It’s really damn hot. For winter, it’s hot. Too hot. Disturbingly hot. This morning I drove past a tabloid sheet that pronounced today the "hottest winter day ever". I felt every degree, arm out the window as i drove. Last time I ventured into the bigbackyard to blog I was in need of gumboots and wet weather gear (or was alternatively unclothed, often a better way to manage the ridiculous downpours). Today, by contrast, I set foot on dry land, gumboot-less and in need of sun protection. Where once there were small lakes and sodden fields the earth is dry, compacted, cracked, shrinking away from fence posts and pipes and from around the stems and roots of plants. I find myself wondering, with an edge of anxiety, when the next shower will come. My sister calls me and says she’s run out of water. I am shocked. She’s had an excess of water for about 2 years. I am suddenly conscious again of the capricious nature of the weather and that drought is only ever a few days away from the last shower. We’ve been living in a wet dream of too much water for so long now that the days of hauling water from the duck’s bath to nourish the plants is a dim memory. From the side door I can see the usually psychedelic greenness of the surrounding hills turning brown before my eyes. Smoke rises like a warning from spot fires along the horizon. Farmers are burning off, anticipating a scorching summer. The smoke creates a quality of light which engenders a sense of unease: yellowish, dense and strained through the threat of fires to come. I plan rescue strategies for the vegetable gardens and carry bucket after bucket of water to the newly planted and embattled palms in the driveway. Looking out into the big paddock, I worry about the lack of pasture for the cows, and the impact of their hooves on the dry earth. Only weeks ago the paddock was carpeted by an impossible lushness of fodder for my small herd. Today I see a carpet of yellow; fireweed; and a forest of those weeds that grow green parachutes full of beautiful but evil diaphanous seed-silk, carried on the hot early summer breezes. I don’t know the name for this weed. I see very little in the way of food for my cows, in particular little to nourish cows in calf. I worry about the cost of feeding the cows through the dry, about hauling bales of lucerne from Casino or Tatham to see them through.

Sage words from local farmers indicate a dry season that may last well into next year, no doubt punctuated by heavy weather phenomena, the kind of weather that rumbles and boils out of a clear blue sky at the end of a scathingly hot day. The kind of weather that splits trees in two and blows apart churches. The kind of weather that turns on you, spitting in fury. No, Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore but Heavy Weather is here to stay…

So, having created the weather for this entry, i sit sweating in the double edged loveliness of it, looking into the cavernous gap of time between my last foray into the bigbackyard and this, today’s expedition. Alot has happened.

I did just mention in passing, did i not, without really a pause for breath; "cows in calf"? Yes! I did! While there is no empirical evidence to support my belief, I am quite certain that Little Grrl (now the banner pinup cow for this site!) is in calf. I’m unsure about Rosie, but Little Grrl was looking decidedly rotund this afternoon when I went to feed her and while I have, as I say, no empirical evidence, I witnessed some interesting bullish happenings last time Little Grrl was on heat. Not the least of these things being that Charlie is now a capable bull, and tall enough to mount Little Grrl successfully. Which he was doing repeatedly the last time she was on heat. However, more interestingly, during the same estrus period a bull from the next door property managed to jump all fences and and spend the night with Little Grrl in the house paddock. That bulls can sense the estrus from quite some distance and another property away is quite amazing. They are quite capable of and will jump fences to get to a cow in heat. As i witnessed. I’d say it was a rowdy night, judging by the bellowing, and none of my cows slept much, but the bulls know when to take their leave, and in the morning, not a sign of big bull. This will be Little Grrl’s first calf, which also means that she will be a lactating heifer, and I will have 2 house cows to milk. I feel some trepidation about milking Little Grrl. She has horns and is not afraid to use them. Her udder has never been handled, and while she has been hand raised and is very domesticated, she’s feisty and frisky and will top a puny human every time, regardless of puny human cow-topping strategies… one should always respect a good set of horns. I expect I will have to build her a stanchion for milking purposes, and perhaps restrain her while milking so she doesn’t kick me. All this will be a new experience for me, as I’m so used to milking Rosie freestyle, she being the most accommodating of cows.

My small herd of four became three recently. Regular visitors to the backyard will have seen photos of Miss Pretty, the sweet calf I raised by hand from just days old. She was a rescue calf from Trevor’s Dairy where the Lad used to work. A pure Illawarra dairy calf, sweet natured, very docile and human-friendly. Miss Pretty died recently after swallowing something which caused a blockage in her oesophagus and subsequently created bloat. Bloat is a distressing ailment for an animal. The animal is unable to belch, swallow saliva (cows produce up to an amazing 100 litres of saliva a day) or chew their cud. The gasses in the rumen expand and can’t escape, creating pressure on the lungs and obstructing bloodflow. Death can occur very quickly from suffocation and other complications. In a cow, diagnosis is often difficult and death is often sudden. Decisions need to be made quickly. The veterinary approaches to dealing with such emergencies are primitive and harsh. Thus a knife between the ribs or a metal tube down the oesophagus are part of the arsenal of emergency veterinary treatments. But one does what one can to try and preserve the life of a healthy animal. I desperately wanted to save Miss Pretty. I wanted to watch her calve and milk her. In the end, following 4 very distressing visits from the vet all through the day and night, I chose to euthanize Miss Pretty to end her suffering. The treatments were punishing. I couldn’t watch anymore. Miss Pretty was euthanized and buried down in the old pig pen, near May the goat and Charlie the rescue calf. I wasn’t alone in digging her grave and tossing the red soil on her red red coat. There were 5 of us quietly digging her grave, sweating alot and passing small comments. I am blessed to be living as part of a community that honors the processes of life and death as part of a sustainable system rather than just eating it, vacuum packed, from the supermarket.

 

Of course where there is death there is also an abundance of life. From where I sit, I can turn my head left and see out the side door down the garden path, towards the vegetable gardens and the hills beyond. The house gardens are still green, and the vegetable beds are full of bolting brassicas, rushing toward seed in the unseasonal heat. I have been eating fresh broccoli for nights and nights now, snapped from the stalk and steamed, with only cracked pepper as an accessory. Perhaps a squeeze of lemon. Maybe the smallest dob of butter. One doesn’t want to overdress fresh broccoli. The chinese cabbages are sprouting unruly heads of yellow flowers, securing their place in next season’s garden. Cauliflowers are nearing their denouement, packed tightly in their parcel of outer leaves, perfectly formed, having outrun the appetites of the green caterpillars. Baby greens are thriving and there is an abundance of last season’s straggler leeks, spring onions, brown onions, kaffir lime leaves, curry leaves, lemongrass, limes, lemons, galangal and mint for the creation of sublime evening meals.

citrus mania - taken by esther, farmfriend and marmalade queen

This abundance is due in large part to the time and energy of my farm family and to the neverending stream of urban retreaters, wwoofers and devoted friends who are so generous with their time and skills. After a despondent season or two, the gardens have now been beautifully overhauled and feel manageable, viable and are beginning a cycle of newfound productivity, I do believe.

