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.
