Monday 24 October 2011

I’m feeling somewhat shamefaced having lain down for a few minutes in order to catch up on sleep lost through coughing – and woke up nearly two hours later! Too late to go up the hill & continue clearing my new fence-line as planned, in fact too late to do anything useful outside. The weather’s turned foul again and it’s high time I caught up with events. 

The last couple of weeks have been characterised by endless computer troubles which have eaten up an enormous amount of time. We bought a new computer a few weeks ago from a Hobart City Council auction. Not having the patience to wait, Bronte bought the first decent one that came up, which happened to have Vista rather than Windows as the operating system. I’d set it up with the old screen and had begun finding my way around it & loading software but had been rather daunted by the prospect of trying to transfer e-mail information and other files. However, I was suddenly forced into action by the old computer beginning to disintegrate. At first, we couldn’t send e-mails (although we could receive them), then we were unable to search the internet and the internet options in Control Panel became locked. We were able to get around the e-mail issue by using a gmail account, but without access to address-book groups such as the WWPG it was most inconvenient. (If bored by computer stuff, skip the next few paras ..)

I had a steep learning curve to climb. Vista was quite different to Windows & took a great deal of getting used to – things were displayed and filed differently and often called by a new name. I took a bit of advice from my neighbour (the weather wiz) and also a friend in the business who lives locally. I was reluctant to transfer the old satellite internet connection & decided to risk moving to mobile broadband with Telstra. That entailed an age on the phone and some days awaiting the USB modem but it was simple to set up & operates OK if not super-quick. I have the modem on a long cable pinned high up on the window flyscreen to get a better signal.

One of the first hurdles was to sort out the issues with Vista and also the HP software that kept annoyingly popping up every time anyone tried to do something. First of all I had to disable User Account Control as it asked for permission each time software was opened, then delete the HP tools and security software containing something called ‘credential manager’. It was driving me potty by asking if I wanted to save login details after every keystroke. It’s easy to write these things, but they caused hours of work – searching for files and looking up how to do things on the internet. Then for some reason MS Office failed to work & it seemed the disk had exceeded the number of allowable activations. I had to bypass the internet & ring the Aussie MS number which eventually granted me an access code. 

I tackled e-mail then – firstly importing everything from Outlook Express into Outlook, such that I could put it into a format that could be transferred to Outlook on the new PC. Unfortunately before this could happen, Outlook Express lost all our e-mail addresses – all 297 of them. This was a blow, but there was nothing to do but persevere. I created a .pst file, put it onto an external hard drive & loaded it onto the new PC along with all our photos and other files. Again, this took an age as the old PC took 20 minutes to transfer each folder. I imported the .pst file into new Outlook and was relieved and amazed to see all our old e-mails appear in the inbox. I then spent an interminable amount of time going through these e-mails to retrieve our e-mail addresses. Luckily there were occasions where I’d done group e-mailing and forgotten to ‘bcc’ the addresses. I eventually populated Contacts with all 297 addresses once again! However, alarmingly, I could not find these when trying to send an e-mail & spent some time trying to work out how to display them in the address book. Then I couldn’t even locate incoming e-mails. Talk about a frustrating time. It seemed that Outlook was using the old .pst file as the default and not displaying our new account.

The next task was to download all the freebie programmes we use such as AVG, Nitro pdf Writer, Free Download Manager (fabulous programme for people with unreliable internet connections), Adobe Reader, Shockwave, Flashplayer and some sort of image/ photo editing and drawing tool. After some research I chose Paint.NET which also necessitated downloading service pack 2 for Vista plus the NET framework. Even now there is more to do – load on Picture Project & AutoCAD, replace all our download ‘favourites’ in Explorer and re-build the WWPG mailing list. I’m looking forward to simply using the computer again!

Despite the computer and the usual farm work, we’ve had some excitements recently. It was my birthday a couple of Sundays ago – the weather being dodgy we opted to visit MONA rather than the Spring Fair at the Botanical Gardens. It certainly lived up to expectations and the more ‘fringe’ items failed to shock us. Apart from one notable exception (a video installation) these did not seem gratuitous and appeared to have artistic merit. There were some weird juxtapositions of exquisite ancient pieces displayed alongside flamboyant modern works. We started at the bottom & worked our way up (all of MONA is underground – much of it hewn from the rock) and by the time we reached the top and third floor, we were museumed out & failed to give it justice. We took Luke through the parental guidance areas and had no need to worry since he was transfixed by the hand-held gismo handed out to patrons in order to look up info on the displays. Afterwards we had a pleasant lunch at the Hogs Breath Café and went home replete. Bront brought me a directional electric fence tester and fault-finder which has already proven very useful!

Three days later it was Luke’s 7th birthday. We made a fuss of him on the day & I made a load of little chocolate cakes and took them to school for his classmates. I made gigantic profiteroles for pudding in the evening which we managed to scoff in two days. We arranged a party for Luke on the Saturday afternoon but for some reason he only invited three friends. As it transpired, that was quite enough and the assembly hovered on the verge of chaos for the three hours everyone was here. It poured with rain, so most of the outdoor activities we’d planned had to be abandoned in favour of indoor archery (arrows with suckers which stuck to the windows – Bronte drew a T-Rex as a target), 'pin the tail on the pterosaur' and 'hide and seek'. Another load of baking was required to produce an orange-flavoured birthday cake (delicious), ginger biscuits (odd) and brownies (yum). One of the lads was still sitting there eating long after the others had moved onto another game. We did get outside in the end & the kids smashed the piñata, cuddled the chicks and goslings and had a few rides in the go-kart (we couldn’t start the one with the engine so had to stick with gravity-assist only). We heaved a great sigh of relief once everyone had gone!

