Signed & Sealed

But not yet delivered!

Today saw the signing of the contract for the sale of our block of land. Ahead is the exchange and then the wait until we can settle. The interested party mentioned in the previous post came back to us after some time with a revised offer which was much closer to the mark. A polite and swift round of negotiation later and we were theoretically over the line. Less than a month later and we are two inky scrawls even closer.

Some time in the near future we're going to need to get out there and collect all the "resources" that I'd so lovingly gathered and carted and stored out there. I'd say some of it will go to the tip, but the majority of it is potentially useful, and can be used almost as well here as it could have been there. I'm hoping at least that I can bring the sawmill back, it's always been pleasing to me to know that I'm in possession of such a deadly implement, even if it's not hooked up to a power source...

The whole experience has certainly been a learning one. We've got a fair way to go to get back on track, but this is the first positive step in that direction, and it's exciting to finally be taking it. As much as we will miss the land, we wont miss the grief that went along with it.

Things have otherwise been trundling along, the new duck house I'm building is slowly progressing, and our bowls pairs game went well last weekend. This Sunday we will be in the semi-final, which is exciting for a novice. Hopefully I'll also get the duck house closer to completion as well.

And So It Goes

It's been almost a month to the day since the last post, and I can't say a lot has happened in that time. I'll be meeting with the real estate agent on Tuesday to organise for the block to be put on the market. We had had some interest from someone that was looking to buy the neighbouring property, who wanted our block for it's access to the water, but in the end they decided they wanted to be closer to the nearby city. At the time it was a positive sign, because selling the block is going to be challenging, to put it politely.

We're holding off marketing this place now, until we sell the other block. We need a place to live while we wait to clear that one out and consolidate our lives. Just got to hope everything doesn't come crashing down around our ears in the meantime, on both the personal and global levels. It's still up on the internet site, and if it sells, well, that's the way it's meant to be, but we wont be pushing it via an agent for now.

I finished the tiling in the kitchen, well, almost. DW has asked that we tile the back of the cupboard that faces out into the room, rather than trying to do anything else with it, so the job got a little bit bigger, but it shouldn't take much. It's looking a lot better in there, that's for sure.

The newly planted trees survived a bout of heat and have made it through to our current rainy period. It's still hot, and strangely muggy, but at least we're getting some rain, and all the weeds look so nice and green :-P

Further sad news on the vehicle front, we are now without any kind of work vehicle. After the adventure with the little truck, not two weeks ago the trusty ute died on me, right in the middle of Sydney, on the way home after attending meetings for work. It made it all the way down there okay, but just couldn't struggle back, throwing the timing chain as I was motoring back along the M4. Needless to say this has left us in a pretty tight spot, especially considering we've got so much stuff to move around the place to get all the plans in order. There is something of a synchronicity in this as well, even though a negative kind.

Yet again I'm left wondering about the validity of any of the plans we dream up. The Universe is either challenging us or obstructing us, but it doesn't appear to be giving us anything in the way of clear guidance. The various things I read around the place tell me we're heading towards ever more trying times, yet we find ourselves in a position that is, if anything, even less prepared than we were two years ago. It could well be that that is the message, that we need to clean everything up, get it all sorted out, before we can move forward. It certainly started out by cleaning two useful vehicles (and associated expenses) out of our lives :-) Off to a good start perhaps!?

Framed!

Well folks, it's been a while... and we've certainly had some "exciting" times since the last post.

The weekend after the last post we were at it again out at the new block. I arrived early but only had a couple of odd jobs to do collecting materials together and getting things organised. Once the crew arrived we got started, and despite a couple of scary moments due to lack of adequately robust bracing we got all the portal frames up and a good number of tophats on to hold it all in place. Thanks to the poor quality screws supplied in the kit we'd run out by late afternoon, having thrown about half of them away.


It was late afternoon when we packed up and headed for home, with Brother M following me back on the scenic drive via Canowindra to enjoy an evening of wine and conversation, and home made pizza, at the basecamp (FSF is basecamp if we consider the goal is ascending Australia's rather flat topography by 300m to the new place...)

The following day was one of rest and recovery, and a fair bit of pottering in the back yard. I also nipped into town to pick up some materials to make potato cages, and to try and protect the nursery stock from the ravages of the guinea pigs. I've resisted potato cages in the past for various reasons, but figured I may as well give them a go and see if we can up production on that front.


The intervening week of work was not very exciting (easy to predict given I can't recall mentioning work here too often) but at least it passed swiftly into the next weekend. I went out alone to the block on the Sunday only to find that disaster had struck.

Once again inadequate bracing and not having all the purlins installed had brought us to the brink of destruction. The Saturday night had seen ferocious winds, which continued through the Sunday, and the shed frame was on quite a lean thanks to one of the support ropes snapping. Thankfully it only took about an hour to straighten everything up and re-anchor it all, then I got started putting the last of the purlins in and sorting out some of the mistakes I'd made along the way. In the intervening week I'd splurged on a tek screw gun (so much for simple living!), and bought a big box of real tekscrews. Failure rate is less than 1:10 now, which makes the job a whole lot easier.

By Sunday afternoon, and not too late at that, the shed frame was completed, and anchored a bit more firmly than before. Let's hope it's still standing this Saturday when it's time to start putting some cladding on it. Getting close to completion now!

Once the shed is complete we can clear this place out and really get moving!!


