Saturday, April 17, 2010

Since the start of 2010

It has been a busy start to the year which is no excuse for me not getting to update the blog in so long. Please accept my apologies. But now that I am back into the swing of things, let me update you on what has been happening around here – because part of the business has been all the happenings going on on the property.


Since the new year we have:

• Made progress on Grants mud house to the point where the walls are almost completely up and the roof is now on.

• We harvested a good crop of maize – a mix from Lesotho, the Cape and local seeds. However, the crop was plagued by what we think was rats and was being destroyed while drying on the plants so we had to do an emergency harvesting to save them. They are now feeding our sheep.

• We enjoyed a great summer harvest of corn, beans, spinach, carrots, aubergines, tomatoes, peppers, chillies, baby marrows, beetroot, radishes, cabbages, cucumbers, pumpkins, butternut and plenty of herbs.

• I have been busy preserving vegetables from the summer harvest for us to enjoy in winter. Including freezing beans, corn and pumpkin, bottling tomatoes, pickling jalapenos and chillies, cooking tomato chutney, creamed spinach, tomato pasta sauce and hot chilli sauce.

• Our chickens have moulted but have started laying again recently – and our 2 roosters were fighting so the old guy hit the freezer yesterday.

• We have had 2 new lambs born in the last 2 weeks – one of which is the first ewe lamb we have ever had born. She is smaller and weaker than the ram lambs and we have had to watch and give her an electrolyte solution to make sure she is gaining strength. She is so cute – I will take a pic to post for you.

• We have planted a lovely winter garden of cabbage, carrots, beetroot, leeks, radish and peas, and tomatoes and peppers in our growing tunnels to see if we can grow them through winter in there.

• We have stockpiled wood for the winter which starts next month.

• We have had 2 litters of new rabbits born since February so we now have 11 little white furies hopping around.

Besides all that there is the usual cleaning, weeding, maintenance, watering, feeding and caring that takes place all the time.

I will post pics of our new little lamb and Grants mud house this week so stay posted.

Overall, we are so blessed to have this opportunity to live out here in the country – especially the girls and I who get to be here full time and enjoy the space, the peace, the healthy food, raising animals and watching the seasons change.

Hope you take the time to notice the changing colours of the autumn leaves and to walk outside in the autumn breeze.