You’ll never guess…!

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We know you’ll be stunned to hear this – but we’ve had more rain!

Almost a fortnight of constant drizzle if truth be told, and the odd day of sunshine that we saw prior to that, was definitely fleeting.
But thats the usual way of winter up here in the North – but then come to think of it – then there are the summer storms… and then cyclone season… BUT there are always a couple of weeks each year that we start to panic though, ‘cos it hasn’t rained in “agessss“, and we worry about everything shrivelling up and dying 😀

All jokes aside though – we watch with such sadness and despair, when those out west suffer through the droughts, which do unimaginable damage to peoples property, livestock and lives.
Truely heartbreaking…

Back on track!

A couple of weeks ago we got another delivery of road-base, and our trusty worker Terry came out and spent the day filling up all the ruts and grooves in the driveway – thankfully, riiiiiiight before the next round of rain descended.

Since this last lot of rain has set in, we’re not sure we would have been getting in and out without a lot of fancy-type stunt driving, if we hadn’t got the road-base laid in time!
Even with it down, its already starting to churn up a bit again :-\

We had a rude awakening on Friday morning – 5:18am to be precise (!!), when we awoke to the not-so-dulcet tones of cement lorries rolling in to the property next door.
To say we were less than delighted could be considered somewhat of an understatement.
We think a certain Project Manager or Site Foreman needs a few little lessons not only in noise ordinances, but also in neighbourhood relations!!

And for the next 5 hours, they just kept rolling in, one after another after another.
And once they were gone, the labourers spent until 630pm, tending to and smoothing off the foundation pads.
NUTS!!

Our other neighbours M&M arrived home after having been traveling overseas for the last month.
It was good to see them again – and they were definitely glad to be home, despite having had a good time.
Alas, our super timid girl Molly wasn’t so pleased and didn’t seem to remember the man-of-the-house, so when he reached down to pat her, she flipped out and bit him.
Something she has never ever done before.

It was a toss up on who was more stunned – Molly or us!!
Thankfully our neighbour took it all in his stride, and reasoned that he shouldn’t have reached down to her when she was going off – but stillll…. :-\

After the event Molly spent hours just looking so incredibly guilty and sorry – which probably pretty much matched our embarrassed and shocked expressions.

We’ve decided that we will put a run of shade-cloth along that side fenceline as they have primary school aged kids – and we’d be thoroughly mortified if anything like that happened again – but especially so to the little ones – so we figure that a shadecloth barrier will make it a whole lot more difficult for small hands to grab at her through the fence…

We got a lovely surprise with some Friends (H&I) dropping through with 2 of their boys for an impromptu visit and had breakfast at the Farm with us, on their way to visit their other kids.
Whilst we keep in regular contact with them, we haven’t all physically seen each other for a few years – and as is always the case with dear friends, it was great to catch up with them again.

In news of the garden, it has still been too wet to have the soil we ordered delivered, as the truck will churn up the driveway too badly, and if the driver was silly enough to go off the driveway, we would probably end up with the truck sitting bogged in the paddock for the next month or so – so the newly created raised beds remain empty at the moment.

The broccoli are heading up really nicely though, the bok-choi is raging, as are the cabbages, and the cauliflower is wrapping its leaves around some tight little budding heads.
We’ve already been picking peas, beans, tomatoes and zucchini.
We’ve even feasted on a few raspberries that we rescued before the birds found them!
Oh, and the lettuce are ridiculously huuuuuuge!

Waiting to be planted out in the orchard are a couple of oranges, a lime, avocado, fig, olive, peach, plum and a peanut-butter tree.
We’ve also got another banana tree waiting to be planted, which was gifted to us by a lady in town, who grows an amazing amount of food in her tiny town-house garden. She’s very inspirational!

Last weekend we decided to do a road trip to Cairns, so we could actually see what sunshine looked like!
We had a very productive day, with a trip to Bunnings and Kmart included.
(basically – those two shops are reason enough to go to Cairns lol)

The most exciting item we bought home with us though, was our new oven!

Whilst we have always had a big regular oven in our home, we have always preferred to use a bench-top oven, as they are smaller and quicker to heat, and most times we aren’t making a huge meal that requires a big oven, so the bench top one suits us just fine.
(think: toaster oven – in case you’re confused!)

We decided a long time ago, that when we moved to the Farm, we wouldn’t be installing a ‘regular’ cooktop or oven – its just a waste of space and money in our scheme of things.
However our old faithful bench top oven was getting a bit old and less reliable though, and so we’d decided that we were going to spring for a new one.
And we did just that, during our trip to Cairns!

We found a really rather a magnificent one, which is actually deceivingly large internally too – compared to our current one; and we can fit two loaves of bread in at once to cook.

We made our very first ever loaf of Ciabatta in it – and it turned out perfectly!
Its really quite the beauty to look at too – and has an internal light – which we haven’t had before.
We know – its sad that two people can get this excited about a $99 oven….!

There has been one small bonus to the wet weather.
We’ve got some work done in the kitchen – which we’re pretty good at avoiding, if there is something we can be doing out in the garden instead!!

The splash-backs have been sanded, stained, varnished, and installed and they look fan-bloody-tastic!!

Okay, so we appreciate that they most certainly are not everyones idea of stunning gorgeousness – but they sure float our boat!!! 😀 😀 😀
We’re very happy with them, and are happy that they have just the look that we had imagined…

Next bit to get done in there will be the back wall of the kitchen, which we will do in the same timber as the feature walls in the bedroom and lounge.
Then another bench will go along that back wall, and will have the sink in it.
We’ve discussed the fact that the sink will not have a ‘view’, which we both rather like to have, but we might put a window in that wall at some point – and we still have our outdoor kitchen if we want to do dishes with a view.

We still tend to think the inside sink will be more used is for rinsing veg and hand washing anyways, rather than doing the actual dishes anyways…

Well, thats about it from this sloshy muddy side of the world for this time.
’Til next time – we hope you’re all staying warm and dry!

x x