Everything is right with the world

I was up at the Doomstead today, to do a bit of preparation and preposition some stuff for future work.

The builder has finished his bit of the build and fixed the defects.

The Eastern end

From the Northwest

My front door

On the way out, I saw some feral jonquils

and an echidna! A real live wild fucken echidna! I've never seen one before in my life and I was so stoked.

A few minor speed humps along the way

The builder didn't manage to finish his part of the build due to bad weather. (I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to be wrestling with a 6 metre length of roofing iron in sideways rain. He's been on another job for the last couple of weeks, but will get back to mine next week.

There are also a few defects which need to be fixed before I start laying bales, as they'd be impossible to fix afterwards.

Anyway, here are the latest photos.

The electrician at work

The kitchen window

The western end, clad

Yet more progress

The builder has the roof on, and the electrician has made a start. I'm going up on Monday, and there will be photos.

There has been serious progress on the Doomstead

The builder started on the frame this week, and has made great progress.

This is the view from the north east.

Here's the view from the ghost of the kitchen sink. (The pile of dirt will go.)

I'm stoked. The frame, wet area cladding, and roof should be done in another couple of weeks at the most, then I can start laying the bales.

Progress

The builder will be starting on the frame and roof next week, and reckons it will be up by the end of May. I've also just taken delivery of the straw bales, which are taking up one bay of my shed, so I'll be able to start on the walls as soon as the builder has finished.

It's finally happening!

Another small step

I had a site meeting with the builder yesterday. Depending on the availability of straw bales, we may be able to restart construction in early April. There are a few preparatory jobs we can get done in the mean time. I need to get a small shed up with a concreted floor for the batteries, inverter, generator, etc, and there are a couple of minor problems with the slab which can be easily fixed.

The place is looking great - surprisingly green for this time of year because of the rain we had the other day. I saw a brown snake sunning himself (until he spotted me and slithered away), and a hare.

More later, when I find out about the bales.

Update: Bale Dude rang back, and he has bales available, which he can deliver in mid-April. Huzzah!

Update to update:  The builder had a few delays, and other work. Quote finally delivered, and he's hoping to start at the beginning of May.

Dave's Great Big Day of Fun With Agricultural Equipment

It wasn't actually fun.

I got up to the Doomstead at about 10, which is pretty good for a bloke who's on holiday (especially as it's really 9), and tried to start the tractor. Flat battery. Trying to jump start it off the ute just about set my jumper leads on fire, but didn't actually help. I need new jumper leads, btw.

So, I made a quick trip to the local garage with the battery to see if he could charge it. It was going to take most of the day so, to avoid wasting the trip up (and all that fuel), I bought a new one. He had a pallet of bargains for $120, which isn't too bad.

The tractor started, so I began playing agricultural equipment Tetris to get to the slasher. When I tried to back up to drop the first bit of stuff off to one side, I found one brake was jammed on, and I couldn't reverse. (Other wheel spinning, which is alarming on a tractor.)

At first it looked like the footplate was pressing on the brake mechanism, because most of its bolts had fallen out. (Yeah, yeah, I fail at routine maintenance.) Once I had the plate off, and looked a bit closer, it was still jammed. Now, I've never adjusted the brake, and it worked fine last time I used it, but it was certainly adjusted too tight. It was a bitch to adjust, because the adjusting and lock nuts had been painted in place, but I got there in the end.

I've managed to slash the larger half of the paddock (yes, yes, I know), which is probably all I would've done anyway, and now I'm home, clean and fucked. Everything hurts.

Hiatus

Last year didn't go well - I couldn't take time off work to build. I was responsible for a complex project which was a technical success, but the users refused to sign off on it. For months.

I hope to get things underway again in spring. In any case, I'll be moving up to the Doomstead on retirement at the end of the year, even if I live in a caravan in the short term.

Stage One finished!

The slab's been poured, and it looks pretty good. The concrete plinth with the bits of steel rod and plastic pipe sticking out of it is for the bales to sit on.

View from the south east corner

Ramp down to the pit where the composting shitter's bin goes.

The paddock's really green, and the nanoforest looks fantastic. The wattles are starting to bloom again. On a recent trip (not the one where I took these photos), I saw a euro in the scrub and tried to photograph it. Unfortunately the camera is not real flash, and it didn't really show up. About a minute later, I saw three of them bound out of the trees, jump about the paddock a bit, then turn and go back into the trees.

Now I need an estimate from the builder for the frame and roof, so I know how much money I need to borrow to finish it.

Progress (continued)

The builder has done some work - the site is leveled and there's a hole for the grey water settling tank, but not much else. I'm a bit concerned that there's no pit for the composting toilet bins yet.

As you can see, the paddock is really green.


I went for a bit of a wander, and took these photos of the micro forest.


Looking south along the western fence.


Looking into the northern edge. The taller trees are at least 4 metres tall.

Progress!

I've finally got around to engaging a builder to put in the slab. He started digging the trenches on Tuesday.

I'm going up on the weekend to check on progress. There will be photographs and a proper post.

Has it been nearly a year?

Well, yes it has.

