Mind the gap!

Well we certainly haven’t been sitting on our backsides the last couple of months, but I know that we have been slack in the blogging department.  I will do my best to cover the gap, so make your cup of tea/coffee/scotch/gin/cider now and get settled, this will be a wordy one.  But read through, I promise you may learn a thing or two!

As you could see from our last post we had been milling quite a bit of timber. We’ve finished that off and now have a great deal of working material stacked and racked.  Some of the stuff that came out of the mill was so impressive we earmarked it for future furniture.  I still have to cover all of it to keep it out of the elements, but once that is done we will have a resource that will last us years.  The only question we have to answer now is: what do we want to build first?

Father and son on the wood pile having some morning tea

The orchard really kicked up a gear in September and has continued to go beserk in October.  At the end of August we hired someone to come help us knock it into shape, and even though after four weeks they didn’t work out as an employee their efforts in preparing two of our blocks for grafting was great.  We estimate that approximately 2,500 trees were cut down and mulched up, with wound paint applied to every cut to stop the trees getting diseases through the cuts.  It really was a herculean effort, and set us up beautifully for grafting.

The "Hinchinbrook" block, freshly cut and grafted

Now, to the grafting…. it is a strange thing to cut one tree down, take a little stick of another tree, make a few cuts to it, wedge it into the bark of the first tree, and then have it grow.  But this is essentially what happens.  We had two legends of the game, Clem and Boxer, who are 74 and 71 years old respectively, come down and do our grafting.  Now this didn’t mean that Coreen and I could kick back with beer and skittles, it was our job to follow them along, taping the grafts so they wouldn’t blow over or come out, and putting wax around the joins so no air or moisture could get in and cause the graft not to take.  These guys are so fast, they put on about 1,300 grafts a day, that’s about 650 trees that we needed to tape and wax.  They would finish their day at 3pm, after just ambling along since 9am, and Cor and I would be there until 6:30pm trying to finish before dark.  It was a real lesson that first day, so for the next couple of days we roped in some help, but then by day four we ran out of friends (our “friends” learn quick!) and it was just back to us again.  When they are really moving these guys can have up to 6 people working to try to keep up with them.

Boxer and Clem, having a break and letting us catch up (just a bit)

We had a wonderful time working with Clem and Boxer, despite working hard the jokes flew thick and fast between us, and they took time out to show us how to graft.  They even gave us grafting homework over a weekend and came and inspected it on the Monday to make sure we had done it right.  Lucky we have plenty of trees to practice on!  It was absolutely brilliant, and I still have a bit of scion wood from four heritage varieties courtesy of the Steenholdts (who have been in apples for decades) that we hope to graft onto some hand-picked trees.  Boxer even brought five of his favourite varieties and grafted them for us.  We are certainly going to have quite a range of tasty apples for you to try when you visit!

All done, Matt with Clem and Boxer

Such a strange thing to turn this into new apple trees

In other apple matters, we have had a bit of an issue with our equipment, namely our orchard sprayer.  I bought it last year and it seemed to do the job OK, but when I pulled it out and gave it a test run a week before I was due to start spraying it failed dramatically.  After waiting a week I then spent a few days up to my elbows in grease at the mechanic’s trying to help them get it fixed as they were snowed under with work.  It took about 4 weeks (during which time we had to borrow a sprayer from a good, good friend) but finally it is now back and working.  The failure taught me that it probably wasn’t working properly even last year, but after much time, effort and sadly, money, it is now working great.  We spent more than the sprayer cost in the first place fixing it, and though the thought of buying a replacement did play on my mind, the total cost is still less than the price of a fancy new one that is likely too big for our orchard in any case.

Mad Matt, the Orchard Warrior

A quick word on spraying. “But aren’t you going organic, how can you use sprays?”  This is a common misperception about organic farming.  There are actually a number of chemicals approved for use in organic farming.  In the USA the list is actually so big it is a little scary, but the gist of the thing is that it must be a natural product.  So that means we use chemicals like lime, sulphur, copper, certain oils and products containing natural bacteria to help us manage our pest issues.  However even naturally-occurring products can have dire consequences for nature and the soil biology, for example pyrethrum and boron kills beneficial insects like bees, and copper or excess sulphur can destroy microorganisms living in healthy soil.  This means that even an organic farmer has to make choices about what substances they are comfortable using, and why.  We have less to choose from, but that doesn’t mean it is simple!

