BRINGING HOME THE BACON AT ORMISTON

Plagues and Pets

2011-05-18T11:25:00.003+10:00

Scratching above our heads at night, squeaking in the cupboards, Coco on high alert at all times. At this time each year since we experience the annual (well, I am christening it as such) mouse plague. Apparently we are not alone - the appearance of large signs outside the rural stores advertising mouse bait means that I don't need to be too paranoid about the cleanliness of the house. This year however we have pet mice too... something which Coco has found terribly confusing and exciting at the same time. As you can see, Brad and Rosie are somewhat chubbier versions than their wild counterparts, however when we do hear squeaking we check first because they have been known to escape (despite being fatties they do seem to squeeze through very small spaces). James managed to castrate Brad (demonstrating that he has excellent eyesight and is a clever surgeon) so that Rosie did not add to the already growing population, we are just hoping that she does not have any inappropriate visitors in the cage at night.

Family Photos

2011-05-16T16:16:00.002+10:00

Coco's family that is... well 3 out of the 9 anyway. We had a lovely visit from Blott, formerly Beatrice. Like true springers they were more interested in chasing rabbits or tennis balls than chasing each other so we tired them out with a walk around the farm and a swim in the dam.

February/March: Beach Holidays, Mudgee Show, Gun Dogs and Visitors at the Shop!

2011-05-16T16:10:00.001+10:00

A brief look at our January!

2011-05-16T16:05:00.001+10:00

Cafe-less

2011-05-16T15:00:00.003+10:00

The large gaps between posts and fact that I have not had a chance to keep you up to date with all of our daily news is a glimpse into our thought process when we decided after much debate and sadness to close The Farmer's Pantry, the farm shop and cafe that we had run so successfully up at Burrundulla Winery for almost 2 years. The farm, James' vet work, the kids and the fact that we had not had a weekend off with the exception of our UK visit the previous Christmas were all factors and life was getting too hectic considering we came out here to simplify things and spend more time as a family. As I write this we have just today moved all the large pieces of furniture out and are officially out of the farm shop...which actually felt a little sad...however having the last 2 weekends free and having Sunday lunch, gardening, riding the horses and all the other little things that we have not been able to enjoy on our farm have made us realise that we made the right decision.

On the farm we seem to be growing a herd of pet sheep - Luke, who has been rechristened with names that I dare not type, has been possessed by his hormones and is both aggressive and (like most handraised farm animals) not fearful of people at all. I stay safely on the bike when we have to bring them in for drenching etc as last time he was very intent on charging James regardless of large sticks and bin lids - beware when his ladies are in season. Managing him is 'simply' a matter of catching him by the horns when he gets close in his charge and then physically moving him on the back of the quad bike to the next paddock. He has been joined by Ebony - who being female has so far been more of a success - now fully grown she is used for petting zoo days and as a nanny to other orphans. Ivy is the latest, those old merino girls who were 'aged' when we bought them to train Woody on 3 years ago have gradually died in the paddock of old age and there are two left. One of them decided quite unseasonally to have twins about a month ago and perhaps it was all too much for her. We sadly lost her and one of the lambs, however were left with a little female. She and Ebony are now very bonded to each other, although Ebony despite being fully grown will still happily drink from a bottle so trying to feed little Ivy whilst having another sheep jump all over you is not so much fun.

The grey ladies (cows) are due to calve quite soon - we have one little bull calf and are hoping for some more heifers to grow our little herd some more.

Horse wise Emily was delighted to get Rockstar for Christmas and he has been a huge success (unlike Sparkle and Micky, I admit it). She is at pony club every month now and rides out with me by herself. He is also very patient and spends much time being a) plaited b) brushed and (the reason he is patient) c) fed anything and everything - sandwiches, chocolate, fanta (which he can drink from the can) and crisps...not so good for him but Emily thinks it is fabulous that she can share her lunch with him. Jazzy put her foot through a fence in January and has had almost 5 months off in recovery but is back under saddle again - we attempted to get her in foal this season however she had other ideas and there is not a foal on the horizon.

So, here is to more farm news and less work! Although James is thinking that we need to start a salami empire so watch this space....

Our winter photos..

2010-10-15T12:51:00.006+11:00

Children and Animals..

2010-10-15T12:37:00.004+11:00

During the September Mudgee Wine Festival we brought 3 newly weaned piglets up to the cellar door. Although initially tentative then were soon won over by Emily and Felix. Emily has named this one Olivia - more of them can be seen on the Ormiston facebook page - where we christened Em The Pig Whisperer. Needless to say the pigs have been eartagged as breeders and will join the herd when they are big enough.

It is obviously spring around here because we have also got 'Cheepy' a solitary chick that was unsold at the local farm shop. I couldn't help myself and bought 'her' (hmm..let's wait and see) home. She was meant to go under a broody hen for adoption. By the next day she had indeed been adopted..but not by a chicken.

Happy as a pig at Ormiston

2010-10-15T12:29:00.002+11:00

We have just moved the growers on to the next paddock...it has been resting for 8 months and the abundant rain has had quite an effect...

It has been a busy (cringe) 5 months since our last post... we have had lots of press and publicit. In the last 2 weeks the cafe made the SMH Good Food Guide 2011, Delicious Magazine and we just had the crew from Landline and Sydney Weekender film us and our opinions. Taking an empty bucket into the paddock with 14 hungry sows for the camera ended up with Harriet giving me the 'look' that meant that I held my nerve for about 4 seconds and then threw the bucket down and reversed out of the paddock at great speed. Apparently I may now end up on the bloopers roll... We are gearing up for the Christmas orders and as usual wish our small farm could yield more. Still, keeping them as happy as above means that we have to keep the farm idyllic and our numbers small.

Felix and Emily broadcast the Farm

2010-06-01T14:46:00.005+10:00

It has been a long time between blogs - long enough that Felix and Emily have become obsessed with making video's on my iphone - they know how to work it with much more expertise than I do! As you can see they also spend far too much time at the farm shop and cafe because they can direct people there independently. When particularly bored they will clear tables and charm customers....mostly though they drink hot chocolates milkshakes and ask when they can go home. I don't blame them at all. The cafe seems to go from strength to strength. We have been so lucky with our local chef Rachael McCarthy who comes in and helps us to figure out what to do with all the seasonal ingredients - running a 100mile cafe in Australia is more challenging than we initially realised... longer distances between farms than the UK for a start - however there is so much fantastic produce out there. With books like The Omnivores Dilemma and the latest movie Food Inc we find there are more and more people seeking us out because of the principles on which we run the shop.

On the home front, piglet losses from a crafty fox over Christmas who figured out how to take piglets out of the back of a farrowing sow (sorry if you are having lunch) were enough that at this time of year we are quite low on stock numbers. Luckily we have both decreased fox numbers and now know that as long as they are in the nursery paddock the foxes don't bother. This does mean however that we have had a month's break from both Mudgee and Sydney markets. This has been a nice break on one hand but not great financially for the farm. Our 10 month old calves went off to market and managed to fetch enough money so that the Grey Ladies have now paid for themselves. We have also lost few sheep of late and are not sure why - of course the most hardy sheep that seem to cope with everything are the five old merinos that we bought to train Woody.

Once more after thinking it would never rain again we have had abundant amounts over the last couple of months. The paddocks are sodden and there is so much feed that my horses are enormous. Jazz went to a friend's spelling complex for a bit of Jenny Craig treatment before our last 2 competitions and is now on holidays in the front paddock having managed to come back looking very trim and healthy. She has only just started talking to me again. Here we are at one of the local dressage days.

That is about it really, we are enjoying wood fires and can't believe it is June already. We have started putting our legs for Christmas Hams away already! James has found a possible proscuitto and fermented salami producer and we are trying (and failing) not to get too excited. We finally uploaded the new website www.ormistonfreerange.com.au (have a look) and are venturing into online ordering. The tractor has also died and we are in the market for a new one and we are waiting for Dora and Maggie to have their winter kids - this year I am determined to start making feta again.

Our Evening Walk

2010-03-07T21:22:00.001+11:00

Country Living... or not? On our evening stroll around the place this evening we were accompanied by two children wearing ipods who deafly yelled all answers to any questions but insisted on having an outdoor adventure. Tree climbing and horse talking followed and then we gave up and took them home...

School Starts, Letitia the dog pig and others

2010-03-07T21:05:00.005+11:00

Finally, as far as Emi was concerned, school started. Emi has settled in with amazing ease. She refuses to wear the pc unisex option shorts/trousers and insists on dresses everyday however we have had her hair cut into a fetching bob since this photo was taken because the battle to put her hair up every day was just getting too much for both of us. The year is flying by with the usual amazing speed. We have been attempting to spend Sunday afternoons/evenings having picnics on the property in a what feels a very colonial ritual - complete with the picnic table and chairs in the back of the ute...all we need is white linen tablecloths to complete the picture.

Letitia joined us after we discovered that we do indeed have a fox problem with our lovely pigs. For a month or two we had been wrongly blaming some of the sows that farrowed in the large field for very small litters. Unfortunately for the fox he got greedy and took an entire litter one night and then almost another entire one quite soon after. Letitia was left with a nasty injury and one other sibling. The other sibling joined another (safer) litter and Teesh came down to the house where dutifully did her 2 hourly feeds around the clock until she was a week old and in the words of Emily "she decided not to die". After a while we became a bit concerned that she was sure she was a dog and so she was put up with Britney and a litter of the same age who adopted her fairly readily. She still comes running up to the fence for her bottles but at least she is getting some pig play rather than having an identity crisis.

Jazz and I are venturing out and about as much as we possibly can... we have joined the local dressage club and will join the shiny and expensive horses whilst we bounce fatly around and attempt to look as though we know exactly what we are doing!

Happy New Year

2010-01-26T11:51:00.004+11:00

We are back - after a lovely long (and cold) break. Before we left blogging became absolutely impossible as the Christmas rush meant little sleep and no ability to think outside of cuts of pork and smoked goods. Luckily everything went off without a hitch and all customers were happy. Demand meant that any pig that looked like it was weighing it at over 40kg was sent off and it reminded me of the chant from the movie Babe ("Christmas is carnage"). We are just getting back to production levels now and both had to hit the ground running after getting off the plane pretty much.

Our best Christmas present was obviously the rain, all 6 inches or so of it. Our dams are completely full, as are our water tanks, and in fact the difference between here and Singapore doesn't seem so huge. It is such a huge relief and seemed very strange to leave dry, yellow bare earth and come back to a lawn that was knee high in places.

We are getting ready for both Felix and Emi to go back to school next week and have many plans for the year ahead. It was so lovely in the UK for so many reasons but we loved the many farm shops pigs living as they should out in the fields. I attach a photo which I couldn't resist taking. Have a look at our slideshow of the holiday. I'm off to finish my patriotic Australia Day lamingtons...

Spring Update

2009-10-30T18:56:00.002+11:00

It is dry dry dry - however as I type this it appears that the way to encourage rain is to plan something that requires it to absolutely not happen. Felix and James discovered this when they decided to camp on the back paddock during the school holidays. Tomorrow we had booked the sheep in to be shorn. Again this requires them to be completely dry. Despite no forecasted rain it chucked down 10mm in 20 minutes this afternoon...shearing is put off until Sunday.
Jazz is enjoying the green grass on the soak away.
Our olives are growing beautifully - the goats are not in James' good books after getting through the gate and stripping all spring growth off the entire orchard and also eating the 2nd year asparagus crowns that we just really hope will grow back again. They are lucky to be alive..
Meanwhile fencing of the said orchard, back vege garden and house paddock in general is going ahead at a great rate.

Third Dog Sydrome?

2009-10-30T18:46:00.003+11:00

It is true what they say, dogs are like children. Felix has been photographed minute by minute but with Emi we stuck to the major milestones. Fergie as our 3rd dog has sadly missed out. I did however get some great mother and daughter shots today as she seems to have got the hang of a) staying and b) searching through the haybales for mice with Coco. My training whistles have arrived from the UK and James has sourced a shotgun that he is most happy with so all he needs now is some rain (fat chance) and it will be like a striding over the English countryside. Apart from her ridiculous name, which we just can't change (despite racking our brains) she is a great little dog. To my great surprise we have a doggy daycare centre which is most excellently run in Mudgee and she just loves to go there - she gets her exercise on the running machine, has a swim in the hydrotherapy pool and generally socialises with the other dogs. Coco is quite happy to have her around and we are all very devoted to her.

Errr... she is staying

2009-09-30T08:31:00.002+10:00

The above news probably won't be a surprise to anyone, however in my defence there was a 'complete role reversal whereby I stayed focused and James steadily convinced me that in fact we definitely needed another spaniel. In all honesty there probably wasn't a huge amount of convincing needed, especially after Harry's owner Steve, also owner of the Dad came up to get him with two of his working spaniels. Jessie had her best day ever, and flushed seven rabbits...she is still asleep, James is saving for a shotgun and suddenly the prospect of English style shoots up here are on the cards. We have tried to change Fergie's name but unfortunately it has stuck. Yesterday she spent the day with James in the ute meeting butchers, tyre changers and many others as well as going into pre-school and running about with Emi's classmates. She loves her crate almost as much as Woody.

The horses are shedding their winter coats, I could have woven a rug out of the hair that came of Sparkle during grooming this morning. We are still desperate for rain and too scared to look in the tanks. The shop is doing well, we are off to Sydney markets this weekend and the school holidays start. It never stops around here...

Orange Dust

2009-09-23T16:10:00.003+10:00

No, there is nothing wrong with our camera...this is what we awoke to this morning. It covers an awful lot of the country as Sydney looks the same apparently. It is quite eerie but has cleared to just being freezing cold this afternoon. I feel particularly sorry for the car salesmen (not a sentence you will often hear me utter) as everything in the whole town is covered in a layer of red dust...lots of cars to wash. The local car wash is doing a roaring trade with the rest of us and I am going to have to spend the morning washing windows and dusting at the shop to uncover everything.

All gone

2009-09-19T18:49:00.003+10:00

Well - almost. Charlie went off to his new home today. This leaves us with Harry and Fergie (whom James was really hoping we could keep so he could buy a shotgun and have a gun dog). They are off to Sydney as working spaniels at the end of the week... It will be so quiet. I am sort of sad, but quite relieved - anyone who thinks you make money out of dog breeding is wrong. Any funds received are going towards redoing the floor in the backroom so that every warm day coming up (and there are many) won't keep us reminiscing with odour of puppy pooh forever more.

More from The Farmer's Pantry

2009-09-19T18:43:00.002+10:00

Well, it's our third weekend open and we are slowly getting the hang of our little farm shop. How cute are the cupcakes??? I seem to have gotten the hang of coffee more or less and we had a steady stream of customers today which Tiff and I seemed to cope with quite nicely. Today I also learned that meat slicers are really sharp. Thankfully I still have my finger however I will look as though I am paying tribute to Michael Jackson for the next month wearing one glove to cover up the bandaid until my fingernail grows back.

They're ready

2009-09-07T19:37:00.002+10:00

Well, here are Coco's babies - they are really my babies as well because I feel that I have been a worthy co-parent. Poor Coco has come through an awful mastitis which has enabled her to have a very effective tummy tuck (removing dead tissue) but she is still feeding the little monkeys. They are hooligans but I love all of them, and even though I spend most of my time with a mop and bucket I am going to miss their little faces as they scream at me in the morning to FEED THEM RIGHT NOW. Very good homes await - even for Beatrice... Emi is coping well.

Open for Business

2009-09-07T19:28:00.003+10:00

Well - almost 2 years to month the first sows arrived we have opened the doors to The Farmers Pantry. Doing the Sydney Market the day before probably didn't reflect a particularly good thought process, however we sold 300 kg of pork and headed back to try and get our head around being shop keepers with our usual degree of total disorganisation.

The idea was to not tell anyone and have a dry run through - this worked well and thankfully we have made a very wise decision in employing Tiff, who has cafe experience and makes a better coffee than I can ever hope to - and really just rolled up her sleeves and made everything work in a way that made us both forever grateful. James has taken to coffee making in his usual manner and is suddenly an experienced barista. I am very good at flat whites...oh and babycino's when I make the milk too frothy - anything in between seems impossible. More practice. On day one the dishwasher broke, we lost power on one side of the kitchen and something died in the roof leading to a terrible smell this morning. I go by the thought that the worse it is leading up to an event, the better it will be on the day - this seemed to hold true.

Anyway - here are some pictures...we are now shopkeepers!

Thank god for Uncle Woody

2009-08-24T12:04:00.004+10:00

Poor Coco has been very sick with mastitis - thank god the pups are 5 weeks old and I don't have to take over any handraising. She is still determindly trying to feed them but it is obviously excruciating so we are trying to keep her away from the pups. They are eating like lions and thriving. Woody has decided that he will step into the role of primary carer and is found with the pups most of the time. Attached are some photos of them this morning...

City to Surf...and back to city again..

2009-08-12T21:57:00.002+10:00

Well, I believe I said I fancied doing this 14km fun run about this time last year. After putting pen to paper there was no getting away from it so I lined up with 75,000 other Sydneysiders (most much fitter than me at the moment) for the hilly run from the city to Bondi Beach. As you can see it was quite painful by the end - actually it wasn't as bad as the photo makes it look. It seems that the way I think I run and the way I actually run are vastly different. In my head I am a marathon runner - in reality my style is more old lady. Anyway, I really enjoyed the run - more in retrospect admittedly. If I did it again I feel that renting a flat in Bondi would have made it much easier at the finish line as the logistics of moving over 75,000 people out of Bondi meant that a long walk was necessary to get to a nearer train station and rest our weary legs. Felix and Emi both took my medal to school when we got back home, and although Felix couldn't quite comprehend why I didn't win he said he was 'very proud' of me anyway.

Ponies and puppies

2009-08-12T21:46:00.003+10:00

I'm told that I am going overboard on the puppy photos - however as my day is filled with washing both the kids clothes and now the pups' bedding you are just going to have to hang in there until they go to their new homes. Today Emi and I saddled up little Jaz and pottered about with her in the front paddock. We couldn't do too much as her daughter was in the yard making it very clear indeed that if Mum went too far we would have an airborne youngster tearing after us so Emily did some excellent shoulder brushing while Jazz happily ate her way through a bucket of food. Puppies had their first day of solid food yesterday which they tucked into with gusto - they are also having a couple of hours outside with Uncle Woody now which Coco is very grateful for. They get cuter every day.

Jazz arrives

2009-08-07T17:11:00.002+10:00

Here is Jazz - she is my lovely new horse and joins Sparkle (who is not impressed) and Mickey (who is very impressed). You will hear lots more about her but I can't possibly type any more this session.

Beatrice the springer who wasn't..

2009-08-07T17:01:00.006+10:00

Coco is doing a beautiful job with the littlies who are almost 3 weeks old. They have suddenly turned from small squirming sleepers to tail wagging trouble makers. Felix and Emily are delighted and spend pretty much all their time in the whelping box which Coco so helpfully shares. She is a lovely mother, although at times as we look into the box with them all clamouring about her she gives me a look that says "don't make me go in there". They are very lively and difficult to cuddle because they want to practice walking and wobbling about and generally making sense of the world. This brings me to Beatrice. In the beginning we had some concerns about her mental capabilities as she seemed very happy to lie quite happily with Emily for indefinite periods of time. This is like a little girls dream and Emi and Bea spend most of their time in each others company. We have decided Bea has no interest in being a working springer and would actually prefer to be a toy poodle - or maybe on of those handbag dogs. Above is where we usually find her... below is everyone else..

