Categories: From the Farm This Week
      Date: Jul 25, 2013
     Title: 25 July 2013
Well what a week, starts with a tree smashing storm and now an earthquake centred in Wellington Seddon.

Tonight as I walk around the farm with Albert the dog, walking among the poplars, nut trees and other deciduous we have planted over the years, Albert lifts a hare and it bolts away in the cover of dry leaves and shortly after a cock pheasant flies with a cluck cluck and the beat of wings. Albert not worrying as he is a sheep dog, a beardie, but I'm thinking where can you do and see these things today as more and more trees get cut on the farmland turning our landscape into a green desert.

But I'm thinking as the moon full and big rises and I can't stop wondering if that big close moon with its strong gravitational pull has something to do with the earthquakes.

Not sure if I told you Ila has brought a Nissan 4 door ute and this week the gear box went so that was a tow job to Midhirst Service station for fixing. Ila is not a happy girl.

I went in to do 2 radio shows with Access Radio 104.4 FM one was with the hemp show with Greg. The other for market day.

The house truck fence is finished, gate swinging, so we have been shifting sheep around as this fence has been holding us up.

Have been ringing pigs as they have been rooting the ground up, still more to do. A few more Damara lambs and even a clutch of game chickens out today.

More work on the studio and the track. A few more fittings from Trade Me keeping the costs down.

Jessie has been cutting odds and ends of firewood. A small tree on a fence here and there all mounts up and helps.

The pump has been playing up and I had a bad pump day along with a washing machine fix, a main cable fix that the boys pulled down carting timber, weld up the broken trailer someone had backed into the ramp......Some days I really feel like Mr Fixit.

I came in the other day and Augie had the fire fully stoked with wood. He said I think the chimney is blocked and it looked like that as there was a good bit of smoke coming out the door. So in true Mr Fixit fashion I said that's no problem easy and gave the flue a bang with my hand. With that it must have dislodged the block up the chimney and a huge amount of soot came down blocking the flue completely at the bottom ........Within seconds huge amounts of smoke came spewing out of the fire door and under the cook top filling the house with smoke ...and sooty smoke at that ..So with visibility closing and breathability less I took the flue base off and got up on the roof and swept the chimney. Luckily I had the long bush rod on hand. After 2 buckets of soot mostly in the buckets... all fixed .....Well not counting the layer of soot over everything ...The moral of the story .....if a fire smokes don't put more wood on ....

You know the whole time Ann just kept cooking lunch. She is one great wwoofer so even tempered. In her spare time she always has a crochet hook in her hand. She is a great sock maker. Has swapped Augie a cooked meal, the last French wwoofer a pair of hand made ear rings, Ila ride time on her horse. All for pairs of hand made socks.

Beate is back on the farm today, back from her trip to Germany of 4 or so weeks .. I hope she is not too jet lagged.