Continuing the theme of abundance, I found yesterday a goose egg in the small goose house under the mulberry tree (which, incidentally, is ripening its berries at a rapid rate and subsequently i have stained lips and fingers most of the time…). This egg was the first goose egg i think i have ever seen. The appearance of the egg makes one thing clear: one of the geese is female, and since, apparently, it is rare for geese to lay unfertilised eggs, I would say I have a mating pair! I haven’t yet seen any mating activities between the birds, and believe me i keep a close eye on such things, but goslings would be a fine thing. The egg is sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, while i ponder what to do with it. Apparently if the egg is eaten on the day it is laid it is referred to as a Golden Egg. This is now a second day egg. I haven’t come across any references to second day egg naming. The shell of the egg is very white and somewhat matte and chalky. it sits next to a much smaller duck egg, with it’s waxy, smooth and slightly blueish shell, and a tiny smooth brown shelled chicken’s egg.

 

eggs: goose, duck, chicken

I think I will have a goosey scramble for dinner. 

Sending you all golden eggs and an abundance of all that is good. Let’s catch up again soon.

Ms V x

Heavy Weather: Taken From the title of a novel by cyberpunk writer Bruce Sterling. The sf thriller is set in a near-future world suffering from "heavy weather" - tornadoes and other phenomena caused by the runaway greenhouse effect. Last year a tornado hit Dunoon. My friend’s response to my frantic texting, knowing my penchant for drama, was "… yes, Dorothy … were’s Toto?". We don’t have tornados in Australia, do we?

It seems that Heavy Weather is back with a vengeance… Brisbane has been trashed by freak storms for days on end. We’ve had ceaseless rain for 2 weeks, now punctuated by blazing days with a hint of the storm to come rumbling on the horizon. Yesterday, after a very very hot day, the Dairylad and I sat on the back verandah and watched the clouds build and boil and race across the sky, eventually hitting us with great sound and fury - every kind of lightning, winds,  and bucketing rain. Two little calves sheltered on the verandah, soaked, despite the warm protected home we made for them. The rain was driving in horizontally and overflowing from the gutters, straight on to the little ones. I expect this weather pattern to continue, much as it did at the end of last year, leading up to the floods of new year.

I mentioned calves (do I ever *not* mention calves in this blog?) … Yes, we have calves. You saw Pretty (since that’s what we’ve called her in lieu of a name since she arrived here, it has become her name!) in the last post. She’s still tiny and delicate and sweet natured. She’s been a little sick, but is getting stronger every day. She has a companion now, a little bull calf called Joe. There is a story to Joe. He was rescued during a day of freakish storms…

I answered the phone the other day to one of our very neighbourly neighbours, Heidi. She told me that she had just been visiting some friends down the road, when a farmer called by to say that the mother of one of his calves had died, and he didn’t think he’d be able to rear the calf. Heidi, knowing that we are the local calf nursery, told the farmer that we might be willing to take the calf. I asked how old and what breed and so on, and apparently the bull was only 2 days old, and his mother had died while calving. So I’m guessing this means that he didn’t get the very first all-important drink from his mum. (the colostrum she produces post calving passes on her immunity to the calf, protecting the calf from all sorts of disease. There is a window period of 6 hours when the calf is receptive to this.) Anyway, it turns out the calf is a pure bred and registered Limousin bull (nice beef breed - Sunny’s sire out of Tippi was a Limousin). For us to buy a pure Limousin calf would cost us round $150. Bulls run to the thousands. So our good turn for the farmer was really a great bonus for us. We collected him in treacherous weather… I am sure the calf would have died had he stayed in the rain, and without a mum and no milk… he came home in the car with us, and was bedded down on the verandah with Miss Pretty. He’s a quiet calf, reluctant to drink, and very… slow… he moves very slowly. We’ll be happy the day he does a little high kick and highland fling, in the way that calves do. It’s such an expression of good health and happiness on their part. Not sure why he’s so… lacklustre, but possibly he’s still recovering from a traumatic birth and also, maybe he didn’t get his first drink. Anyway, we are deciding whether we should/could to keep him as our herd bull… He would produce beautiful calves with Frenchy - Charloais/LimousinX, and also with our other cows. Obviously he’s not going to be up to the job for another 2 years, but it’s about building something slowly, this cow business…

Currently we are in the position of having to artificially inseminate our cows, since we don’t have a bull. And milkers need to be impregnated in order to produce milk. As long as they have a calf on them they will continue to produce milk, though I’m no sure how long the cow produces milk for in quantities that are useful after calving. Little Girl is about ready to be impregnated for the first time, and Rosie will probably be ready in a few months also, though we need to stagger the impregnation, since the cows are dried off a few months before calving, so we want to organise it so that we aren’t without milk during that period. Frenchy can be impregnated at any time from now on, really.

So to have our own herd bull would be fantastic. We just have to see how he holds up I guess, and whether our small holding is suitable for keeping a bull. And maybe check on a few things like what size calves he’s likely to produce, and will any of our cows have trouble calving. His mum died because she prolapsed. It’s a bit graphic, but he’s a huge calf, and i’m not surprised his mum’s insides fell out while calving. I don’t want that to happen to any of our cows.

Apart from calves, there are gardens. I’ve had quite a productive time, and have had much welcome assistance from city dwellers coming for a farmstay. Erica and Coonan and Katy spent about a week in total here, and when it wasn’t raining, spent time in the gardens with me, mowing and reorganising the garden beds so that they are more manageable for me, and less available to rabbits. So things are getting crossed off my mammoth list. I’m happiest when writing lists and crossing things off said list.

So now I have one huge garden bed whittled down to a raised bed of reasonable size. The rest of the mammoth garden bed will return from whence it came - to lawn… The raised bed is still a work in progress, but looking good. Around this I will place pots up on decorative stumps and grow herbs and green leafy vegetables in them. Just down the hill a tad from this raised bed is the bed which was the winter bed of onions and leeks, which we have been eating for a long time now. Plenty of leeks still to eat out of that bed! This one I will fence with rabbit wire and star pickets. It will get any the runoff from the raised bed, which will be very beneficial for it. There are 2 more beds. One, neglected for the longest time, I mulched just this morning. It self seeds a variety of greens such as tatsoi, baby spinach, chard, rocket and parsley. Oh and bulbing fennel. I just gave it some love and attention, and I’m sure it will become a productive part of the system again soon! The second bed is full of weeds and seeding parsley. The bed is fully in te shade, since it contains a lime tree, a large rosemary shrub and a huge cycad. Anyway, I’m going to mulch it and see where to go from there. Some herbs seem happy in there, growing in amongst the trees and other plants.

