Mayday blues

May 1 2016

The rain is pouring
down which is unfortunate because there is a community get together BBQ
organised for this afternoon with live bands and a jumping castle.  The rain is good for the plants and
grass and it is also filling up the tanks and we need this after the long spell
of sunny hot weather.  I had a
couple of dry hours to work in the garden this morning and I continued to fight
weeds in the far corner under the bay leaf tree.

Yesterday I began
clearing out an area between the gully and the ruins that was full of
blackberries and dead saplings. 
Lots of the saplings pulled out by hand but the blackberries were
tougher.  I will need some
assistance with the remaining trees that were too firmly fixed to move. My aim
is to replace the mess with grass right up to the gully fence so that the area
is quick and easy to maintain.

Edd has started on the
fencing above the dairy.  The
school took out the worn out plastic tape and it has to be replaced with
ringlock, which is more durable. I realised that when this is done we have good
strong fencing all round our Permaculture zone 2 area.  This is great because this area
contains our food forest.

In the house I have
started stage two of my aquaculture experiment.  I have added watercress seeds in jiffy pots to the clay ball
bed.  I will just have to wait now
and see what happens. We are using our ginger in our evening pot of tea, and
the neem tree, pepper vine and vanilla orchid are still alive!

Bo is on her on her
own with her kids this week because Simon is in America for work.  Al tells me he is spending the weekend
building earth bag walls in Warburton in the community garden and I have no
idea what Wayne or Josh is up to. 
Perhaps they know how to relax.

Harvest

April 26 2016

The weather is
glorious.  Cold clear nights and
sunny warm days.  Bright blue skies
arch above the crystal clear forested hills.  It would be impossible not to be very happy.  I spend a lot of time in the garden.
Today I cleaned out the tomato bed by the swing and prepared the soil for new
crops.  Yesterday I raked up the
dead leaves along the fence and moved the waste from the bank.  I am always amazed at the volume of
stuff we relocate from the garden every year.

Edd has completed a
minor miracle and got Skiddy so he goes again.  I hated to see him stuck in the paddock but Edd had to find
new barings for the wheels that take the tracks and replace everything that was
won before he could put the tracks back on.   Skiddy was put to use heaping up the compost pile and
loading the ute before he was moved up to the sheds.

It really is the
season of harvest.  Yesterday I
stewed up a huge pan of tomatoes with herbs and some bay leaves so that I could
freeze portions for winter soups and sauces.  Today I have begun to salt the first pot of olives and
brought in a second pumpkin.  We
are in no rush for pumpkins because we still have some left from last year that
seem fine.

Edd fetched oats and a
young jersey cross Friesian calf to rear on the excess milk.   She was pretty sick after the trip
home and we had to give her a course of antibiotics for pneumonia but she
recovered quickly and is now drinking well.  Edd has called her Josie and she is dark brown with flashes
of white on her hind legs and tail.

Turnbull passes his tests

April 18 2016

The dry weather is
continuing and the paddocks are bare. 
We have confined the goats to the crofts and hand feeding them.   The young alpine buck, Turnbull,
has been tested for disease and has passed everything so we have put Phantom,
the white horned doe in with him when she came into season.  For all his life so far Turnbull has
been best mates with the white buck Abbott who we castrated, but now a doe is
with them Abbott has been told firmly to get lost.  We should probably sell him or eat him.

We have not got a ram
in with the sheep but we have brought two Doper ewes who should be
pregnant.  Zulu, the alpaca was
very unsure about them at first and refused to let them anywhere near his known
sheep.  He was not aggressive towards
them but kept them away at feeding time. 
After two days he was more relaxed about them and they had learnt to
push up for barley when they saw me with a bucket.  They are round and white like the old ewe but their ears are
angled slightly down instead of up so they are easy to spot. I am referring to
them as Dopy 1 and Dopy 2. 

The swallows are
soiling the jot water solar panels. 
They keep having large meetings and all gather on the parapet at the
front of our house, presumably to discuss if they should fly off for winter.  Shorter day light hours and cooler
weather are not coming together as normal so I assume they have not come to any
agreement yet. The meetings are still convening regularly.  I shall clean the panels when they
finally decide what to do.

Yesterday we had a
Permaculture site visit here. The weather was perfect and everyone stayed for lunch
in the ruins.  The new vegetable
garden was really looking like it meant business so despite the drought things
looked under control.   I had
been working hard the week before to clean up the beds and paths surrounding
the vegetables and that all helps create a good effect.

Now we are getting
ready for Edd to go to hospital and get his knees fixed.  He has a date in May organised and the
surgeon said if all goes well he will do the other knee this year too!   Both my mother and Indigo are
sick this week so we have plenty of family to worry about.  As Al has just told me it seems to be a
time of change for everyone.

Nuts

April 10 2016

I am now officially
one year older.  We celebrated the
even with a family meal at the Indian restaurant and a picnic up in the forest
by the cascades.  The water coming
down the falls was at low ebb so we were able to help Silky climb over the
rocks and view the whole area.  The
surrounding bush was badly damaged in the 2009 fires but it is now
recovering.   The old wooden
bridge at the lowest level was destroyed and has been replaced with an ugly
metal structure but the place is so beautiful even this out of place structure
cannot destroy the ambience.

It is still really dry
and I am very glad we have reduced our stock levels.  We are able to keep all the remaining animals looking fat
and full but there are reports of starving horses in the newspapers.  I have just been told that we can buy
oats too. Our usual farm we buy from did not get a crop this year so we are
lucky that he has some left to sell.   We are still using the large bales we had left from
last year for the goats.  We
brought far more than we needed but it has been a lifesaver because there was
little available round here this year.

The big news is that I
have finally grown a nut!  I have
been trying for about 30 years without success.  In fact I have harvested 4 edible chestnuts so far.  I have been watering the trees. It is
obvious that daily watering is needed to grow nuts or olives.  The chooks have eaten most of the grass
under the trees but we have put down hay from the rotted outer edges of the
bales, which is protecting the earth and keeping the chooks entertained as they
spread it out for us.

We were all very
worried last week because Ceci, Indi’s new puppy, got very sick and had to stay
at the vets on a drip.  Much to
everyone’s relief she recovered and today she is back at school, learning to
work sheep.  She is still very thin
but at least she is full of energy. 
I was very worried that we would loose her but Indi took her to the vets
in Healesville who are very good with small animals.

Edd and I went to the
Agricultural show near Druin yesterday to look at various things. We found lots
of Dorper sheep and have decided on the white ones rather than the black
heads.  We want this breed because
they shed their own wool so there is no need for crutching or shearing.  We are also looking for a poddy calf to
drink the spare goats milk.