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.

Springtime 2018

In my own garden-version of no-kill cropping, I have experimented with all kinds of ways to keep from ripping weeds out of the soil, while attempting to keep my preferred plants sunlit. I find my old hand sickle far too large to use between plants. I have tried my garden knife (called a Hori hori) but it isn't sharp enough to cut grass and weeds cleanly without ripping. I then tried taking flowering seed heads off the grass with my hands. That doesn't work well when the grass lets go of the soil instead of the flower. So, I found some old grass shears that were probably in a bunch of old gardening tools, won for a few dollars at a clearing sale years ago. They're old, but in good condition, although my hand is definitely getting stronger using these shears! There's a pinch spot you have to be careful of, and a glove is useful. The cut is much nicer though, clean, and accurate. If I accidentally cut off some garlic leaves, at least I know the garlic isn't completely done for!

However, I did leave it a little late to find the best tool for the job. The grasses are flowering and dropping pollen with every snip, which makes for a sneezing, eye-watering experience. Still, everything that is cut stays where it falls, and it's fast and much easier than pulling and ripping. It's quiet, clean (no dirt flying anywhere, no dirt under my fingernails!) and I feel better not killing.
On the other hand, I understand there's a satisfaction in taking out the frustrations of life by pulling weeds, and yes, the grass are annuals and are going to die once they've flowered anyway, but this way, a living root stays in the soil as long as possible. That's the main thing. I'm going to keep going with this and see what happens.

I've been keeping the mono garlic neat and trimmed using the shears for longer than the kitchen garden beds. I simply trim back the grass around the garlic, let the grass lay where it fall, and rake the leaves and mulch back over the bed. I rake the leaves and mulch back about once a week at the moment, because the choughs are extremely diligent (but not neat) about their bug control duties.

Did I mention that I added a couple of extra hoops to the shade-house? They're a bit bigger than the original hoops, which might need to be fixed before the shadecloth goes on, but it doesn't bother me if it looks a little funny. What is funny is when birds like kookaburras or ravens or choughs try and land on the slippery hoops, wings and tail waving all around trying to keep from falling off. Well, it's either funny or I'm starting to loose it out here on my own. :)

Speaking of loosing it, I am really glad that snakes can't hear. I think they'd be offended at the scream that I let out when I see one! Honestly, I can't help myself! They're so beautiful, and after I've screamed, I usually try and get a little look at their shimmering golden brown colour. Being an Eastern Brown, I don't get closer, and every time I see one, it gets away from me as quickly as possible, which is really quick!
Almost everyone I've met around here kill snakes on sight. It's not legal, it's not ethical, it's not necessary. Well, maybe if I sprout a tail and get really small and fuzzy all of a sudden. They eat mice, not people. :p

The water tanks are about half way full. The house tank is 22,500L (5,000 gal) so, maybe 10,000L (2000 gal) full, and the structure tank (pictured above) is 10,000L, so another 5,000L (1000 gal) worth in there. The structure tank fills up faster than the house tank when it rains, and I wanted to access that water for use in the food gardens before it had a chance to overflow. I started digging the ground with a mattock to bury the water line (important as the tractors and cars drive over this spot occasionally). I found the mattock to be .. well, I'm sure you can imagine, even after a rain, the mattock makes that dull thud on the ground and little old me didn't bother doing that for too long. I found the broadfork to be an excellent tool to use instead! It went in to the soil much deeper and kept the soil in big chunks. I lay the blueline in and rolled the chunks back over the top of the pipe. Easy, even for me!

And finally, in keeping in the spirit of being nicer to the soil, I bring you seed balls version 2.0. The no-clay version.
I planted some bean seeds last month. It was a bit too cold to plant, but about 4 or 5 plants are still alive today. I re-seeded the spots that didn't make it, but this time I encased about 3 or 4 bean seeds into a ball of worm castings, and planted the whole thing. Our worm farm has been doing really well and we have enough castings to put them to good use in the garden at last. I almost can't wait to see if it works! The castings should help give them a good start, and I'm also adding dolomite to the soil around any other seedlings that I transplant. If things keep going well, and we get some more rain, we should have a really interesting growing season ahead. With all the researching, reading and educational and inspirational podcasts I've been listening to, I've been looking forward to putting it all into practice. Still, it's only spring, and when the dry, windy 40°C plus (104°F plus) weather hits, this positive attitude could very well wither and die like the grass in the paddock. Speaking of the paddock, I had read that one of the best ways to mulch (we do it with the mulching mower on the back of the tractor), is to cut it before the pollen falls from the grasses. That way, green premium hay is dropped onto the ground before the summer heat. I really enjoy "mowing", and because I cut high, and the grass isn't thick due to the lack of rain over winter, it was quite easy to do. I cut less than half the grasses, and will cut a little more soon, although I maintain quite a lot of long, wild areas to keep insects and other critters happy.

