A big red horse

Got to tell you I had better things to do then blog the last few days, the weather here has been fabulous, nothing below zero and days have reached 20 Deg C. It’s just like Spring!

This the hole in the bathroom window - the window is covered in ice -it's 9am

But of course, things are still happening. We had kids’ soccer on the weekend, visitors up to the wozzu and jobs that went undone.


I bought the Cook a new toy, it’s big and red and hopefully will make her busy life a little more bearable. It’s the biggest garden tiller you’ve ever seen. You may recall that we use our pigs to do a lot of the digging around our place, but sometimes we need to finish things off a little better then the pigs are capable of, and the poor old Cook has a crook back, so digging isn’t something she likes doing. Hopefully as the ground becomes better we won’t need to dig.


In a perfect world, and following permaculture principles of low energy inputs this is more desirable, however we need to get to a point where that is possible for us.


I bought it home in the small trailer, we used ramps to load it on, but I don’t have any of those at home. I decided if I unhooked the trailer I could tip it up and roll it off. There was nobody around when I needed to unload so I did it myself, I untied the tiller and then I unhooked the trailer, unfortunately the tiller was at the back end of the trailer and the trailer tipped up rather suddenly. The tiller rolled down the tailgate and headed down the hill – strait for the cooks car, holy crap! I gave a semblance of a chase and managed to knock it off course just before it hit the car, not so lucky were three pigs, a dog a rose bush and the back fence, I haven’t told the cook yet.


We had the chance to give it a run on Sunday and managed to turn over the whole garden in less then an hour – that used to take us four weeks or more. We’ll have to change the way our garden beds are, but makes it possible for us to really start thinking about our option s for a market garden or CSA.


We had some seriously cold days last week, I think it was Friday when we had the coldest day in the district for 17 years. The diesel in the car turned to jelly and I couldn’t go to work until 10am when the truck had thawed. Unfortunately the Cook pumped water on the Thursday and I didn’t empty the pump, so when I went down to pump on Sunday it was sitting on the side of the river split open like an oyster – bugger.

It’s going to take a few weeks to repair so I’ve had to replace it, we’ll have a spare now I suppose.
I started picking up the bricks for the wood fired oven on Saturday, in the rain with Harrison, 1000 bricks is a lot, specially when your loading them by hand.

Cold - Rather!



This was the view down the drive at 7am this morning




Frozen thistle - covered in frost

    It's lunchtime and I don't think the Cook is out of bed yet.  No water for showers or shaving so I'm starting the day a little scruffier then usual.

Its cold now.



The front gate post at 7am this morning



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.

Wet, wet, wet.

The rain keeps falling, so far this month Valley View has had 95mm of rain in the gauge. We are luckier then some, Cooma has only recorded 40mm and others only a couple of kilometres down the road had less.

It’s all about weeds at the moment, whilst it’s to wet to spray in the paddocks; I’ve been chipping out weeds around the house yards. My hands feel like balloons on the end of broom sticks, and I can barely close one because my fingers are swollen, guess I’ll just have to harden up a bit more.

I was driving home on Friday afternoon, as usual listening to the ABC when I heard a familiar voice. Great interview Mrs D, Great topic – compost, and you came across as very professional and elegant – well done!
We had some friends come out for a visit on Saturday afternoon, Little Pig was on her best behaviour and took all the belly rubs on offer, at one point even Floppsie got in on the act.

On Sunday I managed to fit in an NSF Field Day out at Braidwood, Peter Andrews was there and the rain managed to hold off until the end. The Farm we visited was very impressive and the difference between the NSF property and his neighbours was telling. It would have been interesting to see the contrast during the worst of the drought. The owner had placed compost heaps containing dead animals, road kill, plant waste, discarded soil form dam bottoms, rock dust and other biowaste around his farm on the top of slopes, you could see the nutrient plumes flowing down the slope by the way the vegetation changed.

Sadly on Sunday we also lost one of our longest living farm critters, poor old Licorice the Guinea Pig died after seven years of squeaking, we noticed something was up the day before when he stopped squeaking for his food, so we sat him out on the lawn in the sunshine for the morning and he was gone by that afternoon - the Cook is going to put him under a rose bush today. I think he had a good life.

Have you ever really considered the real cost of food?? The Cook went off to the farmers market, she met a friend on the way in who told her she needed to try a chicken from a certain stall holder, she then ran into a stall holder we know and he told her the same – farmers market version of viral advertising! Anyway, off she trots to buy one of these great chickens. To look at the chicken you can see it’s something special, firstly it’s large, larger then normal store bought chickens. It’s got a healthy looking skin, sounds strange, I know – but it looked good. It was packaged in a simple plastic bag with a label. The chickens are pasture raised, down the coast some where; I’m not sure if they are grain fed as well.

