Our life in the country

Changes

It's been almost 6 months since my last post. That's justifiable I think, given how busy things have been around here.

My baby girls (that's right - there's two of them) were born at 2:00am on 31st December 2009. Madeline Grace and Georgia May came 5 weeks early (which is apparently quite normal for twins) and had to stay in hospital for 2 weeks because they were being tube fed.

The last 3 months have been a bit of a blur. The three hourly feed cycle the girls had when they first came home certainly contributed to that. It's only in the past week that they have started sleeping through the night from 11pm until 6am - which is an absolute blessing! Sleep - it's the new black.

The sleep depravation has been the toughest. For a few weeks there I was averaging between 3 and 4 hours a night. It's not like the 'old days' when you could pull an all-nighter, feel tired, sleep for a couple of days and then wake up feeling vibrant and refreshed. Averaging 3-4 hours a night, night after night, for days and weeks on end seems to slowly chip away at the very fabric of your sanity and worst of all, you don't notice it. That is until someone looks at you like there's something 'wrong' with you, or maybe comments that you are being a bit 'touchy' or tells you that you should 'chill out' and you immediately fall into an uncontrollable rage, throwing things across the room, stomping your feet, assuming the fetal position and crying like a baby. That's when it dawns on you - 'I seriously need to sleep'.

However, I've still managed to keep a few of the farm projects running. Over the summer months I grew some veggies, built a chook pen, got some chooks and have almost finished construction of the new veggie plot - complete with automagic irrigation and feng-shui landscaping.

We've had lots of home grown potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, beetroot, strawberries and raspberries. The wet spring resulted in some blight in the potatoes, so I'll be starting a new potatoe patch this year.

We've been struck by almost every pest known to man, including harlequin bugs, cabbage moth, cherry slug, snails, ground beetles, garden slugs, aphids, birds and Smurf the cat - who seems to think the whole garden is one giant kitty-litter put there for his exclusive use.

My hope for next summer is that the habitat I'm working on creating (rocks, logs, mulch) and the nectar producing natives I'm inter-planting with the veggies will encourage the proliferation of predatory animals  like praying mantises, lacewings, shield bugs, lady beetles, lizzards and frogs. The intent being, to create some sort of natural biological eco-system that will help keep the 'pests' under control.

I've almost finished constructing the veggie garden. I've dug out roughly 60m of paths, lined with 3"x8" cyprus sleepers that I managed to source for only $4 each. The paths are filled with 9 cubic meters of road sand which took an estimated 150 wheel barrow loads to move with each wheel barrow taking roughly 20 spades full of sand to fill. That's a total of 3000 spades full of sand. There's a total of 11 raised veggie beds with a drip system and automagic water supply to each. There's also a bridge over the top swale that I can drive my ride-on mower across.

It's looking really good...and I'm looking forward to focusing my efforts on growing things instead of construction and spades full of sand.

The four cows are growing out well and I'm looking forward to...well...you know, in September this year. A few weeks ago I woke up on a Sunday morning to find them missing. I had left the gate between the veggie garden and the paddock open and they had all wandered out, through the veggie garden, past the house, down the drive and into the road. One of the local famers chased them to the end of the adjacent road and into an empty paddock. When I found them, they knew they were in trouble. With the help of our friendly neighbours, we walked them back down the road and back into my paddock. Naughty cows.

The problem I have now is that I only have a small and a large paddock. The large paddock is too much for the 4 cows and they are getting really fat. I'm hoping as winter comes and there will be less fodder around, the cows will lean up a bit. Otherwise, come August, it will be cow diet time.

In the meantime, my winter project will be to divide the main paddock into 6 smaller paddocks with a central laneway. That way I can control how much the cows are eating and can also maintain the pasture in a more controlled manner. Although I once swore I would never do fencing again, I've had a bit of practice now and have become quite proficient and standing them up. The idea of standing up the fences for the six paddocks, while once unimaginable, now seems like a quite satisfying and worthwhile project. I just need to break the news gently to my wife - I think she's expecting that once the veggie garden is finished my weekends will be dedicated to my fatherly duties.

Moooooooove over, there's new arrivals on the farm.

So it's the end of October and we have had a huge amount of rain, well above average, and a few warm days. This combination of warmer weather and rain has brought with it a new problem to overcome...grass...and plenty of it! It reached the point where I struggled to walk though parts of the paddock because the grass was above my waist.

