A Birthday Gathering.

My brother recently had a milestone birthday and when asked what he wanted for his birthday he said a gathering of family and friends at the Gulargambone Caravan park.
My sister in law  grew up in Gulargambone and my brother worked there early in his career and that was where they met so it has a special connection for them.
We had expected to see Gulargambone  drier and dustier than here as it is about 140 klms  north west from here but were pleasantly surprised to find it a green oasis.
The caravan park is owned and ran by the very friendly  David and Bernadette Frazier.

We arrived early on Friday  and set up our camp.

We found this a great space to camp, well cared for with  a really well appointed camp kitchen ,meals area with lot's of quirky paraphernalia around the place.

They cater mostly to the grey nomads that travel the land and in winter it's standing room only with  up to 90 people lined up for their famous camp oven dinners served twice a week on Wednesdays and Sundays.

There were funny and quaint little things around that really make this spot  have character.

I especially loved the authentic "Dump Point" for the caravaners with ensuites in their vans to empty their toilet cassettes into.

I also loved the very original "ladies and Gents"  signs on the bathrooms.

On Saturday morning, my big brother cooked up a feast for breakfast for the early arrivals, we had supplied the eggs from the farm.

By lunchtime  on Saturday the caravan park was full of caravans, tents and other various camping set ups, in all there were about 60 of us there.
Brian and I went for a wander around town, Gulargambone  obviously has a great progressive group running the town as  it really shone in many areas,  There were  lovely  shops along the main street all well maintained and colourful as well as murals on the walls on many  buildings.

It was sad to see the  beautiful Castlereagh River completely dry, thank goodness most of its water runs along underground streams to supply the water for Gulargambone and other towns along  the river.

The local water tower reservoir has  been painted with a stunning mural,

Another great attraction was the "Ghosts of Bullocks Past" display, a replica of a traditional bullock team made of chicken wire.

Gulargambone should be very proud of their achievements, the town was a pleasure to visit.
The festivities got under way at our gathering, They held a surprise "This is Your Life " style  production, highlighting some of the  events in my brother's personal and career life.

It was great that all our siblings and their partners  were able to be present,

The  food was great, everybody contributed to the feast, bringing meat, salads and nibbles, my job was to supply the desserts.

My sister in law made the birthday cake, a replica beer stubby holder complete with a beer..

Hard to believe my big brother has turned 70, time is marching on so fast.
The entertainment at the party was brilliant and friend of my brother and sister in laws sang wonderful old songs we all knew and another friend did some great story telling and poetry recitals.

What a wonderful night we had, and just like with the food contributions everyone jumped in to clean the area and do the dishes and cleaning...just brilliant( loved seeing all the blokes at the kitchen sink)

Another great BBQ breakfast the next morning cooked by the boys,

We paid a visit to the historic  Armatree Hotel for lunch.

Armatree is a small village about 16 klms from Gulargambone with just a few houses and the hotel.
It is a popular spot  that caters to large groups, celebrations and  special  musical guests and attracts huge  audiences of hundreds of people at a time.  The Armatree hotel has been awarded the best NSW bush pub for the last two years by the NSW Australian Hotels Association.
About half of the  crowd headed off that day and late that afternoon we all sat around chatting and enjoying ourselves.

Somebody happened to mention that due to the smoke and dust that had moved across the sky, the sun  was creating a beautiful picture ass it started to set so I grabbed a few photos( I know there are a few, but I was just in awe of the colours)

The  wonder of Mother Nature in all her glory.

We had the most wonderful few days together catching up with family, re aqainting ourselves with some old friends and meeting a few new ones, that's what life's all about.
This will probably be the last post that I do before Christmas so we would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and WET 2020.
So , until we meet up again down the track,
please take care of  yourselves and your families,
Merry Christmas 
Cheers
Jane and Brian.

Finding kindness and generosity in hard times.

We have had a really full on busy few weeks, with jobs outside  here at the farm, a bit of preserving in my kitchen and a few adventures out and about.
The big dry has really kicked in and is biting hard, What lawn we used to have has disappeared completely,

Brian has been busy converting all our vegetable gardens into wicking beds, digging  deep down  below the soil surface, lining the hole with  strong double thickness plastic to create a water well, running a pipe drilled with holes along the bottom and then filling to approximately 200 mm with rocks( small is better but we are using what we have on site).

We then spread a layer of geotextile fabric over the rocks to seperate  the soil from the water ,and to help the wicking process.

