Bredbo Valley View Farm

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Archive for the ‘field days’


New to the family

So the fun continues - we have a new family member, George. George is a two week old Merino Lamb. Our friend Jane sent the Cook an internet add for him yesterday, I was told to call the guy and see if we could get him. Irony is that the lamb originally came form the property behind us and is from one of Buzz’s sheep. So we picked it up in Canberra and drove home with it sitting on the Cooks lap whilst she slept all the way home.

It has been adopted by Ben, or more accurately it adopted Ben and is now living in our house. So far this is the largest of the farm animals to make it into the house. He’s quite charming and sweet, has really long legs and he’s frisky, loud and tenacious.

Looks like I‘ve sold the remainder of the big piglets. This will give me a bit of breathing space to have some of the porkers fattened up for processing. It’s supposed to rain today, the weather reports now say tonight – hopefully it’ll happen soon.

I’m off to a Natural Sequence Farting field day on Sunday – it’s out at Braidwood which about 140km from here so looks like an early morning. I’ll write it up for Monday if I’m not too tired.

Hopefully Monday will see the return of Photo’s as well – still got to send the Cook off to do a few extra shifts so we can replace the old one. I’m looking forward to that!

Posted on on November 7th, 2008 in conservation, field days, merino sheep | No Comments »

What - no pictures????

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.

Posted on on November 5th, 2008 in berkshire pigs, field days, free range pigs, organic gardening, weather | 3 Comments »

Another coldie

Another cold morning with snow falling on the Tinderry’s as I drove into town. The Jeep was hauled off to Cooma this morning, looks like a new water pump and hoses.
Beccy the calf has been grazing with the other cattle and has settled into the herd well. She is drinking more now, probably because she gets more exercise.

Another piglet has been singled out for special attention. The Cook is working on a way to cope with these without having to bring them into the house – good one!

Forgot to mention the other day, the Cook and I were driving home from Michelago when we came across a small herd of deer crossing the road – this is the second time this year I’ve seen them on the highway.

Today’s picture is of a sheep I saw at the Murrumbateman Field Days - I’m not sure what breed it is, but probably a mohair type.

Posted on on October 23rd, 2008 in berkshire pigs, cattle, field days | No Comments »

The Jeep is dead - long live the Jeep!

The Cook was looking back over the Blog on the weekend and quips “there is always something happening isn’t there!” This week end was nothing unusual. I arrived home Friday night and passed the Cook at the gate – it’s nearly dark and she’s off to work. “The bull is down on Buzz’s lucerne paddock over the back, you’ll have to go move him onto the river for the night.” Right, I don’t know Buzz’s lucerne paddock, where the gates are, or where in the paddock the bull is. So off I go on another little adventure in the darkness. I get down to the paddock and the bull is standing by the road – lucky me, I chase him around for an hour until I stumble across a gate and I move him on – ever notice how lucerne paddocks are always full of snakes! Kids are sitting down eating dinner when I get home – Harry couldn’t wait so they helped themselves.

I had to go on down to the oats paddock and do some fencing first up Saturday, by the time I’d trodden on a couple of Brown Snakes and chased a couple with the shovel I was feeling a little lonely. I fixed the fence and headed back to the house. The whole time I was there, the bull was watching me from across the river.

A fellow was supposed to be coming to look at a boar, but he never showed up. I missed the land care meeting as well, but I had a chance to catch up on a few things around the pig yards.

We evicted the piglets from the house; I don’t think they were too impressed. They keep coming up to me and pull my trouser legs for attention.

Sunday morning we were up and at it early – Murrumbateman Field Days. I was up at the crack, about 5:30am to get everything fed and watered so we could meet the Cook in town. We hurried off at about 7:00am but didn’t get far. As we came up to the gate I said to the kids “Car seems to be running a little ruff”, everything seemed OK at that point. About 2km down the road everything stopped – crap!!!! I noticed smoke coming from under the bonnet and thought – crap!!!!! I waited for the Cook to ring – I didn’t have any credit on my mobile, silly me. Our NRMA membership had run out as well.