More new arrivals

2009-08-07T16:54:00.003+10:00

Around the time that the calves were born my goats started to waddle a bit and Maggie had twins pretty soon after. Both boys they are named Jack and John (which is always a mistake because boys are not destined to live forever around here). They are full of mischief and are having a lovely time getting the ram to attack their mother as they spend a lot of time winding him up and then hiding behind Mum who has to roll up her sleeves and go into battle. Speaking of rams, Luke is very happy because he has 5 new ladies to talk to. He has small man syndrome and follows them around very hopefully much of the time. They don't seem to know he exists at this point.

Soon after this Dora had the biggest kid I have ever seen. She was so uncomfortable afterwards that I was convinced there was another one in there and was forced to ask Fiona to come out of retirement and roll up her sleeves. We were both a bit disappointed that we couldn't have a James Herriot moment but Dora was well and truly finished. The kid has been christened Jilly and has to kneel down to feed off her. This means early morning and fetta cheese again.

An off-line life is a difficult one..

2009-08-07T16:38:00.004+10:00

Where do I start? Well, I guess it started with a new computer which didn't like our modem. Many trips to the local helpful computer shop rendered my modem which only refused to work on my new computer completely refusing to talk to any piece of technology. A week later and a new modem and I am catching up with life again. We might be in the country but are clearly not following a completely 'Good Life' philosophy. In fact it has been a busy couple of weeks on the farm. Despite the fact that i feel like we are in the middle of winter we are welcoming baby animals left right and center. Two calves were born last week when we learned that mother cows do in fact 'cash' their babies (or some such term that I can't remember). They do it pretty well too. For three hours we drove around the paddock and the cow very down hearted that the little calf we had seen the day before had obviously died a terrible death. Cow expert Scott took 2 seconds to spot the little thing hidden well in the grass and we still couldn't really see it (but pretended that we could of course).

Felix started the school holidays with a toffee apple and finished the holidays with no top teeth. He is pretty pleased and looks like a small vampire. Emily spends much time wiggling her bottom teeth and has convinced herself that they are actually close to becoming wobbly.

More fencing

2009-07-21T16:52:00.002+10:00

Our first job, when we moved in here, was going to be to re-do the entrance to the driveway. Up until now it is has been a dilapidated mess of old fence, rusty cattle barriers and a thriving blackberry bush. Obviously priorities soon became evident elsewhere but today the old rusty stuff came down with very excited children and James and I looking pretty happy too. As you can see the right hand paddock is ready for the wire as all the poles are finally in place.

They are here...

2009-07-21T16:39:00.002+10:00

So much for calculating the pregnancy carefully - I trundled off happily to our week in Sydney thinking that the babies were due the week after, only to realise the night before we came home that they were in fact due that day. Coco kept her legs crossed and waddled to the gate to greet me and after a week we couldn't believe that she wasn't carrying a watermelon. She kept to her bed for the next 24 hours but still waddled up behind the quad bike to do the pigs morning and night. By Saturday she came out with me to do the chickens and as I came out of the chicken shed I noticed that she was looking at me with eyes like saucers and standing in a very odd way. We hurried her back inside by which time Lizzie was already pretty much out (bum first). The kids, Coco and I were all a bit surprised so Lizzie was lucky that James jumped in and took off the membrane to get her breathing. What followed was a long night - mostly for James as I gave up at 3am and went to bed. Coco was very confused about the whole thing - on the one hand she cleaned them all up very thoroughly and was happy for them to feed, but when they started screaming and moving all over the place she found it very overwhelming.... I empthasied totally. After she went to snap at them a few times we decided that she was the devil and I sat in the whelping box with her when I took over the shift from James at 5am. Thankfully the mothering hormones kicked in pretty well, by the afternoon she had started looking all doe eyed at them and I have had a hard time getting her away from them ever since. They are of course utterly adorable and we have gone with a Royal Family theme so we have; Lizzie, Annie, Fergie, Camilla (my favourite), Beatrice, Charlie (also known as Fat Charlie or possibly Henry the 8th as he is vastly bigger than the others and never stops feeding), Harry, Billy and Eugenie.

Puppies and Ponderings

2009-07-09T12:54:00.005+10:00

Contrary to the fact that the only photos I have on the blog of late have been of the ballooning dog, in fact Coco's pregnancy is progressing without much fanfare. She still jumps all the fences (albeit whilst doing her nipple an injury that i can't type about without squirming in discomfort), she runs about madly and was just sighted chasing off a fox with Woody in hot pursuit. She steals every piece of food going and I truly thought she was going mad when the other night I found Emi's shoes, jacket, half a dozen toys and some sticky tape chewed up in the playroom. Nesting behaviour perhaps? In fact James finally admitted that that Woody had got out of his crate and had a party before falling asleep on the couch the night before. In short she is progressing through with a breezy attitude that makes me slightly envious although at 7 weeks now with 2 to go she is starting to snore, lie about and generally look like things are getting a bit uncomfortable.

At night she stretches out beside me belly up and I annoy James by telling him every time I feel one of the puppies kicking about. He is very glad that we are going away to Sydney this week and hoping desperately that Coco will have the puppies whilst we are there as well.

Farm wise; Alan was sent to Protea Farm in disgrace after he won the award for Most Useless Farm Animal on our property (which is really really saying something). He pined away lying at the fence and not showing the slightest interest in our sheep till I gave up and sent him over to give Marley some companionship. He is of course now perfectly happy and enjoying his retirement being spoilt rotten. The pigs are doing their thing, we just added two new gilts to the herd which is now up to 24. Our first lot of smallgoods, kransky, chorizo and ham & bacon were launched last month at the Mudgee Farmers market and were an absolute hit. We are concentrating on expanding the range for the shop...which we signed the lease on yesterday. I am now up to my ears in brochures for chairs/tables/kitchen equipment and trying to get my head around the new e-commerce site which we are having designed so that we can send out 'Mudgee Meat Boxes'.

Today is the last day of school term for Emi and Felix and tomorrow we head off to Sydney for a week with Grandma and Grandpa. I am dipping my toe back into the waters of Animal Behaviour by going to the Equine Behaviour Conference at Sydney Uni. Much last minute reading of books to remind myself of all the things I used to know has been underway. Emi and Felix have been making lists of all the movies that they want to see and are pretty excited about the McDonalds they will inevitably get on the car journey there - lucky they are so easily pleased.

Lastly - we have had a run of good publicity this month and I am attempting to load the latest on to the blog so you can see for yourselves the farm and how the camera adds 10 pounds...

Clever Coco

2009-06-12T13:09:00.007+10:00

I'm pretty sure that Emi completely faked her illness symptoms to get out of school and be present for Coco's ultra-sound today. She was more excited than I was (and that is really saying something) and insisted on holding Coco's paw throughout. Coco lay back legs akimbo and dozed away with her tail wagging like a model patient and James started counting. Seven definites and one maybe - I took a photo of the screen when I could actually see two of the little tadpole dogs for good measure. Emi was fairly sure that James would be able to take them out for her to have a quick cuddle and then put them back in and is still a little hazy about the whole thing. The last time she saw one of the pig placentas she exclaimed "that is disgusting I am NEVER EVER having a baby" - Felix, showing early chauvenistic tendencies answered "bad luck, you have to if you are a girl".

Still no rain..

2009-06-02T17:51:00.002+10:00

Every day we look at the rain engorged clouds with new hope as they blow over us and appear to dump down water everywhere else except for our little farm. James has started plumbing in a system up at the pigs in readiness for having to buy in water just in case. Tonight I am going to an introductory evening for Emily's school start next year. I feel that I have heard it all but feel it is necessary to go so she doesn't suffer from suffer from second child syndrome any more than she has to.

Not much news to report up here really, except I thought I might share with you some insights that I learned whilst helping (hindering??) James to makesure manhood was never something that Fiona's new alpaca would achieve.
Things you are not meant to say when vets are operating:
1. "Why are his lips blue?" (his gums are black apparently because he has funny coloured pigmentation on his gums and I couldn't figure out whether this was a good or bad thing)
2. "He's gone" (I meant "gone away with the fairies obviously" - in hindsight I see where that one went wrong)
3. "Oh for god's sake blink" (he had some hay on his eyeball and I was trying to make him get it out - again probably should have said it in my head).

Luckily I usually faint at the sight of blood and can merely watch from a distance, offering pieces of useless and easily ignored pieces of information. Now we all know why...

The Big Four O...

2009-05-22T11:01:00.004+10:00

After much organisation and a lot of help from neighbours, family and friends (and the drought...in that the lack of rain meant we didn't have to hire a marquee) we made sure that James had a 40th Birthday party that would take away the need to have any sort of midlife crisis. We had such a brilliant night that most people forgot to take photos - and those that were taken are a touch on the blurry side. At last count we had about 70 people and 20 kids running around madly. Felix needed a day off on Monday to recover. We had fire buckets around the house for warmth, a pig on the spit and of course the Goducken... although actually it was partridge, inside guinea fowl, inside a duck, inside a chicken and finally a goose. Expertly boned and stuffed with sausage meat by James. James' parents were here for the party as part of a 3 week stay that meant our fencing up the drive is well underway and the paddocks have had their yearly slashing with thanks to Peter. Woody has been very lonely as Coco has gone off to learn the meaning of life with a very nice Springer Spaniel called Ash. She pined for her pig dog friends for a while but apparently gave in after it seemed apparent they were not coming to rescue her. We pick her up tomorrow and now wait to see whether or not she will be pregnant with crossed fingers.

We are aiming to open our farm shop by end of June or July at the latest and are madly growing up our 'smallgoods' pigs for salami and bacon which there seems an endless demand for. Last but not least it seems this seems like a good place to announce that we have booked our trip back to the UK for Christmas this year. We will be flying out on December the 21st exhausted after ham sales and very much looking forward to coming back and seeing everyone. Felix and Emi are very excited, firstly about seeing their cousins, secondly the Queen and an equal second is the possibility of snow....their words not mine. I thought I would share a conversation that Emi and Felix had between themselves last week whilst eating their dinner:

Emi: "Who was born first"
Felix: (chewing on his food and thinking about it pauses) "Jesus" (he has started scripture lessons at school which seem to have had a big impact..hmm)
Emi: "No..I don't think so"
Felix: "Yes, I am telling you it is true"
Emi: "Um..no, you were born first, then me...it definitely wasn't Jesus"

Geese and Guardians

2009-05-22T08:59:00.005+10:00

Fantastic Mr Fox is still busy at work up here. Margie, the original goose, who had lived through almost everything was finally taken. This left my Embden goose Patricia to wander around honking tragically. Luckily one of our good friends and the local Agriculture teacher found me a flock that needed a new home and showed up with them in the back of a stock trailer some days later. Initially we thought we might take the numbers down by filling the freezer with 6 of the young ones. I kept the whole lot in the stable with a pathetically grateful Patricia for a week to get used to me and fed them every day in preparation for being locked up at night. They are very big geese but thankfully seem pretty friendly. James and his Dad (more on that later) chose one as a five bird roast (or as they are known her a 'Goduckhen' (very unsure of spelling). 2 hours later they emerged covered in feathers with tweezers, a blowtorch and god knows what else. The rest of the geese have had a reprieve as James has sworn never again. They are happily floating around on the very low damn with the ducks. I am sure the fox is very grateful we have stocked his winter larder. Two days ago James did an impressive vault over the fence and sprint down to the damn on hearing a commotion and literally scared Mr F running off with one of the females clutched in his jaws. He came up to the house with her looking very dead however we put her on some straw and twenty minutes later she was up and around...albeit walking in tentative circles with some pretty serious bruising. She has had antibitotics and much TLC and subsequently all geese now sleep up next to their night house unless they really have to go down to the dam and get a drink. I really really don't like foxes any more.

In acknowledgment of our fox issue we have been joined by Pharoah, who looks more like a large teddy and less like a scary fox killer to me. He enjoys eating horse stud nuts, carrots and makes a funny camel like sound when he sees me. He likes a scratch along his neck but not on top of his head. He looks like he can spit a long way.... I am yet to find out but he seems to like people very much. I am hoping he likes our sheep very much too. He is one of James' alpaca breeders old stud bulls who has been retired and castrated. He even has a cute head collar and walks along quietly enough that Emily announced that she would like to ride him instead of a pony. Apparently they are fearsome flock guarders who round up the sheep and then attack the fox by striking with front legs. He doesn't seem to like the dogs which is a good sign, however this morning I let him out with the sheep and after walking off and looking very protective (above), I have just found him waiting for me by the gate calling for his morning tea. Lucky for him he is very cute and I guess will join the rest of the cute yet hopeless pets that we seem to keep around here (see diabetic ferret posting for more on this).

Overrun with Piglets

2009-03-26T11:53:00.002+11:00

Nobody breathed a bigger sigh of relief than me that young Dorothy (pictured right with me bottle feeding her as a baby) has come up with the goods and given birth to our cutest litter yet. As can be seen nest building is not one of her strong points (didn't actually attempt to spread the biscuit of hay just put it next to her) and she decided a ditch looked about right. They are so cute with their mottled colours and Dennis shaped ears and heads. We are on day 2 and although I had to shoo her out of the wallow this morning in case her babies drowned whilst trying to feed so far (touch wood) everyone seems to be doing well. Clearly the mothering instinct in pigs is hereditary as her mother Debra farrowed last night by just lying down under a tree, there were 3 straw filled huts for her to choose from however again..dirt won. We found two of her piglets this morning attempting to join other litters - one with Britney who is in with Maguire the boar but who babysat very competently until we could put him back. I spent last night with one of Lucy's little ones feeding every 2 hours until she was strong enough to go back this morning, much to Emi and Felix's disgust (they named her Layla and thought she would be perfect for show and tell) and as I type we have had 12 from Rosie, 6 from Molly (first litter), Beverly has built a beautiful straw nest and is about to farrow and Harriet is lying in water and thinking about where she will pop hers out.. Maureen is due as well and all in all we are happy because the girls that are on their 2nd and 3rd litters are pretty reliably birthing about 11 - 14 babies, which is fantastic.

James' new business venture

2009-03-26T11:25:00.002+11:00

Well, here it is - James' soon to be patented lettuce garden. This is prototype one obviously - the ducks are delighted and since this photo was taken have enjoyed the opportunity to nibble fresh greens at leisure on the pond. Prototype no. 2 will obviously have a duck guard. The idea is that it uses up the nitrogen rich water (provided by duck and pig droppings), reduces evaporation (when we have enough of them) and grows huge amounts of lettuce. It is a win-win situation. Watch this space...

Fantastic Mr Fox

2009-03-17T07:22:00.002+11:00

It has taken me a few days to be able to write this without choking back the tears (of frustration). My lovely (and expensive) Emden geese settled in beautifully. I loved to watch them on the dam...they had all bonded and Margie was very grateful. Unfortunately for her life must be a little like living in a war zone. Apparently our fox was also very grateful and took my new gander in broad daylight on Saturday. This meant I had to admit to James how much I actually paid for it ($50). Margie and Patricia (newly named left over goose) are now refusing to go down to the dam and spend their days in the goat stable or up at the shed. Clearly they are traumatised (and actually quite sensible).

In that same day we also had a litter of piglets born without skin.... James had gone to Orange market and I was left attempting to do the pigs with Emily telling me "that isn't how Dad does it". Just when we thought she would surely explode, Charlotte our gilt waited for James to be away before farrowing. I went up to check her and couldn't figure out what I was seeing. Thank god for technology - I sent a phone photo to Fiona for clarification and after some research it turned out the piglets had a congenital problem that I can neither pronounce nor spell. Needless to say it is rare and considering the odds suggests that Charlotte had known her brother in a way that is neither right or decent before we bought her. The ones that were badly affected were taken away and we are left with five that seem to be okay.

Close Encounters..

2009-03-11T17:29:00.004+11:00

No, it isn't a stick - it is a snake - and no, James hasn't turned into Steve Irwin - its dead. Not by our hands - it was run over at our gate. As it was probably heading into the property I can't say I'm very sorry. It is actually the first time that we have seen one close up (apart from the black snake last year). It seems that everyone else has seen brown snakes on our place except us. Even dead I must admit I kept expecting it to snap out of it and lunge at someone. I'm sure we all fleetingly thought maybe we should move to New Zealand... but its okay, we are over it...

On a sadder note we are holding vigil next to Jessie's bed as she was looking very much worse for wear when Vanessa went to check on her today. Initial test results suggest she is diabetic which has been workshopped by the vets and I suspect a complicated and never-seen-in-Mudgee surgery will follow, although not actually being a vet I have no idea what is in store for her. It is quite sad as she is a likeable little ferret so I am hoping that she is going to stick around.

We would also very much like some rain now....please...

School Days

2009-03-09T21:04:00.002+11:00

Here I was thinking that when Felix and Emi went to school/pre-school life would be so much easier. Well it is sort of, but nobody told me about how organised I had to be to make this happen. I have had to buy one of those calendars that have a space for each member of the family. I have to unpack their school bags every afternoon... not only to clean out the lunchboxes but to keep up with the notes/requests/homework...yes really. I have to try and remember sports day, library day, art day. Pick up and drop off is okay since Felix prefers the school bus...but still. I write on the back of my hand quite a lot. The kids are very understanding and seem more organised than I am to be honest. Thank god.

Autumn Arrivals

2009-03-09T20:48:00.005+11:00

Despite mysteriously losing 5 chickens and noticing the neighbours peacocks were strangely quiet, it took the loss of Pondy, our White Gander, to realise that we had a fox around. Soon after we lost a hen that didn't come in as soon as dusk hit. Then after some particularly windy weather that blew the duck shed door open I found another one of our lovely geese dead as well. War was soon announced and James spent many evenings stalking the said fox. He came back semi-triumphant on night two having shot one fox but coming across 3 more. Clearly it has been a good season for them. Soon after I found one on the other side of the fence watching the dogs with great interest. Marge the solitary goose was terribly lost. She pretty much walked around honking tragically and it was all a bit sad. I bought a pair of young Emden geese at great expense. At 6 weeks I was expecting little goslings - they are obviously juveniles because their voices are breaking which gives them half a cheep and half a honk. Marge doesn't care she is very happy with her new friends. James has put the equivalent of poultry deadlocks on the duckhouse and reinforced heavily. At least they are keeping the rabbit population down.

