Category Archives: life on the farm

small changes make the world of difference

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I really do love the way the porch is looking these days. The potato vine I planted a couple of years ago has taken off and is threatening to swallow up the whole house, but it provides a calm spot to sit and read in dappled shade during the times when the sun normally sends you scurrying inside.

My various pots and containers with succulents and one pink geranium (I may be greek but I’ve never been a really big geranium fan) are all doing well.

I bought a couple of outdoor setting cushions for the adirondack chairs a friend made for us and they’re way more comfy and inviting.

Of course, we have to bring them in when we finish our ‘front porch sitting’.

Not cause of the dogs. Its the birds that worry us most.

We don’t call it the poop deck for nothing!

My plan is that one day we’ll put a roof over the back porch as well, making it more usable in all weather and a good spot for hot summer afternoons.
When that happens we’ll still have this little corner where roofing will be a challenge. I’m not worried. I’m thinking more trellis, a pink climbing rose I’m growing from a tiny cutting, and we’ll have an ‘arbour’ area at the corner of the porch.
How pretty will that be?
Or… I could go all Greek and put in a grape vine…
I have time… The rose is too little to go in the ground till spring and it’ll be at least a year before its tall enough to need support above the rail. I have till then to find a way to convince Wayne we need a roof on that side of the porch.
z
PS I apologise to geraniums for my earlier comments. I had no idea they come in so many varieties and colours. Thanks to Google, I’m now re-evaluating my stance on geraniums and will most likely become a staunch supporter of them in the future.

silliness is key

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While looking at the DIY Showoff link party, I found a link to this post from Our Peaceful Planet.

Its all about how humour and laughter are the key to a good relationship.

Here is an excerpt from the post:

Ideas To Get You Laughing
 
These suggestions were chosen to encourage having fun and laughing together.  NOTE: If any of these things sound way too immature, your totally missing the point.
 
  1. Watch funny movies or shows together.
  2. Watch stand up comedians together.
  3. Set a goal to share one new joke with each other every week.
  4. Grab some things in the bookstore humor area and read to each other.
  5. Have a game night where you play a fun board game together. You can even do it with friends. (Crimes Against Humanity sticks out as a good choice.)
  6. Be playfully teasing with each other.
  7. Get over inhibitions and do something silly. Make faces, walk funny, do some slap stick.
  8. Always look for the humor in a situation.
  9. Whisper naughty things to your mate that makes them giggle.
  10. Have a tickle fight.
  11. Play twister together.
  12. Hang out with funny friends.
  13. Learn to laugh at yourself.
  14. Play a fun video game together. (Roy and I play World of Warcraft.)
  15. Ride go carts together.
  16. Do the hokey pokey.
  17. Go to a park and play on the swings and slide.
  18. Have a silly string fight.
  19. Play laser tag.
  20. Have a water, snowball or pillow fight.
  21. Act out a scene from a movie.
  22. Learn to juggle.
  23. Have a bubble gum blowing contest.
  24. Have a burping contest.
Well… that’s interesting. Lets see how we fare.
Watch funny movies/shows together – of course. Although sometimes I have to draw the line at some of the stuff Wayne finds funny. I mean I absolutely hate Absolutely Fabulous. And Kath and Kim. And Little Britain. Ugh. However we share the Big Bang Theory, Two Broke Girls, Two and a Half Men (with Charlie of course), Mom and a few others.
Watch stand up comedians together – I wish we could watch them live like I used to in Melbourne long long ago. As it is we just watch the comedy specials on TV.
Set a goal to share one new joke with each other every week – no goal, but we share jokes often. Especially the political jokes that get elected…
Grab some things in the bookstore humor area and read to each other – nah.
Have a game night where you play a fun board game together. You can even do it with friends. (Crimes Against Humanity sticks out as a good choice.) – Crimes Against Humanity? I can’t find that game… I found Cards Against Humanity… is that the same thing? I used to love board games but its been a long time since I played any. Time to bring back the fun. Anyone for Pictionary?
Be playfully teasing with each other – always.
Get over inhibitions and do something silly. Make faces, walk funny, do some slap stick – gosh. If we made more silly faces we’d be at risk of the wind changing and staying that way! Anyway, silly voices, silly accents, silly words… all the time.
Always look for the humor in a situation – ok… easier said than done in some situations. But good point and sometimes we can do it.
Whisper naughty things to your mate that makes them giggle – uhuh.
Have a tickle fight – no way. I’m too ticklish! Does slapping each other on the butt as we pass count?
Play twister together – are you kidding? We’d get stuck in some contorted position and have to be taken to hospital like human pretzels.
Hang out with funny friends – as much as possible.
Learn to laugh at yourself – always.
Play a fun video game together – we don’t play video games. Or computer games.
Ride go carts together – that would be fun. Do we even have go carts in Tasmania?
Do the hokey pokey – have you seen us get out of bed in the morning?
Go to a park and play on the swings and slide – LOL… but no. We’ve never done that.
Have a silly string fight – sadly, I’ve never had a silly string fight. Put that on the shopping list.
Play laser tag – I don’t think I could pay Wayne enough to play laser tag.
Have a water, snowball or pillow fight – water yes, pillow yes, snow… no. 
Act out a scene from a movie – does quoting lines from movies till he wants to strangle me count?
Learn to juggle – I’m game if you are.
Have a bubble gum blowing contest – could do, providing we don’t pull out our fillings… speak for myself. Wayne has great teeth. Mine are a whole lot of filling held together by some enamel.
Have a burping contest – HA. All the time! In fact we grade each other on depth, decibels and reverb. 
I guess me and Wayne (or Wayne and I for those of you who are more pedantic than I am) aren’t doing so bad after all.
Pass Go and collect $200.
Might be time to challenge Wayne to a game of Scrabble.
z

