Harvest time

 28.2.2024

 

The sheep are now shorn and the Persian sheep are separate on the old drive where I can feed them separately. At present I spend much of my time with vegetables.  We have an abundance, far more than we can eat. I have cleaned out the freezer and am preserving everything I can but I had to resort to taking zucchinis to the charity shop. Today I prepared and froze apples, pears, sweet corn and beans.

 

We are now getting hot dry days. This was supposed to be a day of the worst fire rating with very high temperatures ad wind, but so far it has been only moderately hot and pretty calm.  There are large fires that have been burning for a week near Ballarat that are not yet under control, but so far nothing new has happened that we know about.

Last week our half of the valley had three days without power but our solar system worked brilliantly and everything worked as normal with the sun and batteries help.  We have a generator that we used to move between the dairy and the house as needed but this new system is far superior.  

 

Our next big job is getting the deep litter cleaned out from the goat shed. This has not been done for three years so there is a huge build up.  Our friend with the gear to do this is away in Ireland so we are stuck till he gets back.  Luckily, we still have some litter left from the last clean out that I can use to refresh the vegetable beds, but the supply is getting low. I don’t think we could grow much without this fertiliser.

 

Our tiny steels creek market is now back on twice a month and it is great catching up with neighbours. It is another place where I try and give away vegetables.  I was given apples last week end which was great because the sheep got into the new orchard in spring and ate all the branches that would have born fruit.