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.

Who's your daddy?

Bredboshire Spotted

I’d like to introduce the world to the rarest pig there is – The Bredboshire Spotted.  This breed is not only the rarest breed of pig there is, but the newest.  Currently only 16 are known to be in existence, and all are located in a farm on the banks of the Bredbo River.

Penny keeps the piglets together

Winter is here

It’s official – if there were four of me I’d still be to busy to scratch. I mean, I can’t even sit down for a cuppa tea without something or somebody needing some attention. It’s been a awhile, so I’ll probably miss a few things out – but I better not forget to say thanks to my Mum for coming down from Queensland and paying us a visit, doing ALL our washing and being nice to the cat. And that seems so long ago now.

We had a field day out here a couple of weeks back and built some ditch and berm swales for the Cooks Food Forest. It’s all small steps, but we now have a couple of pears and plums planted. Unfortunately I managed to pull out an apple tree I thought was dead much to the horror of the Cook – for which I am unreservedly sorry darling.

Of course I’m still fencing, and last weekend saw me finish the first phase of the river boundary fence project. I still need to put in the gate, but once that has been done the horses and cattle have a new paddock for winter. I then need to extend the new fencing past the front of the house to keep the cattle on the river – on the river and not the Cooks garden.

Our Solar Array is up and running and we are taking energy from the sun and feeding it into the grid. We’ve already passed 100kwh feed back into the grid. We’re not to happy with the NSW governments decision to retrospectively reduce our tariff, luckily our local member only won his seat by the skin of his teeth – if it goes through parliament he won’t be getting our vote next election.

The Cook and I attended a Natural Resource Management Forum a couple of weeks ago, managed to meet up with some of our friends from the local NRM Groups including the local Catchment Management Authority. The forum was very interesting for the most part – the Cook kept passing me notes about the speakers as the day progressed, we’ve never been able to go anything like this together before, and it’s nice being able to compare notes instead of having to try and remember everything during a kitchen debrief – hopefully we organise the time to do things like this more often in the future.

I’ve finally planted (well, a month ago now) the Stone Pine trees that the Duckherder gifted us - I started to plant them whilst I was on my permaculture course and the Cook and the boys finished putting them in for me. If you’re out there Mrs D we need more, we are using them in our shelter belt along the western side of the farm. The plan is to plant them with other leguminous trees and some others probably nuts – possibly pecans, but oaks go well with conifers as well.

I finished my Permaculture Design Certificate over the Easter break. I met a lot of really nice people and learnt a lot as well. The course covered a lot of theory, but due to it not being a live in course there was not a lot of hands on. The Cook mocks me now because I tell her things she has been trying to tell me for years – I know – she’s always right, I should listen to her more – I’m a bad, bad man.

I wanted to catch up with Mrs D but the days were too long and I needed to get home to get things done for the next day, sorry about that Mrs D – I’ll catch up with you soon hopefully.

So we’ve had our first permaculture day, we built some swale or ditch and berm works for our new food forest. Starting small we’ve planted four new trees to compliment the three other fruit trees in the food forest area. I need to do more fencing – no really – I do, so that we can keep the infernal goats out before spring.

There are a swag of piglets running around at the moment and this weekend we’re moving some of them into the vegi garden for our winter clean out.

Last weekend we had a moment of confusion when Harry came in and told me we had a wild pig in the pig pens. I went out to look and low and behold a young boar had managed to force his way in with the sows. He was a very handsome young fellow, black and white – he looked like a Bentheim Black Pied, a rare native German pig which is crossed with the Berkshire in Europe, the only reason I say this is because I saw an add for one the other day (look them up on google).

I have done a little research and found that nobody has a record of these pigs ever coming to Australia – but somebody has one advertised for sale 100km from our place – in the same catchment. I’m pretty sure he was wild, but he did seem rather at home with the sows – anyway, I had no choice but to dispatch him. The Bottle Tree Creek/Rock Wallaby guys had a pig incident the other day as well I read – I wonder if they got that one?

I’m not a big reader – but since my course I’ve got dozens of permaculture ebooks to read. Somehow I’ve got to find the time, there is one I’m downloading at this very moment titled ‘Trees on the Treeless Plains ‘ by David Holmgren and is a revegetation manual that provides a design system approach and principles applicable everywhere to assist in the development of local strategies and design solutions. I reckon I’ll find this very helpful for our place and for a lot of the places we visit doing NSF work. I might even do a review.
It’s busy going forward as well, weeds to kill before an inspection in July, Kimberley from up at Jerangle is coming down to look at pigs this weekend, more field days to organise – not here thank goodness, and a long weekend of fencing – somewhere in this lot I’m going to have to get more pig food as well.

Jeez! I nearly forgot about one of the most pleasant days we’ve had out on the farm all year. Back a couple of weeks ago the Cook organised with another family or tow to have an apple crushing day – her hope was that somebody would be able to work out how our fruit crush works so we could make some apple cider.

