In the Garden





Gardening has been the major activity around here for the past few weeks. Growing enough for a year is a real challenge, and puts a lot of emphasis on getting things right first time. The Cook is the head gardener ad I am just the muscle, however this year I do have my own gardens – one of Red Indian Maize and another of two different varieties of beans. I'm planning on doing another this weekend for pickluing cucumbers



Our Garden 13 Nov 2011



I’ve also built two trial Hugelkultur beds, unfortunately for me the Cook has planted Zucchini on them - not my favourite. Hugelkultur is a system where you mound earth and sod over a pile of logs, the logs are supposed to do two things; firstly they contain a lot of the nutrients from the soil and when they decay those nutrients are released into the soil and are made available to the pants, secondly the wood absorbs a lot moisture and stores that in the ground. A third positive is the growth of soil biota is increased and helps transport the moisture and nutrients to the plants.

Although most people recommend using a Cedar type log for your Hugelkultur mound mine are Poplar because that’s what we have here. In the long run it will mean that our mounds don’t last as long as they could, but we have a fairly good supply of Poplar so I’ll just have to rebuild them every other year if they work out.



Same Garden 13 August 2011



We have a huge potato crop, it’s about 400 m2 and it’ll be interesting to see how many potatoes we get and how long they last us. For the first year the Cook is trying Sweet Potato, it’s only a couple of plants to start as a test.

Ben had a birthday recently, his favourite present is a rocket set. We’ve had two successful launches to date. These things are pretty amazing and for a pyromaniac like myself a lot of fun, so far we have launched the rockets 180m into the air, Ben has ordered larger rocket engines to see if we can get higher.

We’ve also been experimenting with grain. We are planting wheat whenever we move a pig pen, so far the results have been good, apart from the bit where the goats stuck their heads in and ate around the edges of the plot. We’ve been using old water tank halves to grow the wheat in to keep the pigs away. Unexpectantly we’ve had oats come up as well, I’ll have to talk to my feed man about that.

We’ve continued on with our Holistic Farm Management course, we’re finding it enlightening. We’d really not had a plan or a method for analysing our decisions against our goals. The course has covered a lot of ground, last session where on grazing management and how properly managed grazing can increase the triple bottom line.

We’ve sold a lot of pigs lately, by the post Christmas sales we’ll only have a small number of growers, about 8 and our breeders left – I may be able to take a holiday with the family. It’ll cut our costs for the rest of the year, most of the breeder sows should farrow some time in February which will give us pigs in time for next Christmas.



Next lot of Growers



The little black and white pigs are growing in front of our eye’s. We’ve never had piglets grow as quickly as this. They are a real scream to watch run around the paddock, they travel as a pack everywhere they go, sleep together and eat together.

Weeds are still and issue and all those Serrated Tussock plants I didn’t get are happily seeding at the moment, I think in the balance of things I am getting the upper hand and should have that problem well and truly under control in a couple more seasons.

Our bees are happily going about their business, filling their boxes with the nectar of the gods. I’m hoping this year I’ll be able to harvest my fair share. The garden hasn’t started to bloom yet, so once that flow starts we should be right.

We’ve been getting so many eggs from our chickens it’s hard to know what to do with them all. I think we live on quiche, we’ve been having it three times a week. I’m still not exactly sure how many chickens we have – yes I know count the legs and divide by two, for a few days we were getting 22 eggs. It’s slowed down now, some of the hens have decided to start sitting, and we had our first brood hatch the other day in the bottom of the spit roaster. With another forty or so eggs to go it doesn’t look like chickens are going to be a problem for us this year. I’m hoping to have our Strawbale Chicken Coup planned and teh foundation s down over Christmas.

A friend of mine from my army days took our goats away the other day. They’ve gone down the coast for a job getting rid of Blackberries and Fireweed. My friend, let’s call him Phil, kept the goats locked up and fed for the first few days, then let them out to graze. Unfortunately he had a massive storm that afternoon, and the goats used to living in our shearing shed during storms decided to find some shelter – and haven’t been seen since. So if you’re driving between Bombala and Bredbo and see four goats, two white one Boar and a ginger one with dread locks let me know.

Boomerangs

I hope everybody has survived Christmas; ours was quite and mostly restful. It did take me 10 days to mow the lawn with the brand new 21 inch cut, 190cc lawn mower that I bought the Cook for Christmas. Normally we buy second hand mowers from garage sales; I’ve broken three since we’ve been on the farm so this time I splurged on a new one. Apart from being able to start it first time every time, it mows twice as wide rows as the others. It’s made a huge difference to how long it takes to mow the lawn, but it hasn’t made any difference to how fast it grows back.

