Tuesday 3 July 2012

..Also see loads of photos added to previous post (15 May)

Thursday 28 June 2012

Recent sunrises

I’m writing this on my new swish laptop, whilst enjoying a few moments of rest after a manic day. I had to take Seb, our amiable Toggenburg goat buck to his new owner, chop wood for the house, do some marketing work, cut wood for piggy brews and get them going, take water to the goats, food to some of the poultry, catch 4 roosters and despatch 3 of them. All of this before 2.30pm, when I had to leave to get the bear from school and get him to soccer practice. He is now roaring about the soccer field while I sit in the ute – occasionally I catch a glimpse of his orange-topped socks between the buildings.
 

The laptop came about after I mentioned to Bronte that I might be ‘more productive’ if I had a laptop, since I could catch up on marketing work, sorting photos, WWPG stuff and blogging in the living areas when he and Luke were home, whereas at present I don’t like to hide away in the office – it seems rather antisocial (plus I don’t like to miss out on anything). To my surprise Bronte thought this was a great idea and produced one for me yesterday. I was overwhelmed!
 

To return to the busy day; pretty much all days are like this at present – ever since we (well me really) decided to go the UK for a few weeks, later in the year. Getting the animals into an easy-to-maintain format is a real challenge. Neighbours (in fact the ones I do the marketing for) have offered to look after everything whilst we are away – but we clearly can’t expect anyone else to devote the hours I do to the farm.

Farm view showing farrowing pen & small goat pen

So far I’ve made feeders for all the poultry and the rabbits. With poor timing, we’ve acquired two new bunnies: large white does called Alice & Bronwyn. They are too young to breed so can’t go outside with poor lonely Bertie just yet. They are in relative comfort in the brooder cage in the garage with their own feeder (made from PVC fittings and a small nail-tray), plenty of hay, veggie leaves and Rosie to keep an eye on them regularly. Rosie is insanely jealous of the bunnies - every time I coo at them she whinges & gets in my face. The plan is that eventually they will produce eating rabbits for us.

Alice and Bronwyn

Bertie

Poultry feeder

Rosie 'guarding' the new bunnies

Mostly of the poultry feeders last for over a week, but the birds in the turkey cage eat theirs in only 4 days. Hence I reckon if our neighbours top up the feeders every 4 days that should ensure everyone is happy. Although the birds still don’t have proper coops I’m trying to ensure they are as comfortable as possible by mucking them out, installing new perches and giving each pen a 20l waterer. They are rewarding me by providing us with plenty of eggs, even in this darkest and coldest time of year. There are still 4 roosters to decapitate before we leave and I might move the old peacock pair: Pasha and Narnie, in with the turkeys and the young peacocks. The danger is that Pasha might beat up poor Peregrine (the young peacock), but it will be easier to look after them there and the old peacock pen is looking fairly ramshackle. I’d love to build them a new one, but it won’t happen before we go.

One of the new perches

Sunday 1 July 2012

The hardest animals to sort out have turned out to be the pigs. I should have just got on and made them new pens, but foolishly thought it would take no time to create hard-standing in the corners of both pens. Where the pigs are fed and mooch about, the mud is so awful that it sucks your wellies (gumboots) off if you venture in. I started by tackling the corner pen – collecting large rocks one by one from within the pen itself. This was exhausting since each step was an effort. Then I found a couple of large old rock piles up in the goat pens – the first was a pain, as each time I went in and out the goats tried to follow me. At last I found another pile in an empty paddock. I made so many trips with poor Suzuki laden to the gunnels, but still the rocks kept sinking & the mud kept oozing through.

Hard-standing underway in corner pig pen

Eventually I got to the point where I could start adding gravel. I had 8 tonnes of hardcore delivered, but since the truck couldn’t get anywhere near the pig pen it was dumped on the drive & I’ve now shifted about 6 tonnes of it by hand, shovelling it into the ute & unloading it the other end. I’ve finally topped all this with several inches of FCR (finely crushed rock mixed with cement). I reckon it will work pretty well except I’m worried about the edges crumbling. The pigs have little sharp trotters & weigh over a 100kg each so it won’t take them long to break it down. My latest plan is to split down some large koppers logs (treated pine left over from our deck supports) & bash these in around the edges. Fingers crossed this will work! Trouble is it has taken so long that I still haven’t made any sort of self-feeder for the pigs & time is running out – aargh .There’s also a possibility that Blaize might drop more piglets in about a week’s time.

