2015....ok....I'm getting ready for you....slowly.

I have been away from the farm for 5 weeks and I have come home to an overgrown jungle. It's amazing how much the rain affects things, and how much better the landscape is once we get some. The property goes from depressing and dusty, to lush, green and full of life. The rain has been wonderful. The tanks are full, the dam is overflowing and  there is lots of grass in the paddocks and the cows are looking full and happy. LOTS of weeding to be done... This arrowroot plant has more than doubled in size in 5 weeks and is now over 2 metres tall!

 

Everything has grown so much, Damian got back to the farm 2 weeks earlier than me, and he came home to our small front yard looking like this:

My gardens are in there somewhere! He even resorted to bringing in the heavy artillery to bring the grass down to a mow-able level.

I have managed to make a small dent in the weeding, and the grass is back to being nice and mowed, now with the added benefit of being green and lush. The rain makes the weeds fairly easy to pull out as well, even though when I was weeding yesterday I got stung by a nasty wasp...nevermind, I am loving the rain! In the 2 years we have been here, the only good rain we have had was from the floods in Jan 2013, so to have had some regular rain, and to have our tanks full again has been fantastic.
While down in Brisbane, we made the house quite Christmassy and even put up a few outside lights this year!

It was  Grace's 1st birthday party on the weekend, this first year has gone so quickly. It was ridiculously hot, but Grace had a great day.

We did a visit to Lollipop Land at Old Petrie Town before coming home, I took Kasey and her best friend Bethany for a day out. It is about "Lollipop Land" a town of the North Pole where all of the lollies and sweet things are made for the world at Christmas time. It is only held for a few more days, so if you haven't had a chance, go and see the displays before they disappear, as they won't be back until the end of the year. The show is put on by doll maker Chris Boston, and visual display artist Jule, from Whimsical Imaginings.

So, now we're back at the farm and Kasey is back at school next week... Time to get back in to the swing of things and see what 2015 brings...

My craft studio tour....

We finished the craft room earlier this year..well, the inside anyway. We still have to clad the outside to make it look all pretty, but establishing the business and work around the farm has taken precedence so far.So, finally, here is a tour of the finished inside product.

I saw this wall sign somewhere online, and I did an internet search, and found it for sale online from the UK. It adds a nice touch. I purchased the draftsmans chair from Officeworks, as the benches are quite high, so I needed a higher chair to reach the sewing machine.

 This corner keeps my KNK Maxx, which is a large version of a Cricut etc. Here is also my sticker maker, and some decorations, as well as my sorted scrapbooking photos.

 This is the repurposed cupboard from Mum and Dad's house. It keeps lots of my supplies and decorations.

 Beside that is where I keep my papers, as well as other scrapbooking supplies. In front of that is the pull out sofa bed lounge.

 A couple of display shelves to make the room look nice, and to display some of my nice goodies.

 I resprayed this old filing cabinet black, and I use it to "file" my fabrics. I haven't finished decorating the front yet, but I will get there. I think I may have to get another one, as I need more fabric storage!

 This is another display area, which is on top of the filing cabinet. Lots of pretty things to make me smile.

 This is another corner, this is on my sewing table, and has some of my dress form collection on it.

 This is some of the more practical areas of storage. I will gather a few more wall cupboards, as there is still more things I need to store, as some things are all put in together, and a little more organisation and separation would be ideal.

 We pulled the sofa bed pull out mechanism out of an old sofa bed I got for free, and Damian built me a box and put the mechanism in it, and I covered it in fabric, and made up a cushion for the top, so it can be used as seating during the day.

 My craft studio can then be used as a spare guest room when the sofa bed is pulled out. It is air conditioned as well, so great for summer.

 And last, but not least, this is the view I get from out the window. I really must spend more time up there, especially with Christmas just around the corner.

I enjoy having guinea fowl, I like to keep them as they are great for letting you know if there is something different around, and for tick patrols and for deterring snakes.  They are quite difficult to determine male from female by just looking at them. Older males have bigger wattles and bigger helmets on the top of their heads, but when younger, are very difficult to tell the sex of. Other than by the noises they make. Females have a definite two syllable sound as per my video below.

