It has been a bit hotter lately and I’m obviously concerned about snakes about the place.

Most weekends now involve at least an hour on Penfold (the ride on mower) as I try and keep the grass down and the ground visible for when we are walking around.

Of particular importance is the vegetable garden, as the pond in the middle provides a water source and the variety of lizards and small animals provide a potential meal for the snakes.

Tonight Meg rang as she arrived home to find a brown snake on the concrete outside the roller door of the shed, “looking for a way in”.

After advising Meg to keep an eye on it, I quickly packed up and headed home.

Arriving home in a cloud of dust, I saw Meg standing under the pergola at the end of the shed. The snake had left and she had been following it to where it disappeared, under some rocks on the corner of the concrete slab.

After making sure that it wasn’t still visible and turning a large rock over, we revealed what looked suspiciously like a snake hole…

Meg wasn’t all that fussed though, and we’ll just look carefully when we enter the shed and try to ensure that we don’t have mice. As well as this, Meg taped up a small gap at the bottom of the roller door of the shed.

While this excitement was going on, the very small, male mistletoe bird was twittering around us, landing on the car antenna and also on one of the small blue gums next to where we park.

I grabbed the camera and the 100-400mm lens and snapped him a few times in the approaching twilight.

Before packing the camera away again, I thought I’d capture the new flock of sheep that we have grazing in the paddock. Hopefully they’ll eat their way through our bushfire risk in the next month or so and won’t keep me too awake at night.

Check out more in the gallery.

I received a phone call out of the blue this morning with an offer of some more fish for our pond.

Whether it was meant to happen or not, I’d been thinking about getting some friends for “Guinea Pig” – the original and possibly very lonely gold fish.

“Guinea Pig” was so named after his or her status as the first experimental fish in the pond, and the experimental procedure stated that no fish food was to be supplied.

More than a year later, the big guy was getting bigger, so the experiment was deemed a success. Living on algae and bits of the pond plants and maybe the odd mosquito larvae worked and this phone call was just what was needed to enter phase two.

After collecting the three new fish, I returned home with the esky and plonked them into the pond. The fish were a little stunned and I stood quietly watching them for movement.

The movement came from behind me and I slowly turned to find a 1.5 metre long brown snake in the adjacent garden bed, spanning the width with head over one side and tail the other.

The snake sensed my movement and quickly slithered off, leaving me to contemplate a few things with fast beating heart.

The fish didn’t seem to notice and it was time to get some “real” work (read: paid work) done, so I headed to the car.

Heading away from the vegie patch down the drive, I spotted the snake about 30 metres away. I still can’t get over just how quickly they can cover ground when they want too…

It seems that the sheep were here for a good time, not a long time!

The feed on the ground has been greatly reduced after a month of chewing by fifty hungry mouths, so with working dog running around, a couple of neighbours controlled the mob and drove them slowly down the road.

Their next destination is a shearing shed a couple of kilometres over the hill where they will get a tidy up before heading to another paddock of feed.

The interesting thing for me is the expected turn around for the pasture in our paddock. Our neighbour commented that it should be back up in a month or so. Considering the rainfall over the last few months, I think that I can actually see this happening.

It makes me think a little more about fencing another paddock for grazing. We have two areas that I’m thinking about; one is fairly wooded but accessible and is about 10 - 15 acres and the other is steep but has good feed and is around 30 acres.

I’ve always thought that fencing was the issue holding me back here, but I think that I can break it down further than that to putting in posts for the fencing.

We have a heap of posts ready to go, but I need to either hire a contractor or find a post hole digger from a neighbour or friend. After doing my fair share of digging around the property, I’m not even considering digging the holes manually…

Eventually the idea will be to have enough pasture to carry our own stock year round, but I think that we are a year or two away from that. In the time being, we’ll just have to let others graze their stock in exchange for cash, meat or services.

With recent rain over the last few months, the stock paddock has recovered to the extent that I’ve been looking for something to make use of it.

Over summer we had some Friesian calves to chew down the fire risk. They did a great job and provided plenty of entertainment as well.

Chatting with a neighbour the other week, I asked if he wanted to put some sheep in, thinking that maybe ten or a dozen would suit the eight or nine acres well for a few months.

Meg and I were in Adelaide when the sheep came and returned late at night, so we didn’t see how many were there, but today I had a quick look and stopped counting at 40. That sure is a lot of sheep in that paddock and I wonder how many weeks they’ll last before the feed is gone?

I suppose the good thing about having so many in is that the pasture will regenerate in the spring before summer and allow us to have something else in.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is runner a cultivator over the hillside where the rainwater just runs off. Ideally, I’d like to put in some swales and slow the runoff as well as directing it as it heads down the hill. Slower runoff means less erosion and more of it soaks in, so I am thinking of ways to maximise rainfall without costing a lot or opening up the soil to damage from sun or wind.

