Rainfall this week : 19.5mm

The Best little Whorehouse in Texas, still one of my absolute favourite movies and I’m pretty sure I can still remember most of the words. What a sad, sad day yesterday was. Hearing that such an amazing entertainer has gone across to the other side. I’m pretty sure most of the world is mourning Dolly and is just as devastated as I am to know that she is no longer with us. Listening to Dolly albums all afternoon yesterday reminded me just how much of a truly amazing woman she was and that she was The Queen of Country Music. Vale Dolly Parton and may she rest in peace with Carl Dean now.

On a lighter note, the never ending slab story has actually reached the last page. YES we have a house slab👏. After a very busy and hectic two days, the slab has been poured. Even though all the blood, sweat and tears are now hidden beneath it, it’s very exciting to see concrete!

Monday was a very busy prep day. Jason and I managed to get the hard half of the insulation cut to size on Sunday which made things quicker on Monday for us laying it. We were a little hesitant about installing insulation under the slab at the beginning, but now that we have seen it and completed it, I can definitely understand that it should stop the heat from inside the house seeping out through the slab and ground beneath in Winter. Our slab is our finished floor, so no carpet or timber, just tiles in the bathrooms and rugs in the bedrooms. The boys choppered it several times to give it a smooth shiny appearance and once we are at lock up I will give the floor a coat of sealer to protect it from stains and then another two before we move in. Easy cleaning and low maintenance.✔️

With a very dark early start on Tuesday, the beers were thoroughly deserved and enjoyed that same afternoon 🍻. With a little concrete left over, Jason and I barrowed it around all over the place and managed to make a few pump pads at the tanks and tidy up around the vege beds. Waste not want not! It was a bloody big day but we made it through to the other side 👏.

With a much needed slow start yesterday, we just pottered around tidying up, watered the slab and listened to Dolly Parton all afternoon. Imagine being so loved by so many people that you are dominating all social media platforms on the day you pass away. What a bloody legend she was.

The dogs were finally allowed to wander around again. Two days in the run did not make happy hounds at all. With some freedom back under their belts we walked around the paddocks, up to the dams and they even had a swim in the creek.

Now that the slab has been poured, we can go back to shedding whilst the concrete cures for a few weeks. Catching up on chores and catching up with friends over the next couple of days, fingers crossed the wind stays away as we head into Spring next week so we can start sheeting the shed.

After a 15 day grand tour of 2 states and 5 depots our tapware, door handles, bathroom accessories and laundry sink from ABI Interiors finally arrived and to our very great relief it was all in one piece🥴.

Break out The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias from the DVD collection and dance the nights away listening to all of Dolly’s albums. That’s what we plan on doing this week.

RIP Dolly Parton☹️

Rainfall this week : 1mm

Wow, is there really a light at the end of this very long arduous tunnel? And will we finally break through to the other side?🤪What has literally felt like the never ending slab story is wait for it, nearing the end.

Several hours of rock cutting and breaking later, Jason has well and truly decided to retire from operating a quick cut. Asking the question ‘is it really quick?’ was immediately shut down with a resounding NO! Weary bones aside, clever husband is ever so pleased with his work and as he should be, as he has done a tremendous job.

With the footings all dug (and cut), piers dug, and pads levelled out, we are ready for concrete. The boys are locked in for the start of next week so now the hardest thing will be keeping the slab damp enough so the edge of the trenches don’t collapse and keeping the hounds off it. Oh yes it has definitely been the never ending slab story!

This will all be a distant memory soon as the concrete pours over all the blood sweat and tears that have brought us this far. It’s always the way isn’t it? All the hardest work gets covered up🥴.

