More dam projects, open borders, hot windy weather

Another month flies by, and we've been working on the dam water quality. I have been reading about the venturi effect and decided to make a venturi and set it up down at the dam in order to oxygenate the water. The idea is that the oxygen will help settle the excess iron from the water and clear it up a bit. Marty can swim well, so he put the pipe down in the middle of the dam!

The venturi works, although it drains the 22,500L header tank very quickly, like over night! We decided to go ahead and get two solar panels for the pump so we can run the venturi more often. That meant a trip down to Victoria to pick them up and thankfully the border closures had stopped the day before, and we decided to go quickly before they closed them down again. Thankfully we avoided the whole mask stuff, and the business we went to were not pandering to the fear either.

We've spent the last few days putting up a stand for the panels, Marty digging in the hot sun, yesterday we made about 10 or 11 (little) loads of concrete to hold the posts up, and today we're going to attach the panels, all going well. The wind has been terrible lately, and we were held up by some awfully hot weather. It has been over 40°C, and up to 43°C the other day. (109.4°F) We're all coping pretty well so far.

Mum, Mike and Sarah came to visit down from Queensland finally, when their border opened up. We looked after Sarah for a few days while they went down to Nana's place for a visit. Sarah seemed to enjoy being a carnivore! She ate the same foods Marty and I did, with farm fresh eggs. Her fur became softer, and it was shedding a lot less by the time they came home again! Sadly, none of them are carnivore now, but I bet Sarah won't forget her time here with us.

Anyway, like I said, we have panels to put up today. Hope you all have a lovely day!

Milestone Day for Irrigation

Today was the day that we first pumped water from the dam into the header tank on the hill. I can hardly believe it!

We've probably walked the 250m distance between the dam and the tank about a hundred times by now, and we're not quite finished walking yet. I tried to capture some of the essence of the project in photos to share with you.

Marty, the International A414 and the big white tank on the hill.

We used the single tyne ripper quite a few times along the run.

We've had fun and learned a lot!

In the photo above, it turns out Marty was taking this little video:

We're super grateful for the advice we've received from our local farmer friend, he saved us oh so much money! The irrigation and farm stores would have had us installing either 2.5" high pressure poly pipe, costing a fortune and being much more difficult to work with.. another was asking if we were SURE we needed 2" and thought that was overkill. Still others would have us spending big bucks for a centrifugal pump that might block up due to the particulate matter in the water. So thank you Richard for giving us spot-on advice and answering even the most newbie questions we had, you likely saved us at least $6,000 on this project.

We put pencil to paper and drew a rough plan of the irrigation, a few times actually, refining it each time. It really helped us both visualise the layout, count the parts needed, and we actually ordered exactly what we needed! It was awesome to have everything on hand, without rushing off to the shops for forgotten fittings. Oh, except plumbers white-tape. We needed an awful lot of that!

I found a website that sold the parts we needed very cheaply, and almost finalised the order when Marty thought perhaps we should give the list of what we need and the online prices to our local "Ag n Vet" rural supplies store, just to give them a chance to match it. Not only did they match it, they beat it! They also had the cheapest price on rural green-line poly pipe in the whole area, so we ended up getting just about everything very locally.

They were able to let us know about a local man who had a pipe laying attachment for the tractor as well, which was great as we already knew Pat! We are happily returning it to him tomorrow after finishing using it yesterday.

So, after lots of walking, assembling the compression fittings, using about 5 roles of white-tape (and we had avoided as many screw-on connections as we could in the planning stages), re-applying yet more white-tape as we found some of the connections leaking due to too little used, and re-tightening the compression fittings, we were happy to see the water slowly flowing into the tank. I guess I didn't mention the pump float we made with stormwater pipe, but I'll have to show that off in another post.

The water finally flowed into the tank for a few hours before the sun headed off to the West and a gum tree shaded the panel. We'll need at least a couple of good days to fill the tank completely, so we're thinking of purchasing a matching second solar panel to give the pump a little more juice.

