Winter has been a weird one for us this year.
On one hand we have been hiding out, hibernating and keeping to ourselves and getting things done on the farm and that's been really enjoyable, making "US" the priority and we are finally starting to feel a sense of accomplishment but on the other hand although we are quite private people we have started to feel like we have been missing out on what everyone else has been doing in the meantime.
I guess most people with little properties or farms experience this feeling from time to time, because it really does take up a lot of time getting things going and working out how things best work ect.
You often hear people complaining about the winter vegetable garden and its lack of bounty but for us its the best the garden has been since we moved in! Having two sets of hands instead of one makes so much difference as does seeing progress, it just encourages you more to really get things happening.
The introduction of some basic permaculture principles has been having a huge impact on productivity, the biggest change we made was planting on contour and using swales to catch and store moisture in the soil. That and using hay as a mulch we have seen big improvements and it will be interesting to see how the summer garden fairs this year now we have implemented these simple but effective water saving solutions. Nothing like lifting up a wad of mulch and finding fat juicy earth worms.
We had some challenges with our livestock and sadly some casualties too. We lost our beloved Grubby, the lamb we hand reared when her mother passed away after birth last year and also one of our ewe's who sadly was in lamb so death has had a strong presence on the farm this season. Lots of sleepless nights where had, tears shed and many a lesson has been learned. Thankfully the remaining ewe (also pregnant) and three lambs from last season are all on the mend and looking much brighter which has restored faith in myself as a farmer and the caregiver of these animals. Now armed with the knowledge I need hopefully we can avoid this in future but as they say "you've got livestock, you've got deadstock" sometimes it just happens and death is all part of it
Things on the chicken farming front had been going well until they decided it was a good idea to go to the neighbors property all day, every day and shit all in their sheds, in their carport and scratch up all the mulch in their gardens. Not only where they being a right PITA for my neighbor, their dog also thinks our chickens look like a tasty treat! Luckily the solution wasn't to hard, B managed to get some offcuts of bird net from the huge fish pens at work and we made a big poultry enclosure to keep them safe and also be able to have more control of when and where they free range. After keeping them in the enclosure for a few weeks we are now able to let them out again for a good portion of the day to free range without them going to the neighbours. Be nice if they would pretty please start laying eggs again though now we are past the solstice.
Its also been a time of reflection and personal growth for me and Ive been getting a lot of joy out of what we have managed to achieve on the farm even though the funds are tight when we have needed materials they have presented themselves to us for free or for little cost. I realised that pretty much all we ask for ends up happening for us in one way or another and if you need something done you don't have to let lack of money hold you back. I feel very grateful at the moment to the universe for everything she provides. Grateful to live in such a beautiful place, grateful to be able to be living out our dreams (even if we have a long way to go). Grateful for my lovely home, for having B back home with us and for the time he gets to spend here on the farm instead of at work, grateful for the fertile soil we have on our land, for the sourdough bread we make with the starter we created, for warm sunshine on cold wintery days and most of all for our courage and passion. Because if not for our courage and passion to do things differently for our family and make leaps of faith and follow our intuition none of the above would be happening right now.
Whats next? Well we think come summer we should be able to completely feed ourselves from our own land!! Sure we will still want things like dairy and some meat but what we don't raise ourselves we source locally and in bulk, so ideally I want to be producing enough food on our land that we wouldn't have to shop if we didn't want to or couldn't because things where tight that week. Its pretty ambitious but I cant see why we cannot achieve this. The biggest problem for us is possums so we have more netting from work ready to go to cover the main veg patch and the new smaller patch we fenced with old roofing iron we think we might run a hot wire around the top. Spring we want to get our citrus guild happening, we will plant where some other existing shrubs are that have no real value to us and once the citrus trees take off we will cut down the existing useless shrubs which can be then utilized in hugelkulture beds and for mulch.
Lots of things to look forward too, but today Im just stoked my sheep have started eating healthy goodies from buckets so I can get some well needed love into them.
J