The heat has been taking it's toll in the garden, and DW thinks that mice are also getting into things. Not sure how we're going to deal with that one, the indoor cat is not going to be allowed out for that job. We had trapped the guinea pigs too, but they managed to escape again, so we're back to square one. Ducklings and chooklings are all powering along, it won't be long before we've got to organise accommodation for them all. Speaking of which, we'd better do the same out at the new block before too long. I seriously doubt anyone is going to let us rent and bring along twenty-odd chooks and 9 ducks...

Attempt Number 2

The weekend before last was our first attempt at erecting the shed frame, and let me tell you, it was something of a disaster. I arrived out on site nice and early and got started preparing things. It was the first time I'd loaded the generator onto the truck to take out there, so there was a fair bit of screwing things together to be done before everyone started to arrive at 10am.

Things went well for the first hour, then trouble struck in the form of a generator that ran erratically, allowing at most one screw to be placed before it went off into a flurry of stuttering that prevented anything but hair pulling.

A quick call to Dad who was on his way through Bathurst and I'd arranged for him to purchase one of the cheap and nasty generators from the local big-box hardware stores. The hire company was shut over the weekend, and other loan options were hours away, so the only option was to purchase if we were to salvage anything from the event.

Everyone had arrived by the appointed time, and we got the new generator out and set up, then commenced installing the first frame. All appeared to be going reasonably well (with the exception of a number of missed steps thanks to the panic induced by the loss of the generator, something I was to discover later) but for a few organisational issues. Once that frame was up we started screwing the braces to the second frame and the drill stopped working. Thinking that we'd be smart and put one of the cordless drills on to charge whilst we figured out what to do about the dead drill and we came to realise that the second, new, generator had also failed.

Unbelievable! We tried a few things to get either of them back up and running correctly and ended up sorely disappointed. In the end we unbolted the frame we'd already erected and packed everything up then went for a drive around the place to show Dad, who was experiencing his inaugural visit.

The old generator was in the workshop the next week, the new one is sitting back in it's box waiting to be returned. On Friday I got the call that the generator was ready to be picked up, so I made arrangements to collect it Saturday morning. They gave me the sad news that it was making some strange noises and might not have long to live. My fingers are firmly crossed that it makes it through the next couple of weeks to get the shed finished.

Sunday was spent out at the block again, finishing all of the preparation work that had been neglected in the panic the previous weekend. This time around everything is pretty much ready to go, so it should be a matter of erecting the frames and stitching them together with the tophats. Sounds easy enough on virtual paper, but the experiences of the last attempt have shown me that things don't always go according to plan. I'll let you all know sometime next week how things went!!

Back on the home front, we've now got 11 new oak trees sprouted, and just over a dozen tallow trees. I was able to collect a lot more seed a couple of weeks ago, so as soon as the toilet roll collection is large enough I'll put in another big batch of those.

The baby chickens are growing at an alarming rate, and eating to match, and yesterday we hatched eight out of twelve duck eggs that we've had in the incubator. Some were reluctant to leave their eggs so DW helped them along a bit, but they don't seem any worse for it.

We've planted out the first batch of tomato, zucchini, melons and pumpkins from the glasshouse, though some of the tomatoes are a bit worse for wear (ie dead) as the couple of days after planting got rather warm. I'd tried planting the tommies into half toilet rolls this year, thinking to save on potting mix, but it seems they needed to be potted on anyway so I've exchanged the extra potting mix for stunted plants that keel over when the sun comes from behind a cloud. All is not lost of course, but we'll be a bit behind for tomatoes this year.

We've also got an unusual problem in the strawberry patch. It seems the feral guinea pigs, currently living under the stack of timber in the carport have discovered the patch, and make daily excursions there to feast on the bounty. Time to trap the little fellows and return them to confinement I reckon.

The Madness Continues

It's been a very busy couple of weeks around the place! Between work and play-work there hasn't been a lot of time for much else, but over the weekend I managed to take a few pictures so that you can see what we've been up to, as well as reading the usual verbiage...

The toilet roll seedlings

We did make it out camping, and a great weekend it was. Started out a little windy, but shortly after erecting a screen of tarps to reduce the worst of it it all died down. The night was incredibly cold, and we woke to a thick frost and a case of the shivers which took a while by the fire to subside (I'm sure it wasn't totally due to the wine consumed the night before, the frost must have been partly to blame!) In addition to a long and leisurely walk to the creek we did a bit of digging in the crystal mines and found a few nice specimens, though nothing truly remarkable.

Before leaving we also marked out the new spot for the shed so that the neighbour will be able to pop over whenever he has the time and inclination and level the site for us. The location isn't quite as good as the last with regard to preserving the views, but it shouldn't do too much harm. At the very least it will divide it up into "garden rooms" with framed views lol!

Chooks on patrol

This Saturday just gone I took off out there again, though it was a slow start and I didn't make it out there until 11am. A good part of the early morning was spent welding two pipes into one longer one that was going to be the final stay for the eastern fence of the orchard. I'll admit now that I need a lot of catchup practice on the welding...

