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| Latest batch of soap, coloured with turmeric, perfumed with eucalyptus. Made with the last frozen batch of fat from our last pair of piggies, and left over olive oil used to make chips. It's beautiful soap - we're using it now, although it has turned almost white since. |
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| One of the last rabbits that I sadly had to get rid of before we went on holiday to the UK in July/ August. Had to cut right back so that the housesitter just had the cats, dog and goats. |
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| We had to have poor Bruce put down. He was 14 years' old and had come with us from the UK with dear Murphy-Cat. He was deaf and partially blind and had got so stiff that he had a job getting in and out of his bed, let alone up the steps onto the front deck. I made him a ramp but he never really got the hang of it. I had to keep lifting him up and down. Also, he'd become terribly grumpy and kept trying to bite Luke. He growled and snapped at the cats if they ventured into the laundry. We felt that it was probably the best thing to have him put down, particularly as we were going away for a month. Anyhow, once we no longer had Bruce, we agreed to start letting Rosie-Dog come upstairs into the living area. Here you can see her greatly enjoying her new privileges! All the cats like her and try to rub against her and snuggle up. Scorch is chilling here with her. Daft Rosie gets worried when Scorch tries to play with her and she runs away. |
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| Before we left for our UK holiday, I had to create a new paddock for the goats. The electric fences were no longer keeping them in and they were escaping and eating Bronte's trees. A mixture of UV and wallaby pressure was breaking down the electric braid and I could no longer keep up with repairs. It only take one piece of braid to lay on the ground or be touching a stake and the whole fence goes down. Also Bronte had often switched off the fence when building his greenhouse, and the goats had learnt not to fear the fence. I had already put in stakes and tread-ins for an electric fenced paddock so had to use those. There was no time to put in proper wooden posts at corners and for gate posts, so I just did the best I could. The chicken wire will hopefully keep out the wallabies and help keep the goats in. Electric wire and barbed wire runs above the chicken wire and there are two offset lines of electric braid on the inside. However, the goats - including the youngsters just born - seem to have no fear of the offset electric, so it's not an entire success. Also, my gates are not well-mounted and really need a lot more work to sort them out. |
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| To stop wallabies from pushing under the fence, it was necessary to overlap it onto the ground like a skirt and peg it down. Buying tent pegs would have been far too expensive, so I went to the Huonville tip and scavenged a load of wire shelves, rebar and other lengths of metal - a whole ute-load. I clamped our huge angle-grinder into the bench vice, cable-tied the switch to the 'on' position (very safe) and then cut the entire lot up to make 3 buckets of pegs (above and below).. |
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| Another task that had to be tackled before we left for the UK was to try and make our internet relay station a bit more reliable energy-wise. I rigged up my old, smaller solar panel in series with the bigger one and added a couple more 100ah deep cycle batteries. It still is not nearly enough, particularly on cold nights when the capacity of the batteries is greatly reduced. |
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| A few weeks before going away I succumbed to getting some proper glasses. I'd been using a small pair of cheapo reading glasses for about 6 months but was fed up with never having them on me when I needed them. I decided I needed a pair that would do everything - reading, close up lace crochet work and also act as sunglasses. Unfortunately, I managed to choose some rather expensive frames and the whole lot set me back a huge amount of cash. I'm still getting used to them, months later, and still have to take them off to negotiate rough ground, because I when I look down I'm looking through the reading bit. My long range sight is actually fine so unless I'm reading, working on the computer or doing something detailed I don't really need them. |
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| Beautiful sunny frosty morning. |
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| My regular winter chore - chopping firewood. I chopped a huge pile for the house-sitter before we went away, the whole set of preparations for the UK holiday nearly killed me! |
