Pasties and football

Wayne and Ella

Goats' cheese and pasties

taking time to concentrate on football

October 4.2015

Yesterday the Aussie football finals where on, and Friday was declared a bank holiday in celebration. Not all our family are sports fanatics so we have our own celebration to ease things along. This is the one-day a year that Edd, and helpers, make traditional Cornish pasties and eat them. We harvested all our swedes in honour of the occasion and chopped up carrots and onions. Grand mothers made pastry, (mine was not the best), and Beth and Edd managed to deal with the ingredients and produce a feast.

I had savaged the rocket to make pesto and prepared finger food featuring goat’s cheese, our own olives, humus, and kangaroo sausages and Al and Pip brought very special bread and cheese so that we had lots to nibble before the pasties cooked.  Simon provides beer and was forgiven for being actually interested in the sport.  Ti had a slack rope for his birthday that was strung up from a fence post on the house roof and this provided an alternative activity as everyone tried to walk along it.  Pip turned out to be the supreme champion and helped Silky and I along so we did not feel left out.

We were really looking forward to Dani bringing Ella for her first visit to the farm but someone crashed into their car when it was parked and they had no transport.  Wayne was far to serious about the football to want to mess with pasty eaters, but his team won, so he was happy anyway. Today the hour changed and everyone is taking time to recover from all the above.

In the week Edd and I achieved our aim and moved the smallest chook shed up nearer the sheds so that we could move the 20 chicks who had outgrown their second cage.   We managed to tip the shed onto the back of the ute and move it all in one piece, which saved time. The new position already has three sides of an outdoor pen so the next stage is to complete the final fence and let them out on the grass.

Now that the chicks have room to cope Edd is back working on the yards because the sale for the young cow Sharron, is next Friday.  Last Friday our neighbour, Craig worked with his huge digger to move the trees that have fallen over our boundary fence. We need the fence restored so that he can have his cow his side and our goats stay our side.  In the six and a half years since the fires the fence that the volunteers erected has been mostly destroyed by fallen trees and mud being washed down the creek. 

We hope we can clear enough space to put ringlock on the upper section where the animals graze.

This dry sunny weather is really helping. But having such nice helpful neighbours is more important. We can see that the new lot have stayed on Hargreaves Hill this weekend but we have left them to settle in.  No one moves out here unless they put some value on privacy and it is a fine balance to get the feeling of being part of a community and privacy in proportion.