The other thing which is about to happen is that we are installing a "hidden fence", a dog containment area which means that, come Saturday, our chooks and ducks will be free to range again, without fear of massacre. This will make me very happy. The ducks can go home, the chooks can live in a duck free environment and maybe maybe i will even get some geese for the orchard!

Seems that systems are being restored, and if my environment is functional, then perhaps i will be more so!

Now, I have photos, of course! Of Miss Pretty thinking I am her mum, and of a sleeping Joe. Gorgeous.

joe sleeping, which is all he ever seems to do, on the first sunny day after 2 weeks of rain

joe’s eyelashes

miss pretty

i am her mother… !

more gorgeousness

a succesful escape attempt by 2 small dogs… just go out through the glass!

pretty lyra - farmstay dog (belongs to erica, urban escapee and gardening buddy)

my lovely Likely Dairylad and 2 lovable terrors

That’s all for today… I shall post photos of the garden progress next time.

Backyard love,

from your Ms Everything, Vxx 

 So I mentioned in the last post that Charlene has a new job. She’s still a dairylad, just changed venues. It was not a choice she would have made given different circumstances, and it was certainly nothing to do with dissatisfaction at Briarose dairy. Charlene drove the equivalent of a trip to Sydney every 3 days in her travels to and from work, 2 shifts a day. Petrol is at a premium and i’m sure she’s not the only person who is having to make decisions based on the cost of commuting, especially in regional areas where the distances are long and public transport is light on, ok, nonexistent… She loved her workmates at Briarose, she learned alot, loved the cows (they’re so pretty!) and especially will miss Alan who she worked alongside most days. In her words, he’s the best guy she’s ever met. What is so beautiful about this family (not just Brian and Rosie, but Flo and Roy, Brian’s parents also) and the workers at Briarose is that they accepted Charlene for exactly who she is, no judgment, open hearted and open minds, knowing she came fresh from the city with no experience, but what they could see was her desire to learn, her love for the cows and a sharp intelligence.

She started her new job today, with Trevor and his wife Alyssa at Dan Springs. Dan Springs is a 300 acre property just 10 minutes walk from home. They run Illawarra cattle and some fresians. Illawarras are big reddish brown and white cows that are big boned and very docile. They have long serious faces, not the cute upturned pixie noses of the jerseys.

The Illawarra

She will be their sole employee, so she will learn everything about the farm and Trevor has already learned all he needs to know about Charlene on the dairy grapevine (this is a phenomena we are just beginning to understand…) and seems well pleased… They produce alot of milk, quite high in protein but nowhere near the creaminess of the jersey. She came home well pleased with books underarm, having spent a day hooning around on quad bikes, riding shotgun on the tractor, learning about silage, communing with calves, and having eaten lunch with the family (including a delicious thai desert of coconut jelly!) AND an afternoon tea of scones. Her hours will be sane - every second day she starts at 5.10am, and on the other day she starts at the totally civilised hour of 8.30am… and she’ll be able to walk home for lunch! minus coconut jelly… unless i get inspired!

So to use a totally meaningless piece of verbiage… it’s all good!

I wanted some pictures of our herd as it is now, since the small ones have grown so much and, while it might look like a raggletaggle bunch of cows, I think we have a really nice herd. Every cow has it’s place. Little Girl will be our second housecow (so i’d better get that cheesemaking paraphernalia happening quick smart…), Frenchie is our prime beef breeder. Tippi is Mum to Sunny, and is growing her into a lovely little beef cow through mother’s milk (nothing better to grow a calf on…). Sunny and Willy will be grown freely and stay with their mums and will provide food for us and others when they are big enough (it’s not awful, it’s self sufficiency folks). Luka is a freak of nature albeit a cuddly little bear of a freak, and her job is just to be adorable. Tippi will go to market eventually. Rosie will be our housecow for always.

Little Girl, like a princess wearing a tiara

There’s something tasty down there

legs and udders

hiding behind mum

the family

One of the problems we are having at the moment is how dry it is, and the consequent lack of nutritious feed for our herd. A couple of days ago we sent Hinimoa away on a truck to the marketplace. There was just not enough feed to go around. Hinimoa is one of Michael’s original Dexter herd, and was born on the property, so it was hard to send her away. I hope she went to join a herd of Dexters, but we cannot know her fate. A fact of life is bills, and the sale of Hinimoa will enable us to get a piece of machinery fixed. She was a crazy, rotund, bolshy cow and we’ve all had our moments of terror with her as she bore down upon us shaking her head and horns like a wild thing but she’d always pull up short just as you were about to make a run for it… i’ve seen the looks of terror in the eyes of visitors…which often made me laugh, cruel as that may seem!

 The other problem we are having with pasture at the moment is fireweed… fireweed is evil… it spreads, as its name suggests, like wildfire, and carpets te ground so that no groundcover can grow… When one looks out over a field of fireweed te sunny yellow flowers look deceptively uplifting, like little buttercups in spring and so on…

 

…but the thirteen petalled flower is noxious, inedible by livestock, poisonous and difficult to eradicate. My mission… eradicate fireweed! So today I spent some hours pulling acres of fireweed by hand and carting it to the burn pile. Thankfull I’m a little bit obsessive compulsive, so tasks that require a singleminded dedication and repetition and stamina are right up my alley. I *will* eradicate the fireweed! The reason for its existence is a deficiency in the soil (I need to know more about this), but if one can establish ground cover, then the fireweed will retreat. Hopefully by hand weeding, and if some rain comes, there might be some hope for the pasture to reestablish… Then there are the thistles and the tobacco weed and the farmer’s friend and the alien weed with its evil pods… I would rather weed acres and acres by hand though than use any chemical eradicator…

It seems I’m making a habit of including recipes in my posts lately. The one I’m going to include today is the one that I won the very local bakeoff with! Well, i think me and the baklava kind of won it together, and maybe the baklava just pipped me at the post, but the judges, being ever so fair, made 2 prizes for the baked goods. My prize was a fridge magnet bearing the slogan, overlayed over a 1950’s kitchen and its’ 1950’s housewife, * a clean house is the sign of a wasted life* Ah, how ironic, me being a pedant about domestic duty and all that… most people laughed, some looked at me with pity - those who *knew*. Anyway, dammit I won, and I’m all about competition.

Oh yes, so what did i bake? Well, it was a gluten free lemon curd tart with almond and hazlenut base with chocolate ganache topping. Yes. Well you might drool. It’s damn fine… and here’s the recipe, cannibalised bits and pieces from a number of recipes… I’ll have to try and dig up a photo of this one from somewhere…

Gluten Free Pastry:
6 tbsp butter
3 tbsp caster sugar
grated zest of 1 lemon
1 free range egg
1/2 cup rice flour
1/2 cup of almond meal

Now I find that sometimes this makes quite a wet dough and i tend to add more almond meal and so on, up to 1 cup of each to make it more workable. It does harden up when it rests in the fridge. You can also add hazelnut meal, or whatever you fancy.

