The girls have settled in nicely to their tennis court home. I let them out of their coop early each morning and Chris generally lets them out of the tennis court sometime in the late morning so they can free range around the farm. They love getting out and about, and I dare say the eggs they lay will be better for it. But they appear to have discovered the cat flap in the laundry door…or rather the hole left by the broken cat flap. Three times there was a suspicious clucking outside the study door, and I had to chase a chicken outside. I’m not certain, but I think it was the same one each time.

Now they’ve had a taste of the great outdoors, it can prove quite a challenge getting them back into the tennis court before dark. I really want to do that because there are foxes around, and I have spotted them near the house just on dusk. So if the chickens are still roaming around at that time, there’s every chance they’ll go missing.

Although a slice of bread seems to work pretty well in getting them to follow me.

Water, Water

After nearly a week of rain, the dams are all overflowing again, the tennis court is a soggy mess, and my rainwater tanks are…better than they were. I suspect I’m going to have to figure out a way of utilising my dam water or getting more rainwater catchment working. We seem to be going through much more water than we collect, and that’s a real concern, given we’ve had a couple of good years. I’ve done some research and we can probably get away with a system that will cost about $10,000 or so. For that, I should be able to get a new 20,000 litre tank, a major filtration system—including UV sterilisation—and be able to clean not only roof-caught rainwater but also tannin-laced dam water. And all the bugs and nasties will be cleaned out, including colour, taste and odour.

That amount should last a month or six weeks, and in the meantime, more water can slowly be pushed through the filtration system so the clean water tank stays topped up at all time. Now, all I need is to find $10,000… 

Potato Planting

Given it’s the last month of winter, the days are lengthening and warming, although no doubt there will be a frost or two still left for us. I’ve planted out the potatoes that I’ve had chitting in the pantry. I think they’re a mix of King Edward and Sabago varieties; both excellent eating although King Edward is better for roasting and Sabago is best for mashing. We’ll see if I have a green thumb or not; this is my first foray into the garden as an actual gardener.

Tomato Planting

I also prepared some seedling pots in a tray and planted eight tomato seeds; it’s a little early perhaps, but that’s why we have a poly tunnel; to extend our growing season. If I can get them going in the tunnel, they should have a great head start once the weather improves more. I have seeds for two varieties; Improved Apollo and Grosse Lisse. I have no idea what the difference between them is, so don’t ask. To me they’re just tomatoes; I have the seeds and I want to try to sprout seedling tomatoes ahead of the regular growing season, so those are what I used.

It’s all one giant experiment out here, but at least we have plenty of free range fresh eggs to eat!

Our new chickens found the raised garden beds very exciting places to dig for things. And being chickens, they went at it like crazy. There was dirt flying everywhere, and the few remaining plants that were growing in the garden—cabbages—suffered accordingly. Well, I’m not going to blame them; both Chris and I decided to let them out of their coop into the tennis court and we’d worked out what the consequences would be.

Veggiemaggedon!!

So, this weekend I got busy. Fortunately the forecast rain didn’t happen and I was able to complete my mission; finish enclosing one garden bed.

Garden Enclosure

The panels down the side are not continuous; instead there are three panels with the middle overlapping the two end panels. The purpose is to allow a gardener to access the bed from the outside. The beds are 1.2m wide, which is too far for a regular person to comfortably reach to prepare, plant, prune, and pick. (How alliterative is that!)

The panels are held in place with a bent wire latch that catches on a bent nail. You can’t really see any in the picture above, but the latch also acts as a hook to hold the panel up once it’s opened (you hook it to the bird wire of the enclosure). Simple—as simple as it gets, really— but surprisingly effective and it’ll keep out the animals and birds that wanna eat our veggies, including determined chickens…although now I’ve said that, I assume one of them will find a way in.

Oddly, while I was putting wire onto the door, one of the chickens decided that she wanted to see what I was doing and jumped up onto the bench I was working on. Surprised the hell out of me, but she just cocked an eye and calmly walked about checking things. Only when I shifted the work on the bench did she decide she’d seen enough and jumped down and wandered off.

And the same chicken was determined to get into my garden shed while I was putting all the tools away. Determined she was! I had to actually shut the door, which of course meant no light into the shed, which meant I stepped on the rake, which naturally hit me.

In the head.

I felt like Sideshow Bob…

***

My last post stated I was going to write an update every week.

EPIC FAIL!!  

Instead, it’s been over six MONTHS since I wrote anything. Just goes to show how lazy I am. Oh well, what is past is passed…or should that be the over way around?

