Dream For Three

This winter has seen me needing to recover from a couple of injuries that have kept me a little limited in what I do.

One was a broken rib and the other was a sprained hand. Both these injuries restricted what I was able to do outside, so I have been pottering along as best I could with some creative crafts.

One of the things I did was to take a class named “The Amazing Plait Bag”. The bag is a really good size and very sturdy, and the handles are done in a seven way plait that looks …well, quite amazing.

We plaited the handles on an old CD with slots cut out of it, and once I got the rhythm it was a simply but tedious job.

The main bag was pieced straight onto the pellon and then the seams were covered with embroidery stitches. The original pattern had the cell phone pocket in the front quite small, so I enlarged it just a little and instead of using a button and button hole stitched on some velcro dots and just put a button on the top.

Over all I was quite pleased with the finished result and I can see myself using this bag often.

Remember our first calf Liquorice, well he has grown up to be a lovely big boy. From this very cute lad – OK so he was always a big boy.To this boy. He spent the summer over the fence with the neighbours cows, talking to mama over the fence, and we watched as he grew bigger than the other cows he was with.

Of course the decision had to be made, so today is his date with the homekill man. He is in very good condition and at nineteen months is more than big enough to fill the freezer and give us our years worth of beef.

It is believed, although not confirmed that his father could very well have been a Red Devon so we are expecting the finished product to be very good.

My friend Maureen in Australia organised a pattern for a Sewing Tote Stable bag to be sent over for me to make.

My first attempt was pretty hopeless, I seemed to be having a bad day and the instructions required thinking about as I made it.

After scraping that bag I had another attempt with some nice Fairy frost fabric that I really liked. Needless to say the end result came out much better

It is a cute little bag that can be just slung over my shoulder when I go to classes.

It then opens up like a basket and will sit open while I am working.

It even has a couple of pockets on the inside so small things don’t get lost.

And a flap on one side that opens to show a place to put needles and pins. Nice and convenient.,

Now Maureen I will make you one when you let me know what colour you would like. Thank you for the pattern.

This is a follow-up to The Girls Get A Visitor.

It’s now been a week since Mr. Ram arrived and I’m happy to say that he appears to have settled in.  He is often seen sitting or eating with the whole group of girls, instead of just one or two.

Life here has just been ticking over uneventfully, which is often how we like it to be.

We are still in drought conditions so no grass, although we hope that will change soon.

While we wait, I have begun and new quilt, that I have found quite captivating. It is called a Dear Jane, and is a reproduction of Jane Stickles 1930s quilt.

So far I have done four columns, with 13 rows to a column. I am joining it as I go so that it will not be such a big job later.

As you can see there are a lot of interesting blocks in this quilt and it is proving to keep me wanting to do more.

After such a poor lambing season in 2008 (two survivors out of 12 lambs), we opted not to get a ram last year.  Needless to say, this resulted in some reasonably fat sheet!

This year we decided to take the plunge again, borrowing a ram for a few weeks.  Unlike 2008, we are planning to only keep the ram with the girls for a few weeks.

At first the girls all kept away from Mr. Ram, but within half an hour he had managed to make friends with one of the younger sheep (I think this was the only surviving female of the 2008 lambs).

The new year is here and now is the time to take stock of the old and reflect on what may or may not need changing.

First the unavoidable, the schoolwork. We managed to finish up all our themes from last year and so will be starting a new theme when we start up again later in January. We will be doing the Sea and Sky Theme, from WinterPromise. It will be on science and history of the sea and sky. We like these programs as they give us a lot of choices in how we learn and provide us with lots of good books and  fun activities. Although sadly this may be the last year we use them, depending on what new programs they bring out.

On the craft front, I probably spend way too much time in front of my sewing machine, but I did achieve several quilts, some gifts and started on the gift bags, that we want ot be using from now on.

We have enough chickens at the moment, so we are not planning anymore chicks this year. Maybe next year, but we will see. They have started to get out of the orchard so we will have to upgrade the fencing quite a bit to keep them all where they are suppose to be, before they start finding the garden.

And on the subject of gardening, now that I have put the sewing machine away for a while, I am finally starting to tidy up the weeds. Production is down, due to my own neglect, but it is also picking up as well. I really like the whole chicken dome idea, and it seems to be working quite well.

The kikuya is a bit more of an issue, as the chickens managed to kill it off, but did not dig the roots up at all, so that is something that I will have to work on for some time yet.

They left us with a lovely cleared, fertilised and mulched area that was all ready for planting.

These photos were taken at the beginning of spring and shows the gardens just starting out.

This was the first circle planted, and many of the plants are due for replacement. In saying that, it provided us with fresh peas and salad greens for christmas, and is now producing cherry tomatoes beetroot, and some very beautiful cabbages right now.  I have just added some more tomatoes and spring onions but will put more in over the next couple of weeks.

This was the next circle, we have had an almost endless supply of pumpkin plants out of it, which is not so bad since most of my seeds failed to germinate this year. The pumpkins have mostly been transplanted, and I have lots of tomato plants going crazy in there. We have a few green tomatoes on them, but mostly they are just starting to flower.

We have had several meals of broccoli, and there is celery hiding under the broccoli leaves. I seems to like it under there and is doing very well. We are already eating the outer stalks while the plant is continuing  to keep us supplied with celery. The lettuces again need replacing (will probably happen today) as they are all going to seed with the hot weather.

