Well that’s been my first ‘working at home’ week for the year.
It’s been a pretty full on, very productive week. The fact that it has drizzled its way through much of the week has helped immensely. It’s so much easier to work in cool, slightly damp weather.
As Aaron has been getting up at the usual 4am I decided to do the same. However, instead of feeding out straight away I have done housework until dawn breaks and then fed out.
My focus this week has been mainly about woodchip. Having scored 120 cubic metres of free woodchip we’re determined to use it. If we’d bought it we’d have paid close to $3K so I’m not about to waste it! So this week I’ve filled numerous crates of the stuff and moved it to various destinations.
Last week I had spent several days removing several inches of weeds and soil out of the garden paths in the raised vege garden. This week I took a day to weedmat and woodchip the paths. To fill the paths up again took 40 vege crates of woodchip and it will need more once the woodchip settles.
On Wednesday morning Aaron and I started woodchipping the feed area of Mabel’s maternity paddock. One of the woodchip mounds is straight across the drive so it was just a matter of filling crates and carrying them over to the paddock. I started by carrying them across and putting them inside the gate for Aaron to pick up and empty but I could only do one load (about 20 crates). The bottom step is long gone so it means a big step up and after one load I just couldn’t get my leg up and lift the crate with me.
Aaron had to do the fetch and carry of the next 2 loads and by then both our backs were too sore to carry on.
It doesn’t help with wet woodchip either. It’s amazing how heavy that stuff is when it’s wet!
On Wednesday and Thursday I scrubcut and weeded a section of the back orchard and then weedmatted and woodchipped.
Seriously, there are days when I dream about owning my own digger!
This week I also finally decided to tackle to tomato plant jungle in the back garden.
We planted them several months ago and then just left them as other things took priority. Aaron had at one stage put up some garden stakes but they were well past being effective. We’d not pinched any of the laterals and most of the tomato plants were now a heaped, blighted mass. It seemed such a waste to just let them rot so I decided to be absolutely brutal in the hope we might get even half a dozen tomatoes off them.
Firstly I removed all the stakes and then lay the tomato stems out on the ground. I swear I’ve never seen tomatoes grow this big! There was only one thing for it. I just started at one end and worked my way along, brutally cutting back branches, removing numerous leaves, and pinching out any remaining laterals.
I erected rough climbing frames out of gardening stakes and then bit by bit tied up all the remaining branches.
3 hours later it looked like a massacre had taken place. I swear there was more tomato plant in the compost heap than on the plants themselves. However, what I have now is a lot of green tomatoes, a lot of air flow, and a much tidier structure.
Part of me wondered if perhaps I’d been too brutal but we’re now at the end of the week and the tomatoes are not only ripening but the plants themselves also seem to be doing okay.
Tuesday and Friday were pig meal days. We can only make 6 meal lots at a time as that is either a) how much fruit and vege we have, or b) how much room in the coolstore we have.
At the moment I make them early in the morning when piglet is having a post-breakfast snooze.
He’s so used to spending a lot of time with us that he pays no heed to paddock fences, wire or electric. While it was delightful to have him around as a weaner we realize now we’ve created a monster. He now believes he’s part of the family and refuses to behave like a pig.
He is only weeks away from slaughter and I am having very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand we are struggling to cope with his insistence on going where he likes and when he likes, on the other, he makes me smile because he is all personality and is clearly as fond of me as I of him.
The Problem With Pests
On Thursday morning I fed out and then continued along the drive to walk the dogs and check on the cows.
When I got to the end of the driveway I was very surprised to see one of our instant-kill cat traps in the middle of the drive. Unbelievably, not only had the 2 nails holding it onto the post been wrenched out but the trap was empty.
There was no blood or dead cat anywhere. In fact there was only a bit of cat fur to indicate what had been caught.
Not only was I disappointed that there was no dead cat but I also felt quite sick at what the caught cat had had to endure to escape. Clearly, instead of sticking its head in the trap it had stuck its paw in. The steel bar had then been released, trapping its leg. As the trap was nailed to the top of the fence post I can only imagine that the cat must have been knocked off balance and then thrown itself wildly around until the trap was wrenched from the post. It had then dragged the trap to the middle of the driveway before eventually managing to free itself.
While I despise wild cats and I do not wish for any of them to suffer. What we have now is an injured cat roaming the property and no doubt it’s a bit trap weary. It’s going to struggle to catch game and feed itself. I can only hope this will make it desperate to try the trap again.
The rat traps have not worked at all this week. The rats are constantly setting them off but nothing ever gets caught.
The stoat traps remain empty and quite frankly my frustration levels as far as trapping goes are at an all time high.
The Scraps
The rest of my week seemed to be a series of small let downs.
I start the week with 4 ducklings left and as of yesterday only 1 remains.
Wild chook still had 3 chicks last weekend and then she disappeared, only turning up again yesterday with only 2.
Birds knocked our entire crop off the plum tree out the back. 8 plums? I managed to salvage 6. I think I can safely say that the smell of sun-warmed, fresh plums is something quite beautiful.
The walnut tree appears to have suddenly died. After looking incredibly healthy for so long it’s suddenly curled up its toes and now looks very dead. While not as attached to the walnut tree as perhaps the plum or the nectarine I’m feeling somewhat upset. How dare it! That’s $35 wasted. That’s $35 we don’t just have sitting in the bank to buy a replacement.
While the prognosis is grim we’ve decided to give it 6 months to see if it recovers. Sarah’s avocado had needed that to claw it’s way back from what was almost certainly a fatal attack from a possum so anything’s possible.
We watched ‘Dirt: the movie’ and ‘The Age of Stupid’ this week. Both of them quite scary but also inspiring in their own ways.
I had almost convinced myself global warming was a myth but after watching ‘The Age of Stupid’ I’m having my doubts.
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