Speaking of juice, Marty and I have been feeling much better now after falling into the sugar trap over winter. We started eating some, and we just couldn't stop! Sure, we gained a little weight, but that was nothing in comparison to the health effects. Our energy levels started to fall down again, Marty's asthma and eczema became worse than ever, and we weren't sleeping well either. After only a few days of being perfect carnivores, we started enjoying the benefits of good health once again. Sleeping soundly, needing less sleep, waking feeling good, (no back pain for me in the morning! hooray!) having enough energy to do this crazy irrigation stuff, and Marty's asthma and incessant itchiness finally settling down.

Yeah, it can be a little boring at times, but it's worth it. Just one hour of eating sugar equals many more hours of feeling less than optimal. That certainly isn't worth it.

Dr Ken Berry on YouTube is a great source of information and encouragement for us, I thought I'd share him explaining just some of the bigger issues with eating the addictive stuff:

So, we're off the sugar again, and feeling a million times better for it.

I wish everyone good health and success in your day. It certainly feels good to make progress!

Making progress on the irrigation

 The weather has been typical of spring, we had a cold snap and needed to start lighting the fire again..

Now that the weather is warm again, we even got a little sun burned today while ripping a trench with the tractor. No pictures of that, I'm afraid! We were both concentrating on the task and didn't spare a thought for picture taking. We made a single rip through the soil, ready to accept poly pipe, from the brand new big white tank on the top of the hill, all the way down to the back of the property.

The local wildlife enjoyed the exposed ground, Choughs filled their bellies with worms! We've been lucky enough to see a lizard sunning itself in a patch of capeweed.

We recently got the test results back from our a water sample we had taken from the dam. The results were overall pretty positive, only an alarmingly high aluminium (Al) number confused us (and everybody else we asked). Thankfully the pH value is neutral, and the most likely explanation that I can find is that the aluminium is natural gibbsite bound to organic matter in the water. Our soils are also naturally high in aluminium. We're both comforted by the fact that turtles, frogs, yabbies and other little critters live in the water and are seemingly healthy.

Marty and I donned our white lab coats to set up an experiment. 4 jars of dam water; one control, one with 2 tablespoons of fine agricultural lime, another with 2 tablespoons of hardware store gypsum and the last with 2 tablespoons of shell grit from our chook supplies. We wanted to see what effect any might have on the water. Nothing much happened over a few days, only a slight change in pH and hardness, most noticeable with the shell grit. The tiny black critters swimming around the jars didn't seem to mind either way. Adding a small dose of Charlie Carp (which is a fish-based fertiliser) to the shell grit test after the experiment was over made a sludge layer form at the bottom and seems to have killed the tiny critters! Something we certainly don't want to replicate on a larger scale!

Since pH is an important factor in making sure our water stays healthy, I decided to bust out the old soil test kits. I think they're both far too old to be of any help anymore though! One ancient test kit (yep, we got it in a "lot" at a clearing sale) was showing our soils to be 4.5, the slightly newer (but at least 6 year old) kit was showing a pH of 6 on the exact same soil. I think it's time to get a new kit, or perhaps upgrade to a digital pH meter.

So, we are moving forward with the dam water project. The next step is buying poly pipe and fittings, and setting up the solar water pump. As simple as that sounds, I know it's a bit more involved than that. We have been getting lots of practical advice from a very helpful and patient local farmer, and also watching lots of Greg Judy videos on YouTube about rotationally grazing sheep.

Stay tuned!

Getting dam prepared

 Marty and I have been pottering around, planning and purchasing! We did hours upon hours of research about submersible pumps, measured the distances required, decided which one to buy, and even ordered a 10,000L water tank to put up on the wall of the dam. Then we went for a visit with a local farmer, Richard, who suggested a different way of doing things again!

 We came home and immediately got to work measuring up the new distances and researching again. Richard had suggested putting a big tank on the top of our hill instead of a small one on the dam wall. We would run a larger pipe to the bigger tank and have gravity pressure water available farm-wide!