So anyway we had a yard full of people, some copping, some mashing and some crushing, there were kids and dogs and by the end of it we had more juice then any of us knew what to do with. We’ve still got apple juice in ice cream containers in the freezer. So we now know how to crush the apples next is making the cider – Mrs D any ideas, you’re the alcohol specialist?????

The seasons change

So much has been happening over the past couple of weeks, lets see if I can remember.

We had our field day with the Permaculturalists and the NSF the other week; it went really well with lots of good feed back, more about this later.

The Cooks Pumkin Vine

The Cook has been cooking. I saw over on Mrs Ducks blog that’s she’s been doing the same. My cook, beloved that she is, has made up a big batch of the best plum jam, bottles of spaghetti sauce and many, many cakes covered in wild black berries or choking with fresh rhubarb and zucchini. This woman is amazing she can turn a beaten up cucumber, an egg and two radishes into a meal fit for a King (or me – which ever).   Her garden is going wild at the moment with fresh garden vegetables a hilight of every meal,  hopefully Autumn will be kind to us.

The Cooks favourite

We had a visit from the Cook’s townie sister as well. She didn’t like Ricky the rooster and his 2:30am crowing. The first night she tried to sleep through it, the second night she tried to evict him off the veranda with her foot and the third night – she got out of bed, picked up the rooster and toddled off with him down to the vegie patch. She dumped him in the tomatoes and stomped back to bed. About two minutes later, after thinking about what she had done, she realised that if a fox took Ricky the boys would never speak to her again. So off she toddled back down to the vegie patch, curlers in her hair face cream on, and spent the next few minutes looking for the rooster (she said he was lost – I’m pretty sure he was hiding). When she found him, she tucked him under her arm and carried him back to the house (I didn’t tell her he had caught lice). She placed him back on the railing where he perches and went back to bed – if only Ricky could speak, I’d love to ask him what he thought of it all.

Harry helping fence

We’ve been doing a bit of fencing- as usual. The Cook and the kids have been helping out as well. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve extended the garden out the front and started on the fence along the river. By the weekend we should be able to keep the neighbours cows out and our in. Once that’s finished, we’ll slash the front paddock, graze it over winter and then have the pigs plough it during the first rain and plant some feed crops out there for the next winter.

We had a visit form Lisa the Saddle Back pig. She was dropped off to be covered by our boar Tiberius. I have never seen a pig dig so much in my life. Our pigs have never turned the ground like this one. It was like the difference between a 100hp John Deere and a 15hp Kubota lawn tractor. Might have to invite his pigs over when I want to dig up my front paddock. The other thing she did was tip over the water trough – everyday! There wasn’t a single day were I didn’t have to jump in with them and turn the trough back over. In exchange for services we did receive a bag of very nice Biodynamic apples and a bag of Biodynamic Garlic – the Cook was very pleased.

Tiberius sitting and Lisa Laying down - water trough tipped over.

There’s been some big snakes about lately as well, and for the first time I‘ve encountered a rather large Tiger Snake. The tally for this year around the house has been seven brown and the tiger.

Lucerne Paddock - the little pigs love this.

Yep – been fencing, a lot lately. Still need to get my electric fence up and running again. It’s been down for a couple of days now and it won’t be long until the pigs work that out. Weed chipping has been another priority this week with things drying out we need to get the majority of the weeds out before they go to seed.

Safe!



This weekend is going to be a couple of days of spraying weeds in the conservation areas. The tussock weeds have really taken off this summer and need to be contained and removed before they spread even further.

We’ve had a couple of snake incidents this week as well. Both down in the Cooks garden and both brown snakes. One keeps getting into the chicken shelter under the compost tubs. I was down there the other day and a smallish snake had managed to get in with the chicks, the mother hen was fighting it off and the seven chicks had climb up to the top of the wire and were hanging upside down watching the fight.

I managed to get between the snake and the chicken, but trying to get the snake out, stop the dogs getting the snake and protecting the chook was a challenge. It ended slithering out under the pumpkin bush back to the gully. The other one was a little more exciting, I was going out to move some fence posts, luckily I was carrying the shovel, this one was laying along side the steel water pipe stainer posts and when I picked one up I disturbed it. Unfortunately the snake turned on me and I had no choice but to wacked it with the shovel before he had a go at me. I really hate snakes!

Floppsy leaving her bath

I got up the other morning to squeals of delight coming from the old bath tub water trough next to the house. It was a lovely morning, probably about 23 deg and still, I went out to investigate and found Floppsy the Pig taking an early morning bath in the trough. I tried to get a photo but she is a little shy and prudish, so I only got her as she left. I could just imagine her sitting in the tub wearing a shower cap and washing her back with a loafer.

Changing

Most people wouldn’t have given it any consideration, it never crossed my mind until recently – but now it’s going to change the whole face of the farm.

Back in April I talked about change and renewal, about how we were reassessing what we do, why and how. We looked at moving the farm to somewhere with more rain, Tasmania looked nice, but for various reasons that didn’t work so we decided to stay put. So that change didn’t happen – sorry Dad, I’m not going into politics.