This poor circle has sat neglected for all this time. I didn’t even get around to putting the edging on it. Yesterday I planted some bean seeds, and I have some more started in trays to go in here. I also have some more broccoli plants and well as few other things that are waiting to go in. Good to start getting some production going in here.

On a more positive note, I did get around to planting corn on the other side of the house, and it is doing really well.

It is just starting to form its top flowers so I am looking forward to getting lots of corn of it this summer.

The sheep are still here, they were shorn again at the end of last year and are running in the orchard out of the way. I haven’t decided if I will do lambs this year or not, that will have to be decided closer to march when the ram goes out.

The cows have consumed the most time this year, and also have brought us lots of pleasure and some sadness.

Liquorice is still at the neighbours after being weaned at 10 months, he is looking very good and is very settled there for now. Poor old sweetie did not take kindly to Ollie, when she lost her own calf.

We milked her up until three days ago but now we are drying her off.

Little Ollie seems to only be loved by Murray, but is doing well sneeking feeds from Daisy while Murray is feeding.

He is still much smaller, but is certainly not hungry at all. We will continue to have Daisy feed both the calves for another few months before we wean them off. If she starts to lose too much weight we may take Ollie off sooner, but again to be decided later.

Daisy loves being a mum to her own baby, but will only tolerate Ollie. She has slimmed down quite a lot now that she is making milk, and sometimes I feel that she could do with a rest before she has another calf. We did not intend to have her feeding two calves, it just ended up working out that way.

Neither Daisy or Sweetie Pye are in calf at the moment. We could detect the heat cycles the whole time the AI techs were working, and of course the week after we could get them any more, the both came into heat on after the other. Very frustrating.

This is Sneezy. She was one the calves we got in as week old, late born babies last year. She was always very friendly and seemed to want to be a house cow, by the way she kept coming to see us, for a scratch, and would lick me if I let her. As a last gasp effort, week after the AI techs officially stopped working, she came into heat, so I rang the tech, and he agreed to come an AI her.  At this stage it is looking like she has held, and so she could well be our house cow next year. She was just 15 months old when we had her inseminated, and although we would have liked to wait a bit longer, none of the other cows were coming to the party.

The weather is very dry here at the moment. We had a very wet winter, not much of a spring flush, and now we are going into drought conditions. This is not good for our grass situation, and we are hoping of a few days of rain soon. At least we sold two of our yearlings, so that has eases things slightly.

Overall we have had quite a good year. The biggest high was Daisys baby being born, the biggest low was Sweetie Pye slipping her calf. We are hoping for another good year and not too much excitment, just more chugging on and getting on with life.

About 4 weeks ago we got our new batch of pigs. Two Large Black male weaners whom we named Laurel and Hardy.

How lovely for me yesterday, Bevan got up and did all the morning chores, while I just lingered in bed and read a book. Can’t remember the last time that happened.

Later I had a call from the local vets telling us that two of our sheep had run across the road in front of a car and were now in the neighbours bobby calf pen.  Very odd considering that the sheep were way up in the orchard, but I went and checked them anyway, and sure enough all of ours were present and accounted for. I rang the vet back and then thought nothing more about it.

After lunch we popped up the road briefly and on the way home we noticed that the gate to the pig paddock was open. No sign of the pigs anywhere.

My new vege garden is right by the pig gate, but not a vege was touched, nor was there any sign of there passing. The neighbours hadn’t seen them, and they were not around the road anywhere. We started to worry that someone might of taken them while we were out. To the point that Bevan decided to ring the police and report them stolen. He could reach them so he left them a message.

About 2 hours later, we started to wonder if the found sheep were in fact our missing pigs – but then surely country people could tell the difference between pigs and sheep.

Anyway, Bevan wandered over to check the bobby calf pen across the road, and sure enough there were our two little piggies. I took the car down but the naughtly little things would not go into the boot, so they had to come up in the back seat. Finally they were back where they belong.

Now even after scrubbing the seats down the car still smells like a pig, not a good thing on a hot summer day.

This year I decided to spend money to save in the long run. So instead of buying rolls and rolls of wrapping to just be thrown out after christmas, I decided to start making gift bags.

I started out making just a couple for Bevans birthday, and went on to make some for christmas as well. The plan is to make some each year until we have enough not to need paper wrapping at all.

One of the big advantages is that they can be made according to the size we need, and I am enjoying putting the pictures on them.

They are like a reusable extention of the christmas stocking that I made for lots of kids for christmas this year, as part of our homemade christmas gift ideas.

Here are three of the type of stocking that I made, they are all quilted and so should last the test of time without falling apart. Some of them even had the childs name embroidered on the top. I made puppets, bathbombs, soft toys and of course stockings for the different children.

With all the rain we got over Winter it was painfully obvious that we needed a floor on the milking bay.  This would solve at least two problems – the cows would no longer be knee deep in mud while we (ie. Sharon) were trying to milk, and they would (hopefully) be less hesitant to actually go into the milking bay.  Oh, one more thing, there would be significantly less chance of getting the milk bucket covered in mud.

The frame was relatively easy to put together, although there were a few basic mistakes due to things I had overlooked.  I nailed the outside rails to the posts, only to realise that it was then going to be a little more difficult to put the inside rails on.  However, because of the non-exact nature of the milking bay, I didn’t want to risk building the frame in its entirety only to find that it didn’t fit between the posts.

The next step was to put the floor boards on top.

You will notice that we now have chains and a head bail in place – these were specifically for Daisy, but they have proved quite useful for other things as well.

I must say, this has to be the best job I’ve done in a long time!