 So, Marty called Bushmans tanks to change our order to a bigger 22,500L tank. Richard told us his pumps were from Commodore Australia, which are cheaper and seem to be a better fit for our situation than the more expensive pump we were originally considering. So we ordered one and now we're just preparing for everything to arrive.

 We've also been working on tidying up the annex area, getting ready for installing a little water tank to collect the water from that roof. I have a huge collection of plant pots that I won in at least a couple of different clearing sales, and they were stacked up high behind the shade house. We spent a good couple of days cleaning some and organising the rest of them for storage. We couldn't use them all if we tried!

 I've enjoyed using the potting bench in the annex for potting up a few saltbush and lavender cuttings, and sunflower seeds are popping up now.

 We are extremely grateful for another local farmer, Grant, who has huge round bales of old hay that he's happy for us to take for free. We recently got 4 of them, and used one to cover the ground of where the chooks were at last. They'd been on the hill and the ground is terrible up there. We added the straw once we moved the chooks away in hopes of improving the ground. Another bale went on the dam walls to try and protect the bare sides from erosion. It appears to be helping quite a bit, with more plant growth and many more frogs croaking in the night! We've used old peppercorn logs given to us by a Permie friend, Jim, and even a dead wattle tree that gave up the ghost. Dotting them around the walls of the dam is giving the plants a chance to grow without kangaroos, wallabies and harsh rainfall preventing them from establishing.

 We also have some water plants almost ready to go into the dam this spring, originally from a local(ish) waterway. We're trying to get the water to clear up a bit, as it's quite silty and brown. Plants are the only way that's going to happen, as the silt just doesn't settle on it's own. This is all heading towards getting sheep, and with the rain and lovely spring we've had, there's certainly enough grass for the time being.

 Just another 2 round bales of hay to put down and we're close to covering the entire dam wall.

Annex progress & pastured chicks

Well gosh, time sure does fly by! Marty and I have been working on the annex to the shade house and the shade house itself is now covered in shade cloth and is keeping seedlings out of the frost and cold winds. We have native seedlings for planting around the farm, wattles mostly. There are tagasaste sprouting and cuttings from forage plants taking root. I intend on planting plenty of sunflowers for the poultry this season, too!

Last piece of tin for the roof!

Inspecting after a rain.

The potting bench was made last weekend from scrap and reclaimed ply-board. I painted it in a "subtle nightsky" colour, leftover from renovating the Old Miner's Cottage in Stawell. I honestly can't remember where we used that colour though!

We welded up a stand for an old laundry tub we got from a clearing sale years ago now, and it's ready for plumbing in. There's a trench cut beside the path ready for the water line, which hopefully I'll get done this week. Eventually the outside tin and roof will be painted, we tinted the paint "fairy wings" quarter, so it'll be a light pink colour!

There's still three doors to be made, a bit more shadecloth for the east side of the hoop house, and shelves to put up inside the annex, but it's all coming along. The chicken food is now stored all in one location in lockers to the south of the annex, so feeding and moving chickens is so much easier now.

The old aviary has been excellent for raising chicks. They have a little nest box where they sleep with the broody at night, and a new area to scratch up every day. I put dolomite lime down on the previous day's ground to help keep the flies away from the manure, which is also remineralising the ground as well as helping break down the old grasses.

We kept the chicks like this for just over 18 weeks, now that they're "point of lay" we popped the pullets in with the adult hens and the cockerel will soon become the best quality roast money just can't buy. :)

I really enjoyed raising the chicks like this, and will definitely do it again when one of the adult hens wants to become a mother again. The last broody happily stayed with the chicks for over 10 weeks, which is a testament to the system. Usually our hens will get sick of the chicks and smaller pen size in around 4 or 5 weeks.