We could always plant a quick crop of something at the same time and provide some feed for the next group of animals to visit. I wonder what they will be?

Winter is here in full force which gives me a great excuse to sit and tend a fire.

We have three regular fires; the combustion heater inside the shed, the cob oven that Meg built and the bonfire site. Occasionally we burn off the light pruning of gums that is mainly leaves to reduce the summer bushfire risk, but this isn’t very often.

Friends dropping in is a great excuse for a bonfire and camp oven, and the latest recipe turned out a treat. An incredibly simple recipe of sausages, potato, sweet potato, carrot, onion and a large tin of tomatoes transformed into a hearty meal by the fire.

Meg’s been cooking up a storm in the cob oven as well and has discovered the simplicity of chicken drumsticks with soy and honey. The smoky roast potatoes and garlic in local extra virgin olive oil are hard to resist and we plan to branch out with more roasts soon.

A daily ritual in winter is lighting the combustion heater in the shed, and while it is nice and warm with the insulation installed over summer we seem to be burning a reasonable stack of firewood.

On cold nights, it has been getting down below five degrees so far, with much cooler to come in the coming months and I find that Meg and I are filling a wheelbarrow full from the wood shed every two or three days. At this rate, we seem to be going through a trailer load of firewood every couple of weeks, which means that I must find dry days without anything else on to cut seasoned firewood from the property.

I find cutting firewood quite enjoyable if I have the time to spend – there is a bit of a Zen like quality to the monotony of the physical work and the sound of the Stihl on full throttle – but there are only so many easy to get to and well seasoned trees that are either still standing or have fallen so that they lay off of the ground. (The best firewood is old and dry and hasn’t been transformed by white ants.)

The plan last year was to cut green wood and stack it to season for this year to provide for out firewood needs, but the wood hasn’t seasoned as fast as I’d hoped and we are using much more than I’d prepared anyway.

I’m dealing with this in a few ways; I’ve cut a lot of green wood for future seasons and I’m travelling more of the property to find the “ready to burn” wood.

We’ll never be able to burn all of the dead wood on the property because I doubt we’ll be able to get to eighty percent of the available resource due to the steep hillsides and gullies and the groves of bluegum that block an available path. This means that there will always be habitat for natives and (unfortunately) introduced fauna and our property will slowly return to the original state.

In the meantime while we wait for the bush to return and watch the development of our land, I’ll still plan and react to our firewood needs as I can, driving the 4WD and trailer where I can, cutting, splitting and stacking firewood for warmth and comfort.

There is always so much to do; whether it be work related or trying to keep on top of managing the property or even moving ahead with development on the many house, shed, or garden projects.

After heading back into business for myself again after a few years, I’ve discovered just how much discipline it requires to keep on track. I must work when there is work available and then spend time on other projects when there isn’t, but sometimes the distractions take over and it seems that a couple of days work has taken all week.

Sure, I’m always learning things and sometimes the reading about tools, programming, graphics etc leads me down new paths, but a lot of the time could be spent more efficiently.

Another thing that I’ve found over the years relates to working times. Late nights get later and then the morning starts seem to drag later and then pretty soon I find that I can’t get much done in the mornings. This leads to later nights, later mornings and so the cycle goes.

A few weeks ago, Meg and I made the decision to start walking at 7am each weekday. (Actually, Meg was already either walking or jogging in the morning and the decision was made for me to join her.)

Getting up at a set time and walking has provided heaps of motivation and lets me wake up and think before getting distracted. We talk and plan, I get a chance to think about what I need to get done during the day and it sets me up to work – whether for clients or on the property. All in all I am more focused on daily life and less content to just watch it go by.

As well as the efficiency payoff, Meg and I get to experience a beautiful time of the day as the sun rises over the hills and we frighten kangaroos with our crunching footsteps.

Maybe we’ll see a bit of a jump in the number of ticks getting made on the long, long list of things to do?

Today the calves arrived and I think I feel a little more like a farmer!

Barry came up with a trailer load of three of four month old Friesian calves (six heifers and one steer) as well as a large round bale of hay to get them started.

They were keen to get out of the trailer and avoid us and as they were starting to wander around I saw a large brown snake slithering to safety away from us.

The calves kept well together and immediately set off for the fence line, tracing it over the hill.

Later in the afternoon the herd returned to the hay that was near the water and tucked in for a good feed and a drink.

It seemed that there wasn’t too much to worry about, with the calves settling down quietly in the paddock and checking out their new environment.

We’ll see how long it takes them to mow their way through the feed.

Barry dropped in the other day to look at the feed in the stock paddock and assess the number of sheep he could put in.

Strangely enough it was raining when he arrived and we crossed the fence and walked out to look through the feed.

