Our Heifers upgraded to the ‘title of Cow’ this summer. For those that don’t know, young female cows are actually called Heifers and aren’t considered “Cows” until they have given birth. Thanks to our neighbors’ young jersey bull who has become part of our farm family, we now have 5 healthy gorgeous calves.
This was a special moment…my first time being a midwife to a cow. Little “Summer” was born just before Christmas.
She has a heart on her forehead, and one on her side (well… we like to think it is). Here she is with her proud mama and papa, and little Josiah who is practicing being gentle.
Sometimes you win and sometimes you just have an experience.
The very first day we looked at this property we had a glimpse of our local brumbies and each year around the same time they’d come back. They must do the seasonal rounds in this area.
This year they came back to us after a pretty rough year. The drought and fires would have taken a toll on them. Four brumbies turned up on our fields after the flooding rains broke the drought. Two of the brumbies were in quite a bad state and we were helpless to save them. They wouldn’t let us get anywhere near them and wouldn’t take anything we offered them. They soon passed away much to our disappointment.
We managed to get some cattle yards together and lured the other 2 brumbies into them in an attempt to tame them. A very ambitious task, considering we’ve never had horses before. But that’s how we roll here on the off-grid farm. Our motto is: Just get stuck into it!
Meet Neisan (the brown horse) and Storm (with the striking white main and white tail)
We looked at doing courses on training wild brumbies using the 4BP(4 Brumby Protection) method, a method that’s been successfully used out in the outback and is really gentle. It basically teaches you how to be a “horse whisperer”. But the covid19 restrictions put a halt to these courses and we couldn’t even get someone out to coach us because of all the isolation restrictions. So we had to try breaking them in on our own using videos and emails.
To begin the 4bp method you look the horse in the eyes and when you make eye contact with them you put your head down in submission to let them know you mean no harm. Karl was the only one game enough to get in the pen with a wild horse…it’s not for the faint hearted!
We were soooo looking forward to getting to the point where the horses would feel comfortable being around us…but that wasn’t to be. Someone left a gate unlocked one night and the horses found their way out….ohhh the disappointment! Like I said at the beginning, sometimes you win and sometimes you’re left with an experience. It was a pretty cool experience though. Although the horses still didn’t like being touched by us we were able to get Nesian to eat hay out of our hands and we managed to get worming pellets into them. So hopefully they’ve left a bit healthier than when they came…and hopefully we didn’t frighten them too much that they don’t ever come back again!
Anyway here’s a video of our special time with our local wild brumbies
The kids loved spending time with the brumbies
Brumbies aren’t native to Australia. They were bought in by the first settlers and left to roam wild. There is a lot of controversy over the management of wild brumbies. They are considered a pest by environmentalists and the government because they disrupt the native ecosystems and then there are groups that want to protect them and consider them as part of Australia’s heritage. We would never want to harm these beautiful creatures and would happily take on any brumbies that come our way!
Even amongst the drought, fires and smoke, life still goes on and we’ve been blessed with some new little ducklings. Our ducks decided to make their nests in the garlic patch this year. We’ve just started harvesting the garlic so we’ve moved these littles ducklings into the garden patch…this should be a little duck heaven for them. Hopefully they’ll eat all the slugs, aphids and grasshoppers!
Indian Runner Ducks
We were also blessed with over 20mms of rain over the weekend and after just a couple of days we started seeing a tinge of green growing back in the grass…it’s such a lovely sight. Hopefully we’ll continue to get some more rain over summer. Here’s a picture of the green tinge coming back in fields, and the before and after photos.
Grass is turning green again
Dead grass
After a few days of rain
We’ve still been managing to water the gardens throughout the drought and when you see things blooming it makes it all worth while. I’ve never seen “all yellow” sunflowers before…that was a surprise. It’s a race with the bugs to get to the strawberries first. The apricot tree is producing even though the leaves are looking a bit wilted. The kale is hanging in there despite the hot weather. We have quite a few baby feijoa trees growing which are still standing strong (can’t wait to have feijoas!!).