Lots of things have happened on the farm, so let’s cut to the chase and give you all a long over due update on what’s happening down on the farm.

The first piece of news is that my sister Wendy and her husband John have moved out. They got a better offer than they had here on our farm, living as they were in a couple of containers and the filled in space in between. A friend of theirs offered them free accommodation in a six bedroom farmhouse on a 150+ hectare property outside Goulburn. A full sized house with multiple bedrooms—a joy compared to what they had here.

Of course, this means I’ve lost my gardener and my handyman, both things that were really, really handy to have access to here. I am definitely going to miss them. The wonderful vegetables and value-added products that Wendy made from the garden, and John’s enormous practical knowledge of…well, everything…are irreplaceable. <sigh> Now Chris and I will have to learn to cope ourselves. Oh well, things will or won’t work out. We’ll manage.

***

Winter has been a bit colder than normal here, and we’re finding we are going through a fair bit more firewood than other years. With Wendy & John’s departure, so departed John’s huge collection of tools, along with his chainsaw. So when some friends of ours (Ian and Shaz, for those that know them) offered us some free firewood if we helped them collect some from their property in the Tinderry Mtns (about 20kms further out from our place), I decided that we needed to buy a chainsaw. Not just for collecting firewood, but also because there are hundreds of pines on the farm, many of which are now standing deadwood, and a lot more that need culling because they’re too close together.

The end of the financial year means bonus time, and the finance gods smiled upon me. So off to the local Stihl shop to buy the biggest practical (NB, not biggest possible, just biggest practical) chainsaw. In the end, I got a Stihl MS 311 Farm Boss. And here’s a picture, boys and girls (it’s from the Stihl website, so I’ve added a link and will call it free advertising, but copyright remains theirs).

The New Farm Boss

With a 20″ (50cm) blade, it’ll go through pretty much any tree on the property. On Sunday, even at less than full revs (recommended for the first few tanks of fuel to run the motor in), it was sinking through wind-fallen trees like a hot knife through butter. Effortless! Until I got home, when my left arm decided to let the rest of me know how much unaccustomed weight it had been hauling about! My forearms are still complaining. But we came home with over half a ton of free wood, possibly enough to see us through the rest of this winter.

***

We have chickens!

The Girls

We’ve been talking about getting chickens since before settlement on the property even occurred, so now our third anniversary of buying the farm is almost upon us (July 28; it’s July 11 as I type this) we’ve been putting that off for one reason or another. But that’s all behind us now because I found someone who not only supplies chickens, but also supplies a sizable coop, and all the extras you need, like feed and straw and so on. Not only that, for a small fee they’ll come out and “service” your chickens.

No, not the kinky kind of servicing (I dunno, what’s the world coming to when you immediately think THAT!) but checking their health, dosing them with whatever is good for them for whatever ails them, dusting them for mites, clipping their wings, and all that sort of thing. Handy. Yes, it’s the lazy person’s way of handling things, but hey! neither of us are exactly farmers, and since we can afford it, why not? Our chickens will be getting expert attention at the very least.

They arrived today, and already we’ve had two eggs from them. Champion girls! And here’s a couple of pictures of their coop.

Chicken Palace – Side View

Chicken Palace – Hutch View

The last item here was titled “So Sad…” The little red tractor was dead, a victim of my own stupidity. Well, miracle of miracles, it only took a pot load of money to set things right and the tractor has been back in operation and earning its keep since mid-September. Actually, it took a lot less money to fix than I had feared, so I was very relieved when the final bill came in.

August also saw a visit by the Aitons; Steve, Jennifer and Sean. Steve is an old friend from way back when I first moved to Canberra. He met and married a lovely American lass, and their son is now…oh, 8 or 9, I guess. Maybe a bit older, perhaps. They stayed for a night and a lovely time was had by all.

October soon sped upon us, and my brother Richard and his wife Jane came to visit for a few days. Once again a lovely time was had by all. A couple of weeks after they left, their son Tom called in on his way back to Noosa.

During Dick & Jane’s visit, we erected a big garden shed for Wendy. Zinc-alum and measuring 3m x 3m, the shed has all the room to store tools and so forth that anyone could desire. Wendy had been making do with a huge but old wooden toolbox that was left in the tennis court by the previous owners. The toolbox is now in a bit of a sad state but can probably be renovated and reused, maybe even as a laying box for the proposed hen hilton.

