Free Grass Seed

Most of our paddocks have rather poor grass.  Most of it is browntop, a thin, fairly short grass that the seems to sustain the cattle and sheep, but doesn't fatten them much. 

We've been wanting to improve the types of grass we have, but there are a number of issues around what types are best for our livestock, what will grow easily here, how much it will cost and when can we leave a paddock empty for long enough for new grass to grow.

We had a look at grass seed at the local farm supplies store.  $100 a 25kg bag. And that would do maybe our bigger paddock only.

Over the last two years, we've been getting hay from a local woman.  She has ten acres and three spoiled horses.  Most of the hay we get is her old horse hay.  Any sign of mildew at all and the horses don't like it, or it's potentially bad for them.  So she puts it aside for us.  She gives us all the opened and loose stuff for free. Every year she likes to clear out whatever of the previous year's hay is left before she gets the new lot cut.  Her horses might be fussy about the hay, but my cows love it.

A couple of years ago, we had a lot of rain all through December and so by the time they could cut and bale the hay, it was very seedy.  I noticed that where I fed out to the cows, we got much better grass growing. 

We started to shake out a lot of the seed into a wool fadge. Obviously there was a lot of small bits of hay with it. We got to about half full.

Mixed seed and small bits of hay

With the Autumn rains starting recently, we thought it might be time to sow some of the seed.  After a few conversations with the neighbour, we'd decided to just spread it out where there were thin patches in the paddock.  The small hay mixed up with it should act as a mulch.

We started in the front paddock, but didn't get any further.  While there are some pretty good patches of healthy grass, there are quite a lot of bare patches and spots where there is a lot of flat weed and no grass. 

Seed and hay spread out over thin patches 

Hopefully, this will lead to a much better paddock.

Lockdown Weeks 2 & 3

Days are blurring together and Easter Weekend has been and gone.

Lockdown has become our new normal, although to be fair, it hasn't been that far different from times when I haven't been working anyway. I've become a hermit by nature over the last few years, avoiding people is fairly normal for me.

I only leave the house to do a weekly grocery shop.  The first week or so, I found it quite stressful.  While on the whole, I'm not overly worried about the current situation, not personally anyway, I found that I procrastinated badly about leaving and was very tense when I actually got into my car.  We don't get a lot of traffic up our way.  There are only seven houses on our five km road.  So I'm used to seeing almost no cars for at least half of my journey into town.  I didn't see another person for at least three quarters of the trip.  I saw two cars on the road between home and the supermarket.

There was a queue outside the supermarket and a security guard at the door.  People were lined up with well more than the recommended two metres between them.  Compared to photos and videos I've seen of supermarket queues around the country, this was quite a small line.  It didn't snake around the car park like many I've seen.  It consisted of maybe ten people.  Since then, I've found one queue that was easily twice the length.  Even then, it only took about 20 minutes before I was in the store.

People are mostly the same but different at the same time when they shop.  Many will stand back and wait rather than brush past each other. I haven't seen anyone lose their rag or behave in an irrational or impatient manner.  But there aren't many conversations in the aisles.  When I see a friend or workmate, our total interaction seems to consist of a simple nod, "How are you going?" with little to no slowing of pace.

Only one shopping trip left me really wound up and tense by the time I got home.  It was a combination of a lot of little things and I think it was a reflection of where my head was, rather than anything in particular that happened during the trip.

I've finished my youngest granddaughter's blanket.  I'm still spinning flat out.

I've been knitting during my daily video calls with my family.  This time it's a jersey for the oldest, I've finished a pair of socks in between this and the blanket.  This has led to a list of requests for future projects from my sister.

This sister used to be a wine rep to supermarkets and she has boxes filled with open bottles of red wine that have gone a little vinegary.  She suggested using it to dye some wool.  I've done some research and found that a mordant is needed.  I've ordered some Alum online and I think I'll have to wait until after lockdown before it's sent out, but I will post how it all turns out.

Update: I've done this now - read about it.

Miss 14 has been getting used to (and sleeping through some) calls online.  Most of her classwork is online these days anyway so getting the work isn't too far different for her anyway.

Hubby has been doing a mix of working from home and going in to work.  He has been busy in his time at home.  He's attacking the gully.  He has decided to do all of one side before starting the other side.  He set himself a goal of clearing to at least one fence post on the fence above each day.

The sides of the gully before cutting

This has been challenging on a number of levels.  Firstly there's the slope.  In places it's almost completely vertical.  Cutting at the top and at the bottom isn't too bad, the bits in the middle are not quite so easy.

The slope with a some of a pile at the bottom.

Then there's the honeysuckle.  In some spots, there's such a tangle of it, tying up the gorse and blackberry.  Where there are trees, there is often so much of it, strangling and smothering that it can be hard to find the tree underneath.

