Rainfall this week : 26mm

They say dogs start to settle down and mature when they turn three. Ha ha, they obviously have never met our pretty petite crazy red Kelpie girl Chilli😆. Sometimes I do actually wonder if it is all our fault for naming her Chilli🌶️. Red, fiery, spicy and unpredictable 😳. Maybe we should have named her Molly or Annie or Sheryl. Just an everyday female name, NOT a name that depicts complete craziness. But you know, we really wouldn’t have it any other way. Chilli may be the most exhausting dog we have ever had the pleasure of owning but she is hands down the most entertaining and the prettiest girl we have ever had the pleasure of owning. (Hang on maybe she is the one that owns us😉)

You may have guessed that yes it is Chilli’s birthday today. Quite frankly we are just pleased she has made it to three! She does love to keep us on our toes and live on the edge…

Well there really isn’t all too much to report this week in regard to house building. We actually took most of the weekend off for a change. ( we did receive 3mm of rain on Saturday so it was slightly wet👏) How great is it to stay in your pyjamas until lunchtime drinking coffee and reading magazines 😆. I can’t honestly remember the last time we did that. And at least with reading interiors magazines, we were actually doing research for the house weren’t we🤔😆. At least that is what I keep telling myself…

Mother Nature blessed us with 23mm on Monday. We’ve never been happier to have another rain day🌧️. At least it gave us opportunity to peruse the internet at the many sites for lighting, to try and finalise some decisions on what will go where. There are just so many choices out there though and it really does bamboozle you after a while. But after what felt like hours staring at a screen we did manage to narrow down a list of favourites and make a final decision on a few of them, yay👏.

In between the rainy days and wait for it ‘THE WIND’ we have actually made some progress on the frame. All of the holes have been drilled in the slab for the tie downs and the anchor studs have been Chem set into them ready for the booker rod to be joined to them which connects the top plate of the frame to the slab. ( a good principle of thought is connecting your head to your feet ) This is so the house stays put in our big N3 winds. And we have also started putting up the Outriggers/Verge Sprockets at the ends of the gables and Jason has strapped each piece on also as he has been going along. This seems to take forever as poor Jason has to climb up and down the ladder with everything singularly on each one if I’m not there to help him. ( I have been getting a start on the mowing ) The out riggers are extra timbers added on so that we essentially have an eave on each gable end to match the front and rear of the house. Most shed houses don’t bother with an eave but we decided that we would like them, then the house doesn’t exactly look like the shed. And before you ask ( many have already ) the roof won’t be going on for another week or two. There are still quite a few things to complete before this can happen and there are only two of us. Outriggers, strapping and more strapping, tie downs, timber roof battens, timbers across the top of all the internal frames to tie them in, structural plywood on some walls, and I’m sure there is probably something else that I have forgotten 🤔. All these things that you don’t really see or notice if you haven’t built a house from scratch.

We have also started planting out our tube stock that we had purchased a few months ago. Jason goes ahead and drills the holes with Yoshi and the auger and then I follow along and plant them in and yes of course we have to fence each one as Walter our Wallaroo who has basically moved in with us will no doubt devour them whilst we are asleep otherwise. I’m so looking forward to having some lovely trees out in the paddock in a few years time. It will be lovely to watch the birds hang from the fluffy calistemon flowers and see a haze of bright yellow wattle flowers throughout the winter…

And the mowing has begun once again for the season. And yes I definitely need to get mower fit again🥴. Pushing the hand mower in and around the boulders and over the clumps of love grass is hard work, but the place is looking tidier for it👏.

Anyhow I’m going back out to mow and plant a few more trees, Chow…

Rainfall this week : 1/2 mm

Starting the day very slowly today, these two mature aged apprentices are feeling every year of their age this morning🥴. Working with someone half your age for four days will do that to you though. But it is worth every weary bone in our bodies when you witness what we have achieved.

Thank goodness for Liam. My absolutely amazing nephew drove out to us on Monday morning after a two week stint working out west and pulled this over the line with us in four days, even with the two oldies in tow. Putting him straight to work on Monday we managed to erect about a third of the frame even with having to make a few adjustments due to a measurement error on the slab. (Not from us by the way)

We honestly wouldn’t have been able to complete this without Liam. Those frames are bloody heavy. What was great though is that they were all numbered. We could check the supplied plan and look for the corresponding internal or external number and away we go. But of course sometimes the frame that we required next was at the bottom of the pile🤪. By the end of a very big day Tuesday we had the frame up and started to get ready for the trusses which were delivered on Wednesday.