 

Males have a different noise, like the videos below.

They can be quite noisy, but they don't go on like this all day, and as you can hear in the videos, our farm isn't exactly quiet anyway!

Our light sussex are about 6 weeks old now, and they are all growing quite well. They are an easy breed to tell the sex of quite early, as you can see below.

RIP Buttercup :(

Well a new day, and another curve ball thrown....I noticed yesterday afternoon that Buttercup didn't come up with the others for food, which I thought was unusual. This morning, she didn't come up either. I had a feeling something wasn't right, as she was the only one that hadn't come up. So Kasey and I went looking for her...and found her....very, very dead.  I have been away all week, and Damian hadn't noticed that she wasn't here, so we're not sure how long she has been missing. She looks to have been gone at least a few days. She was here before I left to go down to Brisbane.  I have no idea what has happened, as it's really hard to tell when there isn't much left. I was only saying to Damian yesterday afternoon that I would like for him to build me a milking shed so I can start to keep her around the house yard more and start feeding her up and start milking her soon... sigh....not much I can do about it....
Now that we are getting the water sorted here with the new bore, our next focus is on fencing. We need to start fencing off some paddocks, and fencing the animals away from being right next to the house better, and building some smaller yards etc, so that's the next important step for us. Then we will be able to focus on improving the pastures. I don't think I'll look at getting another milking cow until we do this.

 Rest in peace Buttercup

The bath tub brooder..

A friend gave Damian 24 fertilised eggs a few weeks back, all the light sussex breed. So in to the incubator they went. They are all hatching at the moment, and so far we have got 18 hatched and another 1 on the way. One has died in it's shell, and the remaining 4 haven't shown any signs of doing anything yet, so we're not holding out for those to hatch. It is day 21 today, so we'll see. That's probably one of the best hatching rates we've had to date. The person who gave us the eggs said he spritzes the eggs with water in the last couple of days to keep the shells moist, so we tried this along with the higher humidity we normally do in the last 3 days, so not sure if this is the reason why we have ended up with a higher than normal hatch rate, but we'll certainly do that again.
I usually put the chicks in a large cage I have here with the brooder light, but the chicks flick the wood shavings all over the ground, and it makes a really big mess. The man who gave us the eggs says he uses an old bathtub as a brooder, which we thought was a great idea, and we have a few old baths around here, so Damian set about making a stand and putting a mesh lid on the bath, and......ta dah!

He has made it nice and high for easy access, and to keep the dogs out of it. He also cut a hole in the mesh at the top for the brooder light to be able to poke through so we can keep it high enough for them. They seem nice and happy in their temporary home.

These 2 have hatched in the last couple of hours, with another one on the way, which is the egg on the right with the pip marks in it....

We went to the markets this morning to get some fruit and veg, and I picked up the huge basket full of lettuce and herbs for  $8!!   I thought that was way too cheap, but apparently that is what she sells them for.

I just got back from a week in Brisbane with the big kids yesterday afternoon, and friends of ours on the Sunshine Coast did a big garden clean out while I was down there, and gave away all of their agaves, so I went and picked up some of what they had, and planted a few down in Brisbane and the rest will be planted up here...it's about the only type of plants that grow well here at the moment, hopefully as Damian now has the bore sprinklers working it will keep things a bit more lush and green and we will be able to have better luck with the gardens. I also did a big garden clean up while in Brisbane and pulled out a heap of wild iris, and bought just a fraction of them back up to plant here as well.