The stay went in swiftly upon arrival, so I dove into putting that fence up, being the longest and most daunting. It's only 50m long, but still daunting, so I hate to think what some of the longer ones at 200 - 300 m long will be like, though I might be able to take a few days for them. I had planned to tie salvaged chicken mesh over the top of the hingejoint to stop the goats from getting themselves stuck but pulling the mesh out of the dump turned out to be a whole lot more complicated than I'd anticipated. I ended up wiring the remaining portion of a roll of foot netting over the bigger holes where they usually run into trouble, and finished up the rest with more hingejoint offset enough so the holes are now too small to fit a goat head. I've now only got the 18m and the 30m sides to go. I'm thinking I may need to fork out the money for a roll of netting, though I'm going to try pulling the mesh out of the dump with a winch first.

The eastern fence

I also had a chance to speak to the neighbour, and he thinks he'll be up to do the shed site shortly. Fingers crossed it might be ready for next weekend, then we can begin the joy of digging the holes for the footings! Can't wait!

Spent Sunday getting back into cleaning the farmlet up. As long-time sufferers of this blog may know we were hoping to go on the local market in Spring, which is now here... Still a bit behind that schedule.

Started the day out fixing the front fence up so that it looked more neat, and contemplated the fence that needed to be cut to get the sewer through, and gave up thoughts of trying to repair it after the adventures with the other one (short lengths don't strain well... even after many years of trying) I think we'll get some lengths of pig mesh or sheep yard mesh and make a solid fence that way.

Following fencing we went to the local Show for a while. The kids had a ride on a pony, a few zooms down the jumping-castle cross slippery dip, a browse through the exhibits for the competitions, and a look at the four-odd specimens of poultry entered this year, and the various goats, sheep and cattle. After that it was a jump on a different castle, a dagwood dog each, and then a sit-down in the shade while they judged the junior show princesses and jackaroos, and then held a fashion parade. A choc-top each, which required a fair bit of cleaning up afterward, and we judged the show experience complete for another year, so set off back home.

Orchard in bloom.

A delightful (27 degree) afternoon was spent compiling a load of rubbish for the tip, which was carted off, and then trying to hide the greater amount of stuff that I brought back with me. I'm now the proud owner of a good stack of short pieces of corrugated & colourbond roofing, and a weighty pile of star picket pieces in various lengths. The roofing will be ideal for chook sheds and similar projects, and the old star pickets will be great to cut down for stakes for building garden edging. A most profitable excursion! Rather than unload all that lot I started adding to it all of the remaining outdoor goods that can safely live outside over at the new place, which further helped to clean the place up.

We've decided that as soon as we have the shed built we're going to market, we're not going to worry about the millions of jobs that we could complete in order to try and get a better price. we'd end up staying here forever! If we're going into a rental next then we need a place to store everything, so the shed is a priority, but once that's done, no more excuses!! So maybe there is only 3 or 4 weeks to go? Maybe...

Spring Madness

It's been a while since the last post, busy and exciting times in the lead-up to spring. Last I checked in we'd done some initial work on the new orchard. This has moved along a little bit further, we've got the stays in on two of the posts (major achievement, I know, but we did do some other stuff as well). I'll need to weld a couple more up for the other three posts, then it will be time for some wire.

We spent a great family day out at the block weekend before last, cooked some sausages over the fire and took a leisurely walk down to the creek and then back via the big hill, with a stop-over at the old dump where we scrounged up some interesting bits and pieces.

The seeds for spring also went in that weekend, a variety of things planted up in toilet roll tubes. Only the basil and cucumbers have emerged so far, fingers are crossed for the rest as some of the seed is getting on a bit, highlighting the need to rotate seed more often. The problem faced there is that some types of seed have so much in a pack one could never get through it all before it declines in viability. Might be worth establishing a seed trade network for the spring flush, where half packets of varieties are sent off about the place. A much better approach than planting a tray of four year old seed and losing two weeks waiting for it to fail to germinate.

Last weekend started out rainy and miserable, with patches of sunshine, so after a quick trip out to the block to pick up some firewood we took a trip into town to do some shopping. I'd been working on two old lawnmowers for the last few weeks, trying to get them running reliably, but in the face of wifely displeasure at the ever lengthening lawn and the lack of suitable parts it was decided that a new mower would be the safest course of action. I've had a lot of lawnmowers over the years, but thinking back on it this is only the second one we have ever bought, and the first ever push-mower. The first purchased was the trusty old ride-on we got when we moved out here. Fifteen odd years of patching up and holding together with wishes various old pieces of junk has come to an end and we are now the proud owners of a new mower.

Sunday started out with assembling the new mower and taking it for a quick test run (the lawn was still wet from the rain overnight, and we all know mowing wet grass is bad news). This was followed up with some remedial work demolishing the old septic tank and filling it in, along with the addition of a few bags of lime. Yes, you guessed it, yet another milestone. The Flood Street Farmlet is officially connected to the Cudal Sewer!! No more swampy side paddock in the depths of winter when DW has put one load of washing too many through. No more glorious unsavory smells to chew upon during balmy summer evenings.

Once I was sure I'd survived filling in the tank (the sides of it were foot thick concrete made in the old style, without reo, but virtually indestructible to the tools of a mere mortal. The small sledgehammer is a ruin, swinging the large one almost killed me) it was time to clear out the old tin shed, and repair the door. By mid afternoon I had the truck loaded up with more 'materials' to go out to the block, another pile destined for the tip, and the shed had been updated with a hinged door in place of the sliding one that refused to slide. It's now the home for the bikes so that there is enough room for shiny new mower in the big shed. Amazing what a fellow can achieve when the safety of his new mower is at stake.