Hard-standing nearly finished

I’ve come up with a self-feeder design which I hope will work, but no doubt it will need tweaking, just as the birds’ have. I put mesh over the feed trays of the birds’, but they managed to pull these out & then extract all the feed in order to pick out the choicest morsels. The geese managed to do this without moving the mesh. I’ve learnt my lesson & adapted their feed to the things they seem to prefer – mostly this has just involved removing the pellets & sticking with grain: wheat for the geese & mixed grain & crumbles for the others.

The wretched currawongs are hanging around all the time, but even they are a bit circumspect about actually going into huts to pinch food – the pigs’ food is currently all too readily available. Can’t wait until I’ve got the pig feeders working & to hear the cries of consternation from the currawongs (vultures I call them). When I brought a ute load of juicing apples home recently they were having a great time troughing into them while I had lunch. Later I unloaded all the apples & then looked out at the currawongs, who were all gathered on the ute looking at one another & grumbling & crying querulously. Ha-ha!

I set up a possum trap by the little pigs’ food because – despite my ‘possum-proofing’ of that whole area – there would be a fresh pile of possum poo & chewed potatoes there every morning. However, instead of catching possums I’ve caught about 12 wretched currawongs! They are quite a remarkable bird when looked at closely - enormous beaks (of which I’ve been at the receiving end a few times), terrifically long, sharp curved claws and large ringed, orange eyes.

The goats are now in one paddock – the new one I finished not so long ago with plenty of feed, and the old adjoining one so that I can continue to feed in them in the old yard. I got fed up with being knocked over by them when trying to put food out - & building them a new yard was not on the priority list. To get them all into one paddock, meant either agisting Seb or selling him, since I couldn’t let him get at the young does. My first chance of agistment fell through when the potential carers rang to say they were having to sell their own goats as they’d broken into their neighbour’s property & eaten all his garden! The second one was promising but I was concerned again re fencing, the wet ground and the short grass (likely to lead to foot rot and/ or worms). In the end I got a single call in reply to my Gumtree ad & agreed to deliver him the next day. I felt quite awful leaving him as he’s now tethered on the side of a main road (he’s never encountered traffic before) and is quite alone. I’ve told the new owners that I’d be interested in buying him back later in the year, so I hope they take up that option. He tried to follow me when I left him & I had to go back to give the smelly old friendly thing one last big hug.

Young goats

Seb

FCR also going down in goat yard (now finished by really needs
an extra four or five loads)

We’ve acquired a new rooster – a Dorking. He’s rather magnificent, white & grey with a long curving black tail. I collected three others at the same time but they all went into the freezer on the same day. We used to live quite close to Dorking in the UK so he reminds me of ‘home’. He’s been christened Donald, not after my step-dad but just because it alliterates.

Talking of the UK, I’ve been reading the Rudyard Kipling ‘Just So’ stories to Luke. We’ve really enjoyed them Best Beloved, so listen and attend … My favourite from when I was young was ‘The Cat that Walked Alone’ so we read that first. I was so pleased because I’d remembered the story before but just couldn’t think where I’d heard it. One of the poems in the book talks of the River Wey, Guildford Town, Shere, Bramley and Shamley – all villages and landmarks we were so familiar with in the 6 years we lived in Surrey before moving out here. The stories also prompted memories of Riki Tiki Tavi – a story of a mongoose. But I finally remembered how sad it was so I’m less keen now to track it down. The brave mongoose is left in charge of his owner’s baby & kills a large snake after a desperate fight. However, the owner returns & seeing Riki Tiki Tavi covered in blood, assumes he has eaten the baby & kills the poor animal. Sob.

