Making laundry liquid

It's been a productive weekend here so far. Yesterday, I built a new garden bed just in front of the concrete of the front verandah. I have added some nice tropical style plants to deal with the heat, and to give that nice lush, tropical look. I took a lot of plants from the other house last weekend, as the garden down there needed a tidy up and a thin out, so I only purchased 3 plants all up. I will try and take a photo when the light is better, as the sun is beating down on it at the minute, which isn't great for photographing. I'm also trying to get through the sundry bits and pieces that needed washing, the things that you need to wait until you get a few of, to warrant running a load through the washing machine, towels, mats, table runners etc. Of course, I ran out of soap powder, and didn't feel like driving down the track to go to the shops, so thought I would finally try my hand at making liquid soap. I made soap powder a few months back, but I think that's quite expensive to make, so I'll see how this pans out.
Firstly, I grated up a cup of soap from a Sunlight bar of soap, which ended up being about 2/3 of a bar. I added this to 1 1/2 litres of water,

 and stirred over a medium heat, until it was completely dissolved.

It was completely dissolved, with absolutely no grainy bits of soap left, and a nice clear liquid. I then added 1/2 cup of borax and 1/2 cup lectric/washing soda  to the mix, and stirred until it thickened, which was pretty quick, only a minute or 2.

I then poured this mix in to a bucket, and filled the bucket up with water. I then stirred this mixture to combine it.

I left it to thicken up, but the mix was quite lumpy, so I used my old hand beater to beat it up in to a nice smooth mix.

Once nicely thickened and smooth, I poured it in to an old 3 litre milk bottle, leaving room at the top to shake it before use, and the rest got put in to lidded ice cream containers for storage. It made about 8 litres all up. You use 1/4 - 1/2 cup each load, and for any stains, rub it in to the stain before washing. I'll report back with how well or unwell it does the job.

Two new additions...

Our girls are finally starting to have their babies. 2 have come along in the last 2 days...
A gorgeous, tiny little girl...soooo tiny, and looks just like her mum

And then this bully little bull calf...

I think he is going to end up just like his Dad....Mum's and bubs are doing well, and doing all the right things....there should be some more coming along soon as well hopefully as there are some fat looking girls wandering around...

Sometimes, life gets in the way

of keeping my blog updated. We have been extremely busy, firstly with school holidays, and then we have been relocating our business, and I am only now just starting to catch up. The rent for our business premises was quite high, so the opportunity to move a few hundred metres down the road came up, so the short term pain will be worth the long term gain we think. The rent is nearly 2/3rds cheaper in our new premises, and we have double the amount of space, we were getting quite cramped for room in the other place. So that is now out of the way, and while I have the office all setup now, Damian is still to get his tools and materials all unpacked and some new shelving built to store it all.We had great fun at the scrapbooking retreat last weekend, and the theme pirate night was a great laugh. We  haven't had any other calf arrivals, so I'm not sure how far off we are from any others at this stage, the Jersey was a couple of years older than the other heifers, so they may not have been quite ready when we got the bull. The jersey's calf is getting bigger, and she is starting to change colour a little, she has little brown stripes at the moment.

Grace is growing up so fast, she is 4 months old already. Such a cutie!

 

Hopefully, things will settle a little for a month or 2, and we can catch our breath and catch up on things we need to do around the farm.

The rain arrived...

Thank goodness. We received about 150mm between Tuesday and Friday, which has provided a much needed lifeline to the property. Our dam which was bone dry with cracked parched earth only on Monday is now full.

There is green grass tinged across the property, and the ground has soaked up the rain with relish. Our tanks didn't get filled up this time, but they should both be about 3/4 full now...we are so grateful that we got some rain, we were dreading that we weren't going to get any decent rain until the end of the year. Hopefully we will get some more follow up rain to really give the grass a good boost before the winter cold sets in so that the cows have a good supply of winter feed, especially as we have a few more cows to still have bubs yet. I hope that lots of people got much needed rain out of this.

Our first calf!!

Buttercup the Jersey appeared this morning, looking noticeably thinner. I knew straight away she had had her calf, but it was nowhere to be seen. I know they can hide their calves, and this is the way I was thinking until Max our cattle dog dropped a piece of cattle hide about 6 inches in diameter and the colour of our bull with long calf like hair on it at my feet. My heart sunk, and I assumed the calf had been stillborn or attacked. However this afternoon I thought I would go looking and thought that wherever the mum was the calf was likely to be, either dead or alive. I was so happy when I saw Buttercup in the distance with a beautiful little calf in tow.

It's a little heifer calf, and she looks very healthy. Mum is very protective, and only let me get close once or twice before she let me know that I was now unwelcome! I had Mum up to the yards this morning feeding her up, so I need to make sure she comes up a couple of times a day for feed, to keep her milk supply up, and in a couple of weeks I will start to share the milk with the calf. Jersey's always look on the skinny side, but the lack of green feed around at the moment has not helped, and we bought a large amount of feed in last weekend. It is pretty well just over 9 months since we got our bull, so he obviously got straight to work! She looks more like a droughtmaster than a Jersey. Mumma cow did a great job, this is her first calf, and she is doing all the right things and is VERY protective of her bub, and she has 17 aunties all looking out for her as well.

Making sweet chilli sauce

Damian was given a bag of chillies a few weeks back, and today I had to use them up before they went bad. I ran out of sweet chilli sauce last night, so that seemed a good place to start. I used this recipe.

Not sure how it tasted yet, as it is still cooling, I hope it tastes nice. Kasey received a gold medal award for her Piano for last year from the Australian College of Music, best exam results in the state for her exam level. She was pretty stoked, and we are very proud of her efforts.

Another dry, hot day for us here. I am well and truly over it...where is the rain??  I can't grow anything because it is so hot and dry, everything is dusty and dirty, the cattle are now being bought food and water...I fear that we aren't going to get any decent rain until next summer...

Eggs at last..

The chickens have all finally started to lay. All of the newbies have all grown up enough to start laying now, and my older girls have finally come back on the lay after months off, after I changed their feed to a higher protein feed, and I also separated out some of the roosters, as the ration was way too high of roosters to hens. The ration is still too high for my liking, so I will need to separate out some more. We will have to cull shortly and try our hand at processing our own roosters, as I really only want to have 1-2 roosters at the moment. So, 9 eggs today, and the mix of colours and sizes makes me happy.

The dark brown eggs are from my Maran girls, the light brown egg on the bottom left is a guinea fowl egg, and the green egg in the middle is the 2nd egg from the Aracauna girl. The large white one is either from the Ancona or sussex hen, and the smaller white ones, I'm not too sure of...could be the leghorn girl, could be a polish girl...not sure.
I am currently also making a loaf of bread in my new, secondhand, bread maker. I picked this up today from the 2nd hand store for $20, so I will see how it goes and whether it makes an alright loaf or not.

I also put a deposit down on another absolute bargain, but I am waiting for them to get a part in for that which they are supposed to be getting on the weekend, so I will see if that comes off first before saying too much about that, but I will be VERY happy if it works out.
***The breadmaker ended up having an electrical problem...when it goes in to bake mode it trips the power, and probably needs a new element, which will cost about $150 installed...so I returned it today for a refund...never mind, I will just keep using my old one...