The week that was....

I would like to say that this will be my last post about apples... but it's probably a lie. There are still plenty of green globes on the trees. This morning we had a couple of young visitors and young Willow aged 5, helped pick some apples for her Mum. She learned very quickly to twist the fruit off the branches rather than pull the apples from the fragile branches. She was most proud of her little harvest.

While Frans' Mum Riet was here a week or so ago, we made a batch of Dutch Appelmoes. After the apples are cooked down, they're strained through an old fashioned hand mill. I bought this Mouli at an op shop a couple of years ago for $2.50. It's French. Made in France. Try and pick one up for less than $50 and you're doing well. Sometimes you get very lucky at an op shop!

A few of the bottles of delicious apple sauce

A family favourite. Rummiking. Oma is a wizz at this game. Sara, Pauline and Frans attempting to beat the Master! Stephen is more interested in his car mag!

And what is a game without some home baked goodness. These hot cross buns are my first attempt at making these Easter treats. They tasted really good. A good practise run for this coming weekend!

And here are our ducks. The gander in the cage is one of our original three ducklings. The three Moscovi ducks dancing about outside are ones we exchanged with our neigbour for one of the three ducklings. The gander in the cage is going to become dinner soon..

A vegie bed full of pumkins and butternut squashes. They should be ready for picking in a few weeks, just in time for winter soups! You can just see the corn in the bed to the left.

Spring onions and eggplants side by side.

And then we have to work out what is doing this to our vegies...

Got them! Frans has caught close to 20 mice in the past week. Aparently it's an 'Autumn thing'.

Farm jobs never end. A few weeks ago we had a big wind storm and a number of large cyprus pine branches fell down from our trees onto our neighbour Graham's paddock. The branches spanned the electric fence rendering it pretty useless. So this week, Frans and Graham tackled the tricky task of pulling the fallen branches down from the high tree tops. They tied sturdy straps to the fallen branches and pulled them away from the stand of trees with Graham's old tractor. The branches are now piled up in Graham's paddock waiting for the fire season to end where we'll then burn the debris. But before that happens, Frans is wielding his chain saw and salvaging any good fire wood that he can.

This is our fence line. Graham is pulling the branches down from the trees from his side of the fence.

Frans running to untie the rope from the tractor and lash it to another branch.

And then there's the early evening sundowner...

Sitting in the top paddock overlooking the Otways. A fitting end to a hard day's work on the farm.