Meeting the locals!

Today I got to see my first wild Koala crossing the road almost right out the front of our farm! Now, as a 'former' wildlife ecologist, I have seen many wonderful native creatures, but the koala has always eluded me, so to see one so close (and also so close to home) is very exciting indeed! I will now have to keep a look out for them, and maybe we will go for a walk down one of the tracks nearby where I know there are many old eucalypts. Its also exciting because one day, when the eucalypts we have planted on our farm grow up, we could have the koalas at our place too (that is if they can survive the logging, cars and other threats in the mean time....)

The start of something good

Here we have the first few raspberries off our plants. Its only early days and last year we easily picked a kilogram of berries in one sitting. They are so easy to grow and so productive I find it incredible that they can be so expensive in the supermarket. We will probably eat many fresh, but also make our jam. Last year we made about 3 kg of jam, which has lasted us the year as well as having a few jars to give away as gifts.

The title of this post is also in reference to our very recent election! YAY! We are pleased to see our old governement out, and hopefully we can have SOME hope of better things to come.

No knitting or spinning news. Still working away on Brad's sock, and I've abandoned the jumper for our little one, since I'm not happy with the armhole shaping, and have had to rip it out once already. So I will probably just improvise on that. Photos once I have the back finished.

Wet

Well, suddenly the weather has changed from mild nice days to constant rain, with an icy wind. We had about 50ml of rain! It'll be a nice good drink for all my trees hopefully it will see them through what is likely to be long hard summer. Hopefully not too long and hot, but I guess we will just have to wait and see. My poor goats were quite taken back by the sudden change, and were shivering today, poor little things. I wish it would be so simple as to just bring them inside...

The little one is walking and running now too, with quite a lot of confidence. Rarely crawls at all. Her latest thing is to carry bags and other things with straps she can get over her neck. Here is a picture of her with my handbag, and her precious wombat toy. She LOVES wombats, I'm a little worried about once she gets more mobile, that she will try and visit them in their burrows, but we will figure that out once we get to it....


Not much knitting happening, but I've been doing lots of spinning as well as lots of fibre preperations. I've had bits of different fleeces lying around the house for many months, so its nice to put them through the drum carder, ready for spinning. Here is some mohair fleece I have spun,

and the final result the first 200g or so of mohair, plyed and ready for washing. I'm planning on dyeing this as mohair takes dye really well. It will probably become a christmas gift for someone.

Playing in the garden

I have been busily preparing the garden for some spring planting - bought some tomatoe, basil and lettuce seedlings. I have also done some propagating and have quite a few tomatoes in my greenhouse, but they wont be ready to plant out for a month or so yet. You may be wondering what will we do with all these tomatoes! Well, after a terrible year last year, I'm hoping to have enough to make some sauces etc with my fowlers vacola unit. The preparation is ALOT of work, but the rewards are worth it. The little one has been helping with the 'weeding'....

Brought to you by the sun

We are still in love with our solar power system. It produces about 7kW per day, which is great. We will see how much it will make over summer. But if we average this we wont be paying much for electricity anymore. YAY!

The apple tree in the garden is now covered in lovely pink flowers, hopefully these will all grow into apples and we will have a lovely harvest. Otherwise we will pick from the loads of road side apple trees, and do some drying and other preserving. The free road side fruit is considerable around here. But that wont be till autumn....


We have been working on another shelter for the alpacas, since our farm hasn't got enough trees (yet) for shelter. We get some pretty strong winds up there, so it really is important for the animals to have somewhere to get out of it. Not much else happening on the farm though. Grass is finally starting to grow, thank goodness.


Well our little girl is walking. Although she still prefers crawling, she can walk without holding on to anything for quite a distance. Not much else has changed though.

GO SOLAR!!

YAY, we finally have our grid connected solar power system!!! YAY! Here is our beautiful panels, so simple and yet able to generate pretty much all the power we need - the meter was spinning backwards quickly!!! We are very happy - one day all houses will have a solar array, but for now we will have to be content with knowing that at least we are making a contribution.


I highly recommend people to look into getting a solar power system for their homes, really with the current rebates available (in Australia - although other countries have much better...) its no greater cost than a new car or holiday and its MORE important.

Windy

It has been blowing a gale the last few days. Hopefully it wont knock my little baby peaches off the tree.

Nothing much exciting happening up at the farm. Have pulled out another of the old fences that are the legacy of the old farmer, including more barbed wire in the paddocks (the stuff just seems to work its way to the surface - we have walked past these spots so many times and never found this stuff, and now its there....) and more half buried hayband (which can be a danger to livestock if they eat it).

Today I put up a new bit of electric fence to extend where the horses can get to, as the grass is running short at the moment. I put in a 'bungy' gate, because the next door neighbour needs access to his property from that side of our place.

Have started another shelter shed for the alpacas, but at this stage we only have part of the frame up, unfortunately the weather has not been suited to doing building work, Ironically as the weather would be ideal for having a nice shelter shed....

The goats are doing well cleaning up the blackberry that has really started to grow back. In an attempt to make our smaller goat Cookie a little safer (he has sharp pointy upright horns) we tried putting tennis balls on the ends of his horns. Would work a treat, except that our dog Freya just wants to pull them off!!!!