Racing against the clock Wednesday morning, serendipitously the trucks carrying our trusses happened to get a little lost trying to find us which just gave us enough time to complete the hatching/ribbon plate around the perimeter of the frame so that the trusses could then be placed on top ready for us to stand up.

Remember how I mentioned about the frame you wanted next would be underneath nine other ones, well of course that happened with the trusses also🥴. Here we thought we had them placed perfectly in the middle facing the correct way, only to find out the end gable for the eastern side was on the bottom. So after dragging the top trusses across to the other side we were finally able to make a start. Of course that was also after realising the end gable which has two trusses was pre nailed together. Mustering all our strength we managed to lift it into place. Again these things are NOT LIGHT!

After getting a few up on the eastern side Liam pushed us into getting the other heavy end up so Thursday would be an easier day. After a lot more dragging of trusses back and forth across the frame we did it👏

Finishing the frame was such an amazing achievement. And again we definitely couldn’t have completed it without Liam. I think even Liam was slightly surprised we could almost keep up with him🤣. My nephew is very clever and bloody fantastic at what he does. One very grateful and proud Aunt here.

After battling high winds, impending rain, dust storms, hot sun, relentless flies, crazy dogs, cold mornings and two mature aged apprentices Liam admitted he had fun and has promised to come back👏👏👏 And I’m pretty sure the dogs are missing him already.

I honestly can’t really remember what we did last weekend. More prep in readiness for Liam, grocery shopping, watering and more watering, a breakfast date in town, a few beers at the shearing shed with the neighbors, washing and some early nights. Another busy week has passed by and more amazing sunsets have ended the days nicely, oh and we are now on daylight savings. We aren’t particularly fans of it, especially living so close to the border as our phones chop and change between QLD and NSW times. And quite frankly I rather doubt the stock realise that they should now sleep in for another hour🤔.

On that note, we best get out of our pyjamas, get showered and get back to work. This house ain’t going to finish itself😆.

Rainfall this week : 8mm👏

Not that much progress to report this week I’m afraid to say. But we did spend four busy days in Brisvegas so we do have a valid excuse 🥴. Kate Miller Heidke was the highlight of our visit (and the main reason for heading north) If you have never had the pleasure of witnessing Kate play live, I absolutely, highly recommend it. Her magical voice is something out of this world. We have been lucky enough to see her many times over the years and her performances always take our breath away. She performed at the Princess Theatre in Woolloongabba this time round. And to our surprise we realised that we had never actually visited this venue before. Wow, what a wonderful place for live music and what a fabulous old heritage building it is. Definitely one to visit again.

Are you familiar with Russian Dolls? Remember there was a doll inside a doll inside a doll inside a doll and so forth? Well we had a trailer inside a trailer. What the bloody hell is she talking about you might ask? My nephew very kindly gifted us his old builders trailer. With the drawbar not quite up to standard for the A15 (it’s cracked and has been re welded) we had to load it onto our big tipper trailer to bring it back to the farm. We certainly caught other travellers eyes on the journey home. Thank you Liam, it’s going to be very handy whilst we are building and Jason has already almost filled it up with his consumables.

After catching up with all the oldies and cramming the Ute full once again with all sorts of things (a trip to Trade Tools and Bunnings didn’t help🥴) we made the journey back over the border. Noticing dark and stormy clouds hanging over Woodside on our way in from Wallangarra, we brightened up with the possibility of some much needed rain. Mother Nature blessed us with 8mm which has already turned the paddocks greener. I may even have to break Kevin out of the stables and do some mowing next week. Just less than 500 metres further down Woodside Road some other neighbors were super lucky and received 19mm and even further down towards Mole River they received upwards of 30mm. We definitely have our own little micro climate here in the valley. And we certainly didn’t mind unpacking the Ute in the rain or the fact that a certain wet kelpie ran into the van and jumped on the bed🐶.

Windy Woodside returned just as we had planned to start the shed roof of course. Luckily there are always other jobs to move onto. More progress on the raised vege beds. Jason loaded several loads of soil into each bed and our awesome neighbour Reg dropped off a few loads of sheep poo to mix in. Another step closer to home grown vegetables 🍆🥬🥒🍅🌶️🧅.