The lawn had grown so long that it was up to my shoulders by Christmas, Ben had been lost in the yard for a day and night and nobody noticed, we all thought he was doing the waters. He was finally able to follow one of the pigs out at feed time. By the time I made it to the last few rows I had to scythe the long grass first, hunt out the tigers and then mow it a couple of times.

As is tradition at Valley View we had a Christmas Day litter of pigs, ironically it was from the same sow that supplied us with our Christmas ham. She gave birth to a lovely litter of fine piglets ready for this year’s (2011) Christmas.

We have also had a great deal of chickens hatching with clutches of chicks all over the house and yard. Unfortunately only one of the Lavender Araucana’s green eggs has hatched so far. With any luck the other five or so eggs will hatch out over the next couple of days.

Our most exciting news was the first jars of Valley View Honey! The bees had built honey comb on the lid of one of the hive boxes and when I went to add an extra super to the hive I decided to remove the comb so the lid would fit again. I obviously need to put a mat on the top of the frames in that box. The girls did us proud and from just a small amount of comb we managed to extract three large jars of honey, almost enough to last a few months if the cook can stop giving it away. She did do all the extraction and received a sting on the finger for her troubles. And it tasted just divine. We are still only amateurs as far as the Bees, there’ll be a lot of learn as you go, luckily I have Mrs D’s number if I get stuck!

We sold a lot of pigs over the break; every other day pigs were going off. I now only have about 25 grower pigs left for next year. As the majority of these are boars I’ll probably have to take them down to the pig sales in February. We have about twenty piglets which we are keeping for hams for this years Christmas. I’m planning on having no piglets over winter this year and resting the sows.

Somebody whom bought pigs uttered a side ways word about their wife wanting goats, the Cook’s ears instantly pricked and she was off like a dog with a bone.

She had the goats organised the people over and all four loaded in their truck before you could blink, Bendy and Nudge even allowed themselves to be caught with out putting up the usual fight. The Cook waved them off and felt satisfied she was finally rid of them – until today.

The people who took the goats called just after lunch. They found that our beautiful, lovely, placid goats didn’t want to integrate into their herd (what ever that means) so have decided to bring them back – The cook has been bitten on the bum by KARMA! I hope they had a nice holiday, I’ll be there to welcome them back (I’m laughing to myself) and build their new paddock behind the house.

First week of the new year - gone already.

It’s time to get back to work and stop all this laying about. I’m talking to the Cook! We’ve had a pretty hectic Christmas with heaps of visitors, lots of rain and more piglets.

Santa certainly did bring the rain and we’ve had over 80mm since Christmas eve. Everything is lovely and green and we won’t have to worry about fires for a week or two. The river is flowing, but no flooding yet so the pump is safe. The kids discovered we have fish living in our water tank. Looks like carp, I did want to try Aquaculture – but not in our drinking water would have been the preferred way.


Ben had a snake chase him around the chook pen the other day, Saturday I think. Each time he called me the snake had disappeared before I got there. We also spotted a rather large Red Bellied Black in the back paddock on Sunday. He was lying in the sun, the Cook wanted to know if I wanted to get out and have a look – after you sweetheart!

The Chook Dome has been completed and Harald did a wonderful job. It now houses half a dozen chooks a nice rooster and the three Khaki Campbell Ducks. The ducks quack every time we leave the house, but they really enjoy the showers the get from the garden sprinkler. And the chooks seem happy; some one is laying an egg a day so we can’t complain. If my calculations are correct we only need another three hundred and six eggs and the Chook Dome will have paid for itself.



I managed to find time to fix a few of the home fences, managed to strain the back fence and pull over the gate post - the Cook wasn’t very happy with me about that. Anyway, still can’t keep the goats out, which is a bit if a shame. I have fortified the pig enclosures and they are happily producing in the manner that will provide us with much pork this year. There are two whom are marked for bacon which are looking rather good.

We had a rather dramatic end to the week with a car catching fire on the highway in the front of the farm yesterday afternoon. I saw it from the pig yards and thought it was an accident at first, I raced up the drive and was just in time to see the car engulfed in flames, and luckily the two occupants had managed to get out before it was too late. I was amazed as they both lit up a cigarette and stood back to watch. It took the Fire Brigade nearly fifteen minutes to arrive, but the car was burnt out by then, I was grateful that he driver had managed to stop on the gravel and not the grass – even with all the rain the wind would have pushed a fire into the paddocks and who knows what could have happened.

A year on

It was a lovely weekend, the sun shone; we had warm days and freezing nights. The boys had a sleep over to go to this weekend, so the Cook packed them off early Saturday morning. I had the day to myself, after feeding and doing all the general farm stuff of course. So, there wasn’t much time for anything apart from feeding, making feeds and sorting the green feed. I’d only just finished doing the green feed when Dave called me and said he was bringing out another load – great.

