The new camp bathroom in the ruins
Sorting out relics from the 2009 fires
Clearing a track for the new fence
March 27 2015
This has been a really
big week. With help from Stevo, Edd and I managed to complete the new camp
bathroom and toilet. I even had time to paint the walls a very clean looking
white so that everything would look ready and nice for the school camp. (Even
so, most of the kids took the option of just not washing when they found that
they were expected to carry the water they needed from the dairy.)
We had 27 children and
three teachers camping, which was the largest group so far. They used the
kitchen up at the dairy but mostly cooked with the BBQ in the ruins. Yesterday
they lit the pizza oven and made pizzas for supper. Their teachers took them up
the hill in the afternoons and they all made temporary art works from found
materials. This exercise worked really well and we could relax for a couple of
hours before the evening chores began.
The kids all help with
looking after the farm work in the mornings and evenings. We had small groups
working as herders, dairy workers, arborists, chook keepers, gardeners, dog
carers, rubbish men and kitchen hands. The chooks all got cleaned and treated
for parasites and the trees got weeded and mulched. We had one day with out
power, due to work on the lines, but the dairy workers managed to do the whole
milking by hand. Our herdsmen did a terrific job of looking after the sheep and
getting goats into the right places.
I planned major tasks
that could be supervised from two locations. I was in charge of work done
around the ruins and Edd had the area near his tool shed. One group at the
ruins painted the pergola and another did some field archaeology collecting all
the broken bits of tiles pots and metal left over from the fires and then
sorting and cleaning them so that we could have a museum display.
Once the relics were
moved the small poly house got demolished. Luckily one of the teachers grew up
in a nursery and could tell everyone how to take things down. We now have a
large flat area that will be prepared as a camping spot. We will recycle the
metal hoops as a framework over
some fruit tree to stop birds pinching all the fruit.
In Edd’s area one
group cleared a track by the gulley and then put up an electric fence all the
way down. A second group collected all the waste metal material and a truck
came and took it away. We thought we had organised for a skip to be delivered
on Monday to do this but it never turned up so we needed plan B. The third
group put insulation in the back wall of Edd’s shed and then nailed up play wood
to line the wall. Today they put up massive metal shelfing so we can get stuff
off the shed floor and stored out of the way.
Amazingly all this
work was done in just five days. I like it when the kids say that when they
first saw the task they did not think it possible but in the end they did it. I
think that sort of thing is a very positive experience for them.
