17 August 2004

Unfortunately we are in the grip of an unprecedented drought,
we have gone four months without rain
and due to lack of water will need to put the experiment off,
at this stage, with no rain on the horizon it is hard to predict just when.
We are hopeful of sooner rather than later.



 10 September 2004

We've just had rain in the last couple of weeks, an inch which has settled the dust and we're back onto tank water. I made a mistake when I used our limited finances to buy a composting loo last year instead of a second rainwater tank. As our 5000 gallon tank ended up overflowing 2.5 times last year we could have had a second tank full and it would have easily tided us over the 4 month rainless period (which incidentally is the first on record). Another rainwater tank arrives in a couple of days.

The goat is about to give birth in a couple of days, its her third time round so I hope she knows what she's doing, I've not been involved in any non human births before, and books will only take you so far.

Trev no longer eats meat. And he's surviving. He also rides his electric bike to work and has sold his car.

There is a 3000 word feature article in this months ABC Organic Gardener Mag, which has hit the shelves and helped pay for the tank.

Not sure what we will do about starting off as the succession planting went awry over the dry. (it was very depressing) and if we wait too much longer we'll be running the experiment throught the worst part of the year, and we do want to give ourselves the best possible run at it.

So it's on hold, but hopefully not for too long.

 7 November 2004

We've had another four inches of rain, the tanks are filling, the garden is booming - blooming and beautiful. The kids were born without a hitch, and have been absolutely gorgeous, and we dreaded giving them away as the only real thing to do with boer goat crosses is eat them, but we've managed to find a great home for Chocolate and Vanilla and we are back to having just Possum and milking twice daily - getting around 4 litres of milk a day, and are back into the cheesemaking. Trev is smoking his own tobacco, and made his first paprika. I'm baking all our bread with bartered flour and spending lots of time in the garden, mostly covering all things fruit fly susceptible in bags. Eating our first peaches. At this stage we are planning to start around Christmas - which will be hot, and the heat and humidity can do seriously damaging things to energy levels and morale. However, overall, things are looking good.




2 December 2004

Things are getting dry again and I spend a lot of time watering.

Eating out of the garden, almost to the exclusion of all else, but hey, I'll eat Tim Tam's while I still can.Main vegies in the garden is eggplant, zucchini, squash, tomatoes (eating lots of italian dishes, fruit is the last of the nectarines and peaches, apples, paw paw and strawberries - also enjoying fresh fetta's and yoghurts, the cheddars are still a few months away from maturation.

Trev has been hard at work in his 'recycling centre' - and we now have a working chaffcutter and a corn grinder - which will also take the husks off macadamias.

Caleb and I walk to school most days and have a ball while doing so. One of our games is to jump on the others shadow head, and of course they must avoid this happening, so we both look like a couple of epileptics walking to school. It's 2km there, so we're both getting some exercise, the hard part will be coming back home again on very hot days.

We're all starting to get excited about our start, which we have set as 1 January 2005, which also happens to be Trev's 47th birthday.


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created 2004