We spent an hour unloading a ute full into a pen, then we decide to have a cuppa. When we’d finished and moved back ventured we found the pigs had made a cunning escape from pigopylus and raided the feed pile – it was too late to do anything about it, so we just let them all out to feast. There were a lot of fat and round pigs by dinner time. We heard nothing out of them that whole night – apart from greenhouse gas emissions.



Sunday was National Tree day and I spent the morning at Jacks Gully helping to plant trees. By midday t was time to head home and I arrived back just before the Cooks mate Jane turned up with the kids and a new Goat. So now we have four goats – although this one likes to hang around horses more then the other goats.

The three poddy piglets are growing quickly, they followed us around all weekend squawking and grunting – worse then the boys. The Cook did a lot of cooking and we are now resupplied with ANZAC biscuits for the next few days.

The Cook, Jane, Max and the three little pigs - looking for the goat

To top off the weekend we had high winds, up to 100kmph. The winds were caused by a cold front moving across Victoria – by this morning we had a full on dust storm raging. The pigs movable shelters lived up to their names and weren’t to be seen, the bread trailer – all 1.2tonnes of it was blown across the paddock and ended up resting against a fence post next to the pig shed.

Dust storm this morning

I nearly forgot - on the way in to town this morning I spotted these characters taking shelter from the wind.

On another note the blog has been going for a year now – over 7000 hits and 245 entries later - thanks everybody….!

Sunday

The jury is in and the wood fired roast pig gets full marks. Hopefully I’ll have some pictures of the results for tomorrow’s Blog – there are heaps of left over’s, none for me however….!!!!!

The pigs spent a quite Sunday grazing over the river flat, with the goats and George of course. George raced the car down the drive when he saw the Cook return from her truffle lunch – and he beat her up the driveway.

The Cook had a terrific lunch and is full of enthusiasm for truffles again. This will mean more fencing and hard work for me – but she’s the boss. We will have to carefully decide exactly where they will be planted; I think the last spot was too close to the pigs and the power lines, so next time we’ll choose a better, smarter spot. Our soil and temperature are perfect for truffles here and there are already a number of growers close by.

I fixed the electric fence for the time being, just glad I don’t have a pace maker - yet. I think I need to go back around the whole lot and replace some of the work I’ve done previously. One big mistake I made was not being able to isolate individual paddocks. I think I can fix that without too much effort or cost. I also needed to use more steel posts in the hinge joint parts, the little pigs have no respect for that stuff.

I will also need to finish the front paddocks and put a hot wire around the river flat later on just to stop the young pigs getting too adventurous and heading for the highway.

Well below zero

A happy pig

We had a nice weekend; unfortunately I had to go into Cooma to do a couple of jobs on Saturday and the places I need to go where shut for the weekend, I don’t recall them shutting for previous long weekends. It was also the start of the snow season so the Police were every where. I was eventually pulled over twice for random breath tests. The first time was in Bredbo on the way home and the second time at Berridale – by the same Police officer.

On Sunday morning I was taking a shower, the window to the bathroom was open and I was looking out across the paddocks. I was amazed at how mild the winter had been. The first winter we had I would have frozen solid in ten minutes with the window open in June. Later I drove into Canberra to pick up the weekly pig feed. Unfortunately the feed guy took the day off also and I wasted a trip. I headed home and did some cleaning up instead – by 4:00pm it was dark and raining, cold and windy – winter had arrived.

Sunday Afternoon on the farm

Monday was the real highlight. The morning was bright and clear, I had to take a couple of pigs up to Jindabyne for a lady. I went out via East Cooma and through Dalgety to stay away from the snow traffic. Harry came with me and we had a nice time. Somewhere out on the plains we came across a drover pushing a mob of cattle across along the long paddock. He was ridding a stunning little buckskin mare which the Cook would have died for. I dropped of the pigs – there was no loading ramp so I backed the trailer up to a dirt mound, the pigs jumped off the trailer and we walked them up to their new home. It was surprisingly easy. They settled in very quickly and were reunited with a weaner the lady had taken from us when she came to look at the pigs earlier.

Some of you may remember an American magazine called “The Western Horseman” It was a magazine about life on the range land in the American West, full of Cowboys and Buckaroo’s and tails of hard horses and harder cattle. A lot of the magazine was made up of picture essays about the range lands. I remember as a kid I used to wait for the monthly magazine to arrive, and then wait until our father had read it so I could have a turn – it was probably the only thing I read for years apart from the required reading at school. I used to love the stories about the Rendezvous of Mountain Men that happened every autumn.

