The year begins to turn

January 24 2015

After the shearing the weather returned to the very hot and dry type. We had a week when it was bordering on too hot to work out side. We took the wool to the wool buyers and almost got as much in cash as we had paid the shearer. I have kept a few fleeces back in case I get time for hand spinning in the winter but it is good to get the rest moved before it becomes dusty.

Yesterday finally we had really good rain and today it is much cooler. This afternoon I started weeding the flower garden and moving all the dead material. It always amazes that we get such huge piles of organic material from such a small area. Edd is finishing off the stock yards so that we can put the lambs in there that keep going off the property and then let the rest of the sheep into the house site again. Already the grass has started to go green. Let us hope the worst of the summer is now past.

The vegetable gardens are in full production. We have loads of glossy dark purple aubergines, rapidly swelling pumpkins and an endless supply of zucchini. The strawberries are still providing our breakfast fruit and we have the first of the autumn raspberries and peaches. Indigo has kept us supplied with black berries and honey so we are quite spoilt. The mizuna has been a great crop this year and now we have watercress and baby spinach to add to the salads. The basil is still good and the tomatoes and capsicums are abundant.

The goats have started to come into season and the milk volume has dropped. I now make cheese once or twice a week instead of every day, which is quite a relief. The hard cheeses turned out well this year. I did not cover them with wax but just let them form a rind and this has led to less mould infection. We are eating through them fairly fast! My target this year was to get one reliable hard cheese recipe worked out and we seem to have achieved this.

Now the task is to sell the excess stock we have before true winter starts. The young bucks are almost weaned and the young does have gone down to one milk feed a day. They get hard feed and hay and are all maintaining weight and condition. Our cows are still on the next-door neighbours property with their bulls so we are hoping that they will now be pregnant and ready to sell once the yards are complete.

My work in the bathroom has not progressed much. I thought I had a big tub of tile adhesive but inside the tub was a small amount of powder and stuff to mix it with. This sort of thing happens now that my eyesight is not good enough to read the small print on things. Even so I think it is a bit deceptive to put a kit in a paint bucket all sealed up. Once I could buy mixed tile adhesive and it made much less mess that making stuff up in buckets and having to wash everything out between batches.

Friday 13 and a non-romantic valentines day

Indi sets off to look for the stray lambs.

January 15 2015

Friday was a classic 13th type Friday. It was scorching hot all day and thoroughly uncomfortable. Edd decided to ignore the conditions and continued working on the stockyards because we were expecting the shearer to come on Saturday. He struggled all day until we had a nearly usable space. There was not a lot I could do to help so I began work on the bathroom walls scraping off excess cement at the block joints. (This is the first step to do before tiling.)

All went to plan until the evening when it began to thunder and we spotted a fire in the hills close by. A look at the Internet confirmed that lightening had caused the bush fire but fire engines had arrived and were doing their best to deal with it.  Edd drove off to Yarra Glen for more information.  (It turned out to be on a friend’s property where we have hay bales). I picked up a call from the shearer to inquire if we had got the sheep in before the rain. There was no rain, but another look at the Internet showed that a storm was bearing down on us fast and would probably arrive sooner than the fire.

The sheep have to be dry for shearing so I dragged the gates across the remaining missing parts of the stock yards and fixed them in place with baler twine. (How on earth did people manage before baler twine?). The sheep came willingly into the yards with the offer of food but the next job was to get them into the shed. I drove my car to block one escape route, shut the goats out of the way in the paddock and was just about to call the sheep across when Edd fortuitously arrived home. With me in front, and Edd behind, they all went in fairly easily, even Zulu, the alpaca.

Then we had to drag extra gates across the space so that the goats could get in to a separate part of the space after milking. It was all pretty hard work but by the time the main storm hit all the animals were under shelter apart from four lambs that could not be found. (Indi, on the horse and I, on foot had unsuccessfully searched the hill). We really needed the rain but it seemed most unfair that after so long a time of total dryness it should arrive on the one day we did not want it.

All our efforts paid off next day when the rain was still pouring down. The shearer was able to shear the sheep in the relative comfort of the milking shed and we could put them back in the shed afterwards so that they could be deloused and sorted. Luckily the Indi and her boy friend were there to help walk the sheep in and the shearer knew how to deal with an alpaca. Zulu was made to lie down on his side and his feet were roped to the milking bale and the doorpost so he was stretched out and immobile. Indi held his head back and talked nicely to him and the shearer did his toe nails, his fleece removal, and gave him the injections of vit D and worm medicine we had collected from the vet.