Pig Nests

2009-03-09T20:32:00.002+11:00

What makes a good mother? I have long pondered this question, especially since being on the farm it seems the way that we judge most of our female animals... obviously with me being terribly anthropomorphic and therefore more forgiving than James... Anyway, after being sure that Winnie was going to farrow for many many days, we missed it. She has had a bunch of 'ferals' (the name we give to the piglets born in the sow field who run merrily about and evade capture for as long as they possibly can). I thought you would like to see her nest. Note many large branches and the occasional log. Clearly this kept her busy for a while. Some of our sows spend many hours carrying mouthfulls of grass back and forth until they build a softer bed than even our straw could provide. These girls must be a bit like those Mum's who seemed to effortlessly cope with everything (and probably never had to use newspaper as a nappy wipe..). I can see that Winnifred was clearly just exhausted with the whole process and felt that she had better go through the motions but do it quickly. She looked at me when I saw the piglets as if to say "I know, I know but f**k it, its looks fine ALRIGHT" (language, I know but she had just had 9 babies). Last month Leanne had to be moved because something went really haywire with her mummy instincts and she filled her hut so full of branches and logs that lying down was a tricky business. Bless.

Meet Sparkles

2009-03-09T19:55:00.003+11:00

Yes, you read it right - and if that was my name I would probably be bucking children off willy nilly myself. James and Vanessa are standing firm that after this Fiona and I are banned from ever going to 'view' a potential pony (or probably any species) again. I won't hear it however, because she really is terribly sweet... she just has some issues with being ridden. The owner put it particularly eloquently when I asked whether she had any back soreness or had been seen by a vet to rule out any pain issues. She said "they did all that and they decided she was just a bitch". In our defence we are not entirely crazy however because what followed was a description of how she had been ridden for a long time until she started acting up. Photos of her when she was a 'good' pony (at pony club/jumping/at shows) until she 'turned bad' followed. I rode her, Fiona had a look at her, Fiona learned what the word "pigroot" meant. We both pondered the origin of this word because I have never witnessed my pigs doing anything remotely like it. Most importantly she was a BARGAIN $300. If I wasn't going to buy her Fiona was pretty sure that she would make a lovely pet (cheaper than an alpaca) - we both silently vowed she would never be owned by another spoilt child again and then went home to break the news to James that we had a lovely pony - it is probably no bad thing that my legs nearly drag on the ground because it isn't so far to fall.

Emily is pretty sure she might be a unicorn and keeps thanking me profusely for buying such a lovely pony, Feli even showed a flicker of interest. The pony has been stuffed with every carrot that the kids can find and has settled in nicely. Mickey is sure I have put Elle McPherson in his paddock and is carrying on like a lovesick teenager - she is not big enough to step over him (the approach favoured by the bigger mares) but she just seems to plough right through him when he attempts to herd her around. Despite his most pathetic calling she doesn't return his affections but he is a persistent little man and he seems determined to win her over.

The hottest place on earth??

2009-02-08T21:06:00.005+11:00

Well, according to the papers, Sydney was the hottest place on earth today? I think the townships in Central/Northern Australia might think Sydney is being a bit wimpy - but what good is the media without the hype. I would have to agree with them however as we were in Sydney on Saturday for the monthly Pyrmont Markets. Luckily our stall is on the Wharf walkway so we get the breeze from the water, however the temperature was around 42 - 44 degrees depending on where in Sydney you were. This soon became apparent as we attempted the drive home. The hour and a half stuck in city traffic was trying enough, but the ute seems to have the same trouble multi-tasking as James. Towing a large trailer, sitting in traffic and keeping the air conditioning going was too much...the air conditioning had to go. We thought we would seriously get heat stroke. Once the traffic got going it was a long drive into the mountains. We put ice on the floor of the ute, we threw a lot of water over each other. We were grumpy and silent. Once over the mountains the temperature dropped and the engine decided that maybe it was not going to blow up. The air conditioning started again. We decided that we might live afterall.

The animals seem similarly unimpressed. The pigs are fairing pretty well - the have huge wallows and lots of shade. Like us they don't do much during the day but are very active at dusk and dawn. Ammos and Coco are not impressed - being born and bred in the UK they think they are bieng tortured...in the photo above Ammos is actually alive - he spends most of his day like this. Coco is enjoying the mouse plague that the heat seems to have brought on, but getting her out of the house is an effort in itself - she has found the fan in the office and spends her days lying under it looking miserable (see photo). We are promised cooler weather this week - otherwise I've promised Coco we will shave all her hair off again.

Teeth and Beef

2009-02-08T20:19:00.002+11:00

The fact that the very act of typing this blog causes me to break out in a sweat and stick to the chair within seconds (it is really bloody hot here) has put me off entirely this week. I once again find myself squeezing a full week of news into a couple of short entries. There was great excitement last weekend when Felix finally wobbled his tooth so much that it came out. I almost dread typing this as if he ever reads it as an adult I'm sure it will be held against me forever, however he went to sleep greatly excited by his forthcoming wealth. After Bathurst markets we all consumed too much wine in the post market discussions and fell asleep without giving anything much thought at all. Someone was looking down on us however as James woke up at 4am saying THE TOOTH. Even at this point I told him to shut up and go back to sleep, thinking he was having a strange dream until the realisation dawned on me and after putting $2 (my god, can you believe that is what a tooth is now worth) to replace the little tooth, I then tossed and turned and felt like a truly awful mother. imagine Felix's great excitement when he awoke the next morning and found that the tooth fairy had forgotten him. He was extremely happy and insisted on paying for his own lemonade at the pool, despite my best intentions of getting him to save it (I'm so glad he takes after me in some ways).

To add to the general growing up story, he of course started school on Thursday, joining K1s class at the local public primary school. He was beside himself with excitement and proudly went off to school. Despite all expectations a stretcher was not needed to carry me out and it all seemed to go smoothly. Friday was similarly easy. He had a lovely weekend and then Monday morning he seemed to realise that this was in fact a permanent fixture in his life and he fell apart when I had to leave. It took much of my self control not to fall apart with him, however I'm told that after leaving he simply took a deep breath and got on with it. Tuesday was similarly traumatic, however after a long after school chat he told me that he had decided the way to solve the problem was to put him on the bus. I did this the next day and lo and behold he climbed aboard very proudly and was absolutely fine. I thought I would have a little while longer before being seen with me was not an option, however it has started early. Emily went off to big pre-school as though she had been doing it forever and has settled in really well, which is lucky because if I'm not sure I could cope with two lots of tears... I'd have to home school.

Anyway, after dropping them off at school and pre-school I was left with a whole day to myself. What better way to spend it than a bit of retail therapy. Two years ago I might have bought a pair of jeans...now I chose some lovely cows. I have named them The Grey Ladies, as they are very mature and sensible girls who are grateful that we are stuffing them full of hay and they have a lovely big field of grass. James initially decided we needed a game plan of management i.e. "do we sell them once they have calved and make our money then, or wait till the calves are bigger and sell them with a calf and pregant again". I of course was horrified and had put so much emotional investment into buying them at the sales that I envisaged a long and happy life with us forever. They are staying.

The One that Got Away

2009-01-23T12:23:00.002+11:00

James has reconnected with his love of fishing recently and spent a few idyllic afternoons down at the river trying to catch supper. The other morning without even trying he managed to catch a large (and let's face it pretty stupid) dog. Woody decided that he would eat the lure on a fishing line and I came out in the morning to see the hook stuck up his nose.. if you look closely you can see it sticking out. He was actually surprisingly unconcerned. He just looked a little bemused and kept trying to lick the annoying thing that was in his eye line. One anaesthetic and a pair of pliers later and he is back good as new. He has been re-christened "Simple Jack" (anyone who has seen the movie Tropic Thunder will understand)

Ormiston Christmas

2009-01-23T12:16:00.003+11:00

Stay tuned - between Fiona and my family you might just get to see a little more of December than our camera has captured. Here is what I've got!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2009-01-23T11:22:00.002+11:00

Well, this time last year I believe I sat down to write my first blog posting. The opportunity to sit down at the computer during December became increasingly difficult as I ran about in a constant state of near hyperventilation and general anxiety....this was followed by many nights of inebriation and days of dark glasses. If memory serves let me give you a recap:

The great ham countdown:
Happily this went off without a hitch - we sold every one and the response in Mudgee was brilliant with most of them going in the local area. The hams were really fantastic (we got through one on Christmas Day and one on New Years Eve - the dogs are enjoying the ham bones as I couldn't face any more pea and ham soup). All the feedback has been excellent and we have been getting requests for Easter Hams already.

Christmas:
What can I say about Christmas, we had overly excited children (okay and adults) and lots of food - although my turkey hunt proved fruitless so I am going to have to start early this year. My aim for next Christmas is to have all Ormiston produce (I'm just getting to Vanessa's vegie patch extravaganza) if possible. Even though leaving the farm makes going away difficult we had lots of lovely people staying and actually felt like we had a holiday at the end of it.

The Farm:
Chickens: how do chickens manage to populate this planet? This has been one of the questions I mutter to myself when going about my daily business. Between drowning ducklings (see what happens when I allow the ducks to hatch their own), cannibalistic chickens, chick eating meat ants (don't ask) and god knows what else I thought I had seen it all. I have christened Vanessa the chicken whisperer as even the most stroppy of hens seems to become limp and maternal when she sticks her hand underneath it. This is a job that I simply refuse to do and even James has a special long pair of leather gloves to avoid the vicious beaks and flapping wings. I thought we had sorted everything out this weekend. However when I went to the chicken house this morning my egg eating hen is so fascinated when her babies are hatching out that she eats any yolky bits she can see and then pulls the chicks out of the eggs, which causes them to lose their insides. It is disgusting and I feel a little ill sharing this with you. Sadly for her chicken stew is apparently on the menu this week to stop the rest of the f learning from her habit.
Pigs: Why did I call a pig Britney? It was bound to cause problems - we all knew it. Surely enough she had all her babies outside and was more concerned with fighting all and sundry to steal food than looking after the little guys. I ended up trying to save one that didn't make it. She clearly wants to put them on formula and stop all this breast feeding business as she has very small teats and even smaller babies - they may be small but they are all little survivors though - they have to be. They are in with two other litters from Kimmy and Lil who are younger but bigger than they are. Dennis' babies seem to grow really well and our new Saddleback Winnie looks like she is getting due to farrow.
Goats: Dora needs half a bale of hay to keep up with my milking demands and her giant kids... Mickey the foal spends much of his day rounding them up and attempting to mount them. I don't think the running around helps her energy expenditure much either.
Sheep: They are now in the big paddock with the goats - they were extremely upset about this to start and spent a day bleating and looking with awe at the dam as they have only had a trough up until now. Luke still remembered his Mum and came running up to me with a slightly confused expression on his face when I called. After a cuddle he clearly didn't want his 'ram cred' blemished and ran off with his girlfriends again.
Horses: Ruth has a belly on her that could easily house another foal. Mickey can now walk on a halter, have his feet picked out and have a bath. I am completely taken with him and he runs up to me neighing when he sees me. He is going out with some other teenage horses to run about and learn some manners in a week or two. He has lost his foaly coat and is the same colour as his Mum.
The garden: although I have learnt a lot in a year (I don't dig coffin sized vegie patches anymore) in what may have been a whimsical and probably drunken discussion I outlined grand plans for the vegie patch. This involved digging it all out and putting borders around it. James and I talked about doing it in January... had it been left up to us it may have been done by next January however Vanessa got the bit between her teeth and polished it all off this week. This required italics because because the temperatures were between 36 - 40 degrees and there were times that I thought that maybe she might turn into a tomato. I have got into the spirit of it all by offering moral support and ordering vast amounts of seeds. I am looking forward to having a day a week to spend pottering in the garden...

This leads me nicely to the school countdown. Felix has his uniform and 2 wobbly front bottom teeth (which he tells me is excellent because he will now be very rich). Emily will be going to pre-school 3 days a week. I am trying to figure out what I will do with all the time on my hands..

100 ham countdown

2008-12-03T09:41:00.002+11:00

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/12/02/1227980003246.html

Fame at last! Well sort of... this unexpectedly arrived in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday. The timing was good as we are at Pyrmont in Sydney tomorrow. The phone has not stopped ringing so we are working our way through the ham list rather quickly. I was envisioning that everyone I knew was going to have to have one for Christmas whether they liked it or not however this may not now be necessary.

Countdown to Christmas

2008-11-27T20:25:00.002+11:00

Not only are the kids eagerly awaiting the 'chocolate calendar' that they so fondly remember from last year, James and I are counting down in our own way. 30 hams down, 70 to go. After our 6 months of production we have stockpiled 101 hams for the festive season. They went off yesterday to be cured and smoked and will return back next week. Assuming we will have one here for the big day we are left with 100 to sell. Both of us are outwardly confident but inwardly hoping we don't end up with a lot left over. Orders have been coming in on a daily basis so the ham count goes down each day. We have also sent off 6 sides of bacon to make sure that nobody misses out on that either. The Christmas market run starts next week with Sydney then continues for 3 weekends until we finish on the 20th with Mudgee and Dubbo markets. I guess I then have 2 days to do my Christmas shopping and generally do everything last minute. All attempts to find a rare/heritage breed turkey pair to breed up here have not given me much hope. I will hopefully find something next spring so our rare breed turkeys may be a while coming.

I have declared war on kikuyu grass which I am unfortunately losing. It is very grateful for the irrigation in the vegetable patch and is cunningly trying to strangle everything that is growing in there by putting its roots deep underground and outmanouvering me every time I think I have a solution. I have gone back to digging, pulling and feeding to the pigs in fear that if I put it in the compost it will show up in vegetable patch no. 2 (my contingency plan) which has been built up in an area with no grass around it whatsoever. It is currently being battered by the chickens but at least has no slugs and slaters in it.

Last Monday poor Beccie died unexpectedly of an infection that happened very quickly. Being the hardened farmer that I am I admit I obviously cried my eyes out - she was such a lovely gentle pig (and had bloody big litters with piglets that grew like the clappers) so it was all very disappointing. It brought up the inevitable problem that we had been avoiding of how on earth we were going to dispose of 250 kg of dead pig. Luckily the local earthmover who buries many a horse around here very kindly came up first thing and buried her...and yes, I am going to plant a flower on the grave.

Rain, mud and new arrivals

2008-11-21T18:27:00.004+11:00

In my last post I had a picture of the kids jumping about in the rain....it kept going and going...and going. Over 3 days we had about 3 inches. In case this figure means nothing to you (as it wouldn't to me a year ago) I can tell you that it is a lot for us. Our driveway is starting to cave in for god's sake. It has been hanging in there for a while now but I think the 30 rotarians coming up the driveway and the torrential downpour were the last straw and it has given in to the temptation to have a little river in the middle of it. The plants look terribly happy about it all and we are having a planting flurry to take full advantage of it. In the middle of all this rain we took a long and wet trip 7 hours north to Inverell to add some more pigs to the herd. With the possibility of a farm shop we have decided that keeping the breeding herd on the smaller side (around 35ish) is a good aim and so rare/old breeds are on my list along with the white crosses to keep Maguire busy too. I had long had my eye on a saddleback and as luck would have it there was one up at the farm, along with a large black that is staying with us for a while before going off to another local winery with one of our berkies as breeders. From left to right we have Olive (James' new favourite), un-named large black and Winifred...already called "Winnie" (my new favourite). They have settled in well and are in their quarantine pen for a week before heading out to run about with the big herd. With no market this weekend James is busily building a brick pig run as initial attempts to vaccinate the sows by running them through the yards originally built for sheep (and perfectly good for weaners) ended with them picking up the panels and throwing them aside as though they were as light as a feather...and not bolted to the ground (which they were). "You win" we said as they looked at their handy work with obvious pleasure. James always gets the last laugh however..a concrete slab has been laid and a run will be built capable of holding a small elephant - I just hope they can't climb very well.

The Novelty of Rain?!

2008-11-18T16:06:00.003+11:00

It is pretty dry here most of the time... well I can't complain as we have had a lovely spring. Lots of warm weather with showers in between. Today has been the first truly wet weather day that I can remember in a while. The kids had colouring books and dvd's and all the things I thought they would need to keep them out of my hair whilst I sorted out Christmas orders and got busy in the office. After a while I wondered why they were so quiet... and where the dogs were... On going outside the rain was obviously too much fun to be ignored. After sneaking a few photos I called out to ask what was going on and was told they were "refreshing themselves". I am not sure what the 30 rotarians who are coming around for a farm tour this afternoon would make of the above spectacle on arrival so I had better leave my computer and pay them more attention.

Hunting, Horseplay and Hatching

2008-11-17T21:19:00.003+11:00

It was a big weekend for little Jessie who at almost 12 months old went on her first rabbit hunt. As I am not one for banging rabbits on the head with a big stick there are no action style photos. I haven't actually been ferreting and I suppose I envisaged a sort of stampede of rabbits thundering out of the nets and being set upon by men with sticks. Yuk. In fact Jessie and Coco made a good team, with the help of the boys admittedly and they got 4. James insists this is because we don't have that many rabbits on the place but as I get up at 5.30 most mornings to go running on my crazy fitness phase I see all the cute babies happily bouncing about like those little chocolate Lindt bunnies at Easter time. I think they are smarter than we think. Anyway, Jessie came when whistled, didn't bite anyone and was so tired in the end she refused to go down any more holes and just lay in her box. She slept for 24 hours and seems to be recovering well. Now she looks at me like Coco waiting for a walk when I walk past on the way to the veg garden. James is very proud.

Every Wednesday Emily and I have been taking Ruth out so she can have a riding lesson and Ruth can get some exercise. Mickey thinks this is terrific and delights in attempting to play with me as he would another horse. This involved galloping around towards me, rearing up, jumping about and generally being a pain in the bum....even his Mum gives a sigh and looks at me as if to say 'boys..what can I do about him'. We decided it was time he learnt some manners...or at least got used to a head collar so he is a bit more controllable. James held him whilst I put the headcollar on and gave him a good rub down. On coming back about 10 minutes later he was throwing the head collar about with gay abandon. Similar results were achieved by letting him lick a sugar cube instead of being restrained...he stood quite still to have it buckled up but I am sure it will be off again tomorrow morning.

Wendy the silky has done me proud this time hatching 9 out of the 10 duck eggs that were under her. On cleaning out the nest of old egg shells and 2 unhatched eggs we discovered one of them was cheeping. It had a chicken ceasarean (okay duckling) and we left him beside Mum to bond. On coming back about 1/2 an hour later the poor little thing was covered in ants who were eating him alive. He was dunked in water and looked as though he had one eye..thereby being christened 'Winky'. Maternal urges poured forth from me as usual and the kids took it in turns to warm him up and cuddle him. What is another pet duck to add to the flock I reasoned with James. He regained the use of his eye after 24 hours and became quite demanding...and quite strong. I kept finding him running about in the house cheeping for someone to feed him. James decided enough was enough and put him back with his brothers and sisters. We waiting anxiously but apparently imprinting is reversible dammit - he is happily living back with the whole lot and doesn't even recognise me when I go and visit him. The other two duckens, despite all our best intentions of eating them have gone off to a new home as I got too used to seeing them wandering about outside and resolve weakened. They are currently nestling up to the rooster and not showing any recognition of the other ducks that are at the farm presently. They may end up on someone's table afterall but we are all hoping that instinct kicks in soon.