So, lots of planting to be done over the long weekend. Kasey had a fantastic week at her horse riding camp and is looking forward to going again, I said she may be able to go to one of the Xmas holiday camps. She was keen to show me how much she has learnt today, as she can also do a rising trot now, so she saddled up her horse and we went down to the yards for her to have a ride. Unfortunately, her horse had a flip out on her again, and bucked her off.....again...so Kasey promptly announced she is never riding Magic again, to which I said, "I don't blame you, I wouldn't ride her again either", ...so we are on the hunt now for an OLD plodder for her....she wasn't hurt, she has a grazed elbow, but that seems to be all, luckily. Poor kid....We also seemed to have solved the crow problem, we have closed the doors in to the house area of the chook pen, and there is a small access door that the chooks use to go inside. Since closing the doors, we are no longer losing any eggs, so the fridge is finally starting to fill up with eggs again. Next project here for me will be for Damian to build be a small corrugated vegie garden with a shade cloth roof so I can grow some vegies, it's too hot without the shadecloth, so I am hoping I have some success with growing some veg again sometime soon.

Stone the flamin' crows...

We have been losing all of our eggs lately, every last single one of them! We haven't been able to pinpoint what has been taking them, so we installed a hidden surveillance camera in the chook pen which takes motion sensored pictures. It took a few days, and I thought the problem had gone away as no eggs were being taken, and then all of a sudden, they were all gone again, this time with photographic evidence...

Darn crow !! I'm not too sure how we are going to fix it, we've never had a crow taking our eggs in the 20 odd years that we have had chooks...I think Damian might have to get handy and build some rollaway egg laying boxes so that the crow can't get to the eggs...one day soonish we may build our proper chook pen as this one was always meant to be temporary...hmpff...we've also lost 2 chickens over the last few weeks, we lost our little polish girl a few weeks ago, and in the last few days our araucana has disappeared as well, both of them have just vanished...no feathers, no anything....another mystery...it's getting to the point of keeping them locked up all the time...
It's the start of school holidays tomorrow, Kasey is off to a horse riding camp for a week, and Damian and I are heading away for a couple of days for our 25th anniversary...yikes....25 years....wow...where has the time gone??

Peppers' journey so far.....

Last weekend we rescued a little pony from being sent to slaughter at the doggers. I don't know how she has ended up there. She is an absolutely gorgeous little girl, but she is so scared of humans. When I went to the yards to pick her up, we had to corner her in a small yard, and she just shook when I went near her. She was pretty grubby, with mud caked on her and when we got her home, we gave her a good scrub and she was so good. Still very scared, but no nastiness in her at all.

Above is how she was when we picked her up, she is the same colour as her face all over, so you can see how dirty she is. After her bath, I gave her some food and let her go in the front paddock which is about an acre. She wouldn't let us back near her after that. The next afternoon we rounded her up down the back to a small yard, and managed to corner her in a little laneway, where I did a bit more handling with her, and Toni and Kasey both sat on her and she took it all in her stride, as we found out she had been broken in.

The next day I approached her a few times in the smaller yard, and already she is starting to improve, and did not have to be rounded up quite so much, she stood in the one place and let me approach her, still very nervous though.  If she was in a larger yard I don't think I would have succeeded.  The next day with some very patient coaxing, we loaded her up on the float for the 4 hour trip home. She wasn't too bad, took about 15 minutes to get her on, but she went on slowly and calmly, and was really good for the whole trip home. When we got home I put her in our cattle yards for the night, fed her and rugged her. The next day (yesterday) I put her out in the BIG paddock with the other 2 horses and crossed my fingers she would come back. Yesterday afternoon I tied the big horses up while they were eating, and sat and held a bucket of food and she eventually approached me and had some dinner while I held the bucket. (In the middle of all of this, Doughy our bull decided he wanted the food and I had a bit of a fight on my hands as he can get a bit nasty if he doesn't get his way, Damian and the dogs had to end up moving him on) I did the same this morning, and she came up to the bucket pretty quickly, so from running away terrified to eating food out of a bucket from me in a few days is a really big step for her. The next steps will be to get her relaxed enough to actually let me touch her while she is eating from the bucket... I'm not going to rush her though....I'm still shaking my head as to why and how she has ended up being sent for dog food, she is only about 5-6 years old, and will be an excellent kids pony with some training and patience....

Welcome to our family Pepper....