a kettle collection and an old cupboard

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I love my depression cupboard.

Wayne and I bought it on a spending spree when we bought the farm. Up till yesterday it lived in the guest room holding linen.

It wasn’t very good for holding linen and I didn’t like it in there so I decided to replace it and put it where I can see it and enjoy it.

Its actually not in great condition. The top bit needs to be re-attached properly (right now its got huge nails that’ve been hammered in randomly but have come loose) and the base has rotted away in parts… it probably spent a lot of time in someone’s damp shed. Thankfully its not musty.

And it still has the remnants of the sold sticker on it cause I never saw it often enough that it would bother me enough to get out the eucalyptus oil to remove it.

I love it cause its made of old crates. When you open it up inside you can see them. During the depression a lot of furniture was made from crates cause they were easily available. Back then stuff came in real wood boxes, not cardboard and polystyrene.

Today old crates cost almost as much as a new lounge suite.

So, the old cupboard is now on the front  porch, in the enclosed area protected from the weather, and it holds the broom, steam mop and vacuum cleaner, as well as all kinds of stuff which don’t need to be in the pantry: cleaning products, light globes, etc.

And the top now holds my collection of old kettles and some of my succulents.

Of course, where it is it covers the bottom half of the window, but I don’t mind that. I love the way the light comes in over the kettles.

And I love the way you can see the crates writing through the window.

I’m thinking of making a small doily curtain for the top part of the window to finish off the quaint look.
One day, when I get around to more sewing projects.
z

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life (and loss) on the farm

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A few weeks ago one of our new chickens went clucky. First she sat on the nest and got a bit insulted when we took eggs from under her. Then she got short tempered. Then she got cranky and pecked if you reached for the nest.

So we took the 3 eggs she was sitting on and put her and the eggs in Alcatraz. That’s the original dog run on the property that we’ve mainly used as a chicken/duck pen/hospital/nursery.

The chicken sat on those eggs for so long, never coming out of the nest even to eat, that every few days Wayne or I would go in and poke her to make sure she was still alive.

As you can imagine, she really enjoyed that. Small bruises on our arms will attest to that.

Eventually I walked past one day and saw something I never wanted to see… a baby chicken floating in the water bowl.

They’d hatched and one fell straight into the water. Sigh. Poor little thing.

