31st March, 2024

The weather today was pretty random, but when Thomas came over at 11am to help with some farm chores it was pretty hot and muggy.

We visited with the cows for a while, then took the dry feed block over the road to them. Then we did the major job for the day, rolling up and storing all the water pipe that had ended up in a pile next to the silo. Cows walking over it caused some kinks and squashed bits, but I'll worry about that when I go to use it. Now that it's all hanging in coils there shouldn't be any further damage.

After that we moved the little freezer from out the back of the craft room onto the covered area next to the dairy. I'll be storing feed bags in that. Then we moved Pete's fancy ladder over to the apple trees and I picked everything I could reach. Then we moved it around further and I'll pick again tomorrow.

Beaux from across the highway dropped over to return some of Geoff's tools that he had left at the dairy Beaux works at. He had some calf feeders in the back of his ute for sale, so I bought those, much cheaper than getting them new from the feed store. They're a bit old and sun dried, but they should do a couple of seasons each.

Kelly dropped over and swapped a pumpkin for a bag of rhubarb, and I sent Thomas home with a carton of eggs for Juliet. The artichoke flowers looked dramatic against the clouds this afternoon.

30th March, 2024

Still no rain, a hot one today. A nice breeze though.

I had an early shift, which always throws me out. Annie wasn't happy when I drove out without feeding her. Nor were the sheep for that matter, they look forward to their half bucket of apples each day.

It was pretty busy at work, but we had plenty of staff for a change and they really could have done without me. At least it was Saturday rates.

As soon as I got home I fed Annie, did the sheep, put on a couple of loads of washing, emptied the dishwasher and put the sprinkler on the front lawn, did the egg hunt, fed the chickens and cleaned up the kitchen. Then I dropped some pastries and the five teat calf feeder up to Robyn and had a forty minute nap.

Annie's bad quarter is now soft and normal temp, and what is coming out is normal milk. I don't know if there's not much because Abe is drinking again, she's not letting down, or the quarter has largely dried off. Time will tell.

29th March, 2024

Between the mastitis and Easter at work it's been another busy week. The weather has been cool and dry, I'm still watering but stretching the rotation out a little because it's not so hot. The forecast is for rain on Monday and Tuesday, but we shall see.

Annie is doing well, she gradually ate more and more and her demeanor improved and what was coming out of the quarter improved until she is now marching in for breakfast, cleaning it all up and eating hay happily. I am still milking out what I can each morning, but it's now just about back to milk.

I weighed up whether to put out a round of hay or silage, then noticed how much feed is across the road while I was checking on Jaffa and her group. So Annie and Belle and the rest are now over there too. They may as well stay there until settlement and save me a couple of bales of hay. Annie comes back over each morning for breakfast and milking that quarter, then back on the 75. She seems to be finding some mud to wade in because I had to wash her udder the last two days.

I am still wading through paperwork for the settlement. The pre settlement checks triggered a land tax assessment because there was rental data for the farm, suggesting I wasn't living here. I had a phone interview with the land tax investigator and advised that there were two cottages on the place. They asked for some documents, which I sent off, and they determined that there was no land tax liability because I had lived there the whole time and the area of land covered by the other cottage was below the threshold for it to be considered.

The groomer came and did Poppy and Finn. Last time Poppy took 3 hrs and Finn 1 1/2. This time Poppy was only 1 1/2 and Finn was 45 min. They both smell good and look like fluffy clouds, but the important part is that the grooming will help prevent hot spots and matting.

Work was madness in the week coming up to Easter. Easter Thursday is bigger than Christmas eve for the shop. This year we did $176,000, which is a record. We are all exhausted. We were closed today and I have a shift tomorrow, the Thomas is coming to do more farm work on Sunday, and then I am spending Monday doing as little as possible. Especially if it actually rains.

I picked some tomatoes from the vege garden, and rainbow chard is growing nicely. It looks like we have one pumpkin and the jerusalem artichokes are flowering.

We went around to Pete's for drinks and nibbles with Juliet, Shane, Sally and Mark. I made danishes using the more stable puff pastry and they turned out well this time. I think I could have added more of the cream cheese filling, but I did strawberries with chocolate, blueberries with biscoff, mulberries with caramel and mangoes with strawberry crunch.

24th March, 2024

I was a bit later doing the cows yesterday morning, but immediately noticed Annie had a swollen right front quarter. Locked her in and sat down with a bucket and she was full of what looked like melted butter and white snot. Looking at the symptoms, including looking miserable, being off food and walking slowly, I figure we have e coli mastitis.

By the time the quarter blows up the bug is already dying off. It's the toxins from the die off that are making her feel crappy. So there's no point in antibiotics, it's all supportive care and making sure she eats.

So, I milked her out four times yesterday, offered a small square of grass hay, her normal chaff and grains, apples and milk arrowroot biscuits. She ate slowly and not much and all and didn't drink. She turned down the apple and the biscuits, though her udder was a little less swollen each time. 

While at work last night I picked up kunzea cream, which is supposed to be good for pain relief and good against bacteria and inflammation. I rubbed that into her udder at the last milking.