Spring form tin, greased and floured.

. Preheat the oven to 200C
. Briefly mix butter, sugar and grated lemon zest in a food processor or similar
. Add the egg and beat for a moment or 2
. Mix in the flours and add extra if you need until the dough comes together
. Make a ball of the pastry, wrap it in clingfilm and let it rest in the fridge for 1 hour
. Roll out the dough on a floured surface in the shape of the tin, cut enough for the sides and the base. This is more of a press into the pan dough, because of its consistency.
. Prick all over the base with a fork.
. Line the pastry with baking paper and fill it with rice or ceramic baking beans. Bake for 15 minutes.
. Remove paper and grains and cook in the oven for a further 5 minutes or until it seems well cooked.
. Set aside to cool

Lemon Curd Filling:
4 lemons
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 lb unsalted butter
4 large free range eggs
pinch salt

. Remove the zest of the lemons
. Squeeze 1/2 cup of juice and set aside
. Process the zest and the sugar in a blender or some such
. In a mixer, cream the butter with the sugar zest mixture
. Add the eggs one at a time, the add the lime juice until all is combined. the mixture will separate, and this is normal. Once you heat it, it will emulsify.
. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and heat over a low heat until thickened. The curd will thicken at about 175F
. Set aside to cool
. Pour into shell and allow to set at room temperature.

Chocolate Ganache
Some full cream, maybe a cup
About 3/4 block of dark bitter chocolate (I use the 85% lindt or green and black), cut up into small pieces
I tend to just estimate this bit, the quantities aren’t fixed.

. Heat the cream to a simmer. Do not boil
. Take the cream off the heat and drop the chocolate in. Stir until the chocolate melts into the cream, smoothly.
. Set aside. Put in the fridge if you like
. When the curd is set and the ganache is cool and slightly thick, you can pour the ganache over the curd.
. Another use for the ganache in this recipe is to line the pie case with ganache, base and sides before you pour in the cooled curd.

 Eat! I wish i had a photo of this, but I will take one next time I make it.

Time passes, its cold today and we’ll be needing a fire, the cows are bellowing and the ducks are telling me to get them some food, and make it snappy…

Thanks for dropping by

farmhousewife xx

 

Introducing Sunny

The newest member of our herd, Dexter X Limousin heifer of Tippi out of the gnarly red Limousin bull next door (one good thing to come from Tippi’s sojourn over the fence!).

So… we were right in our assessment of Tippi being near due, but slightly out in our calculations. We expected Rosie to calve before Tippi, based on when Tippi went away. However, looking back, there was one other occasion, around September, when Hinimoa and Tippi took a reconnaisance tour of the neighbour’s land, courtesy of the farmer’s gate being left open into his property. They stayed away just a day and were back the next day waiting to be let back in. And I must say, Tippi looked a little dishevelled… so it must have been on that visit that she conceived… Which would make the dates right…

We were lucky to catch the birth, as it was quick, very quick. There were no complications and Tippi makes a fine mum to a very fine pixie of a calf.

We had just returned home from picking up Greggie from East Bally Heights (my old oceanside stomping ground before I went pastoral), and were introducing Greggie to the littlest dog, Oscar (seen before inin previous post wearing muscle tee and bling!) and wandering down to check out the herd. Greggie is a critter lover and honorary Uncle to all our animals, but only gts up close and personal when he comes for a farmstay. So Charlene and Greggie had wandered down to say hello to the bovine component of the family, when I heard Charlene yelling out : Tippi’s having her baby!

She had seen a balloon (the membrane sac containing the calf) coming out of Tippi’s vulva, with two little hooves in it! Pretty good indication that Tippi was calving! She didn’t seem visibly distressed and let us get up pretty close to her and the calf during the short birth to ohh and ahh and take photos and marvel at the sight in the sunny light of the afernoon. I’d say she calved in about 15-20 minutes. She lay down only in the last minute or 2, gave one final push and the whole calf gushed out. Immediately Tippi started to clean up the little one, eating the membranes and placenta, licking up blood. Cows eat their afterbirth and so on in order to get the nutrients they need to build up their strength after the birth. They also clean up the calf’s navel, which is a site of infection in many calves. Tippi chewed the cord off right at the body and licked it clean, and looks after it constantly. It’s a gory process but amazing to see the insincts kick in!

Here are a couple of very poor quality photos from my phone…

Sorry, Tippi, very undignified, but for the edification of birth novices, here is is the sac
containing little Sunny. You can see the hooves sticking out.

Sunny, just born, still covered in membranes and slime, being cleaned by Tippi

We were really very taken by surprise by this turn of events. Tippi gave very few outward signs of being imminent. Thereare usually mucus strings coming out of the vulva, which is very swollen, sometimes hanging down. The cow is restless, loses her appetite, paces and so on. She was not even very big, especially compared to Rosie who is very large. Her head looks tiny on her body! Rosie’s calf has dropped right down. In the last months of the pregnancy the calf moves from being up quite high to dropping down low, sometimes sitting noticeably to one side of the belly, so the cow looks very lopsided. Tippi was still high, tight and small.

Little Sunny was up testing out her land legs and having her first drink within the half hour, Tippi grooming her and cleaning her the whole time. At this stage the mum produces colostrum, which is a sticky, thick and yellow milk, full of nutrients which help the baby build strength, fight infection and develop their digestive system. In order to get the benefits of the colostrum, the calf needs to have their first drink within 4 hours of birth, so we were very pleased with this outcome.

We have them both in the home yard now, close by so we can keep an eye on them. The little one will stay with mum while she’s getting all the colostrum and then after a few days, when the milk freshens (normal milk starts to fill the udder after a few days) we will move her into the palatial calf pen we assembled (it’s very fine, I think!) where she can keep warm and dry and clean. This is one way to rear a calf. Other people prefer to let the calf run with the mum and not separate them. We are choosing to keep them seperate so that we can monitor the little calf, keep it in in clean environs to minimise the possibility of the calf contracting scours (we wrote alot about scours in our early posts about Little Girl, who was very sick with it. We weren’t sure she would survive, but there she is, with her budding horns, running around kicking up her heels and butting you in the arse every time you turn around…). The calf can also contract milk scours if they overfeed, so separating them is a good way to monitor their milk intake. We may milk Tippi, and so keeping them seperate is also a way to ensure that there is enough milk for baby and we take what she doesn’t drink. I have no idea how much milk Tippi will produce but she has a very tight udder, and big for a Dexter - "a nice bag" is a fine compliment to receive on your lactating cow!