Planting out our bare rooted trees this week that we collected the other Friday was much easier this time around with a machine. Using the 300 auger first to create the hole (guess what, no bloody rock anywhere to be seen🤣) , then the 450 auger to widen and loosen up all the soil. When we first began planting fruit trees a few years ago we weren’t lucky enough to own Yoshi yet. Every hole was dug by hand with a shovel and a crow bar and it was bloody hard work, especially when you hit a rock with the crow bar and it sent the vibrations right back through you. Every tree also needs to be individually fenced to protect it from stock and wildlife until it has matured. It’s definitely been a task over the years and then we sadly lost several in the fires. Now slowly replacing the ones we lost we are building up an abundant orchid once again. One day in the future, I can clearly imagine picking fresh apples and nectarines off the tree, pickling olives, indulging in juicy figs and sprinkling pomegranate seeds over our salads. Hard work does eventually have its benefits.

Fruit Trees Planted this week:

2 Golden Delicious Apples (my favourite)

1 Pink Lady Apple

1 Granny Smith Apple (great for cooking)

1 Mariposa Plum

1 Plum a Okay ( our remaining lonely plum has friends now)

1 Lapin Cherry ( And our lonely cherry now has a friend)

I have also been slowly repotting the tube stock into larger pots ready for planting out in late September. My count so far is 59. ( Mmm didn’t realise I had ordered so many🤣) Don’t worry they will very quickly disappear out along the creek and the dams and around the paddocks.

Signs of Spring are definitely in the air. Tiny pretty little flowers are popping up around the paddocks. Two of our Jacky Dragons have come out of hibernation and nearly scared the absolute s*** out of me as I did happen to almost stand on both of them😱

Ending the week with anticipation of pouring concrete next week and relief that the quick cut has been tucked away in the container for a rest. Jason can rest his weary bones and enjoy a beer around the fire tonight with some friends who are stopping in for the night in their way down south…🍻

Rainfall this week: You are not going to believe it- 9.5mm…..👏👏👏👏👏

Battening down the hatches we did our very best to wind proof our little greenhouse with the outdoor setting so that it didn’t end up down the paddock like it did the last time we had 60km hour winds. To be fair, for a cheap Bunnings greenhouse it has held up extremely well against the elements out here and it has saved quite a few of our plants. Although I’ve sadly lost a couple more indoor plants this week after more below zero temperatures that I stupidly didn’t move inside there last week. Hard lesson learnt there. You get so busy doing other things that sometimes you do just forget about other important stuff🥴.

Along with the wild westerlies we very gratefully received 9.5mm of desperately needed rain. Just enough to settle the dust once again and hopefully save some more trees out on the hills and down the paddocks.

Friday saw a road trip to Kyogle to finally collect our plant order from Daleys Nursery. Starting off with around 8 layers and -4 early that morning, by the time we arrived it was a balmy 20 and we were both in t-shirts😆. Jason was super excited to purchase his first 10 Pinot Noir grape vines. With dreams and aspirations of having a very small vineyard so that he can press his own grapes and produce his own wine just for us in the future he was a happy chappy indeed. But as Jane our neighbour very kindly pointed out on Saturday whilst catching up for a drink, you will basically need one vine per bottle of wine. So we quickly informed Jason he had best purchase another 354 vines🤣🍇. Loaded up with the vines, 3 boxes of various tube stock and more fruit trees we arrived back to the farm and smartly stored everything into the greenhouse, which thank goodness that we did as it was another frosty -4 Saturday morning 🥶.

After researching about the quantity of grape vines required, (it’s not that I didn’t believe Jane🤪) we were just genuinely curious, we discovered that you could produce anywhere from 1-5 bottles per vine on mature vines with an average of 2-3 per vine, but that also depends on variety and climate etc.🍇🍷So yes, the purchase of many more grapes vines will be necessary.

With frozen fingers, beanies more on than off and several layers of thermals we finished the wet system stormwater, all the laying of the electrical conduits and the water supply poly pipe. With everything tested and then of course there was one line that had to be redone due to a certain Kelpie playing in the trenches🤪, we were then able to commence digging the footings. Oh and the ‘bosses’ are now banned from the job site 🐶.

