Category Archives: life on the farm

poodle playdate

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Today was a busy day. And a fun day. Our friends Mary and Zephyr came over for a visit (and grooming session). Usually when Zephyr comes over to play we all go out for a walk in the top paddock which has the best view on our property. Then, once the poodles are nice and dirty, we go back and they all get a groom.

Its actually quite handy, cause by the time Zeph is ready for a groom so are Montana and Romeo. Mary comes up and together we groom all three poodles in a production line kind of arrangement. That way they’re all clean at the same time.

I love clean poodles.

And the weather wasn’t too bad either. Overcast but not really cold, and the forecast rain didn’t turn up either. Good weather for playing with crazy dogs.

Its been pretty cold lately, often below zero overnight and lots of frost in the morning.

The garden is struggling a bit with all the frost lately and I’m already sick of drying our clothes in the living room in front of the heater. I can’t wait for more sun and longer days…

I’m now working 5 days a week at my ‘day job’ which means less time for playing at home. I have no idea how I managed to work full time, 5 days a week, for so many years and still managed to get things done!

z

we got one of them there run-amoks

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Yep. We got a new truck. Well, new to us.

Its a VW Amarok.

Pretty cool.

Wayne is one of those ‘trade a car in before it gets too old and while its still worth something as a trade-in’ people.

I’m one of those ‘buy a car, own it and drive it till it stops’ people. Not really. But then again I’d never consciously made a decision to trade in a car in order to upgrade to something newer before.

Anyway, we started discussing the idea of trading in and upgrading our Mazda BT50 to a newer model truck… sometime in the future…

We weren’t in a rush. The Mazda was 8 years old by now. We got it as a 5 year old car. I only had 2 more years left on the carloan… I was in no rush to start over, for sure.

We’d been looking at trucks on the road and giving them points out of ten for style and looks. And we were gathering info on their performance and features from wherever we could find them. We were considering looking at a later model BT50, an Isuzu Dmax and the Amarok.

I loved my BT50 so we had that at the top of the list and one of Wayne’s sons owns an Amarok and is really happy with it, so it was up there too. Plus I love the chunky design.

Then we made the fatal mistake of stopping to have a look at trucks at a local car dealer. The one we bought the BT50 from incidentally.

We went in ‘to look’ and came out 4 hours later with a car.

Ok, not exactly, but every time we made a move to leave saying ‘we’re just looking’ we were kind of steered back in like a bugs caught in a spider web. Or being drawn to the light…

Whatever. Its done. My beloved BT50 is gone and I have another truck and guess what? I love it!

We got a good deal, its a 2013 model and we got it with a canopy and tow bar for a good price. Plus I can now say I drive a Run Amok!

z

a place for everything – even headlamps

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Got home the other evening and found a stomach on the garden path.

Yep.

A stomach.

No hair. No feathers. No head. No beak. No feet.

Nothing.

Just. A. Stomach.

A ruminant’s stomach.

Seems the poodles thought it was time to up the challenge for me. Every time I find one of their kills, there’s less of it to identify it by. I was able to identify the last specimen by the feathers and some guts.

This time all I got was a stomach. With munched up grass in it. I’d guess rabbit or wallaby… and given they haven’t yet caught a rabbit (that I know of), I’d say wallaby.

At this rate I’ll soon be an expert at identifying species from the inside out.

sigh.

Ok. At this point let me just say that I don’t like my poodles killing anything, even rats or mice. Though whatever is living in our ceiling is asking for it…

I especially hate it when they kill wildlife or our ducks, chickens or geese. But they have a strong prey drive and they will kill any intruder in their yard. Its a fact of life and I’ve had to accept that my gorgeous fluffy dogs are real dogs… predators even.

But on a cheerier note, at least a more creative one, I finally created a place for Wayne’s huge collection of headlamps.

He has a million of them. Battery operated, rechargeable, you name it, he has it. He bought one so he could go out to feed the horses in the dark. Then he bought a second as a spare. Then he got a rechargeable one. Then he found a brighter one. It goes on and on.

I don’t care how many he has. They come in handy when I’m searching the yard for clues such as hair, feathers, a head… What I have a problem with is him recharging them all over the kitchen counters.

I had to create a spot for them which met these requirements:

  1. store all the headlamps in once spot and not all over the house
  2. a spot handy to grab one on the way out 
  3. a spot handy to put it back on the way back in
  4. the ability to store and recharge in one place

I had no idea how to do this. I didn’t know what I wanted it to look like or where to put it.

In the end I went for quick and easy. I grabbed a bit of chippy old skirting board I had in the shed, drilled holes in it and jammed in some really big nails. I added a cool chippy green-blue door thingy. Just for fun I painted the heads of the nails pale green-blue to match.

