Life on our small farm

Frog friend

Frog friend

I was clearing away slug eaten leaves from the bottom of the cabbages ... and who was hiding under some leaves but a lovely little frog!

We often hear and see the frogs in our animal water troughs, but I hadn't seen one in the vege garden before. We have a little water trough that we were going to make into a fishpond for the front paddock, but now I'm thinking I'll set it up with lillypads to make a nice place for frogs to live.

Frogs are quite an efficient form of natural pest control. Skilled at using their tongues to catch even flying prey, frogs subsist on a diet of mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches, caterpillars ... and best of all - slugs.

Having a frog in our garden is a sign that we have a healthy ecosystem, free from pesticides and fungicides. Frogs are highly sensitive to pollutants and stay away from sources of toxins.
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Thank goodness for rain

Thank goodness for rain

We're well pleased that we've had a good amount of rain. Our dams and ponds were empty after two dry summers and it's taken quite a bit of rain to get them full again.

The dog is pleased to have her swimming pond back and we are relieved that the dams that collect and store the animal trough water has filled back up. It was getting a bit of a worry - was there a leak? But after a catch-up with the neighbour we learned his dam was very low too. That was only 3 weeks ago, now we've all got loads of water! Everywhere.
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Unplanned pregnancy

Unplanned pregnancy

This is a story of unplanned pregnancy. The neighbour's bull found our heifers so irresistible he broke down the fence to have a big love fest with our girls. 

So mooving (sorry) the cattle now involves checking out udders to see if they are evidence that next winter we'll have calves born here for the first time!

It might turn out a good way for us to raise calves each year. Maybe we need a gate between the neighbour and us instead of a fence?

And, another brightside was an excuse to get to know the neighbour a little more during multiple visits to entice the bull home.
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What a storm!

What a storm!

Well that was a stormy Sunday! And a near disaster for our lettuces and herbs. But we got by with a little help from our friends.

We lost power on Sunday morning, and without power to pump water along the channels under our hydroponic plants roots, all we can do is manually pour water down the channels to keep the plants alive. The mature plants in particular suffer, and wilt so badly they look like seaweed! You can imagine our distress!

Along came our neighbors, extra buckets, watering cans and helping hands at the ready. And, the best bit, eventually they tracked down their generator.

Our power was out for a couple of days, and that generator saved the lives of many lettuces and herbs! And saved us and the buckets alot of work.

So a huge thank you to our neighbour's, so willing to come and help out ...

... and now we have our own generator. It wasn't on this month's budget but we feel so much better knowing we have power backup at the ready.
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