Boo Hoo. It’s time to cry!

Almost 7 years down here but it is time to go! Zero regrets (some people seem to think something must be wrong if I am leaving) and it has been a wonderful experience, fleeing suburbia and the ratrace is a very worthwhile thing to do. Now I need another challenge or at least a change, I’ve sort of done everything I either can or want to do done hear and am feeling restless.

When I decided to put my 5 acres on the market I didn’t expect to find a buyer in just 4 days so it certainly flustered me and I’ve been getting everything packed, sold or given away ever since. I do have until the end of November though.

I will eventually change this blog and use it for other purposes. Soon I will be overseas when I fly to Phuket on December 22nd. If you want to follow my next adventures you can check out my other blog here >>> theactoftravel

Good Wood

Sometime last year I had to get a big tree taken down. It was leaning dangerously towards my shed and had splits and rotten bits and would eventually fall. So for $650 I got a guy out to chop it down . . . carefully. Later I gave a big part of the truck (called a billet) to my neighbour because he is a nice guy and does a lot of work with big hunks of timber, fence posts and more, and also I knew he would lend me his woodsplitter so it was a chance sort of pay him indirectly for his kindness.
Then me and a friend cut up the remaining timber with a chainsaw then split it all up into firewood. I let it sit in piles for many months so it would dry and out be ready to sell this winter.
My main aim is to recoup the cost of the tree felling and have done a deal with Peter who runs the local post office and he has bought 4 ute loads of firewood for $500. I still have about $300 worth to sell so I should come out ahead. Very nice, but a lot of work.

Update: ended up selling all the firewood for $950.

Palms sort of

Some months ago when I was in Narooma, the next town north of here, I noticed a palm* had some seeds and I grabbed some. About the size of a walnut they are. It has taken these many months but some have germinated and sprouted forth and these two I have transferred into a big garden bed which I am filling with Australian natives. I am reasonably sure the palms* are Australian also. They should grow to about 2 metres tall max and grow as a bunch of branches from a stump at ground level. Ah if only I knew exactly what they are, but the main thing is they’ll do a good job of adding some variety to the garden.

*(not necessarily palms but look similar)

Leg

Just pulled this leg of  lamb out of the oven. My cat loves freshly cooked warm meat, I think he could eat the whole thing. It is a huge leg which was given to me recently. Actually I was given the whole sheep cut up ready for the freezer. I think all the meat would cost about $300 in a butcher shop but I take it for granted though always appreciate the deliciousness!

I stuffed garlic into the deep cuts and sprinkled rosemary and a little salt and cooked it a bit slower then usual. Maybe left it in too long so it is a little dry, maybe.

Chestnuts

I wasn’t sure for a few years if a certain tree I planted near the sheep shed was the walnut tree I bought or the chestnut tree. Well this year is its first year of fruiting and I have my first harvest of Chestnuts. The tree is barely 2 metres tall and I think will produce 200 chestnuts and maybe more.

And as with the fruit in the previous post, I am experimenting with preserving them. Roasting them in the oven mainly.

Preserved Fruit

Here’s my attempt at preserving some of the far too many pears my trees produced this season. Typical of me I am too lazy to find out how to preserve things properly (I did actually read up on the matter ages ago) but like to experiment even if things go wrong.

On the right is a jar of sliced cucumbers which I have no idea how they’ll taste, just had to do something with the huge amount that was produced from the one plant I had. One other jar went rotten and stunk!

The big swim meet

Every year in early March there’s a fund raiser down at the pool. Local businesses sponsor a team of four swimmers that can be made up of anyone wanting to have a swim. Participants range from kids that can barely swim at all right up to 80 year olds and everyone in between. Every team has to swim a firt swim that determines their handicap time then each team starts the following races based on their handicap. It works out fairly even. First and second in each race goed through to the next round unless they make the mistake of exceeding their handicap time by more then 4 seconds, this helps to keep everyone honest. This also makes it best to just try and come second each time.

The pool only has four lanes and is 25 metres long  and each swimmer swims one length so it isn’t to challenging.