Anyway, Tuesday night I arrived home late. I needed to pick up the bread and had to get feed and straw as well. By the time we had unloaded the feed, fed the pigs and given them all straw for the cold evenings ahead it was 9:00pm. The Cook arrived home a little later after a long day shift and went strait for the heater. Just before we went off to bed it started to rain, just a little and only for a few minutes. The Cook had come in and cursed the cold but I was surprised it had rain because the sky was clear earlier.

Tuesday morning front the front gate looking back at the house

At about 3:30am the goat decided to seek shelter under the eaves of the house – right under our window. I put up with about an hour of her ringing her bell until I had to go outside and move her on. I jumped out of bed and the full moon was shining through the window so I ducked out the front door bare footed only in a t-shirt. I jumped down off the veranda ankle deep into fresh dry snow. That woke me up! I pushed the goat out of the yard and went straight back to bed, my feet freezing. I did wake the Cook and tell her it had snowed which I think she appreciated.
So After I had my shower this morning and while the moon was still up, I wandered around outside with my camera. I watched the sun come up, reminded me of many mornings in the Army freezing on the Pucka Range whilst on piquet duty. The snow was only an inch deep but the ground was frozen solid. As the sun rose and you could see more detail, it all reminded me of the photo’s I used to see in the Western Horseman Magazines all those years ago.

As a by the way, all the roads south and west of Cooma are still closed – it’s 2:00pm. We shouldn’t get anymore snow however – and all the piggies are fine.

Above average - at last!

I felt like a Roman Emperor returning from Gaul last night. Being a Tuesday I had a trailer full of bread on the back of the jeep, as I turned into the driveway across the TSR I could see the goats standing atop the rocky hills behind the house. They must have seen me drive in and started racing down the side of the rocky hill. As I pulled up at the gate both Shadow and George where waiting for me and followed me up to the house, by the time I got there, the goats had arrived and the pigs had all come in out of the paddocks. Everybody loves me!!!!!

Yesterday afternoon bought more rain and by 5:00pm we had received more them 20mm for the 24hrs. This takes our monthly rainfall above the average for the first time since June 2006.

So – next it’s the cold. ANZAC day approaches fast and officially that’s the start of the cold weather. All the farms around us have been busy planting the last few days in preparation and the past couple of days’ rain has paddocks starting to turn green already.

Tomorrow the DPI are running their Love Grass Field day on the TSR next door. I can’t go unfortunately, but the Cook has volunteered.

We're Back!!!

Well, we’re back. We all took a break over Easter after a couple of hectic weeks before. So where did we get up too? I attended the AGM of the Bee Association, at which I met the famous Mrs Duck Herder. A lovely lady, we had a chat about her bees, compost and bio dynamics, shared secrets about the location of various apple trees and the best acorn places in Canberra. It was nice to meet a fellow Blogger face to face. On the way home I nearly skittled a dozen small deer on the highway, a learner driver in front of me slowed down – I thought it was so I could over take; but in fact it was to let a herd of deer across the road.

On Good Friday I went into town to collect acorns – I manages to get a trailer load, but because everything was wet I had to feed them to the pigs almost straight away. I had a nightmare time driving into town on the Monaro Highway so I decided not to go in again over Easter. That afternoon I saw a fox dash off away from the chook pen in the half light. A quick check of the chickens revealed some missing, so he was obviously busy

The fox didn’t get the Easter Bunny. Eggs where scattered across the farm Sunday morning and the annual Easter egg hunt was conducted with the full enthusiasm of all involved – and chocolate was eaten in large quantities for breakfast – but not by me. Funny how the Easter Bunny puts eggs at either end of the far and the clues all follow the longest route. That Easter bunny sure is a sadist.

We had good rain over the weekend, 15mm one day and 20mm last night. It started raining at about 9:30pm and didn’t stop until 5:00am good solid soaking rain. Somewhere between 3:00am and 5:00am the Cook and I had a good chat about my stupid idea to put a bell around one of the goat’s necks and chains on the others. All three of the goats had decided that the spot under our window was the best place to stay out of the weather and the “ding-ding” of the bell kept us awake for hours. When the bell wasn’t ringing, the other two goats would walk along the veranda dragging their chains – I can imagine roast goat will be on the webber tonight (still no oven).

The Cook had spent a couple of very long days in the garden, mulching, composting, weeding digging and replanting. It all looks rather splendid and with the over night rain should take off. I think she was looking forward to a good nights sleep. Today she has been in the garden harvesting the rhubarb and cooking it up – mmmmm!! yummy rhubarb strudel for dinner. She spent some of Easter bottling tomatoes as well and now we have almost a winters worth of those as well.