So there's plenty to do, and we're working on the logistics of getting sheep so we can rotate them around the pasture as well. That won't be for a little while yet, but it's higher on the priority list now. We've measured the height of the dam wall, sized a couple of pump options and got a rough idea on what we need to get before we take the great leap forward into purchasing our first 4 legged livestock. 

Autumn Activity

We've had a couple of good night's sleep without the 3am microbat intrusion! We thought maybe it was getting in through the air vents, and although we'd already sealed them from the outside, I put tape over them on the inside just to make sure. Nope, that wasn't where it was getting in. While I was up on the ladder, I noticed a bit of a gap around the top of the window frame, so that was plastered over and it seems that was the answer. At least the bedroom is even more air-tight now, so there's an upside!

The brakes on the International A414 tractor are now back together and working as intended. It was the idea of lifting the back end of the tractor and adjusting the breaks while it was running was the most stressful part, but in reality it was no big issue. The old massive bottle jack and some big heavy bits of metal worked to hold her up just fine. Once adjusted, Marty took her for a run up the driveway as usual, and we discovered that the handbrake is adjustable from the top!

After the tractor was back together, we hooked up the single tine deep ripper and dragged the old A frame out from storage. We started by marking a contour line in the woodlot area using the A frame with the level attached. I then drove the tractor alongside the posts, and the deep ripper sunk into the ground, moving the soil but not turning it over. We did a rip on each side of the posts, and we planted the trees that I had waiting all summer for good weather. We planted a line of 14 trees, mostly Yellow Box and Blakey's Red Gum, in between the two ripped areas. Usually people plant IN the rip, but if it's a wet winter, they'd easily drown, so we planted them between the lines. The silty soil in the woodlot is deep and becomes a heavy clay at the bottom of the rip.

Then we took the A frame and tractor up on the top of the hill, and made a couple more contour lines up there. The soil there is rocky and hard, and the ripper didn't go in nearly as far. We hope to see some improvements to the soil and hopefully some more natives will volunteer to grow up there now. It would certainly be easier and better than buying and planting more trees and plants, but I started some locally saved seeds just to see if I can get any to come up. If they do, I'll plant them between the rips up on the hill. There is plenty more land we can rip and plant trees in, and we certainly intend to!

Since then, Marty and I have been working on a project we've had in mind for a while now, a covered annex to the shade-house. We worked on it all last weekend, and there are now 4 poles in the ground, and the ground is roughly leveled using the little Kubota. We'd planned a little garden shed in that general area, but weren't exactly excited by the plan, but we came up with a better idea and just went for it with the materials we have on hand.

The little cement mixer that Mum and Mike gave us before they went to Queensland was awfully useful. We plugged it right into the solar system, and it uses only 150W. Much quieter than running the generator for mixing a little concrete for the posts. Not to mention the bags of cement they left came in handy, too!

The next step requires some welding, and we're expecting a bit more rain, so we'll continue it when we can. It'll be such a useful little space once it's complete - a bit of storage for chicken feed, gardening supplies and tools, and shelter for potting up plants etc. It's also a bit of practice and a confidence building exercise before we start on the bigger shed we've wanted since we moved in. We'll get there!

PS: I forgot to mention how nice and easy the tractor is to drive now! It stops easily, and the handbrake works perfectly, which makes us both feel more relaxed.

Big catch up

We've had a very very long autumn here, the summer heat was gone by February and by March things were downright wet in comparison. Trees, shrubs and grass all began to green up and even flower. Fruit trees threw a few flowers out just to give the bees and bugs a little extra food before winter arrives. The drought had been so depressing, but I ordered a few more plants for the garden that are suppose to be extra tough. Mostly succulents. The rain inspired me to get into the garden again and I'm so glad I did.

Volunteer silverbeet, chard, and sunflowers among the perennials

Succulent and cacti raised garden

How green the kitchen garden looks!

The chickens then surprised me when a broody chook showed off her new chicks. I'm embarrassed to admit that I had no idea anyone was sitting. One of the chicks was hatched out a couple of days later than the others and wasn't ready to be up and about just yet.. so I took him inside and warmed him up with hot water bottles.