The solution? Borrow some cows, 26 in fact, courtesy of my friend Steph.

I need a lot of cows for a short period of time to make sure they eat out the entire paddock (which is about 9 acres). After a couple of months, I'll have the grass under control, Steph will have slightly fatter cows, and I'll be able to put a few steers on the paddock to fatten over the summer and winter for next year.

Having never received a truck-load of cows before, the day they arrived was very exciting. A semi-trailer arrived followed closely by a rather distinctive odor. The man driving the truck clearly knew what he was doing, and not wanting to appear completely naive, I thought it best to limit my interaction with him to a nod, a smile and a polite "howdy". I figured that was a safe bet, since if I came across completely incompetent, he might be inclined to load the cows back on the truck and take them away.

Daisy (not named by me) was the first cow out of the truck. She didn't exactly do it with finesse and style - preferring instead to exit the truck and walk down the loading race backwards with the rest of the herd eagerly pushing her to get out.

 

For a bunch of cows who's mental capacity is pretty much limited to mooing, pooing and chewing grass, the unloading of the truck was a fairly orderly and relaxed affair. Each took their turn and after about 10 minutes the truck was completely empty...well, of cows that is. What the cows had eaten in the 48 hours prior to them making the journey to our farm was painted all up the sides and across the floor of the truck.

We left the cows in the yard for about 5 hours that day, to eat the grass down in the yards and to make sure everyone was okay and free of any injuries before sending them out into the main paddock. When we let them out, they all walked together around the boundary fence and across to the other side of the property, stopping at the dam for a drink along the way.

When they arrive at the fence on the other side, one of the cows moo'd. Then there was a moo from one of the steers on the adjacent property. Then one of the big steers came racing over the hill (and I'm not talking a cow walk - he was going like a bat out of hell). At one point I thought he was going to go straight through the fence - but fortunately he had the sense to stop.

He was followed shortly by the rest of the steers, who obviously couldn't run as fast as he could. And one by one, they all lined up along the fence to check out the new shealas that had mooooved in next door.

They sniffed and licked each others faces for a few minutes, then grew tired of each other and the cows went their way and the steers went their way and that was that.

So far they have been in the paddock for a week and have completely eaten all of the Capeweed and much of the grass, but seem to be avoiding the flowering rye grass.

Damselflies live in our dam

Last weekend, I went for a walk and discovered lots of damselflies hovering around our dam. When I looked closer, I found a few of them in the midst of climbing out of the water on one of the grass stems and molting their laval shells.

They then expanded their wings and waited for their new shells to harden before flying off, grabbing a mate by the throat, dunking them in the water and having their merry way with them. Not for me to judge, they have been buzzing around the place longer than we have.

I'm no expert, but I think they are Blue Ringtails (Austrolestes Annulosus). Anyway, their striking blue colour is awsome.

 



There's more photos in the "Bugs of the farm" photo album.

Unfortunately, by that evening, the swallows had gobbled most of them up. But hopefully, they will have laid enough eggs for more next year.

Sunrise on the farm

This was the view this morning when I woke up at 6:30am. The fog resting in the gully over the Tarago river.

 

Two words - fencing contractor

A couple of weeks ago, with the help of my father and friends Steph and Frog, I stood up my first fence. A milestone for me to say the least. A chance to do something really masculine - something that separates the men from the boys - like mustering cattle in the high country, plowing a field with your bare hands, necking a VB long-neck or wearing leather to mardi gras - that sort of thing. But it wasn't quite what I had in mind.

Firstly, the posts need to be positioned in a straight line. Sounds straight forward but surprisingly, it's not. In fact, it seems that even when you manage to dig all your post holes in a dead straight line - by the time you put the posts in, the holes have moved. Some of the holes even seemed to have moved uphill - which is some feat in itself. I don't understand this - but then, there are many things in the country I don't yet understand. Perhaps one day when I'm old and grey, I'll see some poor city-slicker trying to stand up their first crooked fence and just nod knowingly and smile and give them the shits.

But the posts were only half my battle. You see, it turns out that barbed wire is equally as effective at deterring humans as it is cows. In fact, one might argue that it is more effective against humans, as it is specifically designed to cut into cow hide (a.k.a. leather) - which unlike our bovine friends, we are not blessed with. Further, it seems (unless my fence making mentors were taking the piss) that the most effective way to secure the barbed wire to each end of the fence is to tie it (yes, tie it - like you do with your shoelaces). Thankfully, I didn't strike any major arteries in the delecate but painful battle that ensued between myself and the barbed wire, and all but the deepest of cuts on my hands, arms and inner thighs have now healed completely.