We have another piglet schwarm. A schwarm, for those who don’t know, is a group of about ten or so piglets that run around the farm in a small group – like a swarm of mosquitoes but more devastating. Luckily they have been pretty harmless so far, I think they have nabbed a couple of duck eggs, some lose acorns and the chook scraps. They are an absolute cack to watch and take on a character all of their own. The schwarm only lasts a couple of weeks, once they are too big to escape under fence of their pen it’s all over. It’s when the pigs are truly free to range, unless they go near the garden, then they are dinner.

I think I should check the compost heap if I don’t see the goats tonight……..

How many?

I don’t know how many pigs we have at the moment. I know we have two inside and fifteen piglets out side – but I’m not sure how many others we are supposed to have. I might do an inventory this weekend.

The eldest piglets are at the exploring age. I’m hoping they don’t find the ducks eggs two quickly – we haven’t collected any for weeks now since the older pigs have been getting out.

The piglets have a game they play where they run around for a few minutes following a leader, finally the first piglet leads them into a giant figure eight pattern then slowly makes it smaller and smaller, until, finally the first and last piglets are following each other nose to tail – once they are all in the tightest figure eight pattern the cross over piglets crash into each other and all the pigs form a scrum, one on top of the other – a massive pile of feet, tails and noses everywhere.

We had our first cold night for Autumn last night. There was frost on the windscreen of the cars and bare metal gates. And to think last Friday it was so hot at the Show. The forecast is for days around 24 Deg and mornings around 4 Deg – I love this time of year. But this also means we only have a month to get the pigs shelters finished and the finished pigs to the processor.

I saw on a website yesterday a fellow talking about how dry it was and how the river near his farm had nearly stop flowing, and how surprised he was at the low soil level of moisture. He was telling the story about how he was digging a post hole and had to get a bucket of water because the soil was so dusty he couldn’t dig it with a post hole digger. The same fellow had only been saying in December/January that he was having such a good season. It’s surprising how quickly things can change for farmers, one minute everything looks like it’s going really well – next minute your carting water and hand feeding.

Today’s picture is the winner of the Best Any Breed Milking Goat at the Royal Canberra Show 2009.

We got your article Lynn – thanks, luckily none of our pigs are that smart!

Making Jam

Blackberries – not the telephone sort, but the black sweet yummy sort that grows down the river. The Cook spent Saturday making jam from a bucket of blackberries she had picked that morning. Ben absolutely loves them and it’s not unusual to find him with a purple stained mouth and fingers during the picking season.

Today is supposed to be very windy and maybe we’ll have some rain. We spent yesterday afternoon putting things away before the front moves through – with 100kph winds forecast I didn’t want to take any chances of something shorting out the fence.

Only one pig escaped this morning, so yesterday’s modification to the fence must be working – almost. I was up early this morning because it’s bread day - the days are getting shorter and it’s now dark when I have to leave early for jobs.

I was watching the piglets on the weekend, they have a game they play which is very funny to watch. The start off by running around the paddock in single file, once everybody is in the line they form a figure eight and as they run it gets smaller until the front piglets catch up to the ones in the back. Once they catch up they crash into each other for the biggest melee you’ve ever seen. I’ve seen repeat this game many times in a day – free range is the only way to grow happy pigs!

A day at the show

It was a hot afternoon at the show. I arrived just on lunch time on the first day. Not a lot of the exhibits had opened and I was really there to look at the Goats and introduce myself to the bee people. The goat and sheep areas where adjacent to the gate I entered through so I was lucky not to have to walk miles to see them – it was also next to the diving pigs, unfortunately I missed their performance.

I had a walk around the goat enclosure and tried to ask a few questions. But I think the stress of showing and the heat made most people less then conversational. I really wanted to find out things like protein quality of feed for good milk and prices for good milk breeds – the Cooks reading this shaking her head. I found out that goats have a higher cream content in their milk than cows – something I didn’t know before. All the goat breeders had a mixture of breeds, nobody really concentrated on just one breed. I sat and watched the judging for a while, which was interesting, but I’m still not totally convinced I know a good goat form an average goat.

I watched the sheep judging as well, the classes where large and the judging was intense. Most classes I watched was for the Suffolk Sheep – I think the Merinos are judged on Saturday.

After an hour or so I decided to move onto the Bee stand in the pavilion to have a chat with the Bee Association people about their club and what I needed to do to get a site picked out and readied for a couple of hives. I met a gentleman named Pat and he spent a good amount of tie explaining the ins and outs of beekeeping and the benefits of joining the club. I think with activities such as beekeeping it’s good to gather as much information as possible before you leap in. I’m looking forward to attending the first meeting and learning more.

Saturday I spent most of the day running Ben around birthday parties in Canberra, so I wasted a good amount of the day. He enjoyed himself, he had a good time at the laser tag and won both his tournaments.