I still haven't managed to get the fox, unfortunately. I've only seen him once since I bought the shotgun, and I couldn't get it up quick enough to shoot the bastard before he ducked behind some trees. And he has been eating the quail - there were hardly any of them escaping from under the slasher last time I mowed.

Still, all-in-all the health of the paddock is pretty good - I've got clumps of trees and saltbush scattered over it,  and there's a lot of grasses and other short plants as well, including some lucerne that Chris and I broadcast-seeded a couple of years ago.

The thing in the foreground is the handle of my Hamilton tree-planter, to give some scale: it's about a foot long.

And here's a photo of a bit of the windbreak from last August. The whole of the windbreak and the micro-forest had this beautiful golden haze from a distance because of the wattle blossoms.

The paddock is no longer quite that green.


I recently bought a second-hand post hole auger, which was really hard to attach to the tractor, and I still haven't worked out how I'm going to store the thing other than on the tractor itself. I think I need some kind of gantry in the shed. After Chris and I spent a day playing agricultural equipment Tetris, I've got everything under cover (the slasher spent a couple of weeks out in the weather). Having sons has turned out to be handy ...

So, the next steps are to find a contractor to put the slab in before the building approval runs out in May, and get some fencing organised. I need to fence in the micro-forest and the windbreaks, and along the creek line, and also divide the paddock into 5 or 6 bits, of a bit over a hectare each, so I can cell graze when I finally put some sheep on it. That's actually not as critical as the rest, especially as too much fencing will make building the Hovel trickier, but I need to at least plan where the fences will go eventually.

A new beginning

Prompted by Ootz, I've decided I need to resuscitate the near-dead orphan blog.

Since I last posted, the tractor's been fixed (it was the battery, and the first replacement was fucked as well), and the paddock has been slashed. The trees have grown, some of them are now 3 or 4 m tall. Not bad for seeds direct-drilled in 2007! Even better, on a recent visit, I disturbed a couple of euros who'd decided my 5 acres of short forest beat the shit out of the surrounding several million acres of wheat'n'sheep as a place to live. (The fox I saw on the same visit wasn't such a thrill: I've bought a shotgun to deal with it.)

Plans for the Hovel are with the local council for building approval (although I still need to produce and send the design for the reed-bed system to deal with grey water), so I may be able to get the first stages of the build underway later this year.

I'll take some photos next time I go up there, and post any that may be of interest - hopefully in the next few weeks.

Biblical floods

I reckon the Robertstown Lagoon will have a bunch of water in it. (A mate of mine, when I told her I'd bought a paddock in the Robertstown Valley, asked if it was in the lagoon, having grown up in the area. Fortunately I was able to reassure her.)

So. I have a new tractor battery, purchased at a discount price (it had some scratches, or something), but it's too fucking wet to go up there. I reckon I'd bog the ute on the way over the creek. I was planning on going up this weekend, but I don't see the point. I've missed the opportunity to slash at the right time for weed control, and I reckon it'll be too fucking wet to burn until about March (which is all the Council cares about).

Update: Still too wet to go up (12th Dec). Maybe next weekend.

The week in review, and other matters

Well. It's been raining a bit up on the paddock, according to the BoM's radar maps and rainfall observations, and I need to slash it in preparation for the bushfire season.

When I was last up there, the fucking tractor battery was too flat to start the engine. That probably had a bit to do with it having just sat there, connected to the tractor, since I last used it a year ago. I've had it on a battery charger for several days, so hopefully it'll kick it over this time. I'm going up for the weekend (if things go well), so I should be able to slash the paddock, and run around the perimeter with the brush cutter. (Or come back Saturday night, cursing the cost of new tractor batteries.)

Update: I need a new tractor battery, dammit.

Starting well into the process

A while ago, I thought it would be a grand idea to document the process of setting up my doomstead. Of course, being as I'm master of procrastination, it hasn't happened yet. (The process of setting it up's been a bit slow too, if I'm honest.)

Still. Time to start. This is what it looked like the last time the Lands Department flew aerial photography of the area. (To get some sense of scale, it's a bit over 20 acres.) That's some time before I bought it, and it looks much nicer now, at least to my eyes. I reckon my neighbours hate me, though, because it'd be a source of weed seeds.

By "weeds", I mean Ruby Saltbush, Fragrant Saltbush, Cutleaf Mignonette (they actually may have a point there, but sheep like it, and it's great bee fodder), thistles, Salvation Jane, tagasaste, a dryland lucerne cultivar I broadcast, and numerous other native and introduced grasses, shrubs and trees, well, really anything that isn't wheat or sheep. There's even feral wheat, barley and peas coming up from when it was last cropped. Oh, and some sheep remains.

I'll share what it looks like when I get to grips with embedding photos. But it's really fucking green. Last time I was up there, a couple of weeks ago, the stuff growing on it was waist deep.

I've got 5 acres direct drilled to random native plants by Trees for Life in the south-west corner, and I've planted a few olive trees along the creek line. The next step is to put in about 100 grape vines, once I work out which variety will be drought-tolerant and give me more-or-less drinkable red wine.

Posts will be very occasional, btw, as I'm probably the laziest man alive.