much dead matter a garden produces. We have build a burning pile
below the ruins dam and it grows larger by the day. I have trimmed the lavender
and rosemary bushes. I was very impressed by the rosemary in turkey at the hot
springs. It was trimmed into sculptured designs that looked great.

Last night we all went
to the hotel in Healesville and had a meal out to celebrate my eldest grandson’s
eighteenth birthday. He had taken and passed his driving test during the day
and is thrilled to be driving his own car by himself at last. Now all he needs
is the money to pay for the fuel. The meal we had was great but the service was
slow and Pip was feeling ill but at least we had some sort of celebration and
Wayne was there, (looking very slim and fit,) to give him extra birthday cash.

Bo and her family are
in Italy and we get up dates on the E-mail about all the wonderful sites they
are seeing. It all sounds like a very active holiday. I am worried that I have
no news about my mother from the UK but Bo will be there soon and we will get a
better picture of how things are going. 

Wwoofers make a difference

March 12. 2014

Our willing workers
left yesterday to continue their Australian adventure. They have been
incredible workers and with their help we have achieved much. The chooks are
now running in free-range orchards that have been totally cleaned of weeds and
other rubbish. The fences have been repaired and fox proofed and the old shed
below the ruins has been repaired, painted and repositioned near the dog yard. 

Once again fox protection is the main object here.

Down in the old garden
by the ruins I have now rebuilt the garden walls and planted out the poor
blueberries that have been waiting in pots. The wwoofers have done a great job
with the tree care over this very dry period, so all; the trees are looking
surprisingly healthy. We have now eaten almost all the lettuces but still have
enough zucchinis to sell the spare at the weekend market.

Our tomatoes are slow
and mostly small and the eggplants and capsicums are not doing well either. The
rocket is bolting but little pumpkins are starting to form. Something keeps
eating the beans, which is sad. We had a large crop of pears from the new pear
tree and we are still getting strawberries. The nectarines were plentiful and
the peaches good too. I have made jam from the spare fruit we did not sell.

Our neighbour, John,
has put drains around the large polyhouse. Luckily we had spare ag-pipes left
over from the shed drains so we were able to use up materials that were lying
around. We had to buy truckloads of chippings from Castella quarries to put round
the drains but we hope that this will prevent the polyhouse from flooding. This
is pretty essential if it is to be used as a marquee for A’s wedding!

John and Edd have
moved several piles of rubbish from the chook yards and the polyhouse and have
combined them into an enormous burning pile below the dams. At least it is out
of sight down there and away from the main living areas. A plans to come over
today and build a base for the pizza oven so that he can start building the
oven its self at the weekend. This is all very exciting. There is nothing like
a major event to stimulate a large clean up.

wwoofers and weddings

March 3. 2014

I can’t believe it is March already! The time has gone so fast but already we enjoying sunny autumn
weather with cool crisp mornings and days in the high twenties. It is really good working weather so we have been outside all day working on the farm.

We have our first Wwoofers here since we were burnt out. A young couple from Germany are now in
their third week here and we are getting lots of jobs done. The big task is to
move the second chook shed and fox proof the lower pens so that we can get
point of lay pullets to give us winter eggs. The chickens that we raised
ourselves are almost point of lay themselves now so we can put all the young
stock together once we get the new shed up.

At present the shed is in pieces being repaired and painted and Edd has been working on a base for it
to go up on. Last week a frame was built and the next stage is to fill it with
concrete. Work stopped on this project yesterday because Al came up with his
partner and her parents to help prepare the place for the wedding. They have
invited 200 or more guests and are using the farm as a venue.

The only undercover space any where near large enough is the big polyhouse above the house. We put
it up after the fires to act as temporary shedding for goats, animal feed,
tools and machinery. Once the new sheds went up we abandoned it, leaving the
things that we were not using in it. This made it difficult to clean out
because brambles had grown at the edges and deep litter accumulated in the
centre.

This has now all changed. Everyone has worked together putting in time and labour so that it is once
again a huge useful space. Yesterday we all worked and had a feast al fresco in the ruins at midday.  We also moved the old wood stove out of the inglenook chimney of the old house and Al build
support walls for a pizza oven base. The idea is to get this all functioning
ready to feed wedding guests.

At the same time I began rebuilding the low garden walls that the bulldozers knocked down when we
moved the house rubble. It is so satisfying to see the last of the fire mess being tackled.  We are exhausted, worn out and sore but very happy with how things are going.