Resuming

Hello, long time no see. I've been having a bit of a crisis with my whole identity after the move to the country and feeling like "suburban" doesn't fit anymore. We're still doing all the same things, just more of it I guess and more livestockey. I originally started the blog as a teaching and reference tool for my family; recipes, tips tricks and it turned out to be a great way to hold memories too and compare past photos with changing times. 

It's been a great resource for recipes and the family (especially distant members) have been missing the intimate updates of our lives here...so....we'll just plough on in our suburban way, country style I guess. So here's a bit of a catch up over the past few months.....

July followed June in spectacular winter fashion bursting water pipes and draping the landscape in finery of hoar frosts. I made a stunning video of our garden during one of these -7C mornings. You may have seen it on my facebook page but here is the link if you missed it.

Spring came but winter wasn't done. Three killing frosts in the middle of November killed all the set fruit on the trees and any early rising sap in the vulnerable plants. So no peaches or plums this year. Moving the Tahitian lime here was pure folly and not even permanent frost cloth could provide protection; it lives but it will never bear fruit, I'm starting to despair that we will never see fruit again on the fig or the pomegranate either.

It even wiped out the majority of my bearded iris in bud, this one only survived being under a tree and coming out a little later. 

 Our grandsons visit regularly and we have very special times. Being a grandparent means we can give them so much more one on one time than their busy parents can. They learn cooking from scratch and gardening and animal husbandry. Dan digs for buried treasure, which is buried ALL over our yard and is convinced he is digging up dinosaur bones! They help with the sheep and visit the shearing. At night, there is plenty of card and board games; TV rarely gets a look in. Just the joy of being kids.

 The bull calf in the top right hand corner arrived as a day old instead of being taken to the abattoir from a dairy farm. We have called him Neil-Not-Veal or Neil for short.

He has been hand raised drinking milk from a bucket and is now nearly four months and weaned. We pick him bouquets of broccoli flower heads, kale, and fennel seed heads. We aim to keep him a bit treat motivated and thus more manageable for moving. He is rotated on segmented blocks but unfortunately we haven't had the rain to boost the pasture this month so he will be on-sold shortly to someone with bigger paddocks.   

Summer came and we planned for Christmas.  Our old dogs have aged considerably this year and neared their 14th year. Sadly Bella had to be euthanized a couple of days before Christmas. 

 Over the past few months my work had increased dramatically and I have been working eleven hour days with a two hours of travel added to that! There definitely has been no time for blogging! Circumstances have improved and I am looking forward to scaling back in the near future and getting back to my dream life work balance that I am fortunate to enjoy most of the time.

If you are still following, thanks for being with us and I look forward to sharing some projects and recipes soon.