Back At The Farm

There has been so much that has happened at the farm over the last month or so, that I decided to just pick a few things to show you.
Just before we went away, Rob our bee  friend came out and took some bee frames and extracted the honey and brought us back 3 X 2 litre mik bottles of honey( just under half of the total honey he told us)  We were amazed at that  as we had said at this point we would have been happy with just a few jars.

We decanted the honey into smaller jars, as we want to share with many people and this way everyone gets some.

We ended up with 25 small jars.
Our new Wisteria  flowered  this season,

As did the Cliveas,

One special treat in the garden this week was seeing my new lilac  bloom. They  hold special memories for me, a huge  shrub used to grow outside my bedroom window as a child.

My Iris's have been bloomin' beautiful, but all my colours seems to have been lost with the whole garden this year only blooming  these two colours.

Finally we received some very welcome rain. We recorded a total of 23 mm,

Not a lot but already we can see  what a difference it has made, all we need now is some follow up.
The weekend that we arrived home we attended the engagement party of our neice Jessica to Ethan over in Dubbo.

It was a wonderful night of catching up with family from my side of the tree and these cupcakes that served as the engagement cake were  totally delicous.
The next day our Son In Law arrived and  dropped off  out two youngest granddaughters who were going to stay with us at the farm for 5 days .
We had such fun, I loved watching Poppy head off to feed the sheep with a fairy and Ballerina in gumboots in tow.

We maintained a fairly busy schedule, with painting,

Trampolining,

Bead necklace and bracelet making,

Lot's of running and bike riding which resulted in two skinned knees and special bandaids being applied,

 Lastly but not least there was chicken whispering,

This activity proved to be one of the most popular ,having to repeated a few times during the visit.
I loved my washing line this week, instead of boring old farm clothes and the odd "tidy " outfits,  my line became a rainbow of colour with dress up clothes and tutus and little girls clothes .

I did  major face reconstructive surgery on "Bunny"a very special toy that  our granddaughter has had since birth. Bunny has seen better days and after a nasty experience in a washing machine when Daddy didn't realize that Bunny was meant to be hand washed, she needed a mend.

With help from Bunny's owner, we overlaid her head with lace curtaining( to contain the filling)  added buttons for eyes and a new nose and mouth and a few extra stiches on legs and arms and all was good. We had a wonderful time with the girls and look forward to their next visit with us.
We were lucky enough to be invited  to a tour of a new Correctional Centre that is opening in our area,

I was so  surprised by the sheer enormity of the place, having never been in a jail before  it really was very confronting as to  the sterility and bareness  of the whole complex.

The communal "rooms" also were a surprise. Twenty Five prisoners will share this large room, sleeping quarters only separated by the  low walls, Each man will have a bed,desk and chair,tv
They will share  bathrooms, and a small kitchenette and dining area.
It was a very inteesting tour and one I am glad we made the effort to do.
Last weekend I attended a luncheon in Dubbo with my mother,

The lunch is held each year to celebrate the recipients of  certain medals, in my mother's case  the OAM (The Order Of Australia Medal)
Mum received her medal about 7 years ago for 50 years of voluntary service to the RSL Auxilliary , but  attends the lunch each year along with all the other past and current recipients.

Our Orchard is  progressing well, Brian has really been concentrating the water onto them. We have not planted any vegetable  garden this year m preferring to keep the fruit trees  going  as their loss would have been expensive and  a serious time loss.

Rob the bee man called out again last week, and he and Brian sorted out another set of frames to extract.

Today Rob arrived back at our place with another 3 litre bottles of honey9 approx another 8 kgs.)

This gave us another 28 small jars of honey, so much honey, looks like all our friends and family will be getting gifts of honey in the near future.
We are just still in awe of what a good bee hive can produce, they are just amazing little creatures.
It's been a big month and this is just a little.
Canning and preserving has taken a back seat for a while, but  I am sure it won't be long until I am back at it again.
Take care until we meet again,
Cheers
Jane and Brian.

A Little Road Trip

Another month has gone by and I  simply have not found the time to sit at the computer, get my photos off my phone and camera and  catch up with the blog. I apologize  and I may have to do several in a short time to catch up again. I keep up with the Facebook page as I can do it on the fly, while we are traveling or in short bursts of a few minutes at a time, but this takes a lot longer.
After organizing our son to  care for our small farm in our absence we headed off in our little caravan again.

This time we were heading north to Queensland for our niece's wedding, but taking a  few days to make our way up there and catch up with some friends and family  who we hadn't seen for a while along the way.
First stop was Barraba to visit one of Brian's aunts who we had see but not visited for over 30 years.
We parked our van in the back yard and had a wonderful afternoon and night with Auntie Shirley.
We went out to a lovely old local pub for a great meal. It was  good catching up and reminiscing .

Next we moved onto Warialda and stayed a couple of nights  at an old friend's place.
Neville and Brian used to work together many years ago and Tracy and I spent many days  in each others company while the men were away working. We are god parents to one of their children.
We had a look around the area including a local nature reserve which was a truly beautiful spot.