Who enjoys digging? Well I’ve realised that I’m not that fond of it to be honest. Even with a machine to assist, there has still been quite a bit of hand digging, in particular near all the drainage. I’m relatively sure that I will have guns like Sarah Connor by the end of this job💪. And then also each footing needs cleaning out properly and all the levels checked and re checked and all the excess removed so that it doesn’t fall back in into the trench which means more shoveling and more pushing the wheelbarrow 💪🪏. Hence the bosses are definitely being banned from the job site now as we know how Miss Chilli loves playing in the trenches.

Saving the best for last, today is the day Jason attempts to deal with that damn rock. As he pointed out to our Sparkie, it’s like Bald Rock had a baby and spat it out on our property right in the way of not one but two of the footings😳. It’s absolutely ginormous. I’m getting the hell out of here, see ya bye👋. At least he gets to play with his new toy. (Which I might add, he informed me it was fun for the first 5 minutes 🥴)

A fun fact for you, Bald Rock is Tenterfield Shires iconic Granite boulder at you guessed it, Bald Rock National Park. Bald Rock is Australia’s largest granite monolith which once you climb to the summit it rewards you with magnificent 360 degree views over the surrounding landscape. Formed from cooled magma 200 million years ago it is 750 metres long, 500 metres wide and 200 metres above the forest. The hike through the forest up to the summit is a fabulous walk with plenty of photo opportunities along the way.

More garden art from Greg and being crazy with the dogs. Life’s too short to be so serious all the time, and Taco loves hitching a ride🤣.

With a busy afternoon ahead, lots of noise and lots of dust, I think we’ll both appreciate a beer later on🍻…

Rainfall this week : you guessed it, 0mm

The glorious golden hues of the winter wattle signal the way home. After another whirlwind trip to Brisvegas and the long journey home, we are back in our winter woollies and back in the trenches. 🥶 Both dogs excitedly jump out of the Ute and run laps around the paddocks, stretching their legs and rejoicing at the space around them. Even though they love visiting the family and Tiger, they do love coming home.

Braving IKEA on Friday, we surprisingly survived. Even though it was busy it wasn’t as busy as I had anticipated. Although the cafe seemed to be busier than the actual shop. 🤔 The plan was to inspect the Billy Bookcase products that we will use to create built in cabinetry in the lounge room on one wall that will essentially mimic hand crafted and constructed bookcases that are fully built in and trimmed up and painted that would normally be quite expensive. ( Rightly so as it’s a lot of work ) Perusing Pinterest we have found quite a few fabulous ideas that use the Billy products from Ikea for a very reasonable price. One of the spare bedrooms will also have one wall covered in shelves that will surround a Murphy Bed which again we will build ourselves. And as an added bonus we came across the wardrobe inserts which also gave us some great ideas for our walk in robe. (I’m very excited about having a walk in robe as I have never had one before 👏 )

Arriving home on Saturday afternoon to the calls of the Black Cockatoos, we were blessed with watching them wing in over the Ute and all land in the big knarly old wattle tree. It’s always amazing to watch them and hear their crazy screeching.

Sunday was spent moving camp, collecting water from town, cleaning and getting organised again. And just like that a new week has already begun. 🥴 With confirmed dates from the concreter we got straight back into the trenches. After backfilling the drainage, Jason started digging more trenches for the power feeds and the stormwater. I have to say he is getting quite good at digging neat trenches now. Of course there were rocks, there’s always rocks isn’t there. But eventually after trying different lines, he made it through to the tanks. No trenches are straight forward, they all seem to go right, then straight, then left and then right again. Oh the joys of owning a rock farm 🤣.

BTW, Chilli seems to think we have built her a new agility course. Every morning she’s in the trenches, runnings laps around the house pad and jumping over everything. It’s quite comical and entertaining to watch whilst having a coffee.

Lasagne layering in the vege beds has commenced as well. Yes it is going to take me a while to fill them up, but I’ve made a start and will continue filling this week. With plenty of dead Banksias to cut down, they should provide me with quite a lot of material.