I had a terrible couple of days a fortnight ago. It was freezing cold, icy and windy and I was setting up a little yard in the small goats’ pen, in readiness for catching them, doing their hooves, drenching them &, in time, catching them to put them up with the big goats. I made a triangle with a new bit of fence and 2 gates & began driving in a stake at the apex where the 2 gates met. You wouldn’t believe it but the metal stake went straight into the polypipe, just under the surface, that unofficially carries water from the weir at the top of our plot, over our land & down to our neighbour. Water came gushing up under 4 bar pressure (about 56psi) and began flooding the little paddock and the hay-feeding area. I ran into the house, rang the neighbour & then furiously dug a drain to both uncover the leak and take the water away from the paddock & into a nearby sedge area. By the time the neighbour arrived, I was tired, cross and sweating. He’s a bit of a mad scientist type, never stops talking, is always feeling sorry for himself, regularly refers to the ‘man upstairs’, is something of a misogynist and a mechanical genius. I’d got various things ready for repairing the pipe & would have got on with it had he not appeared, but nonetheless I was unable to get a word in edgewise & he treated me as if I was an idiot woman who wouldn’t know a tool if it jumped up & bit her.

Well, I’m afraid I just lost it. All my pent up frustrations, tiredness, anxiety and hurt at some of our other neighbours’ attitudes & people like Hogman etc, just came tumbling out. Once the dam burst I couldn’t stop – I was shaking, crying and yabbering! Poor guy! Anyhow, he coped fairly well & in the end I reckon it did us both a bit of good. He learnt a bit about us that perhaps he’d not realised, and I learnt the reasons for some of the ostracism we’ve experienced at the hands of one of our old-timer neighbours. And the reasons were so perverse and parochial that I’ve stopped worrying about them now. It would appear that because we’ve dared to speak to the local council about things like stray dogs, trees poisoned and left to fall into the creek and so on, we have effectively found ourselves on the other side in an ‘us and them’ situation. It was made clear by the neighbour, that ‘you don’t talk to the council, you don’t talk to the law, you sort things out yourself’. By that he seemed to mean that if you’ve been here a long time, you may flout council regulations, ignore planning permission requirements, dump rubbish on the banks of creeks, let your cows poop in creeks despite downstream offtakes, let your dunnies overflow and put raw sewage on your garden upstream of others, drive while drunk etc.

It really all boiled down to the fact that we’d complained to the council about a stray dog which eventually turned out to belong to a nephew of these particular neighbours, who was living in an old picker’s hut (illegally of course) in a field across the road from our entrance (treating us as fools, the neighbours had said the hut was for ‘storage’). The dog was half-starved, was roaming the neighbourhood, frightening our goats & ripping open our rubbish bags night after night. I nearly said to the waterpipe neighbour, that had we sorted that situation out ourselves, we’d have shot the wretched thing – which would presumably have pleased them even less. The ironic thing is that we got on with the nephew himself OK. He’d done a bit of weeding for us, I towed one of his mates’ cars out of his muddy drive, chatted to him about the WWPG & helped a girlfriend of his who’d lost control of her car & ended up at the bottom of the paddock. Apparently our willingness to discuss the stray dog issue with the council was the main reason we were the last to know when the neighbours put up for sale the land adjoining us. That still rankles the most!!

These attitudes however, are sadly typical of Tasmanian small-mindedness, insularity and parochialism. This way of thinking is mostly rife amongst the old rural fraternity and much less so in townies and incomers. The irony is that despite all the efforts we have made in the name of the environment (eg the WWPG, wildlife rescue and the way we built our house & run our farm), we are also now ostracised by a greenie pair of neighbours who object to us culling some of the thousands of pademelons that live & feed on our land. This helps provide grass for our livestock but also helps maintain the paddy population at a level more likely to cope with prolonged drought conditions and freezing winter weather – periods in which food is scarce. For the first couple of years we were here, we regularly saw sick and dying pademelons, and corpses were common. Now this situation is much better – but there is still a massive population on our land. One only has to come down our drive at night with headlights on to verify that. Luckily there are some ordinary, intelligent, fun and level-headed neighbours with whom we get along famously. We may not agree on everything, but at least we can ‘agree to disagree’ and accept each other’s points of view.

