May weekends have been dominated by lantana spraying and installing insulation. Neither of which are much fun, but had to be done. Since our little bull Donald died from lantana poisoning, we realised we had to take it more seriously. There's not much lantana at Eight Acres, we dug all that out when we first arrived, but at Cheslyn Rise, we knew we had a few bushes, and then when we went looking for it, we found it EVERYWHERE, and huge bushes 2m high and 2m wide. We decided we needed to get it under control quickly, so spraying was the best option (and after that we can start chipping out the smaller plants as we find them). In total we spent four days and sprayed 800 L of mixed up spray using our tractor sprayer. The only good part was that while we were walking through the bush looking for lantana, we saw some areas of our property that we had never been to before! I am hoping we can return for more peaceful walks without all the chemical handling gear.
We have finished the insulation, and a few other little jobs, we we are hoping for a final inspection soon. (House update back here).
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| giant white leghorn hens! I don't know how they stay so white... |
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| the chicks that hatched with the guinea fowl keets, we are hoping that the chickens have a calming influence on the guineas |
Garden update here, in summary, there are an awful lot of chokos....
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| Taz with her new toy.... |
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| ....until Cheryl took it off her. Cheryl likes balls... |
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| Here's some dead lantana, I told you there were some big bushes! (I didn't want to put this ugly photo up first) |
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| and putting the tin back on the roof after installing insulation was a challenge |
Remember how I said I was going to write an ebook about our house cows?? Well I did write something (40 pages!) but then we kept having more experiences and I just kept adding to it. The past few weeks I've been reading back through it and trying to come to a final version. New experiences can go into future editions, I've just got to get this thing finished! I started another blog site to sell the ebook from - http://housecowebook.blogspot.com.au/ - there's not much there yet, and I'll tell you here when its ready, but its really is coming soon, I promise!
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| Here's Taz again with another toy, she wouldn't let thin one go, but Cheryl wasn't interested anyway, its not a ball |
This is where I've got up to with knitting the alpaca wool I wound into balls. I'm using big needles, so its growing quickly, and mistakes are not obvious. I keep getting lost in the pattern, so I wrote it out and then I have a post-it note to keep track of which row I just finished. How do you keep your place in a knitting pattern?
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| Here's Pete's birthday cake cooked in the woodstove - my article on woodstove cooking is in the latest Grass Roots magazine |
Sustainable small holding - lots of permaculture info
Videos about essential oils from Weedem and Reap
And finally, its time to think ahead to Plastic Free July. If you haven't done it before, check out their website and register, give it a go, you will be surprised by how much plastic you use and how easy it is to reduce your plastic waste. We will be joining in again and I'll be posting about how we reduce plastic all through July. If you want to start preparing, Madeleine at NZ Eco Chick has some great posts to get you started.
How was your May? What are you plans for June?
How wonderful to have so much land that there are areas you're still discovering. And good luck with the last bit of your e-book, it's a great achievement!
ReplyDeleteyes! its quite fun to explore, if only we had more time to just stroll around :)
DeleteI discovered that the lantana here in N. NSW, the pink variety is not poisonous to cattle. I have seen our cattle eat it occasionally. However, one part of our property has acres of the stuff which we are gradually tackling. Huge shrubs we grab out with the tractor and chop down, other areas we manually break up and stack in piles. 6 - 12 months later it breaks down and makes good mulch. Fortunately we are retired so have the time to play with it, and we too discover things, like stone walls, on our place we never knew were there. Joy
ReplyDeleteSounds like hard work! I have read that some varieties are less poisonous (ie don't contain as much of the poison), but I don't trust any of it now!
DeleteHey Liz. I am a technology nut and a very slow knitter, so I downloaded an app for my iPad called stitch minder. It is great because I tend to put knitting down and not pick it up again for months. It took me three years to knit a beautiful cable knit jumper. Turns out I knit with such tight tension it didn't fit me. My 11 year old is wearing it now!
ReplyDeleteOh no! at least you had someone who could wear it. I will have to look at that app :) I am finding that my low tech paper method works ok though.
DeleteTaz and Cheryl are adorable.
ReplyDeleteTaz has a look very much like our Jayda , her ears are lovely aren't they !
yeah, she's a cutie :)
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