Jack Frost did visit whilst we were in Brisvegas which unfortunately killed off a few more plants. ☹️ Learn from your mistakes as they say. Don’t leave indoor plants outside🥴 Both my Monsteras are almost dead, the Moreton bay figs that were in pots are dead ( lucky they were free ) the two smaller spider plants are almost dead, and a couple of varieties of succulents look extremely sad also. The rest of the succulents and the pig face don’t seem to be bothered at all and all the trees are looking great still. Some of my Geraniums have been burnt, but I figure they are such hardy plants that they will bounce back in Spring. Only time will tell. The olives seem to thrive in the cold as does the rosemary and the roses. But it’s definitely all learning about what grows well here in such a varied climate and what doesn’t. I’m sure I will manage to kill off quite a few more plants along the way…

Plants that seem to thrive out here:

Olives…Rosemary…Lavender…Pomegranates…Cherrys…Figs(edible)…Plums…Apples…Bay Leaf…Roses…Grapes…Most Succulents…Garlic Chives( nothing eats it👌)…Crepe Myrtle…All of our Citrus are doing quite well, but we have them all planted under the big paddock trees for protection🤞.

We have been pondering on whether the world has started spinning faster🤔 Do the clocks move forward sneakily? The days are technically supposed to be getting longer after the Winter Solstice but I really do think they have been getting shorter🥴…

Rainfall this week : 0mm

Swapping out our thermals and woollens for jeans, t-shirt and trainers, winter in Brisvegas is positively balmy. Gee, we had forgotten how warm Winter is in QLD, especially when you have just left below zero temperatures that same morning. Out the door at the crack of dawn with the crazy Kelpie, you know you’re in Qld when on your morning walk you notice all the tradies wearing shorts to work in the middle of winter. 🤣 Watching the sunrise over the water in the mornings and the moon rise above it in the evening instead of the hills is always a lovely sight to see.

With a proper winter finally upon us, and Jack Frost visiting us over the weekend the paddocks are really starting to show their winter colours. Mossy greens amongst the rusty brown and straw yellow grasses and dusty pinks across the boulders in the afternoon light. Misty magical mornings and frosty fields give a sense of wonder and delight. Marvelling at how the plants seem to thrive covered in ice (oops except for a few indoor plants that I forgot about🥴) and listening to the crunch beneath our boots wandering around the paddocks with our usual steaming hot cup of coffee. And after another few frosty mornings whilst we are here in Brisvegas our fingers are crossed that we haven’t lost anymore plants.😳 (I did move them into my little greenhouse 🤞)

Aside from frolicking in the frosty fields we managed to complete our under slab drainage this week. 👏 After Jason carefully removed the majority of the dirt with his trusty Yoshi, I came along behind him with my shovel and tidied up the trenches ready for laying the pipework. Two busy bathrooms and one laundry later we passed our inspection on Monday with flying colours. 👌 Who knew there was so much in it. (Says me who is just a mere painter😆) Clever husband has nailed it once again. Thank god I married a plumber hey. 👏

With drainage completed and inspected we are now ready to dig the footings and piers once we return from Brisbane on the weekend. And after a mad dash to Toowoomba (the big smoke) last Friday we are now the owners of a quick cut saw. Note to self, ignore the price tag😱 Now the removal of most of that damn boulder should be easy peasy. (Well easier🥴) And as the happy husband says with his new toy, it will come in handy many more times as he always points out, we do own a rock farm😆.

With another trip to Brisbane almost over and all the family rounds complete, it’s IKEA day today. Intending to brave the crowds and traffic for house storage research, wish us luck…

Rainfall this week : 0mm☹️

Stillness and the sound of silence. Miraculously and thank bloody goodness, the extreme weather has finally disappeared. After a hectic week of gale force winds with 50-60km hour gusts we were beginning to think we were living in the Sahara Desert. After setting up our ladders and getting all of our tools out, we were all set to start sheeting the shed last week when the wind decided to call in and say HELLO. Ladders fell over, bits and bobs went flying and the dogs blew off the chain, so we threw our hands up in the air and packed everything back up. With absolutely no chance of shedding this week, we decided it would be advisable to set about marking out the rest of the house and all of the drainage in preparation for laying the drainage. In between the gusts of wind and clouds of dust billowing around us, it was a battle to get anything completed, but with our neck gaiters constantly on and off our faces trying to keep the dust out, we battled through albeit a little exhausted.