So, to continue in regard to change. We attended a talk at the Natural Sequence Farming AGM; it was about farm planning, trees, permaculture and general farm philosophy. We had always intended to raise our pigs as naturally as possible and we thought that meant free range, but included pens, straw, shelters, wire and gates. But then somebody, out of the blue, made a statement “you know pigs are forest animals?”

I didn’t know what to say, I’d never even really thought about it. But it made sense. And put it all together with planning, trees, permaculture and animal welfare and it made perfect sense. We’d even seen it, talked about it – but never put it all together.

As an example, the pigs in the front paddock. They have trees, and they love nothing more then laying in the shade on a summer’s day, both the Cook and I have talked about it but never really connected the dots. Additionally we’d also had a sow escape and have a litter in the bottom of the paddock a while ago as well, we didn’t notice until a few days after they were born that the pig was missing. But the piglets were the healthiest and hardiest we have ever had. They had no shed, no shelter just long grass, shrubs and trees. They survived frost, rain and possibly foxes huddled together in the nest mum built in the low shrubbery.

We now let mother pigs out into the paddock to farrow, there are only mothers and piglets in the paddock and we try for one sow at a time. And it’s working, better then we ever expected. The other night, Harrison accidentally locked a mother pig up; separating her form her litter. The next morning I went looking for the piglets expecting the worse – but there they were, camped under a bush totally hidden right were she had left them. Mother and piglets were reunited after feed time and every thing was fine.

Climate is the other consideration; it has become obvious that the rain in our area now falls in pulses. We get large amounts over small periods with large drying gaps between events. We need to condition our farm to deal with this and thrive, instead of standing back and praying it will rain before everything dies. Fortunately, it appears there is a relatively simple solution to all of this and the results will speak for themselves.

I’ll talk about our plan in my next post – til then.

Brrrrrrrrr!

Snowy Hills

Back in July I wrote and didn’t post -

Well, the brass monkeys are working overtime here in Bredbo and I’ve been too soft to face the cold of the computer table to up date my Blog – yes, I take total responsibility for the lack of communications.

-12.9 Degrees Celsius – cold enough for me. No hot water for morning showers all this week and last, the water in the washing machine was still frozen at 6pm the other night and we couldn’t wash the kids uniforms – the poor old Cook thought her brand new washing machine was busted. But it’s warmed up now, it was only minus 8.9 over the weekend – lucky us.

It’s even been to cold to chase of foxes with out ugg boots and beanie, suppose I should wear more, but my luminous white body is well camouflaged against the frosty grass and the shock and awe I reap on the fox - if it doesn’t kill him it’ll have him in therapy for years.

So when I left you all the Jeep was sitting in Pambula awaiting a new power steering pump and the trailer was outside Bega awaiting me to pick it up. Since then the Jeep is back on the road – just another example that a combination of lick, spit and a whole lot of Gaffa tape will fix anything. Of course this time I also needed to use super glue, my spit just ain’t doing the job these days. I managed to get down to Pambula and pick up the Jeep, grab the tailer and drop it off home, stop for a pee and get back to Canberra for an appointment before noon that day – which is quite an achievement for the old girl.

Unfortunately the Jeeps long term prognosis is not good. The radiator is showing signs of failure and I have to keep a close eye on the fluid levels, the gauges are all failing and I’ll really not sure what’s going on half the time – with the car. But the game changer happened the other day when one of the kids closed one of the back passenger doors and the front passenger door fell off. It gets really cold driving down the foggy frosty Monaro Hwy with an inch gap around the door. So sadly we are on the hunt for a replacement for the old girl.

I’ve got a step closer to getting prepared for the spring arrival of some bees. I have purchased a stack of timber to build my first boxes, Monika and her partner form the bee club came out the other weekend to help – but it was too cold to stand outside and use power tools so we opted for a cuppa in front of the fire.

School holidays are her and that has to be the Cooks favourite time of the school calendar – skiing starts when they go back, always a highlite for the term.

The Cook spent a week in Adelaide; I think the kids have just about recovered. The work load doubles for everybody when so goes and the cooking takes a noticeable down would spiral consistent with the amount of time she’s away. And don’t ask about school lunches – luckily the kids like (maybe now ‘liked’) vegemite. And I’ve got to find a better way of telling if shop bought ham is off as well.

And as usual with the drop in temperatures comes the colds, Harry and the Cook have both been suffering bad coughs and a nasty tummy bug. Luckily Ben and I stayed far enough away not to become infected.

I tried to do some fencing last weekend, but every time I bent a piece of wire it snapped – a good indication it was just too cold. I managed to get some done this weekend, the pigs are now totally surrounded by pig mesh netting – now I just need to get the electric back on and put in a few more steel posts and we should be right again.


Forward to now.

Snow has fallen on the mountains yesterday and for most of the day it was better spent inside. We had periods of rain, hail and ice and bitingly cold winds. Not that this allows us to rest, there was still pigs to do, things to fix, fences to check and general day to day jobs to do. One of my favourites is the weekly trip to the dump, never go there with out running into somebody and being ski season it’s a full on mission impossible just to get across the highway to get there. I swear it’s only two hundred metres down the road and takes half and hour.

