Repurposing, upcycling or is it Bespoke?

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Browsing through a glossy magazine this week, an article caught my eye, it was about repurposing. I happen to be of the belief that farmers invented repurposing, they wrote the book on it.  Well they don't often write it down, they get on with it and it's all stored in their heads and the results are not always likely to feature in Better Homes & Gardens. But, think of all those wonderful bush letter boxes, and whoever thought that a very large umbrella frame would be ideal for drying the washing.  

When farmers need an adaption for the gizmo  it's often too far to go into town, too expensive or the model in the store is just not quite right, besides when you need it, you need it right away!  So farmers repurposed.

Our entire shed is repurposed, the posts and beams were our trees, the iron was salvaged  from another long collapsed shed, the work benches are old doors and half the important stuff in there came from an assortment of clearing sales. It looks at least half a century old but was built four years ago.

The best little box trailer ever was a repurposed concoction tossed in for free with a second hand quad bike, it's a master class in recycling ingenuity, all solid timber and steel, it weighs a ton but looks terrific in it's new bright red paint. Lately it's been doing duty delivering meals on wheels.

For some reason this winter we overlooked repurposing and decided to go shopping for a new hay feeder for the cattle.  We have small Herefords so everything seemed either too big or too high and most were too expensive. That left the option of scattering the hay in the paddock where is gets stomped, pooed and peed on because cattle have zero table manners.

Back home the repurposing wheels starting whirring, there were a few pallets lying around, a couple of metal gates and some left over mesh fencing stashed against the wall. The cattle were measured, the gates were measured and the pallets joined together.
By lunch time a bespoke cattle feeder had been constructed. The cost - $0     - repurposing at its best.

Bespoke cattle feeder

meals on wheels in the box trailer

RABBIT RAMPAGE

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new rabbit housing estate now available at Apple Gully Farm

In our part of the world we are happy to share the pasture with our shy little black swamp wallabies and our family of wild deer, they nibble a little and move on.
We also have rabbits, we started with a handful and now we have them by the truck load.  They breed and eat and then they breed and eat. In between they dig holes of all sizes, sometimes shallow test burrows or single family burrows, when they really get going they expand into warrens that resemble rabbit size suburbs.  On our farm they have teamed up with the wombats by digging their burrows into the sides of wombat holes. Wombats and bunnies are formidable excavators and now  we have areas looking more like the Somme than paddock.

Blame the hunting mad Thomas Austin for importing 24 rabbits in 1859,  however,  the first fleeters were ahead of him- luckily they ate all their rabbits  faster than they bred because the convicts ran out of rabbit stew fairly early,  the settlement was starving after the first year.

By 1950 there was a grand plan to get rid of the rabbits, it was a world first, we had a special virus called Myxomatosis and it was going to wipe those 'wascally wabbits' off the map, and it almost did --for a while.

When I was 12 my pet black rabbit called Pookey who spent most of his life in domestic bliss living with the humans in our family home, was infected with Myxomatosis and died an awful death in his box in the kitchen, I was devastated.

one little burrow 

By the way, the comment ' breed like rabbits' exists for a reason. Rabbit pregnancy lasts a whole 31 days, they mature and are ready to breed at 4 months, females are always on heat and ready to go and can have up to 12 kits (young) per litter.      That's what breeding like rabbits means!

Maybe we should feel proud of our rabbits after all they are responsible for one of Australia's greatest  infrastructure projects, one to rival the great wall of China - thanks to rabbits we have the mighty  Rabbit Proof Fence stretching north and south in Western Australia.

However, now it's time for this story to take a dark turn because the rabbits have decided to take over the farm and the farmers must fight to hold on.  First it was the new trees along the drive way- undermined and ringbarked  by the nibblers, then it was the beetroot crop, the citrus trees were next - ringbarked and the first crop of oranges nibbled and left to rot, then the Photinia hedge was reduced to a pile of sticks,  the rhubarb disappeared over night, even the Agapanthus were not spared - dug up and randomly chewed.