Ormiston Swimming Ponds

2008-11-17T21:08:00.002+11:00

Once upon a time, actually in what seems another life by now, James and I first saw each other without clothes (but with swimmers on thank you very much) at the Hampstead mixed swimming ponds. How strange that how ever many years later we have never tried out our own ponds until this weekend...and by we I mean James as I was too chicken. I am not a fan of water in which I can't see the approaching shark/crocodile/yabbie (delete as appropriate). This is made all the worse when I have seen the geese coming out of the water with leeches on their legs. Three brave young men in the form of my cousins were the intrepid first swimmers because we were all dying of heat and nobody could be bothered driving into town. Felix found it hilarious, Emily was slightly worried..the goats were bemused and the ducks weren't really sure what was going on. It must have been okay as it was used extensively over the weekend and James even decided to brave it all by Sunday. Coco will mistily remember it as her best weekend ever as she swum happily around with everyone, usually with the ball in her mouth. Woody, who has never gone in over his toes had a few enforced swimming lessons and seems to think that the water isn't the invention of the devil afterall. James can be seen coaxing him in above.

I think I am going to put up a sign and James is considering building a jetty...

Farm Life can be Cruel

2008-11-11T08:39:00.002+11:00

These pictures don't really show the true horror of what James has done to Coco.... she has been suffereing terribly with the little grassheads and burrs that she picks up on the property. We are as sick of combing them out as she is of carrying them around. We marvelled in fact that she is probably single handedly responsible for spreading the little seeds over most of the town (and extensively through the car). By yesterday they were clogged in her ears, through her tail and up her legs. Drastic measures were called for. "Shall I book her in to the dog groomer to have a summer shave" I asked James. "Don't be ridiculous..I can do a perfectly good job at work". We took her in and she lay very happily on the table as even James realised once he had started that maybe he should have let the nurses do it because "they would have been much neater". Not only does Coco now look like an English Pointer..or a Cocker Spaniel..we can't decide - she has great bald batches all over her and a tail with no feathers on it whatsoever. Woody can be seen sniffing her in the above photo to make sure it is 'really her' - although he does usually have his nose up her bum so maybe it is just the norm. Anyway - I admit she is much more comfortable but next year I am sticking by my guns and booking her into the doggy equivalent of Toni and Guy so she doesn't have to suffer this sort of indignity.

Emily turns 4...

2008-11-10T16:54:00.004+11:00

I'm sitting here waiting for the cheese curds to need their next stirring after giving Ruth a messy bath with Emily and am suddenly overcome with guilt that this blog is getting so neglected. There being no time like the present it seemed an update was a good idea.

Firstly obviously is Emily's recent birthday. She is pictured here with her brother who seems to be in training as a supermodel if his pose is anything to go by. She had the obligatory party at the local indoor play area, as well as a separate family one and a cake at school today to top it all off. Whilst we were having a cuddle yesterday she became quite thoughtful and said to me with a sigh "Mummy, I really am very sad that I won't be 3 anymore".... how soon it starts. She is currently in serious practice at her local dance class for the Christmas concert. She gets to be a Christmas tree which thank god I don't have to sew - I just have to pay an arm and a leg for it. Felix has started his 'Mudgee Beginners' at the local school and decided he doesn't need to go to preschool anymore because he is too grown up for it.

I never thought I would actually be taking photos of a silo, but as you can see above this year has been a first for many things. Its just so shiny! As we, or should I say the pigs, are going through a tonne of food a week now we finally decided to save ourselves about $200 per tonne by buying in bulk - serious bulk however, at 14 tonnes per delivery. There was nothing else to do but take the next step and buy a silo. Second hand requests didn't amount to much because most farmers are holding on to silo's with grain being scarce at the moment. We had to bite the bullet and buy a new one. James laid a concrete slab and it was delivered on the weekend. Woody is very unsure about it - not sure what sort of image it is in dog-sight however it is large and reflective and he spent a long time barking at the large monster that is endangering his pigs. Woody has been doing his job recently as one of our sheep got flystrike unexpectedly so he was called upon to herd our growing flock up into the corner of the field so they could be drenched and checked over. We have no sheep handling facilities at all - so Woody would bring them up and James would launch himself at the nearest one whilst the rest ran off. Felix found it hilarious each time James ended up face down in the paddock, which was often to begin with.

We are of course gearing up for Christmas, we have had our first lot of bacon cured by an organic smokehouse in Sydney and been a bit overwhelmed by the demand for it at all markets. We are sticking with traditional hams this year but will move to have them organically cured next year. So our life continues along the same routines of markets, butchers, abattoirs and plans. We are trying to decide which way to go with our little business - whether we can afford to wholesale the meat which means competing with farms that can do it cheaper, or stay in control of it from paddock to plate. At this point we are throwing around the idea of a proper farm shop which is starting to look more like the way we need to go. We are encouraging farm visits and have people coming from far and wide to see the pigs and buy some pork - so maybe it will be in the spirit of Jimmys Farm afterall.

I'm off to try out my new running track which James has obligingly mowed again - am slightly tentative as a friend riding her bike down our drive a couple of weeks ago came across a large brown snake making its way along her path and was so surprised she fell off. I guess it can only make me run faster.

Foal Fun

2008-10-13T18:56:00.002+11:00

Just when you thought you were sick of photos of baby animals I add a new species. Driving up the driveway after running 7.5 km as part of my new bootcamp regime this morning I assumed I was seeing double, however Ruth in her usual capable and calm way delivered this little bundle at some point last night. The kids were very excited this morning for about 5 seconds but soon wandered off whilst I stood there and stared until they were late for school. I don't think I have mentioned Ruth before, however she has come up to stay for a couple of months to make completely sure that the kids really really do like riding before we make the decision to add pony club to the ridiculous array of sports that I seem to spend my life driving around to. So far Emily in particular shows no intention of losing her interest in it and Ruth is proving to be an incredibly sweet and gentle little pony.

Today at long last we made the decision to buy a ride on lawn mower.... the thought of pushing the hand mower around on a weekly basis to keep up with the grass in the garden, orchard and now down the driveway was just all too much. We gave in. James then drove it around like a dodgem car mowing the lawns at a speed that I am not sure it is really meant to cut grass at. I may never have to do the job again.

We are gearing up for a big weekend with 2 markets, sausage selling at Day on the Green with 4,000 people expected and a farm walk open to the public on Sunday. With around 60 piglets born over the last 2 weeks we have plenty of cute factor to cater to the masses.

Sydney Markets and Farm Mobility..

2008-10-10T16:37:00.005+11:00

We now feel like real Aussie farmers... the quad bike and soon to be arriving silo complete the picture. After moving the sows and weaners up to their new paddocks the walk with the wheelbarrow seems like about 2 km each way. After the wheelbarrow even blew its tyre and James started to look a little peaky and eat us out of house and home after each feeding time we thought enough was enough. Enter the new quad bike. As of today life has become much easier...it takes 2 minutes to pop down and see the sheep and feeding the pigs with the trailer on the back is a 15 minute job instead of an hour. Watch this space to see if James starts to grow a beer belly. I on the other hand have signed up for Boot Camp and 3 mornings a week I stumble out of bed at 5.30 (which is way before sunrise now the clocks have gone forward) and join many others to sprint up hills, run around the pines and do boxing... unfortunately any good that I am doing is matched by the calories that I am consuming like a labrador when I get home so that I have the energy to get through the rest of the day.

The duckens (or as James prefers to call them the dicks) are thriving with their chicken mum. I am slightly concerned as they may never learn to swim, however apparently I only need be concerned when the mother is a duck and she takes surrogate chicks for their first outing which turns into a mass drowning. They are very visible waddling after Mum while she scratches up morsels for them to eat. We have about 60 piglets here at the moment, Bev, Rosie and Deb have all had piglets, and Harriet once again decided she would farrow ferals in the big pig field. They are thriving of course but are wild little things that bark and flee at the sight of us. Bev felt that the straw filled hut was too hot for her and made a lovely nest outside where she has had 9 little Berkshires. It is hard to believe that she is on her 3rd litter with us one year in.

Great excitement this week with our first bacon and ham coming back from the charcutier... the bacon is excellent and has been organically cured so 'nitrite free'.. it has its first outing tomorrow at Orange Market. We finally got to Pyrmont Growers market last weekend... whilst we got drenched with a downpour only Sydney is capable of we set up our stall on the pier with about 300 other regional producers. The buyers started coming at 7am and by 10.00pm we sold even the trotters of the 6 pigs we took down there. It was exactly the type of market we had been looking for in Sydney and everything you could imagine was there...quails eggs, free range everything, veggies, jersey milk, venison, partridge and lots more. Unfortunately we had our heads down selling and didn't get too much of a chance to go for a wander but next time I will be prepared.

The kids have been home for 2 weeks on school holidays and it will be to mutual relief when pre-school resumes next week. Suddenly they have learned to say 'I'm bored'??

Preschool Farm Tour

2008-09-25T14:30:00.003+10:00

It started with one class and ended up with 60 children coming up to the farm to watch our sheep being shorn. The event was much anticipated by Felix, who suggested the day before that not only should the kids be able to come to the farm but I should be making cakes for them all, something I somehow got out of. Hay bales were brought down as seats, the shed was swept and Mick, our neighbour who gamely volunteered to shear in front of such a large audience brought up his dogs to move our girls up to the shed. "Do you realise that your sheep are lambing", he asked on arriving up. "Impossible" I answered, "they haven't been in with a Ram and they are so old". "It must have been my orphan lambs you saw down there, I just put them in the big paddock". Off we drove to move the sheep and sure enough there was a tiny newborn lamb in the field. After picking my jaw up off the ground and doing some quick calculations we can only assume that some funny business must of gone on at the saleyards, and I became very happy with my bargain pregnant sheep. Driving them up it also seemed obvious they were all heavily pregnant - not a great time to shear, but the school was coming up so it had to go ahead. We settled them into a straw filled yard and left them for the evening.

By morning one of the others was down and lambing, James ended up pulling the lamb out and after moving mum and baby (and getting butted up the bum in thanks), we thought the others would be okay.

The children arrived en masse - the 2 buses they had booked couldn't get up the driveway so they all walked up in high excitement. Into the makeshift shearing shed and 2 of the sheep were shorn whilst they looked on. Mick taught them how to throw the fleece, I watched on with the same degree of attention as the children, amazed at how compliant the sheep are whilst being shorn and assuming it is a 'play dead' type behaviour that is similar to chickens and rabbits. Anyway, we went up to the pigs, which I have to say were the hit of the day. Leanne and her piglets, particularly a tiny runt called Pee Wee stole the show, and Lucy and Molly were also very charming and friendly. Mick brought his little calf up for the kids and my goats as always were up for a bit of petting and fuss. All was going well until a new horse put in the paddock by Scott (who rents one of our fields for his charges) ran through a fence and broke its leg. The kids were on their way out anyway (thank god) so after running back and forward to deal with the aftermath of that I walked back up to the house and was just about to try and convince Susie to take the little ram that had been born that morning. On the way back we noticed that one of the other sheep was down with a lamb head hanging out the other end and not much else happening. Coffee was thrown aside and Susie thanked god that she didn't wear her best clothes out (she knows better now anyway). Lamby had one leg out and one stuck back behind him. We ineffectively tried to free the leg, stuff it back in and re-birth it, swear, call James and demand he come back more quickly and generally flap around. I thought that lamb was turning blue and obviously dying until after the event when I realised it was joined by the umbilical cord and could have stayed there for quite a while longer. Anyway, a large amount of obstetric gel and a good push from Mum with my hand on the side of the lamb and he came out - huge and covered in shit...his Mum didn't clean him so well and I am sure it is because he was just too revolting for even her to contemplate.

She then lay there without responding for quite a long time - Susie and I contemplated blankets and hot water bottles, we told her a lot to get up. I think at some point we discussed getting her up but just assumed she was going to die. It appears to me sheep and I have some things in common - being overly dramatic when not well. She had convinced herself she too was dying (and I truly believe she would have if we had left her). Mick came back at this point and took one look and hoisted her to her feet. She then shook herself and realised that in fact she was very much alive and we all gave a sigh of relief. It reminded me of the midwives that wanted me up and on my feet as soon as I came back from the c-section while I wanted to wallow in my bed and eat chocolate. Anyway, no more mollycoddling - its all tough love for the animals on the farm from now on I tell myself - thank god James is a vet because I think the chances of that are slim to none.

September Catch Up

2008-09-25T13:54:00.005+10:00

It is with some trepidation that I log back into the blog to see just how far behind I have left everyone with our news. Happily I can see that it has almost been a month - but not quite.. It has been a little different to previous months because we had almost 3 weeks off markets. This has been a great opportunity to write down lots of things on a 'to do' list and realise that we have probably not fulfilled very many of them at all. Anyway - productivity seems to have resumed and we climbed back aboard the market train last weekend. This time we combined Dubbo and Mudgee in one day (James and Dubbo and me at Mudgee). Luckily I was ably assisted by James' sister Hannah, who had a crash course in pork cuts and Danielle, who is our usual Mudgee helper. I was sold out of meat by 10.00, as was James, again we have increased numbers of pigs so hopefully we can start to fulfill the demand a little more effectively. Much fencing was achieved over the market break and the sows moved up to 'Sow Hill' which is their new huge fenced paddock. The downside of Sow Hill is that when you take people on farm tours now they are often unable to see the pigs at all as they are busily going about their business in the long grass. Our boar paddock was finished and Maguire came out of Sow Hill for a bit of a break to let Dennis have a run with the girls. He hasn't finished sulking and has refused to get out of bed for 2 days unless to eat. The weaners moved into their large new paddock, making it 4 weaner paddocks in total, which means we can rest each one for a large portion of the year. We tested our theory of them being able to cope with electric fencing only briefly... it ended when gardening on the weekend down at the house we were joined by a group of curious pigs who had shorted out the fence and decided to go visiting. More fencing followed.

After sitting on her eggs for a record 40 days the above hen, to her relief and ours, hatched out these 2 little ducklings. James was obviously thrilled and commented "I'm so glad we have yet another species with identity issues" however the hen is scarily protective of them and although they may drown at the first sight of water they are having a lovely time being duckens.

Luke and Leiha (don't know how to spell it) moved down to the adult sheep paddock with Bruce and Barry our 2 cross-bred lambs. I didn't really want to give them names as they are meant to add to our self sufficient meat supply when old enough, however on the ute journey down we bonded a little and they clearly needed an identity. They are huge compared to the little Wiltshires however everyone is happily bleating away and enjoying the spring grass.

The kids finished up the school term and go into the last one in a couple of weeks. I took the photo of them in their pre school 'uniform' because it is just hitting me that Felix will soon be going to 'big school' and I wanted to commemerate the moment. I had his parent teacher interview recently, which was all good - although I will just repeat a little paragraph for his embarassment when he is older:

"Felix gets along well with other children in his class and has a particularly good friendship with Alex, Lachlan, Lachlan, Maree and Isabella, with whom he enjoys playing pretend games. Felix often plays the role of the family pet, with Isabella leading him about the playground and teaching him tricks"

Cassie the farm cat who just isn't continues to rule the roost - she will now sleep on a cushion in front of the fire, when not in Emily's bed and enjoys a leisurely stroll to visit the ferret each morning.

Felix 's 5th Birthday

2008-09-05T15:43:00.003+10:00

Spring has sprung early..

2008-08-29T19:42:00.005+10:00

Well, technically we still have another week to go but babies are everywhere here at the moment. Luke bonded pretty well to Chloe our little goat kid, but it isn't the same as having a sheepy friend. I knew another local Wiltshire breeder and asked her to keep me any poddy lambs that became available. Low behold she had a little ewe-lamb that she was ready to get rid of. She has been christened Princess Leia (god knows how that is spelt all you star wars fans) by Emily with pretty heavy persuasion by Felix. We have the pair now...Luke and Leia - Luke is very pleased with her, they sleep cuddled up and quickly became inseparable.

Meanwhile Dora was looking bigger and bigger and I was convinced she was carrying triplets, however she very calmly delivered the above enormous twins yesterday and is her usual lovely self. It is nice to have a calm and friendly mum who is happy for me and the (human) kids to come and stroke the babies and she hasn't forgotten the milking routine as she is so full of milk
I have had to take some off her so the babies can actually latch on. They are both boys which means that theoretically they will end up in the freezer... Maggie is starting to sway and waddle and I am crossing my fingers for a girl from her. Leanne our teenage pig mum (disgraceful behaviour has been going on in the weaner paddock) after all our worry over her had 11 piglets that are very small but seem to be doing okay, and much to our surprise one of the other young Berkshires who was in with Dennis has also farrowed with 3 piglets. Not surprisingly Dennis has been very disgruntled as he hasn't had a chance to show us what he can do yet - I am pretty sure that the piglets are the work of Dale the ginger handraised piglet - his act of revenge for us sending him off for bacon.

Angelina has started laying her lovely blue eggs and Brad is quite taken with her (following their namesakes). They strut around the yard together (again, like their namesakes) and Brad still takes any opportunity to jump on the big hens when they least expect it. Sonny (son of Brad) is indeed a rooster, as he showed me today by attempting his first strangled crow. Despite being soft hearted and keeping everything I can I think he is going to have to go. I will leave it to James to carry out the deed, however I think all he will do is provide a meal for Jessie.

We are in the middle of a market break, with this weekend being a 5 week month (markets only on the first 4) and we are moving things around a little which gives us 2 weeks off. Fencing is underway as is the redoing of the stockyards with concrete runs after James attempted vaccinating the sows the other week and they lifted up the entire metal run and just threw it aside and calmly walked out of them with a glint in their eye.

Felix turns Five..

2008-08-29T19:24:00.008+10:00

I can hardly believe it, however I can also hardly forget it as I am sitting in the middle of face-painting instructions, a 'how to make balloon animals' kit and am paper-machaeing (spelling?) a pinyata pig in readiness for the birthday party this Sunday. This year Felix has very specific instructions as to how he wanted his birthday to pan out. Despite my best efforts to have a party at the local McDonalds/indoor play area/park I was shot down very quickly as he told me he had discussed it at length with his friends and it was to be at home. He then outlined the general run through of the day and showed me a picture of a Harry Potter castle cake that he had decided on. Make sure you keep checking to see how that little beauty turns out (based on my previous efforts I think you can probably guess it may look more like a Harry Potter cave but lets wait and see).

Anyway, after a week of 'how many more sleeps' questions and 5 late night toilet trips during the night the big day dawned. At 6.30 the house was woken up and great excitement followed. Emily as you can see received a hoop and a fairy costume as let's face it, sibling birthdays can be hard. She coped pretty well and enjoyed the fact that when Felix went to pre-school that day she could play with all his toys without him knowing. He had cakes at school and then we organised to take him to a local Thai restaurant (his choice) with his friend Sam for dinner. He was amazed that they brought a cake out at the end and played Happy Birthday over the speakers - 'how on earth did they know it was my birthday?'. The night before James and I went to the orientation day at the local primary, Mudgee Public. Between that and his birthday the next day I spent the day in dark glasses in case as every time I thought of him being five I got quite stupidly emotional.