I blame both of us for that. We (he) should have known better than to put a deep water bowl in there with the hen. Didn’t we (he) learn after all those times we (I) fished Herman Too out of that very same bowl when he was dead set determined to kill himself?

Ok. He may have put the bowl in there, but I saw it and didn’t remove it. So, we’re both to blame.

Three hatched. Two alive. At least we have two live ones.

They’re so cute, and she’s such a good mommy. If you go in there she’ll chase you away, wings out, tail up and pointy beak.

Meanwhile the other three chickens decided they wouldn’t be shown up so they went clucky as well. Only problem is we’d been taking the eggs so they’re sitting on empty nests, threatening us with the business end of their beak for nothing.

Well, except one, which is sitting on a ceramic egg. She plans to hatch a chicken figurine.

The horses are all well. Cass is still locked in the stable, poor girlie. She’s being spoiled and pampered, being fed the good stuff twice a day while we wait till its safe to let her out. Its looking like that might be this weekend. The wound is healing well, only four stitches pulled out so its held together. We’ve been cleaning it every day and spraying it with disinfectant twice a day.

She’s ready to get out. She’s bored.

The others are jealous. They don’t understand why she’s being fed while they have to fend for themselves. Life ain’t fair, is it?

Chipmunk shows off his manly physique.

All in all, Dancer and Chipmunk are taking it well but Wally is cranky.

I stay out of his way.

Oh, and we’ve had another animal adventure. Sheep this time.

I think our place has become known locally as the best animal resort in the area.

We keep getting visitors. First there were a couple of pigs, the native hen family, plovers, then the turkeys who visit on a regular basis for a few days at a time, and now we have sheep.

Dancer keeps a wary eye on the new guests.

The horses were a bit put out by the new visitors. How did they get in? The whole place is fenced obviously. The sheep are part gazelle and part greyhound. I saw them run and leap!

Wally doesn’t mind as long as he gets all the treats.

Other than that, I’ve been doing the odd bit here and there but nothing interesting. Hopefully I’ll finish a project or two this weekend to share. Stay tuned.

One thing that I’m pretty sure about now is that I DID fracture my rib. Its been weeks and its still sore.

Mind you, falling on my butt last weekend didn’t help.

No, it wasn’t my fault this time. It was Barney’s.

Let me explain…

Barney was getting in the way of a car which was trying to park in the driveway. I called him over and squatted down to pat and hold him till it was safe.

Its hard enough to balance on your toes in a squatting position at the best of times if the ground is slightly uneven… but there I was trying to balance my center of gravity between my boobs and my butt when Barney decided to lean in.

There was no saving me then. All my weight shifted to my derrier and I went splat.

Again.

Only from a much shorter height this time. And I didn’t land on my sore side.

However, the jolt was enough. Ugh.

Eh. Life goes on.

z

cleaning and sorting update

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Just a quick update before I disappear back into the casita.

I think I’m getting somewhere. I can see the floor now. In the workshop area at least.

I decided I can’t get all three rooms organised at once like I’d planned. I thought I could go in there and sort and clean and organise and have 3 tidy rooms in one go. Instead, I’m going to tackle it a bit at a time.

See, here’s the problem – I have a ton of stuff taking up space, and even with putting things in the sell, donate and throw away boxes, I’ve still got lots left.

There are things I’m just not willing to let go of yet. Not till I’ve made something with them. I got a lot of stuff to redo and make over for myself or to sell, so the only way to move those things out is to redo and make them over and sell them.

So, what I’ve decided is the way to tackle cleaning up the casita is to work in stages. Stage 1 is to get all the boxes out of the pile of death in the store room, the items in them sorted and distributed to their new homes (here or elsewhere). That way I can find just the right bit to finish something.

The store room is not yet empty and won’t be for a while. The grooming room still has stuff in it that don’t belong there. For a while. But the workshop is beginning to look like a person can work in there again.

I’m going back to continue on that in a minute, and then I can start on Stage 2. Making stuff and moving it out.

Hi-ho, hi-ho, its back to work I go.

z

cleaning up or messing up?

