We have just had a couple of great weeks up at the farm, our main concentration this time was to get the outer chicken run completed if possible.
We headed off with the trailer loaded up again as usual, this time with two 1000 litre water cubes and a pile of recycled metal poles and a few recycled rolls of chain link mesh.
At our normal coffee break stop, there is a tree that we have been watching for years. It has a beautiful native orchid growing high up in the fork. We always check as soon as we drive in to make sure it is still there. It is truly beautiful, I hope that no one ever takes it.
We arrived at the farm, and got the fire lit straight away as it was rather chilly, Tilly the old Blue girl loves to lay in front of it, it must really warm her old bones up(I know it does mine ).
The first night in the middle of the night I was awoken suddenly, (I use a CPAP machine,so you notice straight away), when the power goes out . We are off grid and this is unusual. Hubby started the generator for the rest of the night .
Next morning he had to run a check on all the big batteries, he found a dead cell in one and replaced it with a spare one we had up our sleeve.(now we need to buy a new spare.) !
We did a day trip to Dubbo and caught up with our daughter and beautiful little granddaughter who is growing way too fast, 13 months and very ,very cute.We had a belated birthday lunch with our daughter, albeit at the local RSL club so that my Mum could join us(the access is best there for her).
We had a lovely day.
Some good friends of ours who come regularly to the farm were coming so that Ken could help my husband with the chicken run work, but we had to get quite a bit of work done first before they arrived.
We had selected a lovely shady area under trees, but reasonably protected from cold Southerly winds, but we had to remove quite a few dead and straggly trees from the area to make it more suitable for the purpose.
We spent a few days, clearing and dragging all the trees and stumps to a big pile(I feel a bonfire coming on), what we couldn't pull out, we burnt out, sitting having drinks by a few fires over a few nights, It was a lovely relaxing way to end a hard days work.
Next my man started digging holes for the main corner posts and gate posts.
Next he had to cut off some of our recycled metal posts as they were way too long for what we needed.
Then he had to concrete those metal posts in and let them set for a couple of days, while that was happening he also drove in the in between star pickets.
Then all was ready for when the help arrived to finish the job.
When we had all hands on deck, they attached the three horizontal plain wires and then rolled out the chain link mesh fencing.
Brian's brother from next door also popped over to lend a hand, and the old saying"Many hands", certainly rang true, they accomplished a heck of a lot in a short time.
In no time at all they had most of the outer yard up.
The photo above is the first half completed, we would have got more done but bad weather set in and the boys retired to the lounge room and the TV to watch some well earned football and beers.
The next day they completed the fence and even trenched all around it and connected and buried foot netting to hopefully deter the foxes.
We are really pleased with the yard, especially as most of it was constructed out of recycled materials.We ended up with a 17 X 12 metre yard.
We wanted to get the gate (also recycled,an unused metal security door) on, but simply just ran out of time. Next trip up hopefully.
All in all we had a very successful and enjoyable trip up and it finally is starting to feel that we will be living there soon.
Until we meet again,
Cheers,
Jane
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