This Weekend

Yesterday I spent the day the day doing a way not fun thing.
Last night I went out to P&E's place and had big D&M's, but als o a very nice night.

Today it rained and rained and rained, so I managed to get my walk in, and then tried to sweep the paths and clean up a bit.

Would have put a coat of estapol on the hutches, but it's too wet and it would go all milky, so I didn't.

Just finished watching 'El Mariachi' which was very cool.

What I learnt this week

Or already new...
Peahen's are dumb

I already new this.
But now it's been reinforced.

Went outside and found that the peahen had managed to lose all her chicks.

Shame.

Especially since I had planned to gather them up and feed them anyway.

Me=nearly as dumb as the peahen.

The rest of the weekend

The rest of the weekend didn't go to plan at all.
The weather was waaay stinky.
So I slept in, did my exercises, and went for a walk.
The gate didn't happen until Monday and the goats didn't go in till Wednesday.

Made the lasagne on Sunday night.

Lot's of red sauce, white sauce and homemade pasta

Also made a heap of fettucini

And of course the gate.
And here's how far I got on the hutches

God I need my energy back.

The Weekend so far

Every decade or so I clean out my cupboard, and given that tonight I'm avoiding all the jobs I thought I'd do (the perils of Not making a list), I thought I'd do that.

This is about half of the offerings for the op shop tomorrow.
The rest came out in the tall boy clean out of thursday.

Now I have a cupboard!
I even went in after this pic was taken and cleared out any shirts that I'd bought more than 5 years ago and hadn't worn.
And any pairs of socks more than a decade old.
In the bottom you can see my new shoe rack. No more shoe heap!!
Of course, what you can't see is that my bed is covered in clothes, but that's temporary.


To get my shoe rack, I made a trip to hobart last night. Stayed with a friend and we went and looked at bathroom fittings. Budget for the bathroom refit looks like about 10-12k. Gold plated lever fittings are sooooo sexy.

Also got my first look at the symphony I commissioned from a Luthier in Hobart. The lid hasn't been fitted yet but the sound is already incredible. Four drone strings, two melodies, made from King Billy Pine and Myrtle. In the keys alone there are 139 pieces. Harry's work is just incredible, everything is handmade, and he works out of a workshop that is no more than 6' by 10' and is absolutely spotless. It's so pretty he doesn't want to give it to me. The current plan is to take possesion of the beast on the first weekend of February, which I can do now that I've given up on going to Canty Faire. Will spend the day with Harry learning the ins and outs of Hurdy-Gurdy/Symphony.


Tommorow I hope to;

1. Get up and do the morning exercises, and go for my walk.
2. Build a set of hutches to go in that gap you can see on the right of my cupboard.
3. Make a gate for the vegie patch so I can put the goats in there over the next 2 weeks to eat the fennel down from 8'.
4. Put the goats in the vegie patch for a couple of hours.
5. Start in on the next boundary of electric fencing so I can
   
   a) clear the fire hazard around the barn,
   b) save a few bucks on feed
   c) get access to a few more of the downed paperbarks, to harvest for firewood for this winter.
6. Complete the setup of the 3 single to three phase inverters I owe Keygs.
7. Make pasta, and vegie lasagne, and maybe pumpkin soup.

Should be a quiet one.

Bed Time for me!!

Found it!

Woohoo! in cleaning the pile of crap out of the corner of the lounge room, I found the lead for the camera!

This evening I have;

Stripped the bed
Washed the sheets
Hung them out
Cleaned up all the clucked on but unhatched eggs
Taken the Vacola jars for trade to the car
Cleaned the corner of the lounge up
Finished all the felling from the November Crown Garb!!
Fed watered and inspected all the animals
Updated the Blog 3 times
Made dinner
Done the dishes
Thought about refurbishing the bathroom.
Fixed the boob downlight in the bedroom.

Now I'm having a little spell before putting the new sheets on the bed.

Here's some randomish pics I took this afternoon.

Here we have my best sitting hen, mother to a fantastic breed which stoop when you put your hand over them. Way cool. There's actually 9 chicks in frame.

In the foreground here you can see Stella, the happiest and nicest goat in the world. And behind her is Winston, the sookiest.

This is the 4 head that showed up this afternoon. Kind of like miniture emus. You can see mum retreating in the top of frame.

And the bathroom, which I'm seriously thinking about renovating

Squeee!!! Peep peep!

Came home today to find peachicks in the yard!
Yes the peahen is back and all my suspicions paid out, she's got four very cute little ones.
I took photos but the camera lead is AWOL, will post once I find it.
They sound like a bunch of seagulls about 500m away.

How the time flies

Dropped off my own private radar for a while there, and with
things changing so massively, I have found new value in the whole blog concept.

So what's been happening?

Chooks
After the earlier efforts at hatching by the girls no going so well, all the regulars went back to the nests and brought forth in style.

I'm now in posession of another 20 birds, with a few more expected soon.

Bees
The bees have behaved. I pillaged them for a skerrick of honey from a full frame, which is delicious, and now I can leave them alone for a while.

Goats
Stella, the very lovely and friendly goat, came into season a week or two after Crown and I got into touch with the lady I sold a billy kid to last year, only to find out that her neighbor had poisoned the poor bugger.

Frustration ensued, and after a search, I found a fella by the name of Winston, who has all the assets required to perform the task at hand. Which three weeks later he did.

Turns out he's the sookiest goat ever. Drives me nuts with his bleating.

So now it's just the wait until the girl drops the kid(s) and I'm able to hand raise them and make my own cheese.

November Crown
After all the prep, and the huge effort put in by all, November Crown went off with a minimum of hitches.

Pickups and dropoffs went OK except for a few oddities.

The tourney worked and the winner was found.

The candleabras looked fantastic, with only the odd wax river descending from above. The thrones added greatly to the feel of the high table and the band made everything great.

The feast was OK.

All in all, very worth the effort.

Silver Arrow Tourney
Early December we held the annual silver arrow tourney. While a good time was had by most, there were dramas, which were entertaining and it was the location of the cathartic event, which sucked.

Seperation
Between Silver Arrow tourney, and Christmas, SWMBO left. Since then I've been learning how to be on my own again.

New years
New years was great. I escaped to Qld where I stayed with friends who were happy to just let me do my own thing. Walked up Mt Gravatt a few times, went to a new years party which went very well indeed, helped them with their renovations, and participated in my first ever fondue party.

The next 3 days were all pain though, as I recovered from complete exhaustion.

12th Night
12th night saw me in Sydney, staying with Miss D and J, who were very nice, if a little hammered by the humidity and heat.

I had lots of chats with many different folk, most of whom were very nice and sensitive about where I was at. Also had chats with a few who were in a similar emotional space, which was fantastic for the anti-Robinson Crusoe vibe.

I fought like a sack of poo in the tourney, until I borrowed a better stick from J, which improved things markedly, until a freak shot from Paddy put me out for the afternoon.

Spent Monday cruising, then shopping with Baggy Trousers, where we found the silk for my devest garb.

I had a few profound moments over the weekend, but one of the biggest was realising that some of the folk in the area think I'm far more intelligent than I do. Very strange, as I normally budget 3 minutes brain time to understand the sentences that come out of them, and feel kinda dumb most of the time. Don't know what to think about that.

Still don't really understand Keats