A lamb by any other name

2008-08-08T13:55:00.005+10:00

As I type this our newest addition to the farm, the above lamb, is sleeping peacefully on the verandah. He has chosen to lie about 1/2 a metre away from Woody who is eyeing him with the tenancity that only a young sheepdog can muster. It seems that Woody is convinced that it is only his unblinking stare that is keeping the lamb in his place, where is the lamb is completely at ease and totally oblivious to the whole process. Woody seems put out. Anyway, we have been busy as usual and freezing cold at the same time. Although we have had some welcome rain, the days are mostly clear skied with a good frost each morning. Last week after getting back from Dubbo we got a call to say that an orphaned lamb was looking for a home... our merino girls need a meat ram and I have always been taken with the Wiltshire Horn sheep. We have been putting everything into the pigs for the moment so buying any of them was out of the question - however we were lucky with Luke. The naming of the lamb took place, Felix was very excited because it was a boy, he must be feeling a little emasculated with all the breeding females that we keep and wondering why none of the boys get to stay. Anyway, although little and cute we thought it was important that he had a strong and manly name for the future. We all put in our ideas but Felix stood firm. "His full name is Luke Skywalker the Jedi Knight" he told us "but you can call him Luke for short". My suggestion of Sean fell on deaf ears and so Luke it has stayed. He bleats incessently at me and is drinking with great gusto from his bottle. So far he has been to a kids party and to pre-school with Felix. He has had his tail ringed and is probably the only sheep in Australia who had this done with a local anaesthetic.

Beccie's spotty piglets have ventured out and we bought in 10 berkshire piglets to boost up numbers who have promptly joined Kimmy and Lil's litters and proved once again how complex the maternal behaviour is in pigs as they have been adopted pretty readily. This means we have to wean all over again but at least everyone is settled and happy.

We have had a flurry of interest in the farm recently, an article in a Sydney newspaper (Manly Daily) http://www.manlydaily.com.au/article/2008/08/01/11372_news_feature.html will hopefully boost Sydney sales. Also in the media have been the latest campaign by Animals Australia to stop sow stalls (which have been illegal in the UK for a long time) http://www.animalsaustralia.org/lucy_speaks/. Lots of orders are coming in and the upshot of it all is that our numbers are starting to look small. It is all good but with lots of our income tied up in hams waiting for Christmas and demand that is getting hard to meet we are up against it a bit. We both want to stay loyal to the farmers market customers and always make sure that we have meat to sell at the markets, but on the other hand wholesale sales will always be vitally important to keeping us running. James has been fencing the next phase over the last week and we will be changing markets around to give us 2 weeks off sending any pigs off at the end of the month. It is hard to believe that it is almost one year since the first pigs came on to the property. Bacon and ham is still our next hurdle.

James' shooting abilities are improving - he managed to bring home a hare this week. It was then cleaned, cooked very slowly and turned into a sort of rilette or terrine (above) with some pork belly and eaten on crusty bread. I was initially dubious however admit it was delicious, I was surprised at how dark the meat was but it wasn't as gamey as I was expecting.

Orange markets tomorrow in the (forecast) snow, and poor James will then get back and head straight to Sydney for the Balmoral Mudgee Food Festival. We are selling our pork and porcini sausages in a roll on Balmoral Beach. I am staying home to look after the pigs...it's a good excuse.

Winters latest..

2008-07-30T12:54:00.006+10:00

It has been a disappointing month for piglets really. With Kimmy and Lillian only having 4 and Andrea having 6 (of which two died of some kind of infection - unfortunately despite all our best efforts Aiden came through the operation well but even the handknitted jumper didn't help once he got sick). All hopes were on Beccie who copes with life with with a very sweet and laid back way. She was absolutely huge but decided to farrow outside while we were away - this wouldnt have been a problem but 3 of her littlies decided to wander off at 1 day old, and another 2 died the next day. This leaves her with 7 strapping little piglets. She moved them inside and James built a doorway on her hut, she repaid him by chasing him down and scaring the *&^% out of him. With numbers low we have bought in 11 six week old weaners from a Berkshire breeder not far from us. Little Leanne looks as though she is having her first litter, although we are not sure if the father is Maguire or if one of the males in the weaner paddock got in there first. The next lot of fencing has been planned which will mean we have 4 large weaner fields, a boar paddock, a nursery paddock and we can winter the sows in the large field at the front, but bring them into the woods for the summer shade. Winter has meant that we have planted our asparagus crowns, mandarin trees and raspberries. We said goodbye to Joker who went back to his owners, much to the disappointment of the kids (and me) so I guess we are on the lookout now for a pony, maybe a bit bigger so that I can ride it as well.

Emi's cat, re-named Cassie (her choice) outdid herself by catching her first mouse at her young and tender age. The other day as I walked into the toilet one ran out and disappeared into the kids room. It think it is safe to say that rather than coming from the shed we obviously have a family of them living happily somewhere in the house. Coco has become very adept at catching them so we brought her inside and told her to 'find' the mice. She became very busy and excited and looked to be doing the job...but came back with a tennis ball. I have started shaking my shoes out before putting them on and the cats are keeping busy at night hopefully getting rid of them. There are rabbits everywhere, which is kind of scary for mid winter...can't imagine what spring will be like. James still strides around taking pot shots of an evening but it seems the rabbits are pretty safe. At the recent Small Farm Field Days Show we found someone with a company called 'Bunny Blasters' which looks to be an effective and humane way of quickly destroying warrens and what is in them. It may come to it as there are scrapings and holes all over the place. Jessie is still yet to have an outing and just grows fatter and happier in her cage.

On the animal front Dora is so round she looks as though she is going to pop, however still has 6 weeks to go I am looking forward to seeing how a goat manages to waddle...Maggie also seems to be looking pregnant, however goats are notorious for being difficult to predict so we will have to wait until September and keep guessing. We have a new Gander, named Snowy... two of our other geese have gone to my friend Susie and as with most things here have missed out on being Christmas in July dinner. They have a very plaintiff 'honk' and I don't think either James or I could face it. Snowy is getting bullied by the drake who obviously has little man syndrome and picks on him terribly. He seems to be a gentle giant. Lastly I went to shut the chooks in last night and Wendy and Son of Brad (I'm sure it is a rooster) were roosting in the main chook house - he was sitting up next to his Mum looking very proud of himself, it was quite cute.

The chickens stay free range...

2008-07-30T12:45:00.004+10:00

Part of my plan with the 'big' vegie garden at the back (next to the orchard) was to run it in a permaculture system. This would mean rotating each garden bed and using the chooks to clean up the old vegies and fertilise the area at the same time, ready for replanting. According to the book this required me to use a chook dome which James obligingly agreed to build for us. The idea is that the dome goes over the bed, and the chickens live safely in there protected from foxes and the like, while the other garden beds are in turn protected from them until we are ready to move them on. All the theory seemed sound. It even had instructions on how to build a chook dome using only piping and bailing twine with some wire over the top. A morning's work in fact. On the right is what it was meant to look like - on the left is what it looked like before the bailing twine 'cross braces' were put on. There was a lot of swearing from James about 'bloody hippies' not knowing how to build anything...let alone write instructions. Once done we all stood back to survey the structure and unanimously agreed that it looked awful. It is still sitting sadly in the front garden to be disassembled. A sturdy wooden one with shiny handles and wheels on the bottom will probably follow.

Pig Medicine

2008-07-11T16:17:00.004+10:00

Well, nobody can accuse us of not offering our porcine charges the very best of care. This little guy was born with a testicular hernia which made him walk as though he was one of our kids wearing an overly large nappy. We have had a few with umbilical hernias that haven't seemed to have caused much of a problem but this one didn't look too good. James made some noises about getting rid of him early on..but just like the bottle reared earlier piglets, we thought we should give him a good shot at life (which is odd considering we are going to cut it short at 6 months... I am not sure why it makes me feel better but it does..perhaps I just don't like waste?). Anyway, a book published in 1958 called Swine Medicine held the answers that James was looking for and so he was loaded into the cat carrier this morning, crapped extensively through it all over the ute and arrived at the vet clinic shortly after. I went in to take some photos and show the kids and brought him home so the clinic staff didn't pass out at the smell (it is an indication of how bad it actually was that it made even the clinic smell bad). He recovered very quickly and is now up with his Mum. The suture material may mean he is unable to join the human food chain, however I have a back up plan at the local high school with the agriculture class.

Mouse plagues and namesakes

2008-07-09T21:30:00.004+10:00

Most mornings for at least the last month have included the body of a mouse being left helpfully beside the bed, or in a doorway (in perfect position to step on whilst blundering about and trying to open my eyes). Initially we have felt very proud that our city slicker cats are obviously venturing over to the barn to rid us of pesky little mice. Today after rummaging in the cupboard James came running out with one of my shoes in a plastic bag with what he hoped was a mouse inside. It appears we have live ones in the house, which begs the question - are all those little dead mice actually coming in from the shed or is our house crawling with a mouse plague. I am not entirely sure what is worse..spiders or mice. Mice are definitely cuter but really make you jump when you pick up something and they shoot out and run off. Anyway, I am trying hard to come up with good excuses because as you can see Emily has a new friend we have christened "Betty". She is meant to live in the shed and rid us of mice and hopefully therefore snakes....she is currently in the laundry.. hmm. We have had Maguire's namesake visit (not sure if that is the right way around)...anyway, Chris visited the pig that we named after him this week and filled us in on all news and gossip from North London...he also laughed at us when we complained bitterly of the cold. It reminded us that we arrived this time last year and many people were astonished that James insisted on wearing shorts every day. To us it was hot but everyone else was in deepest winter. Change doesn't take long does it.

Winter

2008-07-07T08:25:00.010+10:00

I have decided the problem with a blog is that in my mind, I don't want to update it until I have the photos to illustrate our latest disaster (or sometimes success). It isn't that I don't mean to take the camera out everywhere we go, I just keep forgetting. Take yesterday, which was a prime opportunity. Felix went to a 'Harry Potter' themed birthday. To get ready for this Grandma stayed for a week sewing a cloak and knitting a gold and brown scarf (oops, was meant to be red and gold but luckily Felix didn't notice). I knitted another one - with the help of 'Google: how to knit' (how did we ever live without the internet). I drew on glasses and the scar and great fun was had by all. Did I take a photo? No. I can never even prove to all those who are skeptical that I am capable of actually knitting anything that I actually did it. That is my excuse anyway. I was so enthused by my scarf knitting success that I have been thinking that we should get the wool from our sheep (what is the word??) - "made" into wool and I can do a quilt? One square at a time. For some reason this statement was met with much humour by James and the kids. James also seemed to be re-living uncomfortable past memories of wearing hand knitted jumpers on the farm when he was a boy. All in all the idea has been shelved and I may just buy some wool from Big W and save it for a rainy day (which in the current climate may be a fair way off).

So what has been happening.. well, the car was returned to us working at great expense and we are now too frightened to tow anything with it. Luckily our trusty ute workhorse doesn't have any such problems although there may be some kind of mechanical jinx on us at the moment. Coming back from Dubbo markets - which can I say are now one of our favourite places to go after we were put in the paper with 5 other producers for being 'one of the most unique/favourite stalls'. Anyway, driving back from Dubbo with both phone batteries flat we had luckily come back into Mudgee. James was itching to get to a farm sale and I was just itching to get out of the ute as Emily was squashed in between us in a car seat. As we rounded the corner there was a bit of a bump and James looked out the passenger side window to see the wheel of the trailer continuing in a different direction off into the local park. We pulled over with the trailer on a precarious tilt and both scratched our heads a bit and maybe uttered a few choice words. Everything pretty much closes in Mudgee at lunchtime on Saturday so we couldn't phone the rental company and our phones were flat anyway. With luck a nice local who knew the trailer owner pulled over and gave us his mobile. In the meantime we had to unhitch the trailer and get the left over meat home and into the freezer. Luckily we didn't have a lot left - had it been post Sydney we would have had a problem.

So we hit the Sydney markets with about 7 pigs.. the butchers worked into the night to get it packaged and boxed up and James left for Sydney at 10.00pm on Friday night. As tends to happen with our animals they sensed that something important was coming up and Kimmy decided to be very helpful and have a complicated farrowing. I left at 12.00pm with the kids to go on the coach and train to Sydney as we didn't have the car. At that point Kimmy looked like she was getting on with it, she is a bit of a stressy girl anyway and my presence was probably going to hold things up so I left her alone. By the time James finished work at 5.30 she had produced one piglet which is not particularly normal. In between getting organised he gave her oxytocin and tried to help. In the end we left her with our very competent neighbour who looked after the animals for us and a vet friend on standby too. By the morning she had produced 4 live and 5 dead and had a possible infection.

With this on our minds we drove to the St Ives market and were a little surprised to be one of about 10 stalls, with a man selling toilet paper on one side and another selling towels on the other - very nice people and great company for the day but not what we were expecting for the 'organic food market'. Fighting the urge to laugh or cry we set up our stall and ate an awful lot of sausages. As it happened we had lots of really nice people come and buy from us - some who had been through the Mudgee markets and made the trip to St Ives especially which was really touching and makes it all worthwhile. As always, all the other stallholders were great company and we met lots of people who really loved our pork. Had we been a bit less gung ho and bought one pig we would have had a lovely day - we both just kept thinking of how much we were going to have left over and tried to be optomistic about Frenchs Forest on the Sunday.

It ends happily because Frenchs Forest was a huge and busy market - we talked non stop all day, handed out hundreds of brochures, met lots of people and sold a lot of pork. We are now left with the dilemma of what to do about Sydney long term, although we will be there for the next couple of months, as we have been invited to Bathurst as well - which is a local market for us and one which we had aimed to go to. It is on the same weekend. The dilemma is mostly because at our present size we can only produce 4 pigs a week and as we are keeping breeding stock so we can increase these numbers this month we are going down to 2 a week (thinking winter would be a slow month). Its great to be invited to other markets and have our belief in what we are doing reaffirmed by the demand but juggling it all as we grow is a challenge (see, it isn't all ponies and picnics!).

On the animal side of things Wendy, one of the silky chickens decided to have a drink from the horse trough and sadly drowned (I told you they weren't so bright). I have got 2 more to replace her because I am not having much luck with egg hatching (success count at the moment: 18 eggs attempted - 1 successful chicken). We have planted our asparagus and look forward to our first crop in the speedy time of 3 years. I managed to milk Amanda this morning and put my first batch of milk in the freezer towards the next lot of fetta. She has turned out very nicely and happily goes into the milking area and no longer trembles when I am actually milking her. We are in school holidays for the next 2 weeks so I am planning to get the veggie garden weeded and get our second veggie garden sorted out - Brad and his ladies will go and live in a chook dome there to clean it up and fertilise the soil in the hope that Brad himself will stop fertisiling my other chickens and let me get some decent chicks out of the next batch of eggs. Lillian had her first litter of piglets...only 4 and she decided that she didn't like our hut and preferred to have them in the mulch of a large eucalypt. They were moved to the shelter later and are gorgeous strong little things. With her litter of 4, Kimmy's litter of 4 live we are a little short on piglets this month. Beccie is due next month and all hope rests with her to bring our numbers up.

We are right in the middle of winter here, although blue skies everyday and some frosts mean it doesn't feel like it. Our only source of heating is the wood fire which is getting a lot of use. James is also giving his chainsaw a workout getting rid of dead trees and chopping them up. My ratio of fires built to actually burning is probably about 4:1 at the moment. We are also building up our winter bonfire and are thinking it might make a good Christmas in July addition - this is where we get to have an English Christmas with all the seasonal things that don't feel right eaten in 35 degree heat. The geese are looking nervous.

Ponies and Ponderings

2008-06-22T16:49:00.003+10:00

Its been a while since I last wrote, and rather than bore you with complicated stories of happenings over the last week I thought you might like to look at some photos of our picnic today in one of the far paddocks. We are looking after a little pony called Joker for 6 weeks and despite coming with a bag of tricks that include: turning on taps (making me think Alzheimers had hit early after the yard was flooded 2 days running until I caught him at it); closing his eyes and running through the electric fence when he knows it is off (not beeping) and nipping me when my back is turned and I am trying to pick out his feet - he is absolutely lovely with the kids and they adore him. We have been going out on a track that James cut with the tractor every day with either one or both childen and Emily declared last week she would like a picnic under a tree that is on top of the hill. It was a good idea and we packed a bag and took dogs, children and horse up there today. We are so caught up in the day to day running of the place that we forget how beautiful it is.

Just to update you however the last weeks have included the following:
- Orange markets (very successful but a long way and we managed to knacker the automatic transmission in our car on the way back - 200 km in 2nd gear takes a long time. It is still at the garage and we await the bill nervously)
- My phone has been 'played with' by a paddock full of pigs. It no longer works for anyone trying to send me messages.... the phone shop found the whole thing very funny and are attempting to salvage it.. I am trying to be optomistic.
- Our silky chicken hatched out a single chick - Brad seems to be the father and I am not sure how the hell the egg got in there...a Bantam Isa Brown Rooster I bet.
- We are getting ready for Sydney markets this weekend - 8 pigs and a clear out of anything not growing well to make sausages (I regret that Dale and Delores 2 the handraised piglets had to go...I was very sad but got to keep Dorothy. She has repaid me by getting out of the adult paddock 4 times and running about trying her best to make James take back his promise to let me keep her).

Enjoy the photos!

Our picnic with Joker (the horse)...

2008-06-22T16:43:00.005+10:00

Bank holiday - what bank holiday?

2008-06-10T19:07:00.002+10:00

Well, whilst the rest of the state slept in the knowledge that they had 3 days off, we got up at 5am as is getting usual for us and set off for Dubbo Farmers Market for the second time. Luckily sleepless nights pre-market are pretty much par for the course as we both toss and turn, wondering if it will rain, if we will sell anything...what we should do with the house..where the next fences should go - I could go on but you get the picture. This restlessness makes it much easier to get up when the alarm goes off and this week the kids had a reprieve as Grandma and Grandpa were here to save them from being dragged off to spend the morning in the back of the car with a DVD. Once there our fondness for Dubbo (two words I wasn't sure I would ever utter in the same sentence) appears to be growing, we had a steady stream of customers, many returning after trying our meat the month before and ordering 3 times as much the second time around. It is a huge and lovely market with fresh flowers and lots of produce and and we sold 3 pigs by about 11.30 to our huge relief. Both of us were pretty exhausted by the time we arrived home although James started putting tree guards around the olives and I finally decided to take the goat by the horns and milk her no matter what. This was actually much easier than I thought it would be and although she continues to be a tricky thing to catch my shoulder has only threatened to dislocate when she has jumped about but held itself steady. She is still on antibiotics for a uterine infection so no goats cheese for a little while yet.

Chicken hatching failed miserably on Saturday when the hen got a bit confused and decided to abandon her eggs (1 week off hatching) and sit on a solitary egg laid in a neighbouring box by one of the other hens. Although the eggs were cold I made James pick her up (cunningly avoiding any pecking that I thought she might dish out) and move her, but her brain had reset itself and the old eggs had to be buried after I again found her out of the nest the next day. My dad and I spent the day on Sunday making another nesting cage for her - this appears to have 'declucked' her if that is possible, because now she just paces up and down and squawks at me when I go near her.