As you can clearly see in one of the photographs above, there is a large rock with the fluro orange stripes painted on it. Well that just so happens to be exactly smack bang right in the middle of one of our footings 😳. And here we were so smug about how few rocks we thought were in the slab. After much blood, sweat and tears with his Jack Hammer and Nine inch grinder, Jason has declared defeat and has advised me that we absolutely must purchase a quick cut saw to assist in removing most of the extremely large and difficult boulder. Oh and he also broke the tip clean off the ripper attachment on the excavator whilst trying to shimmy it out☹️. Seems like a trip to Trade Tools is in order.

With the wind now a distant memory we were happily planning on returning to shedding today. Well, that was until we sat down last night and studied the calendar with regard to when our concreters anticipate arriving. 😳 Working out how many actual days we have ( six days will be taken up going to Brisbane next week) until the pour, the decision was made to put the shed on hold so we can start digging and laying the drainage before heading to Brisvegas and book an inspection with Jamie for Monday morning. And of course we will lose another day or two trying to remove that damn boulder once we return with the quick cut🥴. Then we will be able to dig the footings and the piers and be ready for the second week in August. 👏 So maybe the wind was a blessing in disguise after all, considering our under slab insulation was delivered yesterday as well as our anti-con insulation which will sit under the roof sheets and our vapour barrier wrap to cover the frame.

When you construct a new dwelling in this modern world you now must reach a 7 star energy rating for your BASIX report. Which basically means more paperwork and of course more money. This could entail many different instructions depending on where you are situated and what you are building. For example, double glazing, various types of insulation, house orientation, ceiling fans, zero penetrations into the ceiling, reverse cycle, solar hot water and the list just keeps on going. One of our instructions is to install under slab insulation so we don’t lose any heat through the floor and as we are having a burnished finished concrete floor we have to agree that it seems like a very sensible idea. After much research we have chosen Kingspan Kooltherm which has an R rating of R1.10 and is quite a robust product. This will be installed after the piers are poured and obviously before the slab is poured.

Over the windy weekend we also managed to move our house tanks into their permanent position. It was definitely quite the task with the wind whipping around us but we got there in the end. Another job ticked off the list.

The Macropods still dominate and they aren’t even that fazed about us or the dogs. Rackahontus is still doing laps in the creek and unfortunately there are still plenty of dingo attacks. The brisk mornings have returned and we are back to wearing two pairs of socks and several layers to keep the chill at bay. Big blue skies are above today and the sleepy dogs are lapping up the sunshine. Winter at Woodside, we wouldn’t be anywhere else!

Let the digging commence 🪏

Rainfall this week : 0mm

With a decent frost this week and below zero temperatures it has quite frankly been bloody freezing. With frozen fingers wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee our morning walks have started a little later than usual each day. Listening to the sound of what little grass we have left crunch beneath our boots we can feel the cold wind seeping into our bones.🥶 Admittedly we have yet to have a really big frost like we usually do this winter. You know the ones where you wake up to the paddocks actually looking like they are covered in a smattering of snow and icicles hanging off the garden furniture. Even the dogs water bowl has yet to completely freeze over. But technically there is still time for that to happen with several weeks of Winter remaining.

Friday night was around the fire with friends night. Charles, Ashleigh and their friend Peta stopped in for sleepover before heading further south. Expecting guests gave us the opportunity to work on our new fire pit area. (Yes I know shedding has been pushed back again 🤪) What was once quite a steep slope with yes you guessed it a few rocks and a burnt out tree stump is now our new flat fire pit area. Jason pulled out the annoying rocks and built a little retaining wall which he then proceeded to back fill with several trailer loads of dirt that had been removed from the Arbour area. We also created a small garden within some of the rocks that I will fill with pretty garlic chives. ( I have discovered that not only do they have lovely flowers, not one animal has tried to eat them👏 Win!) With just a little more tweaking on our levels and more collecting of rocks to circle the fire pit itself it should endeavour to be a rather relaxing area to enjoy a beer by the fire and watch the sun go down. Keeping warm by the fire on Friday night with friends was the perfect way to end the day.🔥

After enjoying a slow Saturday morning with friends and a breakfast fit for a king we sadly waved goodbye to the travellers and wished them a safe journey south.

