The Last Few Weeks.

We have been keeping fairly busy on the farm  the last few weeks.
One of the main things we tackled was to make chicken/turkey sausages. We once again had a surplus  of rooster, extra hens, and turkeys   and so we had a processing day. We chilled the birds for the day and then we began portioning and separating what we could and couldn't use.

We then minced that all up with our trusty mincer/grinder.

We added all our herbs and spices, garlic, thyme, Italian herbs, rosemary,ginger, dehydrated  grated zuchini, pepper  and then the meal  mixed with some home made canned chicken stock that had been chilled.

This mix was then chilled for several hours before being put back through the mincer with a finer blade.

After chilling again it was then put into the sausage filler chamber, skins  fitted to the appropriate spout  and  with a few turns of the handle by Brian, and presto ! we had sausages.

We have made two batches of  these sausages in the last few weeks and these photos are a mix of the two lots. Batch 2 was much better and the final product the second time was much better.

Our first attempt at tying and looping the sausages was  above and after some viewing of you tube our  skills certainly improved.
After 24 hours to set in the refrigerator we  barbequed some for our lunch.

Even if I say so myself, they were really nice and with some homemade coleslaw, lunch was delicious.

The first batch produced 9 kgs of sausages and the second batch below yielded nearly 23 kgs.

In some of the last rounds we added cheese and also some  cheese and chilli.
I  headed away for a couple of days,to meet up with my sister to spend a bit of time with our elderly mum who had had a tumble.

Mum  was lucky, no broken bones, just a few scrapes, black eye  and bruised pride. Mum will be 94 soon , so any fall is a reason to worry.
While I was away ,Brian installed two new round stock water troughs that we had brought from our daughter and son in law's place when they move house and no longer needed them. It will mean that we can now  isolate sheep into paddocks as all paddocks now have a water supply. This is also useful practice for worm control.

Vlad the Impaler , our daughter's ram has settled in extremely well, we can't move without him being right there beside us, and always has his head in the bucket even when it is empty, he really is a sweetie.

Brian has also been doing some building up in the  outdoor bathroom,converting a useless space into a second shower room for us for when inclement weather makes the solar inefficient for when we have guests. Normally the solar is enough for us even on cloudy days.

We have a flat shower base to install and are thinking we may line the walls with stainless steel sheets( after waterproofing.)
We have had a few small showers of rain  and  the fruit trees in the orchard are blooming, we have sacrificed a lot of other garden in favor of keeping the fruit trees  as they are much harder to have to replace if we loose them .

The other area that is doing well is the succulents and gazanias across the front of the house, these are kept watered with the grey water  from our  washing machine.

We recently had a small gathering to celebrate my Sister in Law's birthday , I made a big carrot cake which was  quite tasty but slightly on the large size and had to send  some home with our guests. We had a lovely night .

I have been wasting a massive amount of time sitting with my camera , patiently waiting for good shots of the beautiful birds that frequent the apricot tree right outside our dining room window and outside my kitchen window.
The Rosella's are nesting in a box  that we placed under our eaves for them.

The Blue fairy Wrens(I think also known as Superb Wrens) are favourites of mine.

 I have been told these cute  little fellows below are called Striated Pardolotes,

All these cuties are nesting around our house, I just adore watching and listening to them whistling, calling and cheeping around the place,  but what beautiful time wasters  they are.
We have had a  lovely few days away this week( I am updating this post at our  escape destination)  I will endeavour to update about  our small holiday  during the week as I get some time.
So until we  catch up again,
Take care of you and yours,
Cheers
Brian and Jane.

It's Been A While.........

It has been over 2 months since I last posted, it has been a really busy  time and we have travelled many kilometres , enjoyed the company of family and friends, maintained the hand feeding of our stock and even managed to get a couple of small projects completed.
Our daughter and son in law sold their house, so our lovely old "retired" ewes went to live with another  family on a small acreage  with good feed.
We brought their ram "Vlad the Impaler home here to the farm.
He is a lovable big  boy, always wanting a pat or scratch every time you  are near him, he has fitted in well.

When he arrived, he was very excited to see our girls.

It has been a harsh winter, with many big frosts  ,many mornings  dipping well into the minus figures. We have had our water pipes burst a couple of times.

We had a go at making our own pasta which was fun and reasonably successful , we teamed it with our home canned turkey bolognaise  and it was delicious.

I also made jalepeno cheese balls  and they  have become a firm  favourite to have with drinks and nibbles.

Our Hakeas have been blooming, adding a little colour to what has been a rather dismal landscape.