Until next time!

Unexpected progress

What a crazy month it's been! The cooler weather means we've been working a bit harder than usual to get some things done. All that came to a halt when a few mice found their way inside the cottage. Absolutely unacceptable! Haha, we did the same thing in the Old Miners Cottage, ripping apart things because of mice, and here is no exception. We took off the skirting board where the mouse hole was located..

And plastered it all up in lime before re-attaching the board.

It's been so long since we plastered, I had to look up the recipe again (our old blog came in handy)!
Problem solved, and no mice since. Phew.

Another unexpected priority was the wood rack. We knocked one up using old star pickets and a welder. I think we're finally getting the hang of this stuff! It was unexpected because we suddenly found ourselves needing the extra space under "the structure" (the car-port type thing we made) for a chance buy at a clearing sale recently...

I still can't believe I won the little Kubota with a front end loader and backhoe! Swales, earth works and pads for water tanks here we come!! Well.. right after we give her the old grease and oil change, and fix the hydraulic leak in one of the spreader arms. Sounds so simple. Ha. :) Anyway, the wood rack held all the wood that was sitting where the Kubota tractor is now. Given our "beginner" status as welders, I'm really surprised that it's holding up so well.

The new shed/workshop is making progress thanks to our good friend Anthony from the Permie group. This is gunna be great!!

We were given a lesson in mud from another Permie group friend, Dick. The mix needs a bit more sand, but the idea is there! It just goes to show how much clay content our local soil has! It shouldn't be too difficult to do the rest of the house.. it's just a matter of time now.

Yesterday we made a mud mix for the chimney tops, and did our yearly maintenance. The mud up there looked pretty good, but it got a top-up anyway. We've given the caps a lime wash so hopefully they cope with the weather even better than last year. The chimney's are clear and ready for another winter.

There was a bit of mud left over after fixing the chimney caps, so I filled in some holes on the North wall of the cottage, and also made a start on the cob walls of the tool shed. One layer down, many many more to go!

I added more straw and made a cob mix, and it's very strong with no cracks. It's a cute little project, but not a priority.

Next jobs include adding more storage capacity to the wood rack, working on / fixing the Kubota, and continuing the workshop construction. Unless something else unexpected comes up, and that happens a lot around here.

Another day, another shed

After a long hot December, we find ourselves already well into 2016 and a much cooler January than we're use to. It's almost tropical, with periods of rain, storms, and 30-something degree weather. The garden is confused! Ginger is growing well, and so is the Paulownia trees we've planted recently. Our tomatoes were given to us by a friend of ours, but of the three varieties, the cherry tomatoes are the outstanding winners. The roma tomatoes suffered blossom-end-rot and the bigger tomatoes (not sure of the variety) are suffering from the sun and rats are eating any fruit they do make. So, we're happily feasting on the cherry tomatoes. We managed to get one capsicum, sun damaged, but still quite yummy, but otherwise it's been a fairly lean summer. That's ok, it's far too warm to eat a lot anyway!

I was saying last time that we changed our minds on putting the shed where it was, and we were about to dismantle the whole thing. Marty had ground off one beam across the top and we had to leave it for a bit since it was too hot to risk starting a fire. One day we were lamenting having anywhere to store things out of the weather, especially the tractor, and I came up with a crazy plan. Lets put up the roofing iron we were donated (very generously by members of the Permie group), and use the spare C section to make it all stronger (since we made a mistake by putting the C section on the wrong way last time).. and 2 days later, we have "the structure"! The tractor is protected from the elements, there is now a large pile of straw bales and a place to store the chook food (which gives us more room by the back door of the cottage).