We had a visit from James last week. He spent a few days helping out around the place, we managed to do some fencing, put in a corner post and steel posts – I’d recently purchased one of those pneumatic post drivers – why I didn’t do that sooner I’ll never know. The amount of time and effort this one tool will save is just mind boggling.

Other things that have been happening – we’ve picked up more roosters, and this time it wasn’t my fault. The cook was responsible this time – which takes some of the pressure off of me.

We had an NSF working party and put in a leaky weir to help slow down the water travelling down one of the erosion gullies. It took us all of two hours to collect the rocks from a non conservation site and an hour and a half to build. I still have to get some gravel to make a bed for the overflow and get some reeds during the spring to line the edges.

We also bought in a load of round bales of straw for the pigs. They weight about 500 kg each, getting them onto the trailer myself is a bit of a challenge but I’ve managed so far. It’s about a quarter of the cost of getting square bales from the feed store so well worth the effort. The biggest part of the cost is the transportation; thankfully we’ve found somebody whom delivers at a good rate.

I thought Belle the cow was going to calf the other day, her udder has enlarged and she seems to have dropped her belly. I found her on her own in the paddock, she ran off when I approached, but there was no sign of a calf when I looked around. I am hoping that it hasn’t come yet, but I’m still concerned that she may have lost it.

The horses have been causing problems, a brumby from next door has taken up residence with our three and continually leads them astray. About eleven last night the dogs started barking, I got outside just in time to see the horses galloping down the road towards the creek. The brumby keeps pushing the gate open somehow and letting everybody out. I think they spent five minutes helping themselves to the pig’s bread before they headed off as well.

I still haven’t had time or the space to start my Bee Boxes either. I have the timber, the tools and the screws – but alas not the time. I’d better get a move on before spring arrives, I may have to take some time off shortly to get stuck into this.

What’s bugging me?

I like to catch up on Landline every Sunday – but I don’t always get to. A couple of weeks ago they had a very interesting article about Samoa and how they are trying to convince the locals to eat more fresh food from their gardens and stop importing tinned food. It’s hard to believe that people would choose to eat tinned carrots over fresh, or spam over fresh fish. The change in diet has had many effects on the population’s health and well being as well as a dangerous reliance on imported food.

But it’s not just a problem in Samoa. We are selling off our agricultural land to foreign interests who are farming and exporting the produce with no return benefit to our economy or food security. It’s not just the fact that they own vast tracks our best land; they are also buying up the water. With the MBDA Draft plan out after the election, which rumour has it includes a 90% reduction in irrigated agriculture in the basin over the next twenty years, it’s hard to see the logic in this. Surely it’s in the Governments best interest to restrict the ownership of rural land and secure thousands of rural jobs by making these countries import food from our farmers?

Yep - it's cold.

The cold weather is upon us – as usual for these parts it started with ANZAC Day. Unfortunately it also causes me problems with the pigs fencing – every year it’s the same, we get failed wires and shattering insulators. What’s made it worse this year is that the fence went down between the Boar and the Sows and now I’m looking forward to the first week of September as being a very “labour” intensive.

So we’ve had our first Minus 4’s, Monster Frosts and thick all morning fogs. Everything is damp or frozen and scraping ice off the windscreen at 5am is becoming a chore. But the days have been warm – after the fog clears at least.

We’ve only had about 12mm of rain since our big falls earlier and everything ha died right back. We still have some feed and the dams are almost full – but it won’t last the winter.

So what has been going on at the farm? We’ve had a Birthday, a 21st Wedding Anniversary, Mothers Day and our 3rd anniversary on the farm. Also the return of Doctor Who and Robin Hood on ABC always something to look forward to over the winter months.

The Cook scored really well on Mothers Day – a brand new Schnitzer Grain Mill. She’s been milling wheat for various meals ever since. A friend loaned her a pasta making machine and we had a great time making our own pasta, a little more practice is required – no wonder Italians had such large families.

She also got a hand cranked (Amish) corn schucker and her own scythe – she’s a little concerned about hidden messages.

We’ve also been selling a few pigs, some went to the Farmers Markets, some went to be fattened for Christmas and some are going to be breed. We have been pretty happy with the current condition of all our pigs going into winter and looks like it’ll be our best spring yet as far as the pigs go.

Unfortunately the fencing has taken a back seat the last few weeks – but that is about to change. Also, our weed program has been given a boost with the arrival of some new equipment to make our spraying program a lot more efficient and effective.

Ben has started Soccer – he’s the star Goal Keeper for the Cooma Cosmos. So far this season they are 2 wins and 2 loses.

Unfortunately we had a fox in the Chook Dome they other day and he killed a few of our chickens and four ducks – one was the drake we were given by Mrs D. Luckily she has a spare and I am picking it up on Friday evening. He was a lovely drake, full of character. We think he was taken protecting his girls from the fox as they were all fine. I hate foxes. It came back a couple of nights later, not long after I had gone to bed. It got a real shock when a large naked man sprung at it, with a stick cleaned in his hands, from the shadows as it tried to corner another helpless duck. Unfortunately I wasn’t quick enough to get a good swing at it – must have been the cold, and it got away. But I’ll be waiting – in the shadows, when it returns.

