Water....always an issue

I know I have touched briefly on the subject of water before, but thought I would share a little more.
When we first bought the property back in 2003(Wow that time has flown) the only water we had was supplied by a couple of  metal tanks that collected the water off the house and  various out buildings. This just wasn"t enough to supply the needs of the house, garden and livestock, so we had to do something fairly quickly.
There had been an existing dam which at some time in the past had held water, it  now leaked badly and had become overgrown with pine trees and grass.

We talked to a few  people  who suggested it may be worth having the dam dug out  so we hired a  fellow to come and do that.

Unfortunately this didn't work as it then leaked like a sieve and was totally useless.
We made the decision to then use it as a rubbish tip as we demolished  and cleaned up the property we pushed and pulled all the  "stuff" into that big hole.

When  we had  filled it with all the rubbish, we then had our man come back with the bulldozer and fill it all in. It totally changed the look of that area . We suddenly had a much nice view to the west and a usable small paddock for our sheep(still no water but at least  grass.)

The previous owners  had also installed  an old above ground swimming pool to collect excess water and it probably was  also used for leisure during the hot  dry summer months as well by their children..As well as this storage, we had a smaller metal tank at the side of the house which collected  water off the house.We arrived up at the farm one day to find it had burst(it was old and rusty) and  we had lost 10,000 litres of water.

We removed  both lots of old rusty metal (and added it to the previous temporary rubbish hole) .

This left us a nice level platform to place a new  plastic  water tank (these are  special food grade for household water storage.) We ordered it through the local rural supplier and he delivered it out to our farm.

This tank holds 22,000 litres of water, which is collected off the roof of our house only and we then transfer it by  petrol pump up to  another storage tank behind the house .

Slowly as we have saved our money, we have  replaced  more of the antiquated water storage that was on the property. We then decided to sink our bore hole, which had to drill down 300ft to strike water , added all new  underground piping from the bore  to right up high behind  the house, where we got our bulldozer man back to push out a level pad for us to put another tank or two in time..

Brian added some nice compactable red dirt which we "borrowed " from an old quarry  down the road., He then laid these three thick sheets of  black rubber material to cusion the bottom of the tank from any small sharp stones that may be there.

Our same friendly rural supplier then  came with another tank, larger this time 27,000 litres.

Brian then did the connections to the old existing tank,virtually doubling our storage.(as the old one expires we will then twin the newer one as we can afford to ).

This photo shows the tanks. The  far left tank is our existing older metal rain water storage, the middle the newer plastic one (both these hold now the rainwater collected off  the  house and out buildings, and is then gravity fed back in the house. The green tank is what we pump the bore water up into and also then gravity feed back onto gardens. The system seems to work well but is  labour intensive with Brian having to lug pumps around a lot of the time. When we save a bit more money  we intend to set up a solar bore and a few electric pumps to ease the work load and have  the water supply a little more dependable and easier to work with .
There has been a lot of work and expense, but everything we do now is one less thing to do further  down the track.
Water will always be a priority, and without it we or anything else will cease to exist, so we value it greatly.
So until we meet again,
Cheers  to everyone,
Jane .

The old Blue girl

When my husband refers to "The Old Blue Girl" it usually either means our old blue cattle dog {Tilly} or he means the other love of his life, the old blue Fordson Tractor.

She is about as old as he is,and we bought her off the local town Progress association cheaply  as it was becoming a burden for them to  find  volunteer drivers for her to do slashing and mowing, as they needed to have the appropriate training and certificates to operate it in the town.So the council now does all that work for them.
We use her for so much, there is rarely a visit to the farm goes by that she isn't brought out for  some work.

We used her to rip all the trenches down to the bore that we drilled, and up to the generator with the aid of a big old heavy single ripper that we borrowed off friends in Dubbo. Then after all the pipework and electric cables were laid we borrowed a blade off one of our neighbours and filled all the trenches in.

My husband hooks up the old scarifyer in the above photos and drags it around to break up the earth to plant a bit of feed or grass, this old piece of machinery was on the property when we bought it and has been very useful.,It's not the greatest way to do it, but serves the purpose for now.
Every time I hear him on the tractor ,I take my camera out, and if caught photographing him I usually get a cheeky smile or a slightly rude gesture telling me to go away.

I think he just loves to drive around his little farm, wishing it was bigger. I often say to him to slow down, to take it easy, that he's on holidays... but he reckons it's like he is on holidays ,and he loves working on the tractor.

We have done so much with the old blue girl, pulled tree stumps, carted rubbish, carted the water cart when we are burning  rubbish, Carted  these huge loads of rocks, which were every where in our house yard. We use her with a jib on the back as a hoist when we are  butchering the sheep or pigs, and she is used regularly for getting loads of firewood from up on the hill behind the house and dragging around all the fencing materials as my husband has renewed most of the fencing on our place and added a few new ones.

We had a very  tumble down unused and messy  old chicken yard with some old sour plum trees,and when we had a very good old friend visiting we took advantage of the extra hands to remove the posts. I always hate to watch when he is  pulling posts or stumps, as I have a real fear of tractors  as they can be very dangerous if not handled sensibly,but he has worked with them most of his life.
Unfortunately  at some point all machinery needs repairs. While doing some work the tyre was staked and had to be replaced, and as there had been an ongoing issue with brakes my man  had a big day of repairs. Thank goodness he is handy with all that stuff other wise it would cost a fortune in repair bills.
And last but not least the tractor is a social vehicle, . The  final photo is one I love, my man and his brother next door were busy beavering away on  slashing the grass down on both of  our places, and he seemed to be taking quite a while longer then normal when I looked out and found them chatting away over the fence, their respective machines parked nearby...and they reckon that women can talk, you should see and hear these two together. They are good mates, and that's good !!!

So here's hoping the "Old Blue Girl" is around a while yet, I don't mind sharing my man with her and I hope that their relationship lasts for many years to come.
So until I  am back next time,
Cheers to everyone
Jane from Aus.