The letters to officially surrender our shed DA were sent today. That should eliminate all the fancy roadwork requirements, bringing us back to square one, an intersection and stock grids on the laneway. I'm not sure how we'll tackle those, but we'll find a way. The shed will go up under the exempt development code in a different location. I was lucky enough to talk to a member of the Department of Planning last week, and a member of the Department of Lands just before that, and neither could see any validity in Council's claim that we did not have legal access to the block. Given that, we're willing to try our luck and if Council decides to get stroppy about it we can meet them in court over it. As always, if we knew then what we know now, well...

This weekend, if all goes well, is camping time. It's DS1's birthday and Father's Day and calls for a weekend of celebration. Fingers are firmly crossed for some nice weather so we're allowed to go! Hopefully we can spend Father's Day doing some of the things I love, like preparing shed sites and installing fences!! If we do make it out then it's guaranteed we'll enjoy a quiet evening around the bonfire with a glass of red or three, the perfect cure for the hassals of modern bureaucracy.

Miniature Monolith & Rabbit Stew

The weekend began with a trip out to the block to do some more work on the fence for the orchard area. I had thought there were only two posts available from the cattle yard demolition I'd done some time back, but upon arriving out there and surveying the materials stockpile I discovered the third necessary element for the fence. Fantastic news as I now had enough to get straight on with the job, no money needed!

I completed the first two posts before lunch, one next to the concrete post to hang the gate off, and the other further down the hill to form the south-eastern corner of the interim fence. Later on we will have another gate there to let us into what will be the lower front paddock, but at this stage we can just drive around it, so there is no need to expend the extra resources to put in the extra gate.

House Yard Plan. Orchard to the right, with three vege yards for rotating, chooks digging in between. Combined glasshouse/chookhouse planned as well. The gateway in the pictures below is just above the three rectangular yards, on the left.

The new fenceline will enclose the existing route of the "road" from the front gate, so we're shifting that so it runs along the new fenceline. One problem this created was that it ran straight over the top of an outcrop of rather large stones. After some lunch I thought I'd take a break from digging post holes and got stuck into digging out these obstructions, optimistically expecting that it would only take a short while to clear the taller ones out of the way.

Course of the new roadway looking roughly south from the front gate, the white tape is the fenceline and you can see the gateway-to-be down the end.

Sadly it wasn't to be so easy, and three hours later I'd evicted a sizable boulder from the roadway's course. According to some rough calculations it's about 300kg, which is rather heavy. Once I had it out of it's hole I shifted it back up the hill a bit and decided, rather foolishly, to stand it upright as a feature stone in what will one day be the front yard.

The monolith and attendants

Needless to say, once this was done I had serious second thoughts about setting to digging the third post hole needed to finish up the orchard fence outline. Bravery, or more foolhardiness, overcame me and I began digging, to find that the ground in the spot that had been chosen (on a map drawn about 70km away in the comfort of home) was soft and easy to dig, and right on top of the remains of an older fence post. Where the other posts had taken about an hour each, this one was planted within half an hour. The gods were certainly looking after me!

I took a quick wander around to see if I could bag a bunny for some stew before heading home, and got lucky again. We'd discussed it that morning and wanted to show the lads how a rabbit is skinned and prepared for the pot, so the unlucky bunny was loaded into the truck for the journey home.

Sunday had been selected as a day to be spent at home on the farmlet, catching up on some of the myriad jobs neglected in the drive to get some things done at the new place. A bit of maintenance fixing the laundry flyscreen door to ensure it latches properly, replacing washers in the bathroom (including an educational exercise for the lads and lots of willing assistance) and then it was out into the yard to skin the rabbit which had been hanging overnight. Eldest turned a bit green and headed off to engage in other pursuits, but mid-twin kept up the questions and was most interested to see what went on inside a rabbit.

Once that was done it was time to tackle the machinery crisis we are facing. Our push mower threw a vital component some time ago, taking with it some other vital components, and was considered well and truly dead. We'd borrowed and picked up a couple of other non-functional mowers that I was sure could be restored to working order. I concentrated on yellow Victa, a stylish, fairly recent (10 years or so?!), model that had all it's parts. After cleaning carbies, spark plugs and flushing fuel tanks the problem was isolated to a blocked muffler. Much banging and soaking and blowing later I was able to get it started and running. I promptly re-assembled all the protective and dress cowlings, and then attempted to start it again, without success. Aaaaaarghh! I'd had enough for the day, so it was relegated to the to-do list, once again.

We sampled the rabbit stew, and it was promptly consigned to the category of dog food. The flavours were interesting enough, but after chewing on the same small piece for a good five minutes and not having any impact upon it it was decided that actually consuming it might turn the kids off rabbit stew for life. Next time we'll have to let the creature rest for a few days perhaps? Might have to do a bit of research into preparing rabbits for the pot, something I should have done it prior to starting out! Needless to say, the bolognaise we had in it's place was very nice...

Change In The Weather?

Normal for out here is clouds flowing in from the west, and occasionally dropping a bit of rain on us. Infrequently we might get clouds from the north to east quadrant of the sky that would occasionally drop a bit of rain. I remember sitting at a barbeque with friends across the road a couple of years ago and everyone commenting on the clouds from the north that were dropping a light sprinkle on us, saying how unusual it was.

