work starts on Toby's garden
May 28. 2017
It is pouring with
rain and very muddy outside today but who cares. We were so lucky and had warm, dry, weather for the school
camp last week. I am sure I am not
entitled to complain for weeks!
That aside, it would have been easier if it had been dry today because
it is Edd’s last day on the farm before he heads over seas for a month and he
has rather a large “to do” list.
We are just having to
get things done between showers.
The school students put up a new chook shed last week and today Edd put
in the chook door and the chook wire on the gates. With help from Ben and Indi we put new collars on the goat
kids too. They had grown too
large for their baby collars and they all look quite similar so it was
important to keep them labelled.
The school camp got
lots of work done. They harvested
the pumpkins and put in winter crops, built new goat pens in the big shed and
removed the temporary fence stopping the animals from going up the hill. They also planted trees, worked on our
water garden and started to clear the area for Toby’s garden. Al came to stay for a night in the week
and he has started working on a design for the garden and the spa gazebo.
Once the chook pen was
up we moved all the chooks around so that we now have a shed cleaned and ready
for point of lay pullets. I had
some jobs ready for wet weather and so one group of kids painted the walls and
ceiling in the dairy milk room. It
smells much better and looks clean and bright now but I think I will need to do
another coat of paint to complete the job. Then I suppose I can start tiling. I am back cheese making again and doing
feta cheese today.
May 20 2017
The sun is sinking
down behind the small hill at the end of a glorious warm day. We seem to have
missed the massive rain that was moving down the East coast from
Queensland. This is really good
for us because we have dry weather to prepare for next weeks school camp. I mowed the grass during the week when
Edd went off to collect a ton of oats, and Edd is doing the edges today. The vegetable garden is a mess but
sorting it out is a job for the campers.
Today we picked up the
last of the materials we needed for the school programs. Now we just have to
pray that the weather stays like today and avoids being too diabolical. The last thing I need is a week with 20, wet, cold, upset,
campers. Edd goes to the UK the
Monday after the camp so we are preparing for that too. He will be away a month so we are
struggling to get the farm to a state it can be managed by one person and I am
also trying to get enough washing clean and dry for Edd to take. I am not panicking yet.
The main issue on the
farm is to get the fence down the hill secure. Edd has been struggling up and
down that treacherous slope trying to get the wires back up and tight. The poor horses are still confined to a small croft and
are mostly living off hay, but they are elderly now and need better living
conditions before the cold weather sets in. The goats always have the option of staying in their shed so
I am not so worried about them.
The weather is so mild
that the plants are behaving in unexpected ways. We have tomatoes germinating and pumpkins still growing more
fruit. The fruit are developing on the mulberries. We will be very lucky not to loose this year’s crop to a
frost. We are still getting
strawberries for breakfast and the new lemons are ripening. I have ordered some
stuff to try and make olive oil but I don’t think it will all be ready before
this year’s crop ends.
We have several olive
trees that fruit every year and young ones growing so sooner or later oil
production should be possible.
Indi and Ben are managing an olive orchard on French Island and they are
making oil on a commercial scale so I am getting lots of helpful tips from
them. Indi tells me that the beehives
here that came from Al are recovering but she has decided not to harvest the
honey this year to give them an extra help along. The other thing we need to complete a balanced diet here is
a source of starch. Grain
production might be too difficult so we will have to improve our potato
efforts.
Bo has nearly finished
the first semester of her music therapy training. A lot of the training involves practice rather than theory
and the stories she tells us are fascinating. She seems to be really enjoying herself and getting more
involved as time goes on. Al also
tells me that he loves his work and has several really interesting
architectural projects. One is a temple in Canberra for the Tibetan Buddhists,
which is a very different sort of job.
The good news is that
Edd has received E-mails from Arj in Germany and they have set a date to meet
up. I do hope this works out. We
have not seen Arj for over two years and miss him.
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