Hobbits perhaps - no just rabbits 

Finally the rubicon was crossed when my garlic crop was attacked. My proud boast that nothing but nothing in the Australian bush ever ate garlic lies in tatters. Sadly my once free range garlic happily unfenced and unsprayed now succumbs nightly to the furry menace.

'once was a hedge'

 The rabbits have developed a taste for the exotic, they are becoming epicurean nibblers, if I had Thai basil, Okra and Vietnamese mint growing they would surely be adding them to their gourmet menu.

shrub reduced to a stick

Drastic times call for drastic measures,
Claudius in Shakespeare's Hamlet paints a suitably dark image
                                  "Diseases desperate grown
                                   By desperate appliance are relieved"

Watch this space for our desperate appliance

What's been happening down on the farm

     click on    Apple Gully Farm    all the pictures and posts are there

creative garlic

I can't believe that this blog has been lying idle in the blogosphere since late 2013, an age ago.

The great silence suggests that nothing has happened.  Not so, it's the opposite, too much has been going on. Spring has come and so has the garlic crop along with 3 new calves. We are lucky we still have the third, his mother had been listless and failing throughout her pregnancy with a problem that despite multiple tests could not be accurately diagnosed.  She struggled valiantly on through the last months managing to give birth and support her little bull calf for another month and then as ailing cows do, she sat down and waited to die.  So we had an orphan to rear. Its amazing the difference mothers milk makes, despite hand feeding, our orphan is a runt and will probably never catch up with his peers.  

the bucket is a substitute mum for our orphan

Spring started with great promise and then rapidly reneged on all it's promises. The wind blew week after week evaporating what little rain fell  - green paddocks turned slowly yellow.
 
Then came summer- with a vengeance. A hot summers day in our part of the world climbs to around 30 degrees C. All through late spring we baked in 30+ days,  the pasture reacted to this by not growing.  Perversely, on Christmas Day it was cool enough to light a fire, then on Boxing day a vicious hail storm blasted through,  shredding the veggie garden and pelting the cows with hail stones like marbles. poor things winced and flinched wondering who or what was hitting them.

hail stones like marbles

 For most of summer this year the thermometer has hovered around 34 to 39 degrees C. Combine that with very little rain and it spells trouble.  Gradually our creeks have stopped flowing, the grass has turned brown, the blow flies are driving humans and cattle nuts, and the cattle have gravel rash on their noses  from scavenging around in the short dry pasture.

In other ways nature did manage to ignore the fiery weather and just got on with the business of growing and producing. The wild plums turned on a great crop. I shared an hysterical January afternoon picking plumbs with a flock of inebriated parrots. As they stuffied themselves with the slightly rotting, fermented plums under the trees they squarked and tottered about like a bar full of drunk students. None of them was capable of flyng more than half a meter off the ground and a few just lay about trying to focus on me or for that matter on anything.
 My jam making skills need some work, so I'll be back at the pub -- er-- tree next year to pick another batch. 
The mediterranean sunshine has produced a bountiful supply of sweet heritage tomatoes on vines that would now be 15m tall if I hadn't pruned them back to within human reach. We have been utterly spoilt and will never again be able to enjoy a cricket ball hard and tasteless commercial tomato.

our heritage tomatoes

Here's a test-- take 3 supermarket tomatoes, line them up and gently lower a house brick onto them, they can hold up the brick. Now take 3 of our giant Black Russian tomatoes and try the same experiment - you will have instant passata for your efforts.

so sweet and juicy- like a water melon disguised as a tomato

As February rolled around and the hot weather persisted  it became  clear we could not support all of our  herd through autumn and the winter. Even if the rains come, we will still be short on pasture this year. So we confronted the harsh reality of being farmers rather than the keepers of large pets. The old girls as we fondly refer to our original Herefords would have to go.

Tuesday has come and gone and so have the old girls, they arrived in 2010 and had over 3 pampered years on Apple Gully. We've kept their calves who bellow forlornly for the milk bar. Perversely, the rains came the very next day,  too late for our old girls.