We have also started marking out on the slab so that we can commence putting up our house frame👏 Who knew there was so much involved just in that task alone. Learning something new all the time here. Our roof trusses arrive next Wednesday so we would like to have all the frame up ready for that delivery. Luckily my favourite nephew is stopping in on his way home from working out west to help us oldies for a few days😆. So hopefully by this time next week there will be a full house frame installed on our slab ready for a roof😊.

Of course today the wind has completely disappeared but we need to finish marking out the slab before the pest and termite man calls in tomorrow morning to install the termite barrier around the slab. Maybe we will get a chance to make a start this afternoon on the shed roof🤞. All is good, I’m more excited about getting the house frame up anyway🏠.

It’s going to be a busy but exciting start to October 👌.

Rainfall this week : 0mm

Smokey sunsets paint the sky magenta and ruby red lulling us into a false sense of awe. With not the best start to this year’s fire season, Mother Nature is certainly testing us all.

Fingers crossed that Mother Nature may bring us and many other towns some much needed rain soon. Going for our morning strolls with the dogs, we have really started to notice the ground drying up and that there seems to me more dirt than grass now down across the paddocks. Our big dam is unfortunately almost bone dry and the small spring fed dam is the lowest we have ever seen it. But chin up, as one local positively pointed out ‘every day is one day closer to receiving rain’!

On the positive side of things now that the dam is virtually empty, Jason can jump in with his trusty Yoshi and have a little clean out. Wet, dry, windy, sunny or bone chilling cold, we love this place in its every sense. It’s always beautiful, just in different ways. The sunsets still never cease to amaze me and no matter how much we walk the paddocks we always find something we haven’t noticed before.

Noticing some very cute but unexpected visitors the other day, Chilli was able to put her natural born skills to the test. Several calves and one naughty Heifer (Spots mother, who has always been a naughty girl. We have lost count the amount of times we have had to bring her in off the road🥴) were up grazing near the creek crossing along the neighbouring property. The one section that we hadn’t finished fixing😳. You know how it goes, you get distracted doing another job and the last one gets completely forgotten about. Chilli was very happy to help out though. Mustering them all back next door she was rather pleased with herself indeed. With her bloodlines you can understand how she just instinctively knows exactly what to do, it’s quite amazing to watch. Clever clogs👏.

After pushing the stock back through, the rest of the day was spent fixing up the creek crossing and a few other holes in the fence to keep the inquisitive little ones over on their side. As much as we would love to let them back in to graze the paddocks it’s just to difficult whilst we are building as they love to see exactly what we are doing and would end up having a dance party on the slab and probably be the first to use the bathroom🤪💩.

An exciting delivery arrived on Monday from Howard Trade Centre in Stanthorpe. OUR HOUSE FRAME👏👏👏. Yay, the next step in the process. It’s all numbered and very neat which hopefully means it will be easier to put together than an IKEA flat pack 😆.

Even Chilli was excited to see her new house. I’m pretty sure she has been dreaming about jumping on our bed and having an afternoon nap whilst keeping an eye on what’s happening outside.

With the chaotic weather visiting again absolutely no shedding was completed this last week. We will get there, one day the wind will disappear 🥴. There is always plenty of other jobs to keep us busy though. We finished levelling out all the dirt around the house slab in preparation of putting up the frame which instantly made a huge difference. We are always in the garden watering and doing more fertilising and Jason also brought up about seven loads of soil for the vege beds. Another step closer to planting out some seedlings.

Another visitor this week, a much bigger Echidna this time. They are just so cute.

Another week quickly passes by. Still not sure exactly what else we managed to accomplish 🤪 The days just roll into the next one and you completely forget what you have done all week sometimes. And even though it feels like we haven’t been doing much we haven’t sat down either. We are both now the thinnest we’ve been in along time. If anyone asks how to stay fit in your fifties, JUST BUY A FARM🤪. Oh and also get two crazy working dogs that can’t sit still…

Rainfall this week : 000000mm

Well hello there wind, we are so glad you decided to hang around😳. Note to self, it’s not fun erecting a shed in the wind. Honestly, I didn’t realise it could be this windy for such an extended period of time. It has been absolutely relentless but we have still managed some progress despite almost ending up in the neighbors property.

