October 2022 - we're rich!

Winter is most definitely behind us now. Sadly we said goodbye to Sarah, the greatest little pup, she will always be here in spirit. We will miss her always.

This spring has been a very wet one, the annual grasses have burst into action and are flowering already. It's completely impossible to keep up with it, but I am hoping the summer growing perennial grasses will take over afterwards, and we can try to keep those in their growth phase much longer.

Our sheep family has grown by two recently, bringing our flock to 10, and we have at least one more lamb on the way any day now. I sure hope you enjoy pictures of baby lambs.. :)

Star's lamb is a boy, and he looks just like his daddy, Chillie. He's 7 weeks old now, and Star is slowly weaning him off milk.

Sharon's lamb is a girl, and she looks exactly like one of the wethers.. coincidence maybe or perhaps he wasn't banded properly by the breeder? She was born just two days ago, and has a big appetite. Here's another photo, they're just lovely!

Marty and I enjoy giving the sheep attention and scratches, and moving them to fresh pasture daily is great fun. There is something about listening to the sound of sheep eating fresh grass that is very gratifying.

We have another couple of ewe lambs arriving tomorrow from the same breeder we purchased the first 5 from. They're mostly black and white, one with a little "blue" colouring. We also look forward to adding another ewe lamb from South Australia later in the month, she's brown and white. With all this rain and grass, we can use all the mouths we can get! The flock will number around 14 by the end of the month, and I'll be more than happy with that number for over the summer.

Otherwise, life here on our little farm is humming along, we're just doing what needs to be done as each need arises. Sometimes the world outside seems far away, and knowing what day of the week it is feels unimportant. We did go to the Henty Machinery Field Days though! It'd been two whole years since the last one, and it was quite a good day out. We brought home a few small Murray Cod fish for the dam, hopefully to balance out the tiny fish population a little. The tiny fish have done very well in the dam, and we've had success growing water plants and edge plants finally, giving the fish plenty of hiding and breeding places. It feels like an ecosystem now, rather than the big muddy hole in the ground we started with. We love spending time down there now, just watching all the life.

Until next time.

Spring?

October is nearly over and generally it's considered Spring - at least everywhere else we've lived for quite some time. Here, it is feeling like instant Summer. Sure, there were a few days when we put the scarves and hats back on, but otherwise it's been around 30 degrees! Almost nothing in between. I'm not entirely sure if it's considered normal or not!

The last item to arrive from the Henty Machinery Field Days was the "jazz tank" from Clark tanks. Excellent colour! Not quite blue, not quite green. The shed that it's suppose to be collecting the rain from isn't ready, so the tank is waiting around for now.

Speaking of the shed.. got 2.. maybe 3 posts in the ground before our friendly neighbour in town had some advice to offer. We have spent a good few days pondering this advice.. thinking takes time! Made some changes to the design - but only in our heads at this stage.

We've been to a few "clearing sales" in the area lately too. Lots of fun, many bargains, much junk. Basically, when a farm is sold (or for a few other reasons too, I guess), the stuff the new buyers didn't want to pay for.. the stuff the farmer doesn't want or need.. and sometimes, stuff that other random people don't want too - all gets sold via auction. The junk, err, stuff.. is spread over a paddock (or bigger sometimes!) in "lots".. usually lying in a heap or on a pallet. As a group, you and everyone else follows the auctioneer around as he calls for the highest bids. Quite often the auctioneer starts the bidding at the price which he thinks it might be worth, and when no-one bids, he comes down in price until some cheeky so-and-so calls "Two dollars" (or a similar low number) and that's when the real bidding begins. Other times, the cheeky one walks away with the lot for two dollars after all! It's a fun game, but one has to be careful or you can end up either with loads and loads of junk (selling quite cheap, but it all adds up!), or spending far too much money for far too little goods to show for it.

Went to the Henty Machinary Field Days

.. and we did have a good time there!

The HMFD's was much bigger and more fun than I thought, actually. I admit, I wasn't sure if there would be much that would interest us.. Oh was I wrong!

The map, highlighted places we wanted to see.

When we first came to the area, it was quite difficult to shop for what we needed. The phone reception was spotty, the distances seemed great. Getting what we needed at a good price felt something akin to head banging a splintery wooden plank. At the HMFD's, everything was all in one place, multiple businesses all trying to get your money, and offering good prices! Not only that, but saying "We're 20 minutes thatterway" for delivery was a positive - unlike trying to explain where we are to people at our major centres only an hour away.

Marty signed us up for volunteer duty at the steakhouse, and we spent half the 2 days we went to the field days, in there. It was fun, although neither of us felt like eating steak for a few days afterwards!

Cooking steak

We came home with our little hatchback chock full. A Grandpa feeder, a beautiful ceramic water filter, and a stock trough big enough to water 4 mini cows some day. The 2,500 litre water tank arrived the next day, and the 10,000 litre one will arrive in a week or two.

Added to that, a most glorious 30mm of rain fell into our gutters! Every grass has burst into seed, all the trees have new growth, and we're no longer buying bottled drinking water. Hooray!