We are not alone in saying we will be glad to see the back of this summer, the only thing we escaped was the bushfires.

the original old girls on the day they arrived in 2010

How to get a free NBN satellite dish, plus other free stuff

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http://lplatefarmer.blogspot.com.au/

The new millennium began 13 years ago, remember the Y2K bug, we survived that and powered on to MacBooks and flat panels, we queued up for iphones 3, 4 and 5 then we powered on through 3G to 4G ... do we have 5G yet and did you know there was a 1G system way back in 1981. When terabytes of storage are not enough we supersize up to petabytes. Did you know you can now have a Yottabyte or even a Brontobyte of disc storage.  I wish my cupboards could virtually expand  like that, then again maybe not!

Well all of that became irrelevant to us down on the farm because a single bar of 3G mobile coverage was a thing to wildly celebrate. Not that it did much, one bar allows the occasional email or text message to slip in and none to go out. In fact living in an area of virtually zero coverage messes with the mobile phone's head,  when we finally rejoin the world again- that is, drive down the road a few kms, it refuses to work and then the little ceremony of switching to airplane mode and off again seems to appease it.  Airplane mode in the middle of the bush! -  I know --well it just works -- some of the time.

Not any more- because we recently catapulted directly into the 21st century. Our roof now sprouts
   an 1.2 m NBN satellite dish for the internet & phone
   a mobile phone network antenna
   a mobile coverage booster
   a TV antenna
   a cable TV dish

and did I mention the solar PV panels for electricity
plus the solar hot water system

there is no room for a cat on our hot tin roof.

Some of this costs money of course - but not the NBN satellite dish. Here is a little secret,  the government will actually give you a FREE NBN satellite dish if and here is the catch- if you really cannot access the internet where you live. That is, no ADSL, no fibre, no 3G, no nothing.
We don't live out in the back of beyond, we live 1 hour 40 mins from both Sydney and Canberra, right on one of the busiest communications corridors in the country.  What we have that many haven't  are a few big hills around us that happen to be strategically placed so they block out the 21st century.

Some might sigh and say 'how blissful - good bye world'
but farmers need weather forecasts, weather radar, bush fire info, to pay bills ( not many banks around anymore)  and to contact family, check Facebook and Instagram and of course Google useful and time wasting stuff just like our neighbours over the hill.

the cable ties are a hi tech way of keeping the birds off!

So on our roof we make
free electricity
free hot water
from our free dish we get 20 GB of data for around  $40 a month

So far the TV is the only piece of technology not getting used- we're too tired at night and anyhow  the internet allows the digital paper to arrive in bed every morning -  our front fence is way too far away and no unravelling the plastic wrapper, movies, music and every other app are all there on demand-
                just click!

Spring Mischief

 
We've survived another winter down on the farm, at last the days are getting longer and the grass is starting to grow. In our part of the world winters mean frosts on the ground and some years we have the occasional snowfall.
In winter the nutritional level of our pasture really falls away, our cattle visibly loose weight, on top of this they are usually pregnant as our aim is for a spring calving. To keep the herd going we buy in large round hay bales to fill their stomachs. The old girls know the routine and work their way through a bale over the course of  a week, that is until the calves arrived with an even better idea.

wonder what you do with this round thing

where did it go?

that was fun- can we have another one to play with

spreading the round thing all over the paddock was hard work

uh oh!! better make myself scarce -I think we are in big trouble

It's a small world

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spot the mini Hereford

Plan B  down on the farm is up and running.   For several years we've been breeding Herefords and selling the offspring at the local sale yards. Our sales cheques are pleasing but nothing to have us laughing all the way to the bank.  Remember when you thought you might be in the running for a prize at the end of the school year - and you were handed a small  'best effort' certificate. Well that's us on the way to the bank- better than nothing.

We've been researching farming options that will keep us out of the sales yard. Knowing there are bigger and better farmers producing animals for the dinner plate along with supermarkets with big red fingers intent on sending prices down, down, we searched for ideas that avoided the bar-b-q.

First to arrive in stage 1, was the little bull from northern NSW, then came the 3 girls from Victoria. They all look just like our big cattle only smaller and if you have nothing to compare them with they look like --- a Hereford!

