New life

Hello there!  I think every blog update in the last few years has begun the same way, with an apology!  But here I go, I am sorry for not updating our blog for AGES!

So, now that we have that out of the way, what has been happening on the farm since I last updated.

We have had goat babies.  Two sets of twins,of which three are girls (our first girls, which is great as we will eventually be able to milk them).  They are very cute!  So now we are getting plenty of milk and I'm getting back into making cheese, and other dairy delights like cajeta (a mexican goat's milk caramel which is very good).  I like making fetta, soft ricotta type cheese for cheesecakes and haloumi.  But I want to experiment a bit more this year and try some other types.

girl and boy twins - Heidi and Peter

twin girls - Clover and Violet and their mum Rosie

First chickens have hatched, about 9-10 (its hard to count chickens!).  We have a naked-neck rooster, and these are all his chicks, a mix of fully feathered and naked necked chicks.  Our son who loves all the more 'ugly' creatures is very happy, our daughter who loves the classic 'cute and furries' thinks they are ugly! I actually just think some of them look ridiculous, but as long as they lay eggs, I don't overly care what they look like!

Our old trusty mother hen and her chickens

The garden has been taking up most of our weekends at the moment, and much of my weekdays too.  We are being all professional this year, and we are setting up irrigation and even using weed matting for our tomatoes, capsicum and chilli.  We are using both impact sprinklers and drippers and it is quite fun setting it up, although lots of work (and time - everything takes so much time!).  About half the summer garden is planted now.

Tomatoes planted in weed matting with stakes and drip irrigation
It looks somewhat professional!!!

At this point in time the rains are still falling (an improvement on last year, when at this time it was very hot and dry), so things are looking good for a great growing season ahead.  Our polytunnel is growing great, and we have tomatoes, cucumbers, zuchinni, watermelon, capsicum and chilli all growing, as well as bananas, citrus, strawberries and passionfruit.  When the sun is out it easily gets up to 30-35C, so all the heat loving plants are pretty happy!

Our fish pond in the polytunnel with water lilies.