Let’s knock some vege beds together we say to one another once our guests have departed. Oh yes, it will only take us a couple of days😆. Weren’t we just a little WRONG! After collecting the 100 year old timber posts from the back boundary fence that had burnt down in the fires, we miraculously had the perfect amount for our five large raised beds. We also discovered we had just enough roof sheets for the walls, some of which had come all the way from Straddie and some old rusty ones from Yamba. It definitely pays to keep everything as eventually you will use it.👍 Gathering all our materials we set about constructing our future food supply area. Three and a half days later we managed to complete stage 1 of the project. Well that took just a little longer than anticipated 😳. Drilling into 100 year old timber IS NOT EASY.

Bigger and better than we had imagined, a cold beer was just what the doctor ordered as the sun slowly set. With weary bodies and sore bones from kneeling in the dirt for almost four days (who knew it would be so difficult to get up off the ground once you hit 50😳) we raised our 🍻 and yelled cheers. Five raised beds at five metres by two metres long. Huge you might say. Massive actually. Suffice to say we didn’t envision them being quite so big. But the plan is to grow as much fresh produce as we can so they have turned out perfect really. No chemicals or pesticides. All organic. Food with flavour, vitamins and minerals. Now to fill them, that’s going to be the mammoth task.

Stage 2 is to prepare the beds using the ‘Hugelkulter’ technique. Originating from Germany and pronounced hoo-gul-culture meaning hill culture or mound culture. Basically a permaculture practice. The idea is to fill your beds with layers of cardboard, logs, branches, leaves, compost, coffee grounds, and anything else that is biodegradable, essentially just like making a lasagna. Each layer needs to be watered thoroughly as you go and it’s best to avoid to many air pockets. This process helps dramatically with water retention, (very important here) and soil fertility. Once two thirds of the beds are filled in this way it will be time to top them up with Sheep Poo (from the shearing shed down the road) and Mushroom Compost (from the mushroom farm at Ballandean). After allowing the manure to settle for a few weeks we will then be able to top them up with some lovely top soil and start planting.👏 While it may seem like quite a lot work at the beginning, once completed there will just be a seasonal top up of manure and compost. I’m already imagining juicy red tomatoes, lots of leafy greens, thirst quenching cucumbers, ruby red beetroot, brightly coloured capsicums, plump eggplants, zucchinis, onions, shallots, edible flowers and much much more. Fresh organic produce to pick daily for our dinner😋.

Stage 3 will be fencing it to macropod proof it🦘.

With shedding once again on hold🥴 it’s far too windy☹️. We promise to have more progress on that next week. (Fingers crossed the wind drops off ) As usual the week has wizzed by at a super fast pace and now layered to the hilt, eagerly awaiting the porridge bubbling away on the stove we are ready to brave another cold windy day.🥶

Rainfall this week : 2mm

Our morning walks now give Chilli ample opportunity to muster the macropods.🦘With absolutely no shortage of them on the property at the moment it seems that every walk starts and ends with ‘Chilli stop’, ‘Chilli no’ and ‘Chilli heel’. (And yes she has had training 😳) After having the neighbors stock on our property for the last couple of years they had well and truly mowed the paddocks down which seemed to keep the macropods over at all the neighbouring properties but now after moving all the stock back to Reg and Pete’s and after some rain we have acres of green new pick for the wildlife. Hence the Macropods have decided to move back in and surprisingly there is quite a variety of them:

-The Wallaroo: The Mike Tyson of the species.

-The classic Eastern Greys.

-The Pretty Face Wallabies: My favourite, they are petite and pretty 😍

-The Brush Tailed Rock Wallaby.