It may not look like we completed that much this week but as I was away for three days we only came back to the shed on Monday and Tuesday and it was bloody windy🥴. Jason has mentioned we will never build an American Barn Style Shed again🤪. Aside from the fact that it will look great once completed, the amount of cuts on the front facade was enough to scare anyone away. And as we are also putting insulation behind all the sheets, that seems to take just as long as installing the walls. But it will be worth it in the long run.

With myself back in Brisbane for the weekend to catch up with the girls, Jason set about starting to dig the application area out. As we are rural we are able to have an old school application area set up for all of our 💩. We have opted to have both a septic tank as well as a seperate grey water tank as this way when we are in drought like we are now we can water the trees and the grass and the flowers. They will be both be dug into the ground not too far from the application area and will also have a little fence around them with a pretty vine growing over it to disguise it as the lids do sit above the ground.

We were lucky enough to have a lovely little visitor on Sunday afternoon. These guys are just so cute and are super funny how they waddle along and then burrow themselves to hide. This is the third one we have seen here on the farm over the years. Chilli was quite curious indeed at this little spiky creature.

I’m always very grateful to see our wonderful wildlife out and about around the property. In the evening we often watch the micro bats fly around above us as the sun disappears behind the hills. We can hear the Quolls further down the paddock at night but have never actually spotted them up around the house area, which is probably for the best with the dogs. And the abundance of birdlife still amazes me especially the huge Wedge tail Eagles with their chunky legs that soar so high in the sky and our pretty Hawks that nest in the big old dead tree out on the road.

With anticipation of our house frame arriving next week, Jason has still been keeping the slab nice and wet for a slow cure. Col our water man delivered another load for us this week. Now that we are almost at 28 days the watering has slowed down so this next load of water should last us for a few months 🤞.

Winter hasn’t quite disappeared just yet. With 3,4 and 5 degrees every morning for the last week and a very light frost yesterday morning just to remind us don’t get too comfortable with these big sunny days you have been enjoying. But spring is definitely still in the air and trying its hardest to out run Winter. Our Flanders Fig tree has lots of tiny fruit on it👏, and finally the Crepe Myrtles have lots of new foliage. Even two of our new bare rooted apple trees have blossoms. So looking forward to picking a few pieces of fruit this season🍎🍒🍋🍋‍🟩.

You can’t take the working dog out of the Kelpie😆. But honestly I think if she actually went to work she would break a nail and have a meltdown and jump in the car for a sleep🤪. Blockie dog for life!

So many new babies in the surrounding paddocks. It always brings a smile to our faces when passing them on the way into town, especially with their big beautiful eyes and eyelashes and their little Shrek ears😊.

Yes I am a day late with posting yet again🥴 but I do have a doctor’s certificate I promise. Another week, a little more progress and another big blue sky outside. Gardening will be on the agenda today I think🪏👩‍🌾🚜🍃.

Rainfall this week : 0mm

Welcome to windy Woodside 💨. Shedding is rather difficult when the wind is blowing from every direction and your trying to hang into a sheet of metal. Battling through though we have managed to complete sheeting three sides of the shed this week, YAY! I still wonder how the wind seems to know exactly when we are about to set up and get started for the day 🤔? Almost on cue, as soon as we have set up the scaffolding and have gotten our tools out it’s literally ‘Hello Wind, nice to see you again’ NOT😳. With plenty of silver tape at hand and a few ingenious ideas from Jason about how to stop the insulation from ending up across the road we are very pleased to be back shedding even though it has been hard going. Loving the colour we chose, ‘Colourbond Woodland Grey’, it just seems to blend seamlessly into the surrounding landscape. Now seeing it on the shed we are super excited that we have chosen the same colour for the house. And once I spray all of our shipping containers the same colour, all of our structures will blend in and fade away and we won’t resemble the Port of Brisbane any longer😆.

Things are definitely taking a little longer than expected, holding onto sheets of iron just as the westerlies pick up is definitely a challenge and by the end of the day quite exhausting, but we are making great progress and it’s looking fantastic 👏.

Feeling windswept and sunburnt we are calling it a day on shedding. Mind you it is 2pm and we haven’t had lunch yet. A little pottering in the garden sounds like a grand plan indeed for the rest of the afternoon.