After about half an hour I decided to try a trick I’d learnt in the Army about moving a vehicle out of danger – and to my surprise it worked. We managed to roll back into town and out the other side until we could turn across the paddock and roll down to the driveway – brilliant, the car won’t be stuck on the side of the road. We got to the house and rang the Cook and filled her in. She’d only had the Jeeps door re-attached the day before. I think this time the Jeep is well and truly dead.

So finally about 11:00am we arrived a the Field Day, had a look around, bought a book on Sheep Basics, and spoke to a guy about irrigation. We headed off home about 3:00pm to do some sheep mustering.

We needed to move the sheep up to the yards to spray them for lice and get them out into the paddock. They have de-wormed and are ready to take on the African Love Grass. The Cook and the two boys haven’t had a lot of experience with sheep, but they love getting into it and having a go. We got them into the yard no problems and the spraying went well. The Cook and Harry got bowled over a couple of times (I can laugh now they’re not here) but apart from that it went smoothly. The sheep are now out in the big paddock happily eating away.

On the way into the yards we picked up the goats, which ended up pretty handy as they led the sheep into the yards. Poor old Pricilla has lost her mate however, with Sheepy leaving the comfort of the house yard to flock with her own kind.

Once the sheep were done there was only getting all the pigs back into their own paddocks left to do. Of course when ever we go out the fence goes off and everything goes everywhere – I should have quessed.

Posted on on October 20th, 2008 in Biodynamics, farming, field days, goats, merino sheep | No Comments »

Have a good weekend

Well it was all excitement when we got home last night. The Boar had moved in with all the sows and – well – the breeding program is in flux again. The cattle decided that the front paddock wasn’t filling their needs and moved out the back – Calamity Jane went out on her horse and rounded up all bar the young bull – he’s still over on Buzz’s oats. The older bull was found stagging around with a mob of Buzz’s Hereford cows – I’ll cop a heap of misery for that.

There are a few things to do tomorrow, some ones coming to look at pigs, I’ve got to do a rubbish run, now I need to go do some fencing out the back as well. There’s also the Land Care meeting in town. Sunday will be written off with the Field Day and back to the grind Monday.

Looking forward to the Field Day, catch up with a few people, see some new tractors and drawl, check out some Wiltshire sheep and have a steak sandwich – yep what more can a bloke ask for?

Posted on on October 17th, 2008 in cattle, field days, horses | No Comments »

Horsing around

I apologise for nothing yesterday, I was run off my feet doing things for Ben. Yesterday was a great day with 8mm of rain on our freshly planted potato’s, garlic, corn and oats. The evening was rather cool; the Cook was up all night making ginger bread men for Ben to take to school today.

We had finally located the spare part for the Jeep door so maybe we can get this fixed before the weekend. This weekend is, of course the Murrumbateman field days, our yearly pilgrimage to the North of the region. I’m hoping to get some tools, a bit of fencing gear and maybe another John Deere hat as the young fellow keeps wearing my other one to school. The Cook is planning an assault on the plants – more trees I think.

Daylight saving is great. I can be out in the paddocks until 8:30 or later, depending on dinner. It really helps with getting the mundane things done which take up time in the mornings leaving longer on the important things.

Last night we noticed that a horse form the TSR was in the front paddock, the Cook went out to put him back with his mates but noticed he’d hurt himself. I took a torch down and had a good look at the wound; it was rather serious, bleeding a steady amount with a rather large downward gash and flap. We rang the owners, who came down and had a look at it, they put the horse back into the paddock, and hopefully they will come back and treat it this morning.

The piglets residing in the house are being evicted on the weekend – the Cook has had enough. But honestly they do stink a little, unlike the first lot which were rather odourless in comparison.

Looks like I’ve sold more pigs, I’ve got two more orders one for a grown Boar and another for five piglets – thanks allclassifieds.

Today’s photo is of Maia the pony we are looing after for Jane.

Posted on on October 15th, 2008 in cooking, farming, field days, horses | No Comments »