A very hot summer with helpful workers

                              Keeping cool by the river with work away people , friends and Indi

February 2, 2019

We are having a long spell of really hot weather. Over 40C on some days and no rain.  It has been a real struggle to keep plants and animals alive. Luckily the “work away” travellers have been helping and so far, we are OK.   The pullets are now sheltering under the trees in their new pen and all the goat kids are in small crofts where they can have shade and any cool breeze available.

Dan is doing a great job in the ruins garden tackling all the really hard bits that no one has got around to sorting.  The bank is now a cool place to sit under trees rather than a jungle of weeds.   It is amazing how much work has been done.  Yesterday I took the Finland couple to Whittlesea where they are meeting their next host, but Dan is staying on. This is good because we are getting all sorts of bookings for farm visits and it looks as if it will be a very busy year.

Last week we left our workers in charge and had a day off the farm.  Firstly, we called in at a Garden world, my favourite garden centre and then we went to Mornington to pick up our wool from the place it was being processed. I was surprised at how much there was. The people had sorted it out into 4 colours and washed and carded it ready to be hand spun. The white wool was spun into yarn so that we can go on with dying experiments during the school camps.   We left the wool that was shorn last year down there to be treated.  This year we have grey wool as well as brown, black and white.  I would love to start spinning but there is still too much work in the garden to be done.

After exchanging our wool Edd and I took the car ferry across the heads to the Bellarine Peninsular where Al lives.   Baby P is still under a year old, but he is now crawling everywhere and getting into things, as babies do.  Al and Pip still have a lot of work to do on their house to get it more liveable, but the new offices Al added for their work spaces look great.  They are both faced with a pale stone and are all that is visible from the road. 

We all went out for an evening meal in a restaurant stuck into the ocean on a jetty.  Luckily, we could sit outside and watch the sun going down which was wonderful.  Less good was the electrical storm that we had to drive through to get home.  I fell asleep as soon as I got in the car so Edd had to do all the work on his own.  Next morning, we were pleased to find that all the animals and plants had been well cared for, it would not have been possible to do this trio without help.  So far, I am totally thrilled with the work away system. We started having Wwoof workers about 19 years ago, but I was worried that we were getting too old to manage this type of help.  We seem to have slotted straight back into the swing without too much hassle.