Sunday can be the Busiest of Days

Couldn't sleep after waking at 4 am. Got out of bed at 4.30, may as well make the most of it. Stirred up the fire, had coffee, did the emails and wrote the blog. Got the yoghurt (that we made a few days ago) draining.

Draining and Tubbing the Yoghurt

By then it was light enough (although very misty) to check the neighbours cattle. Still no babies on the river. One or two look promising and will need to be checked again this evening. Took the trailer full of rocks (ex Nuttery) down to the spot near the hayshed that we are filling to extend the flat ground. Emptied the trailer (by hand) and brought back a load of firewood that had been drying (never waste a trip). The extended area is getting quite large and should give us a better storage area for firewood. Living on a ridge makes flat land very valuable.



The rock platform growing

Over morning tea of coffee and scones we went through the Tomato planting list. July is the time we put our seeds down ready for Spring. The seed trays will sit on one of the hot composts to germinate. and then be planted up to larger pots as needed. Despite every attempt to keep the numbers down we still managed to pass the 20 mark. There are just too many favourites. Some are chosen for colour, others for texture and flavour, a couple are really early ripening, a couple are really late ripening, some are better for bottling and a couple are just good standby fruit in bad years when the others struggle. We look at what we grew last year and take out any we didn't like and go through the catalogue to see if there interesting additions. The first column is last years planting, the second is the proposed 2013 planting and the third is how many seeds need planting. We like to have a couple spare of each variety.

The Tomato List 2013

Tomatoes in trays in the cold frame

Put the tractor away in the hayshed, taking a load of rocks back in the scoop then went onto putting all the grape vine pruning's through the mulcher and start the next hot compost. Got down two layers. This will take a while to fill as we will be pruning the fruit trees as we go.

The beginnings of a compost with central hole

Last job of the day was to check the springers on the neighbours hill and on the river. The girls on the hill can be easy as the hill is in view from the house but not today, it needed a walk which the dogs enjoyed. Success a new calf born only a couple of hours earlier. On the river there was more productivity. A new calf just born, mum was still cleaning up as I arrived.

Only minutes old