The day after blowing my top, I drove Luke to the bus in the Suzuki as the ute was loaded up with gravel. The bus driver chose that day to leave early & we had to chase it most of the way down the road. The Suzi had been playing up a bit, not always wanting to start the first time. On the way back, it just died and I was left stranded on the side of the road. Luckily the lovely post-lady (whose sons are into Suzukis and 4WDdriving) saw me & towed me home. It was close to one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. She went quite fast, I was so close to her rear bumper and without windscreen wipers I could do nothing about the mud and water all over the glass. With almost no visibility and poor brakes I was pretty helpless. I can’t put into words how relieved I was to arrive safely home. I managed to push the car into position in front of the garage, by putting my back against it, pushing hard with my legs & tucking chocks under the tyres when I couldn’t hold in. I re-charged the battery & checked the things I knew to check but then I was at a loss.

I rang a neighbour who has 4 cars which often have problems & ironically he was down at the neighbour whose water pipe I broke the day before! They both kindly came up & fixed the Suzuki while I unloaded the gravel from the ute into the pig pen. It turned out to be a hidden ‘kill’ switch, presumably fitted by the previous owner, which had corroded or otherwise shorted out. I was immensely grateful & they seemed pleased to have resolved an issue without too many complications. I waved them off with eggs, soap and blackberry jelly & profuse thanks! I was most relieved that there was nothing seriously wrong with the car, upon which I’m so reliant.

This was not the only car trouble in the last few weeks. The tyres on my ute were worn right down so I got some ‘all terrain’ ones fitted locally at vast expense – much to Bronte’s disgust. But to have gone to Hobart would have meant a half or full day away from getting things done here. Turned out the bearings also needed repacking, so that’s also been done and the wheels aligned. This has been a most expensive month – with UK flights, tyres, applying for new UK passports etc. it will only get worse as the cost of putting the dogs and cat into kennels whilst we away is extortionate, plus we have to pay to park the car at the airport. The pets also need vaccinating before they are kennelled – it’s never ending. I’ve begun to get rather anxious about money and have continued to apply for part-time jobs – without getting a single interview. Bronte says my views on forestry are too well-known for me to get a local job, plus he reckons my degree puts people off, invoking reverse-snobbery. I’ll just have to make money myself somehow. I’m going all out at present trying to market my neighbour’s IT business – I’m sure it has huge potential, it’s just an uphill struggle breaking into big corporate markets without a known name and lots of capital behind one.

The weather has turned bitterly cold. We’ve had a number of days when the temperature has not risen above 5degC. At the same time, we’ve had snow on the hills, sleet and horizontal rain at ground level and strong winds. So it’s not been fun working outside. On other occasions, we’ve had bright and crisp days following frosty mornings – but my fingers & toes have still turned blue! I’ve even got chilblains on my toes. Thank goodness for my Ninja gloves and thermal top! Luke’s been most impressed with the frost – we had to stop on the way to the bus one really bracing morning & lob rocks onto the dam. They cracked the ice but didn’t sink – skittering instead across the surface. Luke said it was ‘cool’. I’m sure the trout must be starving but I keep forgetting to try to catch them with my new pulley-line, plus time’s not been on my side.

Frosty morning

The cold weather means we’ve been hoeing into our store of firewood, such that I’ve been chopping wood most days. We are using big lumps of blackwood from the large tree that fell down at our gate and it is almost impossible to split! I ought to have muscles like Arnie. Actually there’s nothing that tires me out quicker than wood-splitting. I have collected some wood from easy to reach places, but it’s awfully wet. I do use it on the piggy brews. I stand the wet lumps on top of the brew so they get all the heat that comes up between the brew and the shroud. Last time, when Luke & I came home after soccer training, the fire at the bottom had gone out, but all the logs on top were on fire.

