Cyclone Yasi

We spent two days preparing for Cyclone Yasi. This involved tying and weighing things down, filling troughs and tanks with water, taping windows with masking tape, moving anything loose into the house or sheds, harvesting food, pre-cooking meals, checking our emergency supplies, charging all batteries (including 12V ones for lights), fueling our cars, collecting a spare LPG bottle (for hot water, BBQ and cooking), filling the header (storage, up hill!) tanks with water, making ice in the freezer, preparing a 'safe room' in the house and more.

On the afternoon before the cyclone, the power went off around 2pm. We released the 2 horses, 4 cattle and all the poultry into the house paddock, which we secured as much as possible.

The cyclone lasted all night and roared for over 4 hours. It poured with rain sideways and buffeted the side of our house relentlessly. It was very loud, and so dark, and every now and then something would go BANG! I was so sad for our poor animals out there in the dark...

By dawn, we could go to the windows to look outside, but we still couldn't go out because of strong wind gusts. We were totally exhausted that day, after being awake and scared all night.

Our power didn't come on for another five days and we mostly had no landline phone or internet (it came on for a couple of hours here and there) and sometimes we had mobile coverage for calls, sometimes just sms, sometimes nothing. The roads were cut to our farm, but not for too long. We have our own water supply, and that was not affected, thankfully.

Damage included a smashed chook run and hen house, one shed half gone, the milking bails are folded in half (roof caved in, wall missing), a lot of fences down due to trees falling on them, lots of our fruit and nut trees are broken and uprooted, as are some of our native plantings. One greenhouse is a bit squashed and plants like passionfruit vines are shredded. There are leaves and branches and mud and mess washed and blown onto everywhere they shouldn't be! Our banana trees are in half, with bunches on the ground. A couple of parts of the house leaked water and so did the shed, but there was no major damage to any domestic buildings. A lot of our refrigerated and frozen food had to be given to the chooks.

It took two full days to fix the fences, and another day to cut up the fallen trees and drag them out of the way. It would be great to be able to mulch them. We have salvaged some firewood from some, and will use some as mulch.

The chook run has been mended, and their house has another tarp covering it for now. The milking shed has been propped up but needs major repairs fairly soon.

Further inland from us, roofs were blown from houses, shops and sheds, so we were very lucky to have sustained so little damage. Many farmers lost some livestock to injury and shock. Lucy only gave 2L of milk on Thursday afternoon, and has only slowly increased since. She still isn't giving as much milk as before the cyclone, which I've heard is a common reaction.

We are feeling so blessed because of the minimal damage. When we look at images of towns like Tully and Cardwell, andthe surrounding beaches and farmland, the effects there are so much worse. Many homes have been condemned, many more await repairs. Whole farms have been flattened. There are still tens of thousands of homes without power across the far north, and many without water. There's a massive accommodation shortage here in FNQ, and not enough tradespeople to repair the damaged buildings.

Yasi is just one natural disaster in recent history. The news is a constant stream of stories of floods, fires, cyclones and more. Seems to me like Mother Nature has something to say...

Summer on the Farm II

Because Lis is such a talented photographer, I thought I'd share a few more of her observations on the blog...

Honey the horned heifer.

Lucy Moo, our beloved house cow.

Poppy Hen and her brood.
She's raising twelve more chicks, and they're her third lot since the beginning of Spring!

Pepper, our happy muscovy duck.

The old red tractor.

Summer on the Farm

Here are some fantastic photos taken by my sister-in-law, photographer Melissa Smith, whilst she was visiting in December, 2010.

A little muscovy duckling with a huge personality!

"Drako" the muscovy drake. He is such a gentleman!

Peek-a-boo - some of Poppy Hen's chicks

Milking time - Bel and Lucy

Monkeys in a tree. Oh no! That's Abby and Heath!

The Food Forest

Two years ago we planted Stage Two of our orchard. Stage One being a year older and around 20 fruit trees near the chook run. We've removed half of Stage One by transplanting the stunted trees to other areas. For some reason they many not thrive in that location...

Stage Two was planted in a disused paddock area
previously filled with long grass and bracken fern like this one

Stage Two began as over 50 food-producing trees planted on a west-facing slope with deep, rich soil and good drainage. It was planted in typical grid formation to allow for the tractor to go between the trees and slash the grass which grows lush and tall through most of the year. The trees have thrived - with many well over head height already, and our first samples of the fruit to come ripening with the changing seasons. They have had less care and attention than most of our other tree plantings - a little feeding, some mulch (removed by helpful free-range chickens), removal of shoots below the graft point as required and grass and weeds pushed back, hoed or cut only around three times each year. In the beginning I had to spray with eco pest oil for what may have been red mite, but as the trees grew larger, signs of disease vanished. I do hope that they stay away!

After recently watching a fabulous Food Forest DVD we lamented not planning and planting this way from the start, but vowed to alter the orchard to mimic a forest over the coming wet seasons.

This week, we have planted out around one third of the trees required to fill the space between the rows. Varieties added included mulberries, pigeon pea, malabar chestnut, mandarin, wampu, loquat, miracle fruit, sweet leaf, a few different tropical stonefruit, cumquat, albizia, ice-cream bean and more.


We grow some of our trees from cuttings and seeds, are gifted or buy some through our local community groups like Seed Savers and LETS, buy some at the markets and a few at local nurseries.


We have only a few macadamia seedlings remaining in our tree box, so it's time to plant seeds and source more trees for the food forest project. If you have a favourite type of tree, please leave a comment and let me know about it.

Here are the trees on the hillside. A lot of them are 2m tall now and the bamboo on the edge is several metres tall and 1.5 metres diameter.

Update - Two Months

We've learned so much in the almost two months we've had a house cow! Some of the main lessons are:

* it's not easy
* it's not cheap
* nothing ever stays the same

If I knew what a challenge a house cow would be, would I do it again? YES! The milk is fantastic, the manure is abundant, and the cows are really a joy to work with, especially Honey the calf.

We're still milking out once a day, but we take our share first in the afternoon as we were barely getting 1.5L for awhile. Honey is eating a variety of other foods (mainly grass and lucerne hay tops) and growing amazingly fast and well, so we thought it was time to take the first step to weaning. Hopefully each further step toward weaning will go as smoothly.

We are using diluted Neem oil for buffalo fly at the moment, which appeared once the rain came back. I'm playing with dilutions so I don't have to re-apply all the time, but it certainly seems to make a difference. I check both cows daily for ticks, and remove them manually. Luckily, both animals are quite used to me touching them now.

We're spending less on feed now that there's more pasture for the cows - for awhile there their food budget rivaled ours! Lucy is happy to eat more homegrown foods, especially pigeon pea, and she is hand-fed snacks of these most days. Sometimes I'll lead her to a lush part of another paddock and stand whilst she munches away, or tie her to a post whilst I do something else.

From the milk I've made yoghurt, panir, quark, sour cream (didn't work out), cottage cheese and cream cheese so far. Mostly, though we only milk out what we can use fresh and in cooking. The Home Creamery has been an invaluable resource (and inspiration) in creating products from excess milk.


This was also published as Our House Cow Journey Part Two, to follow Our House Cow Journey Part One, written for the Simple Green Frugal Co-op Blog.