We had a further good family day out at the Hobart Show last week. Strangely, there is a public holiday for the show on Thursday and then people are expected to go back to work on the Friday or take a day off. I’ve always found the show more of an endurance test than fun, so this year we researched a bit and discovered that Wednesday was farm day. Bronte took the afternoon off & we kept Luke home from school and had a great afternoon. The weather topped 29°C – the hottest October day for several years – there were few people there and we saw all the animals and events we’d looked forward to and had several rides in the fairground section. The first event was the Braap and BMX demo which was a favourite for Luke & Bronte. We were also there in time to see the ‘largest bullock team in Australia’, and it truly was large in every sense – tremendous horned animals yoked together to pull a wooden cart. We watched the pig racing display which included two pigs diving into a pool of water and Luke had a go on the climbing wall. Luke and I went on some sort of bungee contraption and I had to get off early as it was so knackering. I took Luke on a few rides including a scary underwater simulator where we were attacked by a mock great white! Poor Luke was terrified. We bumped each other on the dodgems and then Bronte bravely announced he would take Luke on a ride called the Hurricane – he got off looking exceedingly pale and had to sit down in the CWA tent to recover!

As you’ll note the weather has been very changeable. We’ve had a few fine days and some pleasant temperatures but inbetween we’ve continued to get heavy bouts of rain and cold spells. Today I waited until the weather had cleared a bit before venturing outside, at which point it started hailing horizontally.

On the farm front, we’ve had three deaths in as many days. On Saturday it was my turn to take Luke to Little Athletics so I got up really early to rush round the animals. Exasperated by Fifi, the last of our original turkeys who was constantly broody and laid only soft-shelled eggs, I sent her off to the great turkey pen in the sky. Later I cut out two substantial slabs of breast meat, which when tenderised and slow-cooked will be lovely, before roughly plucking the carcase and cooking it up whole for the pigs. If I’d had a spare pen where retirees could live out their natural lives I would have kept her, but we are short of pens and she was upsetting the other girls by bossing them around and kept sitting on other turkey’s eggs making them useless for the incubator (never mind that they are useless anyhow by virtue of being unfertilised).

The following day Bronte & Luke checked for eggs & found Boris bunny with his toes up in one of the hen houses. He’d been hale & hearty the previous day, bouncing around and chasing the hens. There was no sign of injury and he was in good condition, so his demise remains a mystery. Then today I found one of the youngest goslings dead in the goose run. Again there was no sign of injury but a little earlier I’d seen the geese chase off a horrible craven (forest raven). The cravens are getting bolder now they presumably have young. A wedgie (wedge-tailed eagle) soared very low over all the bird pens this afternoon so he must also be looking for food for young. Much as I admire the wedgies I’ve no intention of feeding them with our young birds. 

Also today, one of the remaining female turkeys had disappeared – it’s quite bizarre. They are in pens with 1.4m high fencing so getting out is not all that easy for fat, heavy birds. This was one I’d chucked next door into the weaning pen to try and shock her out of broodiness. Whether she’d just got fed up with me persecuting her and decided to nest in the bush or whether she was taken by a predator (no sign of blood, feathers or tracks), we just can’t fathom. Oddly, the dogs went crazy in the early hours last night – Bruce was barking madly down near the turkey pen and Rosie was yowling outside our bedroom window. Whether that was coincidental or related to the turkey’s disappearance I guess we’ll never know. So now we’re down to just three female turkeys – from five just a couple of days ago! And their wretched eggs are still infertile. We’ve given up and started eating the eggs instead of incubating them.

I’ve suffered a couple of animal attacks and injuries of late. When I approached the geese to retrieve their empty feed bowls Arthur the gander went bananas and leapt at me punching my arm with his beak. I was surprised how powerful he was. I can hardly complain – he’s just being protective - but I do wish they would realise I’m not going to attack them each time I go into their pen. The following day when I tried to catch Handlebars (one of the bucks), to do his feet and drench him for worms, he shook his head violently and his horns bashed into my wrist causing a large bruised swelling which has only just cleared up. Determined not to let him beat me, I pursued him round & round the pen until he finally gave up & shot into his little hut, from which I hauled him out. His flanks were heaving while I did his hooves, poor old boy, but he got his own back by making me and all my clothes stink of billy goat. I caught all the baby goats again in order to give them their booster vaccinations. Also did their hooves, drenched them and treated their feet at the same time.

A week last Sunday was a horrible day, with squally rain and even snow on the mountain flanks. Despite this, some of our hardy neighbours turned up keen to go fishing in the dam. We’ve had no luck recently at catching the trout we put in there as tiny troutlets a couple of years ago. However, our neighbours are clearly much more experienced fishermen as they quickly caught four and were going to throw them back until Bronte, alarmed, shouted not to. They took a couple and we kept a couple and it was a real treat having trout for a couple of evenings. The fish looked in great condition and weighed a little under 2kg each. I’ve been scheming about ways of catching them and plan to put a string on pulleys across the dam with removable lines hanging down from that. I thought we could set it up early morning or twilight and haul it in half an hour later, rather than standing there casting and re-casting for hours on end.

It has definitely felt like spring here recently despite the variable weather. One of the more noticeable signs is the cacophony of bird noise, especially in the mornings. The native hens scream and carry on at the least sign of danger, setting off the currawongs and the geese, the pair of ducks that have set up camp locally, various other unrecognisable creatures in the bush, the turkeys, then finally the peacocks, whose terrific wail tends to silence the rest and bring a temporary end to the commotion. Annoyingly, I’ve noticed that the two youngest peacocks that I’d thought were girls, are in fact boys. We'll have to advertise them because it wouldn’t do to keep more than one male with our two peahens.

Thursday 6 October 2011

I can’t write this in the evenings as normal because I hired the box set of the first season of ‘24’ from the DVD shop & Bronte’s become obsessed such that we have to watch three episodes every night! If I miss one the rest won’t make sense. To salve my conscience I am gradually making inroads on the huge mending pile although it’s not doing my eyes much good. Several of Luke’s trousers have now been neatly patched and lengthened. After two beautiful days of sunshine and breezes, it is drizzling again today, so I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up.

