In The Orchard.

The cockatoos ate all the almonds.

The big wet caused all the nectarines and apricots to swell and split and the fruit fly moved in and then moved on to the plums. 

 I have high hopes for the peaches and persimmons. 

The pistachios also look good for now.

Time will tell...

Today we sprayed the fruit fly and took the time to pick up all the dropped fruit and bag it in the sun to try to control the fly.  Better late than never I hope.

I will be more organised next year.

Thistles and Stuff

It felt like we had 30 acres of dense saffron thistles but The Mr put the slasher to good use a couple of weeks ago and cleaned things up.  Despite being well into Summer, it feels like Spring so I hope the grass grows now that there is less competition for it.

It is a beautiful end to the day when you can look at this sunset from your dining room window. I know I have shown this photo off already, but I love it. 

And lastly, this is Nellie.  The vendor left her here for us and she is a bit of a pet.  She is also good company for Terry the poddy calf we have.

We have been here nearly 6 months!

Husqvarna

A week and a half ago I picked up our new mower from in town.

I am a little bit excited and have since mown all the lawn twice. 

The Mr is yet to drive it, but I will let him have a turn when the novelty wears off!

Hydrostatic gearbox, lights, cup holder, bumper, sliding seat and bonus trailer make mowing the grass fun again.  The orchard looks wonderful and The Mr moved a fence post so he could swing a wider gate to let me get this mower into the front yard.  This means he got to use the new electric cement mixer so he had fun too, even if he didn't get to drive the mower at all.



Things are slowly starting to look better around here!

Sorry about the dusty photos, it has already done four hours work.

Triffids

Ok, they are not really man eating Triffids, but they are plentiful, and they do attack.

There are a lot more than I would like, the good season with plenty of rain has given the weeds a good start as well as the grass.  Our creek is flooded again too.

Clearing Sale 3

Another sale!  I think I am a little addicted.  It is like op-shopping for farm stuff!

I picked up this set of matching wardrobes. 

They are the same colour but the right photo was taken in a low light room. 

The Mr is now the proud owner of a stack of stiltsons, a pipe cutter and pipe wrench and another set of bolt cutters.  He also picked up a wire spinner and a pipe bender.

We had a full trailer coming home!

Clearing Sale 1 and 2

A quick update on clearing sale goodies!

Clearing sale 1 was The Mr's Carry All for his tractor. 

He has used this a lot already and loves it just a little bit.

 Clearing sale 2 was where I picked up my sheep crate seen here taking our first lot of sheep to the sale.  The Mr had to weld a roof on it for me because it was a little low to not have one.  Given we had the mesh already this was no big deal. 

The other thing we bought home this sale was an electric cement mixer. Our fences are bad so this will get used a lot in fixing them.  This is near new, the paint has not even been worn off on the inside of the drum.



 

I think I need to make myself some sock-savers. 
The barley grass is a menace!

To Market

On Monday we took our first lot of sheep to the local market. 

We loaded them in the sheep crate I bought at the last clearing sale we went to.

The 7 Ewes and 1 Wether had to go in order to clean up the remaining herd here.

We want to keep the better stock for breeding from.

We got a fair price given what we sold and came home happy enough.

Next week we have to send in a load of Rams to finish the tidy up.

Lamb Marking

Yesterday we took advantage of the nice day and marked our lambs.  They now all have orange ear tags to mark them as a 2010 drop.  They also have rings on and are almost ready to be weaned.

We don't have sheepyards so it was a bit tricky catching them and getting organised but with the creative use of a roundyard and a few sheep panels we managed. 



I am dreaming of owning this portable sheepyard trailer before we have to do this again next year.

Cold Snap

Taking advantage of the cold snap that came through to get some meat in the freezer. 

Hogget and Mutton this round, Prime Lamb next time.

Slashing

The orchard was a little overgrown.

General Update

The sheep are shedding their wool and we are about to mark lambs.

