We have lots of excuses for not keeping this blog updated (like how annoying the process of uploading photos on this is etc), but probably our best excuse is the arrival of little Lucy. I say little cos she was born at only 2.5kg but she is strong, healthy and quite big now. She's about to turn 8 months old and we're waiting with abated breath for her first words and first crawls! Today she gave a wave! Here she is wearing a beanie that was sent to her by her God-parents-to-be Rhys and Nina when they were cycling through Peru! Lucy has solids now... all prepared by Annette and she's enjoyed everything so far... home grown organic potatoes and pumpkin, loves banana, carrots and avocado. Enjoys her lentils as well! As for nappies, she uses a verious selection of organic cotton or bamboo nappies which are working really well. I will get Annette to post some information on how we're using it.
Rather than try to go through everything over the last 12 months, I'll just start with some photos. In the background on the right is the goose house and on the right is the chook house. They are situated in the orchard where approximately 25 fruiting trees are planted. You can see Rodney our rooster perched up on the compost bays. In the foreground is a chook tractor which I built to fit exactly a raised veggie bed. The little pullets inside are Jay Lee and Elizabeth. They were hatched and reared by Chloe my niece in Sydney and they are very very tame and easy to catch and handle so they make ideal chooks to put in the tractor during the day. At night they go into their own predator proof aviary.
Our newest arrivals are Little Bo (the brown Boer goat girl) and Bernadette (the purebred white Saanen Dairy goat girl). They are very cute and follow us around like dogs, but we have them either in a stable at night, yard by day or tethered near their favourite weeds! Bernadette will hopefully give us lots and lots of milk next year! Bo is just for company (she is a meat breed but I don't know if I'd be allowed to eat any of her babies!!!). Lucy loves all the animals.

Emy and Denny (the pair of Embden Geese) being ushered back into their house for the night.

I've said this before, but we promise to keep this blog updated!!!!

***STOP PRESS****

We are going to open our house up for the 2009 SUSTAINABLE HOUSE DAY. We had planned to enter last year but we were just too busy and not really ready.... we're not finished yet, but the property is presentable. Its on Sunday 13th September. I will prepare my tour of the property and list our various 'green' strategies and features of the house. I'll use this blog as a notebook and post the tour items.

Bye