Luke and I have started training for the Point to Pinnacle race in November! Bronte has been training for it (sporadically and not very enthusiastically) since earlier in the year, but owing to repeated muscle strains (he refuses to warm up before training believing he is still 30), he’s decided to enter as a walker rather than a runner. The race is 21km from the Hobart foreshore to the top of Mount Wellington at around 1200m altitude. So I’ve said we’ll walk with him but not hold him up if he wants to go faster. We’d become rather slack about walking to the school bus, but now we are marching there with renewed purpose through rain or shine. I’m not sure if there is a minimum age which precludes Luke and we’ll have to see how he copes with a dry run up the Sleeping Beauty track from Mountain River.

We got in a bit of practice by walking to Snug Falls the other week. We’d never been there before and were surprised to find it such a popular spot. It’s a fairly short, easy walk and at the falls themselves there are many flat rocks and pleasant spots to picnic, which is exactly what several families had determined to do. Unfortunately we were frog-marched back up the track at tremendous pace by Bronte because we’d somehow mislaid Bruce the dog on the way! I’d cut his hair with scissors the day before and was a bit ashamed to be seen with him he looked so peculiar – plus he often wanders off for ages & then catches up on our walks. On this occasion however, he’d obviously become rather confused and followed a different family back to the cars & then some way back down the road, before following a ute back up & finally meeting up with us again at the start of the track. Poor Bruce, he was so tired and so relieved to get in the car with us again. He had a large drink of water and collapsed. Rosie rode tied up in the back of the ute because I couldn’t face her throwing up on the back seat again. It seemed to suit her as she wasn’t sick this time.

On the way back we saw a Wedge-Tailed Eagle feeding on roadkill right at the side of the road – what a magnificent sight. Talking of wildlife, one of the WWPG members has just sent me footage of a healthy Tasmanian Devil feeding in one of the forestry coupes above us in Mount Wellington. It was such a wonderful thing to see and so sad to think that Forestry Tasmania is still clearfelling on the far side of West Wellington, within the 430,000Ha assigned in the recent Intergovernmental Agreement on forestry for ‘immediate protection’. I had a letter published again in the local paper The Mercury, highlighting this fact and noting that the demands of Ta Ann (Malaysian veneer factory in the Huon Valley) were driving the destruction of coupes from which over 70% of the timber will go for woodchips for which there is a declining market and no profit. 7% or less of the West Wellington coupes are suitable for sawlogs and around 20-25% can go for veneer. Given that the government ploughed millions of dollars into the set-up of Ta Ann and that so little has been given back in return, it seems a pretty poor deal. Ta Ann employs around 100 or so people but that is the only benefit it brings – and some of these people are brought in from Malaysia.

Along with a lady from ET and another from a campaign group on Bruny Island, I had the chance to highlight what was happening to the Federal Minister for the Environment, Tony Burke, on Monday at a Community Cabinet event in Kingston. We were given around 15 minutes to present our case – we thanked them for their commitment to achieving a forestry deal and maximising conservation outcomes, explained why the nominated areas should be protected, showed evidence that Forestry Tasmania was still logging within the 430,000Ha and explained how plans were being developed to enable these areas to pay for themselves, if given appropriate backing. He was polite, reasonable and clearly exasperated with the State Government and with Forestry Tasmania’s intransigence. However, he gave the impression of being focused on the bigger picture – the end game in Mar-May next year when legislation is brought in to ensure wood supply and protect more forest. We may have to lie in front of the bulldozers yet!

On the environmental front, I’ve been harassed of late by the man who borrowed Connor and the trailer – we now call him ‘The Horrible Hogman’! He recognised my name from the public meeting I presented at earlier this year and saw from my blog that I was a part-time campaigner for the WWPG. He began sending e-mails with his point of view which is clearly pro-logging in its current form and had a couple of letters published in The Mercury which were somewhat extreme in nature. He thinks anyone present when an activist is arrested, should also be arrested and locked up and even those who have given money to a campaigning organisation should be guilty if one of that group’s members later commits a crime. While I understand the frustration felt by workers when their work is interrupted by protesters, there is sometimes a need for such action to bring attention to practices that ought to change. Even in a democracy we need these people to highlight injustices.

Anyhow I wrote back and tried to draw a line under the debate by saying we would have to agree to disagree on forestry issues. I remained polite and tried to keep the conversation light. However, his e-mails became more vindictive and personal, finally accusing me of telling ‘outright lies’. I lost patience at this point and asked him not to write any more to me and only to contact me again when my piglets were ready. This clearly incensed him because he then tried to send something to The Mercury via their website in my name and also sent a vindictive paragraph about me to the same paper. I contacted their very nice letters editor who kindly said he would not be printing either of these letters and advised me to go to the police. Hogman’s contention was that since I live in a timber home, use firewood and live on cleared land, I must be a hypocrite. What he fails to comprehend, despite me pointing this out on several occasions, is that I am not anti-forestry, just anti-clearfelling and the current forestry model as employed in Tasmania. It is too high-intensity and the economics don’t stack up. The cost to the environment is far too great when weighed against the meagre financial benefit. Plus the fixation on forestry means we do not invest in alternative and more sustainable enterprises that could better secure our economic future.

What else has happened over the last couple of weeks? I managed to castrate, vaccinate and treat the feet of all the goat babies. I penned them in a small section of the yard then contrived a velcro device to hold their little wrists so they were suspended over the front of a chair – so it was much the same as if someone were holding them for me. They were very indignant at such treatment and I always feel rotten putting the bands over their balls! Most were fine but little Tolly obviously felt the pinch afterwards and went and snuggled up with mum baaing pitifully. I’ve also finally got around to making a couple of mineral shelters – I just roofed a couple of the little tip shop desks we’d acquired a while back and painted them the same colour as the huts. All the babies have gone mad for the salt and mineral licks. Our soils are low in some minerals such as selenium and iodine so hopefully this will address any deficiencies.

