Early Bird Farm: September 2015

Sunday, September 27, 2015

St Marys Church

This old church is about 10km before you get the Goulburn turn off on your way to Sydney.

The roof has had a little damage.

Andrew like's to go detecting, hoping to find old coins or other old rusty treasure.

I like to photograph interesting things and Sally Girl likes to drag me around so she can sniff everything, makes it hard when your trying to take photos i can tell ya.

As you can see from the rubble inside and the build up of dirt, the roof has been down for quite some time.

It is made from stone with bricks at the top and bottom of the windows.

The outside stone was once white washed. We did find some small pieces of glass and lead from the windows.

Some of the things that were found were hand forged nails, lots of wire and rubbish like bottle caps.

But the best find was an old Goulburn Cordial bottle and these i collect so was pretty happy about that, especially as it was not broken or chipped.

Once it had an iron roof and some sort of render on the inside walls.

This old church stands on private land, however you can visit it but you must close the gate and not venture onto the rest of the property.

On the other side of the gate stands the cemetery.

I find old cemetery's to be so interesting. Old headstones, family plots with generations of family buried along side each other. I have found a lot of the early graves are mostly children. Some times they say how they died, and they nearly always put exactly how old they were, like 10 years and 4 months. And husbands usually died a long time before their wives.

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Linked Here
a-little-r-r-wednesdays-hop #121

Friday, September 25, 2015

Workshop part 2

Today i am posting from our local library in Bombala, free limited internet. It is only open 3 days a week and i usually miss the times as they are all random, its crazy.

That's small town life for ya.

Here is what we were up to last week when the sun was shining unlike the last few days where we have had snow, sleet, fog, wind, a little sun and buckets of rain.

Part 2 of the workshop

This is another branch from the tree in the front paddock.

First Andrew has to cut off all of the side branches before he can cut the log from the trunk of the tree.

The above cut is the limb Andrew and Joshua milled last time.

This little guy was hanging out on the other side of the tree and stayed there all afternoon, i think his mum must have left him behind.

The final end cut before chain sawing the log from the tree.

There are no pictures of us moving the log as it was just the two of us this time.

Before cutting the log from the tree we put smaller limbs under it so we could roll it with the log dogs to where we wanted it.

Having is sit on the limbs makes it easier and you can cut more from the log.

We had people popping in and out most of the day so the mill wasn't set up till the afternoon.

Andrew milled the top so we had a flat surface, then we covered it for the night and went back up to the cabin.

We started early the next morning and here are the first bearers for the work shop.

There was a bit of rot at one end but these can easily be trimmed up when we use them.

Next came the joists and as you can see the log is getting pretty small.

This is all that is left, the last joist came away before Andrew could finish the cut.

The mill was packed up and all the timber stacked and all before lunch.

We got 9 Bearers, and 9 Joists plus numerous off cuts.

It may not look like a lot but its enough to build our shed.

And as you can see from above the stack of framing Andrew and Joshua cut last time.

After lunch we put in 4 more stumps these are put in at 1500mm apart from centre to centre.

Closer than normal because it will be full of tools.

We will be adding another 4 stumps as we are going to have a veranda on it.

As you can see from the picture the stumps are getting shorter at the front, it is following the slop.

By the time we do the last 4 stumps the ramp to it will be pretty low.

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Linked here
From the Farm hop #26
Our simple Homestead hop #18
Sundays Down Under hop #16
a-little-r-r-wednesdays- hop #121

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Plough

The reason we went to Melbourne was to pick up a plough. Don't get too excited its not for a tractor, they are way out of our price range.

This little beauty attaches to the back of the buggy and at $380 we could not pass it up.

It came in its own crate so some assembly is required.

The good thing with the crate is we can reuse the ply for something else.

It is a spring tine plough and pretty well made.

It only took Andrew 1/2 and hour to put it all together.

As it was late in the afternoon it stayed in the paddock till the morning.

It has 7 tines and you can raise or lower to suit the depth you want to plough.

Sally Girl is always supervising.

Put the Buggy into low range and away Andrew went.

The turning circle on the buggy is not as tight as a tractor so there was lots of going over bits to get to the next section.

One of the reasons for getting the plough was so we could dig up all the serrated tussock, it is a noxious weed down here and as land owners we are expected to keep it under control.

There are a couple of ways of doing this, poison, fire or plough.

Poison was not an option for us and fire can be very dangerous so ploughing is our solution well mostly any way as i spend a great deal of most days digging them out with a shovel.