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You know how I started cleaning out the casita?
Well, the job has defeated me.
Or at least, its giving my confidence a good thrashing…
I started out with a mess and I thought I was making some progress. Instead I now have a bigger mess in more rooms than I had to start with.
Sigh.
I know that its always darkest before the dawn (or messier before its organised) but man… this is seriously harder than I thought. 
I thought I’d have it finished this weekend. Now I’m thinking it might be the middle of 2016 before I’m done.
Meanwhile, Romeo decided to do some of his own organising. He decided it was time to remodel the dog pillows.

And here is the proud Romeo with his handiwork.

He even decided to just take bites out of the foam on this  pillow. Just picturing him doing this makes me laugh.

I think he was just trying to lift my spirits. Cause of course, coming inside after digging myself out from under 107 cardboard boxes to find foam and stuffing all over the floor in the living room is just what I needed to lift my spirits!

At least he was determined, he had a goal and he worked hard to achieve it.

I should take a leaf out of his book (or stuffing out of his pillow) and keep going on my clean up and organising.

It will get better.

One day I’ll finish.

Then I can start messing it up again.

z

good start to the year?

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Ain’t life fun? Just when you think things can’t get any worse, something else happens.
First it was Wayne, with his sore back, then me with the wacked ribs, now its Cass with a gash on her side big enough to drive a truck through.
That’s three now. Lets hope that’s all there is now!
I went out this morning to put her mask on (for the sun) and saw a huge gash on her side with blood dripping from it.
Not nice.
I yelled for Wayne and we went up the top of the paddock to get her and brought her into the house yard. We washed the wound and yeah, it was beyond our capabilities to fix. Too deep and too big.
I called the horse vet clinic and they sent out one of their vets this afternoon. He did a great job stitching it up. I was unsure how he’d be able to hold such a gaping wound closed, but he did a double layer job – first stitching muscle and then skin.
I made myself as useful as possible. First I brought out my small grooming table so he could set up his tools. Then I lent him my clippers with a #40 blade to clip around the wound. And after he finished I cleaned her up.
Wayne says I’m a frustrated vet nurse. I’ve assisted with surgeries before, on my own animals when they were injured after hours (which is when every self respecting animal injures itself). There was a time when I considered being a vet … I opted to go to Art School instead. 
Looking back now, being a vet would probably have been a much better career choice…
At the very least I’d have been able to support my animal habit. Oh well. Hindsight is 20-20 right?
My poor Cass. She’s a bit accident prone, but this is rather bigger and badder than the usual cuts and scrapes horses tend to get. She’ll be in isolation for a while till we know the stitches have done their job and she wont rip them open.
For those who are squeamish, I’m putting the before and after pics below. You just enjoy the pretty photo of my hydrangeas. 
I put them at the top of this post just for you.
If you have a weak stomach close the window now.
This is what the poor girl looked like after we washed out the wound.

And this is this afternoon after the vet closed her up.

Poor Cass…
z

busy bees

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When I say ‘busy bees’, I mean real bees, not me. I’m lying around the house trying not to move and work up a sweat in the heat. 
And not to put strain on my aching ribs which have put a limit on the amount of oxygen I can pull into my lungs at any given time…
Do you have bumble bees where you are? We do. I’d never seen these bees till I came to live in Tasmania. They’re big and round and drone kind of like the Boeing 747 of the bee world.

Have I mentioned I love my new camera? Its a cherry red Nikon Coolpix L830 that I got almost new on ebay.
Have I mentioned I love ebay?

It has an incredible 30x optical zoom (incredible when I had a 3x with my old camera). Its very handy when you want to take pics of animals in the distance. Like the geese.

Of course, full zoom needs a tripod or you just get blur, but I have one of those. A Velbon tripod, in great condition.

I got it on ebay.

Naturally.

Did I mention we’re one goose down? We had three geese originally, they had 3 babies. Two girls and one boy.

Unfortunately one of the girls got into the yard before Christmas and the dogs killed her.

