Well it has been a while since I have shared how things are going on our little farm.  Summer is over and Autumn is here and it is a lovely time of the year.

We had a couple of fires this year within our brigade – one being a header that caught fire. This isn’t our header, it was working on one of our neighbours property.  Below is a picture of the header after it was put out.

Our local fire brigade also burned along the sides of the road from our place to the next town, about 12 kms.  This is to keep the grass down and hopefully stop the fire from jumping into the paddocks.

Here is one of the fire trucks out the front helping to keep the fire along the side of the road and not in our paddocks.  Our Brigades are all run by volunteers and they do a great job.This is what it looked like out the front of our house. It looks black for a little bit and then the green starts to show through.

My husband is still milking two cows each morning and we are still making feta and cheddar cheese. Below is where he does the milking, it is good in the summer but can be a bit difficult in the winter. We are in the process of moving the milking area to the end of our wool shed and the power is waiting to be attached at the moment. Once that is done the men will concrete it out and move everything over. This will make milking more pleasant in the winter and also make it feasible to milk more cows.

Here are the two cows that we are milking at the moment.  Both cows are a Fresian / Jersey Cross bought from a dairy farmer friend who uses a Jersey bull over his heifers as they deliver smaller calves and thus making it less likely to loose either cow or calf.   Both are totally different looking one looking more Jersey and the other more Fresian.

The cow not facing us has been here for quite a while and her name is Cornetto (after an ice cream we can buy here).  I think the other ones name is Daisy and that really suits her.

The piglets are still growing well and when it gets a bit cooler we will be butchering a few of them.  The bigger ones will go first of course. We have really enjoyed the last lot of sausages that we made from our own pork so I think that will be first on the list to do.

My husband is keen to make some dried cured meat and we might do our bacon that way this year.

Here is Roses our little kitten. We have two kittens and a cat at the moment, so the younger children have one each and the cat – Smokey belongs to all of us.  They really help keep the mouse and rat population down.

If you knew my husband well you would know that he has an aversion to cats, especially inside as he is allergic to them and if they are inside they give him asthma.  Over the years he has really softened towards them and now I find out that he is feeding them milk each morning down at the shed.

We have been offered an alpaca, and I hope that it will be delivered shortly. I don’t have too many details as yet but I feel very blessed that it isn’t costing us anything as they can be quite expensive. Maybe we will get it a mate when we find out what type it needs.

Well that’s all for now, stay tuned for the next episode.

What’s happening on your farm or homestead at the moment?

Psalm 24:1  The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.