Bringing all this old wood indoors has led to a plague of ladybirds - not the red and black ones, but a sort of yellow kind with loads of small black spots. They are now hibernating in various nooks & crannies around the house & get crunched underfoot on the wooden floors. We’ve also had a lot of slippery, fidgety skinks, which wake up & shoot around when they come into the warmth of the house.

The diet is still going OK, although I have reached a stage where I am quite fed up with being hungry and have suffered the trembles on several occasions. I’ve had to introduce a bit of carbo into the lunchtime meal – eg avocado or sardines on toast – which has helped hugely. I’ve now lost 8kgs and I’m beginning to think that might be my limit. There’s still another 1 or 2 kgs clinging around the usual areas that I’d like to shift, but not sure I’ve got the willpower to go that extra mile.

Dogs and cat are not happy in this cold, wet weather. Murphy-Cat barely ventures out of the house. He was sniffing at his litter tray recently, so I shoved him outside. He shot off down the deck stairs so I assumed he’d done something when he came back & let him in. He promptly went & peed and pooed in his tray!! I think Rosie traumatises him when he goes outside – she follows him around with her nose up his bum, which must put him off the matter at hand somewhat. Rosie comes in much more than usual and even shaggy-haired Bruce can’t wait to get into the (relative) warmth of the laundry. I reward them with treats when they come in and that has kept them hanging around local to the house. They have a small Aussie rules ball that they each get a hold of and shake and growl at one another. It’s a scream to watch. I keep wishing I could get a video of them doing something silly so we can win $500 from that daft ‘Funny Home Videos’ show.

Luke self-portrait with Rosie (wearing his tie-dyed T-shirt of
which he's very proud - made during vacation care)

Murphy after a typical tough day

We’ve finished’ Breaking Bad’ on DVD and have still to find something that we enjoy half as much. We’ve seen the first episode of ‘West Wing’ and – being the philistines we are – it took several episodes to get into it. There was just too much walking and talking and too little story and action! However, it did grow on us & we looked forward to it at the end. We tried ‘Spooks’ but that was a bit unsatisfactory with its single-episode stories and rather too realistic violence. We are now onto ‘Fringe’, which we are quite enjoying despite the preposterous story, ludicrous science, complete lack of protocol or supervision of the main characters, and horrifically gory things that keep happening to people.

Luke and Bronte have purchased ‘Nerf’ guns. These are large plastic guns that shoot little rubber-sided pellets which nonetheless hurt when they hit. They started by buying one for Luke and then Bronte had to get his own plus heaps of extra ammunition. They now have running fights around the house, generally with me in the middle trying to cook dinner, or Murphy in the crossfire when minding his own business in the lounge. Luke’s been scoring goals at soccer and now considers himself ‘one of the best players on the team’. How nice to have such confidence!

Jet fighter made by Bronte & Luke (well, mostly Bronte actually) from
kit sent by Mum (Nanny Shirley)

Tuesday 15 May 2012

How people find the time (and energy) to write daily blogs is quite beyond me, although maybe with winter settling in with a vengeance I shall find myself indoors rather more often. After a beautifully mild autumn, we’ve had some awfully cold, wet and windy days. Working outside has been a continuous battle against the elements. Some areas are already getting soggy, such as parts of the pig pens, but elsewhere it’s not too bad as yet.

My gravel track across the tractor crossing leading up to the goat paddocks is holding up well, but the crossing itself is a mess. We’ve had some lovely autumn colours around, particularly in our fancifully named ‘arboretum’ although they are fading fast. I so prefer deciduous trees and rather dread Bronte’s gloomy pine trees coming up everywhere over the coming years. He’s still in tree-planting mode but has slowed down a little in the cold weather.

We are WWOOFer-free now, with the last two girls - Amber and Fiona - leaving mid- and end of April respectively. While they were both here, we had another magical outing to the Hartz Mountains. It was like entering a fairy-tale world as we neared the top in the car; suddenly everywhere was heavy with snow! We did one of the medium-length walks, as well as stopping at the Waratah Lookout and tramping to Arve Falls – which was much inflated from our visit just a few weeks previously. It was snowing hard as we left, by which time we were cold, tired and glad to be on our way home.

