The Bull

It seems that trying to keep business going in "the city" and have the safe life of a farm, is a difficult balancing act. No-one believes you when you tell them your cell signal is random and they definitely don't believe that your land line goes awol with every high wind or rainstorm. Well, it is and it does.

Also, for us to fetch letters or parcels from the post office to make your shares worth anything, is 26kms there on winding hilly dusty roads and 26kms home. And when you lie and say you have sent something and we get there and you didn't, we are naturally a bit miffed. It takes at least a precious hour of daylight when we can be working our arses off doing something worthwhile. Like picking actual poo for the compost heaps instead of dealing with corporate bullshit.

I certainly will take the simplicity of farm life and work over my previous life. At least this is honest work. Got to become completely self-sustaining so as to avoid these irritations.

What do I Write?

I have been struggling to post new entries here as I just don't what would interest you about farm living. I am going to guess you either know us and want to see what we are up to. or you may want to be a fellow refugee to a more gentle life. And so, if you are reading this you are stuck with what I want to tell you!

We have been very busy out here in the sticks. It's Spring you see and lots of good things happen in Spring on a farm. Hens start laying eggs every day with a lot of fanfare in some cases. Mostly our 5 have been good girls and have laid them in their house. Someone has decided not to for the last 2 days and so we have been hunting eggs all over. These girls get around too. They follow us all over the yard and even down to the veggie garden. We haven't found them but the dogs may have beaten us to them.

Can you see how big the 80g egg is? Eish- now wonder all the squawking! And we are so sick of eggs. At least I have a great cake which uses 8 at a time. We will never go hungry out here.

We have also been preparing a new field in mounds so I can plant the seeds I have been collecting for so long. I have 8 differnt types of tomatoes in trays already and I think I still have 4 more to go. That's besides all the other things from lime basil to pineapple tops to watercress to purple carrots. Hopefully I will have a really nice spread to show you soon.

I have a  mantra too- when at a loss, make compost. The oak tree has dropped lots of leaves so I collected these today to go into a long-term compost heap. Oak are not the best leaves for quick growth until they are well rotted. All the chicken house straw and scrapings go in this pile to chase it along.

As well as all the digging (ouch I can't get out of bed) and carting compost, manure and lime, we have been cleaning up the water furrow behind our house. There was a downed tree there over the furrow and it took quite a bit of chainsaw cutting and clearing to get it sorted.

It's a very pretty spot so we decided to make a nice path and throw out lots of flower seeds along the edges. Of course in clearing we found some new friends- a meduim-sized puff adder and a 40cm night adder. We were so chuffed with the the night adder as it was our first and such a pretty snake. We found them new homes and got on with our work.
All the cleared material we shredded and put onto the path and it really is looking nice. After a bit of rain, it will be such a great spot to sit and read.

Granny has been a super-gran- working in the veggie garden every day, pulling out wattle trees in the new picnic area and just generally helping everywhere. Not bad for a 70 year old lady! She is as tough as old boots and I hope I'll be just like her at 70.

We may be supplying seed to a small seed company and so we went off to harvest some stinging nettles- with Jan's welding gloves! Those buggers sting and I managed to flick plants back into my chin several times. A lot of blue air was hanging around! BTW, Max took this photo. He is growing up so fast now. Those first 2 years dragged but now he is a lot of fun- if 2 handfuls!