I chose to put this new headlamp hanger on the front porch, in the enclosed area. Unfortunately there’s no power there so I had to use a long extension cord going from the outdoor power point in the middle of the porch and a power-board mounted on the wall. I’ll be managing the cords better once I find my box of cable clips…

I added this cute half planter basket to hold the chargers.

In order to do all this I had to move a few things over to the other side, so the kitchen window ledge is looking a lot busier.

I’m happy. The headlamps are off the kitchen counter. Wayne is happy cause he no longer has to search for headlamps I’ve moved.
Win win.
z

what greeted us when we got home last night

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This is what we saw when we got home last night:

Of course, it was dark when we got home, so we didn’t so much see it as feel it. Wayne stepped onto the porch first and said, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it can’t be good…”

Seems one of the dogs (not naming names, but it starts with ‘R’ and ends with ‘omeo’) decided he needed to dig through the walls to get at something under the house.

Luckily the timber walls are stronger than the plaster walls he’s already rearranged in the casita, but everything in the way of his exploration paid the price.

Thankfully nothing was broken. Just ripped bags, chewed cardboard and lots and lots of small bits to pick up.

One good thing came of it I guess… when I had to kneel on that manky old carpet piece that’s been our outside mat forEVER, I realised just how grimey it was. I actually went and cut another piece of old carpet and made a newer/cleaner outdoor mat.

And while I was at it, I cut a new piece for the back of the ute (truck to some).

Just in case you’re thinking our dogs are naughty… most of the time they’re cute, cuddly and adorable. See above – Montana sleeping on an armchair. How cute is that?
And Romeo on the couch which he seems to have claimed as his own. He makes sure to stretch out as much as he can so no one else can fit on it!
Barney, meanwhile, has his own bed… which Montana likes to steal when she can.
You always know when Montana is in Barney’s bed cause he lurks around, looking miserable till we notice and go move her along. Then he’s back in it like a shot.
Well, today I bought Montana her own new bed. Its bigger than the one Barney has cause she’s bigger than him. Soon as I got it home Barney claimed it.

Montana seems to prefer the smaller basket. Seriously, she loves small crates. She will fold herself into miniature poodle size crates.

Anyway, after all that you might be thinking “All this is very well, but what happened to the small changes challenge she set herself? All that big talk and then she stops posting/sharing/doing for twelve (12) whole days? Then she has the nerve to post about DOGS as if nothing’s happened? Does she think we didn’t notice she fell off the wagon? What sort of example is she setting? Who does she think she is?…”

Get off my back!

I’ve been busy, ok!

I’ve been busy, and tired, and lazy.

I took some time off from doing stuff.

And housework.

I chose to watch TV instead of logging on in the evenings. I have a few things to share, which I will do over the next few days. I’ll drip feed it all and try to stretch it out so it looks like I’ve done more than I’ve actually done.

Don’t give up on me yet.

z

small things big impact – a bench in the mudroom

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Day 4 – A bench in the mudroom

Do you remember when I made this little cabinet for my shoes? I always intended it to live in the mud room as a bench as well as storage. But up till recently we’ve always had a dog bed in that spot, somewhere for the dogs to get out of the weather.

Well, winter is coming, and I decided it was time to move the dog beds off the porch and out of the mud room and into the grooming room. Two birds: warmer dogs and we reclaim our porch and mudroom.

So the cabinet moved into the mud room. Its still not finished in there. I had planned to paint all the walls white, but I decided to leave that wall natural, showing the old weathered timber we lined the walls with. It really shows off the drawer front coat hangers I made.
This is another of the small changes and updates which I’m finally catching up on and which make so much of a difference.
The photos make the mudroom look ok, but its not really. Its filthy, the white squares on the vinyl are so grimey and so hard to clean. Possibly not the best choice for a mud room…
Oh well. Choices are made, things are done, decisions are proved to be wrong. Such is life. 
I still love my floor, but maybe not in this house, in this yard, with these dogs and with this man.
🙂
z

just because

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Why am I sharing this pic?

Cause I like it.

I took it to show a friend the rickety chair I picked up off the side of the road last year, a chair which is beyond repairing to actually seat a human being of ample proportions, but which retains a lot of charm.

When organising the store room (still not organised) I hung it on a humungous nail and left it there.

When I saw the photo I realised there was something I just loved about having a chair hanging on the wall.

Meanwhile, I’ve been busy. Cleaning. Tidying. Organising.

In the casita, not the house. The house remains a total mess. In fact, its messier than it was last week when I put off tidying up.

On a happier note, the chickies are doing well and the hen and chick we moved out to the chicken coop ran off the minute we opened the door to let them out.

We shouldn’t keep chickens. We’re just not qualified.

Meanwhile Wayne bought new rugs for Chipmunk…

He looks like he was eaten by a horse rug.

