Tractors and guinea fowl

Things are moving this week at the grove.  Our neighbours - a semi retired diesel mechanic and his wife, John and Janice, have provided us with a bit of excitement.  On Monday Janice and I brought 12 Guinea fowl babies up from their place to our old pen. Janice's guinea fowl laid a lot of eggs, and she hatched them under a chook (Guinea fowl are useless mothers.  Probably forget where they have laid their eggs) One escaped during the transfer, but John and Janice cunningly caught him the next morning.)  I worry about foxes, and even my other neighbour's staffy, who might fancy a little gf for morning tea. Please God they make it through their compulsory incarceration.  The one surviving original guinea fowl we have is hanging around the pen.  I hope he will want to be a mentor, and not peck them to bits.  He has been so lonely since his 3 buddies disappeared a couple of months ago. Janice has offered to check the chicks daily re water and food, which is a great relief.  Tania, my usual helper, has gone off the radar a bit since her kids are on school holidays and her husband is incapacitated - he had a serious accident hitting a kangaroo on his quad bike, and is in a brace due to fractured vertibrae.
Part two of the excitement is the possibility of a new tractor.  John and Janice have a Kubota - a reputable brand- which they think might suit us. It is newer, and smaller than our old Same (which they are trying to sell for us, a difficult job when the tractor has a busted clutch and  replacements are impossible to source.) I had a drive yesterday.  It felt fine, though I couldn't manage smooth gear changes.  Anyway, we are being lent the tractor for the weekend to try out, so once our baby sitting duties are over, we'll head down to the grove and see if we can dig out rocks, pull out stakes and generally cope with something completely different.  Wish us luck!

Amazingly tough and hard working

No, I'm certainly not talking about myself.  Summer is tough at the grove.  Although it is fractionally cooler than where we live in the city, and being close to the coast always gets whatever sea breeze is going (sometimes that's a gale!) it looks very dry and barren.  The little grass dries up and blows away, grasshoppers eat anything green and my few poor fruit trees shrivel. BUT I have some ornamental plants which do amazingly well and look cheerful on no fertiliser and no water.  Here they are.
At this point I had intended to add some photos which I took yesterday.  But my blogger dashboard has changed and it wont allow me to 'browse' and load photos from my desktop!!! ARGH.  It is probably my fault and relates to something I have inadvertently clicked.  So I'll just give you a boring list.
To clarify, these are all exotics, and not native

1. Bougainvillea.  I have five big plants, at the moment smothered in colour.  Real stand outs with hot cheerful colour.  Apart from the white one at the gate, which looks white and cool, not hot at all.
2. Ground cover lantana.  This is a toughy.  It is isn't the noxious weed one which causes so much trouble in the eastern states.  It is bright yellow and ground hugging,and flowers for months.
3. Oleander.  They get bad press because they are poisonous, but so are lots of plants, including daffodils and no one hates them.  I saw oleanders growing in Italy as spectacular features and resolved to resurrect their reputation a little bit. Mine are pink, and are looking very stylish.
4. Rosemary.  What is not to like about rosemary?  It smells good, you can use it in cooking, the bees love it, and it is so tough
5. Lavender.  Ditto for lavender, though I don't think it is terribly useful for cooking.  I have infused some olive oil with it, having plans to make some soothing ointment with oil and beeswax.
6. Lagestroemia. 'Crepe Myrtle' is the common name, and it is easier to spell. When we originally planned the grove, it was suggested that we plant almond trees along the drive. I took a unilateral decision and planted crepe myrtle instead.  I thought this was the all round super ornamental shrub.  It flowers with a profusion of blossom in summer, the leaves develop autumn colour, and the trunks, as the plant matures, are gorgeously shiny and patterned.  To be honest, they have struggled a bit, and after 10 years are no where as tall as I had hoped, but they are starting to make the sort of display I had hoped for.
7. Plumbago.  This one also hasn't been quite as tough as I had hoped.  It is an old fashioned plant that Nannas used to grow as a hedge.  I like it for its mass of blue flowers in summer.  One cultivar has amazing ink blue flowers.  I have put two near the blue house, but sadly something is eating them.  Either the kangaroos or rabbits like them, or it is the grasshoppers.  I'll try a tree guard, though that wont fix the grasshopper issue. 

Hooray.  The system has relented and is letting me put photos in!

Bi colour bouganivillaea

golden lantana

bougainvillaea, rosemary, lavender, plumbago

Oleander

Crepe myrtle

White Bougainvillaea

I wish I could have shown you the photographs! (And now I can!)

