Thursday, July 14, 2011

catch up

What a long time since my last post. In the thick of the busy season here at the moment, with the Small Farm Field Day weekend upon us. This is traditionally foul weather but today is quite sunny after a frosty start. We will be going tomorrow to look at obscure farm machinery and exotic poultry. Ness is after a large mechanical log-splitter after she sustained spinal damage chopping firewood with an axe last week. Those city folk are powering through our log supply and we will need to look for another source next week, all recently felled trees too green to burn.

The weed man came and approved Ness's weed control programme. It helped that he was the bloke who bought a lovely ewe lamb from us last season and is after more when the girls lamb again. Brian has calmed down and stopped attacking us when we enter his paddock so we assume that he has done his work and the girls are gestating.

Tennis news- our mismatched team managed to get into the Grand Final last week, but were outplayed on the day. Next comp starts on Thursday and I have a new team including a Kiwi and a Russian player, so all very multi-cultural on the Mudgee courts.

Hoping for duck eggs soon- Kevin is getting very amorous with Kylie. They are hopeless mothers apparently so we will try and get the hapless Snowflake the silky bantam hen to hatch them for us. The last crop of chicken hatchlings have mostly grown into useless roosters which have been separated from the others- Ness is sharpening her axe and I fear slaughter is imminent.

The Protea crop has been fantastic this year after a shaky start, so we are giving flowers away by the bucket load. If next year is as good we will get organised and sell some at the local markets.Knowing our luck we will pay for a pitch and the unpredictable plants will sulk and refuse to bloom next winter. Could always sell Ness's amazing pomegranate jam instead.

We have spent a couple of weekends in the comedy 70's caravan in order to rent our place out to large groups, but made an executive decision that we are no longer going to decamp- too cold and nowadays we just have too much stuff so emptying our unit out for rental has become a massive task. Ideally we would like to build a 3rd unit on the property to increase revenue, but funds are tight so it will need careful planning.

From Protea Farm 1