Midwinter Feast

June 30 2014

It is another cold, wet,
miserable day but at least it was sunny this morning when we had to go outside
and care for all the animals. We were pretty tired after our big mid-winter
party yesterday. I had spent most of the yesterday cooking the feast and moving
furniture around to get the house ready. We had roast beef, chicken casserole,
ham on the bone, roast vegetables, baked potatoes and bowls of home grown,
salad. This was followed by rhubarb crumble, Xmas pudding, cherries and cheesecake
made from our own eggs and goats cheese. We had a big plate of goats’ cheeses
too with our own preserved olives.

The latest big round
of cheese I have opened has turned out very well but I did not keep notes so I
am not sure which type it was. (Epic mistake). This coming season I will have
to label the cheeses and keep much better notes. At least I now know that I can
make a hard cheese that everyone likes. I just need to remember what I did!

Edd also worked hard
and kept up a non-stop supply of firewood so that we could keep the stove
working flat out. We also lit the lounge fire so that with the two fires going
we could get the house really hot. The reason for this was that with 20 people
to feed we would need to use the trestle tables in the solar buffet hall. The
idea was to open the double glazed doors when our guests arrived and have a
comfortable temperature in the hall for dining.

Amazingly this worked
really well and everyone enjoyed the warmth. It had been a miserable cold day so
it was a good test for our systems. We have had a disastrous week for weather
with high wind gusts and floods in the city. The SES has been busy all week
moving fallen trees and keeping the road and rails working. Edd planned his
week so that he could fetch a ton of oats on the only dry day and get barley
back from the brewery on the days they brewed.

Our party went well.
We had invited our closest neighbours as well as family and this worked well.
The two smallest girls played together so well that they did not bother with
food. Our neighbour’s sister had gone to Curtin University to study architecture
at the same time as Al and they new all the same people. Al’s wife could not
come so it was good that he had someone else to talk to.

Indi had practiced two
songs to perform with Bo’s boys. Indi played the guitar, Morg played his
ukulele, and Ollie helped with the singing. They are getting really good
together and it was good to see the boys abandoning their electronic devises
and actually doing something real for part of the time. Bo talked with Wayne’s
girl friend Dani. We are all enjoying having Dani as part of our group she is
so kind and talented that she is easy company and a great person to have
around.

All in all I feel we
have successfully welcomed the light back after the passing of the shortest
day. 

midwinter and a circus

Midwinter sun warms our home.

June 23 2014

The deadly deed is
done! Edd and I realised that we would not get our yards built before the dairy
heifer market day and we really did not want to keep them for another month.
After due consideration we rigged up a temporary ramp using yard panels gates
and the yard timber nailed together to form a ramp that was raised at the stock
crate end with concrete blocks.

Most of this set up
was lashed together with bits of rope, so when we got up on Monday morning to
try and load the girls both Edd and I had missed a lot of sleep just worrying.
These beasts are horned and quite heavy so forcing them to do something that
they do not want to even think about is OK with the right equipment but rather
dangerous without! It was a bit tricky and they broke out once, but we
eventually got them on board and they fetched a very reasonable price at
auction. It feels good when we turn our problems into cash!

The shortest day of
the year has been and gone and we are planning our midwinter feast for next
weekend. This weekend would have been better timing but Bo was off on holiday.
Her parents in law were looking after her children over the weekend but on
Sunday her mother in law had a fall and injured her hip. She is having a hip
replacement today, so we are all hoping that goes well. When she was taken to
hospital my eldest Grand daughter, Indi, drove down and picked up her young
cousins and I met them in Yarra Glen.

I had been back on
yard building with Edd but there was no way that I could continue with three
youngsters. By a lucky co-incidence a circus was in town so I decided that the
best plan was to go with the flow. The kids enjoyed the circus especially the
clowns. It was a bit low on animals, four Jack Russel terriers, three liberty
horses and a tiny pony but at least they had some. It is good to know that even
in these days the kids can still enjoy something we did when we were young.
Actually, I still enjoyed it now and was rather glad of the perfect excuse to
spend the afternoon under the big top.

bread cheese and stockyards

June 18 2014

It is actually quite
warm today despite the grey skies and mud. It is Wednesday so I am in the
process of making cream cheese and I have also cleaned out the fires and lit
the stove, so I am making bread. Most of the morning was spent helping Edd put
in more posts for the stockyards.  He
drives Craig’s digging machine and I have to check that the posts holes go in
straight. Edd’s aim was to have them ready so that we could use them on Friday
to load the heifers into a stock crate to take them to market. To me this was
another case of unrealistic optimism but any progress on the stockyards is good
and not to be discouraged. We are plotting devious alternative strategies for
coping with the loading.

The heifers were such
accomplished escape artists that we have had to confine them in a small croft
with a large round bale of hay. I feed them barley twice a day, which they love,
so I have a small amount of leverage with them. They have churned up most of
the croft into mud but they are definitely gaining weight. We brought them last
use up the milk when I went to the UK to nurse my mum. The idea was to avoid
putting too much strain on the family coping here and it would have been an
awful shame to throw all the milk away.

The garden is loving
all the rain and flowers are appearing everywhere. The lucerne and wattle trees
are just starting to bloom and the native wisteria has already purple flowers.
The red-hot pokers and the arum lilies have beaten most of the narcissi and
they always precede the daffodils. The garden looks very colourful already with
the rosemary bathed in blue and purple. I am not sure if we are having an early
spring or just a warm spell. Usually July is our coldest month.

seven sleepy trees

June 17 2014

I am happy to report
that Flynn has now recovered totally after his compost- raiding episode. He lay
still for a day but in the evening he tried to get up and discovered to his
total joy that his legs were working normally. He was surprised at first but
soon started his normal boisterous bouncing.