Still not a lot of luck on the egg front. I candled a further 21 turkey eggs yesterday and all were infertile. I also broke open the three geese eggs in the incubator to find dead partially formed embryos inside. All a bit grisly. I still have about 30 or so turkey eggs in the incubator but don’t hold out any hope. The turkeys all seem to have stopped laying now for the time being and I worked out they’d averaged 13.6 eggs each! Just a bit under the 15 that I estimated as being the normal batch number. The challenge now is to stop them going broody so they’ll start laying again soon. I spent some time on the internet trying to work out what was going wrong and I’m wondering if William the gobbler is just not quite old enough. He looks mature and seems vigorous and protective but perhaps he’s not quite up to tackling the girls yet. I could try and source another gobbler or I could bear with him and see if he comes good and in the meantime concentrate on chickens. I’m still undecided. I managed to retrieve the unhatched goose eggs from Darcy Bussell’s nest and they smelt absolutely rank. Bronte said they couldn’t possibly smell as bad as dead pademelons (when I went to a carers’ training day at Bonorong they called them ‘stinkies’) but it was tenfold worse.

I made my second batch of sausages last week. Again I had to hand-stuff them - they looked and smelt a treat, but were still not quite right. Bronte says they are too crumbly so perhaps there is not enough fat in the sausagemeat I made. Luke loves them so at least I have one fan.

Luke’s gone jigsaw puzzle mad recently. We hadn’t done any for an age and I casually suggested a few weeks back that we do a puzzle and since then, he hasn’t looked back. He’s just finished another 500 piece one that was clearly too easy for him so we’ve scaled up to a 900 piece fiendish looking affair with a picture as complex as one of the Where’s Wally scenes. That might slow him up a bit. It’s his birthday next Wednesday so I suppose we have to go through the agonies of a party the following weekend.

 

 

It’s actually my birthday first on Sunday (45 – gulp) so I’m looking forward to some treats and pampering from Bronte & Luke (fat chance). I did get a little surprise through the post recently however – one of our WWOOFERs who had stayed with us for ten weeks, had remembered I missed not being able to buy Baked Beans with Sausages and had kindly sent me three tins (the parcel had been opened by Australian Quarantine)! It’s been a great treat eating them for my lunch. I have written a few references for her recently, so hopefully they have paid off.

Rosie has been in a bit of trouble over the kennel – in which I still feel a swelling of satisfaction when I come up to the laundry door – for chewing off all the sheepskin I put over the front to keep the wind off, starting to chew the wood and pulling out the loose bedding. I’ve give up and taken all the sheepskin off – they’ll just have to be draughty – put cayenne pepper on all the corners of wood she was chewing and confiscated the loose bedding. I pulled the rest out and secured it as best I could before stuffing it back in. Since then there have been no further incidences.

I’m starting to feel a trifle overwhelmed with spring so far advanced, Christmas coming soon and so many jobs needing doing. I need to put fishing line over the turkey run, partition off the main chicken run and build some coupes, finish clearing the fencing line for a new goat fence and and – well the list goes on ad infinitum. I’ve been a bit low in energy probably owing to stress from the Hogman incidents and the Community Cabinet preparation etc and am struggling to get motivated.

I’m always hamstrung when typing, by Murphy Cat. For some reason he has to be on my lap or somewhere inconvenient around or on the keyboard when I’m in the office. He likes the warmth from the anglepoise lamp and hates being in the lounge on his own. He’s got a new lease of life with his steroids and nutrigel and has mad fits of skidding around the house and wanting people to chase him. I keep telling him to go outside where Rosie will chase him as much as he wants ..

Tuesday 4 October 2011

Wow, it’s been an age again since I’ve sat down and updated this page. I’m sitting here looking out of the large corner window in the office: the sun is shining (for a pleasant change), the currawongs are chuntering to each other in the swamp gums, Handles and Seb are lying down communing, the pear tree is shedding blossom like snow, the swallows are swooping low over the ground (and clanging about on the roof) and I can see the birds scratching happily in their pens. The four new goslings have been taken for a walk by mum & dad – who are fiercely protective. I tried to retrieve the unhatched eggs but the adults became so upset I decided to leave them. Arthur ran at me & looked as if he might leap up and attack.

Pear tree and little crab apple before they started shedding blossom

I’ve just taken three of the four new-born chicks out to the brooder in the garage – of the 14 hens’ eggs in the small incubator, 10 proved to be infertile when I candled them. I don’t know what Nigel the Australorp rooster is playing at. Even his girlfriend Nigella’s eggs (also an Australorp) were infertile, whereas last season they were always reliable. I am having even less success with the turkey eggs. I’ve got 44 eggs in the big borrowed incubator now & when I candled the first 16 all were infertile! William, who is so fearsome when one goes into the run (particularly to Luke) is clearly not doing his job. I’ve racked my brains to think of other problems but don’t think I’ve been doing anything particularly wrong – I’ve collected the eggs promptly, minimised handling and kept them in a clean, cool area. At least the dud eggs are not wasted, I either feed them back to the birds, or give them to the pigs and dogs.

Now the turkeys are all going broody and it requires constant vigilance to break them out of this state. Turkeys are not like hens, they will not lay eggs constantly. They lay a batch of say 15 and then sit on them – or sit on the empty nest if you’ve removed the eggs, they don’t appear to differentiate. And they’ll sit for weeks on end, while all this time of course they are not laying eggs. So my latest tactic is to hurl any broody ones over the fence into a barren pen (currently recovering from the ravages of the piglets) and leaving them there for a few days. One that I returned seems not to have gone back to being broody. Whatever I do, they will not lay another batch of eggs for some time. The season for turkeys is short too, from around September to April – sometimes continuing for a further month or two for a good turkey in fine weather. So I am keeping my fingers crossed for the remainder of the eggs (I replaced the 16 I candled, but am running out of ones in store).

