Breathless!

Well August has been crazy.  Just crazy.  We have been so busy we haven’t had time to keep people up with what has been going on, so here are a few photos to tide you over until we have time to sit down and write a thorough blog post….

So we have been going on with the milling...

...and doing more wood than ever.

We have had new fences put in to keep wallabies out...

...a lot of new fencing!

We have a load of compost for this year's vegetables...

...and the boy has spent a bit of time up the farm.

We have started prepping trees for grafting...

...and been hiring some pretty neat gear to deal with the trees that we have cut down.

Princess has started killing wallabies that make it into the orchard (the fencing is not 100% finished yet).

Work has started prepping the shed and surrounds for our house build.

The Wiltshire lambs have started arriving.

We have started taking the lad out to dinner (he's pretty tasty).

More lambs every day!

Exhausting, right?!

Got wood?

This is supposed to be the post where we say that since the kid was born we have been getting no sleep and the farm projects are falling behind, right?  But no, Cor’s parents came for a visit and have been world-class helpers with the cooking and childcare.  This has allowed me to get decent amounts of sleep and into the full swing of milling our own timber with Ernie (our builder), Steve (his off-sider) and a Lucas Mill.  We need timber for vertical boards and decking for our new house, a new set of cattle yards, sheds and barns, and farm stay cottages sometime in the off in the misty future.

We used an experienced tree feller to bring the selected trees down and while it was quite the challenge to get the trees cut up and pulled out of our scrub, like most things on the farm a bit of ingenuity, some sweat and a tractor made it possible.

The mill at work

To those unfamiliar with the Lucas Mill, it is a mobile mill that can be setup on almost any flat spot, allowing the milling and racking of timber where you want it, with no need to transport logs or timber off and on the property.  And together with some judicious use of our new excavator we have developed a system where the logs can be loaded, milled and unloaded in no time at all.

One of two blue-tongue lizards resting on our milling site

Loading up the logs onto our rail system for sliding into the mill

We are predominantly milling eucalyptus obliqua, or stringy-bark, one of the three trees classed as “Tasmanian Oak”.  It has a lovely reddish hue to the wood and mills beautifully.  We are even contemplating putting some aside to dry for making furniture out of in a few years.  It should weather nicely on the front of the house and we look forward to seeing it go up in a few months.

The beginning of our wood stack

The milling on its own should be enough for any man to deal with, however we have also had our new fencing started.  We have a contractor installing wallaby-proof wire around our orchard to keep our animals in and the free-loading wallabies out.  We are fencing off the majority of the bush from the orchard, leaving the bush area for wildlife, while protecting our orchard trees and pasture from the plague-like numbers of wallabies and pademelons in our area.  We are only in July and are already seeing a number of apple trees being ring-barked by the fauna.  We are planning to acquire some firearms to initiate a pest management program for those animals that remain within the orchard area.

The fence starts to go in

We also took advantage of Cor’s parents being here to leave the bonnie lad at home and attend the inaugural Huon Valley Mid-Winter Festival at the Apple Shed.  My god what an amazing event.  Inspired winter food, cider in full flow and a massive bonfire, all to a great live soundtrack provided by a bunch of skilled bands.  We caught up with stacks of folks we hadn’t seen in a while, and had a great time on a lovely clear winter night out under the Southern Cross.  We will definitely be going again next year, and next time the boy can come.

A cold winter night at the Apple Shed

Which brings us (finally), to the boy.  Julian is now three weeks old and has finally started putting on some real weight (he was a bit lazy on the boob initially).  We have been not just leaning on the support of Cor’s parents, but the advice of everyone we speak to including our wonderful GP, midwives and our friends.  Pretty soon my mum will be here for a few weeks too.  There’s not much else to tell except it was a bit weird to realise on my birthday that we aren’t just a partnership any more, we are a family.  We aren’t just building Our Mates’ Farm, we are building our family farm too.

I surrender!

Winter hibernation? We wish!

Winter hibernation, one reason we moved to Tasmania.  Real seasons, and when you have a farm things slow down a bit in winter.  Except we only just bought our farm and there is far too much to be getting on with to spend the days sitting by the fire.  Not that we have a fire… well, until we move house next week.  Turns out the place we are living now gets pretty cold during winter, it has been 6 degrees Celsius the last few mornings, and that doesn’t make for a great environment to bring a new baby into.  And since Coreen’s parents bought a house the last time they came to visit, we are moving over there until the house on the farm is finished.  Their house has a wood fire and is better insulated, so promises a much better and warmer home environment for when the kid arrives.

On the house front, we took a bit of time to come around to it but we have now decided to convert one of the farm sheds into our new farmhouse.  It meant that we weren’t plonking a house on top of prime farming land, and will be cheaper and faster to build.  It will also be smaller, forcing us to be a bit more economical and efficient with our designs.  Planning approval has been submitted so fingers crossed that comes back soon so we can crack on.  The goal is to have the place done by the end of October for the start of the season, but since we will be living at Cor’s parents’ house there isn’t a mad rush.

Cor is doing well, getting bigger all the time.  We went out to the Apple Shed for dinner last Friday night to celebrate my last night of drinking until the baby arrives.  From now on it is action stations, the hospital bag is packed and we are ready to go, any time of the day or night.  We have prepped all the stuff for the kid, though I still think you need to be an engineer to understand modern prams.  We have the names narrowed down and have some auspicious Chinese middle names lined up too.

And the farm stuff rumbles on.  I have realised that my drive to have the big silver wattles removed and the new fence put in during April, then May, then June, may push out a bit more yet.  You can spend a few hours over a chainsaw and not make much of a dent in all the trees still growing in the way.  We will certainly have lots of firewood in a few years when it is all dry.  I have also spent a rainy day working with my new excavator, pulling out trees in a section earmarked for new fruit trees.  One of our projects is to get a bunch of different fruit varieties in and going so that in a few years we have all our own fruit on the farm (and not just 5 types of apples!).

