Some photos

Since I have been pretty slack updating this blog, here are some more pictures of our baby goats, they are growing up so fast!

Peter and Heidi, about a week old

Peter and Heidi, plus the older babies Clover and Violet almost 2 months old

mums and their babies

Our chickens are also growing up, and with some luck there will be ducklings next month.

chickens growing up, note some of them are naked-necked.

chooks in their electronet enclosure - note the naked necked rooster - father of the chickens.

happy chooks and their chookshaw.  

We have been adding more beds, more irrigation etc to our garden, here is the progress, with tomatoe beds in the background - 58 plants all individually drip irrigated.  3 beds of 8 plants, in the process of being set up for capsicum and chilli.  To the right of these are 8 beds of potatoe, which are growing well, these are irrigated with impact sprinklers.

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.

The last year

Hello There!
Its hard to believe nearly a whole year has passed since I last updated this blog, sincere apologies if you check in here every now and then.  This last year has simply flown by in a flurry of business, the likes of which I could not possibly imagine!  Fingers crossed that the next year will be slower and easier, but that's not likely, although I live in hope....

So one major reason for my absence is the arrival of our fourth child, another girl, who arrived here on the farm on christmas evening. She has settled in fine, but sure has taken up a chunk of time.

My vegetable garden was a mixture of success and failures, but as I tell my kids we learn a lot more from failure than success, so I am sure learning lots!  Our biggest issue here has been water, so this year we installed a 115,000L water tank, which is now 2/3 full.  That should make keeping the garden alive easier, especially since we have also gone high tech and bought a pump and sprinklers!  My days of watering by watering can are OVER!  My other major issue has been rabbits.... and while we have STARTED on a fence it wont be finished in time for this year's garden, so I'm not going to bother planting crops that they eat, like peas and bean, and grain crops.

Our polytunnel is now officially finished, with doors, sprinklers and lots of plants (including bananas, coffee plants, lemon grass and a few other warmer climate plants.  They like the more balmy conditions inside the tunnel, although the snow we had still made it a little chilly for them, hope they can hang in there a little longer, as spring is just around the corner (the wattles are starting to flower and so are the daffodils/jonquils).

the finished doors, the top swivels so hot air can vent out with the doors shut.

the inside of the polytunnel showing banana plants in the back  and vegie beds at the front.

We have caught the mushroom bug, after doing a short workshop at our local community garden.  We did one shitake mushroom log as part of the workshop, but have since bought dowels to do some other logs here.  Its a fun (but time consuming) process and the kids helped out too (despite them all LOATHING mushrooms - luckily I have mushroom eating in my genes and can cope with a glut!).

the kids hammering in the mushroom inoculated dowels into holes drilled in the logs

each silver wattle log had about 20 holes drilled into it evenly spaced.

Our eldest daughter has gotten into duck keeping, and now cares for our expanded flock of ducks (we hatched some ducklings late last year - born on christmas day too...).

Our goats are milking OK, but in the process of drying off in readiness for kidding (fingers crossed) in spring.  They aren't too impressed with the winter grass (or lack of grass), so its quite a chunk of my time devoted to trying the coax them to eat - and yes everyone thinks goats will eat anything, but they are such picky eaters....

So there you go, a snapshot of the last year.  Hopefully I will get around to updating this blog more regularly again, wish me luck!