We enjoyed a BBQ and visits to  some of Tracey's  family( which we also had met many years ago)  and also had a couple of meals out.

It was a long overdue catch up, and we have all determined to not wait so long again.
We had intended to surprise other friends at Warick but they alas were not home and we will endeavour to  meet up with them and a few others on another  excursion.
With our friends not home we decided to head straight up to Dayboro where the wedding that we  attending was to be near. We passed through some stunning countryside.

We arrived  and set up camp at the Dayboro Showground , where many  the other traveling family members were also going to stay with their caravans.

There was a day  on our  own  before the others arrived which was nice. We had a look around Dayboro which was a lovely touristy place with lots of nick nacks  and coffee shops, a great butchers and a scrumptious bakery all  of which we  purchased goodies from..
It was lovely to just have some down time to sit and relax .
The wedding was being held  at the Glengariff historic estate up at Mount Mee a very picturesque location not far out of Dayboro.

It was a beautiful wedding of two very sweet people.  Chloe and Mitch  truly were destined to be together,we had a wonderful afternoon and evening even taking part in some crazy photo booth sessions with all the Sister's In Law, which was fun.

The next day after the wedding we hooked on the caravan  along with a couple of other family members and headed to Brendale (a northern suburb of Brisbane and had a couple of nights  with Brian's brother (the father of the Bride).
On the second day, all us  Sisters In Law  decided to catch a train into Brisbane to wander along Southbank and grab some lunch at a nice spot that grabbed our fancy.

What a stunning, family friendly  great place to spend a lazy day, what a treasure you have there Brisbane.

We found a lovely  place to eat, upstairs  with a wonderful view .
I had lunch with three of the loveliest girls, our marriages and partnerships  have thrown us all together and we thoroughly  love hanging out together.

After lunch we decided to catch a river cat and do some sight seeing up the Brisbane River.

It was a lovely  afternoon with the girls.

 We are Left to Right : Kerry,Myra,Yvette and Myself.
Next morning up bright and early and we headed  inland to Yarramin  all together   to a property that Brian's brother had been given permission for us to camp on for the night.

It was a beautiful campsite, next to a lake with the whole place to ourselves.I couldn't help but take so many photos.

We went on a scary( for me) tour of the property, up hills and down hills, through gullies and over rocky knobs....for me  it was terrifying, but everyone else had the time of their lives ,even the two perched up on back on the two chairs.

We saw kangaroos,  and also some deer as we  drove around the property which was about 5,000 acres in total.

After a wonderful camp fire and a great  nibbles/dinner and wonderful conversation  we all hit the sack.
Next morning the sunrise was glorious and it reflected off the lake beautifully, I only managed to get a couple of shots which in no way did it justice.

A kangaroo mum and her joey came down to drink along side the ducks.

This was such a beautiful spot, we could have stayed there for ages, but unfortunately we all had to move on. Hopefully  there will be future times that we may be able to return  to this place again.

This was the point we went our separate ways,  we went on to Noosa and the others attended a bench rest shooting  competition at Springsure.
We headed to Noosa, to catch up with another Aunt of Brian's who we hadn't visited for many years. She suffers terribly from arthritis and is beginning to have mobility issues.
It was lovely to catch up and we had a  nice morning tea with her. She is very interested in family history and has compiled a wonderful book of Brian's family  history.
Early next morning while we were outside the caravan having our coffee we were inundated with ducks demanding food,

We probably made a big mistake feeding them as very soon after I think we had half the feathered population of Noosa  wanting to share  what the ducks were having.
My favourites were the beautiful rainbow lorrikeets.

 We are not  really coast loving  people and although we had planned to go back down the coast we decided to head back inland instead .
We went through Gympie, Kingaroy and Dalby, staying the night in Dalby.
We  wandered through  a great pioneer museum  in Dalby that engaged us for a couple of hours.
I especially loved the  original old cottage that had been relocated to the museum and spent ages in the kitchen ,looking at all the old kitchen paraphernalia .

We had arranged to meet up again with the BIL & SIL from next door back in Moree at the hot thermal pools.
We loved our trip  to them  before and were looking forward to a return visit.
We spent a couple of days there before they arrived, then we enjoyed three days together.

My Sister In Law Kerry celebrated her 60th  birthday while we were there and we enjoyed a lovely dinner out together while we were there and Kerry and I also enjoyed a days shopping.
We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Moree and  while there also  ran into some other people from  our local town which was  fun.
We headed back home  and the BIL & SIL stayed on  there for another couple of days.
Our time was up and we really had to return to the farm.
There had been no rain while we were away and things were pretty grim.
It was a lovely break and we hope to do many more trips like this in the future.
We had  great company and  had some wonderful times over the three weeks, but  we were glad to come home.
I will  try and do a few updates over the next couple of days while I have a chance.
Until we meet up again,
Take care everyone,
Cheers
Jane and Brian.