Other outings have included Envirofest at the Botanic Gardens – a bit of a disappointment really, except the gardens were clothed in the golds, reds and oranges of autumn. Bronte pinched a few sequoia nuts from just outside the gates – the seeds are tiny. Unfortunately, I don’t think we shall live long enough to see a ‘General Franklin’ on our land.

Anzac Day was great fun. It appears that there is a tradition of an Anzac Day sports day in Huonville and since Luke enjoys his Little Athletics and we thought it might be fun, we went along and entered ourselves in the various events. Rather worryingly, Bronte, Fiona and I found ourselves lumped in the ‘open’ section, which meant we’d be competing against anyone over 14 yrs old! Hence I was beaten into 4^th in the 100 metres by a 15-yr old girl who’s been breaking state records, her very fit friend and a young mum who apparently “runs a lot”. I was fairly proud of myself actually, since I’m pretty sure I was the oldest female competitor. I didn’t do nearly so well in the long jump and discus but at least I didn’t come last. I discovered in the long jump that my muscles and joints just don’t have any bounce in them anymore! Fiona did much better, coming third. Luke did better again, coming first in his age group in the 100m and the long jump, but was beaten into second place in the vortex. Bronte was a big jess and cleared off to Mitre 10 during most of the events, not competing or staying to support his team! He was shamed into competing in the Anzac mile at the end and he and Luke finished a very creditable middle of the field. I gave that one a miss!

I was taken out last Sunday for a Mothers’ Day meal. I was really very spoilt – to my surprise and pleasure. I’d asked for a meal out but hadn’t expected prezzies too. Luke got me a teddy key-ring and bath salts. Bronte bought me a huge cookbook (no reflection on my cooking I hope), a couple of fiendish puzzle books, some woolly socks for the farm and some Ninja gloves. Unfortunately they don’t imbue one with magical Ninja powers, but they are lovely and warm and waterproof for winter. We missed Agfest owing to Luke having flu’, which was where I bought a pair last year. They were my mainstays for the whole of last winter.

I greatly appreciated the meal out, since I’ve been starving myself. I decided to lose a bit of weight really quickly. So I’ve been living on tiny salads, nuts, stir-frys (fries?), thin veggie soups and skimmed milk fruit shakes – no carbo, no fat, no sugar. I’m even drinking my tea with skimmed milk and no sugar – urgh. However, the pain is bringing reward – I’ve lost 5kgs since 1 May. I plan to lose 3kg more then go back to eating normal meals, but much smaller portions – and no desserts, chocolate etc. When the WWOOFers were here I made big hearty meals and rich puddings such as treacle tart, banoffee pie, cheesecake, brownies etc (it’s making me hungry just thinking about them). I was unable to resist when they were in the house and added lashings of cream and ice cream. The ironic thing was that about a week into the diet I received a heavy parcel from Sydney which turned out to be the ‘Flat Belly Diet Book’ and the ‘Flat Belly Diet Cookbook’ – what a laugh. They were prizes from our fad earlier in the year of doing all the puzzles in ‘That’s Life!’ and other puzzle magazines. I was amazed to have won anything – but a wad of cash or a car would have been more useful!

Yesterday I went with Luke and his classmates for a walk along the Pipeline Track, from Fern Tree down to the Waterworks just outside of Hobart. It was a lovely walk along part of the route of the old water supply pipe for Hobart, installation of which was begun in 1861. It’s redundant now but the infrastructure including a stone aquaduct and sluice house, still appears to be in good condition. The girls were as good as gold, whereas the boys took every opportunity to climb things, scramble down banks and ditches and chase one another. Luke largely ignored me! Two other mums who live locally came along and gave me a lift back to the beginning of the walk to pick up my car.

Things have been busy as usual on the farm. In fact I’ve been having a bit of a killing spree. Having been meat-free for about a month, we now have one freezer full of meat and the one in the garage is slowly filling up. 17 roosters have bit the dust, one piglet (3 months old at that stage and about 15kg) plus 3 geese. Jasper the goat is still in my sights and there are a handful of younger chickens whose gender is currently not clear. I’ve kept one colourful red rooster to keep the 6 remaining pullets (we’ve sold all the others) company. They have just starting laying and suddenly we are awash once again with eggs. I also culled all the older hens and Nigel the Australorp rooster, plus poor Handles our old goat buck.