In the last couple of months we've seen clouds come in from the east to north-east more frequently. At least two or three times this year already, and it always seems to co-incide with the big storms off the coast up in Queensland/Northern New South Wales. I'm not sure whether they will bring us any rain yet, the ones flowing in today don't seem to be putting a lot of effort in, but it's still early yet. They might put in some effort around 3pm. My fingers are firmly crossed as we haven't had any since the camping trip.

A more traditional westerly storm back in March

We didn't end up making good on the plans to go out camping again, ill kids don't mix well with the cold autumn nights that go along with camping out here. Maybe if we'd gone then we would have had more rain ;-)

I also held off on tree planting, I'd like to wait until the fruit plants are dormant, and I'm going to get another load of sheep manure from a local farm so that the other trees can get a good start in life. To be honest I'm also a bit reluctant to stick them in. I want them in the right spots, so I don't have to adapt plans around them later, and it's rather difficult to anticipate every possibility. I did nip out there last weekend and do a bit of measuring and planning. The time between now and planting can be spent designing the best plan of where the various things should go. I've only drawn up a hundred or so variations to date, there can't be many more possibilities!

I also managed to get out into the berry patch here and give it a good weeding and clean-up. Just got to try and keep it that way! Our new chooks have final reached laying age, we got our first egg yesterday, and another this morning, so we're off to a good start. I also had a chance to fire up the forge and hammer some hot metal, very satisfying after all those months. I made a rough imitation of a hand-held weeding hoe, though it didn't turn out much like I'd hoped. I'm going to try making a trowel and a replacement handle for our frying pan as my next projects, hopefully this weekend if time permits.

Kitchens & Furnaces

Yet again the universe has conspired to assist us in it's own peculiar fashion. We received news last week that someone working in at the Totally Local store in Orange had acquired a complete kitchen from a fire damaged home. The kitchen itself was unharmed but for some soot & smoke. Knowing that opportunity might knock a couple of times, but that it was always best to secure a bird in the hand rather than watch any number flutter away into the bushes, we reassigned some priorities, reconsidered finances, and purchased it.

New Kitchen

It's a lovely piece of work under the grime. Looks to be Tasmanian Oak, and modern stuff, well, more modern than our old kitchen, which is the slat fronted doors that were popular some time in the 70's, if then. I carted it home late last Friday, and we set about cleaning it up and deciding where it would all fit in. I should say, the DW set about cleaning it, I set about building the bits that went toward installation, and undertaking said installation. Not that I don't like cleaning... well, maybe I don't :-)

Old Style Kitchen Cupboards

So far we've installed a big pantry unit and a trio of overhead cupboards, one of which contains a rangehood unit. Beautiful stuff! The previous kitchen was sadly lacking in storage space, all of it below-bench and poorly organised. The pantry unit alone has allowed us to move all of the foodstuffs from the other cupboards into it, with room to spare. There is one corner unit we can install, then the rest requires the services of a plumber to set up the tap. That will allow us to remove the last of the old stuff.

We had been contemplating getting new benchtops made up for the old kitchen, they were, to say the least, tacky, having been cobbled together from various pieces as we changed the layout over the years. With a new kitchen, it will be worth the expense of getting benchtops to suit, so that's one of the upcoming projects once we have it all installed.

Due to the way it needs to be laid out we'll be left with an odd corner where we currently have a cupboard and the drawers. As we want to completely exorcise the old kitchen I'm thinking it might be a good spot for a built in shelf unit.

Having a decent kitchen will improve the saleability of the place greatly. The previous kitchen was tres tack to say the least, even dodgoir. The new one might not be tres chic, but it will be a vast improvement.

On the farm front, no news yet on the status of the DA amendment. If the weather is nice this weekend (predicted not, which is understandable given it will be a full moon) we will get out for some more camping and a big tree planting day. Hopefully even if we don't camp there will still be time for a bit of planting.

Getting stuff in the ground and growing out there is very important in the grand scheme of things. We can survive in a tent, but cannot survive without food. Whilst I hope that society will run along smoothly enough that we can complete all our plans, a realist would know that such a dream might be a bit of a stretch. A relatively abundant and safe food supply out there will increase our options and level of security. We could of course live off rabbit and hare, but DW does like her greens!

The big post-peak oil preparation project for this winter was going to be a charcoal making system, to complement the blacksmithing. In my wandering about the place and researches, I've come to the conclusion that this would be better as a combined charcoal-wood oil system. There's no point wasting the byproducts of charcoal making, indeed many of them would be very useful in other areas of the household system. Tar for preserving wood and methanol for making biodiesel for instance.

In thinking about a design for such a system, I thought to myself, why bother creating a furnace just for charcoal making? What else can we use a furnace for? In the past I've thought of metal casting, glass blowing and pottery firing, all of which go toward making a comfortable life. A single well designed furnace unit should be able to accommodate all of these activities. So I've come up with a preliminary design for a multi-purpose furnace. A grating will support either a charcoal/wood oil drum, a crucible for smelting metal, the same for melting glass, or a series of racks to allow pottery to be fired. One piece of infrastructure to suit many tasks!


The main modification I've thought of since doing this model is the inclusion of an extra door above the grating. When working with glass you need access to the crucible to draw out material, whilst leaving the rest nice and warm. Depending on how tall it ends up being it might be possible to do this from the top, but then the glass worker would get rather warm...