Robbing the bees

Here we are at the beginning of a new year.  We spent a few days after Christmas with our son and daughter in law, down on the beautiful south coast, and had a look at their bees, which they had just moved from an apple orchard to sort of hippy commune.  It made me realise we really ought to check our bees.  When I robbed ( I dont like that expression - I'd prefer to say 'harvested' honey.  But to be honest, we do rob the bees of their honey, their hard work.  I believe every worker bee, in their short life time, only gathers about a teaspoon of honey.  And some die every time you open and check the hive, no matter how careful you are)  Any way, when I robbed the hive last time, I did it by myself, and it was very hard, so this time I prevailed upon my husband to help.  Our grove, where the bees live, is 100 kilometres south of home in the city.  Husband had a physio appointment to go to (bursitis in the knee) so didn't get there until lunch time.  It went quite smoothly.  It took about 3 !/2 hours to rob and then extract the honey, and clean up.  We got about 12.5 kilos of excellent flavoured honey, and each got stung only once.  Mine was minor, but poor husband got stung near the eye, and it swelled dreadfully. He doesn't look happy, does he?

Bush Regeneration Grant

Our very proactive local authority, the City of Mandurah, has a scheme whereby rural blocks can be funded to revegetate with indigenous species.  We were recipients of a grant a couple of years ago, and were funded to fence off a small area (to protect it from rabbits) and restock it with local plants.  This year they rang me and invited me to re apply.  The ladies from the environmental department came out to visit and asked for my plans.  This time I have asked for a small grant ($200) to purchase plants, plant guards, stakes and fertiliser to create a 'corridor' for small birds to travel from one side of the block to the other.  I will have to choose dense prickly shrubs  and space them fairly closely for this to work.  We already have a line of trees across the block, but will need to thicken it up for the small birds to be safe.  I notice the brilliant blue flash of wrens in mating plumage darting in and out of the lavender bushes around the tank near the machinery shed, and also in and out of the piles of prunings awaiting burning.  I must re create this density  with local plants across the block to make it work.  The environmental ladies seemed sympathetic, and were happy to see the amount of replanting we have already done.  The fenced area showed sufficient growth to encourage them that I was serious and would look after the plants.  (I lost about 30% of my plants, but the surviving ones have done really well.  I had no idea that the kangaroo paws would be so tough!)  Fingers crossed that they accept my proposal.

Time to get the irrigation working again

Actually, I am not sure if I want to irrigate the grove.  The trees seem to produce quite happily without much supplementary water, so I am really only watering to keep the fruit trees at the end of each row going - I have stone fruit and citrus and figs and mulberries, a persimmon, a pecan, and two pistachios struggling along in our terrible sand.  But in any case, I needed to do a bit of maintenance, so I have started by cleaning all the 5 field filters and the one in the pump shed.  The next step was to go up and down the rows to see if water is coming out of the loops around the trees appropriately.  A quick look around the Mission, in zone one, was rather worrying.  A lot of loops have been cut up by the slasher, and water is pouring out instead of gently dripping.  This means no water makes it down to the ends of the rows where the fruit trees that really need the water are located.  It is going to be a slow job checking and repairing all the loops across all 5 zones.  Best not to think about it and just get on with it.

New Guinea Fowl

While having the dismal conversation with Janice Tetlow about the tractor the other day, she told me that her guinea fowl had hatched a good number of chicks.  I have asked if I could have some (didn't negotiate price, but I am hoping that tractor good will might count for something...) and she said yes.  So now I'd better get the old pen cleaned up - they will have to be enclosed for several weeks to 'bond' with the property, otherwise they will just head back home to the Tetlow's place.  Our one remaining guinea fowl is such a sad looking fellow.  Nothing sadder than a social animal living alone.

Update on tractor

Not good news on the tractor front.  The clutch, which we had repaired at considerable (several thousand dollars) expense not too long ago, has died again.  Mr and Mrs Tetlow, our neighbours who have a small business repairing and selling tractors, have advised us that it is probably not worth trying to fix it this time.  The parts are very difficult to get. Mrs Tetlow told me that the most valuable part of our tractor was the tyres, which are in relatively good condition and all up worth about $3000.  We have left the situation like this.  The Tetlows go to farm clearance sales, and buy tractors.  Janice Tetlow assures me that a 100 HP tractor, which is too big for most hobby farmers, and too small for broad acre farmers, could probably be picked up for around $10000. It would probably come with a cab and airconditioning. (Luxury!)  Perhaps my late Mum wouldn't mind me buying a new tractor with my inheritance.  (In fact I think she would thoroughly approve) We must wait and see, but in the meantime we can't do any tractor work.  I have a lot of tree stakes I would really like to pull up, but you need the tractor for that.