There is not much else
joyful around. As we approach the shortest day it grows dark by 5pm,and the days
are dull and wet. It is not really cold but we light a fire to keep the
dampness at bay and light the stove every second day to heat the water. The
goats are giving a significant amount of milk so we are still using the milking
machine once a day. They spend almost all day in the shed eating hay and
waiting for spring.

We are at last putting
up the stockyards but progress is slow due to the unfortunate weather. I have planted
the sugar maples down the main drive. I brought the trees two years ago as tiny
bare rooted seedlings. They have been nursed through two summers in pots but
are now large enough to risk planting. (I just hope I have got the right trees
because all the leaves are off for winter and they might have got confused with
other trees.) They are going to get a big surprise when they wake up in spring.

I have put rabbit
guards round them but they will need lots of care and commitment for several
years before they are established. I have to be prepared to water them in
summer for 3 to 4 years and to guard them from raiding life stock and careless
parkers. Growing to maturity is quite a challenge for trees round here. I doubt
I will be around to see them as mature specimens but there is no point dwelling
on that!

Tasmanian Trip

June 11 2014

Today started in
rather a panic because our desert dog Flynn was obviously very sick when we
woke this morning. He was cold and shaken and hardly able to walk. As he was
totally normal and fit last night I was worried that he might have found some
rat poison! We discovered that he was a lot heavier than we had thought so it
took two of us to carry him to the car for a trip to the vet. The vet decided
that he was poisoned, but by what none of us know. Our best guess was mould in
the compost bin and when we looked he had definitely leapt into the bin last
night. He is dehydrated so I am forcing him to drink electrolyte replacer and
just hoping he will gradually recover.

This was not exactly a
good way to get back to normal after out holiday break with friends in
Tasmania. Tasmania was much colder than the Yarra Valley but we were given a
really warm welcome and were looked after so well that the cold was not a
problem. We fitted a lot into a few days. On the morning of the first day we
saw a boat-building workshop that taught students traditional boat building
skills and after lunch we went on an enormous air walk above the forest and saw
Huon pines growing by the river. They were very different from how I had
imagined them to be and grew extremely slowly for a very long time. The older
ones were 3500 years old but they had all been harvested where we were. It is
hard to imagine anyone wanting to kill such a tree.

Next day our friends
took us to Mona, the museum of old and new art. I am actually at a loss for the
right words to describe this over whelming experience. There were elements I
loved such as stunning architecture and a descent through solid rock into
galleries dug into the promontory. Once underground the exhibition was spread
through a labyrinth of large and tiny spaces where dark predominated and the
light made sudden contrasts. The atmosphere was edgy and slightly threatening
but there was amazing skill and beauty. Of course I soon managed to get
separated from the others but gradually we all worked our way to the surface
and recombined as a group.

On our final day we
decided on something less confronting and spent the day exploring the botanic
gardens in Hobart. I could see the TV gardening program's vegetable garden and
lots of amazing trees. It was bitterly cold but lots of unexpected plants were
thriving. The garden had been built within a tall brick wall that could be
heated but it was not needed so possums have taken over the accommodation it
provided.

All this site seeing
was great but the best bit of the holiday was catching up with our friends,
laughing with them and seeing their new small holding in the Huon Valley.

better late than never party

June 5 2014-

I am packed and waiting for Edd because we are off to visit friends in Tasmania. At least that’s the theory. It has been an effort this time to get the house tidy because all the stuff from Mum’s house in the UK arrived and had to be unpacked sorted and put into place. The lovely thing is that my sister sent over lots of the tapestry cushions that Mum made and they are a colour that meshes in well with everything here.  I was awfully sad that Mum has been separated from all her household goods when it first arrived but at least this stuff has remained with the family.

My eldest Grand daughter is down in Victoria for a holiday and today she and a friend are taking the horses for a ride. She was up in Canberra for her 20th birthday so we had a late party for her as compensation.  I should have done the house cleaning yesterday but Edd had borrowed the digger from our neighbour and he needed me to help put in posts for the stockyards. We got one line done but there are more we will need to do when we get home.  

June 2 2014

Another week passes and it is not really cold. It is hard to believe it that the shortest day is in about three weeks time! Usually July is our coldest month but it is so easy to get this house as warm as toast that I am not worried. On wet days I have accounts and other indoor jobs to do. I have got my spinning wheel at work too in the dark evenings.

In the garden the new winter vegetables we planted have so far dodged slug attack and the older plants are still providing plenty of fresh greens. Last week I found lots of lucerne tree seedlings and I have planted them up in pots so the rabbits do not eat them. We will need a lot of new trees to create a privacy barrier between our land and the new neighbours, who have started to build in a very visible spot.

The people above us at the end of the valley are also building.  I went up there today with Edd on the tractor to collect the augers for the large, machine he has borrowed to dig the postholes for the stockyards. Their building site is screened from everyone by existing trees and they have created a fascinating little hamlet. They like really big things, and down their drive they have set up massive ribs of steel as an art installation. They have used huge tree posts to build fences and pens and livened things up with small dashes of orange paint on a few edges and window frames. The whole place has a definite and very different “look”, and I rather like it.

On a sadder the neighbours on our south side have decided to sell up and move. The present owner is the son of one of the Hargreaves brothers that we brought our land from. We call the property Hargreaves Hill , which is of course the name Simon uses for his beer. We have lived with the family as neighbours for over 35 years so it will be a big change if they leave.