A farm type weekend

On Saturday K and his son in law oiled the new deck off the shearing shed. I was on baby duty. Mother and daughter supervised.

The shearing shed has become the social hub for visitors and family.

 

 

 

Parties, barbeques, picnics and of course sheep work happen here.

 

The deck is for loading bales of wool into trucks. The original deck and ramp weren't safe and were retired last season. Friends and family built the new structure recently. The generosity of people is wonderful.


Mr Fix It has spent the last week making the rails to go around it. They slot into wood stirrups and lift off to move bails out. The rest of the time they keep us safe.




We had planned to have bubbly on the deck to celebrate, but there was a cold wind so we adjourned to the caravan for roast dinner instead. This particular leg of lamb was very well travelled. Bred and fattened in Crookwell, frozen and transported to Mataranka,  brought back to Crookwell to share.  I wonder if the lambs smelling the wonderful aroma of roast realised what their fate is next year.  Bit unfair to cook in their paddock.

The other first of the day was our baby grandson's first visit to the farm, which hopefully will be his home soon. First sleep on grandma's bed too.



We have reacquired a dog. She comes up the hill to live with us when we visit. It was quite gratifying that she seemed to know what was going on and be very happy to live with us again. Mind you that might be because she remembered exactly where her ball is kept. She is ball obsessed and will exhaust herself chasing one.
She sat next to my chair this morning for an hour quite happily. Or should I say next to where the ball is hidden.


Anyway it is nice to be pet borrowers for a while.


Cheers Sue


A Ferg on the Move



  

Generosity. Or I have fresh eggs, veggies and a dead snake.

I am always heartened by the generosity of the people who live out here. I think because we are so few we naturally look out for each other.  So tonight I thought I'd show you the wonderful produce that I have been given this week

Last Sunday we met with friends to break bread and encourage each other. Our hostess put on a wonderful spread as usual which went down a treat with a bottle of Western Australian red that K had found in Katherine a few weeks ago. After lunch everyone disappeared into the kitchen garden and came back with fresh broccoli and kale, as well as a reasonable long snake.


 

The snake was dead, cut in half by the shovel that is a necessary tool to carry when you venture into  gardens such as these and, since it was dead, I assume it was not a children's python. I didn't get close enough to check.



Last night I was too bushed to drive back an hour and a bit from the school I was in, so the principal and his wife kindly put me up for the night. They fed me and gave me a bed.  There was buffalo stew cooked in the  slow cooker, rich tender meaty chunks, vegetables and spicy gravy. This morning there was a serve of this stew packaged up for K.


(The buffalo roast we have in the freezer,  and which we are not cooking tonight now, was given to us by one of K's fellow workers who went hunting recently. I love the taste of buffalo but it has a very strong almost grassy smell as it cooks so when it is cooked here the crockpot is banished to the very end of two extension cords.)

I was introduced to the chooks (Australian for hens) all twenty of them who live in a fenced off half a house block with a massive intruder proof night cage. Wild pigs have been known to crash through fences to get to  chooks and eggs, the  camp dogs like fresh chicken, as do the pythons. 


So I have a dozen eggs collected this morning, as well as some vine ripened tomatoes.

Fresh anything costs an arm and leg here so it is especially wonderful to benefit from the generosity of old friends and new acquaintances alike.

Vine ripened tomatoes
 

Cheers Sue

A Ferg on the Move