Football and pasties

October 1 2017

We are having a very family weekend.  Everyone gathered at the farm yesterday to watch the football finals and cook pasties.  This year I made the pastry the day before and the pasties were ready by half time.  Edd supervised vegetable preparation and assembly of all the parts with lots of help from everyone so that the tradition of pasty making is passing down to the younger generations.

The teens and girl friends disappeared into the environment and Silky kept two- year old Ella happy with the toy box. The serious sports people watched the match right through but luckily let out enough groans and whoops to let the pasty makers know when to rush to the next room and watch key moments.  To crown things off, the Tigers, whom we were barracking for, won the cup. Al and Indi have always been Tigers supporters and so has Stevo who will probably need a few days to recover.

Simon had a worse time. He had set up a screen and projector in the restaurant. All went well until the football started and then the TV system for channel 7 that he was using switched to other programs. This was totally unexpected, luckily our TV at home showed the match fine.

Al and Pip stayed here on Friday night and then Wayne, Dani and Ella stayed last night. I am baby-sitting Ella today whilst her parents go to see the Elton John concert at a local winery.  Lucky them! At the moment everything is peaceful because Ella is asleep.  It is the first time she has been left with us so I am not sure what she will think of the arrangement.

On the farm the goat kids are settling down to a routine.  They all drink from the bucket feeder but the smallest kid runs away and needs to be caught first, which is maddening.  Nola looks as if she might have her kids today and is the last pregnant goat. We have only two female kids so I hope she can reset the male/female balance.

Our neighbour has been over with his digger and levelled the edge of the camping ground where the carport and wood shed used to be. There were some big tree stumps to be dug out that were far too large to do by hand.  Now, once grass grows I can maintain the area with the ride on mower.  This gives us a good cleared space between the ruins and the gully that will form a firebreak as well as extend the camping site.

It is Silky's birthday today so we will all go to Bo’s house later this afternoon for yet another family gathering. We have a complicated plan over cars because only Wayne's car has a baby seat.  Wayne has taken my car to Yarra Glen and then swapped cars with Bo to go to the concert.  We plan to drive Wayne’s car and Ella to Bo’s house for the party. Then Bo will drive Ella in Wayne’s car to join her parents after the concert at the place they are staying and come home in her car. We will have my car at Bo’s house to come home in.  It all seems pretty obvious this morning but trying to work this out yesterday after a few glasses of wine proved impossible.

Farm life in Spring

Sept 26 2017

The weather is definitely warming up.  I feel so much more energized when the sun is shining.  This is a good thing because we have the goats kidding, kids needing training to bottle feed, serious cheese making and building programs all on the go!  Today Stevo is replacing the door on the donga with a larger door.  (The previous door and frame had to be taken out every time we moved something large in or out, fridges for example.)

Last week Stevo and Edd put up a ceiling in the tool shed. This stops swallows nesting on the beams and shitting on all the tools, which is a big improvement. There are swallows that sit above the donga windows too that we plan to relocate elsewhere.  I actually love the sparrows but they are so messy that I do not need them in places I have to keep clean.

The sheep have been in the little crofts above the goat shed eating up the capeweed before it flowers.  We wormed them going in and we have done the lambs tails this week when we got them out.  We have eight female lambs and only one male. (The goats have gone the other way with two female kids and six male).  We neglected this work last year, when Edd had his knee replacement, and ended up with three rams.  They are now baled up in the yards waiting to be sent off. It feels much better to be back in control again this year.

I am trying to decide what sort of vacuum sealer to buy for storing cheese. If I wax the cheeses they often grow mold but if I leave them un-waxed they go hard as rocks.  In effect this means that there is only a small time gap at about two months when I get a good cheese to eat. I consulted the cheese makers I buy supplies from and they suggested vacuum sealing but it is difficult to choose from the many types available when I know so little about the process.

sustainable house day and goatlings with attitude

Not so sunny today but the house is still clean and tidy!

Sept 18 2017

Yesterday was mega.  Al had organised us to have an open day as part of sustainable house day. I had spent the last week making sure the house was as presentable as possible and Edd fixed up the sign he has been working on for the front gate.  He also fixed up the last unit in the mudroom and the kitchen bench back plate.  These small jobs have been hanging around for ages with out coming to the top of the priority list so it was a real bonus to get them done.

