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.

Fencing, baking, and naughty Angie and lovely Lucy.

We have been working hard on the stock fences over the past few weeks. The electric fence had many shorts, and was losing power, and the cows were taking advantage of the situation, and breaking through the fence at will. Jesse worked hard and largely overcame the problems. Here he is assisted by Ali and Ian.









Even though the current in the fence is now giving a good belt, Angie is still breaking through, lured by the greener grass on the other side of the fence. She really has a thick skin.










We were also delighted to get the power hooked up to the new implement shed.











As well as the spouting up on the cob cottage.











Ali's chicks are growing quickly, but the younger ones are still just balls of fluff and skin.










The youngest chicks are causing us some consternation, though. All of the clutch but two look like this.











Then there are the two odd balls,who are half the size of their brothers and sisters, and only half the feathers are formed on their bodies. Even our chicken expert, George is unsure just why they are so different. We are waiting and watching to see just what they will become.




Wwoofer Nico is a baker in his French homeland, and very kindly shared his skills with us, making his speciality brioche. He used my sourdough starter, (and gave it the thumbs up) and ten eggs, butter and flour.












The results were delicious.











We also welcome Lucy to the farm, she is Joy's first calf, Angie's older sister. She is all grown up now, and is expecting her first calf this spring. We have purchased her as a breeding cow, and love the her dun coat, making a nice contrast to Joy's black coat.

Update on the cob

Well, it's time I gave an update on how we are going with the cob. Progress has slowed for several reasons. Firstly the weather is much cooler, and the wall is drying more slowly, meaning we can't make each lift as high. Also, now we are getting higher up the wall, we need to climb a ladder each time to place a cob on the wall. Still we keep on, slowly but surely. I wanted to share with you some of the pictures from our international "mud stompers" hall of fame.

Firstly Jesse and Annie from stomp the Canadian way!














Meagan stomps solo in the Aussie way.












The cup of tea way.












Returning for his 3rd visit, Kiwi Ben stomps the Kiwi way.













Dita stomps the Czech way, watched by her parents. Dita and Martin had been wwoofing with us late last year, and were responsible for some of the most beautiful tiles in the earth house. It was so wonderful for us to host the whole family for a few days, before they headed back to Czech.












All that stomping has given a few of us sore feet. Meagan and Annie decided to do a new take on 'bound' feet, and found that red duck tape was a real winner.














Morning tea on the deck of the wwoof house.












Scones and cream, Ali's favourite.















Another important way to mix the earth and straw is to roll it using the tarp on which it sits. Here wwoofers Gaston and Barbara from Argentina show us how it's done.











You might be wondering how the earth is applied to the walls. Meagan shows us how to form the earth/straw mix into a rough brick-like shape.










This is then applied to the walls and worked in with your hands and fingers to ensure each lift mixes seamlessly with the one before.











And the most important thing is that the walls are going up, slowly but surely.










And we have even reached the top lintel on the northern corner. Gaston and Barbara show how excited they are about that!