Bredbo Valley View farm - providing quality education in Permaculture and sustainable living practices.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Introducing - Andrew


It’s been unexpectedly busy the last couple of days. Tuesday night I was driving home down the highway just on dusk, on the other side of Prospectors Hill when I passed a bloke pushing his bike up the hill. It’s a notorious stretch of road; three people have been killed there since we moved here. Being Tuesday I had the trailer on the car, but I couldn’t pull over because of the traffic – so I waited till it was safe and chucked a U-turn. I pulled up and asked him if he wanted a ride into town, it’s not unusual to see people riding bicycle along the road – but not many are pushing.

So he tossed his bike on the trailer and I drove him into town. He wanted somewhere to stay so I took him around to the Pub. Astonishingly it was shut, I’ve never seen the Pub shut before, and there is nowhere else cheap to stay in town ( I now know due to new owners it's shut Monday and Tuesday). He had no sleeping bag or anything and it gets cold at night in Bredbo this time of year. So I offered him to stay at the farm, which he accepted. We had a chat on the way I found out his name was Andrew and he was an Architecture Student from Cardiff in the UK – and he was riding his bike from Sydney to Melbourne.

So I rocked up home with a stranger. Luckily the Cook was working and wouldn’t be home for a while. We fed the pigs and did the other chores and went inside for dinner. Of course the living room was half full of piglets – somehow that number has grown from three to four. I cooked dinner and we all sat down and ate.

Andrew told us a bit about what he was doing and we talked about the best way to go to Melbourne. He had intended to go from Cooma across the Snowy Mountains to Wagga. I suggested that that wasn’t a good idea with only one gear. I think in the end he decided to go south from Cooma to Sale then on to Melbourne.

The Cook got home a little bit later and we sat up for a while and chatted. Next morning Andrew packed up his bike, tied his bag to the back with a piece of string. The dog had stolen his piece of string and he had to steal it back it from her – covered in slobber, which took some effort. The Cook was amazed that he only used a piece of string holding everything together and cracked some joke about doing his trip on a shoestring. She made him a packed lunch and he rode off up the drive and headed south. Good luck mate.

We’ve had a few people looking a pigs the last week or so and I am running out of grower Sows. I can’t complain – having fewer big pigs over winter is a good thing. I’ll be collecting acorns this week as well, as I’ve said before it hasn’t been a good year, but Good Friday and Easter Sunday give me a couple of days with out cars in the car parks around Canberra to get as many as possible.

There is the Bee Association Annual General Meeting tonight so I better go to that. I also had a call from the NSA people last night about doing some work here in a couple of weekends – but I think that isn’t going to happen at this stage due to many reasons.

The damned foxes have taken a couple of chickens, they must have come into the chicken yard this time because I don’t remember some of them ever going over the wire before.

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