Gum tree meets chook house

During the recent cyclone, we heard a massive boom that sounded surprisingly like a bomb going off.  I  ran onto the balcony and saw that the large gum tree near the new chook house had come down. The worrying thing was that we knew our 20 girls would have been hiding in and under the chook house, trying to stay out of the rain and wind.  So we bolted down there and the entire run was hidden under branches and leaves.  Unbelievably, the girls all staggered out safely, looking a little dazed but unharmed.  We set to, moving the branches to one side until the larger ones were left that would need a chainsaw.  It was still pouring with rain and the wind was howling and we didn't want to leave the girls in that run as the other trees could also come down, so despite all the efforts to separate the layers from the meat chickens, we moved all the chooks in together.  It was a tight squeeze and Bruiser seemed a bit put out with so many women around, but no major fights ensued and we knew they would be safe there.

These are pics of the damage after we'd done most of the cleanup, but you'll get the idea.

 Good thing Shaun did such a great job on the construction of this chook house!!

Pictures at last

Apologies for the long delay.  Its been a time of cleaning up, replanting and then business at work, and also a time of lots more rain, so not great conditions for photo taking.  But here is an overview of the cyclone, taken a few days after once the water had largely receded, but was none still flowing.  A large river of water was flowing through the property above, collecting all the forest debris with it and dumping it all on our fence line

A Cyclone Comes to Town

The cyclone has been and gone and we are feeling a little battered. The power has just come back on after days without it.  We haven't had a chance to upload the photos as yet, so I'll post those shortly.  It's been a dizzy ride but fortunately the house only suffered a leak in the roof and some flowing underneath.  The property took a pounding though.  And sadly we lost the fish in the aquaponics system. Shaun had a small back up generator but it couldn't keep going for more than a day.  I'm off to the airport now and will blog properly when I'm back from the year's first work trip.   I hope you are all safe and sound.

Two worm farms and a watermelon

Firstly, I have to do a little bragging.  The largest of our watermelons that I've been photographing finally matured and was ready to harvest.  I'd been checking the spoon for a while and I was glad to see that it had finally browned off.  The main reason being that if this puppy grew any bigger, I wouldn't be able to pick it up!  So here she is, all 15.5 kgs of her

Its like having a massive dinosaur egg on the kitchen table.  Now we've done the official photos, its time to cut it up and have the taste test.  I'll let you know....

A Christmas present finds a home

We'd been discussing a name for the property since we bought it almost two years ago.  So now its official

Shaun hung it on the wall, just outside the front door, as you come up the driveway.  I love it

Today's harvest

Despite all the heat and not much really going on in the garden except survival, we are still harvesting.  Here is a glimpse of what we've got going on

When I was down doing a water this morning, I filled up my T-shirt front (which is what you do when you forget your basket, and you can flash a pale belly to the neighbours - very attractive) with the ripe green zebras.  For whatever reason, the rats have been leaving them alone of late and so a number are now growing large and ripening on the vine.  Yesterday, this dish was full to overflowing with tomatoes from the last week or so, so I decided to make passata. Its a bit weird, being green and all, but I'll let you know how it tastes in pasta after tonight

One day at a time

With the heatwave well and truly in our neck of the woods at the moment, there's little going on beyond watering and mulching (and watering and mulching).  So far so good though, as we haven't lost anything.  In fact, it seems as if the watermelons are up for a bit of heat as they continue to grow regardless.  And grow they do

Aquaponics goes troppo

A few months back we took out the massive Green Zebra tomato plant (keeping in mind we have about 10 plants now yielding in the veggie patch) to make room for some new plantings.  Then it looked like this, as the new seedlings were taking root.

Summer projects part 3

Since we were in mulching heaven, we just decided to keep going.  You might remember the stairs that go from the house to the pool, through the little tropical garden.  But at the bottom of the stairs is a pathway along the pool fence that is weedy and horrible.  I've weeded it in the past and used those weeds to try and mulch the path to keep future weeds down.  That didn't really work, so we've now tried this instead.

Summer projects part 2

We've really been putting in the hours (early morning and late afternoon, given the heat) to make the most of the holidays.  I'm sure once the property is more established we'll go back to taking holidays like normal people.  But in the meantime, here's another project we've been working on.