Our short but spectacular display of Spring Blossoms throughout the town are slowly disappearing with all the wind about. There’s something very special witnessing the actual change of the seasons here after living in Queensland most of our lives. Every visit into town for supplies saw various shades of pink, rose and magenta and magnificent white blossoms lining the streets and in peoples front gardens. We feel ever so grateful to experience living here. Even a few of our own fruit trees have produced some beautiful blossoms this year. How wonderful to know that in years to come when our orchard has grown and we will have an abundance of blossoms right here in our own backyard 🌸🌼🌻.

Tenterfield hosted a small but wonderful little garden expo on Saturday which of course saw us purchase a few more fruit trees🤪. We just can’t seem to help ourselves. Anytime we go into a nursery we seem to find something that we absolutely must have. Anyway we purchased three Blueberry bushes to add to the Blueberry garden and Two Cumquat trees to add to the growing Citrus garden. Everything is really starting to get lots of new spring growth and my herbs which all seemed to dislike Winter are looking much happier and healthier. Now to just finish those damn vege beds you say. Well I have made quite a bit of progress there in between everything else on the long list of jobs to complete. Soon I should be ready for a few loads of Sheep manure 🐑. Watch this space.

If your into Country/Folk music, I highly recommend checking out ‘The Rusty Pickups’ from South East Queensland. We were lucky enough to catch these guys last Thursday night at our little local theatre in town. Wow, they were absolutely incredible. The young girl Amily was amazing on the fiddle and the banjo was so much fun to listen to. Gotta love listening to live music🎶🎤🎵.

Fire season has officially begun. With two large fires already burning on either side of town, it’s not a great start to the season. But it is still so dry out here even though the paddocks are looking green. After having stock on the property for the last few years since the last fire that came through the property, they kept the paddocks very short to the point that some areas were picked clean. Now that they have moved back to the neighbors, the place has had a chance to start recovering and we are seeing lots of new native grasses and little sedges coming through and lots of wildflowers. Even all the little saplings around the property are growing well and the grass trees are going completely bonkers.

Another week, more progress, more fruit trees🤪, more crazy antics. See ya next week, Chow😊

Rainfall this week : 0mm

Jackie Dragons bask in the sun on the Granite Boulders, Water Dragons laze around the creek holes, Bee Eaters flit through the air with a distinct chirp, A Black Snake suns itself along the grassy creek bank, Lambs dot the hills in the horizon, Tiny flowers reach for the sky, Blossoms are blooming all over town and when you are back to wearing single layers through the day you know Winter is definitely over. Birdsong fills the quiet reminding us that Spring has well and truly sprung 🌸🌻🌼.

With the last day of Winter behind us, I figured it was time to get out in the garden and start spring prepping. Finishing repotting the tube stock was the first task at hand, then it was a full round of different fertilisers for all the various trees and herbs around the paddocks. With new shoots already appearing on our newly planted bare rooted trees and lots of new spring growth on all of the olives trees, the garden is coming alive again after its Winter dormancy. The hardest part will now be trying to keep the hounds from exploring the rocks and creek beds, especially after meeting Mr Black the other morning basking in the sun. But what joy it is to see the wild flowers popping up everywhere and to watch all the birds return with their array of colours and birdsong. And yes I do think we are in for a very warm Spring indeed…

Catching up with great friends on Saturday at the new winery Meteora in Ballandean was a lovely treat after finally finishing the slab earlier in the week. With two birthday girls celebrating, we all enjoyed a lovely glass of Rose and yummy Mediterranean style meals for our lunch. With sweeping views across the vineyards to the surrounding hills and beautifully landscaped gardens, Meteora is a wonderful spot to sit back and relax with great company.

Admittedly not much shedding actually happened this last week. Well in fact, no shedding happened this last week. Feeling quite exhausted after all of the prep and then pour of the slab, we have had a few well deserved slow starts and have spent all week just tidying up around the house area as well as spending quite a bit of time in the garden catching up on jobs to do. Jason has also spent quite a bit of time keeping the concrete hosed down to ensure a slow cure and has also been trying to keep the dogs from using the slab as a dance floor.

Now feeling much more energetic and enthusiastic, we can focus on starting back on the shed whilst we await the next couple of weeks for the slab to fully cure and for our frame to arrive.

Let’s go shedding…

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🍻…