Monday morning James and I decided to tackle Harriet's feral family who have been living quite happily up in the big paddock with the adults. They are very healthy little things but we knew it was going to be a struggle because they wouldn't come anywhere near us. Plan A was to lure Harriet out and as her piglets followed put them in the stockyards and then separate Mum out to take her back. This failed in about 2 seconds, when Harriet came out and the piglets bolted on sight of us. Plan B was very complicated and once again put James' life at risk as he decided to try and put the piglets into a box and then carry them all to the weaning pen on the tractor. All was ready for this option when we looked at all the adults that would probably try to kill him every time he picked a piglet up and we decided on Plan C... take all the adults down to the stockyards and hope the piglets would follow. Adults happily trotted down to the stockyards and piglets were like a wild herd of sheep..but smarter. They came up and then one false move from me caused them to stampede to the back of the paddock and hide. Woody, despite my comments about him last entry, saved the day. He was sent in as a last resort and managed to herd the little piglets out after we had tried before him for a good 20 minutes and failed. I was so delighted with him that it took a minute to realise we couldn't 'turn him off'. A lot of tooing and froeing followed with piglets escaping and running back towards their paddock before we settled on Woody, on a lead controlled by James and me with pigboards, pushing them very carefully forward. The plan worked and we got them to the stockyards. Ear tagging followed and luckily James was wearing heavy wellies because they obviously take after their Mum and once held by the legs tried quite hard to take a chunk out of James' leg to show their displeasure. My arms are still sore from running about with pigboards.

Last but not least, James decided to take advantage of his fishing rod birthday present, and the last day of the fishing season here and go to the local fishing spot on the river. An hour later he screamed up the driveway in a cloud of dust and got out with his rod and a fish still attached to it speechless with excitement. Both the kids were very excited and are obviously becoming a bit more accustomed to the harsh realities of life with Emily exclaiming "is he dead Daddy, did you kill him" and then telling me "the fish is dead because Daddy bonked it on the head and now we are going to EAT HIM". A quick biology lesson followed with the kids enthralled by the fish gutting and me staying well away in case I threw up. It made a lovely starter for dinner. Pity he has to wait another 5 months to go again....

Australian Sheep Farmers?

2008-06-05T17:11:00.004+10:00

James has been sowing his oats (not his wild ones as far as I know though) - the early week was spent spreading seed far and wide on the tractor. The kids and I followed spreading a hay mulch over the top to try and protect the seeds from the birds and keep the little moisture in the ground that we recived in about 15 mm of rain. The kids gave up after about 5 minutes and decided it was more fun to jump in the muddy puddles that were through the paddock. With the little rain that we have had it is starting to look like a pig farm up there with enough mud around to keep the pigs happy turning the soil over and generally making a mess.

We have also finally got some sheep.... and Woody has got something to practice on. Unfortunately for him we have so much grass on the paddock at the moment it is very difficult to spot the sheep in the paddock, let alone learn to herd them. They seem a fairly wise old bunch of ewes that have seen dogs come and go and are quite happy to take on a young pup and butt him as far as needs be to get their point through. I feel a bit sorry for Woody at the moment, the pigs are so easy for us to handle that he has little to do, today he got in the thick of things like a teenage boy that wanted to show everyone his manly abilities and eyed one of the young pigs off that had broken away from the herd. The pig just walked a few steps up and nudged Woody who was a bit wrongfooted and decided to just try and make friends with him instead... he then cut his losses and trotted up to the paddock and the pig followed him so all in all it was like watching a scene from Babe.

This week's ponderings...

2008-06-01T17:24:00.005+10:00

Some of our latest dilemmas and ponderings for you:

- what is eating our olive trees.... probably rabbits but there is so much grass around I really can't believe it. James returned from mulching the trees with Felix to put priority 1 on putting piping around them before we lose them all. This has had the unforseen effect of taking away all the sympathy I held for the bunnies leading up to James' gun licence coming through. I am looking up recipes right now.

- Is Dora pregnant, falsely pregnant or am I feeding her too much... like me, I am hoping that even in early pregnancy her stomach muscles drop and falsely give the impression that she is about to give birth when actually she is only 2 months in.

- will the new goat ever be tamed? I stood with Maggie while she was eating today, she is very confident now and no problem to catch or touch... she is more jumpy around Dora's horns that around me. New goat will let me stay in her pen whilst she eats as of today.

Actually it feels like it has been a relaxing weekend. Yesterday we were selling hot pork rolls at one of the local wineries. The combination of a band, beautiful weather, lovely location and a nice stream of people rather than queues that we can't keep up with made it feel like a day off for us too. The kids soon tired of it all and the video below shows how our tent becomes a gypsy style childrens play area... after having faces painted and eating as much crackling as possible they soon tired of the novelty.

This morning we weaned Lucy, she positively ran out on her piglets up to the dry field and Maguire very quickly tried to jump on her. She told him to sod off in no uncertain terms and re-established herself as top pig before getting a little confused and trying to feed Harriets ferals. We also moved little Dennis into his field, where he spent the day playing with the little piglets that ran under the fence to say hello. Everyone had some fresh hay in their beds and paddocks cleaned and I finished with an hour in the vegie garden weeding and planting. Emi has given up trying to be girly and when asked what she would like for going a night without her dummy she chose a 'light saver', Rodney the rooster had better watch himself. James managed to vaccinate almost all our sows today. Armed with his new vaccinator gun he has perfected his technique - feed in a mass so they are all jammed together, jab in gun and run with pig. It did seem to work very well.

Dennis the Menace and Rodney the Bully

2008-05-30T13:22:00.005+10:00

Well, after much anticipation young Dennis is here... he arrived with a big purple D on his back to ensure that he didn't receive the Improvac vaccine which is a great alternative to surgical castration. We use it to ensure that our males don't have 'boar taint' - decreases testosterone production to the point that the testicles shrink to nearly nothing (actually I have no idea what it does to testosterone, you would have to ask James, however I do observe that our pigs have no testicles and I thought that sounded quite knowledgeable)... this fate wasn't something that was wanted for this fellow though...he needs to be firing on all cylinders so to speak. At the moment he is only a baby, and enjoys tummy rubs and pears. He is quite different looking to our other pigs, I think he has quite a cute face? I accept that I may just be spending too much time around pigs however so we will settle on the fact that he is a fine specimen. He is in the yards at the moment and will move into his own paddock with some young girls to keep him company this weekend.

Day 5 of goat taming is going slowly. Amanda didn't eat for the first 3 days, however I noticed by yesterday she was cleaning out her feed bucket. My next step is to get her to eat with me standing on the other side of the fence...if this is successful then I will stand in the yard and so on and so forth. Little Chloe is very cute and skips and hops around Mum not really understanding what all the fuss is about. Chicken watch is also going well...fingers crossed. The silky forgave me and is diligently sitting on her eggs. Buoyed up on the success of this I cleaned out the chickens yesterday and put 12 eggs under one of the Australorp hens...possibly too many but she is such a big fat hen that I thought she could manage.. will see how many rotten eggs we have at the end. Rodney rooster would benefit from a bit of testosterone reduction himself as yesterday I turned my back on him and felt him wallop into the back of my legs. Later on poor Emily turned to go back to the house and he chased her like a greyhound. If he had hurt her I am not sure whether he would still be strutting around outside the house as he is this afternoon. As it is Emi said to James yesterday "I'm afraid you need to get rid of that rooster Dad" - so she is fast becoming a farm kid...I'm not sure she really understands what getting rid of the rooster will entail. We will of course be sure to tell her that he went off to live on that distant 'farm' that our goat and the other ducks are merrily going about their business on.

What the heck is here....

2008-05-25T17:50:00.005+10:00

This is our new goat and her kid... with Maggie and Dora pregnant and therefore not milking my cheese making abilities are going to waste. The lady that sold me Maggie and Grace had just had a new 'batch' of kids so the farm kids and I went off to have a look this morning and look what we came home with. Conversation on the way home went like this:

Me: so kids, what do you think we should call the new goat

Felix: Rusty, or Dark Vader or Luke

Me: well, it is a girl goat so maybe we could have a girl name

Emily: lets call her What the Heck

Me: why would we call her that

Emily: so we can say What the Heck is her name! (very pleased with herself)

Me: (impressed that she has come up with that by herself but not sure if What the Heck is acceptable pre-school language and not sure if I will get in trouble from her teacher at some point this week) laugh .. NO

After much of this type of discussion on the way home we have settled on Chloe for the baby and Amanda for the mum. Being the bargain that she was (I got her for meat money) she hasn't actually been handled and attempted to climb the walls out of the pig trailer when we climbed in to lead her out. I am not sure whether this bodes well for milking... Maggie has slowly improved but have had time to work on her. Not sure if I have bitten off more than I can chew.

James has had a long weekend of fencing and has managed to catch a cold in the process - he is off tomorrow for a long 7 hour return trip to pick up our new boar... photos of Dennis to follow. I will stay and hold the fort here.

This week I also learned theoretically how to hatch out eggs. It goes a little something like this:

1. Collect up the eggs and leave them out of the fridge, pointy side down for up to 3 weeks until you have a decent clutch for the hen

our version: put them in the fridge and had a mad scramble to find suitable eggs - now have 'fruit salad' approach which means we have 4 duck eggs, 1 silkie and one unknown in the batch for the hen.

2. Make sure you have moveable nests in the main chicken pen so you can take the hen out at night and put her in a separate pen to hatch the eggs.

Our version: take the chicken out in the middle of the day because you keep forgetting to do it at any other time, make husband do it because the little hen keeps pecking you very scarily and then watch him tell you to stop being a whimp but use heavy leather gloves to pick up the hen and move her anyway. Watch her escape and run all over the hen house making so much racket that the rooster starts looking like he might have a go at you. Corner her and shove her into the new hen area and wonder whether she will ever sit on or even lay another egg as long as she lives.

3. Once the hen is sitting happily in new area, lift her gently and place the eggs underneath her.

Us: push the eggs underneath her whilst dodging her beak and hope that she will organise them herself later - telling yourself that they have sat on a bench for a week and being a little outside the nest for a night won't hurt them.

I wonder...will it work?

Ups and Downs

2008-05-18T18:05:00.004+10:00

Its been a bit of a rollercoaster week actually. We continue to try and develop our Ormiston baby snags (latest name...still thinking). After eating enough fat and cholesterol to clog my arteries many times over and just when the thought of another sausage was intolerable I think we pretty much got the recipe right. It has been tested on a few kids, other than our own, and the next step is to try them on a few more... so far all comments are good. Earlier on in the week we decided to start signing up for the farmers markets around us, only to be told that they all had pork producers (not free range) and didn't want any more pork. My attempts at explaining the difference was pretty much met with 'well pork is pork'. This, frankly, is more than a bit of a blow for us. If we can't go to the farmers markets we can't really sell our product. If we can't sell it at the markets then we can't really build up slowly and we may as well chuck in the towel. This defeatist attitude only grabbed hold for a bit and then we rallied. A few calls to Sydney markets soon cheered us up with much excitement from the managers at the thought that we might be coming down there sooner than we thought. After coming back with enough pork to make our visitors sick of coming over here from Dubbo we took a risk and sent another 4 off for the Mudgee markets. There was much nail biting and looking at the clouds building on Thursday and Friday - a little torn because we are desperately in need of rain but were aware that if it arrived on Saturday during the markets it would affect how many people would show up.

Mudgee didn't let us down and we sold out of everything once again by 10.30 - what was fantastic was seeing so many familiar people who had bought last month come back again this month with lots of positive comments. Both of us were completely wired after finishing at 12.00pm and came home and collapsed in front of the tv with the kids. We spent the afternoon in front of the fire watching it rain intermittently and hoping it might chuck it down and give everything a good drenching. Despite lots of dark clouds and heavy winds (and freezing temperatures) it remains fairly dry...

Another sporting moment.

2008-05-18T17:56:00.004+10:00

I'm not entirely sure which order these pictures go in...I think in fact that they are back the front. Felix starts with the ball, then he runs the wrong way only to be put on the right track and attempt to score a goal or whatever they do in rugby. This way makes him look better, but in reality I just can't work this damn blog site and am happy if they upload at all (later note: have just accidentally erased all photos and have put them back on inexplicably in a different order...ignore above comments). This is obviously to show Felix starting rugby at a pint sized age, I spend most of my time having to be held back from racing in and protecting him from the rough and tumble. He generally comes off the pitch saying 'that was awsome'. Last week for example he learned how to spit with the other boys.. charming. I guess I didn't have brothers so I can't appreciate how normal this behaviour is....James is very proud.

Our day in pictures

2008-05-08T16:07:00.006+10:00

Well, its more fun to look at than my writing - the kids are now true farm children and are meant to be helping with the weighing. This involves fighting over who is going on the tractor, getting stuck on any number of gates and then setting off the car alarm many times whilst electing to sit in the car and wishing the morning was over. Felix has discovered Star Wars and the animals are wary around him as he spends most of his days as Luke Skywalker and anyone unfortunate to be in the vicinity becomes 'Dark Vader' (his words) to be dispatched with this 'Life Saver'.

We waved goodbye to Vanessa, Fiona and James dog who we very jealously watched drive off into the sunset for a year of adventure and carefree fun... until we can trap them here again on their way through..

Anyone for Banglets??

2008-05-06T13:36:00.009+10:00

Its been a lovely couple of weeks on the farm with the arrival of two more sets of autumn piglets... despite James and I daily meaning to move a very pregnant Harriet down to the maternity wing she couldn't keep her legs crossed and had 11 piglets in the middle of our largest field on the windiest and coldest night Mudgee has seen in April for a long time. James and Fiona struggled to build a makeshift pen from straw bales by the light of the ute with a boar, 5 sows and an irate mother..they both lived to tell the tale as did all the piglets. We have since put a pen in there and they are often seen playing around the bigger pigs who are surprisingly very gentle and tolerant of them gambolling about. Meanwhile Debra had a litter of leapord piglets (see pic) the next day and we got her to her pen in time. Despite our worries as she wasn't the best mother last time (remember Dale, Dorothy and Delores the handraised piglets), she is doing brilliantly and has only trodden on (and killed) one so far. This means that we have suddenly got another 50 piglets in the space of one week. They are a lovely bunch and Bev's are particularly nice - I have of course got my favourite and have named her Beatrice.. unlike the other piglets, who are curious but don't like to be touched too much, Beatrice follows me around, loves being stroked and will roll over for a tummy rub - she is only 2 weeks old so it is all ridiculously cute. I am sure that she is of super intelligence and realises that the quickest way to ensure a long and happy life is to worm her way into my affections. She is of course quite right, and you can see her above making friends with Coco...she will make a nice breeding sow.

Woody's ears have decided to both stick up the right way for almost a whole week now and the search for his sheep continues.

We have had a few events, the first of which was an airshow called Wings Wine and Wheels. Expecting about 1,000 we thought we had over ordered on the food and had 8 loins of pork and about 400 sausages to sell. James got called away to a colicking horse quite early and left myself, Fiona and Vanessa getting the stall ready... although slow to start with things soon became utterly hectic with queues of people seemingly 100's long and not enough equipment or people to cook enough food. Poor Fiona inhaled smoke bent over the barbeque for most of the day - the hot pork rolls ran out within 15 minutes of being served, leaving sometimes fed up and irate customers. It seems that there were closer to 4,000 people and the feedback was once again positive - we are finding that the sausages are starting to get a reputation of their own.

Buoyed up on the success of WWW, we took four pigs off to the butcher for the Dubbo markets - again it is a large farmers market with around 4,000 people coming through and although we hadn't done any advertising we were hoping we wouln't be left with too much to take home. The market is indeed fantastic, with a huge range of produce as well as beef and saltbush lamb to choose from - I did all our meat and vegie shopping whilst we were there too. Being unable to have tastings due to tight Food and Safety regulations made it a little difficult for us, and although we sold about 2 and a half pigs worth of meat it was much slower going. In some ways it made it much more relaxing, we were able to spend a lot of time talking to the locals and they seemed a very loyal bunch of customers, however our freezer is now full to bursting and we have a lot of pork to get through that didn't sell. Luckily for us we are trying to invent our next sausage - a small chipolata that can be used for kids (or for canapes - there could be a sales line in there somewhere). Much deliberation is happening over the name, so far we have had 'baby bangers' and 'banglets' - suggestions very welcome please. Our first tastings were pretty awful, with a strange rice flour that seemed to turn it into a paste like sausage. Felix summed it up well when he exclaimed that they 'were yuk'. The second lot we were happier with - almost all pork with a light seasoning they were brilliant in the initial patties (we fry up a little from the mix before we commit to casings) but disappointingly dry when cooked. It is difficult because they are so small to get them right. We are now playing around with the fat content and the mincing size to see what works.

Meanwhile we have just put our name against a new boar, who is on one of the free range farms and growing nicely whilst waiting for us to come and get him. Dennis will join Maguire as our Large White boar - meaning that the daughters of Maguire that we are keeping as breeding stock will be able to start entering into the breeding program. Yesterday was spent planning the next lot of fencing to decide where the new nursery paddocks, boar paddocks and weaner paddocks could go. We still have huge amounts of land doing nothing.

It is a beautiful time to be on the farm at the moment, the weather is cool and the flies are almost non-existent (when working). I went for a walk last night with the dogs, the sky was blue as the sun was setting and the kangaroos were out in force - they watched us from a distance and then hopped away as Coco bounced around the long grass trying to see where they were. Last weekend was spent cleaning up a very neglected vegetable patch and finally accepting that sporadic rainfall means daily watering a necessity - accordingly we have installed an irrigation system in there and sod's law says that it will probably now chuck it down with rain - it was looking promisingly cloudy today but we are heading into at least our second month of no rain.

Felix is very excited because tomorrow he starts rugby after pre-school...he even has a cute little pair of football boots which he hasn't actually taken off in excitement. Although hazy on the actual game, he says his friends have told him that it is great fun because you can be a) really rough and b) huddle together to try and push the ball away - he gets a bit confused with c) you can't touch the ball with your hands. As he tried to tackle the kids who were fielding with him in cricket for the ball I think rugby might be a good choice for him...

More piglets and a successful farmers market

2008-04-22T17:12:00.008+10:00

Why is it that I never have a camera when I really need it?? Clearly I would have made a lousy journalist - that said, you will just have to read our latest update and be content with pictures of more cute little piglets. Despite our dates our ladies decided to farrow in the opposite order - Lucy won with 16 piglets, one dead and another very small one (which I should have taken and bottle fed, didn't make it either). The remaining 14 are adorable and are under a week old and tottering around the paddock already. Lucy is often found resting away from the hut after tucking them into bed at night having a glass of wine and some 'me' time - I know just how she feels. Shortly after Lucy, Rosie had 9 little ones and Bev followed with 7 (not the 2 I was predicting). A little disappointing for second litters but lovely little pigs so we will just have to be content with that. That boosts our numbers up and probably makes Felix rest a little easier. Still struggling with the concept of eating our pigs I got a little closer to the reason this week when I asked him what exactly was worrying him about it all (expecting a heart wrenching reply) - he said "I like pigs and if we keep eating them we will run out" - after I showed him that we had 30 more with the latest litters he seemed perfectly happy with the whole concept.