This morning she came in voluntarily, still ate slowly but ate four times as much as last night. Still milking out fluid but there were no goobers today. I rubbed in more kunzea cream.

I offered her warm molasses water and she drank a bucket and half of that, and ate a packet of hobnob golden oat biscuits. She wanted back out with the herd so I let her out, and she went and ate some silage. I picked up a bale of lucerne hay from Scott Auton and offered it in afternoon when I brought her into the barn yard with Abe for the night. 

In the afternoon she finally ate all of her meal, drank some more molasses water, snacked on the lucerne hay and settled on fine meadow hay. Milk is starting to come back in her bad quarter, it's all looking good.

This is all that's left in her feed tub

 Tasting the lucerne hay

  Sharing with her calf, Abe

Home grown hay is best

22nd March, 2024

It's been much cooler, as if someone flicked a switch. I'm going to slow the watering rotation down as evaporation is lower.

I voted yesterday, one thing off the list. Dropped some easter eggs in to Siobhan and had a cuppa. Picked up dog tablets today, bought a lazy susan for the craft room and picked up a parcel from the post office, which is pointy mats to screw to posts for the cows to scratch on.

My first hoop to jump through has already arrived, and it's right out of left field. The Land Tax office supplies a search to buyers on settlement that there isn't a land tax debt attaching to the sold land. For some reason I have been picked for an audit. 

This means that I need to provide land use information from 2019 to now to prove that I have correctly not needed to pay land tax as the farm is my primary place of residence and has been used for primary production. This has to be provided quickly enough to allow them to provide the land tax search for settlement. If not, settlement can't happen. No-one saw that one coming, they've only had 6 years to do this ... I suppose I should be happy that it happened at this end of the 21 days and not two days before settlement was due.

The power is going out in the Scottsdale area on Monday, to allow TasNetwork to fix a pole problem. Woollies has a huge generator in the car park now that will supply power to the main area of Scottsdale, but we will be down. While fueling up the  quad and the tractor we also dragged out our little generator and fueled it up too. We tested it and took it up to the house and it will supply some power for the day. It won't run a kettle, but will run a fridge or microwave, so I will have it plugged into the fridge and just use the microwave for cuppas.

Billie and I swapped produce today, I gave her apples and eggs and she gave me tomatoes, rhubarb and zucchinis. I gave onions to Pete and to Juliet. Kelly is bringing pumpkins and I will share the rhubarb with her. Pete also gave us a pumpkin and Arfa from Ringarooma paid for some electrical work with another duck. The black economy is thriving.

The verandah at Pete's place, plans are for drinks and dinner on Good Friday.

20th March, 2024

Cold ! All the windows had condensation on them. The wind was chilly and the sun was only sporadic. Yesterday's rain was a grand total of 1mm. Today has had a couple of sprinkles, enough to add to the wind chill and not enough to make anything happy. It was snowing in alot of the higher places around Tassie, I was rather hoping for a longer autumn !

I've finished cleaning out the spilled hay in the boatshed so the feeding decisions go to "hay or silage" and "which paddock to put it out in". I don't know why this is causing me so much hassle to decide, none of the options are any harder than the others... Or maybe that's why. In the end I went with silage, towing a bale up to cowmahal and putting a hay ring around it. The cows will have a very full belly tonight, which will help with keeping warm for the calves and Annie, who is lighter than I would like.

I went down to the post office and had my ID form done, which they told me will be sent straight to the solicitor, so no need for a drive to Launceston. Down to the chemist to fill a script, pick up some needles and a sharps container and find a bottle of lysine.

Then to Phil's bottle shop to buy a nice bottle of wine, settled on a yellowtail brand "Jammy Red". Dropped some onions off to Pete, have a bag for Juliet too.

Notified my accountant (who will be tidying up the SMSF) and the bank of the date of settlement, 9th April. Now to wait for hoops to jump through as efficiently as possible.

Someone posted a recipe for fried scones on facebook today. It's funny how random stuff hits you in the feels. I miss Dad, fried scones was one of his things. Today would have been good fried scone weather.

 Towing the bale of silage

A hitch hiker

Wrap and net removed

A ring around the bale

And happy cows

19th March, 2024

It has showered on and off all day, but I doubt we got anything near the 10 - 20 mm forecast.

Mostly the same things I do every day, feed the cows and the sheep and the chooks. Didn't have to water any plants at least. Geoff dropped an invoice for electrical work off to Jason and came back with a couple of boxes of freshly picked onions.

I did alot of admin, ticking almost a dozen things off my to do list. And we had some electrical invoices paid so I paid a batch of bills as well. Last thing before going to work the solicitor handling the sale of the 75 acres sent me a bunch of forms to fill in because a new law came in on the 7th March. Yet another thing that has is a hassle because this has dragged on so long.

