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.

Too close for my liking.

Sorry for another break – things are hot and dry, very dry. Yesterday we had our first fire scare; a blaze broke out on the western side of Cosgrove Hill, just behind us (800m South). I’d just returned from picking up feed when we saw the smoke. The Cook got the pump running whilst the kids and I unloaded the feed and filled the fire tank. Luckily this time the wind was in our favour and the fire was to far south be any direct threat on the house. In the time it took us to start getting organised the aircraft from the Michelago arrived and spent about an hour bombing the fire. The aircraft had been over flying the farm all day between Michelago and Bunyan Airfield and they probably spotted the fire even before we did.

I had a talk to one of the firies this morning, I was told they had trouble getting a crew together due to the effort on the other fires.

The last two months we’ve had less then 10mm of rain, our average for this period is over 140mm and the rain we were expecting over the Christmas week has disappeared. So with little outlook for a break in the weather we will be constantly watching for smoke over the next few weeks – or until it does rain.

This also means that a lot of the jobs I wanted to do in the back paddocks are off as well. We can’t afford to have the vehicle start a fire and as I have to drive through thick beds of tinder dry grass to get anywhere - it’s just not safe.

One of neighbours was badly injured in the Michelago fires; he made front page news of the Canberra Times on Saturday. Hopefully, he makes a swift and full recovery.

In the middle of all this however, the Cook has managed to keep her garden going and we are currently enjoying a bountiful harvest of Zucchini. The three new ducks are growing and now have full feathers – they are just beautiful, and we think they are all girls too.

I saw on the Sister-in-Laws Blog that she took a fall off a quad bike (I hope your okay) – Don’t worry F, doesn’t matter what you do to your face you’ll always be prettier then Maverick…. And I haven’t started my Christmas Shopping yet either, I figure I’ve got until Thursday. Is it too late for Amazon????

I’ll post more soon, lot’s of stories stored up, like being bitten by a snake, selling lots of pigs and George’s latest indiscretions.

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.

A clutch of ducklings

Sometimes there are jobs on the farm that you just have to leave to the kids. Yesterday one of the ducks decided to hatch out her clutch of eggs – not that she really had any choice. The problem we have at the moment is that with so many ducks, geese and turkeys the little ducklings can get stomped into the ground. So we have a farm policy to take the ducklings away from mum until they are big enough to look after themselves.

Getting the ducklings away from mum is definitely a kid’s job. The mums, as you can imagine, aren’t that impressed at first. And I’m not getting into a caged area with a rampant mother duck! That’s what kids are for (I still think we should have had more – it might handy to have a couple of spares!) – right?

The Cook will see that and I’ll get another “I’m not a brood mare” lecture.

I sent a letter/email to Maj Gen Jeffery, the previous Governor General, yesterday asking him to support the NSF movement in securing funds from the Governments Stimulus package. We need everybody we can to get he government to take seriously the benefits of such methods – if you want to email him send it too Maj Gen Jeffery through his PA - wendy.button@pmc.gov.au

We have a problem with getting native trees established on our farm. This is pretty evident from the fact that we have very few native species growing anywhere except the hill tops. Our creek lines and river bank are full of Poplars and Willows however. We had applied to the NSW National Parks for some funding to fence our gully from the cattle and use pioneer plants to establish better growing conditions for natives and help control soil erosion. But, it would appear that this isn’t going to happen.

Last nights sunset