We removed the plastic cover from the middle garden tunnel. The problem is that the covered tunnels are just too damn hot in summer, and in winter they aren’t warm enough to maintain a proper growing environment. However, the plants do need protection from birds, so we are in the process of stringing chicken wire over tunnels 1 and 2. Tunnel 3 is still plastic covered and will remain so but with both ends open.

November and December brought torrential rains to all of Eastern Australia (and Queensland is still flooded badly, including my old hometown of Emerald). We had a couple of rain “events” here that cause quite a bit of damage to our roads, including the road across the main dam. It seems that it overflowed the wall itself, washing away part of the top of the wall and leaving giant potholes. After the first event, I bought a tonne of roadbase, and every scrap was used to fix those potholes. Three days later, another rain event and the dam overflowed the walls yet again, washing away not only my work and the tonne of roadbase, but more wall as well. The rest of the track was a real mess too, so I put in a call to the local bobcat and tipper guy, and he delivered 11 tonnes of roadbase so we could fix everything up. It’s not all done yet, but certainly the worst is fixed.

Christmas time is also the time to spray the noxious weeds on the farm. This year, the growing season has been phenomenal and the St John’s Wort grew in profusion…but not as badly as the first year we were here. And now, with the tractor and the 400litre fire-fighting tank, and a quick change of hose form the heavy 3/4″ firehose to a normal garden hose, we are able to do pretty much the entire farm in just a couple of days. The long grass made the job tricky though because you couldn’t really see where your feet were going and there are so many rocks and holes on this farm!

Almost up to date now!

Chris took off for Tassie for Christmas as usual, and returned Boxing Day; three days later, Judy Reynolds and her two boys Peter and Mark joined us for a visit, and are still here as I write this. New Year’s Eve was a blast with many of our friends making a prilgrimage out to the farm, bless them! Although a lot of them had to leave early on account of children and so forth, a great time was had by the residents of this house, I can tell you. The cleanup effort on New Year’s Day was worth it.

Finally, the pump.

O. M. F. G.

The pump! Aarrgghh!!

The house is supplied by water from rainwater tanks just downslope of the house. Water is pumped up to the house via an electric pump. Well, shortly before the Reynold’s family arrived, I noticed the pump was kinda noisy…and also switching on even when no-one used a tap. And it was switching on ever few minutes! This can mean only one thing; a leak.

So John and I had to fault-find the leak but we couldn’t really do that without creating zones in the water delivery system and to do that we (I say ‘we’ but I really mean John; he da man! Da handy-man.) had to install a couple of gate valves so we could isolate sections of the system; tank and pump, pipe, and house. Basically, a gate valve at either end of the pipe. This took a lot of time for varous reasons I won’t bore you with, but eventually we determined the pipe was the problem, it probably has a small fracture or pinhole that leaks slowly by constantly, and because the pump is an “on-demand” pump, whenever the pressure drops even slightly, the pump switches on and stays on for about 10 seconds.

I shudder to think what my next power bill is going to look like.

So we’ve replace the pipe, and I’ve ordered a new pump; a Davey with a compression tank (this helps to reduce the amount of time the pipe has to be on, and thus I save electricity). The new pipe is currently still above ground, because if I can, I want to shove it up the old pipe which has a larger diameter. The current pump will be going back to its place of purchase to be fixed or replaced, and will become the garden pump (and a handy spare).

There, now you’re up-to-date!

Dead Tractor

My pretty red tractor is dead.

I managed to screw it up by leaving the diesel fuel in a container (44 gal/220 litre drum) outside in the weather, and naturally water got into the drum, and then I filled up the tractor. Tractors don’t run on water. They don’t even run on watery diesel. They especially don’t run on an algae-contaminated water/diesel mix (we took a sample from the fuel drum and it was about 25% water by volume…and green).

So the tractor is going back to the dealer to be fixed, at my expense since it’s my fault. It’s going to be one hell of an expensive lesson, but boy have I learned it!

The tractor’s engine has to be stripped back, the fuel system completely removed, flushed and cleaned. The fuel injectors need to be removed, stripped and cleaned…and perhaps replaced. The fuel filter certainly needs to be replaced. The engine oil probably needs to be dropped and replaced along with the oil filter, and perhaps even flushed. The fuel tank obviously needs to be removed, flushed and cleaned. And then it needs to be put back together again. All at diesel mechanic hourly rates. Oh boy, is this ever gonna cost me!

I tell you, my arse is still sore from the kicking I gave it. (Figuratively speaking, of course.)

Of course, the first thing to do was to wash and sterilise the bottles. I bought a funky bottle tree to dry them overnight. Pretty cool, huh?

