July 2013 – The Atherton Farm Blog

We got 46mm of rain over the first weekend of June. We needed to fix the overflow pipes off of our tanks as that big fall filled them. All of this rain has taught us two things. Firstly, we need more tanks. We could probably triple or quadruple the water storage we have and still fill it. Secondly, this much rain means weeds. Lots, and lots, and lots of weeds. We spent every spare farming moment in June, and the following months, weeding.

The weeding sucks, but a well-weeded veggie patch really is a thing of beauty…

Everything relatively weedless… for once…

The Patch coming along nicely through Winter.

The obvious upside of that much rain was the veggie patch and crop were pretty happy. The biggest irony we found was that hay was in short supply all of a sudden, and the half-tonne rolls that used to cost $50 or $60 were suddenly $150. We managed to get some hay from a couple of seasons ago relatively cheap, but we decided to get one of the cows done.

Farmer John hooked us up with some local cheaper hay. He has the best farm toys.

We took the older of the cows, Fillet, to “The Other Farm” at the end of the month. He was around 14 months old, which is at least 2 months, and probably 4 months, earlier than we wanted. However, with feed as expensive as it was, and with another cow and a pig almost ready, it was sensible to have him done early.

Our stock trailer isn’t suitable for cows, being too low. With that in mind, we hired a horse float, which worked really well. It took maybe 10 minutes to get him in. At first I tried coaxing him in with grass, but that was never going to work. Next I tried coaxing him with grass with a rope around his neck as I pulled him up. That worked a treat.

“Coaxing” Fillet into the float.

Fillet at “The Other Farm”

A big part of our farm time in June was taken up with building a track down the eastern edge of our property. The neighbours behind us have a right-of-way over our block. There are two tracks, one that runs down my eastern border and another that runs along their southern border; however, the last known owner of those tracks died 120 years ago. The only other person who lives back there has a right-of-way over those tracks, and kicks up a stink if anybody else uses them. There are two blocks and two tracks, but for some reason that neighbour refuses to share, despite the fact that he really has no say over who uses them. Don’t get me started…

Anyway, we have a right-of-way running along our eastern border, but it was taken up almost entirely with a row of trees. There was a double fence, though the outside one had parts that were literally over 120 years old and it was unserviceable. The inside fence was relatively new, and had to come down and move a couple of feet inwards. The row of trees, which numbered a couple-of-dozen gums of maybe 10 years old and probably 5 or 6 smaller ones, also had to come down.

In reality, all of that work was our neighbour’s to manage, but we helped out. We took down the trees over a weekend, and started to pull down the fence.

Starting on the fence and track.

Most of the trees gone.

View back towards the front of the property.

Proof that Linhda has driven a farm vehicle.

Trees gone!

Our neighbour’s father came the following weekend to take down the rest of the fence using one of his work vehicles. However, we’d had a half-inch of rain the night before, and we spent 3 or 4 hours getting him unbogged.

Using Sheldon to drag Larry out of his first bog…

… and second bog…

… and about his 10th bog…

Ironically, we used our tractor and my mattock to get the rest of the fence down, and it took maybe half the time we spent getting the truck unbogged.

As always, we reused everything that we possibly could. We got maybe 5 tonnes of wood from the trees, along with some ancient strainers from the old fence that burned beautifully. We also managed to salvage a heap of droppers from the old fence, and we reused all of the materials from the inner fence to reinstate it in July.

We also had a couple of pig developments in June. Firstly, we picked up a baby to use as a spit-pig for Linhda’s and Gemma’s birthday in September. As always, it was fascinating seeing how other people manage their pigs. I’ll not go into gory details, but it wasn’t even close to the way we do it. Secondly, we’re 100% sure that Smoked is pregnant! Yay!!!!

George!

The Babies in one of the spare runs where we grew some greenery.

Smoke Pig pregnant!

We ended up harvesting our pumpkins towards the end of the month. My plan had them being finished around February, which is what our previous experience would have us expect. However, they just kept growing. Even in June there was still new growth, flowers, and little pumpkins. We were at the stage were we wanted the bed though, so I harvested them and ripped up the plants.

Pumpkins!

Despite the weeding and big jobs like the installation of a 150m long track, I also managed an inside job. I painted the dining room and sealed the slate. My plan is to get the entire inside repainted and the slate fixed up, but that obviously comes second to the farm work. To be honest, I’d not do it at all, but Linhda makes me…

All-in-all, June was a great month. We had more rain than we could’ve hoped for, the crop and veggie patch looked amazing, and we looked to have more pork and beef than we could ever use. I used to hate Winter, but am fairly sure it’s my favourite farm season.

This is the downside of free-ranging poultry…

This is the view from the south-western corner of our property and looking southish.

After feeling like we were treading water for a couple of months, waiting for the rain we needed to get things rolling, “things” being the veggies and crop mostly, May was everything we needed. Most of the good rain came at the end of the month, but there was enough at the start and during to get us going.

Nothing for a long time, and then enough rain to make a temporary pond. At least the ducks were impressed.