In contrast to the turkey eggs we are utterly awash with hens eggs. I have been trying a variety of egg recipes such as orange curd with pancakes (pretty scrummy but you can’t eat much at a time), Spanish omelette etc. However, I’ve still ended up feeding a dozen now and again back to the birds or other animals or simply giving them away. Luke and I have been relentlessly eating them for breakfast, but we can’t keep up. If the turkey eggs in the incubator are a dead loss, then I’ll fill it with hens’ eggs – at least I know some will be fertile.

Friday 23 September 2011

It is so foul outside I’ve decided to stay in for a bit & catch up with PC work. After a couple of breezy, mild days during which the paddocks did start to dry out, it’s rained all night. I daren’t check the rain gauge – there must have been an inch or thereabouts. I’m still having trouble with the goats’ feet, poor things, so whereas once upon a time I would have reveled in the sound of the rain pounding on the roof, now I wince & worry about the goats’ hooves & the pigs’ pens.

Despite the rain gloom, there have been some mild excitements to report. The wild baby bunny turned up again – in the cage where it had been before. It’s a great puzzle. I’d been through the hay in there with a fine tooth comb & had seen neither hide nor hair of it. Anyhow, rather than pondering on the issue, I’ve popped into a smaller dog travel-crate from which it most certainly can’t escape. We’ve named it Beryl, it’s still rather cute & is happily eating dandelions & fresh grass which I (of course) get for it each day. At least we don’t have to buy any rabbits now to fulfill our promise to Luke. We just need Rosie to find another girl bunny for the other buck. Rosie’s turning out to be rather a menace on the wildlife front – playing with skinks until they lose the will to live & killing a baby native hen the other day before we could get to her. Some major training sessions are called for.

I’m pleased to announce that the dogs are now happily re-housed in their new kennel. It’s installed on the front deck following a major removals task with the help of the Suzuki. I forgot that a couple of screws poked a fraction out of the bottom & I’ve scratched some of the deck boards rather badly – I’m not sure Bronte’s noticed yet & I haven’t pointed it out. I poured water on them to try & swell them away. The kennel just squeaked into the space allotted for it, but I had to move the external powerpoint – luckily I managed not to electrocute myself & I didn’t have to lengthen the cable to move it across a couple of inches.

It is totally caulked & siliconed in every conceivable crack on the outside & on the inside is fully lined with 2cm thick polystyrene & building paper, all taped up so there are no frayed edges for the dogs to chew. Yesterday morning I made the bedding, stuffing hessian sacks with foam, sewing them together & wrapping them all in old blankets & sewing that in place. Hopefully there is nothing there that Rosie can chew or destroy (famous last words). I’ve stapled a piece of old sheepskin over the front doors (from one of Murphy’s old beds) & made a slit in each side, to reduce the windage into the kennel itself. Luke & I painted a name board that is now proudly displayed on the side.

I’ve also – at last – completed the crocheted quilt I’ve been working on during the winter evenings in front of the fire & the TV. Here it’s being modeled by the spare bed & draped across the sofa in the lounge. It’s all made with oddments of wool & recycled wool unpicked from old jumpers bought from op shops.

I’ve resolved to put away the crocheting for now & start tackling the huge pile of mending that has built up in the meantime, mostly comprising knee patches and letting down trouser legs for Luke. He continues to grow like a weed and is always grubbing about and falling over in mud and gravel. He loves his bicycle & had great fun at a vacation care ‘wheels day’ last week. Thank goodness he’s been back at school this week, it’s rather a strain trying to entertain him & get everything done here during the holidays.

The other minor excitement is that I have borrowed a large manual incubator from a neighbour (who has purchased a posh auto-turning one of which I am most envious) & it’s now almost filled with turkey eggs – 32 I think now. I’d thought the turkeys weren’t laying (or that the cravens were getting all the eggs) but found a batch of 13 hidden in hay - actually in the hut for a change. Since then there have been another 2-4 each day so I’ve been popping them in each time. My little incubator has geese & chicken eggs in it so once they hatch, I can transfer the turkey eggs into it for hatching as they become due. You have to stop turning eggs three days before they are due to hatch & also raise the humidity – which is why it’s not good to have eggs with different due dates in the same incubator. I dare say when I candle them, half will turn out to be infertile – this often happens with the first batch of the season – but I’m hopeful. At least the turkeys haven’t gone broody. Once this happens they stop laying & it is virtually impossible to break the broodiness. I’ve tried taking them for a drive (someone told me this was a failsafe cure) & chucking them into different pens, but nothing has worked for me so far. All three girl geese are now sitting, so we could be awash with baby birds soon. This is a bit of a concern because I’m going to need more space for them.

Yesterday I terminated the three big roosters which were getting rather bolshie and packed them into the freezer. I must have got the dunking just right, because plucking them was a breeze. I used water at 70°C & dunked them for 45-50secs. Talking of bolshie animals poor Luke had a bad day recently, when he was growled & snapped at by Bruce in the morning & attacked by William the gobbler in the afternoon. Bruce gets a bit protective of what he thinks of as his territory & gets a bit stressed by Luke’s noise & sudden moves. William has been a pussycat up until now – it must be the time of year I think. When I rescued Luke & shepherded him out, William leapt onto my back!

I can now worm all the birds & start installing my fishing line over the turkey pen to confound the cravens. That was meant to be today’s job but frankly I’m baulking at going outside in this weather. I’m also a bit worn down this week which has been pretty full-on. I’ve chopped & carted a large batch of firewood and Bronte & I unloaded and raked a tonne or more of topsoil last Friday to try & level out the area around the pear tree, which used to be a small pig pen. We spent ages scraping off the high bits & transferring the spoil to the low bits – it’s now more level than anywhere else on our plot. I was hoping to take back part of it for another pig pen but Bronte might not be so keen now.

