What are we doing now?

People keep asking us what we are doing now.

Well, with Robert working 4-5 days a week now, a lot less is being done around the house.

The weekends tend to be occupied with maintenance.

Last weekend he put the final coat of "Vintage" purple in the kitchen,

and this weekend he puttied up the knots in the timber and primed the outside of the "shed".

The vegetable patch is developing -

we now have potatoes, squash, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkin and silverbeet planted.

The weather is perfect for growing . . . temperatures around 20 deg every day, with occasional showers. The horse manure and mushroom compost is helping add vitality to the soil -

and you can almost see daily growth.

Once crops are ready to harvest, we'll be busy cooking and preserving!

Kitchen garden.

The kitchen garden plot has been fenced with 100m chicken wire. We hope that will keep the bandicoots from digging up what we plant.

3 x 10m long rows of potatoes have gone in - Nicola, Kipfler, Dutch Cream and Pink Eyes.

We should be harvesting them by June 2013.

December 3

Our Christmas tree is decorated - is yours?

We've managed to photograph a nocturnal visitor.

A female Southern Brown Bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus).

They are a protected species in Tasmania, and appear secure.

On mainland Australia they are endangered due to the fox population.

I read that if you put out peanuts, they will come and eat

... and she did !!

Calving season

The cows in the neighbour's paddocks have been calving. Amazing how they look so much like their mums!

Plate Display Rack

I collect English Meakin china from the 1940-1960's. I've been waiting almost a year to be able to unpack them and put them on display in the kitchen where I can get some use out of them. Robert made a plate display rack to fit above the fireplace.

There is 21 metres of dowel in the construction, and it has 29 compartments.

It can hold 29-87 plates, depending on the size.

Robert got a real buzz out of making it.

He got to use a drill press, a cordless drill, clamps, a router and both hand and power saws.

Justifiable use of all those "boys toys" purchases over the years !!

HAY

We arranged for someone to come and cut the grass on our property and turn into bales for silage.

So we got the grass cut for free - and the farmer got silage for his cattle.

Silage : green fodder compacted and stored in airtight condition, without being dried,

used as animal feed in the winter.

They managed to get 20 bales.

They have gone to be plastic wrapped now.

Bye Bye Bales.

 

Halloween 2012

A newly created garden bed,

using existing rhododendrons.

Photo taken from the height of the roof.

The same garden bed, from the road

incorporating the dry stone wall,

and the relocated tree ferns.

The resident pets at the General Store,

Harris 'n Ford.

Happy Halloween!!

Rocks

We have so many rocks buried around the property, we decided they needed to earn their keep.

A dry stone wall!!

No mortar.

It's 4.5m long, and 1m high.

And . . . you can't even tell where we took the rocks from!

Looks like we might have to build some more walls.

The start of a vegie patch

Old rain water tank cut in half

Good place to meditate !!

Might use it as a temporary compost bin.

Vegetable patch marked out, and grass chopped down.

20m x 20m - lets hope it's big enough !!

Next step - rotary hoe it.

After 8hrs of back-breaking work,

decided it would have been better to have hired a plough!

10 years of compaction by horses,

combined with buried rocks, makes for very hard ground.

Half the area is dug over - that will do for now.

Windows

Picked up 2 second hand windows at the scrap metal dealers for $50 each.

Had them delivered today - it took 2 men to lift each of them,

and they were puffing !!

Firewood

Had a 10 cubic meter load of green split firewood delivered.

It took up 24m of fenceline, stacked 1m high.

It now will dry completely to supply us with firewood next year.

Leaving it out in the weather means that the rain will wash though any tannins.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms are $10/kg in the supermarket.

Instead, we spent $9.80 on 2 bags of mushroom compost.

We keep them in the dark, and moist, and voila!

MUSHROOMS

These doors were being difficult to clean,

until we used methylated spirits!

Front of house

October 2011

September 2012

What a difference a year makes !!

Cleaning the east side

This was the east side of the house in August 2011.

Notice the picket fence window boxes, and the rusty iron roof.

Now you can see a new roof, and a larger toilet window.

A close up of the boards shows rusty water stains.

Shannon Lush taught us to cut lemons in half, and use them to scrub the boards.

The lemon juice acts as a bleaching agent.

The finished job - need sunglasses to look at it now!!

Oil of cloves

The exterior of the house is beginning to get a make over.

This is what it used to look like.

Then we cleaned up a bit.

Now we have a new roof, and the tree fern has been dug out and transplanted.

The tree fern was actually 4 trunks planted together, and a chainsaw was used to trim them down!

The hydrangeas have also been transplanted, and the old hot water service is ready to be recycled.

The vinyl cladding (which will eventually be removed) has mould on it.

This photo shows the ease at which it can be removed.

The solution is "Oil of Cloves".

1 teaspoon in 4 litres water, and the mould just washes straight off.

Leave it to dry, and then brush off any residue.

Thank you Shannon Lush !!