Summer is here

Summer has finally arrived here, well for now anyway and it sunny, hot and sweaty. Creek weather. That's where we are heading this afternoon, to our creek, then to our friends creek a bit later (there's an abundance of creeks around here).
I worked in the vege garden this morning, trying to tame the grass, till about 11am. Then the heat caught up with me and I had to go inside and put the fans on.



This spring, Gladis (with a little help from Roddy), gave me three cute little chicks which have now grown into three handsome poults. I think the white one is a rooster. Gladis was a very good mother and I ended up putting her and her nest in the chook trackor, away from the others, for the duration, which seemed to work very well.

We also inherited two ducks via my sister, who seams to be a font of of spare poultry, Ferdinand and Marmalade. After much indecision on Marmalade's part I think she has finally decided to start sitting, luckily in her night house. Ferdy, bless his ducky heart, is being a very vigilant father, staying close to the pen, keeping watch and generally hassling anyone who comes too close.
The ducks have been a lovely presence around the place. We let them free range around the house and they are very friendly especially Ferdy who likes to give you little 'kisses' on the back of your legs as you walk around.


Till next year
Happy new year to all. Hope you all have productive and happy 2011s.

We are in

It’s a slow, sweaty, overcast boxing day here in the Barra. Ryan is out wrestling with a diamond back python, taking a break from whipper snippering our incredibly overgrown veggie patch. Noah is on his new Christmas trampoline which we have all been excitedly calling ‘tramapoline’ and I am writing this post from the Dairy!!! That’s right folks, we is in! I have one word to describe living down here: AWESOME. We moved in on our 7^th Dec (self imposed) deadline, which was an exact year from our arrival and my birthday, very auspicious. Thanks to all the Plaggarians that helped move us in. Love yous.

We had a pretty low key Christmas day. Had turkey lunch with mum and dad, then went for a nice long walk in the evening. We had a Christmas eve get together up the mountain at Bryony’s, with all the lovely PLAGGA people.

We have been flat out finishing off the dairy so there hasn’t been much time for anything else. Nose has finished pre-school for the year, complete with graduation, disco and Santa visit (where N hid under the table and refused to come out even with lolly incentive). We still have playgroup out here every Fri where two mums take turns in looking after all the kids for the day. Great ladies (and gents) and a fantastic little group of kids for Noah to grow up with, including two more on the way (Chay and Bryony, not me!) Ryan still busy at Bev’s in Port Macquarie helping her build a studio with Jimbo. PLAGGA is still going strong, tackling such daunting projects as trail building, construction of an enclosed orchard (well starting it) and and building a cow proof fence.

Hope everyone has had a great Christmas. Thinking of all my old Freo crew and missing you all heeeeeaps! Congrats to Son and Claire on your mum to be statuses, Sonny you must be nearly ready to pop! If anyone from Freo ever reads this blog I would love some good old fashion gossip: births, deaths, raunchy affairs?

Will try and update this more regular like, as now we are in the dairy things should slow down a little (yeah right!!)

Cool joints

Long overdue for an update so I thought I'd better get on with it. We're always so busy but it feels like everything stays the same. Fortunately we have things like this blog to help us see our progress.


The dairy is taking forever. I remember telling Ken M in December that it would definately be finished by Easter. hahahahahahahahahaha! As Douglas Adams said, "I love deadlines, I love the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by". My latest is Em's birthday in early December, exactly a year since we arrived. Things have been going slow seeing as though we've taken some time out to build Angela & Ken's new shed. It’s mostly finished now, with only a couple of big doors to make. Rob will start on them this week.


I’ve been spending a lot of time in the last few week restoring old windows and making new ones from scratch. You know you’re getting old when your idea of a great day involves pausing on the way to the shed to smell the orange blossom, listening to Gillian Welch and making windows. I’m turning things like this 3m long oregon beam:


into straight and true windows and doors for the dairy that are strong and fit together perfectly. It all happens out here in the outdoor workshop:


And then inside to finish them off:


Made with cool joints like these:


Hopefully this week the weatherboard that is 2 weeks overdue will arrive so we can finish the cladding. My deadline for finishing everything external (lock-up I guess), is the end of September. So just over a week to finish the cladding, fill and paint, architraves, install the hot water system, and finish the French doors. Since we’ve been delayed we’ve been able to hang the internal doors, so there’s less to do for next month in case we do go over. This is how things look at the back (note the lack of cladding on the wall on the right):


Every now and then I do get some time to help Em in the garden. The last time I finished off the new duck house when Angela, Ken and Sophie came up from Canberra and brought their 2 ducks - Ferdinand and Marmalade. They’re here to stay now (the ducks) and they’re very cute and Leunig, waddling and quacking around the garden.

Dairy goes up

Progress report from the dairy. Things have started to move up a gear with the dairy building. All the doors and window frames have gone in, the electrics and some of the plumbing has been installed, and now the weatherboard is going back up. We have painted it and although it looks a bit messy (it had been sitting around for a while and got dirty), it will be cleaned off and given a second coat of paint. We kept the original small dairy doors at the back. Although they serve no purpose and can't be opened we thought they were a really sweet, original feature and that it's good to keep some history and show that the building was once a working dairy.



