Scatterbrained

Bad Bunny!

I came into my art room the other day and found this.

Yesterday was Australia Day

I am in the habit of doing my blog posts first thing in the morning. I usually write about the day before but I am thinking about changing it and doing it of a night time instead. Yesterday of course was Australia Day. We had planned a day BBQing on our river bank and having some friends over but Scott's fishing partner really wanted to go on a practise fish for a big fishing competition in a couple of weeks, and to tell you the truth, all the summer socialising is wearing me out a bit.

So I happily gave up our Australia Day plans so he could go fishing. Instead, I took the kids fishing for trout on our river bank. We almost caught a big eal but no trout. Luckily Scott caught some fish which we had for dinner along with the traditional BBQ sausages.

After the fishing it was swimming and play time at our favourite spot on the river.

I went to Launceston the other day and bought four more books in the Sookie Stackhouse series. This one of course is number three!

The kids got naked and decided to to some nude construction building. They dismantled the steps I made to the water on New Years to make an underwater bridge.

 

Then they dismantled the bridge and made a bathtub in the middle of the river.

So we had a nice relaxing Australia Day this year and we woke up this morning to find this, AT LAST!

Clover, the last of my cows to give birth finally had.

Sometime early this morning. We didn't think this one was ever going to come out. Poor Clover could hardly walk.

 

Now there is only one more baby left to be born and this one will be the owner of 'The Secret Project' I am still yet to finish.

Some of the other creative things I have been doing lately are making pineapple vinegar.

If you want to try this go here.

I have started crocheting scarves for my market stall. Not that anyone would buy a scarf in this weather but on a cold Sunday morning at the Evandale Markets a scarf would come in handy if you don't have one already so I am stocking up.

 

This is a little Valentines Day present for Scott. For his phone.

I made it out of thrifted recycled wool yarn which I dyed myself.

I finished another vampire. This one is The Vampire Le Feu.

I spun this wool,

into this yarn.

I'm crocheting this into a scarf as well.

I have a lot of unfinished projects I need to get on with so that is what I'll be doing for the rest of this week. We have an overnight birthday camping party this weekend so I might take a bunch of crocheting along for that.

Creativeness

Look what I made yesterday!

Yes... I know a cow REALLY made him, but I participated. I called the dairy farmer across the road and had him come and pick up my cows and put them in a truck and take them over to the paddock his bull lives in where they had a nice holiday for a couple of months and lost their virginities.

That cow in the pictures with the little calf is not his mother. That is his Aunty Clover. Her calf is due any day now. In the next picture you can tell which one is his mother. Check out those udders!

I have been very creative lately. Karma and I crocheted a bag while we listened to Stephen King audio books in my chair in my bedroom.

I have felted this already and it is OK but the handle is a little bit wonky. I made it for my market stall but I don't think it is good enough to sell. I'll take a photo today. It is the right size for my wallet and keys, phone and a paper back novel though :)

I bought a bunch of natural wool and silk roving from the US which arrived this week and I plan on spinning some today. I have decided to start making scarves for my market stall. They might sell well on our cold Tasmanian weekends during winter.

I also plan on finishing off my third vampire today.

OH, I almost forgot. I did some work on 'The Secret project' for the other new baby which is due soon.

The answers to some questions

Fleasha asked "What is dampa?" It is Aussie bread traditionally cooked over a camp fire. You can cook it in the oven as well. Like Sam said it is nice cooked with cheese although I haven't put sage in it before and now I have to because cheese and sage dampa sounds great. What kind of cheese do you use Sam?

The thing about dampa is it is only really good warm out of the oven or camp fire with loads of butter. After that it goes a bit dry but maybe you can find a better recipe. I'll make another dampa this week and post my recipe on my blog.

Sandra asked "How big is the island and what is on it?" (about Flinders Island) I am not really sure how big it is. It has 450km's of dirt and sealed roads, I remember that. Probably the best way to understand how big it is is to look it up on Google Earth. We spent a lot of time doing that before we went away. I wonder if I can save a Google Earth pic and post it to my blog?

Most of the island is farm land. There are a couple of very small towns with not a lot in it. The island only has two pubs. Loads of cows and sheep. Most of the island is quite dry. There is a national park in the south of the island.

The population is 850. The people are pretty... basic? They live simple and uncomplicated lives. They were all very friendly and welcoming.

Tracey asked "How on earth did they get the rope up that high?" (About the swing from this post.) Can you believe someone climbed all the way up that tree! Jesse has a tree trimming and removal business and one of his employees has a bit of a talent for tree climbing!