For sale: two small, but obviously not tiny enough, horse rugs. One regular and one with attached neck rug.

Never a dull moment at Wind Dancer Farm!

z

chicken wrangling

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This morning we got a surprise.

Another hen has had chicks!

We never thought she’d hatch out anything given that:

  • she wasn’t as fanatical about sitting on eggs as the first hen
  • she was sitting on an empty nest
  • we kept throwing her off the nest
  • once we gave in and put eggs under her, she didn’t sit on them with the single minded dedication of the first chook 
  • we found one half hatched dead chick and figured the eggs were done for
  • even if she did hatch out live chicks, she was nesting in a “sky box” and we had visions of chicks leaping out and breaking their necks soon as they hatched.

Well, she proved us wrong on all counts.

This morning, when we had to go to work, she trotted out three tiny little chickies!

Well, we had to go to work, but leaving them out in the ‘wild’ around here is a death sentence for little people their size.

We managed to lure mom (and chicks) into the pump shed where we closed them up for the day, and when we got home this afternoon we got to work on some serious relocating.

I mentioned we raised the first 3 chickies in Alcatraz. Last weekend we released the remaining two chicks and mom, then promptly lost one of the chicks when it tried to return to Alcatraz, got into the yard and one of the dogs got it.

sigh.

So, we herded the dwindling family back into Alcatraz… till the remaining chick got too big to fit under the fence.

However, plans must change when circumstances change.

The new arrivals meant we need the safety provided by Alcatraz for another batch of chicks.

That brings us back to this afternoon and the chicken wrangling.

Wayne and I went into Alcatraz and began chasing mom and baby around. We caught them and amongst much squalking, we got them up to the hen house where we locked them in with the rooster and other hen. The plan is to keep them in there for a couple of days – till the little one recognises the hen house as HOME and not try to get back into the yard.

Chicken psychology.

Then we moved onto the pump shed.

The pump shed is a very small shed, with a pump in the middle (go figure!) and there’s barely enough room to swing a cat, let alone chase chooks.

Anyway, I got mom on first grab but only saw 2 surprised chicks under her. Panic. Then I looked and the 3rd chick was dangling under mom where I held her.

I promptly lost hold of mom as I tried to grab the baby before I squashed it.

Long story short, I got mom and all three babies and we released them into their new home for the next couple of months: Alcatraz.

Now, if the babies don’t all die of shock, we’ve added another 3 chickens to our family.

See? You thought we lived boring lives in the country! Never a dull moment around here!

z

small changes in the living room I can live with

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Its no secret that I dislike our living room.

Its not the size, I love the size. Its huge.

Its that nothing in there makes sense.

Like the columns in the middle of the room, holding up the ceiling cause the idiots who extended the house didn’t put in the right beam.

And they’re not even in the middle. They’re off centre, creating 2 areas of uneven size.

Mostly, what I dislike about it is the fact that its all so bitsy. We have mismatched items of furniture, nothing that makes sense and ties in together… Its too busy and messy… and I want a new couch. And the carpet is still salmon.

But I can’t remove the carpet yet (I had hoped to do that over summer, and get a new wood heater as well, but that didn’t go to plan). And I can’t afford a new couch. Which is probably for the best cause I still don’t really know what I want. I know I want leather, brown, classic… an old chesterfield would be great. Or a club lounge. And a gentlemen’s club wingback armchair would be nice. In worn leather.

Then I think a modular type with a chaise would probably fit better in our space.

I hate recliners – they’re so ugly, but they’re so comfortable…

In the end I just give up and keep moving things around to try to make the living room more bearable with what’s here now.

Among the most recent of furniture shuffles I thought I’d try a suggestion of Diane’s to stack my two small antique bookcases into one taller piece. I’d pooh-poohed her idea originally, saying the bookcases fit under the window perfectly as they were, that they don’t fit together well upside down… but she had a point. So many of my items were small/low/short. I needed taller pieces.

Then I tried it and I love this new little corner in the chaos that is our living room.

Note the painting of Dancer. I had a nail in the wall… and I had a painting to hang. There you go. 
The old/improved bookcase:

Note the books crammed in the gaps to balance it… I hope no one wants to read those books any time soon…

Its the perfect spot to sit and read or to sit with the laptop on your lap cause its the perfect height and depth of seat.

I’m wondering whether I should redo the bookshelves by colour like in this pin I saw on Pinterest. It looks so pretty, but I bet it’d be hell to locate a book. Our books are a mess right now cause I’ve been shuffling things around, but normally they’re organised by author and topic. ie art books together, dog books together, etc.

Another small but pretty move was the little bookcase I made over a few years ago into the internet corner. I call it the internet corner cause its where the cables come into the house and where, up until recently, the satellite modem and wifi router lived. Its also where the powerpoint is and where the TV lived.