I’ve been told that the family is running a book on what the change is I was talking about – good luck guy’s – there’s no hints. Sometimes things just don’t happen how you expect they will. It’s been three years since we moved onto the farm – one of our goals was to be full time farmers by the end of five years, others included - pay off the mortgage in ten and be as self sufficient as we could before we retire – of course the Cook would put in  - renovate the house as well (she's a little over the Kitchen and Bathroom). We are on our way to achieving some of those goals, others might have to wait.  I think I might add getting rid of the rats in the cieling as well.

One of our biggest problems has been the transport of pigs back from the abattoirs. I think I approached this problem with a number of incorrect assumptions which tied me into a narrow mind set. Of course the principle key to success of any business venture is innovative thinking – and I fell into the trapped of trying to do it the same as everybody else. Having slipped the chains of imitation I can see my errors and am working on a new logistics chain for our product which should prove to be far more robust then the current method and a lot more efficient.

I have been participating in a pilot pig farming course run by the NSW DI&I (DPI in QLD). It’s been really interesting and this last subject was marketing. It’s funny how you sometimes don’t join the dots until you are explaining yourself to another person. That’s when I had my epiphany about our logistics train.

Birds and Bees

Autumn is ‘the’ time of year here – lovely misty mornings, warm sunny days and cool quite nights. It would be nice if the whole year was like this.

I bet the bird watchers we had out on Sunday were wishing it wasn’t foggy. Bush Heritage and Greening Australia are doing a bird survey across the K2C area, they came out on Sunday to do the first autumn survey – unfortunately they came at 8am and the fog didn’t clear until past 11am. But, being true professionals they were able to identify a number of birds by call alone, it’ll be interesting to get the species list and have a look.

Fatso has been watching Hogan’s Heroes’ again – swear she could escape from Alcatraz that girl. I watched her on Sunday; she pushed the water trough against the wire, to short out the fence, then she squeezed out of a gap in the wire. She walked strait up to me and lied on her back for a belly scratch – absolutely no shame.

I headed into Cooma to start the April Acorn Hunt. My trees have a lovely crop this year, but the late rain has delayed the harvest a couple of weeks looking at the trees. I haven’t been around my other secret trees yet – give me something to do this week.

Anybody want a rooster?? We’ve got a couple of spare ones.

I went over an paid Mrs D a visit the other day and had a look at what her girls had bee’ n up too. She showed me her crazy hive frames – very interesting. I’d like to follow as natural bee keeping system as I can, and make as much as I can myself as far as hive boxes go. Mrs D has done a good job so far and I’ve offered to be an apprentice come spring so I can learn enough to confidently start our own bee hives.

I was supposed to muster the sheep on Sunday – I drove across the property and all I could find was Sheepie, Beryl and Mildred. Don’t know where the others have gone too. I walked up hill and down dale following the buggers for two hours before I lost them in a fold in the ground. They managed to sneak around behind me using dead ground – the damned things are so short in the long grass I just couldn’t see what they were up to. And I wasn’t walking up anymore hills that late in the afternoon. So, looks like I’m going back for another look next weekend.

Changing or renewal?

You know, the biggest teacher in life is experience, and with enough experience a person gains wisdom. It’s the wise man who knows how to divorce emotion from necessity and make decisions based on evidence and facts, not idealism and greed. What has this got to do with the farm – a lot, nothing, everything? All will become clear in the months ahead.

Not really impressed with the bacon we did recently. Way too much fat – I’ve never seen so much fat on our pigs before, I’m wondering if it has something to do with being summer pigs – most the others we’ve butchered have been winter pigs.

It’s possible I’ve got the carbo/protein balance all wrong in the pig ration - so it’s back to the drawing board. I think I’ll up the protein until the days are getting colder and see what happens. Also, I don’t think the butcher did as good a job as previously, the low nitrate brine may be an issue as well.

We’ve had our first frosts for the year. Two mornings so far – and one morning was below 0 degrees. The Cook is already complaining and a load of fire wood isn’t far off. Of course the first frost killed off the tomatoes, pumpkin and watermelon vines and all the other things in the garden that aren’t frost tolerant (like the Cook).

The Poplars have just started to turn yellow and soon I’ll be off collecting acorns again. I’ll have to go check out my favourite spots this weekend.

We had a very windy day on Sunday and spent a lot of the day in shelter. At one pint the chook dome (or humpy) was blown over and the chooks escaped into the garden – it took three of us to catch one rooster whom refused to go back in.

I suffered a another three in a row with flat tyres. This morning I had to change a tyre on the Jeep – like every year when the temp drops I have a series of fence issues with wires breaking and such as well – this morning was no different. So there I was trying to change a tyre, with a dozen pigs trying to help. Of course Fatso was the leader, she supervised everything I did and conducted a quality control test at the end – just to make sure. I ended up having to get the kids up to feed the buggers and fix the fence so I could finish changing the tyre.

