Our great southern migration

  The Cobargo show is this weekend and goes three days (of course). This image above is prize awarding for some of the earlier classes. One competition I really liked was "working horse". Horses ran around trees, went over small jumps, had to stand and move appropriately while their rider open/closed a gate and then moved down a narrow path with low rails. All in a time trial. Seemed most useful! Then we I learned more about camp drafting and stock horses . We didn't see any successes in the adult competition (we did leave before the end). While the adults had to pick a calf out of a herd of 7, the kids got only one calf to move around; some did manage that very well! The adults decided their job was to "collect" the calves after the kids (and later, the adults) finished their run. This was necessary but may not have taken as many horses/riders as took up the job.  The night before, we joined the training for the Cobargo rural fire service. This happened to be ...

  The growing season is a bit better in Cobargo than in Roseville. I am overwhelmed by produce and we have only a fraction of what it would be in a typical year. The image above is the current lot of red pears that needed to come off the tree. We bought a sealer and I have tried two methods of freezing so far. We need to find a spot to drop off produce. Pears are different from zucchini, right? It wouldn't be as bad. There is a fresh produce swap in Bermagui but rumor has it you can also drop it off in Cobargo so we will try that first.  We would have even more pears but we only managed to net two trees/parts of trees in our short stint here in December. You can see that the rosellas have totally destroyed pear production in the unnettted part of this tree: At the moment, I am very grateful. The green pears on this one are not yet ready for picking so that is also a benefit.  Tomatoes are still flowering and I have now tried several methods of preserving them. Need more j...

  We have moved in! Our mailing address is PO Box 5291, Cobargo, NSW, 2550.  Our storage unit is empty We rented a trailer and Betty White (the truck) towed it back and forth twice. That did it. There are now more things in the house We have been putting furniture together (hunting down missing pieces), collapsing lots of boxes, killing several spiders, and meeting some of our neighbors.  This spider had early residence and has not been killed but I think may now have migrated outside. Not super poisonous. Scott named her Gladys. I have not been keeping up with the blog. Instead, I have been unpacking and cleaning things.  Most of my effort the last couple of days has been on arranging and re-arranging kitchen supplies. Pretty happy with it but going shopping today so that may change my needs! Those two jars on the right are also my first attempt at doing something with the 100+ ripe tomatoes in our garden. Think canning is in our future but maybe not quite there yet...

      As we were walking around Dederang (before the fires), we heard birds making a "ZZZ" sound. The sound was like a big bug zapper or a large bee. They looked like willie wagtails. I saw three gang up on a kookaburra- not typical wagtail behavior. Ebird helped figure it out. They were actually restless flycatchers. According to ebird, they make an "incomparable buzzing scissors-grinder sound". I did see them repeatedly gang up on other birds.  Flycatcher sound In Dederang, they were also fighting the installation of a lithium battery farm: There was already a power plant in place and this was to be replaced by two battery set ups. The locals were really worried about fires (fair!) and battery explosions. Since most everything would be downwind/downriver, they thought the health risk unacceptable.    The current power plant is already above regulated noise levels so they have to fix that before batteries could be installed. I recorded the sound but it isn...

  This was from our truck window as we drove along the edge of the Longwood fire in Victoria, trying to head to the Melbourne area to get out of the fire zone. To catch you up (the US has had its share of trauma, too), much of Victoria burst into flames a few days ago. We were in Dederang in the Kiewa Valley. Very hot, very dry air made for a combustable environment. We had temperatures 43-45C (110-113F) and lots of wind. Any spark from a motor or branches rubbing can set off a fire and many brush and grass fires did start. The biggest ones were on either side of us. In the fire map below, we were at the blue binoculars. The wind was blowing eastward so really we weren't too worried about the fire to the right/east but the one to the left/west (Longwood) was huge and growing. And also headed eastward.  At that time, we were taking care of the dog, cat and two horses. There was a horse trailer but where would we take them? There was a dam on the property but no easy way to get ...