Back on the farm and we are still having problems containing the pig population. There are two larger pigs that continuously escape regardless of what deterrents I put in their path. Ben has marked these for processing at the soonest possible opportunity. Can’t say I disagree and I think the Cook is very keen to see the wiggly end of them.

Over the weekend they managed to get into the chook pen again and devastate the ducks laying boxes, they pushed their way into the feed shed and consumed the whole batch of evening feeds and have been pillaging in the potato patch as well. They look good, a nice layer of fat across the back and rather large hams, I mean legs – which undoubtedly will be their undoing. I spent hours working on the electric fence over the weekend. I’ve stained it and inspected it and cleaned the connections as well, but it’s still only working at about 50% of capacity – I even took a length of fence off the circuit. I am starting to wonder if the battery is starting to wear out. Luckily this morning only two had managed to escape and that was just prior to feed time. They both squealed when they pushed under the fence on the way in, so it’s working, they just seem to be ignoring it.

What?

I'm off to the Canberra Show today to see a few things. Friday is Milking Goat Day I want ot have a look at what involved with that. I also want ot have a talk to the Bee Club and intriduce myself before I go to a meeting.

There's also the Photography and Agricultural exhibits - I haven't been to the show for years!!!!! let you know all about it on Monday.

Getting too dry

Lucky we have a Midwife on staff here at Valley View. We’d moved a pregnant sow into a paddock of here own over the weekend, our Midwife was doing her rounds yesterday when she discovered the sow in birthing mode. This was the sows first litter so she thought she’d take a look. She went to investigate and found the sow in a little bit of trouble having a piglet in breach. So the Midwife went to work and rescued the little one with a good yank – she managed to get blood and yuk all over herself as well. The sow ended up having six piglets in all – better than twelve. We have soooo many piglets – anybody want one?

The pigs where out again last night and this morning and the fence was not working as well as it should. I had a look around the yards and couldn’t find any problems. The Cook/Jack boot Jane/Midwife and I had been talking about it last night so I figured I try her suggestion of wetting around the ground stake – seems to have worked, good on you girl!

Last night I went out feed the dogs, it’s no moon so it’s pretty dark at the moment but I seem to make my way around the yard okay in the dark. Anyway I was throwing them some bones, normally George the lamb hangs around so I‘m used to a crowd. Anyway I’m throwing a bone to Archie when I notice that there are already two dogs sitting on the lawn next to me – it was one of the runties from last year – damned darkness. Pigs aren’t supposed to eat meat so I took off after her (stupid idea), tripped over the esky and whacked myself against the tap. So I figured running around in the dark was a bad idea and decided to negotiate with the pig instead. I fetched a loaf of bread from the trailer – got stalked by the goats - and tried to talk her into trading with me. I had to divide the bread up with the goats – everyone was happy, the dogs got the bone, the pigs and goats had bread and I’m sure George did too. I just hope the goats never learn how to use a tazer or I’m really in trouble.

Just goes to show how dry it is. There are articles in the paper today about ACTEW/AGL, the local water people for the ACT are trying to find out why the quality of the water coming down the Murrumbidgee is so poor at the moment – I can tell them – it’s because it’s not flowing anymore, there’s no inflows, not for weeks – it’s dry people DRY!!!!!!!!!

I wanted to ask the guy’s up in Rocky something as well – but I‘ve forgotten what it was. Obviously it wasn’t about sheep. Never mind I’ll remember. It’s nearly Autumn which is our rain season – lets hope.

Where are the horses?

We haven’t seen the horses for a couple of days, their up the back in the old Lucerne paddock enjoying the cooler weather. I watched the three goats walk back along the track to the house last night after spending the day out there as well.

The Jeep is back on the road after a couple of days at the garage – it’s nice to have it back in action. I’ve been doing some thinking about a couple of winter projects, shouldn’t say too much – the Cook might be listening.

We’ve got two piglets in the house/barn now – both with coughs. But they just keep the ducklings and chicks entertained. We had to give one of the piglets penicillin the other night, the poor little thing struggled a little and those needles are awfully long – but I shouldn’t get any nasty infection for at least a week! Have I told you about the night the Cook wormed me for heart worm – maybe another time.

We missed a good lot of rain that travelled down the coast over the last couple of days, but, there’s always tomorrow.

Everybody should have Backyard Chickens

I love the River Cottage TV program with Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall – We’ve seen episodes time after time and never tire. There is one continual theme throughout the series “anybody can do this” - and it’s true anybody can. But what is this? Raise pigs, grow vegies, be self sufficient?

