Bit's of this and that.

We never seem to catch up at the farm, as  the first few days we are there we just seem to play catch up on all the chores that we get behind in when we aren't there like lawns and gardens  and refilling all our small 1000 litre tanks up again that we drip feed the trees and shrubs from. It all takes time, and sometimes we feel that we just are not getting ahead at all, even though we know we are.
it's that old problem also too, when you have the time you have no money and when  you finally have money you are too busy working to find the time. !!!
This time we took up the new citrus Trees we bought and got them planted them out straight away  and by the time we headed home they were full of beautiful  sweet scented blossoms.

The next jobs  that we  tackled was to lift one of those 1000 litre water tanks up onto posts a couple of feet high to make it less likely to be a snake hiding place, as we can now mow and whipper snip underneath and keep the area cleaner.

we also spent some time walking around  deciding where we thought would be the best location for our new bee box and we finally decided on an area under the trees, with some protection from the southerly winds by the  rock face behind, not far from the chicken yard where there will be permanent water in in close vicinity of flowering trees and gardens, hopefully  we have chosen wisely, time will tell.

One morning while sitting on our usual perches on the front verandah having our early morning coffees we were watching the pine trees down in the front paddock "puffing" in the gentle breeze to release all the pollen or spores to the wind, it is really an amazing thing to watch.

The next major job that Hubby got onto was installing our  new larger power inverter up into our system up in the power room, This new larger inverter now has taken over running the  house and the smaller existing inverter will now be used to run our cool room on a separate smaller grid, independent from the house.it will usually be shutdown when we are away and will be  there as a backup in case of lightening strikes or such.

We also took a little road trip to Parkes while we were up at the farm to visit our daughter and her family, we took a drive out to visit the Parkes Radio Telescope, which was highlighted in the movie "The Dish", the radio telescope was an integral part of the transmission of live  images along with others  from the  Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.

We had a lovely visit and spent some special  time with our beautiful little 17 month old granddaughter, she and her Poppy had a wonderful time playing together.

We  decided to bring our daughter's Kelpie dog back to the farm with us for a short holiday, he and our old blue girl get along real well, even to the point of sharing a bed together in the car on the way home(even though there are two beds on the seat.

He had a lovely time with us, helping the man of the house with some sheep work(even though he is a town dog, instinct kicks in and he has a rough idea of what is expected of him), and after all that hard work all dogs need to have a cool off in the stock  trough, many, many times a day !!!!
Our sheep have been doing well this year, we have  had a few lambs(we only selected a small number of ewes this season to breed) and we got them in to tag and tail the other day, we had 7 lambs this year( One  didn't make it as the mother rejected it) and all 7 were females. there is an old tale that if you have majority  ewes born the following season will be a bad one), time will tell. !!

On the morning we were leaving the farm we had  half a dozen early morning visitors, they have just realized that the apricot tree has perfect little green apricots on it,just how they like it.

We are really torn between the beauty of the king parrots and the decimation of the apricots each year, that is why we have planted a new apricot tree in the new orchard which we intend to net as soon as possible. This tree is in a position that netting just isn't  an option.
Some of the other fruit trees  were  starting to  bloom, so wonderful to see as we only planted them this season.The quince,apricot,plumcot,nectarine and apples are all in bloom.

Hopefully if we get rain and with the added dip watering we do we may start to produce our own lovely stone fruit  for eating and canning, I can hardly wait.
Before we know it we will be loading up the car and trailer again and heading west for another  stay at the farm to get a few more things sorted.
We may actually be living there  within a few months, I just can't believe that the time is finally approaching, SO EXCITED !!!!
So until we catch up again,
Take care everyone,
Cheers,
Jane. :-)  :-)  :-)