The price for this treat, $23. Was it worth it?? We’ll see tonight, the Cook is doing her magic on it, can’t wait to try it – I’ll let you know how it goes. And what do I think about a $23 chicken?? If it’s more nutritious, tastes better, is grown better then $23 is the price we’ll pay. But first I have another hive to pick up, I left a box with Monika so she could paint it, and low and behold before she could do anything a swarm set up house in it.

Drought is over - for now.

Snakes are about again – my favourite time of the year! Shadow nearly got bitten on Sunday, she put herself between a big brown snake and a bunch of boys staying for a sleep over. I was standing about twenty feet away chipping weeds and didn’t see a thing until it was all over.


It’s also that time of year again for AGM’s. we had the Bredbo Landcare Meeting a couple of weekends ago, a very informative talk from Martin Royds, a local farmer who won the carbon farmer of the year award a couple of years ago and is up for a farming diversity award this year. He talked about the importance of soil condition on the nutrient value of food and how he uses native species to drought proof his property.
We had the Natural Sequence Farming AGM the other night also, we had a presentation from Matt Kilby from Global Land Repair, he talked about different processes, the cross over of NSF, permaculture, soil biology and the relationship between trees, grass, fungi and bacteria.
I had a birthday, but I’ve still failed to grow up any, it passed quietly and the less said the better. I’ve sold a few pigs, some as pets – Scruffy has gone to a new home to be cared for by a family and she took a young fellow with her as company and ten other girls have gone out to new homes as well.

The Cooks garden is looking a treat and the strawberries are plentiful. Young Ben browses the bushes on his way in from the school bus. There are hundreds of young berries all over the patch; we haven’t had a crop like this since we arrived on the farm.
And the rain, last night alone we had 50mm, the road to the house was a river, dams on the TSR overflowed, our dams are all over flowing and luckily I pumped on Saturday because the river is up and brown once again.
Our total for the month is above 80mm, which isn’t bad when the monthly long term average is 65mm. It’s bringing on the grass and the weeds, so early December is going to be pretty busy for us.
With the rain we have had a bumper crop of mushrooms all over the farm. The Cook carried a monster lot up from the garden the other day and decided we would have them for dinner. She cooked them up; they smelt great, made some toast and scrambled eggs to go with them. I love mushrooms; I dished my self up a nice plate full and grabbed a couple of pieces of toast. I had started to eat them when I noticed she was only having eggs, I asked her why? She said “I’m not 100% sure they are safe to eat, so I’ll se if you survive and then I’ll try some” - I survived, the mushrooms tasted great, she’s eaten them since now she’s satisfied they are okay. At least now I know I am useful!
I’ve nearly finished the pig yards and just have to fill the loading ramp yard with dirt. We gave them a test run the other day without the dirt and it went pretty well. We got all the pigs we wanted onto the trailer with a lot less fuss and bother – I didn’t even swear which made the Cook very happy.
We are going out to have a look at a farm near Braidwood later in the week, on the farm they are using a lot of the NSF principles, native grasses, increased soil fertility and strict rotational grazing regimes to great effect.

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.

I love this rain

Another case of starting to write then getting side tracked, taking a detour, heading the wrong way down a one way street and finally finding I’m in the wrong postcode. As everybody knows; sometimes we take things in life for granted – things like, you never get to good drops of rain in a row, the river doesn’t flood twice in a year or washing machines. Follow so far?

Now I’ve already written one blog entry, last night, tried to upload it but the connection was playing up. So I ended thinking I’d wait until today to up load it. I should have saved it first I guess, I thought I did – and well in a way I did, but I saved it to the Cooks USB stick which she has taken of to work with her today, it’s no good to me there.

So what’s been happening down on the farm? We’ve had a little bit of rain, almost 40mm on Sunday, very pleasant. The river flooded again, which was good for the soul after all the dry we’ve suffered lately. It’s really nice to look out over the river from the house and see water flowing and to hear it at night as you nod off to sleep.

The Cook asked me on Sunday afternoon if we should move the pump, I had a look at the rain gauge and it only had about six mils of rain in it, so I said I didn’t see the need. About 11:30pm I had another look and there was 26mm in the gauge and the water was flowing rather well down the drive and in the gully behind the house, so I thought I should check the pump. When I got down to the river the water was turning brown and the flow had increased, so I decided I should move the pump – the fact the pump was in ankle deep water also had a little bearing on my decision. Unfortunately for me the Cook had stuck the foot valve in a bucket (which is the right thing to do) and the bucket and foot valve had snagged on a root in the river. This caused a little bit of swearing and some disingenuous statements being made about the pump – did I mention the Cook was sound asleep in bed whilst all this was going on. The water was awfully cold, and I managed to easily disengage the foot valve from the bucket – unfortunately the bucket was left behind. And of course the first the thing the cook asked was – “did you get my bucket?” oh dear……………

So by Monday morning the river was flowing rather well, we’d had over 38mm by then. The Cook was up early and decided that seeing I didn’t let Archer of the chain for a run the night before she would let him off for a run – the river was flooded so he couldn’t go far, town is on the other side, he won’t swim that – yeah right!!!! So the Cook is foraging around the garden, playing with her ducks, I think she was collecting snails for them. She gets so carried away she forgets about Archer. I was sitting inside having a cuppa and some home made plum jam on toast, I could hear her calling him and thought he must have gone up the back some where chasing Kangaroos.