Trees buried under honeysuckle

Hubby has gotten very good at identifying which is which when cutting and pulling it down.

I've spent several hours out there helping him, by pulling on what becomes a big dense ball of honeysuckle tangled gorse, broom and blackberry, exposing the vines that are still connected so Hubby can cut them from above.




The other major challenge has been the fire ban.  While we're officially okay to burn, there has been a request from the fire service that we don't while lockdown is going on.  So we have several very large piles waiting for the opportunity to burn it all.  And we urgently want to burn it.  Previously, we've cut paths through the gully, leaving piles in places.  These piles have ended up being new mounds of thick blackberry. Obviously, we'd like to avoid a repeat of this.

More of the piles waiting for burning

We've found an old fence.  At first it looked as though a couple of half rotten old posts had been dumped in the gully at the top of the slope.  Then the partially buried barbed wire emerged.  Some has pulled up easily enough, some has had to be cut for digging out at a later date.  Several strands of straight fencing wire have been exposed down the hillside today.  One strand came out, the others will require more work first. It's hard to be certain whether it was old fencing dumped, or still in place from where it was previously before time, weather, erosion and plant pests had their way.

The goal of one fence post per day has been mostly achieved each time he goes out.  He usually manages more than one.  At this rate, we should be finished this side soon enough.  Hopefully, we'll be able to follow up with the odd spraying and that should be sufficient.

Lockdown Days 5, 6 and 7

We seem to be settling into a bit of a lockdown routine. Hubby goes off to work, apparently it's temporary but that changes daily. I make plans for my day. Morning video call with family and then I achieve nothing more. I beat myself up about what I haven't done and tell myself I've got a month and promise myself I'll do better tomorrow.

In all fairness to myself, today is the first day in nearly a week that it hasn't been raining so it hasn't been practical to sit outside plucking roosters or moving firewood from the pile where it's been weathering into the woodshed.  I know this, but the part of my brain that tells me off doesn't really care.

I've still been spinning and knitting. The Romney fleece I was given is working up to some lovely balls and the blanket for my youngest granddaughter is about three quarters done.

I  still keep thinking, here's the opportunity I wanted, I have the time to get some things done.

An online friend recently made a list of different garden beds that work in small spaces. She's a talented gardener and passionate about growing food. One of the styles she mentioned was hugelkultur.

I'd heard of it before, it was one of the many things I found in our early days on our block. Back when I seemed to learn about something new that sounded useful for us each week. I would start to research it and start making plans to put it into practice and the next disaster would happen.

We spent so much time firefighting and dealing with a new emergency constantly that improvements were few and far between for quite a long time.

Reminded of it, I started reading up about it again.

It literally means 'mound culture'. It's a system where you create mounds that require little to no watering. They retain plenty of moisture and are perfect for growing things in dry areas like ours.

You start with a base of branches. In the examples they started with whole trees, any wood that size would be going for firewood, but branches, I have them.

We've been slowly working on bringing down some of our macrocarpa hedge. It grows up into the power lines. We got a professional in to trim and top it a few years ago but that turned into more drama than it was worth, a lot of money and they missed the branches that were the most problematic anyway.

We decided to take the trees out that were around the lines and replace them with natives that are easily grown and don't get as tall. The problem is that macrocarpa branches go sideways and through the branches of the trees on either side. It's not as simple as just dropping a tree. In my job, trees or branches that can twist as they fall are referred to as 'widowmakers'. For good reason.

We've started by trimming off the side branches. Many are still mostly where they were, enmeshed in and held up by the neighbouring tree. We've pulled down what we can, trimming some of them as we go. There's a good pile of firewood for next year forming already.

We tried mulching the smaller branches. Macrocarpa is a very hard wood which has meant we've had to put a lot of work into resharpening blades and we've had to do it often.

Hugelkultur is an opportunity to use those smaller branches without killing the mulcher.

So since we have some fine weather today and I'm feeling a need to achieve something (anything!) I started piling the branches to begin my first mound.

My initial mound of branches 

 It isn't as big as the article recommended starting with. Two meters high seems impractical in my vege patch and frankly, I don't have the energy for that. This is also somewhat of an experiment, so I don't want to commit to something on that scale until I have more confidence in the project.

The next layer is recommended to be almost any organic waste. Compost, kitchen scraps, leaves or manure. The idea is to create a nitrogen rich layer.

I have a pile of mulch with what came out of the roof gutters when they were last cleaned sitting not far from my pile. I also have a compost bin that has been working for more than a year. It's mostly filled with sawdust and sweepings out of the chookhouses with a few dead birds and offal, bones etc from my home kill. There's at least a cubic metre there. I also have a mound of fairly well rotted cow and horse manure. I think I can use all three on this bed.

Mulch and gutter rubbish 

It's probably going to take me quite some time to get this all done, but I have a month, right?