We did a trip to Newcastle to meet our daughter and bring home  our eldest grandaughter  to the farm for a week.
While there we visited a dear old friend who was  ill in hospital.
We had a great week with lots of farm activities, egg collecting, cooking, feeding the sheep, craft activities, tractor rides,  caught up with cousins and had several  bonfires.
We Travelled to Wollongong to return our granddaughter home and were able to attend an early 8th birthday for her at the Botanical gardens.
By the time we returned home  our other daughter and three grandchildren had arrived at the farm for a three week visit while they were between  the sale of one home and the purchase of another.
We had a wonderful  time with them, doing lots of activities with a few other special outings thrown in along the way.
During this time we still had our usual volunteer  jobs, rail barracks cleaning, campground facilities cleaning and the compilation and printing of our local monthly paper.
During this period our friends up the road were on holidays and we helped out by feeding stock and pets, chickens and garden watering.
Brian helped his brother with the drenching, tagging and marking of his sheep and lambs.

The lambs are all  a little sore and sorry for a while afterwards.

Brian celebrated a birthday and we had a cake,

The kids all put together and contributed a large amount of money towards a new BBQ for him.
He had to build it which kept him busy for a while.

Our son also celebrated a birthday, he turned 40 which I still find hard to believe.
We had a large family/friends  gathering here at the farm , with a pig on a spit and a help yourself buffet dinner.

The next morning( as we hadn't cleaned up), there was one cute kelpie that  thought he had struck gold, finding lots of little pork tidbits to scavenge.

Our older builder has been back, this time to install a "proper" toilet door instead of the horrible plastic pull across door we have dealt with for years, and a nice new  aluminium window to replace the old set of window louvers.

We are really pleased with the results, he will now move onto a few more small jobs that free us up to do other things.
Sadly we had to make a sudden trip back down to Newcastle as our dear friend Vic passed away and we attended his funeral. Vic was the very first person that we befriended when we first moved to Newcastle  nearly 40 years ago and we have remained friends ever since. He made many trips to the farm over the years helping Brian with many projects.

                                                                   RIP Vic.
The farm is just ever so dry,Brian put the drone up again last week.
 We have had horrible dust storms, the hand feeding

continues daily, both here, next door while they were away,

and also at  the neighbours other block down the road.

We took a couple of days to have a small break away and travelled to Stuart Town to catch up with some old friends., we saw many, many kangaroors, wallaroos and wallabies  on the road both dead and alive, more than I can ever remember seeing in my whole life,

We had several near misses, as they were just every where.
Our friends that we caught up with are struggling to feed their sheep as well but they are trialing a  system where they are growing their own green fodder.
They have a "room". heated,with lights, and  timed misters that "grows" their fodder over a 7 day period.
Barley seed goes into trays on day 1,

This is then kept at 23 deg, with lights and misting for 6 days( another set of trays with seed is added each day for 6 days)

By day 7 the seeds that were put in on day 1 now have sprouted and grown daily to lush green fodder.

They pull 3 big trays(9 rectangles of fodder) each day,

They chop them up into smaller pieces,

Load it into their vehicle,

and feed it in equal proportions of pellets and vetch to their mob of  Australian White sheep. They seemed to be thriving on it, many had lambs and they all seemed to be in good condition..

We had a great catch up with them and really enjoyed seeing the fodder growing project first hand.
We then continued onto Dubbo and enjoyed a day catching up with my Mum.
I did a bit of a cull  of my  precious things. The cupboards were crammed full and I had to make some tough decisions( I just can't keep everything), the cupboards now look a little neater.

I hope that one day our kids will keep a few special things from these  cupboards as many  items have very special memories.
Last weekend we once again hit the road and drove to Newcastle to attend the 60th birthday of one of our  old neighbours  that we lived near for many years.

We had a lovely night and she was surprised to see us there. We had a night in a motel and continued on to Wollongong the next day to celebrate Father's Day and  our grandson's belated 4th birthday and attend   the book fair and family day at our granddaughter's school. It was meant to be grandparent's day but that was postponed to a date in November. We had a lovely 3 days there.
We called in to see our other daughter in her new home on the way back and stayed a night there also.
On our return Mother Nature finally decided to be kind and we had 7.5 mm of rain late in the evening, then the next morning

woke to this beautiful sky to the west.
A storm passed over with another 5.5 mm falling without washing  soil away.

It was beautiful, we need more, but it's a start. Hopefully after a few more sunny days, we will begin to see a little green growth sprouting out in the paddock .
The sheep headed up on the hill during the storm but all came down later to look around.

At Christmas time our kids put together and bought us a family photo session to be done here at the farm. The photographer Lisa came and took the photos and overall we are really pleased with them. This  one is Brian and I  down near the stock yards.
We really enjoyed the session and maybe in a few years we may repeat   it to have an updated photographic record of the family as it grows and changes.

We have had a huge 2 months and  it seems that  it will continue to be that way.
There is always something that needs doing, or somewhere to go, life is just busy, but in a good way.
So until we  catch up again with you all,
Take care of yourselves and each other,
Cheers,
Jane and Brian.