I'm also thinking a big lid with a chimney wouldn't go astray. A bit of work should allow the furnace fire byproducts to be harvested for further use as well. It's obviously not the kind of system that will be running all the time, so the outputs cannot be relied upon for critical purposes, but surely the heat or the kinetic energy from the flue gases can be put to some use? Turning a turbine for a bit of extra electricity? Pumping water? Direct heat for a glasshouse? I'm sure something will come up!

Plod, Plod, Plodding

Things are moving along slowly with the new farm, we've partly secured the ability to put a fence around the road reserve rather than having to install stock grids on the lane, which will reduce our costs by a few thousand dollars, expecially given we can do the fencing work ourselves. We've got to submit a DA amendment for this, and also to have a zincalume shed. Yes, even though the DA specified zincalume, and the guy from council said he would re-issue it, they obviously scoured through it to find a way out of that, discovering that I hadn't included the words "not create reflections" in my DA's statement of environmental effects. That I'd said it was mostly not visible, and where visible, only from distances over 400m doesn't seem to count. Council staff are not to be expected to draw the logical conclusion that an invisible building cannot give off reflections.

The shed is to be located up behind the trees, just right of centre.

At the moment I'm waiting on council, yet again, to let me know what to do about the design of the laneway intersection. I need to submit a plan for that with the DA amendment, and it needs to be up to BAR/BAL standard, which means "BAsic Right/BAsic Left" hand turns, or slightly widened at the end for layfolk. The trouble is the sample diagrams council sent me are for roads 6m wide or more, not for country lanes about 3.5m wide. It seems they need to think carefully about this matter, as I've been waiting three days for a response telling me what I should do. All the while our shed is slowly degrading out on the block.

On the money making initiative of council, the laneway plans are a prime example of their efficiency. When I first enquired I was told to submit plans with the DA amendment application, with the basic idea being they would review them and get me to amend them where required. Great idea, another DA amendment fee each time I had to upgrade the plans would make them rich I imagine. So I set off on a different course, chasing up everything that's needed to create a good plan, first time through. That way I shouldn't need to amend it, and so shouldn't need to pay out more money. The problem with that approach is actually getting the information from them in a timely fashion. In five more days it will be a month since they issued the dodgy DA, and all that time has been spent trying to get them to provide authoritative answers to the issues they've raised so that I can submit an amendment. These guys are certainly not improving people's impressions of councils.

Oddly enough I was at a community forum with our current council, and they admitted that they were having trouble with communication, but had identified the issue and were working very hard to improve their performance. I wonder if they could send some notes over to the new council?

I didn't mention it in the last post, but I guess you can gather from the proceeding that we've decided to forge ahead, at least with the initial stages of the project, and will re-assess it at a later date. The DW was feeling very, very down about the whole thing, and was more than keen to pack it in. At the time we went over the fact that there wasn't much chance of us being able to sell the block as the next people to look at it certainly weren't going to take on all these troubles. Thankfully, a bit of optimism has returned. At the very least we will get the access problem sorted and get the shed up. This eliminates the only major problems with council, and so gives us, or the people we sell it to if we decide we've had enough, a free run at building the house, oh, and using the block, seeing as we supposedly shouldn't even be out visiting the block without that legal access via an open laneway. :-|

Just a quick addendum on the current place, the blog is called the Flood Street Farmlet so I should mention it occasionally I guess! We've had a few bits and pieces of fruit, peaches and plums were hit hard by the fly, same for the tomatoes, though we did have some nice ones. Sadly we let a lot of maintenance slide trying to get things going over the new place, and moving stuff from the FIL's out there, which consumed a few weekends. Cucumbers are this years great success story, they've been just great, and we've had some really nice corn. We've had a few drops of decent rain and things are looking good.

We've had few bites on the sale of this place, though quite a few visitors through the website for a good look. I really do need to update that, as we've also completed a lot of outstanding tasks, though of course there are still a lot more...

Windy Old Friday

First, a couple of pictures of the new place for your viewing pleasure.

Below is the beginnings of the orchard, a pair of neat rows of holes, all filled with golden, black coloured, goodness. The rabbits haven't been digging into it as I had feared they might, though the goats have been wandering over it for some reason. Apples will be in row number 1, to the left, row number 2, probably odd fruit like plums, pears and peaches. I intend on at least one more this season, for the grapes. I've got four or five varieties so far, just want some of the wine varieties to cover the drinking side of the grape equation.


Next is a sepia stained picture of the tree we felled. This big fella was a little close to both the house and shed sites for comfort. Being dead it was only a matter of time before it decided to start dropping bits of itself across the landscape. There's a fair bit of firewood in it, and I'm toying with the idea of making one of the big logs into the base for a picnic table, but I'll have to see how I go for time and enthusiasm. Why the arty sepia? It was taken on my mobile, which provides for washed out photos, so a bit of playing around produced something more palatable.


Still no DA for the shed, sadly. I called them up yesterday, then again this morning after they didn't call me back as they had said they would. The news is not too promising. Sure we've been told we should get our DA by the end of next week, but in passing he mentioned that it's taken so long because he had to review the whole history of the previous subdivision and the DA for the house. Then he mentioned conditions relating to road shoulders and access to the block. Seems ominous considering it's just for a darned farm shed for storing some of our stuff out of the weather.