Tippi seems much less aggro since she calved. Prior to calving and after her sojourn next door, she was very resistant to being touched or stroked, didn’t seem to care for human company much, but she’s much more placid now, and lets us stroke her and her calf, standing close by to make sure the calf is safe. She let charlene touch her udder yesterday and squirt some milk from her, so she may prove to be a good milker. We just have to be persistent, get her used to the process of milking.

Anyway, for the moment all is quiet and calm, and we hope it stays that way.  

Here are a few more pictures of the sweet little pixie calf called Sunny 

Tippi cleaning her little baby 

Peeping out, still not walking

Beautiful!

Time to go feed the animals…

Updates as they come to hand! Peace from the bigbackyard…

DairyMa’am V x

So the Likely Dairylad and i were moving our little herd this morning over to some new pasture, just taking in the sunshine, ambling along, hanging in the paddock with them, filling their water, scratching under their chins (they love that), when I hear Charlene yell out : babe! Tippi is bagging up!

What? Already? Rosie is not even noticeably bagging up yet…

Well, we knew that Tippi was running with the bull next door (the gnarly Limousin mentioned in the previous post)  and that she was probably pregnant, but she’s been home for some weeks now and we were just waiting it out, not really imagining that we would know anything one way or another for some time yet. Dexters are small cows, with small udders. You usually can’t even *see* their udders, so to see our little heifer bagging up was quite exciting. It means she’s not far off, maybe as close as Rosie. We both felt her udder and yes, it was quite tight and full. She’s been a bit bolshie since she ran away to joing the circus, and isn’t having much to do with humans. She’ll turn around and have a go at you with her non existent horns (maybe she still has phantom horns?) so it was hard to get a look at her vagina, which would be swollen if she’s nearing her cavling date.

So we have one heifer, Tippi (she will remain a heifer until her second calf, at which time she becomes a cow), and one cow, Rosie. Both of these animals are also springers! A springer is a heifer or a cow that is about a month off calving. So we say they are springing as they are preparing to calf.

Tippi had a sister, long gone now, who was from the same bull, called Pania, so we know what Tippi’s little one might look like. Pania (Little Pania of the Rocks no less) was brown, a lovely caramel brown, and the Dexters are black, straight up. Pania now graces the living room floor, so her short dignified life provided food and warmth for the family here before we arrived and still now.

There is alot of excitement about our first farm births, and some trepidation. I’m not so concerned about problems that might arise during calving, since I have seen quite a few calves being born in my time, and especially recently at Charlene’s work, and they just seem to get on with the business. Brian said they have very few problem births, and i don’t think they’ve had one this season. My trepidation is mostly around handling the calf rearing aspect, the milking and then the management of ALL THAT MILK! Cheese time! It will be a bit hectic, and we may need another calf or 2 to feed from the lactating cows, but it’s hard to say how much milk Tippi will produce. She’s a dairy/beef breed, meaning they do well for both, but will not produce anywhere near the amount of milk that Rosie, being a Jersey, will produce.

Naturally there will be a photo essay of the whole process! 

I think an update on little Luka is in order. She’s doing well! The Galloway are a hardy breed, and it seems she has not only pulled through but is making progress in leaps and bounds. We treated her for parasites and she now gobbles down 2 meals a day (with livamol which is a gorgeous mineral supplement, apple cider vinegar and garlic! ) and cries (quietly) for more. she seems to like being out with the big cows, and manages to avoid being stomped on or steamrollered. I hope she develops a loving relationship with one of the other cows, because she is still very much a loner. We have seen her trot, which was an exciting moment and she walks swiftly to her meal bucket but she is yet to present the full calf gambol that seems intrinsic to calf nature.

All is well with the herd!

In previous posts I have mentioned Nourished magazine and Joanne Hay, who is the superhero editor of the magazine, and is involved in all things sustainable and most especially passionate about the raw milk movement and the herd share. We made a lovely connection through this blog, and I hope to write for her magazine in the future. We invited Joanne and family out to the farm for lunch and chat and it was lovely! Joanne and her partner Wes and their 3 glowing children are a delight! Interesting, quirky, energetic, productive, and ever so slightly wild! We ate things we’d grown ourselves, and Joanne bought out an incredible raw cheesecake that I must get the recipe for… They live in a couple of yurts in Byron, managing businesses and family and still have time and energy for the sustainable projects they are involved in. We loved them and everything they do. Check out Joanne’s site Nourished Magazine for edification and enlightenment!

Well, it has been a year of change and inclement weather! All this has left me feeling a bit discombobulated, a wee bit out of sorts and … well … lacklustre. I’m one of those who are seasonally affected, mood-wise, and not enough sunshine is a recipe for a not so shiny me… So much great stuff has happened this year, and most of it chronicled in this blog. I feel quite content with the trajectory this small family seems to be taking, more than happy that my hardworking dairylad has found a passion and a livelihood that engrosses and inspires her, enjoying the small communal living situation we currently have here at Matiatia, especially loving the animals and how that is shaping up. There are also some very very exciting things that might be happening that I can’t talk about here yet which go even further towards making dreams come true. So why a lacklustre me? And what am I planning to do about it? Perhaps others can relate… With the lads out working all day I guess I’m missing company and project partners, farmboys to fix fences with and gardening enthusisats to shovel shit and compost with. I seem to have moved inside (the house, that is…) and have become a bit of a farmhouse wife, with tasks focussed around household management and domestic duty, rather than the getting grubby, hands in the dirt kind of activities which energise nurture, inspire and keep me sane! Lists. I think lists are the answer. And enforced family farm activities in worker’s downtime. If there’s anyone out there who’s up for a bit of farm exposure as an antidote to the urban, let me know, we’ll organise a working bee… Oh yes, and yoga. Of course, always the yoga. I’ve been re-establishing my acquaintance with yoga, and do a good hour and a half practise every day, and sometimes with a buddy and i remember that yoga is the one constant in my life. hari om!

I tend not to personalise this blog, but i think my experience of isolation and lack of motivation, and the perils of identity crisis (i’m just a farmer’s wife!) that we fall into when we are used to more complexity coming from the city is an experience that others who have done the sea/tree change might identify with.

Fundamentally I’m loving the simplicity of this life and the direct connection with the earth, my food, animals that provide and I’m really looking forward to taking on the dairygrrl challenge again (oh yes, still on the hunt for a butter churn and cream separator - old not new), but thought the slight malaise was worth a mention…

So I have more to write, but I shall put it in a separate post, since it’s not at all vegan or vegetarian friendly, and I’d like to flag that here first. Self sufficiency can be gory!

