Another year done. Another one in front of us. Sandra tells me earnestly that I’m not allowed to say to anyone that: “It’ll be Christmas again before you know it!” Such restrictions on my spreading of good will feels somewhat stifling, but then the cheeky phrase was just inserted into the text. Winning! Wise to stay alert around here. And whilst we’re at it, just wanted to chuck in a big ‘Thank You!’ to all the lovely people who read the blog and take the time to comment. Without all of you most delightful people, I’d be talking to myself, and that would be weird. Seriously, thanks for dropping by, and you all make the blog a truly delightful place to hang out.
It’s hard to imagine that we moved into the unfinished house we’d built ourselves fifteen years ago, but that actually happened. Each week since then, we’ve been doing projects around the property trying to make the place productive, beautiful and easy to live with. It’s hard to say whether there was any one week in all those years where nothing happened. Remember the old timer story about the hare and the tortoise, we’re clearly the tortoise slowly plodding away week after week.
In the early days, folks visiting here were horrified at the house and surrounds! Who can forget the cheeky scamp who purchased the second hand refrigerator – he was working for a charity – who handed the $80 mad cash to Sandra before then saying: “Go and buy yourself something nice!” What a charmless man. But then, he also had a point, there was a lot of work to be done. He simply lacked vision.
A few years ago many early projects had finally been completed, and visually the place turned a corner. You could see the appreciation in the eyes of visitors. A small gothic inspired all weather and rat proof chicken run and hen house over there. Wide rock lined all weather paths over here. Fruit trees reaching mature size. Terraced gardens with neat fencing. Aesthetically pleasing sheds. The useful and sturdy looking greenhouse. There was a lot to see. It takes a couple of hours for visitors to take it all in, so sometimes we cut the tours short and head inside for a yummy lunch instead.
We see the place everyday. Some folks could suffer from a feeling of apprehension at all the epic work yet to be done, but Sandra and I just aren’t wired that way – we see what is there, and imagine the future. I can’t show you the future, and long term readers would know that future plans are rarely mentioned. So, with that limitation in mind, I thought it might be interesting to have a look back at some of the projects done during the previous year.
By around March, we’d managed to correct the storm drainage, and create a system of low gradient of paths running from the front of the house to the chicken shed (and elsewhere in the shady orchard). It was a big undertaking, and all up took fourteen months of continuous work from start to finish.
Every single day we use these paths in all weather. In the earliest days, the path to the original hastily constructed chicken enclosure traversing that same ground, was a goats track. The day the log splitter tipped over on the old track, sure there was some cracking of the sads, but a decision was made then and there to one day create a proper path. Now it’s done, and no matter how wet, any of the machines can drive over the surface, no problems at all.
You notice things too about the paths. After we applied the crushed rock with lime to the surface, all of the fruit trees on either side of the path began to grow faster than anywhere else. Sure the trees are now eating the path surface, but they also suggested that there was room for improvement with the soil fertilising processes.
Since the health subject which dare not be named of a couple of years ago, we’ve been running out of dry firewood in late spring each year. That’s what you get when we’re both forced to spend more time at home – the cost for heating has shifted onto us. We needed a bigger firewood shed. However, like any shed project here, the first question is: where will this thing be located?
An area of the farm near to the house was being poorly used, so we decided to put the new firewood shed there. Nothing here is ever easy, and a small shed first had to be demolished and a large water moved.
The water tank was moved and the shed demolished. And ever since, we’ve been filling the new rock gabion cages which retain the steep soil embankment. One day, there may even be a second, or even a third layer of cages there.
Hopefully sometime this year, we’ll construct a much larger firewood shed in that now clear site.
Every single year, without fail, the off grid solar power system receives some sort of an upgrade. This year I upgraded a couple of the solar panel fuse boxes with neater wiring and industrial grade fuses. Always best to be safe with this stuff, and fuses are the things that get you out of electrical trouble, when that is urgently needed. No point skimping on the items, and sadly there is a world out there of sort-of-may-work-possibly fuses. There are another two fuse boxes to be upgraded sometime this year.
