A Tiring but Productive End to 2010

Today is New Year's Day and it's drizzling heavily which we are very thankful for as we are almost in drought conditions. Some overstocked farmers are already having to buy in hay. We had part of one of our bigger paddocks cut for hay on Christmas Eve and unfortunately the baler has not turned up yet so its spread all over the paddock getting a little wet right now. We have had day after day of beautiful hot dry weather - temperatures close to 30*C, and plenty of gale force northwesterly winds as well.

Clearing out our water race to improve water flow. Always a welcome little job when the weather is stinking hot. Jennifer is also sussing out a good spot to encourage eels

All the cattle are now in together in front of the house. Denise is fostering adoration and obedience by feeding out a small ration of feed nuts. Bella and Clarissa at the back; Bonnie with her head out towards Denise; Zita and Zelda, and little Charlie in the foreground. The far back of this paddock past the electric tape has been cut for hay - still to be baled.

Over the last few days and weeks, we have been concentrating on cleaning up our house garden. This has entailed hours and hours here and there with the weedeater, attacking grass up to knee height on what was formerly paddock grazing horses. Denise arranged to hire a huge industrial roaring beast of a push mower over two days to then attack the weedeaten down pasture which was working just fine until a tyre came off a wheel yesterday morning. Fortunately, most of the mowing had been done.

Denise being hauled along by the industrial mower, magically transforming rough pasture into what will be, in about 12 months' time, beautiful lawn (we hope)

While we were returning the mower, we got to look at and test drive on the footpath, a lovely brand new ride-on mower. Denise persuaded the salesman to bring it down to Fossils Retreat to see how it performed on the newly mowed grass and it outshone itself. Needless to say, it is here to stay.

Jennifer having her trial run on the new mower. That's all our raised vege beds in the background, with a pile of topsoil to the side that still has to be barrowed off elsewhere

Irrigation has become a priority in the overall plan now. Just to give all these veges and the surrounding few fruit trees a good drink took 120 litres of water - hauled up from the water race on to the back of the ute and carted up to the house. We will be checking out with our local Council next week that we are, in fact, allowed to draw water from the race, and we'll have to be seeking opinions on how to go about this and get the water up to a holding tank and also put drinking troughs in the front paddocks. Yes, it will be expensive.

We've had some amazing sunsets and cloud formations over the past few weeks. This photo was taken about 8.45pm one evening as Denise was getting washing in from the line.

After our exhausting last couple of days, for New Year's Eve we went and visited friends on a lifestyle block in Greytown for a few drinks, and came home about 9pm. We spent the rest of the evening quietly at home eating a crayfish each, enjoying a few wines and Jennifer was treated to a lovely feet treatment in her new Foot Spa. We saw the New Year in, and collapsed into bed. Today, we are somewhat stiff and sore and lethargic, but the drizzle is clearing away so no doubt we will be out raking up some of our copious grass clippings to use as mulch. We're out to friends' tonight for dinner, then off to the races tomorrow for a picnic day out. Perhaps we will win enough to pay for our irrigation! (Hardly likely but an entertaining thought) ...