The Bottle Tree

Once the bottles were taken down from the tree, I put 2 tablets of dextrose in each one so the cider will carbonate, because who wants to drink flat cider? Cider has to sparkle.

Then I set up the bottling workstation. Actually, the kitchen bench is exactly the right height, and it was really no effort to fill all the bottles.

The Bottling Station

When I removed the lid of the fermenting vat, the smell was powerful, and very nice. So the brew didn’t go off, as I feared it might. I had a taste of the cider as I bottled, and it was quite dry, which suits Chris but not me (I’m a sweet tooth). Next time, I might bottle before it ferments all the sugar and see if I can get a sweeter cider.

The end result is 60 bottles of home grown, home extracted, home brewed cider.

The End Result

Then came the cleaning, of course. Lots of hot water, lots of disinfectant, anti-septic detergent, and lots of scrubbing. Here’s hoping the Anzac Cider is worth it. We’ll see when we crack it open in mid-August.

‘Til then, cheers!

The Bench in Production

Once the white 20 litre bucket is filled, we transfer the mash to the press, which we showed you yesterday. But we didn’t show you the ratchet arrangement which does the pressing. It’s quite ingenious. The handle goes back and forth, and both actions cause it to descend the thread. Damn hard work at the end, though. I had to take some painkillers last night so I could sleep.

The Press in Action

Once the juice has been removed from the apple pulp, what you’re left with is called the pomace. It’s like a cheese, except with cheese you don’t want the juice and do want the solids. Here, the solids are waste. Well, destined for the compost heap anyway. They make great animal fodder too, apparently.

The Pomace

Once we’d finished the crushing and pressing, we filtered the juice, added the yeast culture and yeast nutrients to the fermentation vat, and put it into its spot in the kitchen to do it’s thing over the next few weeks.

The End Result — Fermenting

Here’s the end result; 45 litres of pure home-grown apple juice that has just begun it’s fermentation. It’s sitting along side 23 litres of ginger beer that I started several days ago. That one is going nicely, burping through the vapour lock even few seconds. The ginger beer should be ready to bottle next weekend, and after slowly carbonating over winter, it should be ready for drinking in early spring.

Cheers!

Apple Grinding Bench

Barrel and Press

Putting everything together and here is the setup. It’s currently on my front verandah, but it will eventually have its own home…somewhere. For now, it’s good where it is. The big green drums are for washing the apples before they’re crushed. You wash them in a very dilute bleach solution (1 tablespoon per gallon or about 4 ml of bleach to 1 litre of water, a 1:250 ration, if you like), and then rinse them in clean water.

The Cider Setup, Ready to Go

The apple crusher is fantastic! Chops, grinds and crushes the apples very quickly, and spits them out below into a bucket. We have a sheet of durable plastic that acts as a chute so we don’t lose much. Check it out; it’s dangerous looking.

Crushing & Grinding the Apples

Once we’ve got enough, it’s into the press. Apologies for the quality of the shot. I’ll try to do better next time.

Into The Press

And then we squeeze it down as far as we can go. But the result for the first day is 27 litres of pure homegrown apple juice from 80kg of hand picked, washed, sorted and crushed apples. By the end of the process, we should have about 50 litres of juice. Then I’ll add the yeast (a German pilsner yeast that likes low temperatures), and away we go…hopefully!

First Day's Results

The nature of brewing is that it takes a very long time to finish the process, so I don’t expect to try my cider for at least four months, maybe even longer.

As you can see, the tree is located on a severe slope which made picking the apples very tricky. We could reach the apples on the side closest the tennis court fence (which you can just make out behind the aluminium plank and ladder arrangement, centre right of the picture). But the apples on the downslope side provided to be trickier to collect. We eventually resorted to shaking the crap outta the tree and letting the apples fall to the ground.

You can see the netting we used to protect the tree; it was effective, but we still had losses to bird. Nowhere near as much as we lost to grubs though. Here’s a picture from the other side of the tree which shows the netting more clearly.

The Apple Tree - Another Angle

It took us about 5 hours to pick the tree as bare as we could, and the result was sorted into apples for stewing and preserving (orange trays) and apples for making cider (brown trays). With each tray weighing in at about 20kg, we ended up with seven trays (well, six and a bucket) of cider apples, and two trays for cooking. That’s 180kg of apples from one tree, people! And I guarantee we left another 20kg on the tree because we just couldn’t reach them, and maybe another 20kg on the ground that were just too far gone to use for anything.

A Truck-Load of Apples

Next post I’ll go on about crushing and pressing the apples.