Last weekend entailed early rising owing to Little Athletics starting again on the Saturday and a WWPG Open Day on the Sunday. I had to get the animals fed before going to each event. Luke enjoyed his Little Athletics & won all his events, but was so abominable that he was whisked home before his favourite event – the 100m.

The Open Day was rather more successful. The aim was to highlight the fact that Forestry Tasmania is continuing to log in coupes within the 430,000Ha designated for ‘immediate protection’ within the recent Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) on forestry, & to promote the conservation values of West Wellington (http://wwpg.info). I’d not had much to do with the organization barring sending out invites to the membership & the media. Luke & I went along & had a good few hours, trundling along the 4WD tracks & logging roads & walking along part of the old Judds Creek Road, now isolated by Forestry’s logging operations. We left after lunch as Luke had been playing with two other boys in a creek & was wet, cold & tired. Luckily I’d had the foresight to take a change of clothes, but nonetheless he was about wrung out. We’d taken enough food for an army but managed to polish the lot off – Luke ate most of his on the way.

A few new faces turned up to the event & learnt what was going on & why we are opposed to clearfelling. A local journalist rang up that evening for a chat & was good enough to put a piece in The Mercury the following day (http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2011/09/19/262481_tasmania-news.html).

Hopefully, it might help stir things up. I’ve been having a bit of e-mail liaison with the man who has Connor the boar at the moment – he challenged me on my environmental views with respect to forestry. I’ve asked that he not stick pins in Connor to get back at me!

I’ve just lit a fire, it’s so cold & miserable. I had to weigh up the comforts of a fire against the discomfort of chopping more wood. At least Murphy the cat will be happy. I might break my self-imposed rules & do some phone-calling of potential customers on a Friday, following up the marketing documentation e-mailed out recently for a neighbour. Anything to delay going outside.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

All my spare moments have been devoted to the deluxe 6-star energy rated double-kennel I’m still constructing - or I’ve been flaked out in front of the TV crocheting madly. Hence there have been no blog updates recently. Also my old Mum has been rather poorly in hospital in the UK with shingles and something horrid called cellulitis. So that’s rather distracted me too. Luckily she’s home again now so the various medications must be having some effect, but it’s a lot to cope with at 75 & has been a big worry for all of us. The time difference made it difficult to keep up with news & I felt guilty at not being there to help.

The kennel is finally nearing completion. Bronte keeps asking when it will be finished & I remind him that constantly updating the specification is bound to adversely affect the schedule. I gave up on a hinged roof (as requested by Bronte) because the construction technique didn’t lend itself to hinging (hingeing?) without a whole lot of extra work. The trouble is I now have to squeeze myself in through the entrances with an inspection lamp in order to insulate the ceiling & fit the bedding.

The goat babies have all arrived now. One of my does – a big, healthy Boer - doesn’t appear to have got pregnant at all, which is quite a concern. I’ll perhaps try her with a different buck next time around. We have rather less kids than last year but that was always on the cards. After a gap of around a week, two does decided to kid on the same day, at the same time – and in the same hut! I found three babies & neither they nor I could work out who belonged to which Mum. However, they seem all to be thriving & are treating both does as Mum.

Tragically I saw that another doe (one of my new ones) had kidded & went in search of the babies only to discover two tiny creatures lying outside in the cold – one already dead & one I also thought was dead until I saw it take a shuddering breath. I dithered for a time, wondering if it had any chance of survival or if I shouldn’t put it out of its misery straightaway. Eventually I ran back with it down to the house & held it immersed in warm water in the laundry for half an hour, keeping its nose above water. Remarkably it seemed to perk up. I dried it, wrapped it in a fleece with a hot water bottle, put it in front of the fire with the cat & dribbled into its mouth small amounts of warm milk enriched with egg yolk, cod liver oil & molasses. It swallowed & got stronger all the time.

Later that night, its body temperature was good & it was bleating & drinking happily. So I set up the heat lamp in the garage, caught Mum in the dark & brought her down to the garage & reunited them. She had heaps of milk & I really didn’t want to have to bottle-feed a babe if I could avoid it. Mum & baby were overjoyed at being together again & I left them with the kid nuzzling Mum & looking as if it was about to feed. However, in the morning all was not well. The kid was lying at an odd angle, wheezing & clearly unwell. I can only think that as so often happens when trying to feed weak animals, some drops of the milk I gave it had got into its lungs. Animals seem to have no tolerance to this & can die instantly or get pneumonia, sicken & die. I made the decision to put it down & was quite upset – particularly after all my efforts to keep it alive. Its twin that I found dead hadn’t been cleaned up by Mum so I wonder if it was still-born. I don’t know why these two were so weak. They were very small & it’s possible they were born with a low body temperature.

I had significant shenanigans with pigs last week. I had offered Connor for stud in return for two piglets (fruits of his labours) when the time comes for the sows to farrow. However, this meant getting him into the trailer. This took careful trailer positioning (as per Vicky a couple of weeks previously) between bog areas & then Connor was most wary & unwilling to get in, even for his favourite foods (perhaps he remembered Vicky getting in & being taken away ..). When he finally got in, the other two small pigs were in there too & I had to shut them all in. With Connor one end & Stumpy & Ginger at the other end, I stuck star pickets through the middle to create a barrier between them, then climbed in to shoo the smaller ones out through the door. What a palaver that was – Stumpy bolted out straight back into his pen, but Ginger had to be bodily removed & then shot under the wire & straight up to the house.