After about half an hour I decided I should take a drive and check out what he was up to. I figured he may have tried to walk into town and make his way to the pub – so I went off in search. There was no sign of him along the river so I thought I should have a quick look in town in case he had gone across the river. It had risen about 2metres and was flowing rather well. You would think an old dog like him would not even try such a thing, but there he was soaking wet trotting towards the pub – with out his collar. He was rather perturbed to see me and resentfully jumped in the car for the ride home.

We spent Monday removing the growing hedgerows of Horehound from along the electric fence. It was so thick that it was shorting out the fence constantly. After a couple of hours work we had everything back in order. Tiberius, our 400kg boar acts like a little puppy when we do anything in his paddock and as usual he was all over us like a rash. I still get a little nervous when he’s so playful – at one point he almost pushed the Cook head first onto the fence with a great hip bump (this of course was serious and I couldn’t laugh on threat of an eventful and totally painful death), I swear I could see him smile as well.

I also managed to get the score of the year! A brand new, second hand fruit and wine press – for $100! I saw it on all classifieds and thought why not? I was going to get a new one earlier in the year but they were over $700, and that was for one half as big and no where near the quality. I’m very happy with it and plan on collecting some apples this afternoon to try it out – was going to be Monday, but I took another nap.

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....

More wet shoes

Still raining, looks like the kids will have wet shoes again this afternoon. A lot of that rain is over the catchment which means the river will be really high this afternoon, might head down and move the pump to even higher ground.

It just keeps coming

Monday Afternoon

Monday Morning

An old man in Cooma told me before Chritmas that the drought would break before ANZAC Day - and he's probably not going to be far from wrong. We've had 120mm plus a littel and Cooma has had anither 25mm today, not sure what we've had yet. It's the first weekend we've been rained in for ages which was really nice.

It was the Cooks birthday as well, another wrinkle added to the collection - Happy Birthday sweetheart xox....

If it gets any wetter the pigs will need life jackets, the horses boyancy vests and George floaties. It hasn't been this green for months, the Cooks garden and the lawn are both jungles and I'm guessing the back dam is now full - but I'll check that this afternoon. The river is running bank to bank and is at it's highest for two years, luckily all the rises have been gradual and our fence around our water hole is still there - as far as I can tell.

Mrs Duck has our new Drake so I need to organise a time to pick it up. EM picking up yours shouldn't be a problem - just got to get organised, I'll talk to you soon.

Damn'd, I forgot to tell the kids to take a rain coat

Another good storm over the farm. Kids got caught coming across the paddocks from the bus - they are absolutely drenched. Never mind, it's just rain, a little discomfort will help make men out of them.

Barking at Shadow

Alright, there was some things I didn’t include the last couple of times – firstly, the Cook was in the local paper the other day – who’s a tart now? She gave an interview about the importance of balancing conservation and farming in the K2C region. My photo didn’t win the competition, but it did get into the Summer Hot Shots pull out and was in the top 40 of 1700 pictures entered – really happy about that.

We ended up with almost 75mm of rain from the storms over the past week, which was a real relief. The dam now has water –almost half full, and the gully is running. The river also rose about four feet on the weekend – luckily this time I moved the pump before the river came up.

We’ve missed a couple of major storms that swung around to the east of us. Yesterdays was a rather large one and swung around from the southwest to the north east. It was black as pitch and must have drop a huge amount of rain. About 3 am this morning Shadow, whom has taken up residence on the front veranda started barking and wouldn’t stop. Of course being the brave soul she is and full of heart she wouldn’t leave the veranda to go investigate, no, she just sat infront of the open door and barked. The cook gave up in the end and went out side and very impolitely told her to have some manners and consider other before she made so much noise – but with fewer syllables and only four letters per word…… Once dawn broke we could see why she was barking, the river had risen over six feet and was flowing from bank to bank.

The Jeep is still in Cooma waiting for a part – hopefully today. Tonight is the first bee meeting which I really want to go too. We’ll see what happens.

Looking Good

This afternoons radar, it's a bloke thing - I know.

Friends forever

We’ve had a little tiny bit of rain today, only enough to put a smear of mud on one’s boots and nowhere near enough to put water in the dams. It started to rain early this morning but we’ve still got no more then 3mm and it’s after lunch already. Well that was yesterday, now it’s today we’ve had 38mm. It all fell in about an hour, flooded out the pigs shed and softened up the house track, and made everything really humid.

