INDOOR ACTIVITIES IN JULY

Rain is still falling here at EdgeOfHeaven.  I am having some new fencing done and when posts are going into the ground there is water 500 cm down which is great as the water has gone down rather than just running off the surface.

Rainy weather encourages indoor activity so last week I dyed some wool using forest green and blue dyes. I used the same dye on both a light tan and white alpaca with some interesting results.

This is Camilo on a bad hair day, but Camilo has a very soft suri fleece.  He is the largest alpaca and stands taller than me.  He has also assumed he is superior to the other alpacas and regularly dominates food bowls.  However when Udo the llama gets frisky, Camilo initially stands his ground but will retreat when push comes to shove.  As a human, it is not advisable to stand at the rear of Camilo as he has a very powerful fast backward kick.

When I applied the dye to Camilo's fleece, I didn't stir it as I wanted to retain some of the tan colour.  It resulted in a wonderful fusion of tan, forest green and blue.  I think I will felt this as if I spin it, it may just become one murky colour.

This was a worthwhile experiment - putting the chocolate sheep wool on the left into the dye and stirring it around.  All the bleached tips grabbed the colour and the wool became a real blue/black.

And now for the really showy, but expected result - just thrust some of Picasso's white neck fleece in and the depth of colour is amazing.  Once again I didn't stir this and when you pull apart the dreadlocks (as Picasso is a suri), some white remains inside.

Another article on the fabric adventure is the latest nuno scarf.  I had spun some black alpaca wool into which I had carded some Seve's brown colour.  As I wanted to use this wool, I chose a variegated grey tissue silk and created a pattern where the wool was laid out in an S shape.  When the scarf was felted, I knitted some of the wool and added it to the ends.  This provided a weight to the ends of the scarf which is handy on a windy day when your scarf often blows away.

The month would not be complete without some spinning, so here is a skein of white alpaca which will probably be knitted into some more white alpaca dolls.  Vijay is very reluctantly modelling it.

Latest little girl - SEVILLA

SEVE is a most handsome huacaya and the new little paca doll is appropriately called SEVILLA.  The brown wool has been spun and knitted from Seve's cria (baby) fleece.

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WELCOME JULY

Welcome to the second month of winter.  Last week provided a week of much needed rain and this week should be fine, but much colder.  The olive grove has been a little neglected, so this week should be an opportunity to get up there and into the pruning.  I have pruned about a third of the 70 trees and pruning also includes weeding and checking the drippers under each tree.

On the weekend we picked the last of the limes and the first of the grapefruit.  This poor little grapefruit tree is about 1 mtr high and has at least 20 large grapefruit.  The one for breakfast was delicious, juicy and only had 1 seed.  The oranges are also ripening, but may be at least another week.

All the citrus trees have quite bad black spot, so I will have to get up there and thin them out and use some white oil which seemed to clean them up last year.

The nearly one year old grape vines are all losing their leaves, so I am presuming when all the leaves have dropped that they, too, will have their rather vicious pruning back to 2 buds.  The fig tree is also nearly bare and the walnut is back to stalks.  The 2 avocados and macadamia are looking really healthy as are the apples.

We have purchased some portable electric fencing so that we can let 'the boys' into the grove to eat the pasture, but keep them away from the trees.

And now for the new 'bug' - I have been educated about slaters.  I have watched these little hard backed creatures first eat my petunias, then my peas and finally my fledgeling tomatoes.  So when I was to plant this bed for the fourth time - with snow peas and broad beans, I was going to prinkle around a powder which the nursery told me would eliminate my little friends.  However when I read the label, it said not to put it near plants you are going to eat.  I have instead used ash from the fireplace around all the plants thinking perhaps it might inhibit the night stalkers.

Celery bed

 
In another raised bed I had to harvest all the spinach as the RLEM (red legged earth mite) had started to get into two of the plants.  Last year they ate all the leaves of my potatoes in the ground, so I am very  wary of them.  Unfortunately no one seems to have a cure for them.  Their taste so far seems to be for soft leaves, so they have not touched my celery, which is not far from harvest.