You can see the satellite modem and router on top of the cabinet, and below, you can see our new NBN connection!

We are now part to the modern world, with faster internet! Not to mention a MUCH quieter internet connection! The old satellite modem was LOUD.

So this is what it looks like now – the modem on the wall and the wifi router on the bookcase. Once we’ve connected our VOIP phone the bookcase will move closer into the corner so the wires aren’t so visible.

But just in case you didn’t notice, the barbed wire heart in a base made from curved rusty roofing iron is one of Wayne’s creations.

So there you go. A couple of small parts of the living room which aren’t so bad to look at.
z

who let the dogs out?

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To look at them you wouldn’t think butter would melt in their mouths. They’re so pretty, so cuddly, so loving.

You’d never guess that lion hearts nest inside their curly chests.

Many’s the time I’ve come home to find dead chickens, birds or ducks in the yard. Or occasionally woken up to the unpleasant task of burying a wallaby or possum.

I’m not proud to say that the carnage count includes rats, mice, a goose and even a bandicoot.

While we try to keep our yard critter safe (poodles in – critters out) we sometimes fail. And you can be sure the poodles are there to rub that failure in our faces every time.

This is one aspect of larger dogs with a high prey drive that I dislike. I know its natural – they hunt. Its what they do. I have to accept it, I don’t have to like it. Especially when I’m the one finding and disposing of the bodies like an accomplice after the fact.
Neighbours see me out in the paddock with a shovel, looking furtively over my shoulder as I dispose of the evidence, and they worry if they need to be concerned for Wayne.
At least toy poodles didn’t have a chance of bringing down larger prey… a small bird, a mouse, a skink. But with standards the hole you have to dig is much bigger.

Up till recently, all bodies retrieved were intact. No blood, less evidence.

At least, I’d tell myself, they’re neat killers – one grab around the neck, a good shake and its curtains for the critter who had the misfortune to step inside our yard. No mess.

Very befitting a poodle.

Just the thing to be grateful for: intact corpses.

Except for one memorable occasion when I came home with a friend to find Romeo parading round the yard with a duck head in his mouth. The rest of the duck was still intact though… just minus the head…

Way to impress visitors.

So, you can imagine how disgusting it was to wake up on Sunday morning and find what looked, at first appearance, to be an intact dead pademelon, only to find its guts lying next to it. Outside its body. In a neat little bundle. Barely a mark on it. Like someone had carefully opened a birthday present.

Yup.

Disgusting.

Then, this morning, I woke up to find a single feather and some guts on the footpath.

Great.
I might be good at identifying animals, but even my abilities were stretched to identify this one from the inside out.
I think it was a native hen.
I have no idea how it got in the yard. The poodles leave things alone out in the paddock, but anything that comes in their yard is, literally, dead meat.
sigh.
z

not quite the mediterranean

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Its hot today. It was hot yesterday too. I don’t do well in the heat… All I want to do is lie down and sleep. I probably will after this post…

Its been a good day though cause we went for a dip at a local swimming hole.

Only took us 5 years of living here to learn about it.

I’ve never been one for swimming in rivers, even though I swam in the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers way more than in the sea for the first 10 years of my life. Back then we lived in inland NSW, far from the sea, and rivers were the only option outside the public swimming pool.

One thing I dislike about rivers is the dark tannin stained water, the murky black depths. I’m never comfortable in water when I can’t see my own feet, let alone the bottom.

Ok, I’m being unfair. The water was clear and I could see my feet, but it was dark and I couldn’t see the bottom beyond a certain depth. That gives me the creeps. I mean, when you’ve been spoilt, spending as many summers on a greek island as I have, you get kinda fussy about the water you immerse yourself in.

In Greece beaches are usually crystal clear, sandy and blue. Rivers are dark and scary looking to me.

Take a look at these images for instance (I got these off the net cause I can’t access my original blog and all my photos are on the external drive that went to meet its maker, figuratively speaking.)

Not quite the same is it?

Enough of that now. I’m making myself homesick.

Still, the river was beautiful and peaceful (till the hordes descended with their anklebiters). It has a beauty entirely of its own.

Despite my many years of Paros beaches (and being Greek), I’m also an Aussie country girl. My childhood memories are of living in country NSW. The Australian landscape speaks directly to my heart… which is why I choose to live on a farm and not in a city.

And lets face it: wet is wet!

When the river is closer than the beach and its too hot to move, that’s all that counts.

At least there are no sharks in Tasmanian rivers. Or crocodiles. Or piranhas. Basically, they’re pretty safe unless you stupidly dive in without knowing what’s beneath.

We hung around for a while swimming, relaxing, reading. I went in till I got all pruney and even though we were in an area of shade, I think I still managed to get a bit too much sun… hence the headache.

Not quite Paros, but it’ll do. 
z