-The Swamp Wallaby.

-The Red-necked Wallaby.

I’m sure there are probably other species that we have yet to witness, and even though we realise that they are quite a pest out here in the country, they are still super cute and it’s always entertaining to see the Eastern Greys have a round in the ring🥊. And they definitely keep Miss Chilli busy, 🥴particularly when the neighbour calls in for a 🍻 and we bust her in the back of his Ute gnawing on a macropod leg that he had in a sugar bag for his working dogs😆, no wonder she didn’t finish her dinner.

While it may not look like we have made a lot of progress this week from the outset, we have been busy I promise. We have finished installing the wire mesh on the roof of the shed. This did take us longer than anticipated and boy weren’t we kicking ourselves for not doing this whilst we had the scissor🥴 (Lucky we had trestles and planks). This was completed so in the future it will prevent the insulation from sagging which seems to be a thing in large shed roofs. The flashing has been put on around the slab edge so as to keep those little nasties like mice and rats out of the shed, which is always a bonus🐀🐁.

Jason and his trusty Yoshi have spent quite a substantial amount of time re trimming and scraping and track rolling the house pad to perfection. Husband goes alright for a novice👍.

The profiles are in and now we are ready to start marking out and dig out the footings and piers. ( Whilst in between sheeting the shed🥴) We’ve also been cleaning out all the love grass clumps from around the boulders close to the house area and creating some garden beds which I will fill with a variety of succulents as they seem to survive any kind of extreme weather out here. What is this African Love Grass you mention? It is a highly invasive tussock grass native to South Africa. Originally introduced as a soil stabilizer and pasture grass it is now an environmental weed across Australia. Whilst it is noted to have negligible nutritional properties for stock they do eat it as long as it’s kept short. Therefore we try to keep it under control with lots of slashing which then also allows the native grasses to grow alongside it. We won’t ever be able to completely rid the property of Love Grass but we will slowly have more and more native grasses covering the paddocks in years to come.

Yet another week has flown by and finally this morning we saw the first decent frost of the season ❄️. Winter has certainly been mild thus far and with our fozen fingers crossed for some more below zero mornings and more visits from Jack Frost we are currently warming up beside the diesel heater holding a steaming hot cup of coffee and waiting for eggs on toast.🍳

As we are trying to fully get over this damn cold, our mornings have still been a little slow and our motivation hasn’t been at its highest. But we are soldiering on and keeping warm and are looking forward to our visitors arriving tomorrow 🔥.

Rainfall this week : 0mm☹️

Sharing is usually always caring except in a situation when your husband ever so kindly shares his man flu with you🤧. Living in such a small space together almost made it inevitable really. After going through around what seemed like 2000 tissues we are just about on the other side of it. Mornings have definitely been super slow going this week but we have still managed more progress than anticipated around the farm.

Jason had some more scraping of the house slab pad to finish first and then quite a few piles of dirt had to be moved over to the application area for the septic where it will eventually be retained and levelled. It’s surprising how much dirt appears from just a top scrape.

Shedding is happening once again. With the mighty duct lifter we installed all the roller doors with absolute ease👏 what a life saver indeed.

We decided to lay down roof mesh that will sit under the insulation to prevent it sagging in the future, so after a trip into town to purchase two roles we managed to get one side finished yesterday.

The Annual Poultry Show was held at the Tenterfield Show grounds on Saturday and after hearing Jason reminiscing about his childhood jaunts to the poultry shows with his Father Wayne and Sister Leanne it was only fitting that we headed into town to check out the local talent.🐓

We met a lovely local lady Jenny who won Grand Champion and First and Second prizes for her Barnevelder Hens and Rooster. Neither of us had ever come across this breed before but boy are they just beautiful. Immediately falling in love with them, fate introduced us to Jenny and next year when we are ready for our own chickens we will be able to purchase some hens from her. Yay! The Barnevelder breed originates from Holland and they have beautiful big dark brown eggs, and most importantly they suit our climate wonderfully.

