Farm update - January 2016
Hello 2016! Pete and I had two weeks holiday. We spent most of it sanding the side room, but we also managed to extract some honey and our neighbour started working on a dam in our house yard. It was fun spending so much time working together on the house. We had a bit of rain after Christmas, and so far its been around average rainfall this summer.
We really had to put some time into the side room as the paint was peeling off. Some days it was hot and we only sanded for a few hours, on cooler days we did more. We chipped away at other little jobs like raising the ceiling in the kitchen alcove and I distracted Pete with building a solar oven for an afternoon too. All I have to do is pick the drill and ask how it works....
We have spread out the paint colour samples again and painted more of the house with test pots and still thinking about it. There's no rush so we are just taking our time to see which colours we like best.
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| We spent most of our holidays dressed like this! |
Food and cooking
We opened the Christmas ham early and had so many eggs I made a bacon and egg pie for lunches. I use the cracker recipe from Nourishing Traditions for the pastry. We both enjoyed having more time at home for cooking, sometimes we fight over who's turn it is to cook...
We opened the Christmas ham early and had so many eggs I made a bacon and egg pie for lunches. I use the cracker recipe from Nourishing Traditions for the pastry. We both enjoyed having more time at home for cooking, sometimes we fight over who's turn it is to cook...
Land and farming
We had our neighbour come up to our place with his bulldozer and on the list of jobs was a small dam in the house yard, as I have had this on my permaculture plan for a couple of years (see below). Our neighbour was very skeptical about the soil where I wanted the dam, so there was much rolling of sausages and dropping lumps of dirt in water to test for clay content (more about soil testing here, I'll write more specifically about dams soon). Our conclusion was that it seems to meet all the requirements for dams, so we gave it a shot.
Bees
We took 9 frames of honey from our 3-box hive and managed to figure out how to get the bees off the frames, the frames safely home and into the kitchen, the honey uncapped and spun out of the frames in our 2-frame manual extractor, and ended up with 16 kg of honey (we thought it was more, but can't read our scales properly). We're just getting some jars organised now so we can sell it! All the advice from Sally in her interview with me was very handy!
We had our neighbour come up to our place with his bulldozer and on the list of jobs was a small dam in the house yard, as I have had this on my permaculture plan for a couple of years (see below). Our neighbour was very skeptical about the soil where I wanted the dam, so there was much rolling of sausages and dropping lumps of dirt in water to test for clay content (more about soil testing here, I'll write more specifically about dams soon). Our conclusion was that it seems to meet all the requirements for dams, so we gave it a shot.
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| the sausage test |
Bees
We took 9 frames of honey from our 3-box hive and managed to figure out how to get the bees off the frames, the frames safely home and into the kitchen, the honey uncapped and spun out of the frames in our 2-frame manual extractor, and ended up with 16 kg of honey (we thought it was more, but can't read our scales properly). We're just getting some jars organised now so we can sell it! All the advice from Sally in her interview with me was very handy!
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| Pure raw honey! |
Chickens
As we had so many spare eggs with me not selling them at work for two weeks, we decided to put some in the incubator. As our house can get so hot in summer, we now have a habit of putting the incubator in our bedroom in case we need to leave the air conditioning running at 30degC during the day (the eggs need to be at 37-38degC and it can overheat in the house). This is particularly interesting when the chicks start hatching and we can hear them peeping all night! One week to go....
As we had so many spare eggs with me not selling them at work for two weeks, we decided to put some in the incubator. As our house can get so hot in summer, we now have a habit of putting the incubator in our bedroom in case we need to leave the air conditioning running at 30degC during the day (the eggs need to be at 37-38degC and it can overheat in the house). This is particularly interesting when the chicks start hatching and we can hear them peeping all night! One week to go....
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| incubator in our bedroom.... |
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| our big Rhode Island Red rooster and one of his girls |
Cows and cattle
Our Angus-cross cows are staying pretty tame and come right over to see if we have hay. The steers are a bit flighty and some are still looking shaggy still holding onto their winter coat, we have put out extra minerals, they must be missing something.
Our Angus-cross cows are staying pretty tame and come right over to see if we have hay. The steers are a bit flighty and some are still looking shaggy still holding onto their winter coat, we have put out extra minerals, they must be missing something.
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| Angus cows visit |
Garden
With a bit of rain the garden is a JUNGLE! I am weeding out self-seeded broccoli and tomato. There is pumpkin and cucumber appearing from the compost. I'm harvesting button squash, butter beans, purple king beans, all kinds of asian greens, herbs and just waiting on the chillies to ripen and some eggplant to get bigger. No chokos so far, but I have picked a pepino (I'll write more about that soon).
House
We really had to put some time into the side room as the paint was peeling off. Some days it was hot and we only sanded for a few hours, on cooler days we did more. We chipped away at other little jobs like raising the ceiling in the kitchen alcove and I distracted Pete with building a solar oven for an afternoon too. All I have to do is pick the drill and ask how it works....
We have spread out the paint colour samples again and painted more of the house with test pots and still thinking about it. There's no rush so we are just taking our time to see which colours we like best.
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| Taz supervising the building work |
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| Still trying to choose the exterior colour.... |
Permaculture - Design from Patterns to Details
Here's what I wrote when I originally reviewed this principle. I shared my permaculture design for our property, through analysing the zones and sectors. I'm so glad I did this exercise before we moved the house onto our property. It made us thinking about where to put the house and how to orientate it. The side room with all the windows faces south and gets very little sun, whereas the north-facing verandas protect the bedrooms in summer. We get sun in the master bedroom in the morning and in the kitchen in the afternoon, but that's also sheltered by a veranda. The missing elements were the dam I wanted to help protect from bush fire (just started) and the shed (coming soon!), which we are facing with doors opening south, as a hot shed is not a pleasant place to work! We have also placed a tank on the highest point on our property to gravity feed water to stock troughs. Our next challenge is designing the landscaping and garden to be functional and enjoyable.
Here's what I wrote when I originally reviewed this principle. I shared my permaculture design for our property, through analysing the zones and sectors. I'm so glad I did this exercise before we moved the house onto our property. It made us thinking about where to put the house and how to orientate it. The side room with all the windows faces south and gets very little sun, whereas the north-facing verandas protect the bedrooms in summer. We get sun in the master bedroom in the morning and in the kitchen in the afternoon, but that's also sheltered by a veranda. The missing elements were the dam I wanted to help protect from bush fire (just started) and the shed (coming soon!), which we are facing with doors opening south, as a hot shed is not a pleasant place to work! We have also placed a tank on the highest point on our property to gravity feed water to stock troughs. Our next challenge is designing the landscaping and garden to be functional and enjoyable.
Support me
I decided that the blog needed a bit of a renovation too, seeing as I've had the same header for a few years now, and with me branching out into selling soap and salves, and soon honey, we needed a logo to tie it all together. If you pop over the blog you will see the new logo and layout. Of course when I played with the template it moved everything around and its not looking right yet....
Making Haven
Simply Joolz
And did you know that Leigh has released her new book "Critter Tales"?
How was your December and early January? I hope you got to have a break. What are your plans for 2016?
I decided that the blog needed a bit of a renovation too, seeing as I've had the same header for a few years now, and with me branching out into selling soap and salves, and soon honey, we needed a logo to tie it all together. If you pop over the blog you will see the new logo and layout. Of course when I played with the template it moved everything around and its not looking right yet....
A couple of new blogs I discovered this month:
Simply Joolz
And did you know that Leigh has released her new book "Critter Tales"?
How was your December and early January? I hope you got to have a break. What are your plans for 2016?
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