Hot water bottles, a Styrofoam box, a little fish tank and a lot of old towels.

Little chick just needed a bit more time and warmth.

Sometimes little chick just needed some love.

That was 4 weeks ago, and as I hoped, you can't tell which one of the little boys that chick is now! He went back outside with broody after 2 days and one (tiring) night of re-filling hot water bottles and monitoring temperatures.

This is their mobile broody pen in the pasture, it gets moved almost daily now, and they've grown up so fast. The two boys will stay in the pen, while the broody and two female chicks will be joining the main flock later on when they're ready.  The pen is actually Squeak's old aviary with round metal poles welded to the bottom of it so it can be dragged around more easily.

Broody pen on pasture.

All the rain also encouraged us to do some chimney maintenance, and we replaced the caps on the chimneys with concrete. The mud worked fine for years, but had begun to crack and let moisture in. It also made a mess of the gutters as sand and clay collected in them. Hopefully it'll be many years before we need to go climbing onto the roof again now.

Ticking more projects off the list, the tractor's breaks have been pretty bad since we got it. We'd purchased new breaks years ago now, but hadn't gotten around to doing anything about it. Originally, it took all my weight and effort to stop the tractor, which improved a little after we adjusted the breaks to as far as they could be adjusted. Recently, however, the breaks have begun working rather too well. I only need lightly press them and they stopped the tractor with a jerk. That's just not right and had me worried something odd was going on.

I had read about a deep ripper being helpful with tree planting and water penetration in compacted soils, and decided to try out our cheap second-hand clearing-sale find of a deep ripper, but noticed that the wheels of the tractor weren't behaving normally. One was spinning just moving the tractor without the implement! We decided now was the time to check out the breaks.

One of the breaks, before we fixed them.

It took some effort to get them off, since the fenders and even the ROPS (rollover protection) had to be disassembled to access them. Turns out they had nothing left on them, and one was even broken. We cleaned everything up, installed the new pads and the rubber boot to stop dirt and seeds getting in the housing again.

Marty under the A414.

Next job will be to adjust the breaks, which involves jacking up the entire rear of the tractor and running it in gear! Hopefully once that's done (this weekend) we will be able to get to the job of deep ripping some of the wood lot on contour and then planting out some more trees for this season. We lost last year's trees, but the previous years trees are all looking healthy and are taller than we are.

Finally, a little renovation inspired by a couple of less than ideal night's sleep, thanks to a tiny little micro bat invading the bedroom in the night. It somehow made it's way into the canopy of the mosquito net (clearly not effective against micro bats!), flapping about and waking me up.. we got up and opened the back door and it flew out the door without us having to do anything else. After it happened again yesterday, Marty prodded me to have a look for any gaps in the bedroom. Oh yeah, there were gaps!

West wall - before.

West wall - after.

North wall - before.

North wall - after.

The skirting board had come away completely behind the biggest cupboard we have in the bedroom, I sure hope the bats came in that way! It wasn't too difficult to re-attach the board, and I plastered the gaps with gypsum-based plaster. The room feels different now, quieter.. I noticed the temperature in the room is noticeably warmer, which is nice because haven't started the wood heater yet this season.

We're otherwise doing ok, mostly unaffected by the crazy world going on outside. The only change has been that the local pub has been forced to close, so with that, we're no longer cleaning it. Marty has been working as usual, and we don't tend to go out much otherwise. We've been shopping for the few essentials at the local IGA's (small independent supermarkets) instead of going in to Wagga Wagga and the big supermarkets there. Our butcher continues to supply us with beautiful hind-quarters of beef about monthly, and we have been enjoying kidney, liver and heart as well. I credit eating as well as we possibly can to getting over the 3 week long, but mild illness we both developed early March.

I'm hopeful we'll get many more projects complete in the near future and that the world will get back to the good old normal very soon too.