dark deeds in the forest

January 24  2015

It has been a hot dry week and we have needed to water the vegetables three times a day to keep them going. Our efforts are being rewarded and we have the biggest tomato crop ever. Things have grown so well that there is a danger of over crowding!

The wwoofers have continued to work well and we have lots of clearing up done. On the hottest days we kept them in the house squeezing lemons and took them up to the forest for a BBQ. Usually we have a round trip that first visits the rainforest and then goes on to the cascades where there is a BBQ and shelter shed very close to the waterfall. We were doing our trip as normal when about half an hour into the forest we found that loggers had put a gate across the road and blocked access. This meant we had to go all the way back to the highway and round the forest to the other side to get to our usual BBQ spot.

We met a parks ranger and questioned him because at this time of year lots of people camp at Murrindindi and the loggers had effectively blocked all the fire escape routes going south. Edd met a friend at the market who said that they are moving really old growth trees at night and are trying to hide what they are doing. We do not know if this is true but it is very worrying.

My eldest grand son has been offered a place to study biological science at Latrobe University. This was a surprise but we are all thrilled. He tells us that he has accepted and deferred, which is also good news. My daughter’s eldest son is getting all the gear ready to start secondary school. How fast they grow up! Bo brought all her kids over for a meal here this week, which was great fun.

 Last night we met with Al and our friend, Beni, at the Indian restaurant.  Al tells us that he had a great holiday in New Zealand with his youngest son Ti. They went to a beach that has hot springs under the sand and spent hours digging with crowds of people, trying to get a mini spa dug before the next big wave came in and washed it all away.

Bees,Future plans and good wwoofers

January 18  2015

Indi swooped in at breakfast time when she came up to check her bees and put a clip on the lid of her beehive. She tells me that the bees are very busy transporting pollen back to their hive and have settled down well. She has plans to build a round yard to work horses in and save money so she can afford university next year. In fact she is bursting over with plans and seems to have lots to look forward to.

We have had a productive week with two German wwoofers staying in the donga. These young men are the same age as my eldest grand son who has gone to Germany. He is staying with his girl friend in the same area our wwoofers came from so I have lost one and gained two, so to speak.  These guys are good workers and have done all the jobs that I was finding too hard.

They have cleaned up the rest of the old drive way and taken all the fallen timber to the burning pile. They have also used the weed wacker on the long grass by Edd’s shed so that we can get at the rubbish buried there. I am very keen to get all the burnable material away from the farm buildings as we enter the worst fire risk period so I am very grateful for the help.

My job has been to keep everyone well fed. Luckily with Edd’s help raising seedlings we have a good supply of vegetables. Lots of tomatoes, cucumber, squash, mizuna, rocket and lettuce as well as basil for pesto. I have harvested all the garlic and we have started eating the capsicums from last years’ plants that I over wintered in the house.  The eggplants and beetroot still need to grow a bit larger and the potatoes have just come into flower.

The grass has dried off in most places and the sheep let us know it was time to start feeding them barley again. The horses and pony are still fat and the cows are on Brian’s hill so they are probably slimming down. The goats are still giving lots of milk and I still make cheese every day. 

We had a very sad event because Edd found that Vera (a large golden goat) was dead when he checked up last thing on Wednesday night. She had her head through the rails to get at the hay bales we stacked and another goat must have wacked at just the wrong time and angle. I am sorry to have lost her. She was unusual in that she had never given birth but she produced lots of milk. With out the stress of pregnancy she had grown very large and fat compared to her twin sister. 

This leaves us with 24 goats including the two goatlings who come in to be fed twice a day in the bale. I am busy writing a business plan to try and work out if we could make cheese and sell it on the open market. It has taken me ages to analyse this years accounts but the actual plan is not so bad because there is lots of help on line. Last time I wrote a business plan was in Yuendumu in the early 90’s for Skill share and we just had to plagiarise a plan from someone else back then.

Hay and raw milk

January 6. 2015

The New Year is off to a flying start. We woke up on Saturday to discover that our hay had been baled over night and the small bales needed to be brought in before the rain was due in the evening. Edd had to go to market first and I had to do the milking and watering so there was no chance to start before lunchtime. It was a difficult day too, 4o degrees and windy with an extreme fire risk alert! This had a fortunate effect for us because my eldest son evacuated from his town in the hills and brought his important gear to store in our cellar, thus rendering himself available for hay work!

Our dear friend, Graeme, also came over to help, so in the afternoon we borrowed the large trailer from our friends up the hill and all drove down the road to the property where the small bales of hay were. The first load was hard work, well, not for me. I had the easy job of driving. Edd and Graeme threw up and Al stacked. After we had unloaded and stacked in the shed we went back for the second load. We were all pretty exhausted but we were rescued when Bo and her daughter arrived with frozen fruit icy poles and an offer of help. With this extra boost the job got done and by evening we had the hay all stacked under cover so we treated everyone to a meal at Bo’s restaurant, after we all showered the seeds off.

It was a lovely end to the day. Hay making is the same but different year after year. Edd and I remember getting hay in with a horse and cart. I wonder if Bo’s daughter will one day tell her grandkids she remembers getting hay in with an old petrol ute. The aspects that stay the same are that the men can show off their strength and fitness, the young girls can bring refreshments and everyone can celebrate with good food when the hay is safely stored.

The other big news is that raw milk sales are now banned in Victoria. Up till last week milk for human consumption had to be pasteurized but raw milk could be sold as “bath Milk” for craft soap making and for pets. People who chose to drink raw milk, but could not keep an animal, could get supplies by ignoring the “not for human consumption” label. Recently a young child died from E-coli infection and it was discovered that the child had been fed raw milk sold as Bath milk in a store. The milk was from a farm that did test their milk and no contamination had been found. The case has not yet passed the coroner but already the milk has been blamed and the law changed.

This affects us because we sell pet milk. This year we have supplied several young animals including a deer and yes, some of our customers probably drink the milk raw. Luckily it does not form any big part of our income but another local farm that sold raw cows milk now have almost no family income and had no warning to prepare for the changes. We can still drink the milk from our own goats and I pasteurize the milk I make cheese from anyway, so we have no cut in our supply but others are horrified to find their choice of food restricted. After all, the number of people who die as a result of smoking is enormous and on a scale that eclipses all cases of food poisoning, but so far shops can sell cigarettes without restriction.