A birthday and goings on

Firstly I'd like to thank all of you who sent us kind wishes after the passing of Ronnie. We really appreciate the time it took to comment and your thoughts. This is such a wonderfully kind little corner of the internet. xx

This weekend our firstborn Will turned 13. Officially a teenager. Oh, how time flies! Though in truth he has been a teenager in spirit for quite a while. It's a pleasure to watch him working out who he is and to see him delve into and pursue his own interests. He is still working away on his little log cabin, felling the trees with his axe, dragging them to the site and slowly notching them out. It is slow, hard work but an excellent project for an energetic young bloke. Grant's promised him some time out there to give him a hand and keep him company for a bit.

Wills gifts this year included a BBQ plate to use on a campfire, a new beaut pocket knife (he lost his) and a book with money from rellies. He reckons he's saving for a horse but we will see. He had a couple of mates over and they went camping near the creek. They cooked bacon and eggs over a small fire using Wills new BBQ plate and made themselves cups of billy tea. They cruised back and forth on the quad bike, explored the bush and generally ran a bit wild. Teenage boys aren't renowned for making the best decisions and I was a little concerned they were going to go all lord of the flies on me. Much to my relief they were pretty good and went home tired, dirty and smelling of campfire.

The seeds we have sown in the new market garden area are coming up, though they are a little slow to get established. We think the soil is lacking as until now, it has always been pasture. We have been adding some liquid fertiliser and getting some mulch organised for once the seedlings come up a little more. Grant bought a lightly used second-hand mulcher so we can utilise what we have on our own property. We have a lot of weed control and creek clearing to do anyway and mulch is surprisingly expensive here. I doubt we will get reliable enough crop in our first growing season to warrant going to markets, but I'm hoping there will be enough to make a roadside stall worthwhile. It's all a bit of trial and error until we get our soils and planting schedule right and that will all take time.

I have been pottering away in my little kitchen garden. It's about all I have time for with Elsie at the moment. Grant is kept busy in the market garden.

The goats are going well and have grown a lot. We thought some might be pregnant when we got them but if they were they should be kidding around now so it looks like they might not be after all. (also goats giving birth is called 'kidding' - cool eh?) It seems they are just fat and healthy. It's probably for the best as they were quite young and ideally, we wanted to wait until they were fully mature before running them with a billy goat to help minimise birthing complications. However, they are looking good and it's time to begin to keep our eye out for a good Boer billy to add to our flock and maybe a dairy goat too.

In other fam venture news, the sustainable logging has finally started. They have been improving access to various parts of the property which is a huge relief. Sustainable logging, for those that don't know much about logging that means they cut individual trees of specific species/size/shape and then drag them out to a loading site. It's highly regulated meaning creek lines and certain species of timber are protected. There are also strict guidelines about how many trees that can be harvested from within a certain space. There are two large pockets of rainforest that are protected on our property and our property has historically been a cattle and timber property, so they are not damaging an old-growth forest. Unlike clear-felling which totally clears vast areas of timber, wildlife corridors are maintained as is a lot of the understory in any area where the trees are not suitable for harvesting. There is controversy in this area about logging done like this, but I think it's mostly by people who are not familiar with the reality of what it means to be a consumer. Consuming, generally IS ugly. There is no way around it. At least timber is a renewable, green, sustainable material when it's managed well. Plantation timber is all well and good but people are kidding themselves if they think that harvesting plantation timber doesn't displace hundreds of species of animals in the process. Animals don't know which trees are crops or not. Sadly, our actions affect the environment, whether it be harvesting timber or huge open cut mining for steel/cement/sand and other building materials. That's all there is to it. This is precisely the reason why we as a family choose to buy second hand and utilize recycled materials where ever we can. Once the logging has been done here we will be fencing off and rehabilitating creek lines, getting the goats into currently inaccessible areas to manage woody weeds like lantana/wild tobacco which will also help mitigate fire risk.

Now the weather is warming up we are looking into getting a flock of australorps. Being off-grid means we can't run anything with a heating element without the generator on. It simply draws too much power. But now the days and nights are getting warmer we are hoping to create some sort of insulated box and purchase some chicks to grow out. Because really, what is a farm without chickens?