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🍻…