Beaten By The Rain

This is the first of our onion harvest....

and our garlic...

Here you can see the garlic braids. They have since been moved inside 

which we managed to get in before the rain on Monday night. If you wander over to Linda's, you will see rule no. 4 tells you to pick the garlic ( or onions ) in the right weather i.e. when it's dry. But we missed that opportunity and had to harvest it in the rain. It has rained for 4 days now and if we'd left them in the ground they would certainly have rotted sooooo, Mark and his daughter, Rebecca, have been working tirelessly to get the crop in, and hanging it to dry.

This is the last of the garlic. Tomorrow it will be moved into the movie room in front of the fans . Once dry Mark and Rebecca will clean it up and braid it. ( a messy job, they are both covered in mud)

Here's the bulk of it hanging in front of the fans. The onions are bunched and the garlic has been braided.

Not an ideal situation. We have our fingers crossed that it will dry well!

Milking Time

Mark with Bella, Patsy and Blossom

Mark started milking Patsy the second day after little Blossom was born. Blossom is Patsy's first calf and we weren't sure how well she take to milking. But due to Mark's educating and handling of Patsy since she was a young calf she has handled the whole thing really well. Mark even found her waiting in the milking shed this morning. Mark is milking Patsy morning and evening at the moment to get her used to milking but also to take some pressure off her udder.

In about a week, Blossom will be locked up in the calf pen after her afternoon feed. This allows Mark to get the first lot of milk in the morning before the calf takes it all. He will take between 3-6 litres every morning and leave plenty for the calf to feed any time throughout the day. The cow is mostly happy with this procedure as she feels happy to know that the calf is secure all night while she can go off and graze and the calf is kept warm and safe overnight and wouldn't feed again during the night anyway, so seems to suit all round.

We only milk once a day and get more than enough milk for our needs. We have plenty to drink and enough to make all the cheese and yoghurt we need.

Welcome to the Newest Addition

We have been waiting for the arrival of a calf from Bella....

 We expected her to give birth in October, but no calf appeared. It seems that she had a phantom pregnancy.
Meanwhile while our attention was on said cow, young Patsy has silently and secretly been blossoming....
About 2 weeks ago it came to our attention that Patsy's udder was starting to grow, She was bagging up, which could only mean one thing. Just under 9 months ago a bull had got to her. We were unsure when the calf would be born as we had no idea when the bull visited. We hoped that it might have appeared for the visiting school children, but sadly no. But late yesterday afternoon we discovered this....

A beautiful little heifer

Here she is with her mum and grandmother.

It will be so good to have creamy fresh milk again!

Life's Like That

Some of you may have  been wondering what had become of me. Well I'm still here, but completely taken up with what life has had planned for me. In the words of John Lennon... "Life's what happens while you're busy making other plans.." or something like that!
Just a little run down of what's been going on here since last I posted.
We had a class from the Uni come out for a Tour, It was my birthday on 11/11/11 and after running a workshop for the council we had a picnic in the park and Rhonnie came out for tea. Then it was all hands on deck getting the farm ready for a class 3 camp form a Steiner school. We had 17, 8/9 year olds and 6 adults come and spend 2 nights camping in their tents. It rained the whole time but we didn't let that interfere with the fun. There were animals to feed, eggs to collect, sour dough bread to make, newspaper pots to make, potting mix to make and potatoes to plant.We needed to harvest vegies and prepare meals made from our lovely produce. It was a very busy couple of days and both Mark and I are exhausted. Mark reckons it's easier to hoe rows than look after children.. I think he could be right.
But no time to rest we needed to get ourselves ready for the council's Living Smart Festival where we were presenting a talk on Mandala Gardens and erecting a stall to show case the vents and workshops we have planned for next year. It went quite well with people showing interest in our calendar of events. And Marks talk was well received and he even attracted 2 interviews on ABC radio!
From there we rushed home to feed animals and be at a dinner by 6pm to deliver a speech to Permaculture North Sydney who were in the Hunter visiting some local Permaculture properties. We talked about community involvement from a purple pear perspective and how that relates to permaculture for us i.e. Chapter 14 in the Permaculture manual. We spoke about Transition Towns, LETS trading, Permablitzes, Citrus drive, Bike awareness, Festivals and much more. And this morning that same group came out to the farm for a tour and morning tea.
Some comments...
                          Fantastic. Real Permaculture. Thankyou
                          An inspiration to us all!
                          The sum of your accumulated knowledge and skills is infinite. Thanks for sharing it.
                           Your property has a wonderful energy. You walk your talk- congratulations, it's no mean feat!!

They were a great bunch of people and it was a real pleasure to have then on the farm. Showing people, who are really interested in Permaculture, around the farm is such a buzz.

That's just about it for us this year. I only have my daughter's baby shower next weekend and then I'll be able to draw breath. I would like to say a big thankyou to all you wonderful  people who left me such lovely comments after the death of my mum. They meant a lot to me. I hope to be able to get back to regular blog posts. And now if I could just find my camera!!!

Let's Talk About Spring

We have most of our Spring plantings done....

There are new babies.....

The completion of a very successful Spring PDC ( permaculture design course)....

 This morning a bus load of Uni students turned up for a Farm Tour. They were a great bunch of young people and it gives me hope that things just might be OK.

We have had a busy spring. Just as the PDC was to start Mark's son and  his daughter and her partner and their 3 children moved into our tiny house. The lease was up on their rental and so far they have been unable to find a new place. It's been wonderful to have the grandchildren around and today I thought it would be nice to set up a Spring Nature Table....

Because Elizabeth is so taken with the little chicks  (31 in all)  I thought some pom pom chicks would be good to begin with, one yellow and one white.And a little bird in a nest. I'll see if she would like to help me felt some eggs.

It's fun to have little ones around!

Yarn Along Christmas Gifts.

Joining in with Ginny for a look at what I'm knitting and reading.

'Well, I Wonder' is a look at childhood from a Steiner perspective. Are our children missing out on their childhood? "Surrounded by technology and pressured into early learning. the modern child is often bounced between the' entertainment'  of television and computer games and the premature intellectualization of early reading and school tests'. It looks at strategies for providing the traditional qualities associated with childhood- imagination, play, wonder and fun. I'll be buying this for one of my daughters for Christmas.

This is the beginning of a dress knitted in cotton for our youngest grand daughter  for Christmas.

Have you started your handmade Christmas gifts yet?