These photos were taken before we went on holidays. The potatoes were coming along nicely and the hay was ready for cutting. The two freishan cows, Willow and Clover, are due to give birth this month. Probably later in the month but I am keeping a close eye on them now.

Here is yesterdays 'creativeness' for the day.

It is a tea towel I began embroidering while on holidays. Almost finished now.

Jasper is here!

Have you ever seen a cuter nose? We picked him up yesterday from The Tasmanian House of Fibre and got to meet all the cute bunnies. Dustin and Ruby especially loved the big white German angoras and want to get one of those as well, and we just might too. Sue was very helpful answering questions and letting us cuddle the bunnies and she has a bunch of adorable alpacas too.

I should have taken some photos of the alpacas but I was too excited about the rabbits. She has them in all the colours. Jasper's dad is particularly pretty he kind of looks like a seal point siamese only prettier.

We love our baby bunny though. His colour is called 'smoke'. He is currently in his cage in my craft room getting used to the new sounds and smells. We are trying not to bother him too much and let him rest after the long drive home yesterday although I did take him out this morning for a quick photo shoot.

I have been sticking to my everyday creativeness in small amounts over the last two days. I picked up a little scarf I started making for Dustin a few weeks ago and worked on it a little in bed on the 2nd and along the way on the drive to collect Jasper yesterday in the car.

The green yarn is mulberry silk and the brown is a mohair blend and I am crocheting the two together. It seems a little strange crocheting a scarf in the middle of summer but these yarns are light and I want to have a few little projects like this ready for Dustin's birthday in March.

Today I might get the scarf finished and also work on a project I started while I was away on Flinders Island, which brings me to day 2 of our holidays :)

These are all the fish Scott and Jesse caught that day. We had fish to eat for the rest of our holidays and some we froze to bring home.

Sold

I bought these two steers three years ago from a dairy farm for $10 each. They were only three days old. They came with Daisy, our house cow. The plan was to buy a female jersey I can raise as a house cow and two little bulls to keeps her company. The bulls were turned into steers and the plan was to raise them for our own meat.

I got up at 5.00am every morning and bottle fed them and raised them up on baby calf formula until they were able to be weaned. I didn't name them, I called them J1 and J2 (Jersey 1 & 2). I knew that one day we were going to eat them.

They were well looked after. They had plenty of food, more than enough. They had shelter in bad weather, something unheard of for beef cattle and they had medical attention when they needed it. I was really proud of how well I took care of them and the life they had.

This year the time came for us to call the butcher but I insisted that they both had to go together. They had always been together so I wanted their lives to end together, plus I didn't want to know which one I was eating.

The problem was they were growing so big. I couldn't find a freezer big enough to put them both in successfully. I wanted to keep all the bones for the dogs and any offal, and the skins I was going to give to the butcher (I didn't want to be reminded). I knew it was going to be hard but I wanted to do it.

I wanted to eat meat that I knew had a good life and didn't suffer. I wanted to take responsibility for the meat I ate and see the process through myself, knowing that the animals were well taken care of and that they lived well.

Finally I came to the conclusion we had too much meat for one family to successfully store and so with much hesitation, I decided to sell them.

A neighbour farmer came over and looked at them and said he could have them picked up on Tuesday. This was good. Beef prices were down but if they got too much older they would loose their value. That was not good. Still, he thought I could get $500 per animal. That was low but I really had no choice. He said they will be shipped to the meat place in Smithton. That was unacceptable. Smithton is on the other side of Tasmania and I wasn't having my animals travel such a long way in a truck to their deaths like that. I sent him away.

He said "You cant be like that". Why cant I be like that? I heard him on the phone to Scott a few days later and Scott was saying "I know... I know..."

I called the son of another neighbour who is a stock agent. The cattle sold through him goes to Longford, a little over an hour from here. Much better. I got my boys ready and put them in the stock yards for the day where they could enjoy all the long grass and have some quiet peaceful time together before the truck arrives.

I felt like crap all day knowing that these beautiful animals were going to die soon. The kids knew as well. They were sad.

So the truck arrives and I give the driver the paper work and he pulls out this electric cattle prod thing. So I went in and called the boys and they walked up the ramp and into the truck and I said goodbye. I didn't want him to use that on them. I pat them and tried not to cry. I don't usually show affection to the steers as I have always distanced myself to them but I thought I owed them that.

The arsehole truck driver says to the stock agent "Well they'll be on a dinner plate next week".

So the truck drives away with my boys and Ruby, Dustin and I stand there looking sad and I am feeling like shit. I don't think I could ever do that again. I even contemplated becoming a vegetarian. Still, every bit of meat we eat comes from a once beautiful animal. Just because cows are not cute and cuddly doesn't mean there lives are less important. If you eat beef, you may as well eat cat or dog. It really is the same thing.

