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.