Over the month we managed to finish planting out The Patch. This involved finishing up with some carrots, parsnips, cauliflower, broccoli, artichokes, various herbs and a couple of strawberry plants.

At the same time, the onions and garlic planted was all up and looking awesome.

We also planted out some berries. Only one had made it through the hottest January in recorded history, so we got 10 more – two each of loganberry, black berry, blue berry, boysenberry, and raspberry. Planting them in May will give them a full two extra months to get established before hitting the hot weather. This is also apparently due to be quite a wet Winter, so we might be good.

Trying the berries earlier this year to avoid South Australia’s insane summers.

The weather ended up being perfect the crop too, and we got it in a couple of weeks earlier than last year. This year we went for our own blend for grazing. Our original plan had been to try and feed a small stock of meat animals, probably sheep, mostly off of what we could grow ourselves. We learned early on that our two acre crop is never going to produce enough for that, and so changed tack a little. Now we’ll try and grow enough of a grazing crop for our milk animal, and depend on selling pigs to cover the cost of feeding the meat animals.

We went for a blend of barley, oats, and peas. We wanted rye rather than barley, but it proved a little tough to get. Last year we planted wheat, and put in 60kg. That was at a slightly higher rate than is normally planted, and it came up quite thickly. This year we planted 60kg of each of the 3 grains, giving us three times the coverage. I’m expecting big things…

The fixings for our second crop – 180kg of awesome.

Our farm equipment is miniature, much like our farm.

It’s surprising how quickly it grows.

Just peeking through.

Even with all of this activity, we managed to get a heap of other things done. We trimmed back the border trees both between us and Farmer John and down the eastern edge of the back paddock. This is just basic maintenance, but it’s amazing how much wood it produces.

The animals “helping”.

For some reason, goats insist on being at the highest point they can get.

Sheldon hauling our loot.

We also had another near-miss farm accident. The ride-on wouldn’t start after we loaded the trailer it was towing with wood. I towed it and trailer back with the tractor, and didn’t realise it had no brakes. The carry-all was half raised, I slowed down halfway down the driveway, and it ran into the back of the tractor. The carry-all busted all of the faring off, and almost crushed dad. Without the faring, dad may have been crushed between against the carry-all. It was a little scary.

In hindsight, I probably should have lowered the carry-all before towing dad.

Poor ride-on. It still works like a champ though.

There was also some more fence-building, and potentially the last fence that we need to build from scratch. We need an area to lock away the cows, and future stock, from the crop. We chose to run a fence north-south near the western edge of the back paddock. This gives the stock a heap of cover under the giant pine-trees, and keeps them close-at-hand.

We put in another 3.6m farm fence opposite the one letting out from the backyard, but closing against the far edge of The Patch’s fence. We ended up running 3 electric strands and 5 single strands, and still have trouble keeping the stupid goats in. We ended up locking them in a spare pig run until we work that out.

Site survey and set up.

The animals doing their own site survey.

Three-way box section.

Other box section.

Getting there…

This is more a gratuitous tractor shot than anything else.

Done!

The last of the cement pads was finished in the pig runs. This is the 5^th we’ve done, and Linhda tells me I’m crazy to post pictures of each of them, mainly because they all look the same. However, there’s a lot of hard work goes into cementing, so I’m going to post proof of it. Enjoy…

Shuttering up.

Cement in.

Done!

We had a small bonfire, which I’m guessing will become an annual event around this time of year just to clean up any accumulated crap we have hanging around. This one was interesting though. It had a heap of well-dried leafy gum limbs, though they were a bit damp from being out. Linhda used one match to light one gum leaf, just to see how well it would take. The results were fairly amazing, and it grew to a nice-sized blaze in no time. Just goes to show how easily bushfires can start…

We used one match on one leaf to see how quickly it’d take…

…as it turns out, it took pretty quickly.

This was only a couple of minutes on.

May wasn’t all about growing things and building things, it also had a nice porky theme too. We took George to the “Other Farm” mid-month. He was the runty one from the four boys we bought as potential baby daddies some months back. We didn’t really need the meat, but he was certainly getting no bigger and was just eating our CPG.

We’re really not that good at estimating size yet, and I guessed he’d dress out to around 30kg. He ended up being 46kg! We minced more than last time, put away some mince, and made about 8kg of sausages. We tried an English Pork Sausage and a Dried Tomato mix, and both are amazing.

Our brand! Of course, the poor pig has to be dead and dressed for us to see it properly.

46kg of amazingness.

Best. Sausage. EVER!

To my mind, the most exciting part of May was that we saw Boris actually end up… doing the deed with the sows. It took about 10 minutes of fairly determined activity, and that’s without Honey struggling at all. In fact, you could tell she was eager as she stood still and even went as far as raising her tail.

My concern was that Boris would end up being too short, as the girls are significantly bigger. I wanted him to be smaller though, as that should extend his breeding life. Still, we weren’t sure if the angle-of-the-dangle would work. As it turns out, it works perfectly, and I have the pictures to prove it.

Boris doing his job… and probably really enjoying it…

We had the last Sunday of the month off, which I think is our second weekend day with no farm work. It wasn’t my idea, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it.