I had a huge day of drenching the goats, trimming their hooves and moving them around to their new paddocks to be with the bucks (or not, in the case of the young ones). I also soaked all their feet to try to prevent any foot rot bacteria getting into the new paddock. Handles was in one of the old paddocks and Seb was in the new one with his girls. A week or so later, I woke to find Seb in Handles’ paddock and Handles standing hangdog to one side. It was pretty clear that he wasn’t performing. I tried to catch Jasper the wether to keep him company and thus delay the inevitable, but having failed I made the hard decision that Handles had to go. Seb had been through at least two electric fences at 7,000v, so his urge must have been pretty strong!

The two remaining piglets appeared to be suffering from PTSD for a couple of days after I’d so rudely torn their brother from their midst – but they seem quite happy again now (clearly not too upset then). I was so concerned that the one to go would remain unstressed and innocent of his fate, I didn’t think about the effect on his siblings! We’ve eaten half of the pork and one of the roosters so far and the meat was delicious. Some free-range hens can be a bit strong-tasting, particularly in the leg, but these are just right.

The geese turned out to be impossible to pluck. I remember that the three I did before Christmas took an age and I ended up using the blow-torch to take off the tiny pin-feathers. This time I literally couldn’t pull the feathers off without tearing the skin. I soaked them in hot water (60-70 degrees C) for several minutes, including using detergent to ensure they were wetted right down to the skin. It made no difference whatsoever. I was trying to do this in the kitchen one evening as well as keep track of our serial. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to get them in the freezer before going with Luke on his excursion the following day. In the end I got up early the next day and skinned them. It was pretty easy and took very little time. Today I rendered the skins so as to extract any fat that floats to the surface and sets. I shall have to wait until tomorrow when it’s cooled down to see if it has worked. The cooked skins have gone into the compost.

All the adult goats are now settling down with Seb in the new paddock. They are reluctant to venture far into the bush and stick mostly to the open grassy area and around the edges near the fence. They are gradually making inroads into the big area of blackberries at the bottom. At present there are no huts for them in there, so when it starting pouring last week and was bitterly cold and windy with it, I cut another gate between the new paddock and the old one alongside and let them through to access their huts. I drove around and filled all the huts (for goats, peacocks, turkeys, pigs, geese and hens) with fresh bedding and fixed up one of the goat huts that was sagging and getting holey. I finished in the dark, frozen and fed up, but at least the animals were all cosy. Actually I don’t know why I bother for the turkeys and geese since they prefer to sit outside in all weathers.

In an attempt to vary our diet further, I strung a continuous line over the big dam on pulleys either side and suspended several hooks from it with various tempting baits: grasshoppers, home-made flies sporting colourful peacock feathers, worms etc. Unfortunately it has been a complete failure. The trout circle around the dam blowing raspberries at me and refuse to take any of the baits. It became a real chore as I had to rig up the hooks and then rush back before it got dark to take them all down before the platypus came out and got snagged. Discouraged, I’ve continued to save worms (I’ve got a little worm farm going in the garage now), but haven’t been able to motivate myself to rig up the hooks again for a couple of weeks.

We did at least have great fun one afternoon making different types of flies, with peacock and rooster feathers, sequins etc. Pity they just don’t seem to interest the trout. I also relearnt to splice ropes. To reach across the dam and back again needed a continuous loop of around 60m. I remembered my grandad teaching me to splice ropes together when I was young, but I couldn’t remember the technique. I found a great set of videos on the net and discovered that using a crochet hook was the best way. My splices are a bit lumpy but seem to have done the job. It’s the same principle as interleafing the pages of two telephone books as demonstrated on Mythbusters – it’s just friction really that holds them together.