Terry calf has been weaned and the veggie garden is growing well.

Possum's pony is here now and we are getting ready to bring the other two horses in as well.

It is really starting to feel like home here :)

Paulownia

Yesterday we went for a walk to check on things after being away for the week.  I was glad I had the camera with me when I saw how beautiful the Paulownia trees were now that they are in full flower.

They are deciduous trees 12–15 m (40–50 ft) tall, with large leaves 15–40 cm across, arranged in opposite pairs on the stem. The flowers are produced in early spring 10–30 cm long and resembling a foxglove flower.



From Wikipedia: Paulownia is extremely fast growing; some species of plantation Paulownia can be harvested for saw timber in as little as five years. Once the trees are harvested, they regenerate from their existing root systems, earning them the name of the "Phoenix tree." Paulownia has the ability to reclaim ecologically stressed and degenerate patches of land relatively quickly. Its root systems run deep and penetrate compacted and contaminated soils which have resulted from industrialized development. Paulownia is a phyto-remediator, increasing the organic content of degraded soils, processing and filtering contaminants through the uptake of its vascular system, and emitting oxygen into the atmosphere.

Before and After ~ The Wood Shed

It is fun showing before and after photos, it makes me feel like we are getting somewhere!

We moved the shed forward, tossed out the junk and attacked the leaf litter with the rake. 

It is a much better wood shed now.

Before and After ~ The Shed

A lot of things on our block need work, and some of it is little stuff, and some of it big stuff.

This is big stuff I think so it feels good to have it done.

We took advantage of the Mr's folks coming up for a visit and while I had a babysitter on hand and my Father in-law to help with the hard work we cleaned out this shed before the scrap man came.

We pulled the iron off the front to open up all the bays, we cleaned the rubbish out, burned the piles of wood and cleaned everything up.  We took a large load to the tip and the scrap men took a lot.

It feels good to have a shed we can use properly, and it looks a lot better too.

Clearing Sale

We went to a local clearing sale yesterday which is a fun day out for everyone.  The kids loved looking at everything and Possum made a new friend in a little boy and tagged along beside him most of the day.

The Mr. bought a Carry All for his tractor which he has already put to good use in bringing up some of the large blocks of wood ready to be busted for the fire.

I missed out on the crate I wanted for the trailer but you never know, I might get lucky at the next sale ;)

Poddy Calf

This is Terry, so named after the local dairy farmer we picked him up from.

He is a holstein poddy calf.

He is just 3 weeks old and is very big for his age. 

He drinks milk out of a bucket and he is living in my orchard.

He is a little bit cute :)

Recycling Scrap

Yesterday was a big day with the scrap men coming to clean up all the piles of junk that had been left here.  It really was exciting to see all our hard work in collecting, sorting and stacking scrap paying off as it was loaded onto the truck.

Scrap is saleable so it will be interesting to see what this ends up being worth.

I think the biggest benefit will be in having this place more habitable and in knowing we recycled on a large scale.

The truck got bogged and had to be pulled out by the excavator.

We will have more to go at some stage because there is still junk to be cleaned up, fences to come down and sheds to knock over. Given this truck was full when it left we know we have made a good start!

edit: We removed 9.2 tonne of scrap in this load.

The renovation list is getting bigger...

The almond trees are beautiful in full flower and there is a hint of Spring in the air.

In spite of this I am tired and feeling blue.

Our shower leaks through the wall so I need to rip the tiles off, water proof and tile it properly.

Same with the upstairs shower.

When the plumber looked into the issue I had with the main toilet he discovered it has been double trapped and there is an air lock issue that can't be fixed without jackhammering the cement floor and doing the plumbing again.

I have leaking taps, blocked gutters and still need to organise the new septic that Council have told us we need.

My kitchen sink water does not get away very well and to fix it we need to plumb it into the new line.

I am not feeling motivated and it is ganging up a bit.

I still love it here in spite of all these issues.