A full year down the track. !!!

Long time no see...... and I apologize, there just are not enough hours in the day for me to do everything I want to do and  something has to give.
The two weeks after Christmas was an absolute whirlwind, the tiling on the kitchen floor was finally completed, and then we taped up and got the walls  and door and window trims all painted, unfortunately we still have the ceiling to go, as I had ran out of ceiling white, but I hope to complete it soon.

Hubby then got busy and installed my new dishwasher (which is total heaven to have again. and also installed my great new gas stove.

On the 5th January we celebrated one whole year here of retirement at the farm., One whole year of madness, mess and hard work. Thought I would show a couple of comparison photos of the changes.

The old kitchen , before we knocked out that   gorgeous old fireplace that unfortunately leaked like a sieve  and removed the  fuel stove that was so  worn out it few to pieces as we removed it,  ending the possibilities of using it  outside at a later point.

The new kitchen, all  bright and shiny, I just love it so much.

The old bright green loungeroom and  floral axminster carpet( lovely in its day but  not what we needed now.

we have had an influx of pests and feral animals,  firsly we have had a huge amount of  spiders, but now that the tiling is finished and meets up against the new screen doors, they seem to have slowed.

Last week we had a couple of scorpions( our next door neighbour was bitten on the foot by one in his own loungeroom, and was very painful he assured us.
Next we had a sneaky fox hanging around the chicken coop for a couple of days, so hubby quickly disposed of him before he got himself a free feed.

 And lastly  one night after mopping the floors I walked back through the house only to find this  small stripey snake curled up on the loungeroom floor,

After  a quick capture and some googeling , hubby decided to relocate him to the forest across the road right away from our house.
We had a huge two weeks looking after our grandchildren, while mum had a  vacation in Vietnam with an old friend  and dad had to work ,one 5 years and  the other 16 months.
We had fun in between the hard work, but we were absolutly exhausted by the end of the 2 weeks.

We loved the  chickens and Turkeys,

Loved the pony at the neighbours that she got to ride,

And we were"Lucky" enough to have a poddy calf for a week to  bottle feed.She named him "Tim Tam."

My Daughter bought me home this beautiful little container, I adore it.

Hubby built a new rough shade  area  on the western side of our house where we will hopefully put up a verandah over winter, we set up a small swimming pool for the kids  under there while they were here, as we had 5 days of temperatures above 40 deg C.

We picked  our small crop of peaches early as the flying fox bats were starting to feast on them, but I can't blame them as they were delicious. We are  also being inundated with zuchinnis and cucumbers and gem squash from the garden, which has been lovely, and we also picked our first rockmelon.

We are deperate for rain still here, scoring 20 mm last week, but it barely wet the ground and today while Dubbo  not far away scored a huge 87 mm we only managed 11mm.
Hubby got in and scarified up a small area, hoping that we would get decent rain and then plant seed  after that, but not sure if there will be  enough moisture , with luck we may get another shower over night.

Another job that had to be done was the  removal of an old cockies wire gate and replacement  with a proper metal gate..we recycled a surplus one  that we had removed a few years ago from an unused gateway. The sheep had been pushing through  the old wire gate  and getting into the chicken coop , as we leave the door open for them to free range during the day and  getting their fill of  the  grain and layer pellets.The old blue girl supervised the whole job.

Our building  and  work on the house will be on hold for a while now while hubby moves on with some badly need farm repairs..
I will try to  catch up and do another post in the next few days to keep up with all that we have been doing here.
Take care, until we meet again,
Cheers,
Jane.