Thursday, July 23, 2009

Renovations and explorations

WE started renovating the kitchen...


The slabs are solid granite....

But 3 days of slog...

and now we have a fabulous new kitchen!

next is the living/bedroom space, owch, aching muscles!!

Luckily our vege patch survived the worst of a cow invasion...

We had time to explore the south end of the property, the native bush seen is pretty much all ours...the pines above will get the chop sooner or later...it will sure look strange...a bit like this:



This is the view from the south across the cow farm to our trees on the highest hill


In the forest at the south end are wonderful trees, mosses, ferns and fungi:



And some surprising animals...




Lets hope the shire will give us grant money to fence the cows out from the whole creek and forest area..



Monday, July 6, 2009

July update

Loads of rain folks, some 40 ml in the first week of July, coming off what was perhaps a dryish June (40ml total). Its lovely and wet up there, but the shed is now almost weather proof and we stay cozy by the fireside at night. Ginseng operations have begun in earnest. We even planted some saffron as a trial, but it seems like one needs 5 acres of flowers to make 500 grams of saffron stamens, so its not likely to be commercial venture!

Trial of Dong guai in the dappled forest creekside


More crazy fungi


Laurie loves the outdoor table, a sunny lunch spot in winter, shady in summer


Black wallaby in the pine waste


Our access road after forest thinning operations, much better!


10 year old American Ginseng, destined for our forest soil as seed stock