I guess I'm working myself up into a lather over nothing concrete, and fearing the worst, but I've got past experiences to guide this anticipatory enthusiasm. I'll let you know now, if things don't go well when I receive the offending document the blog post to follow will contain the word "rant" in the title to forewarn you :-) If it's really bad I might just insist on council buying the block of land from us and we can pick a spot in a region with a more reasonable bunch of bureaucrats. I'm also toying with the idea of creating a "council watch" website, where we can post horrendous stories of their malfeasance, and view a matrix of their authoritarian-ness, region by region. Might help me if we decide to move on rather than put up with the ...

On a much more positive note, it's Friday. Yes, that's the one. I like posting on a Friday, because it's when half my mind is turned to plans for the weekend, and that invariably involves assessing what has happened before. I've got more to say then, twice as much in fact. Half about what was, half about what may be.

I'm slowly working my way through the seedling trees in the greenhouses, potting them on. The Black Wattles in particular, as they're growing well, and will do even better with an upgrade prior to planting out this winter. I shall occupy some time this weekend finishing that task off (5 down, 24 to go, though I did take care of some other bits of plant life last time, fig and lemon verbena cuttings that have taken well, etc. I actually got around to turning the old chook yard into a new greenhouse, and shifting the plants out of the glasshouse that didn't need to be in there, which then led to the potting on mentioned in the first place. It's a long and winding road for sure.

You can see the remaining wattles to be potted on mid-top of the image above. To the left are three avocado trees, these will need to go back in the glasshouse for winter, they don't like the frost. I've got to pick a nice microclimate out at the new place for them, and that requires a bit of observation through winter. At the bottom are half a dozen or eight or perhaps even nine (lets make it ten shall we?) carob trees, grown up from seed.

On top of that I'm going to get our generator up and running. Did I mention we had a generator? Won by the skin of the teeth on eBay week before last, a beautiful old 16hp Briggs and Stratton motor on a 7.5kVA/6kW Dunlite generator. Should be enough for all our tomtoolery out at the new block, including welding. All it needs is a new spark plug and a bit of fresh fuel (oh, and a new air cleaner element, but that can wait!).

No doubt there'll be a trip out to the block on Sunday, most likely for another round of digging holes for trees... We've got to have somewhere to put all of these, eventually!

What's Happening

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at the farmlet. We've finished off a few more jobs around the place, and also completed our enclosed area out at Lyndhurst. We've even started to fill it up with some of our resource pile, though it's going to be a relatively slow process.

On the sale front I've put together a website with a partly interactive map of the place listing all of the fruit trees on the block, and a photo gallery that currently covers only the outside of the place. Pictures of the inside are dependent on keeping ahead of the kids messing the place up ;-)

http://www.floodstreetfarmlet.net/

The vegetable garden is coming along nicely now. We've had a couple of light frosts, but I'm covering all of the plants up with a couple of plant pots inverted over them (with a bit of lawn clippings in the top to cover the holes) and this has been keeping me out of trouble. Hopefully we'll see an end to the frost soon. The beans and zucchini are rocketing along, tomatoes and cucumbers are a bit slower, still suffering a touch of transplant shock and the cold nights we've had lately. The first bed of sweetcorn seed is in but, again due to the cold, has yet to show itself through the mulch.

Now that we're essentially reaching an end to the works required here we've started to sketch out some plans for the new place. We're thinking that if we install a water tank, and pipe and pump to get some water up from the creek then we should be set to put some trees and things in this Autumn. We will need to fence off a house block, and figure some way of keeping the pasture down, but doing so will mean that no matter when we finally get the house underway we've still gotten a head start on getting the fruit trees up and running. That's one of the hardest parts of leaving this place. The older trees are now loaded with fruit, yet we're walking away from that to be set back by three years. At least with a plan like this we might only be three years behind rather than five or six if we leave it until the house is finished.

Off To Market

We reached a point the other day at the Flood Street Farmlet. A special point, where we realised were faced with spending the rest of our lives finishing up all of the odd jobs and changing things here and there, to get it just right. We could see that we would potentially carry on in that fashion for quite a while to come. We seemed to be procrastinating over putting the place on the market.

We're unprepared, very unprepared for moving, but then, we've never really been prepared before, and we've moved a fair bit. The DW put her foot down and said she wanted the place on the market, wanted to be off on our next adventure. I "ummed" and even "aarghed". I said "what about if we just get job X done?" ... "and then perhaps job Y?", and it was pointed out that this was why we were never going to put the place on the market if we did not do it straight away.

I like to finish (some) things. The problem is that a home, especially the unusual kind of home that also includes food production elements, is an ongoing, life-long project. It never stops growing and changing, so the bar for "complete" was always going to be creeping off into the future. Each job done was seen in terms of better saleability (well, sort of, I've always enjoyed changing things around, even in rental properties), but they would only reveal more jobs needing completion that also affected the perfectness of the place (let me tell you it's far from perfect!) I needed to accept that it would never be perfect, and that it needed to go "as-is".

And so we made the call and the agent has been for a tour. He tells us it's a challenge. Not because the place is bad, mind you, just because it is relatively unique, given that it's a big house on a big block in a small village, with the orchard, berry patch, vege gardens and poultry houses. It's a lifestyle in a package, but that in turn somewhat limits it's appeal to only those within the demographic to which that lifestyle appeals.

