A lockdown Spring

  

Last week was amazing.  Warm sunny weather got us working outside all day and we got a lot done.  Edd worked with john and his sons to pour the concrete base for the car port and I Painted the wood in the vegetable garden and worked on clearing up the old kitchen patio in the ruins.  This job is traditionally one of the first spring jobs and I have been doing it at this time for years and years.  CB whipper snipped the grass around the vegetable beds’, and I planted out the first pumpkin seedlings that germinated.  

 

I now have zucchini seedings coming up and I have planted Queensland blue pumpkin seeds.  Often, I cheat and buy seedlings from Bunnings but with everything closed down for covid19 this is not an option.  I did check, just in case they would deliver seedlings to me but there was no luck there, so it was back to saved seeds from last year.  The snow peas and broad beans are producing their first pods and the cabbages are nearly ready.  Just in time too.  The freezer that was full to the brim with last year’s produce is nearly empty and ready for a spring cleaning.

 

The grass is growing fast and the sheep are cleaning up on the roof and in our house site/ fire reserve. It has been very hard keeping them going over winter because we were unable to sell the lambs when the market closed.  In this strict lock down we can’t even have people coming to the farm to buy stock, so we have been forced into a situation where we are over stocked.  Luckily, I had sold the spare goats earlier but now we have kids and all the males are ready for new homes.   

 

They are all looking cute and come rushing up for their milk.  All except Tom who Hangs back and is still very shy.  I have no idea why he has this attitude; we have never had another kid like this. Edd says he is sensitive! I think he is just being difficult.  He drinks well but has to be persuaded every time, making the job of feeding much harder than it needs to be.  I do hope someone else really wants a sensitive goat!

 

The kids now drink all the available milk, so I am having a break from cheese making. We have a fridge full of cheese, so this is fine with me.  I get extra time to work in the garden and learn about regenerative agriculture.  I am afraid I have given up in the sourdough bread.  Our friends make much nicer bread than I can make so we are buying bread from them.  Indi can make the great bread and the honey she got from her bees is the best I have ever tasted. It is really nice to eat honey from our own land and watch the bees feeding as they work in the garden.

 

Starting to get things done

8.9.2020

 

He weather has been much, much nicer.  Clear blue skies and warm dry days. At last we can start to get things done on the farm.  Yesterday Andrew, and his off sider, poured the concrete slab for Edd’s new shed.  The truck that brought the concrete here was huge, but it got to the right place and the only problem was that the sun and wind made the concrete go off so fast it was hard to work.

 

Whilst the men struggled with that, I have been working in the vegetable garden digging the mud and grass of the brick paths where it had accumulated during our long muddy winter. Some of the seeds I have planted have germinated, but not the zucchini, and I really want to get them going first. Not that I am short of zucchinis this week. A neighbour dropped off a large box full for us along with a sack of onions, apples and potatoes.  I will have to send some to Bo, it is far too much for us to use.

 

Our stage 4 lock down is to last another 2 weeks.  Numbers off new cases are still dropping but the modelling shows that there are still too many to get on top of contact tracing.  We agree with the policy, but the list of things I am managing without gets longer week by week.  Some things have arrived by post. Having a parcel arrive is quite fun, but I miss the freedom of just being able to drive out and get things when I need them.

 

The last of the kids have been born and are being weaned today.  By next week we should have them all drinking from the feeder and life will be easier.  I start the morning at 7am with the milking and first bottle feeds.  Then I do garden work and do a lunch time bottle feed at 1pm. There is yet another feed after the evening milking at 6pm and then I cook the evening meal and eat it at 7pm.  Edd does the night feed because I refuse to work more than 12 hours a day.  He is Ok because he can have a lie in whilst I do the morning session.

 

Luckily this regime does not go on for long.  The kids can drop back to 2 feeds a day after the milking when they are big enough to drink a litre each at a time.  The biggest problem is that we usually sell all the male kids at an early stage and we need people to be able to come out here for that to happen.  The other problem is that Iris has worked out how to feed her kids through the pen rails which is interfering with our weaning process.  She may have to be shut up in a separate pen away from them every night.

 

The lambs have survived the dreadful weather and are growing quite well.  We need to fix the bottom fence so that we can let the sheep into the hay paddock where the grass is growing. The capeweed is starting to flower but luckily it was dry enough yesterday for me to mow the crofts and cut it all down.  This stops the flowers forming and allows the grass enough light to grow and take over.  We have not finished the redesigned buck pen yet because we stopped working on it to do the shed slab.  We did get a row of posts in. Edd dug the holes by hand which was possible with the ground so wet.  There is an awful lot to do now the weather has improved.