When I eventually herded her back in, I got in the Suzuki to haul the trailer up to the tractor shed, only to find the battery was flat! That meant bringing the ute down & jump-starting it, but as the Suzuki won’t idle I was desperate not to stall it. Finally the trailer was parked in the tractor shed & unhitched, but then the Suzuki stopped & wouldn’t start again. I realised I’d have to charge the battery over lunch. As there is no electric in the tractor shed & I daren’t set up extension leads because it was pouring with rain, I physically heaved the Suzuki part-way to the garage but just couldn’t get it up a rise. Finally I used the ute to nudge it from behind, jumping out now & again to adjust the steering of the Suzuki & stopping before it tore off down the hill. At that point I pushed it over the point of no return & leapt in to steer it down to the garage, before nudging it under cover with the ute again. It was after this that I found the weak goat twins referred to above. That night, I felt as though I’d been beaten with sticks! At least Bronte had the bright idea of sending Connor off in our trailer rather than trying to transfer him into another one. When the man came to collect I was fast asleep on the sofa!

The three roosters due for the chop are still alive and kicking, but I’m keen to do the deed as the ones we are currently eating are delicious. I had a mad fit (which lengthened into nearly three hours) and decided to make a chicken pie from scratch with the roast leftovers. I’d forgotten what a pain it is making puff pastry with all that rolling and fat-spreading and refrigerating. In between times I made a batch of cakes as we are awash with eggs & this seemed a good way to get rid of some (Luke and I had boiled eggs, fried eggs, eggs & bacon and poached & scrambled eggs on toast for successive breakfasts the week before). Both the pie & the cakes were a success but we all stuffed ourselves so much we could barely move afterwards. Today I’ve put 14 eggs in the incubator together with the 3 goose eggs already in there so we’ve reduced our egg-glut for the time being. I’ve also just terminated Scruffy who used to peck me every time I went in to feed the layers & whose eggs were never fertile.

Luke’s been off school but attending vacation care three days a week. He loves it & it stops us both going nuts. Bronte’s taking a couple of days off this week so we’ll hopefully do some family stuff. The weekend before last was Father’s Day – an important day in Luke’s calendar. We’d bought Dad some plants & took him to Alpenrail – an attraction we knew absolutely nothing about, situated just north of Hobart. Bronte groaned, expecting a whimsically tacky railway & village model & a quick exit. However, it turned out to be quite amazing – an entire Swiss landscape built into a large room with viewing platforms and a quite extraordinary breadth of detail. It was all highly convincing & we were treated to quite a show with thunder & lightning over the mountains, mist rising from the lake, cable cars and a funicular railway all working merrily and various trains equipped with passengers, lights & freight. It was great entertainment, especially for Luke who has a real eye for detail.

As if I don’t have enough creatures to look after, Luke & Bronte proudly presented me with a wet & muddy young bunny a few days ago. They returned from a walk during which Rosie had dug it out of the sedge. It was cute but I was worried it might still require milk. However, I installed it in the chicken brooder in the garage with water bottle, hay, fresh grass & pellets, with a heat lamp above to help it dry out & warm up. It seemed to be doing well the following day & we identified that it was a female which was a relief – when it grew up it could go outside with Bertie or Boris. However, this was not to be. The following day it had totally disappeared. It is a complete mystery how it got out of the brooder or where it could have gone. It must have been a Houdini rabbit. Luke was upset, so I’ve rashly promised him that we’ll buy two female baby bunnies when we can track down some nice (& cheap) ones.

Thursday 1 September 2011

First day of spring – yeehar! However, looking out of the window it’s grey, windy and drizzly & feels cold and decidedly unspringlike. Despite the weather it must be spring as there are signs of it everywhere: our clumps of snowdrops are flowering (the only bulbs out of 600+ we planted, that survived), the swallows have returned (a week earlier than last year), two of the geese started sitting today and the hens have gone into egg-laying overdrive. Out of 6 laying hens, we are getting 5 eggs most days now. I’ve started saving some for the incubator. One of my high priorities now is to protect all our birds’ eggs from the rapacious cravens (forest ravens). One swooped into the hens’ run yesterday while I sat here working, nabbed an egg a careless hen had laid outside the coop & was off before I could react. The turkeys are further away under the trees and hence are even more vulnerable – particularly since they prefer to lay their eggs in the open, rather than in a hut. I have a plan to string fishing line from a tall wattle in the turkey run out to the fence, like a spider’s web. I’m hoping the cravens will fly into this & be put off from trying again.

It’s been a high-stress couple of weeks, even by my standards, with goats kidding, a job interview, making a book character outfit for Luke for school (a red goblin from Enid Blyton’s Enchanted Wood), muck-spreading, kennel-building, bird moving, transferring Vicky the pig from pen to trailer to another trailer – on top of all the usual tasks. I caught and moved the youngest 3 chickens from the peacock run into the interim-age chicken run with Henry the Wellsummer cockerel, from whence they promptly escaped. I found them the next day in the young pigs’ pen, which is where they stayed as I didn’t have time to recapture them. Eventually they found their way back where I wanted them, presumably because they were starving by that stage. The 2 oldest hens have moved into the main hen run with Nigel the Australorp cockerel where they are happy & have started laying. I’m now eyeing up 2 roosters who need to go to freezer-heaven in the next couple of weeks.

Nigel the Australorp rooster, pictured with Bertie bunny & Scruffy

 

So far we have just 8 goat kids, I’m sorry to report. It seems to be a bad year on the goat-front. Most of the mums who have previously had twins, have only had the one this year, one aborted early on and another 2 are looking worryingly like they may not have any! I believe it is all due to the run-away worm problem I had much earlier in the year. I had problems getting on top of it & I think it affected fertility. Plus I had 2 does who ought to have been pregnant but couldn’t be put to buck as they’d had kids too early, courtesy of Charlie the poison dwarf, who got through the fences at them. I’ve still got 2 older does that I bought a couple of months ago that should kid very shortly. But altogether the tally is going to be pretty low. Having said that next year should be a bumper one as I’ve got on top of the worm problem and we have an extra 10 or so does coming on which can be put to buck in March/ April. Still having feet problems – no sooner do I fix one hoof than another one gets sore. I really need a concrete yard - at present the feeding yard harbours diseases and it doesn’t stop raining long enough for the yard to dry out.