The weather has been awful. Freezing, cold nights and sheeting rain in the day. Yesterday something completely amazing happened. The sun came out, the skies were clear blue, the wind dropped and even the mud on the roads dried out. All this made the fact that there were 170 visitors that turned up for a look possible.  Al arrived early in the morning and helped putting the signs up before he found some paint and painted the plastic down pipes.  (Another job that never made priority status).  He felt that the outside look was compromised and it obviously offended him.

Before 10am, when things were due to start, cars began arriving and just kept coming all day.  Indi greeted the guests and got them signed in and then I collected them into tour groups and Al and Barry (an architect who works with Al took groups round the house.  The guests who came were really focussed on getting information and asked lots of questions. By the end of the day Al had no voice left!  Edd took the outside tour over the roof and through the farm buildings showing everyone how the water power and light systems worked from outside. 

Indi, Barry and I also did the outside tours as Edd faded.  This went on all day and we were forced to take turns eating lunch, on display like zoo animals. On the positive side when the cars stopped arriving and at 4.30 everyone had left the house still looked squeaky-clean and lots of people had taken Al’s business cards. The weather had been perfect for showing the house at it’s best. There had been a frost over night but we had not lit the fires because I had cleaned them and wanted them pristine in the morning.  The house was 22 C when we woke and with the sun pouring in it warmed a further and staid warm even with the doors open for most of the day.  This was a very convincing demonstration of thermal mass in action. Edd and I still had the goats to milk and other animal work before we could relax, so we feel pretty exhausted today.

Three goats have kidded so we have bottle-feeding four times a day and extra milking. The machine was not working and it is only in the last two hours that Edd has got it running again.  I was threatening to go off and buy a new machine I was so worn out. We just managed to get last years goatlings trained to come into the milk room and jump up on the bale before kidding started.

This group of goatlings had attitude.  They trained to jump up all right but then they refused to leave the milk room. They could see no reason to go out into the rain and mud when they were quite happy with food in a nice clean dry room. Usually young goats shoot out and are easily hurried along by banging the brush against the bale or squirting water at them but this time Edd had to get really fierce before they learnt that rules were rules.

cold weather

August 23 2017

Silkie went back to school on Monday but collapsed on Tuesday. Bo had to take her back to emergency at the children’s hospital and because Bo had to complete her own work at the children’s in music therapy Silkie ended upon our couch.   She has missed quite a lot of school so Bo and I have put her on an education program to keep her going.  I was expecting a battle to start this off but she took to it like a duck to water. 

By the end of this week she has bounced back a bit. She is hungry again and is moving freely. Bo plans to send her to school camp next week.  She obviously had a very bad reaction to a flu virus but there still seems to be some underlying condition that no one can pin down.

This week has been hard because we have had winter weather. There have been heavy frosts for the first time this year and cold days.  Two more sheep have lambed giving us a total of nine babies so far.  By my calculations we have two more pregnant sheep left to go.  After that the goats will start to kid.  The big news is that we have another potential grandchild because Al’s wife, Pip, is expecting.  It is early days so we are trying to curb our excitement.

Al now lives three hours drive away so we are not able to offer much help, which I find very hard.  We see Al every fortnight for a short time when he visits his clients in the Yarra Valley.  After all the time that we spent with him over the last few years it leaves a big hole in our lives.  His daughter, Indi, is moving out of our Donga into the new demountables that she and her partner have built. It all looks amazing but they are finding that they have far too much stuff to fit in their new space so the move is taking some time. I think there will be quite a lot of work needed to restore the donga before we can use it again.

Despite the cold weather we still have vegetables. Asparagus is sprouting and there is plenty of lettuce, rocket, celery and kale.  The turnips are ready to eat too but the parsley is slow.  The point of lay chooks we brought have not been laying well and we are still relying on the older chooks for our egg supply.  Edd and Josh have been exploring the information on growing edible fungi. Josh has sent Edd down the first stage of equipment as a father’s day gift.  We get field mushrooms here naturally, but pine mushrooms have not grown here even though I have tried to put down spores.  It seems that there are many easier, faster varieties to try.

My wool work continues. I am exploring different ways to use wool to make scatter cushions.  This week I am using a hessian backing for chain stitching an aboriginal design.  I do not know if it will work but it is fun trying.