See you shortly 

Vx 

I was doing the evening thing here down on the farm, feeding various animals, worrying about our poorly little Luka, wondering what in the hell to do with the old pig pen enclosure and so on when i noticed 2 people chatting by the bottom fence. The new owner of the acreage next door, who runs horses, lots of beautiful horses, and the previous owner, who is also the same farmer whose herd Tippi infiltrated some many months ago - you might remember the Bring Tippi Home campaign - there were t-shirts and everything!

So I wander down, looking glamorous in my gumboots and flanno, covered in mud and shit and say "g’day" over the fence… introduce myself to the new owner, who is lovely, and get a gruff reception from farmer boy who no doubt thinks i am just some freakish lowlife (hey, i *am* some freakish lowlife - yay!). Anyway, I push his patience by just hanging around, and he eventually tells me he’s transporting some of his cattle to market on Tuesday, and he’d put Tippi on the truck and send her round, if I could just fix up the carrier… sure, what the heck, I can do that… and off i go, executing a little jig of happiness (as much as the gumboots will allow) that Tippi is *finally* coming home.

Tuesday comes, and with it Tippi, hornless, but looking fine, and who knows? maybe pregnant… that would be sweet. The farmer’s herd bull is a Limousine I think, a big boofy gnarly looking curly headed brown thing with one horn turned in. He seems a fine specimen, and really quite docile. I’ve often been around and in amongst his herd (usually trying to run down escaped goats and calves) and he’s watchful but not aggressive…

Tippi joins our little farm herd and we stand in the paddock to watch how the dynamics play out. There’s abit of pushing and shoving, but Hinimoa (Tippi’s mum) remembers her and sniffs and licks and stays close by (she missed her terribly for a long time). Rosie is a bit wary but seems to respect Tippi’s place (below her, naturally) and Frenchie and Tippi seem to get along ok, being of a similar size and strengh probably. Little Girl is feisty but Tippi’s having none of her, so they keep their distance. In the final analysis, Rosie is Top Cow without a doubt, followed by Hinimoa and Tippi then slipping a few rungs down is first Frenchie (her sheers size and strength puting her above Little Girl) then Little Girl. They are a lovely herd, all fine fine cows, and a perfect herd to grow with. All have their purpose and we love them to death.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention Luka. Weeelllll… Luka doesn’t really even rate in the herd dymanics. I’ve seen Frenchie basically steamroller her from one end of the paddock to the other. She’s very poorly, and we don’t know what is wrong with her. She’s just not like any calf I’ve known. No frolic, no noise, no spark… we’ve been trying various things and have just gotten her to start eating a mash of dairy meal, oatbran, kelp, minerals with molasses dissolved in boiling water. I tried garlic, but she HATES it, so that will have to be gradualy introduced… so twice a day she eats this, has for a few days now. I’ve been increasing the amount and hopefully we will see some strength and spark enter her tiny little body which has become quite wasted over the last few months

I’m introducing her to the herd little by little and yesterday they all seemed to be grazing peacefully together. It makes my heart glad to see them together, looking so fine, so handsome.

PICTURE COMING SHORTLY 

The human herd is traveling well, with the Likely Dairylad still loving her work and becoming more ensconced in her working environment, learning lots of new things every day, and as its calving season, she’s in her element, wanting to bring home any unwanted babies… BUT we have babies enough! And being the dry season, only just enough pasture to keep them in good condition. Oh and she has new waterproof kit and boots to wear… she looks rather dashing in it!

Deb is working 7 days a week, with a day off here and there sorting macadamias - noisy work, but money is her reward, and she has a PLAN, which involves seasonal work, then travel. Working the maca season here (she’s been a great find for her employers, reliable and hardworking), then off to the UK to see her boy Tommy for a stretch. Hopefully Tommy will come and visit the farm, which will be a wild cultural change for her…

Me? Oh yes, me… Well, I’m doing some gardening on a coffee plantation for a nice bloke. I got to make vegie gardens the other day in raised beds, so that was cool, planted a veritable cornucopia of foods which will be bursting out the seams of the beds and provide food for my boss and family for the winter, I hope!  Now to continue the slow rescue and regeneration of my own gardens… I’m getting there… we’ll have no lack of leek and onion, and some rhubarb is looking good and we still have plenty of greens and herbs… oh and of course the endless limes and lemons and so on. Winter fruits will be setting soon as well… I’m tackling some web production for extra income and a few interesting things have come up for me after the last post I made. I’m very much looking forward to getting back into the dairy production once Rosie calves, too…

Yes, so after my last post I had a lovely comment from Joanne Hay, the editor of Nourished magazine, who tracked us down, as i had quoted from the magazine in the post I made. She loved the blog and so an exchange ensued. She is fundamentally involved in the raw milk movement here and is instrumental in setting up the herd share here in the Lismore/Byron region which is slowly moving towards being operational. I’m hoping we can become involved on a number of levels. So she will come and visit and we will chat. Joanne is also inerested in having me write for the magazine, and has asked me if I would ike to interview Dr Elaine Ingham, who is running a course out at the Uni and presenting lectures on SOIL, oh yes, my favorite topic to ponder… and ponder… and ponder… maybe i’ll actually learn how to deal with it!

Dr Ingham is from the Soilfoodweb Institute and is a world leader in the research and analysis of the soil foodweb. Over the past 20 years she has worked with growers worldwide and has developed a database of microorganisms present in various soils, and has observed the improvement in soild when the appropriate balance between beneficial fungi and bacterial biomass is acheived.

The course, running from June 23-July 4 is called Soil Foodweb Interactions and Benefits to Plant Production and will be held at Southern Cross University, Lismore, NS

So that’s cool…

Speaking of herds, well, packs really, there is an introduction to be made.

And Oscar makes 3…

 

Yes, we are now mothers of 2 fine puppies, the newest pack member being Oscar. Now Jimmy Jack has a little brother and a friend. The Amstaff breed is very very social and energetic, and a lone Amstaff would have been, well, lonely. Now they play outside all day long, a tiny Oscar holding his own against a much bigger Jimmy Jack. He’s twelve weeks old…

OK, enough, I need to go and dig and plant. I’m thinking potatoes… amongst the brassicas and beans and onions…

If anyone has any suggestions about how to manage 2 enclosed areas that used to be a pigpen and are now pumpkins and weeds but are really too big to cultivate as vegie gardens and could be grass crops but there is not a gate big enough for cows to pass through and so on… I welcome them!

Ok backyard buddies, I’ll be back again soon.

Vx  

So we’ve been googling all things dairy today, particularly following developments in the raw milk movement and legislation around the distribution and consumption of milk.