Well really I don’t think it’s any of these single things. I think that the ethical treatment of animals is very important and we do everything that we can to make sure our animals are treated well. I also believe that everybody should strive to become more self reliant when it comes to food. It doesn’t take much – start small, a hanging pot of cherry tomatoes on the veranda, some mint under the tank stand or lemon grass in the garden. Once you start the bug will bite and you’ll be off. I don’t know how many people I know in Canberra who have plum trees and don’t even eat the plums! It’s worth giving it a go – look at the young lad keeping bee’s on his roof in the West End.

I’ve been amazed at the number of people here, where I work, who have chickens in their back yard. The free range egg market is red hot and people line up for the chance to get fresh, free range eggs.

Having said all that – I have a paddock full of pigs I need to get sorted out. It’s time to start eating pork, nothing more to it. Probably work better if I could find the Cook a new stove – but one thing at a time. No good letting a small thing like an oven get in the way. So, this time next week – I am aiming at having the pig processing wheels in motion.

Bee’s, there’s a thought. I had a hive lined up the other day but I lost the phone number. I’ve put an add in the local classifieds to try and find some – lets see what happens. Worms is the other thing – I don’t have any, that I know of, but I will need some soon.

This morning was bread pickup. The Cook is doing a course in town so I had to take her with me. The Jeep is in Cooma having a faulty fuel pump replaced – so we had to take the little car. I can usually fit a good load in the small car, but normally I’m by myself. Anyway, the Cook and I packed the car to the gunnels with bread and jumped in for our trip into the city. The poor old Cook – now a year older, had to squeeze in and be carefully assisted into her seat. As we zipped around the various roundabouts she became lost in a pile of bread until all you could see were her arms flailing about. I forgot she needs air sometimes. Luckily I didn’t roll the car – ha ha! She didn’t like the joke either. We finally arrived at our destination where she struggled out of the car, bread rolling out of the car on to the road everywhere. It took us twenty minutes just to get it all back in. And then I found out somebody I know saw us – what a laugh.

No more rain.

The rain didn’t quite make it down as far as us. We ended up with a little bit of drizzle this morning but nothing much else. I finished two sides of one of the pig outbuildings, a few more modifications and we should be ready for an improved and more comfortable winter for the pigs this year.

Once I’ve finished this project it should nearly be acorn collecting time again. I’m planning on a big collection this year to carry us all the way through winter – which equates to approximately one bag per day or 400 bags. Normally a bag weights in at 25kgs so I’m looking for about 10 tonnes of acorns, which is about 10 trailer loads – last year I gathered about 3-4 trailer loads.

Then it’ll be time to get the garden back into shape for spring – after that I have plans to …………… Can’t say too much about that yet!

The young chickens keep escaping from the chicken pen. This weekend we’ll spend sometime collecting rocks and making the bottom of the fence pig proof. The piglets keep pushing under the wire and last week they stole a whole clutch of eggs from under a broody duck.

The house is full of animals again, we had to evict a bunch of chickens to look after a sick piglet and there are already a gathering of chicks and ducklings sleeping next to the bathroom.

I took a walk up to the NSF site to collect a pair of sunglasses one of the group left behind last week. George, Shadow and Archer all came along for the walk, George lasted the entire way and I am sure he thinks he’s a dog. We ran into Mildred who is still wearing her bell, she makes a lovely tinkling sound as she bolts across the flat.

Anyway – more plans to make, need to get in amongst the weeds soon as well. I’m sure the Cook has something lined up – especially after the one gum boot for valentines and one gum boot for her birthday debacle!!!!! That reminds me – I need to find a cake. It’s never too late to make up the lost ground.

Piquet goats

It finally rained – 10mm over Thursday afternoon and evening. Of course there is always something to take your mind off the rain - On Thursday the Cook was half way home when she got a call from the eldest, he’s at home having just finished school. The call went something like this

“Hi Mum”
“Hi Harry”
“Mum, the cattle are all on the highway”
“What?”
“Yeah, they are up near the Bridge”
“How do you know?”
“There’s a policeman here – he told me”
“What? – Is he sure they’re ours?”
“I’ll ask him”

So Harry puts the phone down and starts asking the patient Police Officer twenty questions – it goes;
“How many are there?”
“Four”
“What colour are they?”
“Three cream and one black”
“What sex are they?”
“Two bulls and one cow and a calf”
“What colour is the cow?”
“Cream”

Harry comes back on the phone”
“Hey Mum – they’re ours!”

So the Cook speeds home and in the only rain we’ve had for weeks has to round up the cattle and get them back on the farm – ruining her work shoes.

So how did the cows escape? Somebody had come into the property and opened all the gates – all the way to the main road. Not only where the cattle out but most of the pigs had escaped from their paddocks as well. For a while I couldn’t find all the small pigs and I thought they had been stolen – but they ended up being in the hay shed sound asleep in a piggy pile.

