Windows to the forest and the Garden begun

A rainy Xmas which luckily made gardening alot easier, and several days construction slog putting up windows, but we now have 1/2 a living shed and a vege patch taking shape. The grader has finished clearing for the water tanks and garage and this weekend comes the earth-mover for dam repairs.

Congrat's to Quinten and Jane: a new baby girl!

Eventually we hope to evolve into something like this: Earthships:

Plums!

Loy Yang mine

Mt Baw Baw in the distance beyond Loy Yang

Wildlife spotted recently, in addition to the giant wild sheep!, include the southern brown tree frog, whole families of kookaburra's, huge dragonfly's and stick insects and giant earthworms, and wedge tailed eagles regularly soaring in the afternoon updrafts above the hills.

Due to complaints re the rat's accidental deaths, I have been asked to retract my statements re their worth. Ok: In fact native rats are cool. They feed owls and other higher predators, and so they help keep the forest order intact. It was a complete accident their drownings mind you.

My sisters place

My sisters little 'farmlet' in sunny Ballarat
In between visits it has transformed from this:

To this:




Wonderfully inspiring,
and home grown Xmas dinners are the best!

On Cows, Rats and Giant Radishes

It was possibly just too good to pass by, let loose on their lower paddocks adjacent to the river, the neighbors herd of cow's had charged across the creek trampling our stone steps we had made up from the crossing and so after filling their mouths full of our lush pasture they had gone through my (somewhat in hindsight non-cow proof) garden fence and started at the radishes and silverbeets... reminds me of the flopsy bunny stories from my childhood but this is serious when it's about cow's... anyways they left a number of good manure deposits as some form of redemption and really they had only nibbled on a few radishes as it turned out. We can fence off the river crossing with great gusto when summer holidays arrive very shortly by recycling some unused fences we have lying around; "Beware you are now approaching a NO Cow Zone".

SO inspecting the garden today merely 5 weeks after planting we have handfuls of juicy radishes with the beetroot, silverbeet and dwarf beans not far behind. With the trial patch a resounding success for both humans and cows, with a little attention to the soil and a proper fence i hope to get a largeish vege patch prepared by summers end with the help of rotary hoe. Digging by hand is very hard slow work and despite the rotary hoes drawbacks (soil pan) a single use and loads of mulch should see us right. Also today I planted experimental gooseberry and pomegranate vines, not sure if the pomegranate will fruit but it does in the Himalaya's so why not here.

With nearly 200mm of rain in the last month its no surprise that the vege's are loving it. The dams are again overflowing and the river continues at full volume. Merriman's creek crossing the highway at Gormondale on the river flats some 10 km downstream from us is now a wide river, looking most out of place now its forest boundaries have all been stripped bare well up into the upper catchments that are just below our patch. Climate change is primarily caused by losses of trees and the water cycle becoming dysregulated but that doesn't stop the pulp-paper industry.

As I was working there today I was thinking that its only now 4 months next week since we got the farm, all-in-all less than a total of 10 weekends work and we have already achieved so much, its quite wonderful to think what 4 years might bring us. The road is now solid packed gravel but the rains eroded some of the dam wall which will require some earthworks and have halted work on the carpark and new shed foundation area until next year now. We were certainly lucky that early spring was so dry otherwise we might still be getting bogged on a very muddy road and unable to do anything there at all.

Another surprise was that I accidently caught 2 bush rats. The sneaks had ended up in a bucket of citrus scraps that got waterlogged that I had left near the compost, they had managed to climb in up the handle and in but couldn't get out and had drowned, thats 2 less rats to eat my ginseng when it goes in next winter. In fact I think I will use the idea as a trap for the ginseng areas.

Off to plan for the 2 weeks of farm bliss coming up after xmas. Thanks for all the comments to date.

Water so wonderful

It was a real flood, all the weeks rain poured through the earth and the river was gushing with amazing volume, as were the water falls. A long forest walk revealed many different moss and fern designs upon trees and long rainforest gullies with wonderful amounts of life.

Flood warnings

Flood warnings across Gippsland kept us home this week, but last weekend we almost cleared the final main areas of ragwort, built the outhouse, found several new rainforest fern valleys during our wanderings, entertained Esher, started strengthening the side walls across the new road dam with structural logs and small native trees using some of the several hundred small native trees kindly donated to us recently, entertained Escher some more, discovered a beaut horse stud nearby and (whew) used some ferns I brought from town to revegetate the first part of the creek valley we initially cleared of blackberry. The wet weather means we can continue to plant tough small natives without too much worry of them drying over summer. And it keeps the snakes from coming out, but by all accounts there are loads up in the Strezelecki's so its a serious issue we have been considering.

Weeding the stragglers

Replanted creek bank - watch it grow!




Delicate ferns are regrowing along the creek now

The very proper outhouse

Update + Gallery Two

Two weeks of contrasts, hard work and full bellies. Thanks for all the kind comments and encouragement, it's great to have people following this project with interest.

Week one was sunny and balmy, T-shirts at night, soil dry, very hot work weeding, but so many wonderful animals spotted on a clear warm starry night: A large black wombat, 4 small but very bouncy kangaroos, a small wombat who's bum reminded me of a womble and a big black wallaby hopping back into the pines. On another day bright red Rosella's squabble at sunset, Morepork Owl's hoot in the late evening high above us.

Week two gave us very very heavy rain, treacherous access, very cold nights but easy soft soil (thankfully) for weeding (lots of it and still more to go) and re-ferning, plants are starting to be transferred from city gardens to their new home. The kitchen is up and running with great style.
Expect recipes soon!! We pride ourselves on provincial and wholefood cooking and think that it is something worth sharing.

With all the spring flowers we hope to establish a beehive soon. We love fresh honey and there appears nothing more satisfying than helping bee's make their own from yummy native and non-native farm flowers like that seen below and all the sweet blackberry!

Meanwhile here are more photos taken on the property (except the fabulous neighbours Llama).

Views to next door property across tree'd boundary

Lovely gums of 'The Grove'

First Valley, now almost ragwort free, I love the amazing shades of green

Native spring flowers are everywhere

Moss is cool

Nice shot by Laurie

Laurie in the soon to be famous kitchen

Raja in heaven

Top of waterfall

Looking down waterfall valley to distant eucalypt state forest

Blackwood tree's are also cool