November 7, 2008
It’s raining, it won’t be enough for the farmers but every bit helps. It’s been a cool, dry spring in Sheffield. The ground is cracking and I’m watering daily. The dam has dropped a couple of feet. Actually the dam needs to be addressed soon, it has no planting around it or on it. I few well chosen aquatic plants will slow down the evaporation and a good variety of water edge plants would be welcomed by the huge population of frogs we have here. It would be nice to make the dam look a bit more natural as well. I planted a few snow gums near the spring run off but I’ll need to put in a few shade producing trees around the banks of the dam too. There’s a good natives nursery at Liffey so I’ll plan a trip out there when we have a spare day.
Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. Roger Miller
I found a kookaburra sitting inside one of the tree guards the other day. Very odd. Don’t know how long he’d been there and I don’t know how he managed to get in there but he sure couldn’t get out. He must have got bored because he ate my tree. He was very relieved to be set free, poor thing. Now I feel I have to check the tree guards all the time incase something else gets trapped in one.
Garden
October 30, 2008
For the lazy gardener who likes to sleep in. Gotta get me one of these.
http://www.chicken-house.co.uk/acatalog/Automatic_Door_Openers.html#a13
Product Reviews
October 30, 2008
We’ve been here a whole year. The cherry blossom will now always be my reminder that another year has passed. It’s in full blossom now as it was when we moved in. It’s a truly spectacular small tree.
So what have we achieved in our first year. Not enough I suppose. We’ve got our design business up and running but there’s a lot more work to go there. We’ve planted over one hundred trees around the boundary, started a vege garden, planted a fruit orchard with over 30 trees, rearranged most of the ornamental gardens (but there’s heaps of work to do there with mulching and weed control), planted a hedge of hazelnuts on the boundary of the future nuttery, converted a pen and old barn for the chooks, pruned and tidied old trees and moved into a second year of organic conversion.
I’ve also done a lot of planning/designing of the layout for the property. The design has changed and evolved many times over the course of this first year so luckily we had no budget to implement any of the earlier ideas. (who would have thought there could be a positive for not having enough money 
). A very useful design tool has been the ride on mower. I’ve marked out different areas by mowing shapes through the paddocks. This lets you live with the layout before any drastic or expensive changes are made.
So what do we want to achieve in our second year. I think this year will be focused on renovating the kitchen and dining area. The 70’s kitchen is badly laid out monstrosity. We have a simple plan to upgrade it that is certainly within our skills to achieve. In the garden I hope to continue extending the vege garden, plant more trees around the boundary and put in some hedges, mainly along the drive. I’d like to start a second, smaller orchard attached to the chook run and plant some more nut trees in the aptly named nuttery. (we planted a couple of chestnuts and almonds already).
What needs to be done as soon as finances allow is the fencing of the top round paddocks and constructing two large ponds. The ponds and round paddocks are key elements in the landscape design so I’m looking forward to seeing them in place.
This first year has been challenging, business has been slow to establish and things have been a bit of struggle. The garden has seemed overwhelmingly large at times and I’ve just walked around bewildered not knowing where to start. It’s also been physically challenging going from a dormant lifestyle to working hard with a shovel in hand. But even with all that, moving here is the best thing we’ve ever done. The local people a refreshingly friendly, interesting and real (and if you’ve ever lived on the Gold Coast for a few years you’d understand the pleasure of that) and the beauty of the mountains, the fresh air and the charm of living on a small farm is absolutely gratifying… and may I never have to live anywhere that I can’t see an apple blossom every year.
General
October 22, 2008
I never new that chooks were so entertaining. My six little red girls arrived last week and have been keeping me absolutely enthralled with their antics. The breed is New Hampshire, a fairly rare breed but I don’t know why, they’re apparently excellent layers and they are so friendly. These girls are only 2 months old so I won’t be seeing any eggs for a couple more months yet.
We converted an old calfing shed into a chook house. We’ve done our best to secure it and so far nothings broken in for some ‘chicken tonight’. The chook house has a small yard for them to free range, well it’s not too small, it’s probably the size of most new suburban homes backyards. Once they’re fully grown I’ll let them free range through the alpaca paddocks.
I’ve set aside another fenced pen to grow food for the chooks. It’ll be a no dig garden and I’ll start by growing sunflowers and legumes for them. I’ve also planted a passionfruit against the chook house which should insulate it as well as supplying them and us with delicious fruit.
I’ve also been looking into growing duckweed for chooks. It has a high protein content. I thought I had some growing in a trough near the hay shed but now I’m not sure what it is. I’ll try and get it identified somewhere and if it’s not duckweed I’ll hunt some down and grow it in a small trough in the chook pen garden to throw over the fence.
Animals
October 9, 2008
I put an ad in the paper a few months back - “Geese Wanted”. We got a couple of calls from people all basically saying “If you don’t come and catch these geese they’re going in the pot”. Anyway, I only wanted 6 geese but I ended up getting 14.
Not long after they arrived they started laying, seven were hatched a few weeks ago and a new one hatched today. There’s still a few girls sitting on their clutch so I presume we’ll get a few more too.
They’re taking very good care of their goslings, marching around in a pack with all the little one’s safely in the middle. They’ve so far fended off numerous murderous crows a few hawks and one enormous eagle; plus all the other nasties that come out at night that I’m unaware of. Now I just have to protect them from the hungry humans at Christmas.
Animals