With a full moon in Capricorn this week, and also the middle moon of the year (wow where did that disappear to🥴) it seemed a perfect time to reflect on what we have accomplished so far and think positively about the rest of the adventure ahead of us. Many people comment ‘oh isn’t that finished yet?’ or ‘haven’t you started that yet?’ and we wonder why is everyone else in such a hurry?🤔 Life isn’t a race. Life isn’t about getting things done to please others. Life is for living and enjoying and taking things at your own speed. We fully intend to enjoy this build and take our time instead of burning out and being on a race against the clock like we did the last time we built. We are going to enjoy our Misty mornings, our amazing sunsets, our wildlife, our occasional coffee in town, ball play with the dogs and a well deserved cold beer with the neighbors🍻 all the while plodding along and building our dream😊.

Half of the year is already behind us. I’m still unsure where that actually went. When they say time passes more quickly the older you become they are definitely correct. Looking back at what we have achieved so far brings silly smiles to our faces. What once was essentially a cow paddock with waist high grass, now looks much more loved and cared for. We can now see all the granite boulders on the property and we keep a well maintained area around the shed and house area. Our 40 Olive trees are growing nicely and with more to plant we will always have a supply of olives for hors d’oeuvres.🫒🍸 Several fruit trees were burnt in the fires a few years ago but we are slowly replanting and look forward to reaping the rewards in the near future….

Rainfall this week : 2mm

Ooh, what is that sound? Mmm it’s the sound of silence. As much as we love to visit Brisvegas and catch up with family and friends, it’s always lovely to arrive home to the solitude. Bored Brisbane boys hooning around on a Friday night, neighbors cars leaving for work early ( how dare they😆) and barking dogs, oh hang on that’s our dogs🥴 oops. Sandra’s neighbors always know when we arrive and when we leave😳.

After our visit to ABI Interiors at Carrara on Friday we have made a final decision on all the tapware for the house as well as all the door hardware for the house. What a lovely showroom they have. We collected our beautiful big timber posts that have come from the old wool stores in Brisbane that will be used in our front entrance (Thank you Liam). Carl Barron had us in tears Saturday night, what a funny bloke he is🤣. We caught up with all the oldies and on Sunday we were privileged to enjoy breakfast with Buckley😍 ( and Chrissy, Garth, Charles & Ashleigh)

We also happened to learn something new about Fern this week. Not long after Mum and Dad dropped Fern/Tiger off at the vet for her desexing on Wednesday, the Vet then phoned Dad with some interesting news. And no she is not pregnant 🤔, that was my first thought but apparently male cats can’t fall pregnant🥴. Yes that’s right, you heard correct, Fern is definitely a Tiger. We were all a little surprised considering we couldn’t actually find any little lentils. They were there, they just hadn’t dropped into the world yet🤣.

After a whirlwind few days over the border we have returned to below zero temperatures and a light frost🥶at the farm. A little different to south east Queensland 😆 But big blue winter skies are keeping us warm throughout the day and the sunsets just keep getting better👌.

Considering we spent most of the week in Brisvegas, obviously we didn’t progress with any shedding. Although Jason did manage to do some more work on the house slab prep once home, even with a head cold and we managed to get a lot of tidying up completed as well as all the boring chores of washing and cooking. We are now ready to jump back on the shed today and get it finished👏.

After marking out the exact position of the house and the big timber arbour that will run along the entire house on the western side, we grabbed a little garden setting to watch the sunset from the Arbour. It’s quite exciting to see how it is all going to sit and have a stroll around envisioning the finished product and the landscaping that will eventually surround the house. After already purchasing quite a few plants, we have been repotting them into larger pots in preparation for the garden later in the year. In particular quite a few climbing roses for some trellises outside the bedrooms and the ornamental grapevines for the arbour. Everything we choose has to be wind tolerant, frost tolerant and drought tolerant and surprisingly there is quite a lot more to choose from than I had anticipated.

With another magic Winters day is ahead of us I fear we may not be shedding today after all. Man flu is a real thing😳, apparently he is dying but I think he will be A Ok👌 with a little rest…