A bits and pieces week

We have had a busy week or so up at the farm, for once i am actually posting from the farm as the satelite service seems to be running extremely well for once. We will have to revise this service once we live here permanently.We have been watering constantly as it is so dry here at the moment, It has been a dry winter and the farm is looking pretty bare.When we want to water the lawn or gardens, Brian has to start up a big generator up the back which pumps the water up from our underground bore which is 300 foot below the ground. We can only do this for 10 minutes every hour, as we pump it dry. Once we live here we will install a solar pump which will eliminate the need for the big generator and it will be a constant but slower flow of water.
We are babysitting our daughters black lab  Josie, she is a cutie, Brian takes her for walks all over the property with our old blue cattle dog Tilly, but as soon as they return Josie always dives straight into the stock troughs and cools down, she is such a cutie.

Because the place is so dry, we had to reduce our sheep numbers drastically, so while we have been here this time we have butchered 5 sheep. Two were extremely old, so we decided to butcher them and completely bone out the meat and can up to  feed to the dogs as their  nightly feed. They absolutely love it.

We ended up with  approx. 38 pints of dog meat, we also did a canner load of lamb for our own consumption and a load of rump that we had bought cheap, as it wasn't a full load we topped up the canner with  some pints of  4 bean mix,( so easy, just a half cup of dried beans in a pint, fill with water  to within an inch of top, seal, and process the same time as meat) Brilliant for salads or to pop in soups and stews or to do refried beans.

With the bones from the  two old sheep we boned out I decided to also make some lamb stock. I had saved a pile of celery tops and had a few scraggy carrots that needed using up, and we have a tub full of spring onions growing out back, so used all those in the process. We ended up with a lovely rich stock, which i set overnight in the fridge to remove any fat and we managed to get 13 quarts to be canned.

The pantry has been well stocked this visit, I have done, rhubarb,meat for us,meat for dogs, lamb stock,olives, chick peas and 4 bean mix.

While we were here we took a trip to Dubbo the other day to meat up with one of our daughters and to see my mum, who was still recovering from foot surgery. While we were in Dubbo my Mum had a nasty fall and had to spend the afternoon in casualty. below is my husband and myself with our beautiful Grand daughter Claudia  and the other is a wonderful four generations photo taken about an hour before my mum ended up back at the hospital.

We had a lovely visit, even though it was a bad day in other ways. we will be seeing my mum again  this weekend to celebrate her 89th birthday, and to attend a dinner with her  which is an annual event to celebrate her being nominated and receiving an  OAM (The Order of Australia Medal) two years ago, for 50 years of service to the returned servicemans  organization (The RSL). We  were and are very proud of her.
So until we meet again, cheers from this hot and windy farm in Aus.
Jane.