The soil was purchased from our local landscape nursery,

We now have 4 of these larger gardens and they are producing wonderful tomatoes, zucchini, spinach, radishes and soon to be chillies for my sauces and jellies.

The next wicking project were a few old cement washtubs we had. They were moved down onto our back verandah and made into gardens using the same process as above.

These beds now  supply cucumbers, basil and soon lettuces,

The beauty of these  wicking beds is that because of the water well in the bottom that has been created with the plastic lining, they only have to be filled via the pipework inserted about once every 3-7 days depending on the weather. It is said that these gardens reduce water consumption by about 50 percent.
I was gifted 6 cases of pears that needed to be used quite quickly,

so we  pulled out the steam juices and juiced a large proportion of them and then bottled the juice for later use.

We also juiced some rhubarb ( it will be great to drink with gin and tonic.

With the remainder of the pears I made a new for me recipe, Pear Chutney.

I am really pleased with the chutney, great on  cold meats  and cheese and sandwiches.
Our small crop of garlic needed  harvesting and is  now happily drying in the pantry.

We have slowly been reducing our sheep numbers, as is  the BIL next door , we combine efforts to do the  hard job that has to be done and hang them in the cool room for a few days. It is sad , but it is also a necessary job . After the allotted  chilling  time we gather together again to do the processing of the animals.

As freezer space has become  premium, we decided to bone out one of the sheep and mince the meat up and we made curried minced lamb . I then processed it using my pressure canner for ready meals for the pantry.

The ginger beer(alcoholic) that we brew needed bottling and  we have been using these great flip top bottles that our son gave us over and over again.

We also held a small gathering to celebrate the BIL's birthday.

The dust storms are arriving all to frequently and we are so sick of the constant layer of grit that seems to cover every surface  both horizontal and vertical.

And, when it's not dust it's smoke from all the horrific bushfires that are burning all over the state.

We watched  Gardening Australia recently and they were showing how the 1000 litre  water cubes could be cut and turned into wicking beds, so Brian had a go and now  we have 2 up and running and 2 more in progress. We decided to locate these in the orchard and will plant them with melons and pumpkins to ramble safe from the chooks and sheep.

Brian has been carting water in the pod from a creek about 10 klms from here. With this water he has managed to keep our orchard trees alive and save what little shrubs and garden we have left. I don't know how much longer we will be able to continue to do this as the water levels are dropping rapidly and the rain  just won't fall.

He then parks the utility and gravity feeds the water where it is required.

The farm is bare, totally devoid of any usable vegetation, we have been hand feeding our small  mob of sheep for two years now, but the 11 we still have are looking good.

As a result of Brian's diligent and constant watering, we managed to get a crop of various stone fruit in the orchard, that was until the parrots moved in to help themselves to a buffet feast of green fruit.
The apricots were almost ripe and as we were going away for a few days we decided to pick them.
Thank goodness  we did as on our return nearly all of the other green fruit was gone.

As we already had a reasonable supply of bottles apricots in the pantry from last year I decided that I would use these apricots to make jam, a saleable item at my stalls or in the local craft shop where I sell pickles, sauces and jellies.

This is now where our angels of generosity and kindness  showed up.
Our small town is doing it extremely hard as are the surrounding small and large farms  in the area. We are fortunate that we do not have to  rely wholly on our small acreage to survive, but many do and are desperate.
A soccer team in Sydney, The Quakers Hill Tigers Soccer Team,

Heard of the plight of small country towns and got together to do something about it.
They chose our town to come to and  donate 80 amazingly generous hampers to locals who live on the land and could use a hand.
We have no idea how people were selected but we were the very appreciative recipients of one of their hampers and wonderful heartfelt best wishes.
With the help of some other great companies that got on board they met and packed the hampers.

Johnstons transport supplied the truck and the fuel,

They transported the hampers to the local showground where they were distributed .

The hamper was full of really sensible practicle items as well as a few luxuries and  treats.

We just want to shout it out to the world, what amazing , wonderful generous, kind people there are out there and Quakers Hill Tigers Soccer Club is right up there among them.
We hope you enjoyed your visit to our small town,  and that one day when things are a little greener you may return again to enjoy our hospitality and friendship.
Thank you , and we hope you have a truly lovely  Christmas with your friends and family.
You are all the best.
Take care until we meet again,
Kind regards,
Jane and Brian.