Once the goats were all in the new paddock, we took the opportunity to fell an ancient dead wattle that was growing between two of my old fences. Having cut a gap in one of the fences we positioned the ute about a tree’s height away from the base and Bronte tried to throw a hammer on the end of a rope between two big high branches. He did this quite quickly but the hammer pulled straight out and wasn’t heavy enough to pull the rope down where it could be reached. Eventually (about 100 times later) he managed it again and we were able to wrap the rope around the hammer to hold it fast and tie the other end to the back of the ute. As the tree was so rotten Bronte wouldn’t use the chainsaw, so we took turns using the axe to bash away at it on both sides. When the axe went through to the rot within, we pulled with the ute and once the rope had stretched until we thought it must break, the tree finally crashed to the ground. Bronte’s since chainsawed it all up and stowed it away in the dry in the tractor shed. We should be just about OK for firewood now for the winter, but I still need to go foraging for my piggy brews.

Talking of piggy brews, the old brazier I was using had nearly collapsed, so Bronte kindly angle-ground another 44 gallon drum in half for me and cut some air holes in the bottom section. I mounted that between steel stakes driven into the ground and wired lengths of reinforcing iron across the top, for the ‘bowl’ to sit on. To make it more efficient, I’ve created a ‘shroud’ around it at full height from old bits of galvanized iron. This ensures that the hot air comes up the sides of the bowl and heats the contents more quickly. It works amazingly, bringing the whole container up to boiling point in about a quarter of the time it used to take – therefore using heaps less wood and saving me wood-gathering time.

I’ve had a couple of unexpected animal sightings recently. Walking across to the tractor shed I looked down towards the bucks’ pen and saw a wombat wandering along in broad daylight, well away from cover! Luke was off sick, so I tore back indoors as fast as possible, yelled for Luke to come outside, grabbed the camera and rushed outside again – only to find the wombat had disappeared! The pigs grunted and shot off in surprise so it must have taken cover in the sedge alongside the pig pen before disappearing in the bush near the creek. What a great surprise though! Another day I saw a long slinky creature which moved a little like a weasel, race from one patch of bog to another. The end half of its tail was white and looked fairly fluffy. I could only imagine it was a water rat or possibly a ring-tailed possum – however, it just didn’t move like a possum. There has been a great influx of the pretty green rosellas for winter. It’s great to see them back in big numbers – the last two years they’ve been noticeably thin on the ground. Less common suddenly are the black cockatoos.

Luke has taken to soccer like a duck to water. His team has played several games now, winning two, losing one and drawing the first. Luke was sick during the losing match so he can feel that they lost owing to him not being there! Last Saturday Bronte took him to a school in Kingston and Luke’s team won 15:1! I felt so sorry for the poor little souls in the other team – and was quite glad I’d chosen not to go along. Since Luke had never seen a proper game of soccer I recorded the FA Cup Final between Liverpool and Chelsea and we sat and watched it the following day (fast-forwarding over the boring bits). Liverpool was always my team (along with Luton and Bedford) in my youth when I used to go to football matches each Saturday with Grandad Tib. So I was rather disappointed when they lost 2:1.It was quite nail-biting in the second half however, when Liverpool piled on the pressure and looked like they might score an equaliser.

For entertainment on an evening, we’ve turned from film DVDs to TV serials. It’s great being able to watch more than one episode at a time, not have any adverts or interference (our signal is pretty weak here) and not have to wait until the following week to find out what happens. We really enjoyed The Slap, probably the first Aussie drama we’ve really enjoyed – Aussie films are usually so depressing and overly arty (everyone dies, takes drugs and ends up miserable). Now we are onto the second episode of Breaking Bad, which is surprisingly good. We’ve got a list of others we want to watch such as The West Wing and Lost.


I forgot to mention that before the WWOOFers left, we went to a sculpture trail on the coast. Here are some pictures of the artworks:

Kid in hole from which he and Bronte had dug a protruding rock and rolled it down the hill:

Diabolically difficult helicopter model sent by someone (can't remember who unfortunately) for a Christmas present for Luke. Bronte started it and gave up. I finished it, but eventually when its rotor blades starting drooping, I snuck it into the bin!