Anyway, I swam with some frineds and we could only manage to come third in the final. In the photo is our team. On the left is Ruby who is six years old, Sophie who is 7 years old, then Craig their father (who’s holding Fiona one of Craig’s 6 daugthers) and then me Holding out the phone to take this photo.

There’s a sausage sizzle and other stuff sold to raise some money. I have been three times now and always buy $5 worth of cakes all in single serve size and 50 cents each. I eat them during the following week.

The team that came second included Craig’s wife Julie, another of their daugthers named Ivy, Julie’s 80 year old grandmother and a young girl. The team that came first included twin brothers who are slightly handicapped in some way but are big and strong and get rally into it.

Dam Buster

More rain. Amazing. The other week, February 3, 4 and 5,  (see photo and post below) was the first good rain in exactly 2 years. At 250mm it was 50% of all of last year’s rain. The photo below was taken before the dam filled right up.

Then unexpectedly on Febraury 12, 13, 14 and 15 I had another 212mm of rain.  So including January, I have had more rain than all of last year. I keep harping on about the rainfall of last year as it was the worst in my 6 years of living here and the year before was also bad.

Anyway, this photo shows how in this last downpour the dam overflowed quicker and heaps of water. Now that the surrounding ground (including the whole area I mean) has soaked up plenty of water, the run-off was much more extreme. This is the most I have ever seen the dam overflow.

This is now the first time in 2 years I can closed the gates to some of the paddocks and let the sheep just eat in one or two paddocks while the grass grows in others.

And if you haven’t seen this photo, this is what my dam looked like the day before the rains came. http://5acrefarmer.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/how-good-were-the-bad-old-days/

Wildlife

 

Here’s a thread I started on a Facebook group (Hi Helen!) that I thought I might as well put here. This photo I took several years ago.

Life in the countryside has its little moments.

These last few days I have stopped and saved 2 or 3 tortoises that recklessly cross the roads without looking left or right.

Today I found one about 10 metres from the house trapped in a pond sort of thing that may have had water in it so he/she plomped in but could not get out. I relocated said tort into my dam. Said tort slowly stuck head out of the water and looked around, accepted my dam as adequate and slid under.

Today I did some mowing, bad idea. Now I can see the snakes in the area. Watched one for awhile but got bored with that.

Also moved a water trough but put it back as a blue tongue lizard was living under it.

And the monstrous spider that hangs outside my kitchen window at night is too frightening to describe.

Oh yeah, a few days ago after saving a tortoise, further along the road was a Wallaby stupidly standing right in the middle of said road. I slowed down well before said dumb Wallaby which helped the car and caravan following me to also see said wallaby. But coming around a corner in the other direction was another car/caravan combo that did not have time to stop. Eeck, I sat there waiting to see which way the roo would jump once it realised said car/caravan combo was coming up from behind. But a lass, no splat as said stupid (but very pretty Wallaby) by chance mind you jump in the correct non-splat direction and we all moved on.

I saw a parrot clunk into a window but that’s nothing.

And yes, I know . . . alas.

2 years almost to the day

Finally! Not since February 9th 2008 have we had good rain. Now we are having more than we need but no one is complaining. It started tuesday evening with 11mm of rain, then 53mm on wednesday, 129mm yesterday and today at 2pm there has been 38mm and it is still raining.

All the creeks are running, you actually forget they ever could. The photo shows the dam filling up. Did not rise much at first as the soil was soaking up all the water it could but starting sometime yesterday when the soil was nice and wet and the run-off started, the dam filled very quickly. Now that it has reached nearer the top which of course is wider and holds heaps more water it will seem to fill slower but even if it stopped raining now the dam will still fill from continual run-off from the land next door. Most likely the dam will overflow for the next few weeks.

And if you look close you can see the sheep standing at the front of the dam soaking up the rain themselves. Strange. They have two shelters that only this afternoon are they bothering to stand under.

So in less then three days the area has had 50% of all the rainfall of last year.