It is as wet as I’ve seen it here, the grass is sodden such that everywhere squelches as you walk, and my track up to the goats is almost impassable. In fact I managed to get the Suzuki stuck last week, a virtually unheard of incident. I then almost got the ute stuck trying to rescue it and missed sliding into the seasonal creek by the skin of my teeth. I had to take a rather scenic route to get to the Suzuki in the end and even that was tough. When I’d pulled the Suzuki out (Bronte asked who was driving the Suzuki – no one of course), the bog from which I’d extracted it self-healed, closing up the ruts - it was spooky to watch!

The weekend just gone was somewhat hectic with visitors, muck-spreading and pig-moving. A friend of ours came around on the Saturday morning with her daughter, who is Luke’s age. They played in the same room with different toys, without apparently interacting, for an hour or so, before finally the ice seemed to have been broken and they actually began talking to one another. It’s quite bizarre, particularly since they’ve been friends since they were babies. Then later another set of friends arrived for dinner with their trio of youngsters in tow.

I must say I excelled myself on the food front this time. As Lucy is an excellent cook I felt I had to make more of an effort than usual and I’d planned the meal for a week or more (cooking is not really my forté). We had home-grown and -made chicken liver pate with port and orange, home-grown and -made pork terrine (courtesy of the heroic Jane Grigson), with home-made French bread toasted in the oven; followed by home-made goat burgers (delicious) and potato bake (also delicious) and salad; followed by banoffee pie which I adore. That’s the one where you boil the can of condensed cream in water for 3 hours so that it turns to caramel. Even my pastry base (made with egg yolks) was a triumph. We were so replete afterwards we could barely move! Poor Bronte had to go for a walk late at night and slept part of the night on the sofa with indigestion – serves him right for being such a glutton! However, I was equally bad as I had 3 servings of banoffee pie the following day to finish it up! Yum. After the meal the kids were fired up and ran riotously around the house until it was thankfully time for their beds!

On the Sunday Bronte & Luke went out while I saw to the animals and loaded up 30 or so heavy bags of goat manure onto the ute. Later Bronte drove the ute slowly around the hay paddock while the automatic muck spreader in the back (me) threw the muck out. It didn’t take long but was somewhat exhausting! Now Bronte has to do his bit and harrow the paddock tomorrow before the grass gets too long for it to make any difference. I’m onto my last 2 bales of hay now, so I’m hoping the grass grows fast – I don’t want to have to buy more for the goats. I plan to eke it out by cutting them some extra browse (blackwood and wattle for instance). I’m afraid the goat fence-line for the new paddock has not progressed since the last entry.

Later in the afternoon the buyer came for Vicky the sow (she was able to collect before mid-Sept after all). I’d got Vicky into the trailer on Friday surprisingly easily and I wasn’t about to let her out again. Manoeuvring the trailer into place had been a delicate operation as there were several evil blancmange-like areas I had to avoid. Then I had to set up gates either side to ensure she couldn’t make a bolt for it. Connor made things awkward by getting in too, but I managed to poke him back out. Vicky’s greed was her undoing – once she tasted the food I was able to put up the back ramp and bolt her in. Then the Suzuki managed manfully to pull the trailer back up the hill and I parked her in the tractor shed. Vicky was so cross at being shut in she systematically set about wrecking the trailer over the next 2 days. I’ve since had to carry out repairs on the flooring. I felt bad about her being shut in such a small space, but then remembered with a shock that most pigs live their entire lives in even smaller areas. We really should be ashamed of ourselves.

The following day I moved the 2 small pigs into the run next to Connor so that he wouldn’t be lonely. That was a labour-intensive task as I had to set up a laneway with electric fencing. Luckily once I’d constructed it and baited it with a line of cooked potatoes, they happily – and of their own volition – trotted down it into the new pen and were promptly locked in. The laneway then had to be broken down and tidied away. Once I’m sure they are used to one another I’ll open the gate between the pens and let them all be together.

The interview was for Business Development Manager at the Huon Valley Council. It was a 2-day/ week job and therefore might have been possible for me. It fit squarely into my areas of experience and frankly I could have done the job standing on my head. In fact I could have brought a whole lot more to the role than requested, given my previous jobs. However, I have just heard that I was not selected. Apparently, I scored highly on technical skills, but not so well on planning and organisation or on customer service! What a laugh! I’m possibly the most organised person I know and I plan everything I do meticulously. It’s hard to imagine that the person they’ve chosen could be any better. Not that I want to appear immodest but I do know my strengths (and weaknesses). And customer service is also another strength, goodness all my jobs have been customer-facing and I complain bitterly about the complete lack of customer service generally exhibited here in Tasmania. I wasn’t even asked about customer service at the interview. I can only imagine that these are excuses and that the real reason is that they didn’t think I’d fit in or they didn’t want me for some other reason. Most likely because I stir things up – just this week I had a long letter on forestry issues published in the Huon Valley News, sent in response to the diatribes published the previous week, courtesy of some of our more right-wing politicians.

In my spare time (ho ho) I’ve continued with my marketing consultancy work, which has hotted up a bit recently, carried on with the deluxe 5-star rated double kennel, and crocheting in the evenings when watching a bit of telly. I’m disappointed the kennel isn’t finished yet, but it’s so nearly there. Trouble is the spec has changed with Bronte insisting on a hinged (but still insulated and wind-tight) roof. Sigh. On the crocheting front I am busily fastening together 156 squares to make another big, colourful quilt. It will make my last one look like a pale, dull object in comparison! All my wool comes from oddments found in op shops and also from unpicking hand-knit jumpers. I’m crocheting it together with a lovely vibrant gold colour from just one of these jumpers. My neighbour wants a crocheting masterclass – not sure I’m the right person but will do my best!