Then, Marty built a little tool shed to help tidy up some of the shovels, rakes and other stuff around the back door. My contribution is making the front wall of the shed out of cob (mud and straw), so it's not quite finished yet because we're waiting on some sand. No matter, the tools are out of the rain now, at least, and it won't be long until we get the sand delivery.

Australia Day was luckily not too warm, and even more luckily, it didn't rain until the next day, because we took our little Aussie made tractor down to the festivities to be part of the Australian Made machinery display. The day went pretty well, and Marty was thrilled to drive Peter's very old tractor back to his place afterwards.

Since then, we've enjoyed some lovely rain. The water tank is full again and we have some green grass even. Marty and I have also begun learning a little woodworking from a friend of ours, and lesson one is putting up yet another shed! This one will be somewhere we can work in, where the work bench and wood working tools will be, somewhere dry, hopefully a little less dusty, where we can make things from. We're very excited about it.

So, we're keeping very busy, and projects are happening.

High 4 on the A414

We worked on the tractor for over a week. By the end of it, I certainly didn't want to smell oil and grease again for at least a little while!

All of the oils were changed (that's almost 40 litres / 10.5 gallons of oil!!), the tacho (or tractormeter, as the old manual calls it) was replaced because the old one was smashed long ago.. Various filters, pumps and other bits and bobs were replaced as we needed to, breaks and clutch peddles adjusted, and finally we were able to try mowing for the first time. But first, Marty had to try her in full flight!!

Flail mowing is done in low gear, though, and not quite as exciting! haha.

We've been taking turns mowing around the house, around the orchard trees, and even mowed a strip down to the dam. The result is pretty nice, actually. It's basically mulching our entire ground. Since we've even been so lucky as to have a little rain lately, the green grass that was hiding below the brown stuff now has a chance to grow a little.

It also has meant we've been cleaning up a lot lately. There are a lot of logs, sticks and such that have been hiding in the long grass. It's also given us the incentive to finally clean up around the old shed. (Will show those pics off soon!)

Thinking a little bigger

The last clearing sale we went to was the clearing sale to end all clearing sales. We are so overwhelmed with our latest purchase that we haven't been to any others!

Not only did we come home with a ute absolutely full of stuff (again..) but this big beauty was delivered to us the very next day.

Yes, Marty is on the phone. I think the conversation went something like "Help! We brought a tractor!"

This wasn't an impulse purchase at all. We've been considering the need for a tractor.. it's been a tough decision. We were offered to purchase a tractor locally, we also looked at an advertised tractor for sale, but we could see it'd had a hard life. Of course, we've seen them at clearing sales very frequently. This one, I think, was a hidden gem.

It's an International A414. It's not a "little grey fergie", so it's not collectable, and it's not fancy, but has enough horsepower to be able to run the few implements we would like to. We spoke to the man who was selling it (ok, yes, it was after we won the auction - but it still counts!) and he confirmed what we could see with our own observations. This was a well looked-after tractor.

Bidding was pretty conservative.. Marty didn't even join-in. He waited until the last bid was called ($1800) and simply added $50 to it. I was in knots inside as we waited for the auctioneer to call it. Marty must have been, too, because he said aloud, "Finish it!", which made the auctioneer and a few others laugh, and stalled things even longer. But thankfully no-one else bid again, and the tractor was ours.

The main thing we would like to do with it, initially, is flail-mow the very long dry grass. Since we don't have stock yet, but would like to improve the pasture, flail-mowing is one solution. It's a big mulching mower.
Another thing we would like to do is run a PTO driven chipper some day.
But for now, we have the new flail mower, and that should also help reduce the fuel load in case of fire.

 It took a bit of effort for two newbies at farming to get to this stage! We havn't even used it yet.

The desire to fix the old girl up (the tractor, that is!) is strong. This bolt was snapped off, and Marty got it out and we replaced it, so now the step up to the tractor is a bit more firm. There's a lot more that needs doing, but mostly cosmetic things. The tractor itself runs very nicely (unless we forget to turn on the fuel supply).

We're just waiting for the right weather to start mowing now. A nice day after some rain would be lovely, and keep the fire risk lower, as well as the moisture in the ground under the mulch.