Tony with the blended herd

To fast forward our plans to breed up this comparatively rare breed, we've teamed up with a like minded owner of mini Herefords.   We have a bull and not enough cows, she has cows but no bull - perfect.
And was our little bull happy when he realised he had sole responsibility for a paddock full of girls!!

the harem

We're looking forward to calving, with newborns no bigger than a medium sized dog.  The plan is to build up numbers to supply four legged lawn mowers to small acre farmers like ourselves.

That's the roundup of things growing above the ground.  Meanwhile, below ground, this years garlic crop is in and already sprouting.

 A post script:  Our new venture got a feature in The Land this week, so read all about it there too.
 

six different varieties of garlic to test

Avoiding the sale yard

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Our rare new addition- the small one

  The rural adage advises -   never give a name to anything you plan to eat, so our cattle have always had numbers- a letter for the year of their birth and a number to correspond with their parent, their mother that is. We have B2 and over the years she has produced calves CB2, DB2 and currently we have EB2. Each year the calves are weaned some more successfully than others, they learn to love grass, they fatten up and they're shipped off to market.
  
Depending on

• the rainfall
• the quality of grass
• the degree of sunshine
• the local economy
• the rural economy
• the global economy
• the weather in Russia or South America
• the current exchange rate
• the el nino/ la nina index
• the changing fashion for wagyu to angus burgers

and  any number of other variables, we just get a 'market' price.

We sell  our cattle for a cents per kilo rate. In the past we've received anywhere from 196 cents/kg to 100 cents/kg  for 350 - 450 kg animals.

That's right  $1.96 - $1.00 / kg.  
Compare that with the price you pay in the butcher shop or super market.

On a small holding it's hard not to get to know your stock animals, there will always the noisy one, the sociable one, the boof heads, the shy ones. So when they're loaded onto the back of a truck and trundled down the road there is a twinge of regret about their life and the fact that you have got to know them.
After a few years of this pattern we decided to try a new idea. And so was born the germ of an plan to go smaller. Like strawberries and tomatoes, certain breeds of cattle have been bred bigger over the years because big has always been better. But like the hollow, tasteless giant strawberry and the brilliant red but brick hard and tasteless big tomato, the bigger cattle have a limited appeal on smaller acreage and gourmet palates.

Compare the size - mini and regular

And what about the fact that it's OK to get to know your animals, to appreciate the welcome you receive when you walk into the paddock and to realise that though it takes a moment or 3 they do recognise you,  as the chatterbox starts bellowing and the sociable one ambles forward of the herd for a quick scratch.
Don't forget that above all cattle are ever willing lawnmowers with the added bonus of being enthusiastic fertilizer producers and they beat sitting on the slasher going round the paddock for hours on end.

We settled on miniature Herefords, a smaller but rarer version of what we already have because we know they can manage on our native pasture. They aren't too fussy,  they just have to inhale a blade of grass to put on weight.
First came the bull from up north, then the cows from down south, their diminutive size means four of them fitted into a double horse float with room to spare.

Miniature Herefords might seem small by today's standards and they have had their ups and downs - literally. Back in the late 1700's they were large plow pulling oxen from the Welsh border region, later they were bred to be chunky fatty animals providing not just beef, but tallow for the candle trade,  as the electric light took off so did a taller, leaner sized Hereford, no one needed or wanted fat any more. The popularity of smaller cuts of meat and small acre farms has helped reshape the Hereford yet again.

Horns - now you see em

Because they are quite rare we are planning to breed up our numbers and so avoid the truck to market option.  A smaller area can carry many more minis, an important factor when it comes to calculating your rural rates bill.  They are also excellent limited edition compact lawnmowers and out door companions to people like us on small farms.

Now you don't

So far there has only been a slight hiccup, miniature Herefords come horned, not polled which means to be born hornless. Because they will sometimes run with horses it was decided that the horns  would have to be shortened. Such indignity-- but they are forgiving creatures and forgetful too.
Horns -- what horns I don't remember them.