Winter has definitely arrived.  We've had a number of quite severe frosts and the fire has been kept going most nights.

This was one of the birches just a few weeks ago when it was truly splendid.  The leaves have now all disappeared but it shows a different beauty with the marvellous textured bark and silhouetted branches.
One of the things we love about Tassie, and one of the main reasons for moving here when we returned to Oz, is having four seasons again instead of the hot-and-wet or hot-and-dry which is typical of so much of the North Island (mainland.)





The building continues.  Downstairs now has the first coat of render completed inside and the second coat started.
We have also started the lining with the ceiling complete in the alcove and partly done in the dining area and bathroom.









Upstairs a stud wall has gone in on the southern side of the guest bedroom/study.  Yes, I know that it looks as though the wall is short, but it is firmly fixed to the rafters behind the main beam.

The wall will have a sliding door running behind to provide storage space and the bedhead will go against it.  On the Northern side of the room, my study area in the dormer is beginning to take shape. It will have a fitted desk and bookshelves.

We are still trying to get the money together for the plumbing and electrics.  Once they are done, everything else is quite straightforward.

So proud of this lady.   Sue is scared of power tools, and terrified of the drop-saw but has learned to use it anyway and has saved me numerous journeys on the stairs as a result.  She has also become comfortable with the tacking gun, but wants nothing to do with the big nail gun which is too heavy for her to handle comfortably. 

We're still managing to lay up hooch.  This lot is more cider, and there is a batch (8 litres) of white peach wine brewing by the fire as well as 23 litres of stout.

Vinnie now has his own hoonchie in Rachel's back paddock so he can overnight there.  At our place, we still have a chronic lack of feed because of the wallabies eating all the grass that comes up so he has to make regular visits to R's place to get a good bellyful. 

Covid 19 restrictions have had little effect on us, other than putting church meeting on hold.  Otherwise, you don't get much more isolated that we are.

Provisions

This was our harvest of Mountain Pepper for the season.  Not a huge amount but not bad for one small tree.
















I had a go at hot cross buns for Resurrection Sunday.

Not bad for a first shot, and they were delicious.

Now there's a tale to these.
I decided to make plum wine.
I had picked heaps of Greengage and Golden Drop plums from Rachel's orchard, and Sue had frozen them.  Freezing makes them easier to pulp once they are thawed, so I set about making up about 7 litres.  Problem: it's hard to tell frozen plums and apricots apart, so instead of plum wine we ended up with plumpicot wine.
It has resulted in a delightful dessert style wine, with a refreshing fizz.
We also experimented with rhubarb wine - 7 litres initially - and the results were so good that we immediately cleaned out the rhubarb patch and now have bottled 29 more litres.
I also made 10 litres of cider from our own apples and have 25 litres more brewing from apples from Rachel's orchard.
I also have 15 litres of ginger beer brewing.
All told, we have about 90 litres of hooch either bottled or brewing....and I wouldn't average a standard drink per day.  Looks like I'm just about covered for winter.

But there's always a catch.  That 40 litres which is brewing will need to be bottled and we're out of bottles.  A message has gone out to friends to save their soft drink bottles.  I prefer the PET bottles to glass for a good reason: I don't like glass grenades.  PET bottles go out of shape before they will burst, so there's plenty of warning if pressure needs to be eased.

I ran the costs.  Cider costs us nothing when I rely on the natural yeast, or less than 1cent per litre if I use champagne yeast.  The other country wines come out at about 15 cents per litre because of the added sugar.  At those prices I could put up with ordinary hooch, but this stuff has all been great.  Ok, the blackberry wine had a stinkbug in it, which made it less than completely wonderful, but otherwise...

Autumn is in full swing

The winds are blowing.  The apples have all been picked.  Plums, apricots, and rhubarb have been converted into country wines.   Cider and ginger beer are brewing.  Kilos of fruit are in the freezer.  It's the "season of mellow fruitfulness."
Since my last post, Poppy had her calf.  Unfortunately it was still born.  She also seems to have had a hernia.  I need to have the vet check it out to be sure, but, if she had one, it means we won't be able to breed her again.

 Poppy's udder was huge and she had plenty of milk, but her teats were too small to milk by hand - especially the rear teats.  It was impossible to get milk from the rear quarters, despite them dripping milk constantly.  Those tiny teats were just too small to be able to squeeze properly.  At least I was able to get two fingers on the front teats but, again, they were so small that it took more than half an hour to get a litre out of her.
So I've had to dry her off to avoid mastitis.  Thankfully, drying off went without any problems and she's in fine health.
If - and it's a big "if"- we are able to breed her again, I'm hoping that the calf will be able to get onto the teats and stretch them out enough that she becomes milkable.
The upshot of all that is that this year's milk, butter, cheese and yoghurt will now need to come from the supermarket instead of the paddock, and our beef supply is put back a year.

Our batteries finally collapsed totally and we spent a few months running everything off the panels and generator, and with no power at night.  Very frustrating.
We were able to pick up four deep-cycle batteries from a chap north of Hobart for $1600 - less than half price.  The vendor, Michael, honoured our deal despite getting a better offer.
They are now installed and working fine.  We still turn the fridges and freezer off at night, but are making float every day, and staying above 80% charge all night.


Covid-19 is doing its thing.  Tassie has over 200 cases, which gives us the highest per capita infection rate in the country.  Isolation is not too hard for us as we need to go around to the cow most days to check her water, move the electric fence, etc.  On top of that, 10 years up here on the hill has taught us to cope with isolation.  The hardest thing is knowing family can't come down, and we miss church too.
Two of our friends have had the virus, but seem to be recovering fairly well.

Hugh Rimington rips ScumMo a new one:
Journalist Hugh Rimington gave our wonderful PM, Scott Morrison (or ScumMo as he is now called), the metaphorical both barrels on ABC Radio National this morning.  He pointed out that, given that Scummy had detailed warnings in August from emergency services leaders that this fire season would be unprecedented, including maps accurately predicting the most at risk areas of the country, his sneaking off to Hawaii for a family holiday, and lying about it, when the predicted emergency was going full throttle, was wrong.
He also blew apart Scummy's argument about not wanting the Feds to "trip over" the State emergency authorities by pointing out that turning up to do the job of leadership that he was elected to do would facilitate the State efforts, not hinder them.
It's worth listening to on the ABC podcast series.

On another note: we had a paddock hayed today.  511 bales.

Happy New Year!
2020 has arrived with horrific fire conditions on the mainland.  Crews are now going into some of the burnt out communities to assess the damage, and to see how many have been killed.  So far, 7 bodies have been found over the past 36 hours.

Here in Tassie, we have several fires in the North but none in our part of the state for now.

I robbed a hive today.  It is in a friend's yard on the other side of the river.  The one super produced 11kg of honey which means we will have a little coming in from the sales to buy some more frames and hive boxes.

I still have two hives to check, but they will have to wait a few days as we are back to rendering tomorrow.