Speaking of eating pigs our first Farmers Market was a huge success. Once again we both had minimal sleep trying to figure out what we would do with 3 pigs and the resulting meat (LOTS) if the local demand for free range pork wasn't as we had hoped. Our butchers had very kindly lent us their refridgerated ute and as James loaded up the meat I struggled gamely with the tent that we had bought to cover our operations at markets such as this one. Everyone else seemed to set up like a well oiled machine whilst I stood around and aimlessly attempted to stretch the legs out on this supposedly easy to assemble piece of equipment. Once again Mudgee's friendly locals saved the day and helped out with the million things we had forgotten - tent pegs, hammers, scissors and some muscle in putting things up and carrying various boxes. By the time people started wandering through I think we looked almost professional. I say almost because on our first sale I had just taken the money and felt quietly excited about selling a packet of sausages and chops and managing to add it all up in my head when I went to open the till and realised that I had left the key at home....worse than that Emily had been playing with the keys the night before so I was pretty sure I would never see them again. Slight panic descended as more people came to buy the meat and I flapped around trying to figure out how I was going to operate with no change whatsoever, however emptying both our wallets and begging for the right money soon put us on the right track. Vanessa and Fiona responded to a call at about 9 which sounded a little like "HELP, please come down here" and even were so organised as to bring change with them. By 10.30 we had sold out of everything and for the next 2 hours had to hand out order forms and apologise to a lot of disappointed people. Champagne was drunk that evening and since then we have had 4 orders directly and apparently a lot of interest through our butcher, Hodges. It is all very exciting.

My goats are back and our chickens and laying like the clappers - 6 eggs today. We are all a bit desperate for rain and despite the fact that the clouds are ominous and the weather is cold I think we had about 4 millimetres today...the winter vegies are not happy and I have had to start buying fruit and veg from the shop for the first time in a couple of months. This weekend we are preparing for Wings Wine and Wheels - an airshow with wine and cars I guess. We will be selling hot pork rolls and sausages as usual and next weekend we will try our luck at one of the big farmers markets in Dubbo. Despite James' refusal to ever go back there are EI vaccinating it seems that the lure of thousands of customers is changing his mind.

Countdown to Farmers Market

2008-04-09T07:51:00.003+10:00

After smugly commenting on the fact that we have all been free of 'bugs' since leaving the crowded streets of London, we have all developed unpleasant hacking coughs over the last week or so and so life has been a bit miserable, especially for the kids. James' ear has healed up nicely, although I was hoping for a permanent hole so that he could sport an ear tag as well.

Last weeks cyclists were very keen on the hot pork rolls, which sold out within a couple of hours. Next we had to make around 300 canapes and the day began with me forgetting that the local electricity supplier would be cutting off our power from 10.00am to 3.00pm. Thank god a friend's kitchen had been lined up as it was closer to the event and we could keep the kids occupied a little better. I spent a day sweating over a pork belly recipe which I had not attempted before and that luckily decided to cooperate. This was combined with some sausage rolls and taken up to a rotarian conference for about 300 people. Again the tables were empty in about an hour and a half and we had lots of great feedback on the meat. It is now time to put our money where our mouth is so to speak and we will start selling the free range pork at the next farmers market. We are getting labels and brochures printed, having our sign put on the side of the ute and looking around at portable coolrooms. I have a long 'to do' list at the moment that I am trying to work through.

James' parents, Julie and Peter, arrived on the weekend and have not so far suffered too much from jetlag. James and Peter quickly kicked off by finishing the kid's treehouse (above), much to the delight off Emi and Felix who would probably like to take their beds up there if they could.

The goats have gone off to the billy and I am told have both have cooperated with much enthusiasm. I am embarrassed to write this however I am actually really missing having them around - as is Gracey who spends her days bleating pathetically at the gate for someone to come and play with her. I will leave them for another week to make sure that they don't come into season again and then they can load up and come home and get back to eating our blackberries.

Woody is off to dog school this weekend - he spends most of his days ambushing Coco and launching himself at her ears with a tenancity that would make a staffy proud. She is suffering a bit and has taken to jumping out of the back yard and heading up to her good friend James dog for a cup of tea and some rest and relaxation. I am hoping that getting a good start on his training might help, but am slightly worried that we may never have enough work to keep him busy. The pigs seem so clever that they pretty much walk themselves out now and go through the scales without too much of a problem. Staying on the pig news we are due to have about 3 litters in the next week. Lucy is so heavy that her teats are almost dragging on the ground and she looks distinctly uncomfortable. Little Rosie (who is still my favourite and loves a scratch and a cuddle) is probably coming up second and Bev, who really should be first, either has a solitary piglet and therefore not much to show, or is like one of those supermodels who manages to sail through pregnancy without looking as though there is much more than a beachball till the last minute.

Last but not least my chicken saga continues... Brad has been joined by a new Angelina - she is a pretty little grey thing but so flightly that I couldn't get a photo of her. I know that she is there because every morning when I let them out she almost flies into my head and runs squawking off around the yard. I have long been looking for some silkies and found out that there was a sale up at the agriculture plot at the high school with one rooster and 2 hens going. Clearance and garage sales around here seem to be pretty competitive with people showing up hours before they begin so I wasn't going to miss out this time. I went there ready to push to the front of the queue and jump on the chickens at first sight, however luck was with me and they hadn't sold. We therefore now have Buzz, Isabella and Wendy (named by Felix) who you can see above. They provide me with a lot of pleasure as they are like owning something out of the Muppet show... not highly intelligent (even for a chicken) they seem to strut around and bump into things a lot and unlike the others don't roost so I have to be meticulous about locking them up as they would be an easy meal for a fox. They are already laying and the plan is that they are so clucky that I can use them to hatch out my duck eggs.

James takes empathy to a new level..

2008-03-27T13:54:00.003+11:00

Today started out as a normal day - weaning Beccie's piglets, moving the very pregnant Lucy, Rosie and not so pregnant (but supposed to be the most pregnant so not sure what is happening there) Beverley down to the maternity wing. I was out with the kids and James decided that he would do a spot of pig tagging (giving them an ear tag and number) himself. This was cut short as he calmly walked back to the house with blood all over his neck and said he had just 'cut' his ear. I bravely decided to inspect more closely, however after identifying that the metal stake had actually gone through the cartilage at the top of his ear I started seeing spots and had to sit down myself. He drove himself up to the hospital where there wasn't a whole lot they could do except clean it up and give him a tetanus shot. He bravely came back and we continued the ear tagging - this time with me weilding the big pair of pliers that puts the hole in their ear out of necessity whilst James held them as still as possible. I am not sure who squealed the loudest, the pigs about being held, or me every time I punched the hole in their ear... not for the faint hearted (of which I would usually categorise myself however needs must).

This week we have had both pan fried goat and slow roasted goat shoulder. I don't deny that the whole goat saga has been a little stressful for me. I felt very guilty about the little pain in the bum that was Bam Ram. I therefore approached the whole goat eating with great trepidation and so carefully watched Fiona as she ate before me for a hint of goat identification in the meat (which with Fiona would make her run wretching from the table). This was not forthcoming and so whilst I made a bit of a fuss I had to eat my words after eating the goat, as it tasted not too different from lamb. So encouraged am I that I am taking Dora back to a Boer (meat breed) goat for her to be re-joined as the only setback of getting rid of her kids is that she appears to be quickly drying up milk wise.

We again have a full week of sausages - this weekend a Mudgee Food and Wine event in Birkenhead in Sydney, on Thursday a bike-riding event that sees around 1000 bikeriders descending on Mudgee (hopefully feeling desperately in need of a pork sausage) and Friday we have another local wine event at which our sausages and pork belly will be one of a number of options to soak up a bit of alcohol. This week we are bravely moving away from the gourmet sausage and trying hot pork rolls as well....

Happy Easter

2008-03-22T12:08:00.006+11:00

Oops, yet another week has gone by and no updates! Last weekend began with selling our sausages at Mudfest (a local small film festival at one of the wineries) AND selling some to a local chef who used it for a grape stomping lunch at yet another winery. It was our first time selling in Mudgee and once again the response was great - all sausages sold and Mudgee free range pork got a mention in the local paper too... The pigs got a reprieve this week as we step back and have a think about how exactly this is all going to run - of course we have pondered endlessly but come up with nothing so are going back to plan A - just keep putting it out there whenever we can. We are aiming for the next Mudgee farmers market to actually start the Ormiston stall so are in the process of finding out about licencing and all the other fun things that go with selling food to the public.

The Good Life continued with our first almost completely self-sufficient meal - roast pork, potatoes, beans, a small sad piece of brocolli and cabbage. The last pigs were almost used up but had the legs left over so we are awaiting a ham and have a freezer full of spare ribs and leg roasts - they join the duck with the little feathers that we can't get rid of and sadly very soon the little buck goat. I am once again wrestling with my concience that is yelling "keep him as a pet" - however I am trying to reassure myself we are doing the responsible thing by having it all done here and not putting him through the trauma of going to market. I will of course be as far away as possible with the kids, while a helpful local is coming up to do the deed. It is a steep learning curve this farm thing. The children of course think he is going to a lovely farm where he will live happily ever after and are comforted by Gracey, the little kid, who would usually have been weaned many weeks ago. I feel she will probably have a bottle a day for the rest of her life because Emi and Felix (and okay...me) find it so rewarding.

After a long wait it is finally starting to become obvious which of our chickens are hens and roosters. Coming up to the feeding shed I was very excited to hear some lusty crowing and ran around the corner eager to see who our first rooster was. Angelina posed proudly on the gatepost and continued to show me her cockadoodledoo for about 15 minutes. She has now been renamed Brad and seems quite unfazed by the fact that he is half the size of the larger ladies - he flaps about importantly and I am told the Isa Browns are quite partial to his charms. I am awaiting the arrival of some more blue egg layers who are actually laying so that I don't make the same mistake twice.

Easter is of course eagerly awaited with great excitement and the counting down of sleeps by Emi and Felix... they will no doubt spend the weekend high as kites on sugar after consuming as much chocolate as humanly possible before 9am tomorrow morning.

We wanted to drop Maggie the new goat off with Elvis the billy for a naughty weekend and hopefully a pregnant outcome, however I forgot the trailer was full of whey and out of action for another week. There had been much excitement around this trip as Elvis' owners have a herd of Shetlands and Minature ponies and pony rides had been mentioned. We went out minus the goat with much anticipation. They both had a lovely time on Ruthie the pregnant Shetland - unlike most of her breed (especially the ones that I remember) she was absolutely delightful. I am holding back hard on the horse thing, however the offer of letting Ruthie come and stay with us for holidays so the kids can have a ride around on her might be the compromise we have been looking for. Felix just wanted to go 'faster, faster' and Emily endlessly sang a tuneless song that seemed to comprise of "I'm riding a horsie, I'm riding a horsie" the whole time....nobody fell off.

Not content with the growing list of work that needs to be done on the place, James has decided that we need both a cellar and an outdoor woodfired oven (legal in a total fire ban or not is the question of the week). I am in the midst of registering Coco's pedigree in Australia and have had to become an official dog breeder in order to register any puppies that she has - Ormiston Woody continues to be both a huge pain and a delight at the same time. He and James have formed a blokey partnership and if not together he can usually be found destroying my garden and barking at anything he can possibly convince himself we need to be protected from.

Our Pigs are lucky but surely it should be normal??

2008-03-13T21:35:00.003+11:00

I try to steer away from getting on my high horse about animal welfare..but what else is a blog for if it isn't to express your opinion? Thought it a good opportunity to show anyone interested the latest add campaign against factory farmed pork (which is where all your pork comes from unless it states free range!).

www.pigad.blogspot.com.

Watch if you dare!! The videos are particularly distressing - especially for me when I know what a nice life our herd has..

Ormiston Free Range is open for business...

2008-03-11T15:10:00.006+11:00

I had to do it really - pictures from paddock to plate as it were. We have toasted Gloria on many occasions and it feels as if she has had a proper send off - she will always be remembered as the pig that launched the sausage from now on. It is a hot Tuesday afternoon and I think we are really just coming down to earth....even the dogs look exhausted.

The story goes something like this...

The pig eventually arrived at the butchers at about 10.30 on Saturday morning to everyone's intense relief... I went in with James to see the sausages being made with a sweaty brow in case my professional manner was compromised by bursting into tears at the sight of a named pig ending up on the hook - I think James thought this was a possibility as well so he tried very hard to let me stay in the car. Not to be deterred I crept in behind him with eyes averted in case I needed to run out but luckily they had made all 800 sausages and they looked so amazing that we were just terribly excited. The reaction from our lovely butchers also made it all worth while, they were amazed at the consistency of the meat and loved the spice mix that we made up for them.. obviously we let them take some to give us some feedback.

We left them to hang and set but cut off a few to take them home to a waiting audience of willing tasters... the difference in the sausages made from our meat was very evident, they even smelt different when cooking. The spices that overpowered the intensive bland practice sausage meat was perfect with the richer berkshire pork. We decided that I should go along for the day as well and luckily Mum, Fiona and Vanessa were on hand to look after the fort.

Emily must have sensed that I needed a decent night's rest and helpfully woke me at 1.30 on Sunday morning. After this I of course couldn't get to sleep for fear of not hearing the alarm... 3.00 am came around and we were off, both feeling a little sick with nerves and tiredness. The NSW Cellar Door Expo was held in Hyde Park with around 300 wineries from all over NSW - we were in the Mudgee area with another smokehouse, a vension farm, a thai restaurant and a winery restaurant of stalls. I started to feel very nervous for our sausages at this point. I watched the stall from a distance as the doors opened at 11.00 - people wandered past but didn't buy...about 10 minutes of angst followed but by 11.30 we had a queue that didn't go down until 4.30 that afternoon when we sold our last sausage. It really was an amazing experience - we had incredible feedback and lots of requests for which markets in Sydney we would be selling our meat. James managed to drive home that night aided by red bull and jelly babies whilst I lay comatose beside him.

Weigh day took on a whole new meaning yesterday - one of our Berkshires hit the magic number of 70 kilos as did one of the Landrace X girls so they are off today to make up the order for one of the local restaurants and more sausages for Mudfest (a short film festival that attracts about 1,000 people at a local vineyard). They are all very confident in the runs now and go through the scales quite calmly (aided by a handfull of food in the crush which had the unexpected effect of making them unhurried about wanting to leave it). This week we decided they could go home through the walkway by themselves after being weighed but they all refused to leave the stockyards. Dorothy (one of the ginger girls that was handraised) sat at the gate and grabbed it in her mouth shaking it back and forth when we shut her out. On the piglet front we have just lost the second one from our latest litter to some kind of respiratory type infection - despite getting antibiotics, a hot water bottle, fluids and me attempting to stuff a bottle in its mouth most of the night it died this afternoon. It seems very strange that the weakling runts that have been at death's door seemed to live through anything and the strong little fellow that we bought down here deteriorated so quickly...

My goat Maggie (black and white like a Magpie) is getting a little better, I got to observe goat behaviour first hand when they clashed horns and strutted around each other sizing up the opposition. It would have been impressive except Dora is such a rickety old girl that it was like watching a granny beat someone with their handbag. Maggie is still quite flighty but will at least take food from my hand. Gracey is still her demanding self and is enjoying eating her way through my pomegranate tree when I don't watch her closely. She is now with the other kids learning to be a goat.

The website is in progress and you can contact us on james@ormistonfreerange.com.au or georgie@ormistonfreerange.com.au from now on. Sausage recipes gratefully received!

Goat dairy??

2008-03-08T07:09:00.002+11:00

Perhaps this post should read "RIP Gloria"but that's a bit morbid isn't it! Actually all initially went to plan...she was unfazed by the load up and the journey and the abattoir was exactly what we wanted -a small business that treated them very humanely and everything was hunky dory. I did think that I may chain myself to the gate and have a last minute change of heart on the whole producing meat thing, but actually I was strangely accepting of it all. Anyway, the butcher was expecting delivery on Thursday to make up our 800 sausages for Sunday's festival. It is Saturday morning as I type this and the pig still hasn't arrived. Thankfully the boss of the abattoir is driving it across this morning and the butchers are going to work overtime to get it done for us. Needless to say yesterday was a little manic. Photos of our first ever stall to follow soon.

On a happier note we have added to the goat dairy with 2 newcomers - Grace, who Felix has decided is just like a new puppy, is a little handraised Melaan (Australian breed of dairy goat) - she actually thinks she is a dog and James carried her home in the car on his lap - much to his absolute disgust. Felix as you can see runs about with her and feeds her the bottle twice a day and is very taken. The second goat is the British Alpine who looks like some kind of African Gazelle. She climbs the wall when I go near her so not sure how that equates to her ever letting me milk her but we will see - lots of carrots.

Winners

2008-03-01T18:30:00.005+11:00

Well, it was a proud day for Coco and Felix who entered the Pet Show at the local Mudgee Show today. Competition was TOUGH...amongst the 3 entries in the class there was a guinea pig, a chihuahua and of course Coco. Felix took over the microphone and the conversation around the showground went a little like this:

Commentator: So, what is your name

Felix: Felix Daniel Caspar

C: wow, and what is this little guys name, can he do any tricks then

F: HE can't do any tricks because HE is a girl...

C: Oh, sorry, well can she do any tricks

F: yes, she can roll over

C: can you show us

F: No, only my Mum can get her to do it with a special word

And so it went on. Coco was very good, she took out the prize for 'Most Obedient' although Felix was a little miffed that she didn't also get 'Most Friendly'.

I only wish that I got some entries in for the baked section of the show - some of my special favourites were - best packet baked cake and - best loaf from a breadmaker... James is determined to win both next year. The animal nursery was met with boredom by both kids who said 'we have all of those animals at home, why would I want to see them here', however both went on the Dodgem cars with James to great excitement although Emily looked as though she was going to throw up for a lot of it (as did James towards the end). Sadly we couldn't stay for the ute muster although we were determined to stay and see the first heat of the camel race...

The Girls Move into their new field

2008-03-01T18:17:00.003+11:00

Here are the girls in their new 'home'...it is a much bigger field with some maize in it (right) that they made very short work of in the first 24 hours. They are having a lovely time galloping about and generally trashing the new area, meanwhile James is planning to plant a turnip crop in the old paddock to give them something to dig around and eat when it eventually recovers. Meanwhile D day approaches quickly - Gloria is due at the abattoir next Tuesday, true to our usual style we have some slight last minute problems with the politics between the Free Range Pork Farmers Association (Us) and the Australian Pork Limited (intensive) - it appears that there is not much love lost between some members of each and we may not be able to get a number that is necessary to tick the box for the final hurdle when taking them to the abattoir... we have a contingency plan and it is apparently being fought out over the weekend - who would have thought - I am trying not to worry about it because there is a possibility that we may grind to a halt at the final stages but we are thinking POSITIVE.

Final sausage tastings took place with our travelling farmhands making a very welcome comback, and James also tried some of the Mudgee Fine Foods committee members to finalise our thoughts. The banner is being printed and the aprons are too (watch out for our merchandise next). It suddenly occurred to me this week that we are actually going to do this, every weekend, from now on (when I made this point to someone they were astonished that it has taken this long to hit me). I can only assume I have been in denial for my own sanity.