We had the traditional School holiday sleep over with a bunch of young lads camping in the shearing shed. Glad it wasn’t me – much too cold to be sleeping outside. They had a ball, cooking dinner in a camp oven, roasting potatoes on an open fire and making damper. The Cook spent the time cooking cakes and biscuits and making hot milos.

Green acres and acres

March 14th
It seems that the frosts are almost here, chilly mornings and heavy frosts are a good indicator. Our tomatos are taking for ever to ripen and the Cook is afraid we’ll lose the best of them to the frost. The potatoes and the zucchinis are still prolific – we have foot long radishes and eight foot high corn.

We get our straw and hay from a couple down the road on the other side of Prospector’s Gap, years ago they also had pigs and have been keen to have a look at ours. They offered us their old water tank pig shelters; they had been sitting in the paddock for a while but where still in good condition. Harry and I went down in the morning to give them a hand to get the shelters on the truck and shift them over here. We discovered that once the pigs had moved out of the shelters the Red Backs moved in – unfortunately I only had one pair of gloves which I gave to Harry and hoped like hell I didn’t put a finger on top of one of the deadly little buggers.

Everything went well and loading them onto the truck was no problems – no bites either. We got the shelters home, Harry rode in the truck with Lance which was a bit of a highlight for both of them I think. We unloaded the shelters in the pig paddocks ably helped by Fatso – she oversaw the whole operation and inspected the shelters once in place. Its good timing as I had hoped to have more shelters up before winter came. It also lets me divide the large paddock in two.

I’m limping around at the moment and slightly tender – I’ve pulled a hammy, bloody hurts too. So I’m hobbling around the place – it’s not as sore as Friday and I should be right by Wednesday.

We took a drive out to south of Cooma this afternoon in hunt of apples to crush in our new apple press. We found a couple of good trees and returned home with bags full of good looking apples. After doing the feeds and getting things ready for an early morning trip to Sydney we sat down and copped up apples. We filled the crusher top the top and set about crushing. Unfortunately we didn’t have any food grade grease to grease the spindle of the crusher and we failed dismally. I think we also needed to mash the apples a little bit better – we live and learn
The Cook has been letting her Ducks out into the garden during the day to eat the snails and slugs – and the ducks just love it. They get into the corn and waddle about quacking and scoffing down snails. She does have problems getting them back in – but the kids give her a hand.

I’d like to go to the Sydney Show, but I don’t think that is going to happen this year. I’d really like to have a look at the Pigs and see what other peoples Berkshires look like. They’re showing on the Saturday which would have been a good day to go. I am going to a Scything workshop up near Mudgee on the weekend before – which is why I’m going to the show. The workshop sounds like fun, alot of people going are interested in heritage farming. I’m catching a lift with a fellow from Bega, he’s bringing a grain mill to make fresh flour for pancakes and I’m supplying the bacon for breakfast when he picks me up – I think the Cook is planning on starting late that day. With a start like that it’s got to be a good weekend.

I don’t get enough time to reply to all the comments at the moment, which is unfortunate; I’d love to talk to everybody. I do check out your blogs and I’ve got them all book marked. One day I’ll get to you all – I thought with a bung foot I’d get time to do it this weekend, but the Cook just finds jobs for me I can do standing still.

I didn’t see the Duck lady at the Bee meeting – I guess she forgot again.

March 20th

Well, looks like the poor old Duck Lady didn’t forget - she was sick; we all hope you’re feeling better by now – the weather has been way to good to miss.
I took time to head up the back today and have a look at things. There is grass everywhere and water in all the dams. The wild flowers and native grass has seeded for a second time this year and I’m really happy with that.

In the main dam I found an Australian Grebe – a small Australian native duck, had built a nest. A closer inspection showed a duckling sitting in the nest with an unhatched egg. I came back later to photograph the chick, but it was riding around the dam on its mothers back, how sweet..

Not much else happening, we had a feed pick this weekend, dump run and general stuff. Ben got bitten on the finger by a piglet, swelled up really well, quite impressive. We got to see Jamies Pig show which was really good - hopefully it will show people how poorly pigs are treated in industrialised production farms. Really interested to hear that New Zealand have banned Sow Stalls, surely it can't be too long before it happens here.

Oh' yeah, and Old Nev was 70 years old the other day - Happy Birhtday!

Good one Jamie

This was on last night - I hope people get it, but I wont hold my breath. Lots happening I'll update soon - MTFO.

It's over for now

The rain has stopped. I think the pigs will be pleased. We had breif spot of sunshine on Sunday, however today we had another 36mm of rain. The river is flooding at it's highest level since we've been here. All the dams are full and the country side has never looked greener - looks like a bit of work coming up when it drys out....

