Bredbo Valley View Farm

Boy was it hot yesterday – 29 Degs, the pigs drank nearly all their water troughs dry by 4:00pm. And here I was thinking I wouldn’t have to fill them up twice a day anymore. I sent a bunch of emails off to different people talking about projects and grant applications but I’ve received nothing back as yet.

I was out watering the truffle trees last night, I noticed that the tree in amongst all the weeds and grass was growing really well. The others, growing in the cleared area, with tree guards and stakes are all doing poorly. I think I’ll stop mowing around them and see what happens over the next couple of months. If only I could show you a picture!!!

George the Lamb and Beccy the Calf are going well. George now sleeps where Archer the dog used too. Archer now sleeps outside on his chain. Today I’m heading into the feed store for a weeks supply, must remember we need milk powder for the poddy’s.

It’s hot again today; hopefully we get a cool change tonight. Everything is brown, and so very dry – even the hardy Love Grass is dying. We’ve lost a couple of the older sheep, we’ve found three dead so far. But hat was to be expected, they were all in pretty ordinary shape when we picked then up.

The Cooked has hatched another brood of chicks, about fourteen in all, I think we have nearly thirty chicks running round – hopefully they make it to egg laying age and beyond. The cook is putting in the Turkey eggs next, we’ve got room – really, there’s no animals sleeping on my side of the bedroom YET!

Weekends are wonderful things. I get to do all those things I couldn’t do on my own during the week. Saturday started early with the Cook harassing me out of bed – “You need to get up” she said, “all the pigs are in together”. Tiberius’s breeding program required him to service a couple of the sows that morning – sorry I hadn’t read the farm notice board before I went to bed.

So whilst we were out putting pigs back I caught the little Boar that I was taking out to Michelago that morning as well. The little bugger put up quite a fight, and I’ve got a good scar on my nose to prove it – I should learn to hold them better, he took me by surprise and head butted me right on the bridge of the nose. We stuck him in the trailer, threw him some bread, and headed inside for breakfast.

About 10:30am we headed off to Michelago and after driving around for a while, stop for directions and finally found the property we were looking for. It was a nice property set right in the base of the Tinderry Mountain Range. They had an old run down farm house and lots of lovely old trees scattered across their property, it was a beautiful setting. We left the Boar happily getting to know his two new companions – a pair of Saddle Back sows. From there it was into to twon to drop the kids of for yet another sleep over.

Sunday I was up early again and off to a field day for the Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) Association out at Muldoon Farms on the eastern side of Bungendore. I was stopped twice by the police on the way, firstly for a vehicle check at Hume and then for a breath test just outside Bungendore.

The field day was very inspiring; Peter Andrews was on hand to talk about NSF and how he applied his ideas to the Muldoon farm local catchment area. The results they had achieved after just two years were very impressive and it was clearly making a difference to the biodiversity of the creek and surroundings. Peter spoke about pioneering species, trees that will grow anywhere, but after tie die out and are replaced by native species. These pioneer plants help return the soil and environment back to a point where the conditions are optimal for the native plants to regain dominance in the landscape.

He also talked about how the system helped to contain fire and over time reduce the incidence of fire in the landscape. There was also a lot of talk about weed control and the role of local government and their development decisions. Overall it was pretty positive.

Having had a day or so to think about what I saw yesterday, and contemplate what it all really means I can’t help but wonder. There was obviously a lot of money involved in the property that the field day was held on – would of the project gone ahead if there wasn’t a government grant to pay for the work? Would of the owner paid for the work out of his own pocket with out the grants? Cynical I know, but, business people are just that business people.

It was nice to see that he K2C coordinator was there taking notes, it’s important that as many people from as many diverse interest groups see what is possible. After all we are all working towards the same goal in the end.

Anyway, the Cook and I will battle on, we’ll take away the lessons we’ve learnt here and apply them where we see fit. I think our own mix of conservation farming, sustainable farming and elements of the NSF will get us to where we want our property to be in the long run. Hopefully the kids will appreciate all our work when they take over the farm.

Has it only been a week? How time flies. Lots has happened over the past week, we’ve had hot dry winds, sold some pigs and fixed the Jeep. Everything is drying out really quickly now, twice last week we had hot winds over 90kph lasting all day.

The Jeep has come back, new water pump and all – works wonderfully. Unfortunately we had to sell one of the children to pay for it. The pig paddocks are bare dirt at the moment; hopefully we will get some new fencing in over the next couple of weeks which will help solve that problem. They are still digging the incredible holes in the yard – for what purpose I don’t know, but it doesn’t appear to be escape as I first thought.

I managed to get out into the back paddocks and clear away a lot of the brier bushes over the past week as well. These things are extremely thorny rose like bushes that grow anywhere. I’ve noticed that they are growing right across the district, but I am amazed they are growing so well in the dry.

OK, you might have noticed that here is no photo today – well, we had a little accident with the camera – did I say we? No I meant the Cook had an accident with the camera. She was going into Cooma with the kids, I’d left the camera on the front seat of the car so she could take some photos. Not wanting to take the camera to Cooma (it was a high end Sony DSC F757) she thought she’d put it in the washing machine for safe keeping. When she got home, she decided to do a load of washing – chucked it in and off she went. The morale to this story is that digital camera’s don’t survive the spin cycle. So I don’t know what I’ll do for the short term, I wonder how many pigs I need to sell to get a new camera.

So I was pretty upset. Anyway, this weekend we went to an open farm day at an Organic farm over near Gundaroo (that’s near where we got the sheep from). It was an interesting day and we ran into a lot of people we knew, and caught up with others we hadn’t seen for quite a while. It was interesting to see how other people approached the market garden side of things, we took away a few good ideas and the Cook walked away with some new tools. Looks like more fencing and a lot of irrigation to start putting in.

The sheep are settling in to their new paddock, we’ve lost two that we know of. Probably from age, but I’ve got to go up and take a look at them tomorrow to see how they are holding up. Hopefully I’ll get them down for crutching and drenching in the not too distant future.

Beccy the calf is a bit of a wag. Harry has been feeding her lately but he went for a camp over the weekend. So we went out to feed her, she had come right up to the back of the house looking for dinner, she had her tongue out ready to take the bottle but just wouldn’t. She wouldn’t take it from the Cook, Ben or me. As soon as Harry arrived home the Cook gave him the bottle to feed her with and she went straight onto it. I think she has problems!

Speaking of problems – I’ve got to find a better way to capture piglets. Our first paying customer arrived on Saturday to pick up her piglets, at the time they were still running around in the paddocks. I hadn’t fed them in the morning figuring I’d wait and feed them when she arrived. This was fine until I caught the first pig and put it in her horse float. After that I couldn’t catch any more. At one stage Ben was hanging onto one whilst being dragged across the paddock. All the two ladies could do was stand and watch the commotion. Anyway we finally got three of the four piglets caught and put in the float. The final piglet, a girl eluded us for about half an hour and three loaves of bread. Finally, she ran out steam – or weighted down by bread and we caught her. Next time I’ll have to feed them lots and try catching them whilst they are asleep.

Well it’s Tuesday already, the next lot of pigs have left the farm bound for Borrowa. They were a little easier to catch then the first lot, which was lucky because both the kids were at school. The two groups of people who came out both had similar stories to ours about run down farm houses with no water and atrocious plumbing, bad electrical wiring and incredible cold. As bad as that all sounds, it was nice to know other people share our experiences – and survive. So I’m nine pigs lighter and have money to expand the pigopylous - what could possibly go wrong to muck this up!

BTW – lots more happening, just haven’t had tie to put it all here yet so keep checking back for updates – photo less updates that is.