I had to assure Ruby that no one would be eating Willow, Clover and Daisy, our pet house cows. Dustin waved goodbye saying "bye bye boy cows".

My steers fetched $600 each, $100 over the current average price so someone must have liked them. I am proud of how I cared for them but not so proud of my decision to sell them like that, but I don't regret doing it. I eat meat and if I cant take it I should give it up.

When you eat meat this week I want you to think about where your meat comes from. Generally, organic meat has been farmed in a less stressful way. Kosher meat is good and try to buy meat that has been farmed locally and don't buy meat that has been exported live. If you know a responsible hunter, that is a good way to buy meat for your pets.

One of these is mine :)

  Are they not the cutest things you have ever seen? I have bought one from a nice lady in Railton and I am picking mine up at the end of this month or the first week of January.

They are pure bred English Angora rabbits and I am getting the little boy. The litter has three girls and one boy. I cant wait!

Since I started spinning I have realised a fibre farm is what I really want to do with my 40 acres in Tasmania and since I was thinking of getting a bunny pet for the kids I'd start off small. One bunny wont give me much wool but at least we can decide if we like having a bunny. Would the dogs try to eat him? Does he make a lot of mess? Is the grooming required too much work for us? Regardless, we can easily manage one little rabbit but depending on how he settles in on Willowdale will decide whether he will be an only bunny or one of many.

I received an email from a lady with some names of people in Tasmania who breed angora goats yesterday as well. I cant get one of those until we get all our fences finished. We inherited a little toggenberg goat from a broken family whose pets all went off to the RSPCA a couple of years ago and he got into everything. He was lovely though. He was very friendly and settled in a little too well. He really needed to be in the company of more goats so we gave him to some people who already had thirty-six pet goats who free range over a hundred acres so he went to live in goat heaven.

Having him was a good reminder of how things can get out of control if you don't have all the right "infrastructure" (Scott's favourite word) set in place. Still, since the goat pruning of the apricot trees they have come back better than ever and he did a rather nice prune of my rose bushes also.

Wet, hairy and happy.

Spring is here and it is obvious by the state of my clothes today. Unlike my post title suggests, I do not have an excess of testosterone, I am covered in horse hair. Jimmy is currently grazing in the fenced off part of the back yard where the miniature horses are locked up for most of the spring, unless Scott gets around to putting up their permanent paddock.

Since he was there visiting with the minis, I took the opportunity to give him a brush. Masses of long winter coat is coming out everywhere. I didn't think he even had that much winter growth. I'm going to be grooming him forever and I still have the excessively woolly miniatures to groom.

The sheep need shearing urgently too so I need to get the shearer around. I am hoping he'll say he can come right over. This weekend even!

I am wet because our kids project of the day was wet felting. We made a multicoloured sheet of felt which is drying off on the clothes line and a massive mess in the dining room. It was fun and now we have the base of another project for next week.

This weekend we have a BBQ to go to at our local golf club. We donated hay to the farmers who lost theirs in the Black Saturday bush fires and some of them have come over to meet us. Nice. I'm looking forward to meeting some of them and seeing how they are getting on. It was great to be able to help out.

Scott has a fishing competition to go to at Swansea tomorrow. I think he has to get up at 4.00am to head off so he'll be going to bed early tonight. What shall I stay up late and do? I am making some fabric textile brooches for my Etsy shop that need finishing off and I've also started a larger fabric collage project and there is a ball of wool here in front of me asking to be crocheted into something and felted... or I could just lay on the couch and watch a movie....

Warning! Seriously cute post!!!

This is what I woke up to last Tuesday morning, a week ago today. I looked out my bedroom window from bed as I always do before I get up and there is my son's lamb with a baby lamb! I didn't even know she was pregnant. I new it was possible since we have a ram but Sugar is only just twelve months old herself.

A year ago she looked like this.

She is the top lamb and that is Butter on the bottom who we now suspect will probably also give birth any day. I hand raised them in our old hothouse and they slept in front of a heater to stay warm.

So there is baby Lisa the lamb, named by Dustin after a lovely friend of ours.

Here is her mama, Sugar.

And here is the Dada, Sneezy.

And Aunti Butter.

I have raised lots of baby animals but lambs are my favourite. This time since Lisa will stay with her mum, I get the pleasure of cuddles and cut lambie moments and none of the hard work of four hour feeds and mixing up formula's and cleaning up lambs beds.

He is some more lambie cuteness!