Finally the rain has brought some rather creative hair styles for the alpacas.  The huacayas usually have this springy little "bonnet", but when wet you can really appreciate a bad hair day.  Also see Scrumpy on a fair weather day when he looks much more elegant.

WALKING WITH UDOKAN

I have mentioned the big llama Udo a numer of times.  Out in the paddock frollicking with the boys he thinks he is King Pin with lots of huffing and snorting as he stands on the highest point of the dam wall - head and tail raised high.  Occasionally he will chase one of the alpacas around just to let them know he is the boss.  It was quite funny one day when he picked on the smallest, but cheekiest alpaca, Picasso, who just turned around and spat Udo in the eye.

Last weekend we took Holman, the little black suri, out for a walk with Udo. (Holman is a most wonderful walker - keeps exactly to your pace and doesn't pull on the lead.)  Holman was at the front and when I stopped with him, Udo kept coming with Bill.  Udo made a grave mistake and tried to sniff Holman's rear end.  A very accurate foreceful kick ensued and when I looked back I saw a llama truly in pain.  Holman had struck a hard blow right on the left side of Udo's mouth and here was this huge animal standing with his eyes closed and his jaw visibly shaking.  Camelids have pretty useless tongues, but Udo was trying so hard to move his mouth around to alleviate the pain.  If he was a child, you'd try to rub it, but with this large boy it was best to just stop for a while and let him get over it.  I certainly wasn't going to try to get near that mouth.

Then as we walked along I realised that all this happened with only one sound - the thud of Holman's foot against Udo's head.  As obvious as his pain was, there was not a cry or even a moan.

This morning I decided to take Udo out for a walk on his own.  This requires incredible patience as he doesn't make it easy to put his halter on.  If you walk towards him with the halter, he just positions his rear end towards you. Then he just watches (without turning his head) and as you move one way, he manouvers in the opposite direction, never letting you get near his head.  In llama language, the rear end means "I can kick you, so beware" and I keep a respectful distance. Now if you have two people in the enclosure, and position one person on each side, Udo gives in quite quickly.  But when he knows you are alone, this slow dance can go on for a long time.  After at least 10 minutes of this little game, I became very determined to "win".  So I got Udo into a smaller area and stood at the gap in the fence.  He proceeded to show me his rear for another 10 minutes and then finally turned around to see how he would get out.  I opened the gap a little more and he came towards me.  As soon as I lifted my arm, he just turned around and showed me his rear again. 

Eventually he really wanted to get out so he came over to me. He does understand the word "pat" to mean that I want to pat down the front of his neck.  I just kept standing there with my hand halfway out saying "pat".  Finally he thrust out his neck so that I could pat it and he knew that I would then grab the lower part of his neck (which is armpit height on me).  Once I have his neck, even though he could easily pull away with his massive strength, he then lets me hold on.  I then raised the halter with my left hand as I held on his neck with my right arm and he raised his nose so high, I couldn't reach to put the halter on.  A cartoon clealy comes to mind of this sturdy boy taking off with a whisp of a human - arms anchored on his neck and body floating at chest height!

Persistence brings rewards.  As soon as I got the halter over his nose (good stretching exercise for me), he just stood there and let me do up the buckle and then happily followed me out of the gate for a 15 minute walk around the triangle paddock.  During this walk, we can stop and he lets me cuddle him.  He obviously enjoys it, especially a light stroking along the bottom of his jaw.  He made no effort to get away or play the "rear end" game.  He didn't refuse to walk any any stage and followed everything I wanted him to do.

When we came back to the enclosure, he just stood there and let me take the halter off and put it back on repeatedly, quite enjoying the attention.  I gave him one final "pat" without the halter and off he went with the other boys racing to the bottom gate for me to let them into the dam paddock.

That's how you spend an hour to do a 15 minute walk on a wonderful fine winter's day.

JUNE JOY

We are having some of the most perfect winter weather - cool nights, warm days and no wind.  I have done a lot of complaining about the weather, but just now it is perfect.  The eco glass on all sides has made a great improvement in inside temperature - at 7.00pm when it is 13 degrees outside and it's still 20 degrees inside.  Most nights I do not bother to light the fire.  No doubt as the temperature drops in the next couple of months, the fireplace will come to the rescue.

