Out of lockdown as spring advances

The bee swarm

23.10.2021

 

Strange times. Lock down is over and we begin a new phase of freedom for vaccinated people.  We met Al for coffee in a Healesville beer garden yesterday and getting in was problematic.  I had a print out of my vaccination certificate and Edd has his on his phone. This was not good enough. You needed your phone Q card linked to your my Gov vac certificate page.  Oh my Gosh! They expect everyone to instinctively know how to set all this up. Even Josh did not find it easy to get our phones to the first stage!  Luckily the hotel had a man at the door and every potential customer was having the same problems so he used his common sense and we all got in.

 

Life on the farm is much easier to manage.  We had several dry days and I have been able to weed vegetable beds and deal with the grass that is growing flat out.  The snow peas and zucchinis have just started to flower and we have broccoli and various salad plants in abundance.  Josh’s young chooks are almost adult size and his new bee swarm is still here (we hope). Bo has been helping us with the animal feeding and milking.  We enjoy seeing her regularly as much as we appreciate the help.  Lock down cut us off from all our friends and family which was hard.

 

Josh worked all week with stevo building and helping at the brewery.  He has better down loads speeds in his cabin than we get because he built a special arial from scratch.  Edd and I are wondering if we should get a new TV. We got the old one in 2009 after the fires and it is not set up for modern technology. There are a few TV shows we enjoy and being able to watch them later when we miss them would be great if we could work out how.  

 

Chaos and floods every where

 15.10.2021

 

We are still in hard lock down, and the daily number of new cases remains near 2000.  Gradually we are getting everyone vaccinated and if we follow the trend in NSW this might start to ease. NSW new pm has just declared that he will open up to the world again and allow freedom. This is in contrast to what our federal pm wants so chaos is the main issue today. I mean how can it be for people to fly into Sydney from anywhere and then travel to Victoria when we are still restricted to curfews and travel restrictions!

 

The weather is equally chaotic. We get hot sunny days and then, like today, we have cold and floods. It poured down last night and water on the roads and in the creeks is flowing in torrents.  We are better off than the animals who can’t adjust there clothing to suit the conditions.  Mostly we make maximum use of days when the ground dries out a bit.  I dash around on the ride on mower and dig the vegetable beds and Edd whipper snips the bits I can’t get to. We are just managing to keep everything under control but it is a battle now the grass is growing so fast.

 

Edd has been in a lot of pain with a dodgy hip. Last week he had X-rays that probably mean a hip replacement.  This is not good news as our medical system is over stretched already so nothing is going to happen soon. Bo has been wonderful helping every day on the farm but we also know that it is probably best for us to still get out and do everything we can. I try to get up to start the milking early to save Bo’s time and then she gets up even earlier to beat me to it!

 

Josh found a bee swarm and collected it after work so he now has two hives on the property.  I am in awe of anyone brave enough to tackle a bee swarm and drive a car with it in a box. Josh tells ne that attempt one to sweep it into a dustbin failed but a bee suit and cardboard box worked well!  He also astounds me with bee facts from the many study papers he has read. Who knew that bees could count and understood the concept of zero?  Don’t ask me to explain how people worked this out. 

 

 

 

 

A very wet spring

 3.10.2021

 

Everything is water logged. We have never known it quite so wet.  Josh had to drill holes in some plant pots to stop things drowning.  It is actually quite warm, so there has been lots of growth and today when it is sunny all the pumped-up vegetables are looking deflated!  The snow peas are shooting up and I try to help them cling on to the supports as mostly they are not very good at doing this themselves.  No flowers yet but it can’t be long. 

 

Also, I have planted out the first of the zucchini seedlings. They have been growing in pots, but today I made clearings in the mizuna patch and put them into the ground. It will be so good when we actually eat zucchinis again. They seem to have so many uses. I think the last broccoli crop will be ready first. The heads are now almost harvesting size. Meanwhile we use lettuce, silver beat, celery and various lettuces. We ate the last cauliflower but there is a second planning on the way. The asparagus have started to shoot too. Most noticeable are all the fruit trees that are in full flower and the oak trees that have now a full canopy of bright young leaves.

 

Our preserved vegetables in the freezer are depleting too. This is good because I need to get to a point where an almost empty freezer can be cleaned out and ready for the next years’ crops.  The beans and tomatoes are almost all gone but we still have fruit that we eat with our muesli for breakfast. This year I have frozen cauliflower which has worked a lot better than I thought it would. 

The animals are not really happy with the weather. The sheep have wet feet and resulting problems and the goats are staying in the shed for much of each day.   This week Bo has come up everyday and helped us do the farm work so that we could get an odd sort of at home holiday.  It is at least 2 years since we had any break at all, so this has been very welcome.  Edd and I are both feeling age related problems this year and even getting an appointment with a physio is almost impossible.

 

We have not seen any of our great grandkids for months and it is feeling a bit too long an interval. We are lucky that Josh and CB live on the farm or we would feel much too isolated. The good news is that cases in NSW seem to have peaked and there is hope the same thing will happen in Victoria as the numbers of vaccinations mounts.  There have been anti vax protests in Melbourne and we got a surge of cases after football grand final parties but most people are trying to do the right thing.  We are just keeping our fingers crossed.