The animals all have a purpose on the farm. Here is our extended family.
Woolahra and Sydney
Mischievous goat
Woolahra the sheep was the little lamb we brought home from the outback. She came from Woowoolahra Station (hence her name). Sydney the goat was given to us by a friend on the Gold Coast. We were told that if you have goats you need to have fences like Fort Knox. That is sooo true! Sydney will get through anything and wreck havoc. Here he is in the ducks shelter. We thought we had put enough wooden posts around it to stop him from getting in and eating their food. We were wrong! Poor Sydney has gotten up to so much mischief around our farm that we are too scared to get him a mate. So he just hangs out with the sheep.
Unfortunately we lost Woolahra during the drought. The grass was so dry and scarce we had to let the animals wonder down the back of the property to eat and she was attacked, maybe by a dingo, fox or wild dog??? That was sad. We had hand raised her. She loved being cuddled and would follow us everywhere. I could go for a bush walk around our property and Woolahra and Sydeny would happily follow me just like dogs. Our other sheep haven’t been hand raised and will run away if you get anywhere close to them.
The Ram
A dorper lamb
Black dorper ewe and it’s lamb
We started with 12 chickens, 7 Indian Runner ducks and 6 Guinea Fowl. We’ve lost some (from predators) and gained some (baby chicks) and swopped some with the neighbours, so I’ve actually lost count of how many we have. Our chickens and ducks free range all over the place and have learnt to hide under cover when hawks and big birds fly over head.
We made a mobile chicken coop out of stuff lying around the farm that the previous owners had left behind. From the old trailer, an old cabinet, old weather boards, old corrugated iron etc, our carpenter son-in-law wacked it together in a weekend.
Enoka building the chicken coop
Karl and Lucky helping out
The outside
The inside
Now we have plenty of eggs of all shapes and sizes. Sometimes we get crazy monster eggs
Various egg sizes
A monster egg
Too many eggs
We currently have 5 heifer cows – 3 milking breeds and 2 angus heifers. We also look after our neighbours 2 young bull calves. One still has all his bits and pieces so hopefully he’ll breed with our cows sometime soon. He’s a bit smaller than the girls, and they bully him, so we might have to just wait until he grows a little more.
The Jersey cow
Eating hay in the winter drought
The little bull calf
My favourite
Meet the piglets! They are the newest addition to the farm. Their job is to dig up the grass so we can turn it into garden. They are doing a great job…I just don’t have an updated photo of how muddy that patch of green grass has turned into. I’ll post a photo soon. Of course our trusty dogs Tux and Jet are very much a part of the family. They’ve also been sowing their seeds around the neighbourhood. Our neighbours just had a litter of 11 puppies…and they looked just like Tux and Jet (Yes female dogs can have a litter from more than 1 dog!)
Tux and Jet looking after the piglets
Last of all our kitten “Hunter”. We got him just after Christmas. His job is to keep the mice population under control…and yes we have seen him catch some. Good job hunter!
The kids are loving all these animals. We’ve just acquired these 2 little wild piglets thanks to Jason the Aussie shearer and avid hunter. You can guess what happened to their mother. So Jason bought the piglets back for Misty (his daughter) and the kids.
We also have Mr Tumnus the (female) orphaned baby goat who was bottle fed and quickly weaned back at Lake Stewart when the dogs munched up her bottle.
A stray goat came into the picture here at Waka and made friends with Mr Tumnus. They have both been sleeping under our camper trailer since we’ve been here. The sneaky things keep trying to get inside our tent. Mr Tumnus got in 3 times and left trails of pellets for us! grrhhh
Mr Tumnus is the little goat and his new friend “Mr Tumnus 2”
And of course we have the working dogs
Boss
Tux and Will penning up the sheep
Sam
Coolie
And the pet dogs
Kenya
Jett
Toa
How do we feed all these dogs?
Warning…the next picture might be a bit harsh for squirmish city folk
Of all this open land for miles and miles, this emu decides to cross right in front of us at this particular moment of time. Lucky we had the dash cam going!
Off Grid Maori 