Barry “ummed and ahhed” a bit and then announced that he would bring up some calves, stating that they would not only eat through the feed, but push over the larger dried weeds and clear it better.

So there it was. I’d spent a few weeks preparing the fences for sheep and in a five minute conversation it had been decided that we would be having some calves!

I was left to call Elders regarding the agistment pricing for calves and Barry told me that he’d bring some calves up in a couple of days.

Now to plumb in the water trough and await their arrival.

When we bought The Journey last year, we knew that the fences were pretty bad. It wasn’t as though they had been neglected over the years and deteriorated due to age, stock pushing on them or misuse, but the subdivision that created our block had just been fenced badly.

The existing fence was four strands of plain wire, over-tensioned in many places and with large spacing between droppers and using a minimum of posts and stainers. This caused a strange mix of very tight wire that pulled low over the crest of hills, pulled droppers out of valleys causing the wire to rise to such an extent that you could drive under it, and other sections that sagged. In short – it wasn’t designed to hold stock.

The section that we’d considered for our initial experience with stock is a relatively clear paddock of about nine acres. This was an obvious choice as an internal fence already existed and the only new fence was to join about 50 metres.

I’d watched the contractors redo the neighbours place about six months ago and noted some of their modifications; they’d removed the original strands of wire and installed sheep and lamb wire with two plain strands on top, replaced some droppers with posts in the valleys and they built some new strainers as well for added support.

The feed in the our paddock had been left to the kangaroos for the past few years and had a considerable amount of Salvation Jane (or Paterson’s Curse, the Purple Peril etc) throughout. I’d considered slashing it and had read up on the effects of this weed on livestock and come to the conclusion that a mob of sheep would reduce both the feed and also the fire danger by early summer.

In thinking about taking sheep on, I had to consider a number of factors such as drenching, shearing and dealing with lambs and well as ownership – to buy or agist?

A farmer mate of my fathers was talking to him about it all and said that he’d be keen to put some sheep in, so the right pressure was put in the right place and I had a goal, a purpose, a need to get the fencing done.

I had a chat to the guys at Elders about some sheep and lamb fencing and ended up with some rolls of 6 30 90 – six strands with vertical wires every 30 centimetres and a total of 90 centimetres high. My idea was to strain it across the posts and then just twitch it to the existing fence, hopefully providing a very strong fence that will last for years.

Of course, I had to buy a heap of droppers to put in between the existing droppers – I figured about two extra droppers for each existing as the current dropped were about 25 metres apart!

Rolling out the wire, straining and twitching took a considerable amount of time, much more that I’d thought it would. Pa helped me with a fair bit of it, but there were a couple of afternoons of twitching on my own.

Way back in January when we’d put in the strainers (yes, this project has been going on for a while!) I’d guessed at the size of the gate and figured that I’d just use a couple of gates from another part of the fence on the main road. I couldn’t see us using that particular gateway again as it was very steep uphill and straight off of the main road. It had seemed like a good idea.

Transferring the gates wasn’t too hard, but it seems that I had been a little generous on the opening size, leaving a gap that a lamb could easily walk through. The solution was to put in a removable middle post for the gates and I had just the thing – another one of the permapine posts from the pile. To make it removable, we dug a hole and cemented a tin sleeve for the post to slide into. The job worked well and even looked as though we’d planned it that way!

The fencing certainly changes the look of the place. It was looking a little derelict with corner strainers and no wire and metre high feed and weeds in the paddock. The fencing project has been a big step forward. Now we need to get some stock in.

After the “Shed Raising Party”, Meg and I had had some requests for another camping weekend and had organised the October long weekend.

Again it was a cross section of family and friends from all around the place, with many seeing The Journey for the first time.

There has been a lot of change since the last weekend in July, with the wet area setup including shower, sink and washing machine, Meg’s cob oven and the vegie garden producing well.

The kids were entertained with heaps of games set up. Thanks to Caro and Rod they had volleyball, badminton, totem tennis, soccer, cricket and kites as well as the water pistols that Meg had found for each of them.

The main event on Sunday saw a good crowd for lunch, with a big barbecue and roast chicken from Meg’s oven to feed everyone.

Some afternoon arrivals were a blast from the past – the Errey’s dropped in to see the place. Peter was a year 7 teacher when I was in primary school and his daughter Cassie was in my year. 25 years later and only a little has changed! Peter and his wife Zan live around the corner on Spring Gully Road.

It was a relaxed atmosphere, chatting around the fire at night and catch up on all of the news from people that we haven’t seen for a while.

Raph and I joined in on a huge game of hide and seek with the kids on Sunday night, roaming around the vegie garden and fruit trees by torchlight. The kids found some pretty good hiding spots and we all had a good laugh.

Thanks to everyone who came along and contributed to the weekend – we’ll see you all again soon.