And Life At The Farm Returns To Normal.

Now that Christmas and New Year celebrations  and gatherings are now over, life here at the farm has returned to normal.
When we returned from the coast we brought a box of plums home with us and quickly  turned them into plum sauce.

The smaller amount of bottles on the right is chilli plum sauce, something that I haven't tried before and the group  on the left is normal plum sauce.. I am hoping that  I will sell some of this at  a future market stall.
We also  bottled the plumcots that I had stored in the fridge over Christmas as they were too green.

Brian dug up our small crop of garlic and picked the first  of the jalapenos,

We decide to pickle the garlic this year to see how that goes. Last year we pressure canned  them with limited success, we will see how this goes and if not great ,next year we will dehydrate the crop.

I saw on a preserving page I follow that somebody  pressure canned  cubed zuchinni and thought it would be worth a try. I think it will be handy as a "last minute vegetable to throw in Soups or casseroles, or hidden  into spaghetti bolognaise.

Brian and I have been trying to eat a little more sensibly so I have been cooking up piles of portion controlled meals for the freezer and also trying to have a good variety to chose from.

This one  was chicken meatballs/pasta in tomato sauce with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese.

Below is another one of the meals, chicken kiev and vegetables.

We finally had to bite the bullet this week and purchase another one tonne bag of sheep pellets.

The price had risen dramatically in the six months since we purchased the last bag paying $565 for the first one and $770 for this identical bag.
The sheep have done extremely well on them so that was a big factor in our decision to purchase more.

The bees have required a little extra something too so we fed them some sugar water in a 2 to 1 ratio to keep up their energy levels.

Two of our Kurrajong trees had an infestation of mistletoe , so Brian took advantage of a visit from our son to get in and lop the trees.

The mistletoe was beginning to take over the trees.

The sheep love the Kurrajong flowers  and are always grazing under the trees as they fall.

The boys lopped it  back quite hard,

The sheep raced in  to eat the leaves , The ram,Vladd The Impaler was first in, as always.

They just love it, as I went for a walk about 7.30 pm they were still there munching away,

and then when I returned an hour or so later, they were still there .

The day before yesterday we had a sharp storm pass right over with lightening and thunder crashing around and then the heavens opened and we had a heavy fast 22 mm of rain.

It poured over the roof gutters,

and our down pipe strainers couldn't take the force ,

and it flooded all over the back verandah.

It washed everywhere and you can see how bare the place was  after it was all over.

It was beautiful rain, we still managed to catch quite a bit in our rain storage tank, our supplies are slowly building up again.
This morning we were up really early and Brian let the poultry out a little earlier than usual( we found two foxes prowling around the other day, one was stealing guinea eggs from a nest in our house yard and the other was after the young turkeys up near the poultry run, both were chased away after Brian took a shot.)
The turkeys did their usual  roam around but after the rain and in that early morning light the paddocks looked deceivingly green.

They then decided to check out the Kurrajong tree remains,

They scratched  around there for ages.
Our kittens are growing,  the second one will go to it's  forever home this week, and we have decided to keep number three and have her desexed.
We had the mother cat desexed a few days ago and have decided to keep them here together for company for each other, but decided to be sensible  and make sure there will be no more kittens.
They are such sweeties, but total time wasters.

It's been a busy week, but we feel we got a fair bit accomplished, We want to get ourselves ahead as we have the grand kids coming to spend some time here in a weeks time which we are looking forward to.
Until we catch up again,
Take care,
Cheers,
Jane and Brian.