Cyclone Season

The end of last year and the start of this has been a busy period with two cyclones having had an effect of us already, and the season has really only just begun!

We feel like we’ve been very fortunate with how we’ve fared through each of them, but that makes us that bit more nervous for the ‘next one’…

In less than 2 months, we have had over 1200mm of rain and the ground is definitely now beyond saturation point.

We had some earth works done on the Farm in the middle of last year, and they have made a world of difference in the water being able to run away from the Farm and not just sitting in great puddles and ponds throughout the houseyard and paddock.

We particularly noticed it after the first cyclone, when only three days of sunshine later, we were able to mow!
This is unheard of – usually it’s 2 to 3 weeks at the earliest before we can even consider mowing.

They haven’t been a lot of changes to report around the Farm in the last three months…

Our Mighty MG garden-guy has had school holidays and three kids to contend with, plus he has been away on a well-deserved holiday with his family, plus there has been the two cyclones – as well as Christmas and New Year – so conditions all round haven’t been wildly conducive to making big inroads into jobs that we’d like to be getting done, but have just been more-so in the way of maintenance works, and just keeping on top of the regular routine stuff as much as possible.

With all the rain we’ve had, the flower beds we installed in the paddocks last year are looking bright and colourful and are a pleasure to see each time we’re out in the paddock or driving in and out along the driveway.

We got in a second excavator and had the large pile of dirt that was left over from the excavation work of the swale, spread out into 3 different sized semi-raised garden beds.

We have planted some citrus into one of them, and we planned to get some of the trees in the nursery planted into the biggest of the beds while it was still soft from the rain, but when we were mowing the other day, we realised that there’s currently a curlew nesting smack-bang in the middle of the bed.

Curlews nest for around 30 days, so that’s tied up that bed for the next month or so, because we don’t wish to move them off the nest.

Random piece of information:
Curlews tend to mate for life and can live up to thirty years, and they typically lay only one or two eggs per breeding season, with the male and female sharing the nest-sitting duties.

We have two new sets of neighbours, and a third set will likely arrive in a month or so.
It’s been quite the turnover of neighbours in the last 18 months that’s for sure!

We’ve been here on the Farm for 8 years now, come April!
Definitely starting to feel like ‘old timers’ in the area…

The Big Veg Garden has been a little bit neglected of late – a combination of the rain, and a recurrent injury to the main gardener, but the house-yard garden is incredibly lush following on from all the rains.

Despite the neglect, there certainly isn’t a lack of food growing.

We currently have: lettuce, cabbage, squash, potatoes, strawberries, capsicum, pumpkin, lemons, numerous different types of salad greens (aibika, leaf ginseng, mushroom plant, french tarragon, cranberry hibiscus, chives, climbing spinach, mint, tree lettuce, rumex), taro, yacon, 2 varieties of sweet potato, bananas, tomatoes, leeks, pineapple, asparagus, passionfruit, blueberries and tamarillo.

These are just the plants (not including herbs) that we can think of – without going for a more in-depth wander around the place – that are currently producing food, however we also have other food plants that aren’t producing at the moment due to the time of year – like various citrus, apples, lychees, grapes, kiwi, various nuts and some of the more tender annual veg and brassicas.

In between times, we’ve also been slowly but surely making improvements to our bus ‘Noah’, and are pretty happy with the current set-up.

There are always things that could be improved, but for the time being we’re really happy with the layout and added features we’ve put in.

In September and December we were lucky enough to have some huge help with the bus from our middle son.
He did some work on the roof that we were very nervous about tackling, (we’re both the wrong height and shape to be up that high!) , installed our awning, and also sorted out most of Noahs 12v electrical system, integrating the ‘house’ set-up into one system instead of the two seperate ones we’d been running.

The animals are all well – though are definitely getting noticeably older and slower.

Unfortunately for Molly and Hamish, at a ‘mere’ 7½ Mabi still has loads of play-time energy and drives them a little bit batty on occasion with her exuberance.

The cats are also slowing, being 17 – and are looking their age – particularly Blaze.
Each summer Blaze loses more and more condition, and no matter how much he is fed and kept in the air-conditioned cool, he just looks like a bag of bones covered in blotchy orange fur…
Dusk – while looking old and beaten up – doesn’t lose as much condition as his brother, so definitely looks ‘healthier’ in general.

We have four chooks at present – the very handsome rooster Lucy (lucifer) who looks after his ladies so well; and three hens.
Mrs Betty Brown – our oldest hen – is now in retirement and whilst she has stopped laying, she gets to live out her elderly days at Cluck Manor, being spoilt.

We have a few jobs on our Farm white-board at the moment that we’d like to do and get done in time, but at this point we’re trying not to make tooooo many hard and fast plans for 2024 as we feel like the last few years have been kind of a lot, and we’re just aiming for a bit of peace and relaxation…

What’s that saying?
“we make plans and god laughs” …?
We’re just trying not to test the theory!

Blaze taking in some sunshine.