So now that I have successfully stood up a barbed-wire fence and swung a gate with my own hands, I know what to do next time - call a fencing contractor!

New arrivals on the farm

Yesterday we woke up to find 4 new arrivals on the farm - 4 little wild duckings swimming on our dam. I quickly grabbed the camera and went down to see if I could snap some photos. As I approached, both mum and dad and the 4 ducklings flattened themselves down in the grass and were very still.

When I approached a little closer, mother and ducklings scrambled to their feet and ran into the dam, while the drake ran off in the opposite direction quacking loudly with his wings hanging on the ground like he was injured. But I wasn't fooled, and stayed with the duck and her ducklings. After the drake realised I wasn't fooled, he also joined the family on the dam.

 

 

Many changes have taken place in the last couple of weeks. Spring has made a noticeable appearance and the change in seasons is much more profound here than in suburbia. I doubt that's because of any major geographical anomalies, but rather the lack of distractions to the obvious signs. The buds beginning to open on deciduous trees, the increasing number of birds and songs, the increasing number of insects banging at the windows of an evening, the growing grass and much to my dismay, the appearance of the odd mozzie.

Understandably, the abrupt appearance of spring has also sent me into garden overdrive. Last weekend alone my wife and I planted another 13 fruit trees taking our total to 30. We have also planted some lavenders, carrots, 125 strawberries, 3 varieties of potatoes, some tomatoes and raspberries. And that's just the beginning.

Below is an illustration (my design) of what our food forest currently looks like. In our haste to plant some trees we neglected to record the species and variety. We have also mastered the art of tree planing, taking it from a 30 minute contained catastrophe to a 5 minute highly optimised and precision operation.

 

The project for this weekend is to fence off the food forest from the rest of the pasture so that we can get some cows in to graze on the fast-growing grass. Then, the weekend after that I am going to hire a trench digger and put some poly-pipe in the ground so I can pump water from the dam up to a header tank and then gravity feed to an irrigation system in the food forest and later to watering troughs for livestock.

It's a bugs life

Adjustment to new life in the country is progressing about as well as could possibly be expected. The list of things we need to buy in order to survive day-to-day is growing faster than we can keep up with. For example, some things you don't seem to be able to  live in the country without:

• A ride on lawn mower
• A trailer for said ride on mower
• A chainsaw
• A brush-cutter
• 2 spades, a rake and a pitch fork
• A hammer
• Nails
• Screwdrivers
• Screws
• Cordless Drill
• Bits for a cordless drill
• A power drill
• A measuring wheel for measuring stuff
• An Akubra hat
• and other assorted thingies you never heard of before but can't seem to live without now.

Keen to get started on the vegetable patch in time for spring, I went ahead and bought a bunch of Cyprus sleepers with the logical intention of shovelling some of the large volumes of earth we excavated from the swales to fill the beds.

Now, true to form and showing incredible foresight and sheer brilliance, I didn't think to kill off, or at least separate, the grass sods from the rest of the earth when we excavated the swales. Lo and behold, loading those little piles of loose, brown earth with a spade turned out to be as efficient as breaking up reinforced concrete with a toothpick.

So, 1 week on after a liberal application of common sense in the form of 3 cubic meters of quality topsoil delivered from our friendly garden supply centre in Warragul, and we now have three raised garden beds ready for planting.

Our current garden tally consists of 140 strawberry plants, 4 kilos of seed potatoes, 5 rows of carrots and 17 fruit trees (Nectarines, Apples, Pears, Cherries, Limes, Peaches, Figs and others). We are also expecting to plant 5m of raspberry canes this week.

I also managed to get an hour to walk around taking photos of bugs. I like bugs. I have discovered lots of interesting bugs since I have been here and I'm keen to start building a collection of bugs from the farm. I thought it might be nice to make a coffee table book with my own photos and descriptions of their habitat, food, behavior and other interesting things. I have added this project to my growing list of other project ideas. You can never have too many incomplete or un-started projects in my opinion.