I need to send a copy of my rates notice and a form giving them consent to act on my behalf. And go to the post office and do a whole process with my birth certificate, drivers license and medicare card to get a photo taken and proof of identity before the lands office will allow me to transact property. I think it's easier to get a passport ! Then it takes a week to get the "identity report" sent back to me, and I have to get that to the solicitor. It might be worth the drive to Launnie to hand that over rather than risk it getting lost in the mail.

And the big news that got them acting on the identification and consent forms ..... drumroll.... settlement of the sale of the 75 acres will happen in 21 days ! This means that the land office has registered the plan and we are on the final leg of the journey. I am sure there will  be a heap more admin to do, especially around the tax office and the SMSF, but the plan registration was the last big hurdle. Assuming the post office ladies decree me as me.

18th March, 2024

Another day of forecast rain that didn't materialise. At least a breeze and cooler temps.

I fed the cows another lot of hay out of the boatshed, I think there is another days worth in there from the nearly eaten bales. Another dry feed block out for the cows and I gave the sheep the half eaten block in their paddock. They got 2/3 of a bucket of apples and the cows got 2 buckets. I ate one of the king david apples, I think I can start picking those on the weekend.

Robyn sent down the figures for Gizmo, Greenhams paid $1300 for him and she took that off what I owe her. That's down to $500 now, not far to go. I contacted John Rogers about Flora, her knees are bothering her more and more and I think I will have to make a decision for her before winter really bites. He and his wife were very impressed by the meat from Little Moo, so I thought I'd offer them Flora, as it would be a waste to just bury her.

While I was at Elders picking up the dry feed block and some calf pellets I had a conversation with the admin officer about work there. She suggested accounts payable positions, as many of them work from home. I don't know how often those come up, but that sounds like something I could do. As opposed to accounts receivable which is really debt collection and not something I think I would be good at.

I had a message from someone in NSW who was looking for straws of semen from Hawthorne Grove Zeus, a jersey bull from a couple of generations ago. My straws were with Ross Pedrana at Dubbo so I directed them there, and it turns out Ross is still holding 9 of them, so I agreed to sell them since the chances of getting them down here are remote.

17th March, 2024

We had the tiniest of sprinkles this morning, forecast rain not materialising again.

Thomas came back again and we did more fencing and hay moving. I connected up the soak charger and fixed up the silage fence. I am still turning over what pastures to stock and what to lock up. Jaffa and her mob were up at the top of the 75 acres so I visited with them and handed out biscuits.

I cut up the box of tomatoes from the Amish and put them in bags in the freezer, did a couple of loads of washing, gave the sheep half a bucket of apples and waded through a couple of admin tasks, including an NLIS cattle ear tag audit. Hmmm, I was flat out all day but it doesn't sound like much on paper.

This is the view across the Brid Valley from the knoll paddock to Jason's farm. That slice of green on the top of the hill is where he is irrigating, and is a reminder of what the area normally looks like.

And this is what my farm looks like at the moment, photo looking the other way from the one above.

16th March, 2024

A couple of big nights at work, didn't feel like working on the blog when I got home.

The weather has been cooler, slight breeze, but the UV is still way up there.

Still no sign of rain, today I noted some of the short grass on the knoll paddock was purple, which is a response to frost usually. That is bad, in that if we get early frosts the grass will go dormant before it can respond to any autumn rain, and there will be no grass growth to go into winter with. Hopefully it's a stress response to lack of water and we get rain before the frosts are too hard.

The red clay is also cracking wide open, which most people think is bad. But it means that instead of any rain running off like a terracotta tile, it will run into the cracks and filter into the soil. Organic matter also goes into the cracks and gets incorporated into the soil faster too.

Juliet's son, Thomas, is home from studies and at a loose end. She sent him over to help me on the farm and we did some more fence work today. He clipped the grass off another stretch of fence and I put the solar energisers out ready to add batteries and liven up more sections of fence. 

We also patched the fences around the hops paddock and put the sheep in there to eat it down. They don't like being in that paddock as they feel exposed, and they complain about there being no shade. There is shade, the old chook houses have enough shade inside and out for double the number of sheep. But that means they'd have to stop sooking and go looking for it.

I combined the two cow groups on the 25 acre side again, as I will have to start hand feeding properly now. At least Annie is yelling less now. One more day on the remains of Leigh's bale in the yards, then two days eating the remains of the two bales from the boat shed. Then onto working my way through the silage bales. There's probably five days in a bale of silage, and I have about 15 left. If I fence off most of the paddock it will get a chance to regenerate if it rains without them eating every little blade of grass as it tries to come back.

A third hops vine has now set flowers and will have its first small harvest this season. The smaller passionfruit has been eaten back by snails again. The bigger one is tall enough to suffer some damage and keep going, but I will have to bait the smaller one if it's to survive. The king david apple is nearing ripening for the fruit, I ate one yesterday and it was very close.

I gave a carton of eggs to Billie and Jason, as their chooks aren't laying. I'll probably be able to get them a carton a week. 

Poppy is doing well on the carprieve, it's removed a fair bit of the joint pain and she is alot more cheerful, but it's not done anything for her back end co-ordination and strength. Watch and wait I guess.

I think that's it for now.