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Three years of blogging!


Can you believe that I've been writing this blog for three years now?  At this time I always say how amazed I am by how much has changed in a year and how much we have done.  Maybe next year I will be amazed by how little has change, I doubt it though, this just seems to be the way things go.  So if you haven't been keeping up, here's a quick summary of the highlights of 2013:

Dec 2012 - we hadn't had any significant rain for 2 months and things were looking dire.  We also bought a house.  Just the house, not the land!

the house we bought
 Jan 2013 - we sold the steers, we sold our Braford weaners, and finally it rained!  300 mL on the Australia Day weekend (25th Jan) and work was cancelled for one day (paid work that it, not farm work).  I made tallow soap.  We got guinea fowl keets.

the guinea fowl keets

the flood
Feb 2013 - we had a holiday in NZ, we got a bore done at Cheslyn Rise and struck water

NZ's Mt Cook

Mar 2013 - our wee Molly cow had her first calf, Monty and while she wasn't overly keen on being milked at first, she produced so much I had to make a cheese a day to keep up!  We were pleased to have trained our first house cow from a calf.  We also hatched a few chickens.

baby chickens
baby Monty
Apr 13 - Planted winter crops, including forage oats

May 13 - we worked on clearing a pad for house and I did lots of knitting.

arm warmers
Jun 13 - we separated Romeo from Bella so she could dry up and he could be weaned and I shared some thoughts about growing food in the sub-tropics

crazy guineas growing up

Jul 13 - after months of planning our house finally moved to Cheslyn Rise!  And we participated in Plastic Free July.

our house on the move


Aug 13 - we butchered Frank(furter) and Bella had her calf Nancy
Baby Nancy
Frank(furter) and the butcher
Sep 13 - planted summer crops and I took you on a tour of the house

these purple potatoes were a pleasant surprise!
Oct 13 - I got another job, so I had 3 weeks off to work on the house and farm with Pete, especially our cattle yards and the steps for the house

our new and old cattle yards

new steps!
 Nov 13 - I started my new job in Brisbane, there during the week and back to Nanango for the weekend. 

Chime (on  right) with Cheryl
Dec 13 - getting used to our new schedule and looking forward to a break!   This last Monday we lost Chime, aged 12, and we all miss her companionship and the little dance she did every morning while she waited for her breakfast.

Chime

How to follow my blog and some stats
Everyone seems to like to use different technology and follow blogs in different ways, so I do try to cater for everyone.

If you have a blog on blogger yourself, the easiest way to follow if to join 250 others and click the follow button.

If, like me, you changed over to bloglovin when google reader was shut down, just to cover all the other blogs that aren't on blogger, you can join the 280 that follow me on bloglovin here.

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I've just recently spent some more time on Pinterest and set up some boards for the blog, I can't promise that it will be as reliable, but I am trying to remember to pin each post, and then you could just follow the boards that you are interested in, along with 105 other followers here.

And finally, if that's not enough for you and you just want a plain old email of every post so you don't miss out, you can enter your email address on the sidebar of the blog through feedburner with 121 others!

This is my 423rd published blog post, I have over 2630 published comments (some of them my own replies) and I usually get around 600-700 pageviews per day, with a total of over 350,000 pageviews since I started.

I told you all that because, I wouldn't bother to write this blog if I didn't have readers, and most of all, commenters, so I wanted to thank you all for reading, following, pinning, liking and commenting and generally joining in with the conversation, that's what keeps this blog going.  That's what makes it fun and worth doing, when I feel like I'm teaching, learning, entertaining and adding something useful to all that information out there on the internet!


Cheryl enjoying a cucumber
My chicken tractors are still the most popular post of all time, now followed by the worm farm, the guinea fowl, the one about me not washing my hair and our wonderful woodfire.

I want to thank you all for your support and sympathy after Chime died, it really helped us to know that we weren't alone in missing our dog.  Thanks for all your kind words.

And now my friends, I think we all deserve a break, its been a big year, and 2014 doesn't look like its going to be any different, I'm going to have a few weeks off, but I think I've left you with plenty of reading.  See you next year for more permaculture, house cows, herbs and knitting!

How was your year and what are you planning to take on next year?

Comments

  1. Merry Christmas Liz. A year of enjoyable reading from your lovely blog. I look forward to reading more next year. May the seasons be good to you on your farm.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Merry Christmas Liz & Pete. I really enjoyed our cheese podcast that we did together, and of course all of your wonderful blog posts throughout the year.

    Looking forward to popping back in 2014!

    Gav x

    ReplyDelete
  3. Merry Christmas Liz. Thank you for all the work you put into your blog this year. Looking forward to reading in 2014.
    Enjoyed your article in Grassroots as well :)

    Cheers, Karen near Gympie

    ReplyDelete
  4. Congratulations on the three year anniversary.

    Wow, you seem to have fitted so much more into your year than I have LOL Reckon you really deserve a break!

    A Happy, peaceful and restful Christmas to you from South Africa.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well done on your blog - it's one of my favorites and I try to take the time to read what you've been up to as I do learn from what you've written. I might have to look back on all we've done this year, it's amazing how much changes in a year and you've had a busy one!
    Look forward to reading in the new year. have a good Christmas
    Kev x

    ReplyDelete
  6. What a great post, thanks Liz. It really is fun to see one's year in perspective like this. Congratulations on having such a popular and successful blog. It's a credit to you because you are offering a valuable resource to like minded folks around the world.

    Also wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Congratulations on 3 years! WHY have I not bookmarked your blog before? I love reading it and always happen on it by another blog. So I've bookmarked it on my site good and proper so I can keep up with all of your fabulousness.

    BTW - I feed my dog cucumbers, too. And tomatoes, carrots and watermelon. She loves it!

    ReplyDelete

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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

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