It’s hard to recall now, but Sandra and I spent two and a half months, cleaning up the edge of the forest where the loggers had left a lot of mess. Today it looks really clean, and provides easy access for the Sambar deer and wallabies to the orchard. Sadly, the timber which was so damp that it couldn’t be saved, was burned off.
The loggers mess was on an epic scale.
Fortunately, most of the timber actually could be saved. We cut the damp logs into discs, stacked them, and by late December, the strong summer sunshine had dried them out. All have since then been turned into firewood and hauled back up the hill.
It wasn’t all project this and that, one big change with the plant management was that we began taking pruning very seriously. Thanks to a book recommended by a lovely reader (thanks Claire!) The Pruning Book by Lee Reich, we’ve had the best raspberry year that I can recall. And even the fruit trees appear to have benefited from a proper haircut.
It snowed for the first time in many years. That was an exciting few hours, and the almonds dropped their fruit, however three apricot trees out of the dozen which were in fruit, toughed it out (more on this later).
The area set aside for growing vegetables was expanded by six long garden rows. Four are now growing potatoes, one sugar beets and the other is growing mixed beetroot and radishes.
And finally, a new concrete staircase was commenced. It leads from the sunny orchard up into the courtyard to the rear of the house.
Well, as perhaps the cheeky school kid once wisely said: Then some other stuff happened. Here’s seeing what we can achieve in 2025!
Onto more recent activities: Last week we’d begun fixing up two failed garden beds on one of the terraces. The smaller of the two beds has now been completed. A rock wall has now been installed on the downhill side of the bed, whilst the rock wall adjacent to the path was also upgraded with larger rocks. It’s nice to have plenty of rocks to use on projects.
The eroded soil in the garden bed was topped up with a decent mixture of stuff. It was hot work mixing up the many wheelbarrow loads of soil feed and driving it up the hill.
The soil mix was the usual sand + fine woody mulch + mushroom compost + dolomite + garden lime + coffee grounds + blood and bone. It was hot work mixing it up and spreading it around in the strong summer sunshine, and by mid afternoon the heat was intense.
The rock wall below the long line of water tanks has been extended this week by the addition of ten large rocks.
Unfortunately, despite appearances, we’re always running short of rocks. One way of getting additional rocks here is smooshing up boulders into more useful sized rocks – which is hard work. Anyway, a day of that task and we now have about fourteen large rocks waiting to be used on projects.
And the long line of steel rock gabion cages continues to be filled with the smaller sized rocks created in the boulder smooshing up activity. The cages are being installed on the new firewood shed site.
With all those additional rocks, we now have more rocks than available space in the cages. Another cage was made, despite the 38’C / 100’F conditions. Sunday was a hot day, and as I’m typing away at 10pm, it’s still hot.
This week’s video shows how we make these cages:
Observant readers will note that the second layer of steel rock gabion cages has begun!
A few nice additional touches were made to the LPG gas cylinder stand fabricated last week. Black steel caps were place over the vertical posts, whilst plastic feet were installed at the bottom of the posts so as to keep the steel slightly off the ground.
Despite the spring snowfall, and several light frosts, three of the many apricot trees managed to produce a crop of tasty sun ripened fruit. This is the first apricot harvest in about five years and the trees have grown about 10kg / 22 pounds of sun ripened super tasty fruit. The best fruit will be used in breakfasts, but most of the apricots will be turned into jam. Yum! It’s worth noting that the parrots harvested about as much again.
About a fortnight before we had germinated the pumpkin seeds, random plants began growing in the shady orchard. So what had happened was that pumpkin seed going into the chickens feed during the year, ended up in the orchard – and now we have several pumpkins growing in random locations where the chickens soiled bedding was used.
For readers general interest, the nearby large bushfire appears to have been extinguished. It’s in some thick and remote bushland, so that’s an amazing achievement. We took a photo of the burned forest as it appears from here, and unbeknownst to us a fire fighting helicopter snuck into the image.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 13’C (55’F). For last year there was 934.2mm (36.8 inches). This year is 0.0mm (0.0 inches)
Postscript: Overnight the weather turned and large storm has dumped over an inch of much needed rain today.