South side; back



The shower base has gone in and we got our 'Nature Loo' composting toilet in the mail a while ago and that too will go in as soon as we build some stairs and a platform for it.



Getting the cladding on has made the most dramatic difference to the space and we can really get a good feel of what the interior will look like. It is a very small space, but we have included lots big north facing windows to bring in the light and the veiw.



Ryan finished off the new chook house. We are leaving the goose house next door because we don't want to get geese until we have at least moved down to the dairy. I think Princess Rodericka is actualy Prince Roderick, so Roddy you might be for the pot.


So we put Roddy, Gladys and Paige in the new pen and left Johnny and Cantik in the chook tractor. Saddly a fox came a few nights ago and took Johnny and (my only egg layer), Cantik. Johnny had turned into a fine rooster, always looking out for his girls, in the cool way that roosters do. Finding a yummy morsel he would make a particular 'took' noise then stand back (maybe with a slight reverent bow) and allow his girls to gobble it up.

So Ryan has since enclosed the front of the chook house and made it predator proof and a little more weather proof as well.


Johnny and Cantik RIP. So long and thanks for all the eggs.


The slab for Ang and Ken's shed finally got poured today. After many weeks of 'it's too wet', 'there's not enough cracker dust' and just nothing at all, its finally done. So onward and upward with the shed, good stuff.

Bush lemon cordial and butter

We have a few big old 'bush lemons' on our block. I had never heard of them before moving over here. I'm not quit sure what they are or where they came from but I think they might be citrus root stock that has gone feral, that's just a guess. But they are definitely lemons even though now they have gone quit orange they still taste like lemons. The main difference is their very thick gnarley rind.






Saying that I still maneged to get a lot of juice out of them and make some delicious bush lemon cordial.



At the moment we are getting our milk unhomogenised from the local organic dairy. It really is the best milk in the world!!! I love it! From the cream I skimmed off the top I managed to make my own butter. I just put it in the food processor and like a small miracle it separated into butter and butter milk. It made me surprisingly happy.

PLAGGA

So I have two PLAGGAs to catch up on. The first was held at Chay and Pete's and involved clearing weeds, chipping cuttings, pulling down old fences and revamping wood sheds. It was also the grand occasion of Noah and Ninas joint birthday party.







The second PLAGGA was at ours (hooray) and we put every one to work making the last three no-dig beds in my veggie patch and building the new chook/goose houses and runs. PLAGGA is ALWAYS GREAT and lots of fun was had along with the sweat and mud.



This last shot is my new asparagas bed which now has 10 two year old crowns in it primed and ready to go.

Lots to catch up on

Our last garden club (now officially known as the Pappinbarra Ladies and Gentleman’s Gardening Auxiliary, or PLAGGA) at Kelly and Jim’s was very productive. We made two new raised vegie beds and installed and connected up a tank. Kelly provided a yummy lunch and cold beer. Go plagga!









My garden is going well, doing the autumn crank. The weather is beautiful here now cold nights and cool, fresh, clear days with no humidity, perfect gardening weather. I’ve got all my winter crops in the ground, Brassicas, peas and broad beans, onions, garlic and leeks, as well as tonnes of flowers (very essential). I made pea tee-pees from some bamboo Chay gave me and have made a little pen for my broad beans, Tino style. My rhubarb is colouring up nicely in the colder weather getting ready for rhubarb and apple crumble. I love autumn.





I sustained my first wallaby damage the other day (carrot tops) so Ryan has obligingly whipped me up a fence with a cute little gate he made from the old dairy door. While he was in his whipping mood he also made some fab compost bins. 3 bays, 1 metre cubed using the old iron from the house roof and old fence posts. He used some wood that was left in the shack to make wood slats for the front. We filled two of the bins with layers of grass clippings, cow poo from the paddocks, chipped up cuttings and fallen leaves from the pecan tree with plenty of water and “my favourite”, blood and bone. So, fingers crossed, in a couple of months I’ll have some beaut compost. Composting is pure alchemy.





After many weeks of our four old chook girls (that we inherited with the property) laying only one thin shelled egg a day between them and then fighting over who was going to eat it, we bopped them all. That left Johnny (Rotten) our Wyandotte rooster that my sister bred all alone in the chook tractor and me on a mission to find anything a little more interesting than Isa Browns. In Perth I could just look in the Quokka and there would be at least 20 people advertising there pretty chickens on any given Thursday, but here no such luck. So I contacted the Wauchope Poultry Society, rung breeders, searched the internet and finally found Jim in Taree (about 1 and half hours to the south) who breeds many things including Wyandottes. We bought four girls and got one free. So now we have four Silver Pencilled and one Buff Wyandotte. The oldest silver is Cantic pronounced Chantic, the Indonesian word for beautiful. The two younger silvers (who are indistinguishable) I’m thinking of calling Gladys and Paige. The buff should probably be Buffy and the youngest, who was free cause she’s a bit funny looking might need a name like Princess Rodricka. Johnny is in love with Cantic because she’s the only one old enough to do, and picks mercilessly on the others, which I find a bit distressing but that’s just chooks and hopefully they will settle down. Johnny be good.





