The joy of old friends

Edd, Sue and her husband

The new dresser 

September 28 2014

I feel as if I have just had another holiday! A girl friend Sue who I spent a lot of time with about forty years ago in Yorkshire, has been staying here with her husband.  I had lost contact with Sue, so it was a great surprise when I answered the phone one day, and there she was. Even better she has now spent a week with us, as part of a world tour.

One of the treats of being our age is that friends have retired and are now free to travel all the way to see us. Weeks like this are rare and precious times, and I now feel filled with a strange sense of peace and gratitude for all the joys life has given me. Better still, in preparation for the visit we brought a new bed and mattress for ourselves to free up the guest room and everyone enjoyed the comfort a good mattress brings.

Indi has inherited the old bed and mattress for her new rented home. She is now settled into a little house in Yarra Glen with a girl friend who also works at Bo’s restaurant. Bo seems to employ a good section of our friends’ children. They are all intelligent, lovely young people who find restaurant work fits in with their study or other jobs. It seems to be suiting Indi, too, who is now full of life and enthusiasm. I am interested in her bee keeping plans but it is also fabulous having her around because she has learnt how to do the milking and care for the animals so we can call on her in emergencies.

Only one goat, Erin, has not yet had her kids and we have managed to sell a few of the other kids already. We will have to sell more soon or there will not be enough milk after feeding them to make cheese. The 18 remaining kids are now all drinking their milk from a feeder by sucking it up straws, and are growing well. This year we have four doe kids with the fawn, white and black colouring that looks like a wild goat. These kids grow very well and so far those we have kept as adults all milk well. The brown does are of a more graceful build and have quieter natures. It is odd that these traits should go with colour.

Today I have allowed the sheep back into the house site to graze. The grass has grown significantly but the sheep targeted in on the peewits’ nest and licked the eggs. The peewits have been getting increasingly troublesome, and dive bomb us every time leave the house but even their frantic efforts did not deter the sheep. I just wish the silly birds would lay their eggs somewhere sensible. Last year they laid one in the middle of the road, and this year’s effort on the lawn we all walk across everyday is not a big improvement.

It has been a warm sunny day but the wind has been building up so that it is now quite noisy, even in the house. This means it is really bad. We still have a significant number of dead trees that are just waiting for an excuse to fall over and cut off our power supply. A week or so ago we lost power for 24 hours. I keep thinking we should get a back up system of batteries that we could use when the solar system is not working, or the power fails. Perhaps, one day.

Stone pines planted

September 18 2014

Only three goats left to kid now. Nola had twins last night and Angie had one buck the day before.  The goats have given less milk because we have had wet weather, but I have still had enough to make feta and cream cheese. It is actually a good thing we are having this rain because we have now planted about 100 trees and they will enjoy the water.

Between us, and our new neighbour, we have planted a dense strip of native trees and then the rest of the triangular paddock has a neat grid of stone pines, planted at 10 metre intervals. They will need all this space in future years but possibly not in my life time, so we might plant smaller trees at between them in the rows.  Eventually they will produce edible pine nuts and then the task will be to keep the cockies away from them. We do not have to worry about this for seven years at least.

 The stone pines are a very long-term venture, and the plantation might be wiped out by fire before it matures. On the other hand these trees are very hardy and cope with drought, heat and frost. They will give us back privacy in about four years, and can be grazed around by animals, as they are not palatable to most life-stock. They look nice too, and will make a nice introduction to our property.

With all this in mind I am tolerating the rain. Edd has been very active germinating vegetable seedlings and lots waiting to be planted next month when we stop worrying about a late frost. Indi arrived here early this morning and had the horses and pony all lined up waiting for the farrier to trim their hooves. They are starting to get fat on spring grass already! Indi also moved all her belongings out of the donga so that it is ready for wwoofers to live in. I could do with help now that we have all these goat kids.

Spring advances

The strange lamb and her twin

The smallest goat kid

The new neighbours' shed and our area for planting new trees to hide it. They are just visible by their light coloured tree guards.

