New Brochure, wet paddocks, and warm Earthstead.

Wwoofer Matt has been working hard on a promotional brochure for our homestay / B&B, spending many hours in front of the computer and consultant with Ali and I.











We are thrilled with the result, and have been using this brochure to promote our homestay property, Earthstead, in the local area. Our website will be ready in the next couple of weeks, and we will be working hard to get all the information, links and photo's loaded. The brochure shows off our brand new logo, which we are so proud of. Local graphic designer, Lee Hanson and his team did a great job, and we are thrilled.







On a less happy note, we have found the very expensive Italian sealer we used on our precious tiles was not protecting them as well as we had hoped. We were seeing some oil marks and food stains on the tiles, so we decided we needed to reseal them with a tried and true traditional recipe, - bees wax mixed with citrus turpentine. The result has been wonderful at a fraction of the cost of the Italian sealer, so good in fact that we decided to apply the wax to the outside tiles also. Here Doreen and Matt work happily, cleaning the tiles very carefully and then applying the polish.
The inside tiles were expertly waxed by the super team of Jenn and Gee.






We have had a very wet spell of weather lately, and parts of our paddocks are under water. In this kind of weather, pasture damage and "pugging" can be a real problem. Moving the cows often onto new grass is very important, and minimises damage. Grass is not as plentiful during the winter months, so we need to protect and manage it very carefully.







Since our earlier problems with shorts in the electric fence, and Angie breaking through the fence at will, we have decided to check the voltage level each time we move the cows,then any problem can be quickly sorted out before Miss Angie or any of the others decides to go walk about.








We are also very careful to make sure our stock have clean water to drink, and routinely bucket out the troughs before the cows are put in the next paddock.








Ali has been busy getting the underfloor heating going in the Earthouse. All hot water for the Earthouse can be heated three ways - firstly via solar, secondly via the wetback on the fire, and lastly by electricity. We have found that on a fine sunny day in mid winter, the three solar panels are heating the water to 50 degrees, which is perfectly adequate for showering and washing etc. However the underfloor heating is much more greedy as far as temperature goes, so our efficient fireplace and wetback are taking up the slack.









This fireplace is specially designed for this purpose, and puts 30 percent of it's heat into the room and the rest into the wetback, heating the underfloor to a cosy twenty degrees.








As these photos show, our Earthouse is designed for solar gain, north facing, with high and low windows allowing the sun to stream into the house, warming the walls and floor.







Earth walls naturally soakup and store this heat, and very slowly release it over the next 12 hours. We are thrilled with our Earthouse's performance over this first winter, - even though the house is unoccupied most of the time, and the fire is used intermittently, the air temp in the house has not fallen below 16 degrees, with no use of electric heating.

The chooks, Poor Mark, Friday night dinners and planting the roof

Our flock of 8 mature brown shavers, which are called the "plain chooks" are getting old. These good old fashioned laying hens give us 6 or 8 eggs a day, but their laying life is coming to an end.







The young "pretty chooks" (as Wwoofer Doreen calls them) are kept in the pen next door. Wwoofer Jenn has taken a special interest in the pretty chooks, naming them and interpreting their behaviour for the rest of us. We have Oprah, who is always trying to get an interview with the other chooks, the Turner family (Ike and Tina and siblings)named because of their mop hair styles and Pamela and Jasmine of Baywatch fame.








Most of the pretty chooks were hatched here on the property or at our friend George's home, and they are a mix of purebreeds and crosses. The two new comers, Pamela and Jasmine are light Sussex pullets, and were sourced for us by our chicken expert George. Here Jenn lets us get to know Jasmine........







....and Doreen introduces Pamela. Like their Baywatch Babe namesakes, these two "chicks" somehow manage to stay perfectly preened and clean, even in the muddy farm yard.








The very strange chickens we talked about in a previous post have both been put out of their misery - without feathers to keep them warm they just couldn't stand the cold,and were suffering, so Ali and Doreen made sure they died humanely and were buried properly.








Which brings us to poor Mark. We all knew that our Steer Mark was destined for the freezer, and his time has come. Last week the homekill butcher came to Earthstead, and killed and slaughtered Mark, giving the Woofers an amazing anatomy lesson into the bargain. I could not watch, we have had Mark since he was a small calf, and he was sweet natured and I felt sad for him. But......this is the way of farming, and we believe the most honourable thing you can do for a beef cow is feed and care for it superbly, kill it humanely, cook it appropriately and eat it with great celebration, which is what we have done. Mark has given us some of the nicest meat we have ever produced on the property, and we remember him fondly as we enjoy our meal.








Speaking of meals, we have instituted a new aspect to our Friday night gatherings - we now enjoy a Trivia quiz, with questions being submitted by the wwoofers, and teams formed. Prizes of chocolate are awarded to the winning team. Matt, Doreen, Gee and Jenn are joined by their mascot Bella.









We've had a request from former wwoofer Sayshoe for a photo of Bella to be included in this post. They were great mates while Sayshoe was wwoofing at Earthstead and he wanted to see her once again.









Sayshoe was the champ at table tennis while he was with us, and kept us entertained with his musical talents.














Another job well done by our wwoof team is the planting of the earth roof on the earthouse. This time last year another team of wwoofers planted succulents, but the hash winter put paid to them, and not one survived.








This time we have decided to give a native grass Carex Testacea a try. It is a beautiful grass, greenish with orange tips and growing to 60cm with long attractive seed heads. I am really excited about the beautiful soft finish this grass will give the roofline, but we will need to set up some kind of watering for the dry summer months of Jan. and Feb. as these grasses are not completely drought proof.










Jenn, Gee,Doreen, Meagan and I had a wonderful day on the roof, the weather was spectacular and it was such a satisfying job to complete.

Bottles in the cob wall.

We are nearly at the top of the second cob wall on the eastern side, and have decided to embed some bottles in the wall in true traditional earth building style. The bottles will allow more morning light to shine in. We firstly joined two bottles together with clear all weather duct tape.










Then we added a layer of foil, and Wwoofers Jenn (US) and Doreen (Germany) helped finish the process by covering the whole bottle with more duct tape. This then acts like a solar tube, reflecting light from outside to the inside of the house.









Suzie and Wwoofer Meagan (who is on her second tour of duty at Earthstead) then took some time to level the bottles in the wall under the watchful eye of Doreen.










Jenn packs mud around the bottles from the outside.












We are very happy with the finished product, and hope we have been able to seal the bottles well enough to keep condensation out of them. Time will tell. This photo doesn't do justice to the amount of light shining through the bottles. I will try to get some better photo's in the next post.











By 10.30am we are all ready for morning tea, and today it is hot chocolate topped with whipped cream. yummmmm.









The cob shelves are nearly completed and look stunning thanks to Jenn, Doreen, and our trusty engineer, Ali.











Wwoofer G from Thailand is working steadily on the southern cob wall, where progress and drying are slowest.












We've also been working on the gardens. Here Doreen and G plant a native grass under the cabbage trees in the centre of the roundabout.










Woofer Matt from the UK is working with Ali on a flyer to promote our homestay. We are very happy with how it is looking, and in the next post I hope to show you just what they have come up with.