Putting the parents to work clearing the silver wattles

We moved the pigs to a new area up by the bush as their old area was rapidly getting too wet and muddy.  They have settled in well, but Peter Pan showed us just how tough he was, ripping his new gate off the wired hinges the first day, and pulling out the gate post the next, all to get to Tinkerbell who was in season.  We had been trying to rest her before putting him back in with her but he was having none of it.  And it is hard to tell a 300kg boar with 3 inch tusks “not tonight, dear, I have a headache”.  So we now have 3 months to get her back in condition for another litter, poor girl!  The weaners are fattening nicely, and should make for great pork come spring.

The new paradise paddocks

Best view on the farm!

What am I going to do with you Pan?

We also have our first lambs.  Turns out our boy Aldo was a bit too enterprising when we first brought him onto the farm (before we could separate him) and there are now little white lambs everywhere.  It is very early to have lambs (we were planning on spring, not winter!) but we have had decent enough weather lately so hopefully they all survive and make the table on Christmas day.

Princess in doggy heaven

Nine male runner ducks were sent off to Disneyland on one very productive day, and poor 83 the cow was culled and turned into t-bones after losing her calf.  A sad day for us.  But there is a lot of meat in our two freezers!

Disneyland day for ducks

So I started this blog thinking that I would just jot a few recent events down and focus on the photos, and after a few minutes realised that there has been a heck of a lot more going on than I thought.  Perhaps the next blog post will have photos of the baby, or the new house, or the lambs, but in the meantime we keep dreaming of that winter hibernation.   With a kid?  Maybe in a year or ten!

Plus we got our very first egg!

Hard work and help

Sorry for the lack of updates on the blog front recently, we have had Scott and Hannah (our first ever WWoOFers) with us, and this has put a bit more pressure on us to work hard with them to really get things ticked off our to-do list.  And with their wonderful help we really smashed it in Feb!  Unfortunately we worked so hard I was always too tired to blog after work…

We are in full swing preparing for new fencing in April, and we have completely removed our back fence and cleared a number of trees from it.  There is still more tree clearing to do, but we know we can do it.  We also cleared out two blocks worth of irrigation and trellis wires and had an excavator come and pull out the apple trees.  One of the blocks will be the site of our new house and the other will be the location of some polytunnels that will allow us to grow vegetables year round.

The house site underway

All the rubbish that was stashed in the farm sheds has been sorted into recyclables and rubbish (one 6 cubic metre skip of rubbish alone!) and the place is looking a great deal tidier.

Burning scrap wood

We picked up some Indian Runner ducks from a friend in Franklin, they are supposed to be great foragers, and decent layers, so we are giving them a whirl in the orchard.  They have settled in nicely, and we hope to start getting eggs from them this winter.  Any boys will get the chop, and despite the runners being a pretty small bird, they are reputed to be pretty tasty.

Moving the Muscovies to accommodate the Indian Runners

We have also bitten the bullet on the ring-barking sheep, and found a great solution where we are able to agist them (let them eat someone else’s grass) year round on a property a few minutes away.  This means that we still have our Wiltshire girls (and ram) on our place, together with (Shish-ka)Bob.  We had a day of sorting and age-tagging all 60 sheep with the kind help of our neighbours Ross and Leanne.  After wrestling sheep in the race in 30-degree heat they probably won’t be so quick to offer to help next time I ask a favour!

Ross holds the girl while we check her teeth to age her

Leading a few of the Wilty girls into their next area

Which brings us to Bob… Due to popular demand, Bob won’t meet the butcher this autumn as we have too many guests coming to meet him and he is very much a people sheep.  But next spring he definitely goes to Disneyland.  Maybe.  I keep reminding myself there is room for sentiment on the farm, but not sentimentality.

Maintaining that tough outlook is made so much harder when you witness the miracle of a cow having a calf, as we did yesterday.  Two new animals added to our herd, we are now waiting on the other three.  Photos to come when I change the battery in the camera(!).

Black cows are hard to photograph...

So Scott and Hannah have left us to go picking apples at Calverts in Waterloo.  You should see the location of the pickers accommodation, right on the Huon.  Million dollar views for the help, amazing stuff.  I really should get some photos to show you all.  The jobs were organised by our new friends down here, and all I can say is that I have never known a community to help one another out like this one does.  It is a real privilege to be a little part of it and we do our best to return the many favours and help we receive.

On the visitor front we had a visit from Paul and Lulu from the UK.  I knew Paul when I was working at Anglo Pacific Group (in fact he was our largest shareholder and an old friend of one of my mentors, Peter Boycott) but meeting them both for a day on the farm, followed by Masaaki’s for lunch was wonderful.  Paul has had some experience with Tasmanian farming, and they manage quite the estate in the UK.  Some of the questions they asked were really perceptive.  We also had a visit by Katie, Kevy and young Madeleine.  It was a great day to show them round the farm and take them to Masaaki’s for lunch.  Are you getting a theme here?  Well, Masaaki is famous for the best sushi in Tasmania, and he just happens to be based in Geeveston, so what more could you want?

Kevy, Katie and Mads with Cor

Mads loved Princess most of all!

The next month promises more visitors and lots of work as we start picking our (few) apples.  Hopefully we will also get cracking on our polytunnel as well.

So that wraps it up.  Let us know when you are coming and we will wash the cows, brush the ducks, comb the sheep, polish the chickens, and book a table at Masaaki’s….

Cor modelling her new "pregnancy" workwear

Just a small taste of our autumn harvest