Skip to main content

Farm update - December 2013

November is the last month of spring and you can tell that Summer is approaching.  Its getting hot and humid and we've had regular storms, including hail.  In the space of four weeks the grass has gone from crunchy brown to bright green.  The cows seem very happy.  And our dam at Eight Acres is full again.

Donald is looking good
Its been my first full month of weekdays in Brisbane.  So far I think we are going ok, Pete seems to have kept the garden going and all the animals happy, and we've both had lots of real food to eat.

Cheryl and Chime helping with the chickens
Actually, I don't think there's much to tell you.  The chickens are laying (and I've found a very lucrative market for the eggs in Brisbane), we are milking Bella once a week, Nancy is growing, Molly's udder is shrinking, Monty is weaned and in the neighbour's paddock with Benny and Romeo, the cows at Cheslyn Rise have had 11 calves between the 25 of them, we still have six guinea fowl, and I think the dogs are enjoying more time with their mate Pete.  And most exciting of all, my article for Grass Roots was published in the Dec/Jan edition.

The chickens helping to clean up some garden trimmings
I wrote about the garden here (Pete's done a great job looking after it).

The guinea fowl checking out the same pile, they didn't eat any....
And here's an interesting blog about permaculture and cycling
Pete planting millet, fingers crossed we got the timing right

And finally, a free doco about the relationship between food and health.

How was your November?  What are you planning for December?
Labels:

Comments

  1. Goodness, Donald is looking extremely good. He looks like that bull in Wall Street NY.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. haha, yes and he always seems to be a healthiest animal on the property.

      Delete

  2. Looking forward to seeing your grass roots article. How exciting!

    ReplyDelete

  3. Isn't the fresh green from rain a delight for everyone. I have to say Donald looks fantastic!

    I wanted to invite you to come visit my blog and see what I'm excited about! Plus perhaps entice you to enter my book giveaway. :)

    ReplyDelete

  4. Isn't it amazing how the season has changed! I am going to lock the horse up in the yard and hand feed because all this sweet green grass is making her too fat.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. haha, it changes so quickly doesn't it, we can have dry one week, green the next and then dry again if it gets hot.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Thanks, I appreciate all your comments, suggestions and questions, but I don't always get time to reply right away. If you need me to reply personally to a question, please leave your email address in the comment or in your profile, or email me directly on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com

Popular posts from this blog

What to do with eight acres

Behind the scenes of my blog I can see the search terms that led people to find my blog.  It can be quite interesting to look through them occasionally and see what people are looking for.  Most of them involve chicken tractors, but another question that comes up regularly is “what can you do with eight acres?” or “how much land is eight acres?”.  Today I will try to answer this question.

Of course it is a very broad question, there are lots and lots of things you can do with eight acres, but I’m going to assume that you want to live there, feed your family and maybe make a little extra money.  I make that assumption because that’s what I know about, if you want to do something else with your eight acres, you will need to look somewhere else.

If you haven’t chosen your land yet, here a few things to look for.  Focus on the things you can’t change and try to choose the best property you can find in your price range.  Look for clean water in dams, bores or wells, either on the property …
8 comments
Read more

Growing and eating chokos (chayotes)

Cooking chokos (not be confused with another post about cooking chooks) has been the subject of a few questions on my blog lately, so here's some more information for you.
Chokos - also known as Chayote, christophene or christophine, cho-cho, mirliton or merleton, chuchu, Cidra, Guatila, Centinarja, Pipinola, pear squash, vegetable pear, chouchoute, güisquil, Labu Siam, Ishkus or Chowchow, Pataste, Tayota, Sayote - is a vine belonging to the Cucurbitaceae family, along with pumpkins, squash and melons, with the botanical name Sechium edule.


The choko contains a large seed, like a mango, but if you pick them small enough it is soft enough to eat.  If you leave the choko for long enough it will sprout from one end and start to grow a vine.  To grow the choko, just plant the sprouted choko and give the vine a structure to climb over.  In summer, the vine will produce tiny flowers that will eventually swell into choko fruit.  The vine doesn't like hot dry weather.  And it doesn&#…
18 comments
Read more

Making tallow soap

For some reason I've always thought that making soap seemed too hard.  For a start the number of ingredients required was confusing and all the safety warnings about using the alkali put me off.  The worst part for me was that most of the ingredients had to be purchased, and some even imported (palm oil and coconut oil), which never seemed very self-sufficient.  I can definitely see the benefits of using homemade soap instead of mass produced soap (that often contains synthetic fragrance, colour, preservatives, and has had the glycerine removed), but it seemed to me that if I was going to buy all the ingredients I may as well just buy the soap and save myself all the hassle.  For the past several years I have bought homemade soap from various market stalls and websites, and that has suited me just fine.
Then we had the steer butchered at home and I saw just how much excess fat we had to dispose, it was nearly a wheel-barrow full, and that made me think about how we could use that…
34 comments
Read more