Flat on her A@$&*

Well, I spent all of Sunday improving the pig fences in prepartion for the next flood of piglets. I doubled the number of steel posts, strained all the wires and tied down everything. Unfortunately for the Cook some of the fences are a little further off the ground then before - add the fact that the fence is running off of mains power now also and it has a pretty good zap factor - as the Cook found out. She tried to climb over one today and made contact withthe inside of her leg. She ended up seeing stars and clouds, flat on her back it put her. Of course I didn't do anything to help laughing until I cried, snorted, had stuff running out of my nose and nearly choking - and that was all before she got her hands around my throat.

She's not the only one, poor Penny has had a couple of zaps with her tail as well. Shadow walks around with her tail down always now.

And keeping with tradition of Christmas litters, we have a bundle of new piglets arrived today - I think we are up to 18, bacon supply is safe for next Christmas.....

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.

Nice rain. Penny say's hi!

How about that rain? Not quite biblical - but I’m not complaining, far from it. The rain started at about 0100hrs on Christmas morning and this morning it is still raining. The Cook measured 19.5mm by dinner time yesterday and we’d only put the new rain gauge out at 1100hrs. By this morning we’d had a total of 26mm (due to no rain gauge we missed the first fourteen hours).

We had a lovely Christmas Day – all started a little later the normal Christmas Day, our recalcitrant visitor refuse to get up early, that didn’t go down well with the kids and all sorts of punitive actions were being discussed when he wasn’t up by 0800hrs. Luckily they don’t have my creative slant when it comes to this sort of thing and the visitor was allowed to slumber – threats from the Cook to the three of us also went some way towards our better then should be expected behaviour.

For breakfast Christmas Day we had our own bacon and eggs. Dinner was the traditional turkey, prawns and ham. The highlight was the home grown ham. It was just superb, the Cook likes the Shoulder ham better but the rest of us will take anything you dish up as long as it’s from our paddock.

Today was a little slow whilst we get over yesterday. The cook took the time to plant a couple of Pecan nut trees she brought at the Murrumbateman Filed Days - that have been sitting in our bath tub ever since. She has also attempted to pig proof the trees, but time will tell how well that will work. Hopefully the pigs will ignore them, yeah right........

I took the dogs for a walk out to the dam to see if we had managed to catch any of the rain – appears not, none of the dams have any water in them, maybe over the next few days we’ll get some inflow. Penny the new puppy was a terror, she barked at every cow, sheep and kangaroo. She’ll sleep well tonight for sure.

I don’t know if anybody else saw it, but ABC2 showed the Australian film ‘A Bush Christmas’ it Nicolle Kidman’s first movie. It was filmed around Rathdowney, near Beaudesert in Queensland. I grew up not far from there and recognised a lot of the extras in the movie as well as the land marks. I also manned a polling booth in the hall they showed the dance in and rode at many camp drafts and Pony Club days at the show grounds. It was filmed in 1983 – now I feel really old.

Mrs Duck Herder, Afternoon Tea sounds very nice and now the Cook has a brand new second hand antique oven she can cook a cake and biscuits. We are home all week, if you talk to Em organise a time that is good for you both and give me a call.

Oh, nearly forgot. This was funny; the Cook discovered that the Kitten we thought was female for the last six months is indeed male. I just shake my head.......

wasn't there pigs here yesterday?

I’m sitting at the dinner table watching Ben run in circles around the lounge with the kitten trying to catch him, every so often the kitten takes a short cut and launches herself from the top of the lounge at Ben – luckily there hasn’t been any contact yet, but it’ll come, and I’ll wet myself laughing when it does.

We had a good storm this afternoon; at a guess I would say more than half an inch – I was in Cooma with Ben when it rained, there is mud everywhere and the back room of the house has had water in it as well. So, after the kids left for school I spent the morning crushing grain for the pigs and making up feeds, I topped up their waters and made sure the chickens had plenty of water as well – it was going to be a warm day.

I spent most of out the back putting in the last couple of strainers, that’s 20 with another five in the trailer waiting for the holes to be ‘improved’. Tomorrow it’ll be time to start putting in the steel posts – I can feel the aching shoulder muscles already, I suppose it’s character building if nothing else, plus now I have blisters on my blistered blisters.

You know how sometimes you do something – then in hind sight you realise you’ve made a huge mistake. We had a couple of piglets in a box in the house some months ago. They needed some warmth and looking after because they were too small and the litter was too large. Any way these are the pigs we’ve been using in the garden paddock to plough things up. Harry went out to feed them this morning and they were gone (at first I had a dread that they had been stolen, I’d been woken by what I thought was someone driving up the drive at 3:45am – couldn’t find any sign and I checked the camera this morning but it showed nothing). I went to investigate what was going on and found the little buggers had dug a tunnel under the fence and escaped – so it was more a ‘great escape’ then ‘a wooden horse’ – we found them a short time later back in the big pig yard. We probably shouldn’t have watched Hogan’s Heroes when they were in the house.


oh well no tears and they've gone to bed - quite time at last.

Now it rains

It was a little wet and windy today – just what we needed. The day started off slow but soon with kids galloping off to school and pigs to feed everything regained its momentum. The Cook had a well deserved lay in and I looked after the animals. We’ve recently reduced our numbers by about a dozen pigs and it’s made a big difference. Most of the ones that went were bigger pigs as well, so the feed is going a lot farther.