So living in the country is good. I knew it would be. One of the things I love the most is the space. Of course the space for vegies, fruit trees and animals, but also not having to be too precious about everything. In Freo as with most built up areas there were so few wild spaces. Towards the end of our time there, mostly due to the mining boom, all the vacant lots of land, that had been precious little areas of ramble and chaos, were being developed. Out here I feel like we are the vacant lots just hugging the edges of vast areas of wilderness, surrounded and small. It feels ok to go and cut down a few trees or ‘bush poles’ for fence posts. Or to let Noah run around and hit things with sticks (not animals) and throw rocks, swim in the river and be a little boy (if a little wild boy, ‘be still’). And space for the senses, to view the landscape and not be distracted by other people, cars, advertising. It’s good for me, for my soul.

Big Boots and Fluro Suits

I have good intentions regarding posting here regularly. I thought once a week should be fairly easy. But things happen. Our laptop’s hard drive died; there was something exciting coming up that was worth waiting until after I had uploaded the photos; things got busy; yada, yada, yada. Ange and Sophie have left, leaving behind 3 new cute little Plymouth Rock chooks – 2 hens and a rooster.


Ange was keen to beef up while she was here so she spent time digging a trench to connect the new tanks located further up the hill to the old line. We now have 10,000 gallons (about 22,500L) gravity-feeding the house, which will also be the main water for the 2 houses we have yet to build. Before Ange left we had a trip toTimbertown – kind of like Pioneer Village used to be in Armadale in WA. The kids had the life scared out of them when our quiet little horse and carriage ride was held up by a bushranger. Not well thought out… Many ear-piercing screams and tears later we managed to calm them down and I snuck off for a quiet bike ride.


Since Ange and Sophie have gone (much to Noah’s concern – “But I need a little friend to play with”) we’ve also been visited by Kate and Jeremy Wilson, as well as Rob’s mum Jean and her man Ern. They were all here at the same time and it was the strangest afternoon down at the dairy when most of them turned up to help. My quiet, meditative, predominantly solo project was suddenly transformed into a hive of activity. What to do with 6 workers?!?! The answer turned out to be ‘quite a lot’. Windows went in, as well as insulation, bracing, weatherboard was de-nailed, even the floor was swept. My load of wood finally arrived last week so I’m really excited about being able to finally get on with some serious building.


Rob and I have spent every second weekend for the last 6 weeks training to be Bush Firefighters. Whilst there was all the usual motivations of helping the community and getting prepared for the worst, the big drawcard in the end was that we would get to ride around in big red trucks. Last weekend we passed our assessment and now we’ve got big boots and fluro suits and we’re ready to go if we get the call.


The weather is getting slowly colder and less wet. It’s actually really nice – not so many huge downpours that force you inside for a week, flooding everything and bringing out the leeches; not so hot during the middle of the day; and the only trade off is that it’s cold enough to have to put on a light jumper at night. To make way for the new chooks we ate some of the old ones and moved the rest down to the dairy into a new chook tractor I made from the old water tank on Sue & Rob’s house. They seem to be happy and are slowly preparing the soil underneath - clearing the grass and fertilising it as they go.


We had our second garden club day on Sunday. It was at Bryony’s place, where we half-buried logs around the perimeter of their new to-be-enclosed orchard. It will act as something to attach the wire on to, as well as serving as bandicoot-proofing. I would have thought they would burrow underneath but apparently they don’t. It was really good work, nice and physical, and everyone pitched in. Every now and then it poured with rain and we would head inside for cups of tea and yummy treats. I’d do a lot for a yummy treat. The kids love Garden Club too. There’s a real tribe of them when they all get together, about 7 kids ranging in age from 1-4, spread across 6 families.




About a month ago, when Ange was still here I found some eggs buried in the ground under a tap in the paddock. They were smaller than a chook egg, about half the size, and very spongy. We dug them up (8 in total) and put them in an icecream container on the fridge. After about a month I thought we must have killed them by digging them up, but then the other day we could hear some noises coming from within. Inside was a baby water dragon that was very cute and just wanted to charge up my arm and take off. A few of the other eggs were starting to hatch so we returned them to where they came from so they would be able to find some tasty water dragon food when they hatched – whatever it is that baby water dragons eat.


In renovating the dairy, and in replacing Sue and Rob’s roof, we’ve managed to make 2 possums homeless. Last week I made a couple of possum boxes so that they’d have somewhere new to move into. After making so many for Joe in Freo it was nice to be making them again, albeit without all the swanky custom built bits, and a lot more improvisation. Instead of the nice muted eucalypt green paint job I just used what was lying around in the shed – a kind of bright sky blue. I think they’re quite funky and I think I may have accidentally found a new line for Joe to branch into – custom colours.