I wrote stuff for the blog the other day, but the kids had used all my internet time so I just saved it, now I’m not sure where I was up to…… Any way, the alternator in the Jeep finally packed it in on the way home last night, so the Jeep gets towed to Cooma this morning. I was coming home from Canberra – on the busiest road in town at peak hour when it gave in. I had been carrying a spare battery with me to get me out of trouble and it came in very handy.

I’d pulled up at a traffic light at a major intersection – front car, just missed the green arrow previously. As I pulled up the car just stopped, “bugger”, I popped the bonnet, jumped out with my handy ratchet in hand and whipped off the battery leads. Dragged out the battery and dumped in the back of the car. Grabbed the spare battery – it was from the electric fence, and tossed it in, connected the terminals and quick finger tighten, shut the bonnet and back in before the lights changed. I don’t know what the people around me were thinking, but I’d bet it was the fastest battery change they’d ever seen.

So….., what else? I’ll get in trouble for this – but, oh well. The Cook found an egg in the chicken coup the other day, on the ground. This made her very happy because it meant she could make a cake. So off the kitchen she trundled, a little smile on her face, egg in her pocket. Of course as soon as Harry hears the words cake and make he’s into the kitchen – “Mum can I have the bowl?” The Cook has everything ready and breaks the egg into the batter – a shriek emanates from the kitchen and we pile in. Looking into the bowl all we can see is a tiny set of duck feet sticking out of the flour. It would appear that the egg had come from under one of the sitting ducks and the Cook hadn’t notice it was heavier then normal – Harry didn’t want to lick the bowl – who would have thought?

Looking for boots - again

Rather warm today – for us Southerners. Reached the forecast 35Deg C, and stayed there for hours. The Cook has even declared that the fan may be taken into the bedroom tonight – lucky me. I took the kids over to the pool at Cooma to cool off for a while at midday, I needed to get something from the Rural Store – but I missed that, by two minutes. That’s country towns for you, I love the fact that there’s nothing open on Sunday here.

Everything is still green at the moment, but the warm westerly’s have started so it’s only a matter of time before we are dried off and brown again.

I had a rather pleasant surprise this morning, after going to the dump I picked up the Canberra Times from the store. When I opened up the paper (page 8, Mrs D) they published a photo I had entered in the papers Summer Photo Comp – how exciting. I've put it up again just because I can.

Ben came across another snake in the feed shed – I’m sure they are following him around. I couldn’t find a shovel in time so it got away to live for another day.

I love our kids – they really have a great (their fathers) sense of humour. Last night we were all sitting at the table and Harry says

“I saw something really disgusting today Dad”, Ben chimes in

“Britney Spears?”

Both the Cook and I nearly choked on our dinner and once again the Cook was caught snorting. It was rather funny – and no, I’m not going to tell you what Harry saw.

IO'm searching for new boots again. Not happy with steel caps, no good for walking down hills in, wish I could find some of my old Army GP's, I loved those boots. They always fitted well and I could walk for days, and did, in them. You wuoldn't think it would be so hard - it's only boots.

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.

Great weather for the Ducks

I can’t believe it but we’ve had more rain today, last time I looked it was 16mm – and there has been more since then. Looks like we are going to get our whole month’s average rainfall in a week. Pity it didn’t come before the fires in Michelago started and destroyed people’s homes. The Duchks spent the day in the garden eating snails - yum yum.

We had visitors today from Melbourne – great to see them again. They stayed for a BBQ dinner which we ended up having to cook inside because the rain was so heavy. Also fatso was being a pest carrying off the BBQ on her back – I really need to get her fence fixed so she can’t get out when it rains. The pigs are having a ball with all the mud, they slide and wallow and lay around. It was quite hot before it rained; it reached 34 Deg C by midday, but dropped once the rain started.

The Cooks brother has been helping her build a Chook Dome – it’s a real work of art, abstract I would say. It will be interesting to see it finished; The Cook is hoping to keep her new Ducks in it for a while down in the garden. I’ll post pics tomorrow.

The puppy is having fun, she’s played with fatso this morning and tried to play with the cat today – but he’s not really interested in playing with the puppy.
The Cook created one of her world famous Christmas Cakes today – spectacular, she’s a real gem in the kitchen – so lucky I married her and didn’t wait around for Trisha Yearwood.

In other News - Looks like we are getting our own smoker built – won’t be half as good as the Rock Wallaby one. Obie, our visitor from Melbourne, has a brother in Canberra who is a gun welder – apparently this will be right up his alley, the Cook wants him to flash up a Rotisserie as well – I think She thinks I’m made of pigs. Shame I haven't got a welder or I'd give it a go myself (yeah ok, I can hear the Cook laughing from here too).

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.......

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.