Extreme sheep!

Matron of husbandry over at trapper creek posted this on her blog and I just loved it so much I had to share it with you all too!

oink!

The dogs are hanging out by the fence again - so that can only mean one thing...

The piggies are back!!!!!!!

We have six 12 week old large black piglets that have come to stay for a few months. Aren't they cute?

Here a tom, there a tom

Everywhere a tomato...or that's how it seems at the moment. So far we've picked over 26kg (I haven't remembered to weight every picking), but I'm hoping for many more, as there is still plenty of fruit on the vines.

I've just put 5 bottles in the fowlers unit to preserve - I even took the time to skin the amish paste's before quartering them! I don't bother to take the skin off the small ones - these are perfect for a quick pasta sauce.

You can see the remnants in the baskets, along with the courgettes-on-steroids!!!! These will be worm food as I was so busy last week I didn't have time to do anything with them, and they've started to go a bit icky.

The last pic, my keen eyed readers will notice, is NOT of tomatoes. They are two of the tastiest, juciest peaches I have ever eaten. These and their 10 siblings were the total harvest from our peach tree - but we were delighted as it's the first year it has given us any fruit.

Jerry and the yaks

Kayaks that is!


This weekend we went for our inaugural paddle in our new kayaks. We started on the Murray river near Corowa, and paddled (downstream of course!) for about 4 k down to Lake Moodemere for a bit of "carry-the-yaks-up-the-rocks-and-over-to -the-lake", and then a bit more paddling, and a picnic lunch. Lovely!

We went with a couple of friends so we did some car shuffling pre-trip so that we didn't have to paddle back upstream. Result!

There's rain in that thar gauge...

At last check there was 10mm rain from today - HURRAH! This is the most rain on one day since 17th December 2008. In fact this year's rain stats are looking pretty depressing

• Last year in the period 1 Jan - 12 March we had recorded 46mm (and measuring didn't actually start until Feb 2nd). This year in the same period we have had 24mm.
• The last best rainfall day was on 22 Jan - nearly 2 months ago, and that was only 4mm

It's true that we get most of our rain in July-Sep, but we would normally expect to have had 20-30mm a month to this point.

Maybe it's time to start re-defining normal?