Strawberry Season

I think drugs are like strawberries and peaches.

Edie Sedgwick

Summer must surely be upon us - the strawberry patch is bursting in verdant splendour...and here are the first offerings from said patch.  Looks great, smells great and tastes amazing.

Oh for smell-o-vision!

Another hint that we are in warmer times are more frequent beach visits - here are Jess and Oskar worshipping at their temple today, for the third time this week.

Overcast but still great...

A day on the farm

Farming with live animals is a 7 day a week, legal form of slavery.     

George Segal

Busy day today with the official sign going up at the end of the drive.  We also cleaned out two chicken coops, moved sheep, mowed lawns, whacked weeds, planted more stuff, and generally caught up on a heap of jobs around the place.  The happy coincidence of good weather and time means we can spend a few hours pottering around as intended when we bought this place.

Can you spot the old sign?

No weed too large!

Shocking!

“Electricity is really just organised lightning” 

George Carlin

More fun on the house front this week with a simultaneous loss of both AC and DC power on Wednesday. I'll put my hand up for the AC problem as I had run an extension cord down to the chicks and some rain had shorted neutral and ground, enough to trigger the RCD on that circuit.  Whoops.  The pain of it is that the light had been turned off for a few days anyway - so it's not live, and it's not dangerous, but thanks to our regs the whole circuit becomes stuffed.  Good one, regs!

The DC problem is more interesting.  Apparently we have the "Rolls Royce" of inverters, and the panels are good as well.  It turns out that numpties installed the thing and the poor workmanship has led directly to a short in the system - a bit of an expensive one as well.  Great - thanks numpties!

Speaking of Rolls Royce and numpties reminds me of a time in the UK when the kids asked me what sort of car we drove in Australia.  They were informed it was a "Rolls Canardly" - as in "Rolls down one hill, canardly get up the next one".  After the punchline and a long wait, one student snarled "You're a teacher, there's no way you can afford a Rolls Canardly".  Ahhh kids, they say the damnest things!

The tomato and chilli patch before the chickens got to it <sigh>

Ovum Exchange

The sky broke like an egg into full sunset and the water caught fire.

Pamela Hansford Johnson

Decades ago, learning watercolours at Radford College, a recurring image of mountains featured in many (admittedly very poorly executed) paintings.  Here we are years later and the outlook from Charis looks decidedly familiar!  Very spooky weirdness...

Call the X-Files!

Meanwhile back on the farm, while we are all glued to the opiate that is "Australia's fattest dancing chef ™ (season 11)", an age old formula for political success, our masters have been skulking away doing weirdo trade deals that no doubt secure their future, er...sorry the future of the country.

Unlike the nearly dead TPP, the machinations of this new deal are not open to groups outside of business, because of course they know how to run the ecomoni real good <heavy sigh>.  Anyhoo as a counter to all of this impending financial mayhem, we have been carefully negotiating the food/egg exchange rate with hens.  The current rate is a half bowl of chopped vegie off-cuts for one egg...

Mmmm...better deal for them we think!

This is a very good deal for the girls, but we are hoping that now the girls know how to lay eggs, the exchange rate will eventually tip more into our favour.  Maybe we could get smoking Joe to stop double dipping for a few weeks and negotiate a better deal for us?  He had a few successful budgets passed didn't he?  Joe??