I’m going to write a post about it shortly, but in the meantime, I’m on the hunt for things like cream separators and butter churns. They’re hard to come by, and I’m looking for small scale domestic items, probably antique (scotch hands and the like), not big scale industrial machinery. Anyway, on Ebay I found a couple of churns that I’d LOVE to own…

This one… 

and

This one… 

feeling generous? got a bit of spare change? my self sufficiency fund, and hence your contribution to the raw milk movement would be most appreciative…

cheeky i know, but i’m desperate…

I put a bid on an antique pair of scotch hands (see previous post for pic). There’s only 1 other person bidding, no doubt some crazy feral raw milk fanatic who’s been searching for scotch hands to no avail as i have. i may have a battle on my hands…

more later

xxV 

…or have been, incessantly…

[aside and preamble - there is alot of dairy talk in this here post, so vegans and those of a lactose-intolerant persuasion might wish to skip those bits. I’ve been thinking how much happier i am to ingest a raw, unpasteurised wholefood than to drink soy or rice milks. The extraction and processing of these products creates a food which is not natural or whole. anyway, just a thought, which is not relevant for those who are ethical vegans or those who have a system which can’t digest milk…]

…today, happily, we see some sun, and maybe some tomatos will ripen and our perpetually soggy little calf will dry out a bit and her rain scalded little hoofs and legs will regrow the fur they’ve lost and i will get some vitamin D and my disposition will change from glowering to glowing and the chooks will lay and the worms that usually live outside under the soil but have made the big trek indoors in their hundreds will go back to their earthly home and so on.

I feel somewhat guilty bagging out the rain, since i know come too many sunny days in a row and i will be worrying about when the next rains will come… but ordinary day to day tasks become very difficult when the sog reaches a certain level and the water table is no longer below the surface of the earth…

So, be that as it may, rains and so on, things carry on and there are goings on to report, and some pics to illustrate said goings on.

We have a new housecow, and her name is Rosie. She is a beautiful jersey, about 6 years old, and she’s pregnant with her 4th calf. She comes to us via the generosity of Brian, Charlene’s boss. He’s a cool guy. Brian’s wife is named Rosie, and we could think of no better name for this much loved newest addition to our small herd.

rosie

Rosie has a very very placid disposition and from day one let us squat down at very close quarters around her back legs while we did things to her udder… It feels slightly precarious to be in such close proximity to a potentially swift kick with a hind hoof. I’ve seen the damage that can cause and a hoof in the face would not be pretty… but she’s a darling and honestly I really feel perfectly safe around her.  She’s due to be dried off in about 3 weeks before the birth (she’s due 15th July)and towards the end of her lactation her milk will become very creamy (and it is!).

pretty face

We are currently milking anywhere between 4 - 6 litres from her in the mornings. We have alot of milk product in the fridge!

 
the first milking - about 6 litres…

our fridge… full of milk and cream…

cream begins at the arrow…

separating the cream from the milk

Dried off heifers who are in the last trimester of their pregnancy are called "springers", and take a different diet to help build up their strength for the birth and for suckling their newborns, which takes alot out of the cow. After the birth Rosie will produce up to 15 - 20 litres of milk. Her newborn calf will drink about a litre and a half. Hopefully our little Luka will drink from her as well (we are currently feeding her Rosie’s milk via bottle or bucket). That will leave us a good 12 or so litres to strip out of her by hand! That is muscle building work! Brian suggested we take up squeezing stress balls to strengthen our hands for the ordeal…

With so much milk product I’ve been looking into making other dairy foods - butter, yoghurt, cheese…  I have no equipment to speak of, so I’m doing alot by hand and in a fairly ad hoc way, but the butter seemed to work just fine, we’ve had it spread on our toast and it doesn’t have a strong or sweet taste, but it’s soooooooooo good… i just have to experiment a bit more…

our butter

To make the butter I used about 500ml of cream (you can use as much as you have or want) and this made about 100 grams of butter.  

I used a bowl and a hand whisk (wooden utensils soaked in water are preferable, cos the butter won’t stick to them), but you can use a blender or food processor.

Whip the cream in the bowl until it passes through the whipped cream stage and then quite suddenly you will hear a sloshing in the bowl as the butter and buttermilk separate. Drain off the buttermilk into a jug (use it for drinking or baking).

The next stage is called "washing" the butter and is the process by which all the buttermilk is expressed from the butter. Marja Fitzgerald says that she washes the butter only once, and that by leaving some buttermilk in the butter the butter will stay sweet for about 5 days and then develop a "cultured flavour". I washed the butter many times, using a wooden spoon to pat and squeeze the butter until the water runs clear (my mum used to use "scotch hands" for this process). Then I drained off the last of the water and continued to pat and squeeze intil no more buttermilk came out. It comes out through the buttter in small beads and runs off. It takes some time, and i was pretty thorough, but i’m sure there was a little buttermilk left.

Further advice indicates that it is probably best not to use fresh cream (milked that day) for butter making. Best to use cream that is about 5 days ol. The taste will be sweeter, not so tasleless. If you use cream that has been naturally soured at room temperature just slightly, then you will have a culktured butter. 

Today I am going to experiment with yoghurt. It seems like a complex process with incubators and double boilers and so on, but i am taking Marja’s advice and keeping it simple. I’ll put a spoonful of storebought, unflavoured yoghurt (jalna) in a jar and pour just milked (and therefore very warm) milk into the jar. I’ll place it somewhere reasonably warm, wrapped in a wooly jumper and leave it for 24 hours, see what happens! I think Marja was probably living in the kind of farmhouse where there was an aga or other wood burning stove going all the time (as it was during my childhood), making the kitchen a very warm place. I have a fucking awesomely fantastic Ilve stove, but when it’s not on it’s just stone cold, and doesn’t do anything to keep the kitchen warm. Perhaps when the weather turns more wintry and we are having fires at night i can place the jars around the fire to do their thing. Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes…

Enough with the dairy!

(phew! as i write this I feel the list of tasks that cover the concept "self sufficency" stretch out before me in a neverending scroll towards the vanishing point of the horizon… the produce to be dealt with by baking, preserving or eating before it is spoiled - limes by the score, bananas by the many hands, milk milk milk; the lawns to be mowed before the water table turns everything to sog again; the vegies to be tended and garden beds to be mulched, the animals to be cared for, and that’s just today… )

So Tashi has a new house. Goats do not like the rain. The only place Tashi had to go to be out of the rain was the verandah, and i’m all about keeping animal housing and human housing quite seperate… the old pighouse would have been ideal, but the other thing about tashi is her deep need to be near humans. she likes to be able to see us, be near us, and the pig house was too far away, she just would not stay. Even tethering her was useless. she just got herself into a terrible mess trying to get closer to us. So a house for Tashi was in order. Tashi has a good sprinkling of mountain in her, likes to climb, be at the highest point, so we decided on an A frame up off the ground that she could climb up to, be safe from the weather and be near us. Our man in Dunoon, John, made the house for us. Here it is. We need to spruce it up a bit, probably with a sign and some carnival lights, but she seems to like it…

tashi’s new house 

peeking out…

My dairygrrl is going well out at the farm. Apparently she’s onto the "second stage of learning", which is all about the cows and calves. Brian has been reading this blog, and laughed when I said they milked 400 cows a day. Actually the herd is 400 strong but of that 400 there are always cows who are not being milked because they are in the process of drying off and so on prior to calving. So often these mornings Charlene spends mornings wandering in the paddocks searching for the calves that have been born overnight. They are very small and hide in the grass, and play dead when you pick them up. She identifies them and then records every little detail about them before rosie comes to take them to their new home. In the calf pens they get warm milk delivered straight from their mums morning and night. They are kept in the pen to keep them warm, dry and safe from harm. This way they can be monitored for disease and given extra attention if they are struggling. She still comes home smiling every night, with that special aroma of cow in her clothes and hair.