We search around but couldn’t find any reason for the gates to be opened and nothing had been stolen.

I made it home a little bit later; I had to rent a ute to get the pigs trailer of bread home after the Jeep broke down – so I wasn’t aware anything had happened.

It’s the Cooks birthday this weekend - happy birthday Cook --21 again!!!!!! She’s having a weekend off (after she does the laundry, cooks dinner and washes the dishes) – so are we all. I had to get the Jeep in to Cooma this morning so we could get it repaired. Luckily I was able to convince it to start after a half an hour of effort. The Cook needed to pick me up so I shouted her a Bacon and Egg roll for her birthday. I also so gave her a new pair of gumboots!

She has been cooking all afternoon, she is using the River Cottage preserves book to make some dill pickles – hopefully, the newest book from River Cottage arrives early next week – it’s the bread making one, problem is I still haven’t found her a cooker.

Horrible!

There is only one way to describe it - HORRIBLE. The weather has been just horrible. Today we reached 38Deg C - tomorrow it'll be the same, then cool down to 33Deg C. The pigs are coping with it just, the horses and cows are a little upset and teh goats hate it. The sheep have been coming down to drink from the troughs at night and head back to the shaded gullies during the day.

After thinking everything was going so well over the past few days I arrived hme to chaos yesterday. Twelve pigs had escaped, the electric fence didn't work, the female turkey Cybil, had hatched two Ducklings, I don't know why, but; the male turkeys attacked them and they all died. And to top it all off - I burnt dinner.

Tomorrow I need to take the kids in to town for a sleep over and pick up some timber - then come home and finish building the pig pen before next weekend. The Cook is getting ready for her big trip to Gunning for the Biodynamic course. Sh e didn't get home from work to really late yesterday so she's slightly tired as well.

I'll probably have to start carting water from the Murrumbidgee over the weekend so I can give the pigs a good wallow - I'll have to leave that until the cool time.

No picture today - sorry, too hot to stay on the computer for too long

Unmeasured

It did rain yesterday – but I don’t know how much, the goats knocked my rain gage off the post. I’ve never seen goats so fat, Bendy wobbles from side to side when she runs like a half full water bladder, Nudge can't run up the side of the gully and Precilla is taller laying down then standing up – maybe we all need to go on a diet.

The rain we had was good, using the “Grandees’ rain gauge of chance” I figure we had about 15mm – but I’m not so good with the maths for that particular method. I heard on the radio that Murrumbateman had 64mm – lucky buggers, Cooma only had 2mm.

I went to the NSF meeting last night, Peter Andrews visit is confirmed for the 7th of February. We are having a BBQ lunch down by the river at Valley View on the day. The Cook wants me to organise a pig for the day – I’ll see what I can do, but it is only two weeks away. Peter Andrews was on the Sky News Eco report this week as well. It was a very positive interview and a great credit to him and Sky for the manner in which it was conducted.

There was a lot of haze about this morning – it was almost like the tropical haze you’d see in Townsville. The temperature was above 18 Deg C by 6:30am and it is looking like more storms for this afternoon.

One of the mother pigs, I think it’s Myrtle, has turned up with a sore back leg. She’s lying down a lot and wont walk on the leg. She’s the second pig in the last six months to hurt herself like this. We have the kids giving her water during the day and we feed her separately. I think the uneven ground in the mothers’ yard is the cause; I need to have a bobcat come in and even out the ground.

It’s Australia Day this weekend. Which means Cancon for us, the kids are heading in to participate in the Magic card game competition. Sunday we have local visitors and Monday its Bush Heritage. Somewhere in there I need to clean up before the NSF weekend – its just one thing after another. The Cook is off to a Biodynamics workshop in a couple of weeks as well, I’ll be left behind to get the kids to school, feed all the animals and complete another list of jobs that’ll be attached to the fridge door before then.

Loaves - but no fishes please.

How the weather changes - it was snowing on the hills this morning and we had the fire going last night it was that cold. Poor Ben has school photo's today and had to wear summer uniform, he was most unimpressed.

I had to pick up the pig feed in the little car yesterday - and it was packed. Poor old Cook had to sit on the roof, which was fine because I couldn't hear her complaining out there. She made me pick her up down the road from work so nobody saw her, with me that is!

The pigs had reorganised themselves when I got home, all the mum's and piglets are in one area now, and I don't know who is drinking from whom any more.

Feed time this morning was a free for all with the goats, horses and cattle all pitching in to help out. Animals came running from all directios to try and get a share of the fresh bread - luckil;y Shadow was ther to organise things for me.