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.