Anyway, I found a whole bunch of Harlequin Bugs and some other bug I haven't yet been able to identify (looks like a Lygaeidae - related to the same family as the Harlequin bug) which I found feeding on the new buds on an old Fig tree. I have never seen them before, but my research suggests that they both feed on new growth and fruit - which means they may be a pest in the garden. So far, all the Harlequin bugs seem to be feeding on is the Capeweed in one of the paddocks, so that's not too much of a problem for me.

This is the Harlequin bug (this one is a nymph):

 

This is an adult:

And here is the other bug I haven't identified:

 

 

And this is NOT a bug!

New start on the farm

To say it has been a big month for my wife and I would be a massive understatement. Not only did we relocate 100km from Melbourne - but the week we moved in we picked up our new cat and had our first ultrasound at the radiology in Warragul where we found out we are expecting identical twins come January!

OMG! I can't believe it! We have a cat!

I was concerned the week before we moved in that we had purchased the property in haste and that it might not be as good as I remembered and I could be disappointed and "Oh, my God! What have I done?". But my fears were allayed when we visited on the Saturday before we settled and found the property to be even more beautiful than what I had remembered.

We finally took possession on Monday 20th July 2009 and finished the big move at about 9:00p.m. that night. Once we had finished unloading the truck, I tucked into the beers, and when everything had settled, went for a walk around the property in the dark - the whole time muttering profanities to myself in disbelief at what I now faced.

Anyway, 2 weeks after we moved in, I hired a small excavator and with the help of my mate Sam, dug out four swales into what will become our food forest.

The plan is to build a food forest using the principles of permaculture. Now, I'm no hippie tree-hugger by any stretch of the imagination, however the principles of permaculture make sense to me, so I'm going to give it a try and see how we go. In short, the idea is to build a complete eco system where fruit trees and vegetable plots co-exist with other types of flowers, nectar producing bushes, trees and vines that provide insect habitat and food and maintain the overall ecological balance. So in theory, I shouldn't have to use herbicides or pesticides.

The concept of swales is to build ditches that extend along the natural contours of the land to retain water high up on the landscape and give it time to penetrate deeper down into the ground. From there, it will seep downhill slower and remain accessible to plants for longer. The ultimate goal is to make better use of the natural rainfall and reduce the need to water.

Above is a picture of the new swales with the excavated dirt piled as neatly as we could on the downhill side. You can also see some of the fruit trees we have already planted. Eventually, this area will also contain a number of vegetable beds and some flowering natives.

In the next couple of weeks I will be getting a chicken coup courtesy of my retired father. Once we have that, we will get 6 Isa Brown chickens and I'll make a chicken tractor to dig up the beds ready for vegetable planting in September/October.

It's been tough doing the almost 2 hour commute to work in Melbourne each day. But with morning views like this, it's a little easier.

We're moving to the country...gunna can some peaches...yeah

So, a few weeks ago my wife and I purchased our first home on 16 acres in Drouin West, about 100km east of Melbourne, Victoria.

Here's where our new property is:

 

View Larger Map

Both my wife and I have lived in metropolitan Melbourne almost all of our lives and neither of us have ever lived in the country. Accordingly, we are anticipating a steep learning curve. But overcoming the challenges is half of the adventure and we are looking forward to plenty of that.

We are anticipating moving in mid July - so we only have a few weeks to wait. But the wait is killing me. I just feel like I'm in a holding pattern.

Half of the house is already packed...I can't sew a button onto my trousers because the sewing kit is packed already! Luckily I have a belt.

My personal goals at this stage are to get a decent sized veggie patch and orchard planted this spring, followed by some chickens, spring lambs and a couple of pigs for slaughter next autumn. That means that we will have roughly 4 weeks to prepare the veggie patch, plant the trees, and build a pig pen, build a chook pen.

I think I have a good enough handle on the veggie and orchard requirements to have a reasonable chance of success...but the key challenge will be whether or not I am able to take my animals to slaughter after feeding and playing with them over the summer. Many people say not to give them names, or call them names like lambchop, roastpork, lambracks, etc - but I don't think that will help me. I think the best thing I can do is just keep in mind the whole time the they are there for a purpose and I can't let them become pets.

If I can manage that, then next year I plan to try my hand at poultry with meat chickens, ducks, a few geese and a turkey for christmas. For the poultry, I plan to slaughter and butcher them myself. A little fiddly, but like anything, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

It will be interesting to see if things pan out the way I imegine they will. Time will tell.