The apple flowers are out in force now, and so are the bees, and we are hoping for a much, much better harvest than last year.

So the weekdays have been getting our apples going, and our weekends have been dedicated to other “projects”, whether it is getting the sheep shorn or setting up new pig paddocks.

We had a very sad Saturday when Matthew, Sadie and Hedley came over to bid farewell to the old boar Peter Pan.  We only had one sow large enough to handle Peter Pan, the wonderful Tinkerbell.  As Tinks is on her last litter and we want to have more sows, keeping Pan for sentimentality’s sake just didn’t make sense.  We tried to find another home for him but to no avail.  We had a friend come over with his firearm and do the deed, and fortunately our excavator was on hand to bury the big lad.  It was a sad occasion.  Pan had sired many a litter and was a really great pig.  I will always laugh at the memory of him curiously following our friend Mark around his pen, with Mark running away crying “Razorback!”

In case you were wondering, we didn’t turn Pan into sausages because old boars can develop a musty smell in their meat, and with Pan you could smell him whenever Tinks was around, so we knew it wasn’t a starter.  Have you learned anything new today? ;)

Anyway, with the big fella away Sadie brought over one of his offspring, Tess, who was pregnant to their new boar (Barry).  Just a few days after Pan “went to Disneyland” Tinkerbell had her litter, followed in short order by Tess.  So we have 13 beautiful saddleback piglets running about currently.  The seven-month-old weaners are getting to a good size, we will have five of them for the chop and we are eagerly planning a salami and charcuterie day with our old WWOOFer host Mandy.  Between that and the fresh pork, we are going to eat well this summer!

Say hello to Tess!

...and her litter!

Tinks is on her last litter at the moment, but is loving her new paddocks

All the pig action was an impetus for us to set up new paddocks, and I am quite chuffed with the new setup.  My catch cry while we were doing it was “a wallow and scratching post in every paddock”, in a real effort to facilitate the “pigness of the pig”, and to let them do what comes naturally.  It warms the heart to see a happy pig, when you come visit I am sure you will see what I mean!

Love the happy pigs!

On the sheep front we have shorn, docked, tagged and clipped so many that my head still spins.  And of course the busy month was the perfect cue for one of the Wiltshire girls to reject her lamb, meaning that we have been bottle feeding one of those as well.  Normally I wouldn’t have been prepared to do it (having gone through it with shish kaBob last year!), but at the time Mary was one of only two female lambs, and we really want to grow our Wiltshire herd so needed to keep her around.  So bottle feeding every four hours it had to be!

Clipping hooves

That's a lot of wool, more than 3 bags full!

The other baby, little Julian, is also going well.  He is a happy little guy, pretty content to be at the farm, in his capsule or pram under a tree while we work.  He smiles a lot, is always looking around for me, and is fascinated by the brilliant quilt full of farm scenes that our friend Jane made.  I am not sure I am ready for him to be crawling, but hopefully by the time that happens we will have moved into our house on the farm, which Ernie started work on just this past Monday.  We live in exciting times.

Such a happy lad!

So there you have it, a month and a half in review, and I haven’t even told you what we have planned for this month!  I guess you will just have to wait and see.  Of course, you could come down to Our Mates’ Farm and find out firsthand!  Don’t worry, we won’t make you work…. much!

And now a few final pictures for you all...

One of Tinkerbell's piglets sneaks a drink while she has breakfast

The runner ducks have started laying... I see omelettes in my future, lots of omelettes!

This guy and a couple of others have been hanging around the pig paddocks

The working men of the family don't make it to bed

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!

Welcome to our new farmhand!