I was really upset. But to be fair, they did leave her when I called them. It was just too late. They’d already broken her neck and she died in my arms.

Wayne and I buried her near the dam.

Everyone said “Why didn’t you eat her? She’d have made a great Christmas dinner”…

How could we? She was our goose. She wasn’t bred to eat.

One of our new chickens is going broody. She’s trying to nest in a sky box in the chicken coop. No forethought on her part. I mean, what’ll happen to any chicks she has soon as they step out of the box?
Splat.
Anyway, we’ve been taking her eggs and she’s been getting increasingly cranky about it. Wayne thought that maybe we should just catch her and let her go broody in Stalag 13*. That way any chicks won’t have to skydive before they can walk, and will be less likely to be crow food.
I’m not sure I want chicks.
We have 4 chickens and currently get 4 eggs a day. Its hard for us to keep up with that. Sure, with the new law saying that people with under 20 chickens can sell eggs without going through all kinds of regulations and stamping of eggs, which cancelled out the previous new law which made it illegal to sell home laid eggs without accreditation, we can sell our eggs to support our chicken habit…
But having chicks means getting roosters as well as hens.
And that means we have to make a decision: what do we do with the roosters? We can’t drive them up the highway and dump them on the side of the road like so many people do. We can’t bribe people to take them, or smuggle one into every visitor’s bag as they’re leaving. 
We can’t eat them cause by the time we know they’re roosters they’ll have names.
Sheesh. 
Mom was wrong. I’d never make a good farmer’s wife!
z
*Stalag 13: Original dog kennel on the property when we bought it. Its been used to incarcerate escape artist dogs, house roosters (given to us by a friend for the pot, and accepted by Wayne who thought ‘no worries’ then found he couldn’t kill and eat them cause “they were cute”), and raise various clutches of ducklings to save them from aforementioned crows. I was considering converting it to a green house for winter, but hey, winter is months away and who needs a green house in summer?

anatomy of a fall

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I’m feeling a bit better this afternoon. The pain killers no doubt helped some. I think I’ll live.

On one of my short breaks from the ugly purple recliner I thought I’d take some photos for you.

These are the culprit tyres.

And this is a diagramatic re-enactment.

I don’t care if that’s not a real word.

Ouch.

Imagine me lying on my side, elbow bent underneath me bottom left, my feet up between the two tyres. Not a pretty sight. Luckily no one around with a smartphone.

Please note the gravelly clay soil. Much like cement.

On the upside, I’m getting to catch up on computer and mobile phone stuff… On the downside I’m not crossing things off my never-ending-renovation-To-Do-List.

Speaking of smartphones, did I mention my new mobile phone? New to me anyway.

I had an el cheapo mobile phone which I bought when I lost my old mobile about 4 years ago. It cost me something like $75. It was simple. Took calls, made calls. Took photos which were impossible to see on the tiny screen, and refused to open multimedia messages.

I’d been wanting a new phone for a while. Not a long time, but I was getting there.

Then one day I ran over my old phone.

I swear, I did not do it on purpose! Many won’t believe that, but I swear its true.

In fact I have no idea how my mobile ended up on the other side of the driveway, near the gate.

Anyway, while lamenting my carelessness great loss on FB (as you do) cause I was going through an especially broke stage and couldn’t afford a new phone… and at a time when my grooming work should have been booming, but wasn’t, due to a lack of aforementioned roadkill phone…

… someone offered me an old phone.

Its a 2 year old Huawei Ascend and its my first ever smartphone.

A steep learning curve which I’m enjoying.

I am ever so grateful.

I am a big believer in doing good for people cause good will come to you from unexpected sources. I’m always giving things away to people who want or need them rather than sell them for personal gain. I’ve never been a “what’s in it for me” person.

Then, when I need something, someone kind will give me what I need.

Like a mobile phone. Or old carpet, or a doona cover.

So I’ve spent today working on a logo design, editing and cropping photos, cleaning up files on my computer, learning about apps and figuring out how to fix an “insufficient storage” error on the phone.