Yesterday I drove the 10kms into town in wonderful sunshine and on one side the green paddocks were covered in dew and the other side was a rich brown red from recent ploughing.  The only sound was from lambs calling their mothers in the clear morning air.  Coming down the hill I could see low cloud following the course of the river and it truly could have been a scene from a movie.  It's times like these I feel you miss so much living in a city - not seeing, hearint and smelling nature and its splendour.

OUTSIDE Developments

Excellent progress has been made with establishing a pasture in front of the house.  A couple of weeks ago I wrote about throwing around some seed and hoping for rain.  We now have little green shoots popping up out of the paca poo, and with rain forecast off and on for this week, all the hard work looks to be going to pay off.  Some large boulders have been added to define the driveway and some native grasses planted around the rocks to try to achieve a more natural effect (when fully grown).

Another addition has been a little windmill which serves as a means to find wind direction.  Once constructed, I had envisaged placing this near the house until I realised it is quite lethal to get near it when the propeller is spinning and the tail moves quickly with wind direction change.  Once the little grasses have grown, it will also look more in place.

Out the back the 2011 steel sculpture is now on display.  Incredibly heavy, our fish has been welded together using plough disks and various other farm pieces - some stamped "made in France".

This is the second year we have visited the Wundowie Steel Festival.  Last year we purchased a seat made from various farm objects and in this sculpture, the plough disk has provided the base.  Two rabbit traps have been used for footrests and most people squirm at the thought of putting their feet near the traps.

The wonderful rain has also provided green pastures again for the boys and each night they come in with green stains on their bottom jaws.  In addition, the dam is almost at peak height and should surpass previous years due to the new contour banks either side.

The vegetable gardens are also thriving with the much appreciated rain - lettuce ready for each day's lunch in one and spinach, celery and beans powering on in another.

The little banksia garden planted a couple of weeks ago still looks promising.  I scattered some seeds (collected from last year's everlasting flowers) around the banksias and they have sprouted.  As this area is fenced off from the boys, I am hoping that each year they will self-seed and this may be a little pink paradise each September when the wild flowers are in bloom.  There are 8 different varieties of banksia which accompany our one and only mightly oak tree.

That's about it for outside news.  There will be some interesting felting coming up.

NATURE'S ORCHESTRA

Hooray - last week we had 2 days with decent rain.  I have been away for 5 days and the result of the rain is showing.  The clover has come up all over the paca poo in the front of the house, but no sign yet of the tall wheat grass or tall fescue I mixed in with the clover. Hope the birds haven't got the bigger seeds!

Chewed on my first bean this afternoon - planted 6 weeks ago -  and the spinach and lettuce planted at the same time have been consumed for the past 2 weeks and hopefully many weeks to come.

The paddocks have really greened up and it is amazing watching the boys nuzzle around and pick what they like and leave what they don't.  We have a noxious weed called Cape Tulip. It has a long thickish green strap and then in a couple of months a rather attractive pink tulip type flower will appear.  Unfortunately it is very difficult to eradicate and luckily the boys avoid it - we'd be in trouble if they found it appealing.

The dam is almost at peak height and we have only started winter rain.  Will be interesting to see when we reach the previous high water mark.

I haltered wonderful Donnegal and took him out for a walk and when we were heading back towards the house Udo became extremely jealous and ran over to the fence and showered poor Donny with a well directed mouthful of spit.  Fortunately I was on the other side and only received a sprinkle.

My trip "over East" (as West Australians say) also resulted in bringing home some interesting fibres to incorporate into my felting, so hopefully some new creations will be on the way.

Finally it was wonderful to be out with the boys as the sun was setting.  The noise of the black cockatoos and galahs was deafening as they flew from the marree trees to the dam and back - for "last drinks" for the night.  There were at times about 30 black cockatoos on the south side and 40 galahs on the south side.  They had a wonderful time going back and forth, flying low overhead screeching and swooping.  When there was a quiet moment, I could hear the dull knocking sound of marree nuts being dropped and then bouncing off the trunks of the trees - nature's orchestra!