I’ve woken up at 6 am and gone to bed at 12 the past however many days I’ve been here and I’ve never felt more alive. ( I’ve also only showered for 2 minutes once since olympia) I get up, eat toast, separate the baby goats from the milkers, milk the goats and sheep, clean, water plants, and then go inside for morning tea every day.
maeira waiting paitiently to be milked
tobias my fave
mazzy
baby fig
tobias walking on his food
Two days ago Lyndal got a call about picking up 10 bags of free black oats in Scargill, a nearby town, so we took a nice drive around the countryside. The farmers we met were very lovely and happy to be putting their extra grain to good use. They shared a little secret about some ripe cherry trees alongside the road we took to get there, so we stopped by and collected about 3 kilos of fresh cherries to make jam and various other things with. We picked 3 gigantic cabbages and were planning on making sauerkraut and Sue, one of the farmers gave us an ancient dutch recipe to follow which included juniper berries which are my favorite. I spent the rest of the afternoon slicing cabbage (and sliced the tip of my thumb pretty well) and sitting with the little dog watching the sheep graze and pounding the kraut.
old sauerkraut recipe
pounding sauerkraut with the little dog (helping again)
Theres so much fresh food to process we don’t even know what to do with it all. Yesterday I spent the afternoon picking and shelling peas with mazzy and I went out again this morning to check on the plant and there’s now about a million more waiting to be picked. We also have loads of plums aching to be picked and processed as well as another huge cabbage. For dinner last night we picked ripe tomatoes and made a fresh salad with basil and Lyndal’s version of mozzarella and home-pressed olive oil. I also made a pea pesto with mint, olive oil, salt and pepper, and a hint of lemon that we spread on bread.
little dog helping pick peas
Yesterday I weeded the raspberry and blackberry garden and burned my back pretty badly, I’m not used to the hole in the ozone and the hot hot sun yet. (I don’t think my skin will ever get used to it…) It’s been raining a lot more than usual and Lyndal and Steve didn’t get a chance to bail a lot of their hay before it rained, so lots of it was sitting in the field and ended up getting pretty wet and moldy. It loses its nutrition when this happens, so Lyndal and I spend a couple of hours forking some of it around trees so it will turn into mulch and be put to some use. The average yearly rainfall here is around 500-550 mL and just in the last 40 days they’ve gotten over 200 mL which is highly highly unusual. Normally they’d be in the middle of a drought right now, but It’s rained so much that their water tanks are actually overflowing which is pretty unheard of.
Mazzy’s been sick with hay fever and asthma the last couple of days so I’ve been taking care of the watering and milking while she does chores inside to stay out of the allergens. We’re going to the doctor today to find out exactly what’s wrong.
It’s so nice to actually feel tired at night and normally when I wake up at 6 am I feel like a zombie, but I love the animals and the work here so much that I don’t even mind at all. I’ve learned so much about the animals and the farm already and I don’t ever want to leave.
jessica the alluring cat
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