The next Warnie??

2008-02-24T20:43:00.003+11:00

The weekend started off with an exhausting morning of cricket for Felix, who has to be repeatedly reminded that when fielding, tackling his fellow team members for the ball is not appropriate. He has only got 2 weeks left, however we are now being asked whether to sign him up for the soccer team, or the rugby team - his behaviour on the cricket pitch probably points to the latter, however he is working through the pro's and con's of each one himself...this mostly consists of which of his friends are going to be at each one and going with the group that he prefers at that particular moment in time.

James went into feed Kimmy and Maureen and as a very pregnant Kimmy (or Maureen...lets just clear this up right now and say the pregnant one is Kimmy) heaved herself up quite a lot of milk poured out of her teats. We now know from experience that this means that farrowing is imminent, so James had the fun task of trying to separate her off from her absolute best friend from whom she has never been apart. This done he then got her down to the farrowing pen where she went straight inside and promptly had 6 piglets - well, when I say promptly it took a couple of hours but the she must have had her legs crossed in there waiting for someone to come and take her somewhere with a bed she decided was appropriate for the situation.

We then had to rush the kids into the car for the very hyped up camping trip. Ninety minutes and 4 stops to clean the vomit off Emily later we got to Hill End....it was a very windy road. We followed the directions to the 'Bridle Track', which I thought would be a small dirt road down to a river where I would see lots of tents and people camping along the edge side. The road started innocently enough (although looking back there was a large sign at the beginning giving about 10 warnings of various dangers that awaited you on the road and said 4WD only) but pretty soon was just a track big enough for one car and a sheer drop off the other side. Emily was too sick to care, Felix was utterly terrified...I tried to be brave for about 5 minutes, then I thought 'bugger this we ARE going to die' and so buried my face in the pillow and clutched Felix for the whole 9 km trip down the mountain to the bottom. Once we were there, wondering the whole way whether we were on the right track, we quickly found everybody and had a fantastic night. Both the kids loved it and joined the child and dog pack running around in the dirt and generally having a great time. They both slept without so much as a peep out of them and although i found a spider in the tent the next morning, I am quite taken with camping and have decided that we should invest in a tent - after buying the ute it is surely the next step before the swag and the horse??

2008-02-23T11:21:00.002+11:00

Kimmy and Maureen

These two found the chocolate cake in my absence!

Certified Free Range

2008-02-22T15:34:00.004+11:00

Three cheers for James and his fencing skills and the rest. We got everything done in time for our farm inspection yesterday which went without problem. This is very lucky because in order to move pigs in NSW you need to be part of a quality assurance program of which there are not very many...you can be intensive, free range or organic from the looks of things, but nothing in between. Once you have your number you are able to apply for your pigpass and can then have them processed for consumption. As always we were probably cutting it a little fine, considering we have 2 MORE WEEKS (just typed that in a panic) before the first lot go. Today I opened the 'striker brand' in great excitement, only to find that an entire bottle of tatoo ink had spilled throughout the postbag covering me, the kitchen and the new brand with thick, black ink. The kids found this very amusing.

Our new girls, Kimmy and Maureen have settled in well...Kimmy (or Maureen, we are not really sure who is who) is days off farrowing and is wadding around looking very uncomfortable. James moved her to the maternity wing this morning...unfortunately we initially put them in with the weaners, who are obviously approaching maturity because some of the young boars are showing a little too much sexual attention towards them for our liking. As we don't castrate here there is always the chance of 'boar taint' in the meat from the boys - this is apparently more likely the more they have the chance to awaken their testosterone driven instincts. We are moving the girls out today and hope that they won't turn their attention on their sisters instead.

We are taking the kids camping tonight so there is high excitement here - they have been sleeping in their sleeping bags all week in readiness. I am also declaring war on the blackberries, and after watching a show on permaculture decided that getting the goats to eat them down properly is as good a reason as any to keep our two instead of having to make any hard decisions. Yesterday Bam Ram was caught and collared (he is very wary of handling after being castrated) and Flora is also wearing a little red number. I have bought portable electric fencing and am going to fence of the blackberry patches and leave them to eat them down for as long as it takes. If this is effective I think they will have earned their tickets to stay here for as long as they like.

We are off to move the sows and boar into their new huge lovely green paddock with some maize on for extra forage... more photos soon.

Are we giving our children enough attention??

2008-02-18T17:40:00.003+11:00

Need I say more - a play room/toys/a 2 acre garden and yet still the kitchen cupboard is where I find them (playing ninja turtles in case anyone wondered)..

Weighing In

2008-02-18T17:23:00.006+11:00

Exactly like a weightwatchers meeting in reverse, our pigs hopped on the scales today for the second week running. We decided to hold off on the morning feed so that they would follow James without question and would wait until about 9.30 to start. This left the possibility of a bit of a lie in for James, who was then called out to see a dog at 6.00am in the morning instead. As predicted, all 46 were noisily squealing at the gate, and although they required a bit of driving they basically came out and followed James down to the cattle yards as planned. About halfway through the process we looked around for Lillian, who had craftily waited out of sight and then taken herself on a little tour around the farm.... slight worry that she was high tailing it over the hills and far away was averted when we spotted her happily guzzling down apples in the feed shed (above). I think she went through a bag and I bet she is in her paddock with a tummy ache for her troubles. All the others went through the scales without too much stress this time - we cheered the bigger ones on (as in "58 kilos YAY, 3 kilos since last week... and your prize is..."). We also spent lots of time handling them - which they are all very used to now - they all like a back scratch and a shoulder rub and are very inquisitive. This is good in some ways, however it makes them very hard to drive as their response to shouting and waving is pretty much "alright, alright - in a minute you impatient human".

Two days until our Free Range Pork Farmers Association inspection, we have checked everything off the list and are looking forward to the arrival of the 2 new sows to the herd at the same time.

You Beaut

2008-02-18T16:55:00.007+11:00

Well, put some spot lights on the front and give James a large gun and we have become a piggin' family by god - even Woody looks the part (except if you look closely he has a little divot in his bum where a real pig dog showed him how it was really done). That's right, we are a 2 car family with enough 4 wheel drives to give a London greenie a stroke. In negotiations that rivalled anything that has ever contribued to world peace James held his cool (while I played 'good cop' and looked frustrated), until finally they caved in. Our choice of ute was based solely on a series of Top Gear where Jeremy and the team attempted to break a Toyota Hilux without success, even after dropping it off the top of a building. This we felt was good enough for us. Emily and I drove the 'truck' (her words) home and on the way stopped and bought a potting table (that's right...I'm getting serious - well okay, I'm trying hard and that involves looking the part surely) to practice throwing it in the back and driving off rattling and banging around like everyone else does.

Woody has taken to being in the back like a duck to water as you can see, Felix quite likes it too, however for obvious reasons we are not encouraging it. Coco, who is of a somewhat more sensitive disposition, managed within 2 minutes to completely entangle herself in her lead and was lying on the bottom of the tray looking very put out. We have decided that she can stay in the cabin for her own safety.

Day 3 of Dora watch continues to be painful - yesterday I tried tethering her out of sight of the kids, which kind of worked for them, but she pitifully called for the entire day and wouldn't eat. Today I have left her in with food and them on the other side of the fence. They have gone 3 days without a feed from her. My latest thinking is that if I can take all the milk off her in the morning they won't get anything from her once her evening milk dries off and we can run them together again.

In the lead up to the launch yesterday we invited a house full of volunteers to trial our sausage recipes. We have managed to stop giggling while making the sausages by now and can undertake the process with maturity and only a little bit of innuendo. All were eaten, as was my fig chutney, and the reactions seemed good. A little bit of over-enthusiasm with the pestle and mortar meant that the pepper spiced them up more than we would have chosen but nevertheless it seemed to be a success. I think the recipe is almost completed, but obviously it is back to the taste test again - I just hope I am not sick of sausages by the time we have finalised this recipe, as I guess after that it is on to the next one.

Thank God I didn't give them names..

2008-02-13T17:47:00.006+11:00

In a photo that is slightly reminicent of a scene from "Babe" (i.e. the duck crying "Christmas is carnage") here is our first home grown meat. I thought out of respect for the duck it would just be bad taste to have a before picture of them all swimming happily on the dam, so its another food shot I'm afraid. Anyway, I felt very guilty about it all day and can only console myself with the fact that he had a very nice life and probably lived longer than his supermarket bought counterpart, who probably didn't get to run about on five dams and generally have a lovely time. The meat admittedly was beautiful and so it is onward and upward - with another 3 to go - when they have finished moulting. This appeared to be the most traumatic part of the process for the unlucky dispatchers, who didn't mind doing the actual deed but seemed most affected by the fact that they needed tweezers and probably a tub of leg wax to get the little moulting feathers out of them...I think they resorted to a blow torch when all else failed.

James has cut me a running path around 2 of our fields because (and I dread to type this because then it actually becomes something I have to do) I am considering running a half marathon in August. Unbeknown to me Mudgee is somewhat of a triathalon/marathon running town (apparently a lot of iron men began their lives here). Anyway, I went for my first run with the dogs last night. The grass is very long at the moment and even on the cut path it would still come up to my ankles. I am not sure if this made the experience better or worse for me; better because scanning for snakes took the up the part of my brain that was saying walk now please, worse because if the exercise alone wasn't enough to give me a heart attack, seeing a stick concealed in the grass on my path was almost enough. There are also large orb spiders that spin webs across from the grass to the trees so as well as scanning at my feet it was necessary to look where I was going as I almost ran into the webs. Luckily the large spiders sitting in what seemed to be thin air in front of my face tipped me off. They say that snakes orient to their prey because they can feel the vibrations in the ground (I think) - I am not sure why I was even worried as they all must of thought there was an earthquake as I came thundering up their path, screaming every now and then for good measure - they must have fled like flies.

It was a sad day yesterday with our lovely farmhands Fiona and Vanessa hauling up the anchor and setting sail.... their empty campsite looks all wrong without the van there (are you reading this you two). Nevertheless I had one last lesson in seed planting the night before and feel like I am taking the reins of a runaway horse...I am spraying the vegies with the organic pest controller tonight (after carefully looking at the weather patterns and testing the soil moisture) and am drawing pictures of the veggie patch in an effort to decide which beds the winter veg is going to go into.

Andrea was weaned off her piglets earlier this week and is having a horrible time up in the big field with the other sows. As she came by herself she didn't have a bonded friend and is getting bullied by Debra and Harriet... I wish very much that Gloria could be spared and that those two could be the sausage providers as they are my least favourite pigs. This weekend we are fencing off a new field in readiness to rest the old one and also because we have two more ladies arriving this week to join the herd. We will put Andrea and the new gilt Lillian in with them to form a little unit before we put the bullies back in. I vow that if they don't give us decent litters this time they are both off for the chop and I won't feel a bit guilty about it.

I have somehow become one of those mothers who spends each day ferrying her children to and from social events - School on Monday, dancing Tuesday, School/Book club on Wednesday, playgroup Thursday, swimming Friday and cricket Saturday. How did this happen to me? Anyway, the kids are enjoying themselves and as I spend the rest of the day making them play unsupervised while I try and keep on top of everything around here I guess it isn't so bad. Felix was very excited this morning because we went to the local cafe for some breakfast and Merv Hughes was there for some Mudgee promotion or another. I thought he was very impressed at seeing such a famous cricketer but I think it was just his huge moustache.

Lastly I am attempting to wean Dora from her kids as they are now much bigger than she is and feeding them means they practically lie on the ground beneath her to suckle. After wondering why she is skin and bone despite the mountains of food that go into her and reading a few books it appears I was meant to take the kids of her about 3 months ago...oops. They are very unimpressed and are making a racket as I type. I am not exactly sure how long it will be before they scale the fence to get to her - if this happens I will have to resort to plan b, which is sell Flora and eat Bam Ram so I am really hoping that this doesn't materialise.

Sausage Making for Beginners...

2008-02-12T09:23:00.000+11:00

My first announcement this posting is that I am surely almost a proper farmer in that I can now drive our ancient tractor. After a lesson with James that had me glibbering with the fear that once false move and the whole thing would tip up and kill me (and that was only one of the probable scenarios) I turned the key with a very white face and a shaking hand. Attempting to push the clutch in required me to grip the steering wheel and stand up in order to put enough weight on it to make it shift, and then screaming many obscenities and hoping the kids didn't hear we lurched into motion. As I trundled up the drive at about 5 miles an hour I didn't feel like I was on the machine of death, however I continue to have a healthy respect for it after my lessons in reversing and going through gateposts (which are luckily still standing). On a similar upbeat note my cheese starter actually worked this week, and I am off to look at a new goat on the weekend to join the dairy.. although I haven't actually attempted any more cheese at this point.

Although I don't have the photos to prove it - as we were sweating/swearing and running too much to even think about it - yesterday was the first weaner weigh day. After finishing the fencing we decided to drive them through the laneway and into the cattle yards for a quick hop on the scales as a bit of a practice (because obviously it would be that easy). Woody and Coco watched eagerly from outside the fence and we managed to get some of the weaners into the laneway with food (I think next week they need to be starved a little first as some were just too smart). At some point Woody got through the fence and although he doesn't know any commands actually was surprisingly helpful. He had absolutely no fear of the pigs (and at one point shared a touching nose to nose with one that was thinking about charging him). He heeled behind and seemed to just know to stay a fair way back to push them on without them breaking up and panicking - happily, he also responds well to shouting. When we got down to the cattle yards one tried to make a break for it but he managed to eye it back in. We were feeling very proud of him so proceeded to bark incessantly outside the yards just to let us know that he should have been in there making a nuisance of himself.

2008-02-11T09:39:00.000+11:00

These photos are back to front because in fact initially James had the unpleasant task of flushing water through the natural sausage skins (i.e. sheep gut), and then Fiona and James were able to go through the, frankly slighly pornographic motions, of making the sausage (I have put the least embarassing photos on in case they both kill me).

There has been a long lead up to this moment, which started on Saturday night when the recipe search started. It was a true team effort - Fiona and James had done their research, Fiona and Vanessa managed to get the mincer to work when a sick dog required James to hurry off at the critical moment, and I (and possibly Vanessa) marvelled at the repressed homesickness that must have been residing in James and Fiona when their excitement at seeing a 'proper sausage' for the first time since leaving the grey shores of home reached a critical level.

Although I thought at some point James might suggest we should be blindfolded, in actual fact we just had four different types to taste which looked so similar we couldn't really tell them apart anyway. A fair bit of red wine had been consumed at this point so it all got quite confusing, however with my parents joining us to add their opinion, we were all able to agree on the same one as our favourite.

Three meters of natural sausage skins and 48 hours later and the final recipe was finely tuned and churned out into sausage skins, expertly stuffed by James and twisted by Fiona (with all of us exclaiming at intervals "Oh my god, they really are sausages"). Much debate followed, again aided by a fair amount of wine, and we have almost arrived at our final recipe - which I cannot tell you as it is obviously top secret information : )

Luckily tonight we are having a break from sausages as Vanessa felt up for a spot of poultry slaughter before they make a break for it and try and escape from Ormiston to face the wide open spaces (I have tried everything to convince them to stay but may attempt altering the driveway posts today). I am about to take the kids out for the morning as I believe some of the ducks are meeting their maker. I won't write about it on the blog as I am feeling a little ill at the thought, but I had better sign off or I won't get away in time.

2008-02-10T09:57:00.000+11:00

Getting closer to launch

2008-02-07T09:22:00.000+11:00

Well things seem to be going full steam ahead here, James has concreted in the weighing scales for the little weaners to run through every week and show us how much they have been eating. This is good because we spend much time trying to encourage them to grow more quickly now we seem to have more demand for our product before even we know whether it will be any good. 'Sure, we can supply you with pork loin and belly for your dinner with Sydney Food Critics' we merrily said to a local well known chef.... 'where is the loin' I then asked James. There are a lot of crossed fingers here. Sadly it seems that the lovely Gloria, who is one of my favourite gilts, simply refuses to get pregnant (not sure if she wants a career and frankly she spends a little more time canoodling with Debra and Harriet than we would expect her to). It seems wrong to me however due to the fact that she can't give us piglets she unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) is at the perfect size to provide lots of ham/sausages and the other bits. If she wasn't eating us out of house and home I would try and keep her as a large pet, but sadly our bank balance is telling me she has to go.

My cheese making has ground to a bit of a halt. I can't seem to get the starter to set...which means I can't actually even start making the cheese. I think I may have to go back for more lessons. I am looking for another goat to join Dora as the kids escaped and ate a couple of our new trees last week, and they seem to have figured out how to break the wire around the chicken pen and can crawl through it and out to freedom.

We are off to pick apples at a local orchard, who have offered us windfalls for the pigs, and I am up to my ears in figs from our tree down the back. Yesterday Vanessa and I looked as though we had been smoking something illicit after an hour in the kitchen with bubbling vinegar...I am pretty sure I have burnt all nose hairs and probably not done my eyesight any good. Fig chutney, fig jam, fig everything.

This weekend look out for photos of pigs and figs - we have decided to attempt a photo shoot with one of the sows down foraging under the fig tree by the creek... I suspect this sounds easier than it will actually be... we may only get photos of a retreating end of a pig as it merrily runs off into the bush.

Blue Eggs and Ham

2008-01-25T08:58:00.000+11:00

To the left is a picture of Angelina - so called because she walks a bit like a ballet dancer (as in Angelina Ballerina). She is a bit special because she will apparently lay blue eggs, well eggs with blue shells. We are all very excited, although I am not sure if you can see from the photo but she has quite a lot of growing to do before any eggs will appear. On the chicken front it seems that all the chickens bought for $3 at the local market have in fact turned out to be hens, and with perhaps one possible rooster in the younger batch. James and I are in disagreement as I don't think we can eat them now they are hens as they are useful egg providers. Hopefully they will provide us with lots of chicks that can then fill up the freezer - he thinks I am just putting off the inevitable wherever possible...

Dora's cheese has turned out really very well - everyone that tasted it did so with a slightly skeptical look on their face, myself included, however we are all amazed at how lovely it is (once again, not too goaty). I won't take too many photos of food, however I am quite proud of my first jars so thought it should be recorded for posterity before I am swearing over the fact I have a cupboard full of the stuff and everyone is sick of it. Next challenge..fetta... actually no, the challenge is making what I have again without the cheesemaker here to be honest so lets see how I go. I am also attempting to get serious about the vegetable gardening and can be found with my head in books with titles like 'Companion Planting' and 'The Organic Gardener' muttering things like 'perennials' and feeling quite impressed with myself. I suspect I may find it harder than I think once the garden experts leave on their travels but luckily they have gone to great efforts to make sure they will be available on-line for consultations.

We have a launch date for Ormiston Free Range, with James agreeing to provide sausages to the Sydney Cellar Door Expo or some such thing. The date is for the start of March, which means 2 of our youngsters need to be ready for that, followed by the Mudgee Film Festival shortly after. We took delivery of business cards and signs yesterday... once again we have jumped in the deep end - our to do list is headed 'find sausage recipes' if that gives you any idea of just how organised we are...