I do not think all this made a very romantic valentines day for any of us, but the weather cleared up and by nightfall we had returned all the stock to their rightful paddocks and sorted out selling from keeping sheep. The problem lambs that keep crawling under the fence into our neighbour’s property are now secured in the yard around the donga. Needless to say we are sore, tired and need a quiet few days to recover. Some hope!

January 12  2015

It is cooler than yesterday but there has still been no rain even with the thunderstorm that set off the fire in Toolangi. Thank goodness that was sorted out fast, I was worried for Beni.  Thinking about the fires brings it all back into my conscious mind. We spend every day, all day trying to sort out the mess our lives were left in after the fires 6 years ago, but by focussing on the job that needs doing we avoid confronting the big picture. The reality is that before we were looking forward to a comfortable life style but that is not possible at the moment.

I would love to do the things I did before for hobbies. I did art and crafts and got a lot of pleasure from that sort of thing. There is no physical barrier to me doing the same now but I don’t feel engaged that way. Maybe I am wrong to blame the fires. I gave up my hobbies years before we were burnt out so that I could work full time to get my business up and running well. There were plenty of challenges in that and once the host farm was running we met an endless stream of interesting people. Life was very full and very satisfying and we earned enough to pay others to deal with problems if they arose.

One of those days

January 11  2015

It is obviously one of those sorts of days when it is impossible to achieve anything. The house is a nice cool 25 degrees but if you venture outside it is scorching. Nearly 40, according to the news). Everyone seems to be getting muddled, going slow or forgetting things. (Having just written that I wonder what I have forgotten!)_ I have spent the afternoon on the phone with the lawyers who are trying to sort out the bush fire claims. The web site they directed me to would not open. The phone number they gave me was wrong, but when I checked up it was a genuine call!

Now the local fire tree informs me that a lightening strike has started a bush fire at Toolangi up the hill from us. It is not too big as yet but it is very close to where our friend Beni lives. I called her and she is driving back to work feeling rather worried.  It does sound as if things are under control so we are not in panic mode yet.

Now that the wwoofers are gone it is just Edd and I struggling to keep animals and plants looked after.  With all the effort required I thought today that any one would be mad to do all the watering unless you were producing food or running a business. For us it is about food. Every day we collect more fresh vegetables than we can eat. The stuff we sell at the market on Saturday brings in enough cash to get the next crop going and more so it is well worth the effort.

This week we are aiming to get the sheep all contained by Saturday when the shearer comes. Once they are shorn we can deal with lice and sort them out as keepers and goers.  We need a drastic reduction in numbers to cope with the present conditions. 

Edd ordered injections of drench and vit D for the alpaca that was due to arrive today but that went wrong too. As I said no one is quite up to par at the moment.  We have not kept alpacas before but I am told that vit D is essential to help them live at low altitudes.  Zulu has earned his place here so I must learn to fix his needs. He has a surprising habit of wading and goes quite deep into the dams to get green pick.  He has also eaten all the pumpkin plant that he can reach so he must love green stuff but not plot like the goats and sheep to raid the next-door space.

January 6  2015

Still no rain!  The ground is turning to dust and hungry animals are complaining that there is nothing to eat between meals. The poly house has taken on yet another role as a boat-building workshop. Our two eldest kids have sailing boats that need repair so we have put them up on trestle and work has started on the repair jobs. Just at the moment it is too hot to do anything un-essential so the work has not progressed very far.

I seem to spend most of my time watering vegetables and trees. So far the trees we planted last winter have survived which is encouraging. Today there were swarms of insects over the flowering trees and a cloud of white butterflies around the agapanthus. The flowering gum by the ruins has been buzzing with bees after the pollen all week. I wonder if they are Indies bees coming down from the gravel pit paddock or just the usual mob.

It is blackberry season and Indi has picked bucket loads. We stewed some up with plums to make breakfast fruit and they were delicious. The blackberries were so sweet that the tartness of the plums made them taste even better. The little celery seedlings I planted are growing well and we have the largest pumpkins I have ever grown. The apple cucumbers are very prolific and now we have long hairy Armenian cucumbers as well. I haven’t tasted one yet.

I am still making cheese several times a week and we are eating the ones we made at the start of the season.  Some have the salt content just right and some are not so good. I do not have a foolproof recipe yet. The garlic has been harvested but our beans have been a bit crowded out by the tomatoes and pumpkins. I have put in a second lot as a last resort.

Indi, my eldest grand daughter moved out of her share house and set herself up in the donga as soon as the wwoofers moved on. She arrived with two dogs, plants, furniture and even an old bath!  The idea is that she can save money and continue her studies. Luckily she is a helpful person to have around.