One of our loved family members has hit the road, and we are sad to see her go. Our much loved farmboy Zhane has turned swaggie boy and is movin’ … Big adventures await her but she knows she always has a home here. I’ll miss her quiet presence in the garden, or feeding the animals, or smokin’ on the balcony while looking out towards the horizon. She’s been such a fantastic help on this sustainability journey we’re on, and we hope she comes back full of the world, full of the roads she’s travelled, full of color and joy.

Zhane … thinking of nuffin …

Zboy

So we have a new tenant, whose name is Bec. She’s a massage therapist, a naturopath and all things good, and we’re looking forward to the new energy she will bring to the farm.

I’ve been told I should wrap this up, it’s getting way out of hand, so wrap I will.

It’s been too long between visits, so I’l endeavout to wander out into the backyard a little more frequently.

Much love to farmfans everywhere.

 Vxx

Introducing the newest member of our farm family. Her name is Luka and she is a Murray Grey x Galloway. She is about 2 months old and is absolutely beautiful. She only arrived this afternoon after a harrowing ride in the car between Virginia’s legs. She had her ear pierced with her identification tag just moments before she left, so she keeps shaking her head. Anyway, everyone say ‘Hello’ and hopefully you will all get to meet her soon.

 

Charlene x

 

Once again, it’s been sometime since i have wandered out into mybigbackyard and taken stock of where we’re at, how the creatures big and small, four footed and two legged, beaked and billed, are faring.

I spoke of changes at Matiatia last time I wrote and it seems we are in a constant state of flux here, with some happenings causing sadness (see previous post) and others bringing joy and levity.

The family is settling into some sembelance of stability, with Zhane well ensconced now in the cottage, carnival lights and all, and Jax moving into the bails today. Deb arrives back from the UK in just a few days and Neha has returned to Oakland, on a mission to be back on the farm by June or July at the latest. We miss her, and look forward to her return.

We are enjoying living here as a home and family, now spread over the various dwellings on the property, without the place being part home, part business. It feels freer, knowing we can wander at will, play music loud if we want to, farm naked (if we want to), without frightening or disturbing guests. And we do all of that and more! There has been much productive activity, with me and my farmboy Zhane embarking upon lists of to do’s every day. Zhane is remarkable in her stamina for taking my mania for listmaking and tasking in her stride and remaining quite unflustered by it all…

Big news is Charlene’s new job! She’s working on a dairy! Rises at 4.45am for her first shift, comes home by half 9, and is off again for her second shift at around 3pm, home by 7. She’s usually quite aromatic and shit splattered by the time she arrives home but glowing and energised after milking 400 cows and so on… the farm she is working on is very lovely, green as green, on the banks of the richmond river, dewy in the early morning sunlight… the cows are pretty and docile, contented cows, not sad cows. Brian her boss is an excellent person. He works with a mixture of farming principles, including biodynamic principles, using chook manure instead of chemical fertilisers, feeding his cows lots of minerals, apple cider vinegar, epsom salts and so on. He knows every single cow and doesn’t treat his cows like milking machines, pushing the grains in order to get more milk gain from them. This can ultimately lead to "sad cow syndrome", where the cow’s system is very acid, and they become depressed and walk with dropped heads. He works alongside his dairy hands, talking 20 to the dozen about everything in the world and thinks charlene is the bee’s knees. All this is good. I went out wth her yesterday and took hundreds of photos of the dairy and the cows. Some lovely lovely pictures… i’ll post a couple here. It’s a great place to take photos, all that symmetry. Rows of legs, rows of shiny machines… Chatted to Brian her boss about minerals and weeds and honey locust trees which he has growing along the creek bank and about green mulch which he’s looking to turn to if his chicken manure supply runs out, which he predicts will happen because the price of chemical fertilisers have become so expensive that traditional farmers are looking for alternatives. He’s a 4th generation dairy farmer who has come from traditional farming roots and through his own learnings has moved towards using sustainable farming principles, so he’s interesting to speak to about things lke the soil and pasture improvement and animal rearing.

 

On the home front Zhane and I have been extremely busy in the gardens (in between rainfall) trying to get the grasses down to a manageable level. We’ve also been doing major gardening around the bails and caravan, in the secret garden, down around nick’s grave, around the clothesline and so on, all places we need to wander regularly. I’m hanging out to turn over the garden beds for the autumn planting… though we are still getting mountains of cucumbers, lots and lots of beans and the tomatoes and the greens never stop really. Pumpkins are so abundant that it’s a case again of two for the rats one for us… We’re thinking of making a sweet pumpkin pie (gluten free) with chocolate ganache lining the case… mmmmmmmm… And limes, my god limes to burn (but we’re squeezing them and freezing the juice for the lean times…).  We will probably preserve a whole lot, and then also make some baked goods and lime curd to sell. Lemons haven’t been ripening really due to lack of sun. It’s been a helluva season, no sun to speak of, so alot of the produce never really made it…

Our best task so far has been plumbing the drain for the outdoor bath in the bails. Michael already had it in place, so much of the hard work had already been done, but leveling it was a bitch, then digging out for the drain. We pruned many of the gingers and oter plants, weeded out tobacco plant and farmer’s friend, and it looks fantastic, and Jax is pleased to be able to use the bath, which has been a job going begging for such a long time… it really looks great…

the outdoor bathroom at the bails 

the plumbed drain 

 

no cheating, finding true level… 

 

level! 

We bought some new plants yesterday at the Lismore Carboot Market, which I love to go to, has everything from old playboy magazines to geese and ducks to vegetables and antiques and cool boots. We bought a crazy looking succulent that Zhane has put outside her new home, and a lemon myrtle tree and a native frangipani which is less perfect that the common frangipani. I’m keen on getting hold of some more native fruit bearing trees like finger limes…

I’ll be back again soon with more news. Perhaps about the acquisition of new animals… Stay tuned, farmyard friends…

xxV