I spent the remainder of the morning after feeding dodging the Cook and her jobs – she was on the look out to put me to ‘gainful’ employment. As there is nothing to eat in the house until we can get to the shops again I headed up to the back 500 acres to have a look for weeds. Of course I found more than enough to be depressing. I haven’t been right up in the back corner adjacent to the railway line much, there’s a lot of tussock coming across the tracks onto our place, luckily it shouldn’t be too hard to get under control (famous last words). I was also trying to find any trace of our second Jersey Bull – no luck there, I’ll have to go see the neighbour and see if he’s seen him.

On the way back I came via the back of the hill behind the house, I ran into the Wedge Tail Eagles who were hunting rabbits in the grass ,I managed to get a couple of quick pics before they disappeared over the ridge. I also spotted a couple of new native flowers, I still can’t identify them – they weren’t flowering properly so I may go back on the weekend to have another look.

I don't know if there was something in the water here but some of the animals are a little odd today. The kitten thinks it's a lion and has been pouncing on anything that moves in the house from behind cover - and after seeing snakes it's not a pleasant feeling to have a kitten sink it's claws into your ankle. The fat dog has been doing that crazy dog thing running around with her tail between her legs all over the lawn. Fatso has been following me around all day - getting in my way when ever it is convenient for her and lastly George - he's joning in where ever he can and being a real dag.

When the boys arrived home they were put strait to work cleaning up the shearing shed, earlier in the day I’d found a blue birds egg on the grass up there and left it on a table. Anyway Ben found another couple and bought them back to the house. He’s quite the survivalist and pestered the cook to be able to break one of the eggs open and see what it look like inside. I was thinking it’d be a half grown chic or that it would be rotten. But low and behold it was just a normal egg, Ben asked if you could eat it, to which I responded that you could if it was a survival situation – so he wanted to try it. Out came the frying pan and Ben went to work cooking his egg, once finished he and Harry divided it and put it to the test – they both ate their share and decided it tasted just like ........chicken!

Working hard

A few days ago we rounded up a dozen of the smaller pigs and put them into an enclosure (we call it a pigitentiary) on the garden area. They only stay out on one spot for a night and they plough it up enough to move them onto the next area, at this rate we’ll have the paddock ploughed before the end of the month. Everything is starting to look green again now, but we’ll have to wait and see how long it lasts, maybe we’ll get the wet spring we’ve been hoping for.

We’ve finally been able to get our electric fence problems sorted out as well. Our mains power energizer arrived back from repairs the other day and is now working a treat – no more loose pigs. The Cook is really happy about that.
The River is running well and the water is crystal clean. I was quite surprised when I saw it, I thought it would have been a little more turbid after all the rain.

I spent most the day on the hill side putting in fence posts, apart from the blisters, wind and rain showers it was a rather nice day to be out there – lucky, because there is more of that tomorrow. There’s nothing better than the solitude of a vast open space.

The other thing I really like is music – both types. Right now I ‘m sitting at the table typing whilst listening and watching the new Sugarland DVD – if you’ve never heard of them then do yourself a favour and get any one of their CD’s, they’re just great. Jennifer Nettles, the lead singer, has the most amazing voice and she has the greats Georgia accent – I love the Southern ladies when they talk like that... I’ve been really lucky to catch them in concert as well and they are as good live as on CD. I’m thinking of heading off to CMC Rocks the Snowy’s again this year, I’m just waiting to see who all the acts are. I know that Taylor Swift will be in town around then as well and if she brings her support acts with her I’ll go see them instead. Glorianna are touring with her at the moment and I’d really like to see them in concert – and Kellie Pickler is another favourite as well.

It never snows in September!

Snow over Bredbo

A lot needed to be done this weekend – not much happened. Due to the weather we had a pretty quite weekend. Saturday the wind drove us all inside and at times it was either raining ice or snow. I don’t think the temperature rose above 7 Degree’s making it the coldest September day for years. The winds suddenly abated at 6pm Saturday night, which was nice, but by Early Sunday morning we had our second dust storm in a week and woke to a rather windy morning. The kids had a sleepover and spent the night n the wool shed – luckily their swags are well decked out and they didn’t freeze.

???????

Cooks day off

I was supposed to go over to Braidwood for an NSF meeting Saturday night – but I decided to stay home because of the weather and the 3 hour drive – one way.

We fed a lot of bread to the pigs on the weekend. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve lost interest in it. But they were still eating it this morning so hopefully, by tonight, it’ll all be gone. Of course having a couple of extra hands made feeding it out a lot easier. George is always there to give a hand as well and his eagerness to get into the trailer is going to be legendary one day.

Sunday was another horrible day – but things needed to be done. I dropped into the Bredbo Markets and picked The Cook up some honey. Went into town and picked up the feed, visited the dump (hilite) and spent the afternoon unloading the feed.

This morning we had a sort rain shower and then everything fined up – you wouldn’t have known we’d had such a bad weekend by 9am.