Winter is back ....

One could be forgiven for thinking that Spring was making an appearance with the peach trees flowering and the mulberry trees setting fruit, well up til now that is.  Winter is back and all this week our place has been a blanket of white ice in the mornings, yep it had DD and I fishing around for our beanies and gloves once again. 

Life on the farm has been very busy and at times just down right kaotic! I mean really what happened "to the simple life" ?  Our DS (the recent fledgling) was  home for a visit, gosh it was sure good to see him again....sigh....sigh... 

Of course these were basically just fleeting glimpses in between dashing out the door.  This time round he was able to fence his house yard and set up his orchard which now is home to five fruit trees.  Oh and he did like the reno youngest DD and I managed to complete before his arrival.

So anyway I'm not going to go into great detail of what we have been up too during my absence from blog land ......   however we did make 10kgs of Polish sausage.

Making the Polish sausage

Three and a bit hours later the sausage is turned in the smoker.

With the help of our local fire brigade, we burn't off a few paddocks to reduce our fuel load  (This is also called hazard reduction burning) and these areas will be prepared and planted with pasture for the animals.

Our local brigade which includes our family burning off.

Hosted a garden tour through our permiculture garden which isn't as productive as I would like but has been reclaimed from the wild never the less. The mint however, still lives on ....grrrr....  I had thought that all the winter vegetables would just bolt to seed due to our balmy Spring weather but you just never know.......

My heifer "Miss Molly" is yet to calve, her due date was the 1st of August and I have now lost all hope of the calf being a heifer, boohoo ("Cry me a river" as DD would say).  My neighbour is happy because we made a deal that should it be a bull calf he will keep it for breeding purposes for his herd, different bloodlines and all that.  The other little problem niggling in the back of my mind is that DH  has yet to build my milking bales and when I voiced (translated - nagged) my concerns he assured me "the job extends to the time allowed".  (This will be interesting she said with tongue in cheek)  ........ Tick Toc