Anyway, I leave you with a couple of pretty pics of the tyre embankment which shows that one day, this will be a pretty wall of plants and not just a row of tyres.

z

no longer an ugly duckling

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You’ve come a long way baby!

(Does anyone remember the Virginia Slims ad? or am I just too old?)

I am loving my home. I get so much enjoyment out of stepping out the door onto our front porch and just looking at it and the garden. Sure, the back deck (or the poop deck as its affectionately known) is still a mess, it really needs a roof and bird evictions, and there’s still a healthy farm-like amount of crap around the place… but its home and its becoming beautiful – and I love it.

We went from this:

To this:

What’s not to love?
You can read more about the before and afters here.
Here is the back deck, unpainted, exposed… I have plans for that… one day… till then I pretend I can’t see it.

The deck is welcoming and cosy now. The potato vine has gone bezerk and provides dappled shade in one small area.

Soon the pale yellow banksia roses on the trellis should also hide the water tanks on the left. And once the potato vine spreads a little more to both sides there’ll be more shade in the afternoons.

The plan is that when we roof the back deck we’ll just put more trellis on the corner and make it sort of like an arbour area where you can sit in dappled sunlight with plants growing around you. Perhaps a pink banksia rose… I’d love a purple potato vine but they’re not so hardy, and I’d love a jasmine but I’ve killed two of them so far.

Maybe I’ll stay away from them.

Ah… home. In this pic you can almost not see the bare spots on the weeds lawn where I sprayed Roundup. As I keep saying, if it wasn’t for weeds we’d have no green. 

There is still much to do but at least I can say I’ve managed to do something over the Christmas break. I finished painting the front of the house where we had bare timber from moving the kitchen windows. I undercoated the enclosed porch area ready to paint. And I put up my corner brackets, something I’d been planning to do for the last couple of years.

Now, if I wasn’t such a clutz I’d be out there painting today. Top coating the enclosed area and all the window surrounds.

Instead I’m sitting in the ugly purple recliner trying to move as little as possible.

Why you ask?

I was climbing ladders, on uneven ground, for days painting and screwing in brackets and I was fine.

All I did was water the embankment yesterday and I think I’ve cracked a rib.

I need to rethink riding again… I don’t think I should get on anything with its own feet. I can’t be trusted on my own two feet.

Let me explain: the embankment is made up of old tyres. A bit redneck but in the spirit of recycling, which I’m into big time. Its a steep embankment, impossible to walk up at the best of times. The other day I’d walked along the top tossing down the tyres from the top line that I thought were unnecessary.

Obviously, I didn’t put them out of the way or stack them nicely. I left them where they fell.

My bad.

So, while watering last night I was walking along the bottom of the embankment, a small channel which catches rainwater and directs it away from the house, when I tripped on one tyre, stepped back to get my balance and stepped on another, bounced off it and landed like a sack of potatos.

Hm… not quite. A sack of potatos keeps its shape.

I landed like a sack of potting mix. With a big splat, on my left side, on my left arm and on my ribs. My whole weight just kind of formed around and over my arm so that I had to kind of pry myself up.

After I’d caught my breath… ie about 3 minutes of moaning and groaning in pain.

It probably took me 5 minutes to stand up and pick up the hose again. I’d been lying in the ditch of course so of course I was covered in mud.

Like a trooper, I kept watering. It had to be done, right?

Then I went into the house and sooked to Wayne while I changed and washed the gravel off my arm.

The elbow is bruised but doesn’t hurt. In fact, the right elbow (which was nowhere near the squash zone) still hurts more than the left, but the bruising is impressive.

Its my ribs that hurt. And the weight of my left breast. Youch. (Wayne kindly offered his support. Pun intended.)

I can breath but deep breaths hurt and moving hurts.

Wonderful.

I’ve had broken ribs before. Many times.

You don’t want to know.

There’s nothing to be done but rest and patience. So, whether its soft tissue damage or a broken rib, I just have to wait it out.

Wonderful.

I still have a week off work and I had so much to do.

NOT happy Jan.

z

PS. I watch too much TV and have a head full of quotes and movie trivia.