September 15 2014

It is definitely warming up. Yesterday was lovely and we worked all day planting trees. We have about 16 goat kids now but all except the latest four are taking their milk from the feeder. Most are very large strong kids and doing well. It is always a lot of work at this time of year because the goats have to be milked at 12 hour intervals and the kids need milk several times a day.

I have started making cream cheese again and have discovered that the latest hard cheese we have opened has developed some blue mould through it. It actually tastes really good, but I have no idea how it got that way. I have promised myself that I will keep better records this year.

Another new venture is my latest attack on the gold fish in the dam. They have avoided all our fishing attempts so far, so the latest strategy some one suggested was to tame them and get them coming for food. I have brought some pellets and scatter them every day in the same place. The gold fish are eating them after only two days. The idea is to lull them into a false sense of security and then scoop them out.

In the house I have started spring cleaning.  I have now got all our books ordered onto the shelves of the bookcases we brought for the cellar. We had been given lots of books after the fires but they were still all stored in plastic boxes and I was not sure what we had. Now we can actually start to use them. I am already fond of the second hand dresser we brought for the dining area. It is very large so it was quite cheap being too large for most modern homes.

I have done less well with beds. We went into town and brought a second hand bed base for our queen-sized mattress. It was on its side with the legs off when we collected it and neither of us realised it was only double sized until we got it home!  At least we now have a proper bed for the donga. I also have to sew curtains for the outermost bedroom. I am not looking forward to that because there are two huge windows.

The floors are getting easier as we build up layers of polish. Everything is getting cleaned and organised but we are still at the chaos state having moved things out of position and not got them back yet. Indi is moving into a rented house closer to her work this week so we can get the donga clean and ready for wwoofers.

Cairns holiday

September 4 2014

Last month was very busy. The lambs kept coming and now we have 14. They have all managed to survive in the paddock under Zulu’s care but we have given a top up bottle of goat’s milk to some of the triplets. Most of the lambs are white but we have two black and one brown and also one that looks totally different to all the others. It has a wiry wavy coat and a mixture of colours. She has a very broad head and big eyes. Strangely her twin brother was quite normal and white with the same tight curly coat as all the rest.

The goats are now in the middle of their kidding period but we did manage 12 days away. In theory we had planned this for the week before the kidding started, but the goats could not wait and five had kidded before we arrived home. Before we left we worked really hard to get things in order. We managed to get the two new vegetable beds full of compost and manure so that they would be all ready to plant out. Then we put up the new dog yard and I planted out the rest of the young trees and made tree guards for them.

Finally we got off and flew from Melbourne to Cairns where Josh and his partner are living. They made us very welcome in their extremely well kept and organised house, and we had a real holiday from everything. Josh did almost all the cooking and made very tasty food and they took us round and showed us places they liked. Everything was interesting, even the streets because they are all lined with fantastic tropical plants. It was absolute heaven for a bromeliad addict like me!

During the week, when Josh and his partner were working, Edd and I started exploring in the car we had hired. We went to Paronella Park and walked round the ruins and gardens and we marvelled at the botanic gardens. One day we went out on a tour to an off shore Island and viewed coral from a glass bottomed boat. We gave the snorking a miss but enjoyed a nature walk and swimming. Needless to say all week the sun shone and the temperature was delicious. I think coming home this time was the first time I did not secretly feel glad to get home.

Whilst we were away Al, Bo and Indi looked after the farm and managed the first of the kidding. Luckily Bo is an expert at this sort of thing and Indi actually lived at the farm so everything was more or less fine. We are now having the usual battle to get the milking machine going again and dealing with the kid weaning process.

There must have been more frost whilst we were away because several plants are damaged but the vegetables are powering ahead. The first of the sweeds are ready to eat and the snow peas and broad beans are growing well. We still have loads of salad, rocket and spinach and we have already had a meal of asparagus. I left all the grass mown and under control, but it has grown a lot and needs doing again. Today, though, it was so warm and sunny that I got the bromeliads out and re-potted some and planted the brom pups that I had brought home from Cairns in my suitcase. I hope they survive.