Just when I think I can’t get any more impressed, amazed or in love with Coreen (soppy, I know, but this is the only bit that is - feel free to skip on if you like), she goes and has our baby with so much stoicism in the face of incredible pain that it takes my breath away, while in the process setting the bar so much higher for me to live up to.

I could tell you the whole story about what happened, but the best stories are told with flourishes in the right places to the right audience, so I will save it for when we meet in person (a hint: it starts with her being so tough she hadn’t noticed she was in labour).

So straight on to business… it’s a boy!  Julian Li Xun Tack.  Born 07/07/14, 3.745kg, or 8lbs 4oz in old money, 53cms long (a legal sized fish anywhere you go) and with a big head of hair.  He’s ugly, but then all kids are ugly when they are born, you just have to love them anyway.  I don’t know how he slept through Germany thrashing Brazil 7-1 this morning but I am sure that was just a temporary anomaly.

So that is it, our new farmhand is here, we just have to grow him (like everything else on the farm) up to a point where he will be more useful than a smelly paperweight.

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!

The thing we said we’d never do…

… is get married.  We never really saw the point.  A lot of money spent on a big to-do where you don’t get to talk to your friends who come and you stress out about a bunch of stuff that doesn’t matter, and for what?  How could we be any more committed after almost 17 years?  Hell, we have a house together, and now a farm and a baby on the way.  We should be committed.  And surely it doesn’t really matter these days?

Well, just like having a baby (the other thing we said we’d never do), we caved.  We decided that an excuse to get both sets of parents together for the first time in something like 5 years was too good to pass up.  But as usual, we had to do it our own way (with a bit of prompting from Samara!).  We decided to get married on the farm by the dam, and follow it up with a barbecue reception for a few local friends in the shed.  Not a big deal.  We wouldn’t have even told people it was going to be a wedding if we knew that “just a barbecue” might not be enough to pull people out of their routines and get our parents to fly in to Tassie.

It worked out marvellously.  Mostly.  We found an old wood fired barbecue on the farm and got that going great, but when we arrived for the ceremony after heading home to get changed we found that the bottom had swung open, dumping the coals and fire onto the ground and setting fire to the grass, just outside the shed where all our guests were waiting!!!  Ross swung into action and with a bit of ingenuity from him and Roy we rescued the fire, and prevented our shed from burning down in the process.

I must confess to being a little stressed on the day.  Having both sets of parents in town and combining farm jobs with wedding preparations (sorry, barbecue preparations), and baby stuff left me feeling a bit under pressure.  But once it all started it was all good.  The ceremony lasted all of 10 minutes, one of the platypus came up to say hello, we signed the bits and pieces, had a few photos (thanks soooo much Cassy!), we walked past the pigs (as you do), and then kicked off the barbecue.

The barbecue staple was our Wiltshire lamb chops together with lamb “wedding bangers” that we made earlier in the week.  Plus we had asked everyone to bring a plate (how many weddings where you have to do that?) so the salads and desserts were well covered.  Half a dozen bottles of Ralph and Jane’s Wombat Springs Pinot Noir, plus a roaring fire on a chilly starry night, what else could you ask for at a party?

The release of the pressure got to me a little, I drank a bit of red, and then when we got home hit the Scotch with the father-in-law, so Coreen spent her first night as a married woman looking after her sick (inebriated) husband.  Begin the marriage as you mean to go on I say, not to mention that she has been doing this for years so has plenty of practice.  I must have become a bit of a lightweight since leaving London… that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.  Oh, and this story is only on the blog because Coreen has been telling it to everyone high and low and you were bound to hear it eventually anyway.

Our thoughts were with all of you who we wish could have been here.  But then we would rather see you all one-on-one anyway instead of at a big shindig, so to make up for missing our wedding you will just have to come visit instead!

So I will save the farm shenanigans for another post, now for some wedding pics!

We all start walking over to the dam for the ceremony

The ceremony

The Chinese tea ceremony (ie. serving the tea to the parents): an important part of any Chinese wedding

Ross leaps into action and saves the day (and the barbecue, and the shed!)

The barbecue back up and running, a source of warmth when the sun went down