Passage of time

Five years ago we bought this land.  Its been an amazing privelage to have our own piece of earth to care for, despite the incredible amount of work and responsibility that comes with that.  Most of that five years has been spent sharing our time between probably too many different things.  Most of that time has also been spent feeling overwhelmed with jobs that 'should have been done yesterday'.

Our front paddock and gully (in background) as it was 5 years ago.

Five years younger, and proud of our first efforts at fencing!

Gully as it was 5 years ago

We often feel like we are chasing our tail, dealing with weeds (particularly those that seed and spread on to our neighbours land - such as Ragwort), fencing and animal shelters, keeping the grass down (our current weather hasn't helped that!), improving our infrastructure (such as water collection, storage and troughs), and just caring for the animals that we have.  Lets not even mention building the house!  It makes you tired in a way that just a 'hard day's work' doesn't, that sort of emotional weight that is always there...

With a long list of jobs like this, its often hard to stop and enjoy life for what it is.  But its something we are working on! 

Looking at photos from the first year of owning our land we have realised that we have done SO much already.  Sure the house isn't built and there is always a million things that need doing.  We have a lifetime to enjoy our land, our family and animals, and quite frankly we are only human and can only do SO much.

Lots of regenerating trees in gullies.

The same gully as seen in the first photo, now with LOTs of natural regeneration as well as planted indigenous trees.

A garden that is starting to flourish

A handmade house that is slowly taking shape

So here's to 2011, wishing for a good year filled with

fun,joy and happiness, 

good rain and good sunshine

good company and good friendships

good growth and good harvests

more life and less death (I'll compromise for balance!)

less foxes and less weeds

and shorter to-do lists!

Spring equinox

Today light and day are of equal length, but from now on the light will prevail, until the summer solstice that is.

It is a time to celebrate life and growth - eggs, flowers, and getting stuck into the food garden.


The chooks are laying ok, my flock is mixed, with some old girls that have been with us for a while, some in their 'prime' that I bought at the start of the year and some new ones (Barnevelders) that I got about a month a go. The new ones are yet to start laying, which I am looking forward to! I hope to be able to breed a few replacement chooks this year, as well as adding to the flock from local poultry breeders. I am aiming for about 12 layers.

Our solar power system is going great, not a problem. We were worried about how it would handle our biggest regular power user - the washing machine, and to our complete surprise it only took 1-2% of our battery capacity!!! So much for people saying you can't run a washing machine on an off grid solar power system!!! So far we have tested the 'bamix', drop saw and vacum cleaner, and all work fine - the vacum cleaner used the most power. It also runs our internet server and charges laptops and batteries for the drill etc. These things barely have any impact on the battery charge at all!!!

So now our 'problem' is trying to USE power, as the batteries are pretty much always 100% full!!! Winter will be different of course!

Here is a quick photo of the kids, all dressed up, and reasonably clean - just before we headed off for a long drive to visit our niece for her 3rd birthday party. Had a great time, although the drive was not so enjoyable!!!

Not much else to say, busy as always, starting to preapre for the fire season ahead...

Blue Tongue Lizard

Brad took this photo. Isn't it a great photo! Blue tongue lizards are pretty common around these parts, although its a little surprising to see one at this time of year, its almost winter (although the weather is still fairly nice.... fingers crossed we get a nice and wet winter though)!

Here is a recent family photo, with our little boy's blackwood tree - one year on after it was planted.

Our boy is one!

2 days ago our little man turned one. We are having a little party for him on sunday.



Sorry, I realise the photo is not that good, he is at that come over and try and grab the camera stage, so nice photos are hard to get. Usually its a close up of the eyes or something like that!!! He is a big boy, scooting around on his bottom. He is starting to stand up now, especially holding onto me. Hopefully he will walk soon, but he hasn't been in much of a hurry to do things yet. Content with what he has at the time.

We haven't taken his 'tree' photo yet. If you don't know, we planted a tree for both the kids when they were born, and have been taking a photo around their birthday each year. Hopefully we will do that soon (the weather was not great today - and I forgot the day before that...)