Sure, it could sell to anyone, but the value of the changes made over the last few years would not be apparent or worth anything to such an "anyone", which is where the challenge lies. The "anyone" might see all the changes as needing a bulldozer to make the block suitable for something as horrendous as subdivision.


Within a fortnight or two the contract will be drawn up, and we'll be able to go on the market. We've got that long to finish off a few jobs, and transport a lot of our resource piles away to neaten the place up. And a lot of mowing to be done. And, a lot of hoping, for we sincerely hope that someone with similar ideas to ourselves comes along and takes up the Flood Street Farmlet challenge.

Given the current economic climate I doubt we will be able to be choosy. "So you plan to bulldoze it eh? Can't sell it to you then, sorry!", sounds all nice and idealistic, but when it comes down to it, our resources are currently spread thin, and we really need to concentrate them again so we can get moving on the new place. Time and money spent on this place would be so much better spent on our new block. It's up to the next people taking this place on to put their stamp on it, and much more stamping on our part will only make it harder for them ;-)

Another Quick Update

Yet another month flown by! I wont bother making excuses for not posting, they're the same as the usual ones ;-)

I've calmed down since my water crisis, and essentially given up on the idea of having a lot of massive dams, at least for the moment. We've decided we'll have a single large dam to the capacity of our maximum harvestable right, situated at the bottom of hill, where three gullies feed into one. It's a nice spot for a dam.

The rest of our water needs we will handle through swales/contour banks. This will help prevent erosion on our very steep block, as well as ensuring any water that does fall takes the long way round on it's journey to the creek. If we can maximise the work it does then we'll be as well off as if we stored it in the first place.

We're still tossing up a lot of ideas for cropping, nothing has been settled yet. Having our water plans sorted out (sort of) allows us to make some more serious decisions, at least with respect to dumping some ideas. We wont be growing a commercial crop of hazelnuts for one, though we may still have a crack at some olives.

We're also toying with the idea of a bit of herbage. The DW really loves herbs, and so do I, so I think they'd be perfect given our inclinations. We will of course have to do a lot of market research before we move in that direction, but it allows an avenue of diversity. One of our axioms for this adventure is "not all of our eggs in one basket".

Part of our building process involves putting in a 5m or bigger stock grid on the council road (it's not theirs yet, and they may be sent the bill for it before they can have it, lol!) and we've been covered a lot of suppliers for prices. Thankfully we found a relatively local supplier who has them for half the price we've been quoted to date, so that is a bit of good news. I just hope we can take advantage of it before steel prices shoot through the roof.

Our other option is of course to convince the landowner on the other side of the council road that it is more economical to fence his paddock off, even though he loses a scrap of grazing land (that belongs to council anyway). This option is half the price of the lowest priced grids.

The new farm is generally on hold until we get the current farmlet officially on the market (it's sort of on there now, but not properly). We're working through the painting, and have finished off the tiling, so it's slowly getting there. One of the major hurdles will be when we want to move all our accumulated resources out to the new place. Storage there is currently nil, so we're going to need to implement some solutions for that. We have contemplated containers, and may end up going that route, they're almost as economical as a shed (floorspace per dollar wise) without the construction headaches.

So many up in the air plans can get confusing and cause an undue amount of stress. Thankfully it's the weekend now and we're planning a campfire out the back tonight (in fact I think it's already lit!). Sausages, coleslaw and fire-taters, with toasted marshmallows for desert. A great way to wind down from the working week before getting into the working (but infinitely more satisfying) weekend.

Catchup

Things are still grinding along in the background with respect to the DA, and therefore the purchase of the new land. We got hit with some surprise fees for the DA, must be a new experience for the council, so that has set things back by a week, as they wouldn't even begin to consider it without those fees being paid.

We're going to be organising another visit to the block this weekend, if the vendor is accommodating. I haven't yet taken my mother out there, and she's keen to see it, and we're all keen to see it again. Most amazing, the twins, at three years old, are also keen, and often ask when we're going to be building our new house. I'm quite surprised that their little hummingbird minds retain such things.

The picture above is part of the site we're considering for the new orchard and vineyard. It gets a good dose of sun, and should have reasonable frost drainage. I'll need to see how deep the soil is there, but it's well situated all other things considered.

This next visit I intend on taking as many photos as possible of the important sites, the spot for the house, potential orchard sites, shed sites, dam sites etc, to allow us to better plan from the comfort of our (current) home.

Last weekend I finally made it through the "Big Mowing". Things have dried out so quickly that I will probably only need to mow that one time for the entire season, well, maybe once or twice more, but we wont see the rampant growth again until after next winter, unless we get a heap of rain.

The place looks very different with short grass. All the trees are readily visible, and they're all looking great so far. I modified the irrigation so that we are doing two zones high up on the "hill", where the pressure is lower, so each should get a better dose for the time they run. I'd like to do the same to the older orchard, the younger trees at the top of the block don't seem to be getting enough water, whilst the older ones down lower shouldn't need the same frequency of watering.

Also got around to cleaning the glasshouse out and potting on the vegetables, out of the seedling punnets and into something more substantial that will last them until they go out in the ground. We're still getting a few nights a week close to zero, so I'm wary of putting them out too early. Now that we've got the glasshouse we're not losing a lot of growing time waiting, so I'm not so concerned, and it saves me a heap of time that would be spent covering tender plants every night.