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

When is the best time to visit Our Mates’ Farm (or Tassie for that matter)?

Well, what are you doing tomorrow?  I say that only half kidding, as Tassie always has something special no matter what time of year.  But if you want to really experience a lot, and get some stable weather (well as stable as it gets), and eat some great food, February-March has to be it.  Now keep in mind I am only a new Tasmanian, and I am probably missing out stacks of stuff true locals will tell me I have missed, but after a year down here this is what I think.

In February-March the fruit is on, depending on when you are here you will get cherries, or nectarines, or early apples, or blueberries or blackberries.  For the most part you will get cool nights, warm days, and empty beaches after the kids have gone back to school.  There may be a bit of rain, but it isn’t wet.  On the downside there are more caravans and campervans on the road plus the occasional fire-ban day/week.  But the temperatures mean you can enjoy a beer in the sun in the afternoon, and a glass of red at night.  And if you get a chilly night, a wood fire.

The Taste of Huon festival is on, and after seeing how big it was last month, the secret is definitely out: The Huon Valley has some of the best food in Tassie.

You also get a bit more of the people.  Kids have gone back to school, the hay is in the shed, and there is a bit more time for them enjoy the late fruits of summer before the autumn rains begin.

So these are my thoughts on when it is best to visit, but in reality any time we get to see our friends and share a cider or two is a special one for us.  Hope to see you soon!

And what we have been up to lately…

A few of “our mates” decided that April is the best time to visit us here in Tassie, so over the course of the month we had:

-          My cousin Dan from Canada

-          Our mates Jane and Jonathan and their two kids

-          Our mate Mark from London

-          My sister Charlene from Queensland

Dan worked his butt off with us on the one day he was here, woodchipping like a demon and filling, then emptying, TWO (!) trailer loads of woodchips.  We hope he brings his gorgeous wife next time as we still haven’t met.  Of course we won’t make her work!

Dan and Tinkerbell (with one of her tiny piglets)

Jane and Jonathan had the kids to tend to, but despite this Jonathan showed off his apple picking chops (it helps that he is like 7 feet tall) helping us pick stacks of apples.  He hardly needed a ladder.  A Sunday session at the Apple Shed (awesome!) really set the tone for these guys.

Matt, Oliver and Jonathan get picking, old school style.

This time with Cor, Jane and Amelia in the pic as well.

Mark threw himself into apple picking as well and worked like a demon, but it was what he brought to Tas that impressed me the most.  Mark makes gin, and not the bathtub-you-are-going-to-go-blind gin, but a gin that destroys anything made commercially by the big boys and stacks up very well against other premium “small batch” stuff too.  Straight up, with tonic, or in cocktails.  Don’t just take my word for it, he is being supported by some of London’s finest cocktail and distillery guys.  Not bad for a former dive instructor from Hay!  It was amazing to see how far his knowledge base has come, and great to see the same “fire in the belly” we have for great food.  And now great gin!

Trying out some of the local fare at the Lark Distillery

A bottle of Mark's 58 Gin, we are keeping one to celebrate building our house

We took time out from picking for Mark and I to go for a paddle and a fish.  The final score was 5-4 to him!

Charlene came for a week and I thought it would be a cool idea for Coreen to take her on a bit of a road trip for a few days, so they headed off together to Hobart (MONA), Port Arthur and Freycinet.  It looks like they had an absolute blast while I was tending the farm.

Choppo (Charlene's nickname, short for Pork chop), meets a real pork chop

The girls enjoy Freycinet

We also had a flying visit from our legendary WWoOFers Scott and Hannah before they left their apple picking work to return to the mainland.  They came in and with their new-found skills picked a few bins in no time as a favour, which we really appreciated.  Of course their flash picking-bags from Calvert Bros may have helped (I have gear-envy), but it was great to see them again.  They truly have set a high benchmark for other WWoOFers to follow!

Scott and Hannah on their flying visit.  Look at those flash picking-bags!

So that is it for now, we will have parents here again soon, but I will try to be a bit more proactive on the updates!

Cheers from your mates on Our Mates’ Farm.

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