Fat fish, coffee beans, lots of lemons and lots of compost

Another weekend ended, another sense of achievement. 

Special thanks to our neighbour, Mitch who popped up on his tractor this morning to do some tractoring (his has a bucket, ours doesn't). Unfortunately he broke when he was helping unload the trailer and has hurt his back. Wishing you a speedy recovery Mitch.

But his handy work was well appreciated. He took out an unsuccessful garden bed to open up the patio outside the downstairs apartment. I'm going to drop some turf on this next weekend.

OK, first dilemma - fat fish. A few years ago I put about 30 fingerlings (the edible kind - sleepy cod, silver perch and eel tail catfish) into our water fountain pond. They were less than 5 cm long. They're now plate sized but, because of too many fish in the pond, general consensus is that they're over nitrogenised and potentially toxic to eat. So... what to do with the fishy wishys. Options are to drain the pond and try and catch them, then relocate them to a neighbours dam where they can live a long and happy life (Lord knows how, our driveway if very very steep). Negotiations will include fishing rights. If we do this, I'll be able to clean out the pond (read cattle trough) and start again with less, ornamental fish. Apart from begin a really nice focal point on our driveway, the bees love it and I'm more than happy to make the bees happy. I would love love love to have some bee hives but am very allergic to  stings.

Harvest time today for the turmeric. I got about 1-2 kilos and several rhizomes for replanting and sharing. That's more than $100 of turmeric. Seriously worth looking at planting, it's a lovely plant with really pretty flowers. We will chop it into 1cm chunks and freeze. 

A bit of planting... (actually, there was a lot of planting)

Some boasting (check out the size of one of my parsley)

And the gum trees are flowering (makes me think of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie - overseas visitors will need to Google this)

Oh, and Lots of Lemons they said... (tick), dwarf tree (not so apparent) 

All this gardening, of course, means excessive compost. Woo hoo!

Exciting news, out first harvest of coffee beans is nearly ready for harvesting. MOTH (man of the house) is very excited about this. Four more coffee trees being planted next weekend.

I previously posted about a couple of old baths that I mounted in old red bricks. The intention was to use them as strawberry beds (which is going really well and am expecting our first crop next season). Have also added some chilli bushes to the baths and, good news, they're going great. Never thought this companion planting combination would be so successful.

Next weekend, I'm harvesting our significant ginger crop (about 2m squared). Keen for ideas of how to preserve ginger.

And, the roses need a good pruning - they're out of control and very unattractive.

Another quiet weekend in the country - can't wait to get back to work tomorrow for a break.

Gardening with donkeys

Apart from the obvious benefit that donkeys provide for the garden, they can actually be a bit of fun while you're gardening if you plan it right (and nothing unplanned happens - like a low flying aeroplane or any sudden noise, really).

For some reason, fresh donkey poo doesn't seed like horse poo does. But I still don't put it directly onto my garden because it's, well, lumpy and doesn't break down well. So I add it to my weed juice container (refer previous post here).

Yesterday, the boys helped out with a few other things.

Firstly Guinness mowed the lawn. Now you have to be careful with this, he loves cooch and will rip it out by the roots, leaving large bald spots on the lawn (we learnt this last winter).

Then they both helped me moving the palm fronds to the compost heap.

I think Caruso thought this was the best part of the day. I'm always careful not to give them too much of anything that's not in their natural diet but they do enjoy a pile of sweet potato leaves, a couple of banana leaves or boysenberry cuttings.

Finally, there was a little unscheduled rosemary hedge pruning.

I was a little over zealous last time I pruned it with the trimmers and it's taking a while to kick back. Might need some weed juice.

Roman was supposed to help but couldn't drag his sorry ass off the day bed (seriously, that Dogue thinks he's a Shitzu!)

MOTH took down #5 of 7 huge palm trees that have been leeching the goodness out of my veggie garden beds. It was HUGE and didn't come down without some effort. Thankfully it landed exactly where it was originally supposed to (we had several contingencies).

And finally, all of the diggy dogs were very excited last Sunday when Colin M Schnauzer, Claudia and their baby brother Zed (a 4 month old Russian Black Terrier who will end up making Roman look like a midget) came over for the afternoon. After initial greetings and bouts of bossiness and jealous from the little one, everyone had a lovely afternoon. It was impossible to get a good photo, they didn't stop moving!

Life is never dull at Upsidownimal Farm...

Helping mum

Hi guys, it's Bella here. Thought I'd write up a quick bloggy thing for Granny and Pop in Wales so the can see how fabulously helpful I've been.

Mum bought a trailer load of dirt today for the paths of her vegie gardens. Dad's been helping with some brick edges cause Mum has had a sore elbow for a few months now - apparently it's something to do with tennis (not that she plays it).

First I had to wake up Roman to help (grabbed his tail for some attention)

Roman and I were ready to help out...

Roman didn't really want to help but man, he was keen on staying on the trailer (Mum had to unload around his big fat a**)

To finish off the garden, we needed a few more bricks... I had it covered.

Then we cleared some old palm fronds and put them in the burn pile.

A quick drive in Mum's ute and we were basically done.

Mum was really impressed except when I jumped out of the trailer to chase Pussy Galore, the chooker mole. (She taunts me)

I love helping out in the garden...