Straw Bales

Our garden takes a heck of a lot of mulch....

Last year I put on 300 small squares

~ yep 300!

So as you might imagine this could get quite expensive,

~if ~

you had to buy this many.

Thankfully, sometimes (like last year)

we have our own lucerne hay.

But not this year unfortunately.

So our good friend Pete offered us to help him do some for his garden

 ~ and then we could grab some too.

One Saturday afternoon in February 

"we" went out to make some hay.

( OK, I just watched and took photo's

 ~ that's kind-of work isn't it? ;)

Don't they look pretty sitting all in rows - all golden?

You just can't explain the smell of fresh hay.

Damo is driving the tractor and baler

"The baler"

looking out the back window of the tractor

Damo watching the baler carefully because it caused all sorts of trouble - breaking bales, snapping strings, knots in the wrong places....

Well, by the time we had done a lap,

 the weather was coming in fast

(some of you may have read the post

about the flooding in early March 

~ well this was the beginning of that)
You can read about that

HERE

I was pretty thankful to be sitting inside our car

~ poor Damo!

Did you know that straw sticks really well when its wet?

Damo strapping down our loaded hay....in the pouring rain!

Rain on the window pane.

The weather closing in - the last moment of sun for quite a few days.

I just thought I'd share just one last photo

~ our family c:

Damo, me and JB

I'm linking with FarmGirl Friday for this post!

You'll find all the other interesting posts HERE: farmgirl-friday-51

Have a lovely day,

Corinne

Kiama

This year we went off to Kiama, East Beach again.

We were so keen to get going,

we desperately needed a break from a really big end of 2011.

So keen that we packed up on the Friday afternoon instead of Saturday!

We drove a good two hours and stayed in a FREE caravan park,

with 'cool' showers and toilets and no power.

JB was just a little excited with sleeping in a 'big' bed, and not a cot.

We did have a small issue with a broken window in the caravan.....

It ended up being a real pain in the neck -

have you ever tried to find someone to fix something on the "Australia Day Long Weekend"?

Not an easy thing to do!

We found this guy eventually from Robertson,

 but we had to wait around most of Saturday until he was free.

Nice guy, did a great job, and cheap!

So much for all our trying to get there early

and enjoy a bit more holiday ~ we didn't get there

until later than normal on the Saturday....

and it would seem that it was 1 of only 3

 nice and warm sunny days!

The first swim!

The little man REALLY enjoyed the 'splash'!

No fear!

By the end of our time, JB was talking so much - new words?

Beach, Pool!

There were some beautiful evenings,

The ocean was so warm,

until three days later it was so cold

that it made your ankles ache!

'Net' (our oldest girl) and Em came down and spent a week with us.

JB had a great time!

So many repeats of Thomas the Tank Engine,

New Word?

Trying to say Em,

which kind of sounded like Dumb for a day or two!

c;

Em spent her time being artistic, introducing us to awesome

dark chocolate and movies,

art, computer, and reading.

Damo even had a sketch done.

Net managed to score a bit of time away from JB to catch a snooze...

Some nice walks and talks with her!

A bit of fishing at the wharf.

Thomas, Thomas and more Thomas!

If it wasn't Thomas, it was Shaun the Sheep or Hi Five.

Rain, Rain, Rain!

More Rain!

Cabin Fever!

With all the wet weather I got a chance to work on a project

that I have been planning for a few years now.

The picture is a sneak peak

- it might take a few more years yet!

Rough Seas.

Beach fishing with Dad.

Reading with Dad.



 

Eventually it got so wet we had to be evacuated from the caravan park!

Our quite little creek that we were jumping across became a raging torrent!

This picture was taken in the morning about 7 ish, but it kept us up the night before about 3, the sound was incredible.

We made JB a bed up in the caravan and off the floor of the annexe (just in case)

There was a pretty big storm and a lightning strike with no gap between the flash and the bang that scared the life out of JB (and us!)

After that it was packing up without power..... YUCK!

 

The long trip home to unpack EVERYTHING and dry it all out.

Wash EVERYTHING because the humidity was so high

that even stuff in the cupboards felt wet.

I think we might need another holiday really soon...

Any ideas for Easter Holidays???

four days and four nights ~ the big wet

I am linking with http://www.deborahjeansdandelionhouse.blogspot.com.au/ for the FarmGirlFriday bloghop! :)

The weather forecasts were talking 'big' rain.

We tend to not believe our weather forecasters...

they like to make it up if they don't know!

During the drought they talked rain.... and talked rain...

after ten years of Drought and basically no rain

it can make you quite cynical.

It began raining on Tuesday.

It continued to rain right through until Thursday evening.

It rained so much that where our causeway was impassable to any but those with 4WD.

This is our cause way - the only way into our place when the creek is running.
This photo is looking into the bottom corner of our block - everything is about 2" inches underwater.
Our dam is overflowing and making another creek through the back paddock.

Below are some of our garden beds suffering from water logging. Some of the young trees that I planted in Spring have actually died this summer from too much water!

Our new orchard under a couple of inches of water.

We made a "dry" creek bed as part of our garden to drain water off our lawn and car parking area - totally full and over flowing into the fruit trees - just like we planned.

Water running UP towards our house after overflowing out of the dam.

The pumpkins have certainly enjoyed all this rain - they have overtaken the entire vege garden!

We have a dry creek that runs about 2 kms directly North of our place.

All the run off from our place will eventually end up in this creek.

The majority of the time it is dead dry.

In fact it is so rare, that it is running and full

that my Father (who has lived here his entire life)

has only seen it run a couple of times.

I'll tell the rest of the story by pictures....

Friday Afternoon

We own a school bus run - this was part of our run. The bus didn't run Thursday, Friday or Monday.

This is actually a road - NOT a river!

Very thankful that it was Damo driving and not me!

<><><> 

JB and Pa! JB thought that the BIG splashes were very funny!




This is also part of our bus run.
The house was Damo's grandparents place (couldn't resist a photo)

More of our bus run

Video of the creek running back near our place.

The mosquito's were HUGE. 

More dark rain clouds heading our way Friday night.

Saturday........

'Broken Dam' This is where our township was originally, until they moved about 2kms South.

The Creek had gone down considerably by Saturday morning....

The crossing to get to the towns Lake.

Sunday......

Sunday morning everything was back up! Large amounts of rain fell over night.

One of the streets in town - water had started to build up.

One of our good church friends house ~ Damo spent the morning trying to help them stop the water running into their house (newly carpeted!) He tried to pump it over the entrance ways with the fire truck, but it just couldn't keep up. They ended up digging out the built up drive ways.

The creek right back up.

Heading towards Weise's Dam

Just some of the water heading towards the creek.
Weise's Dam

Over -flow from Weise's Dam into 'Broken Dam'.
Broken Dam hasn't had water in it since 1994.

Looking North towards the bridge

The road to our next major centre.

Another road into town - All this water is running around the back of the main street behind the pub, out past the fire station, under the railway line and towards the creek.

The flood water backing up towards the front of the pub, because it couldn't get under the railway crossing quick enough.

Past the fire shed...

The was to our other major center heading west.

Paddocks full of water. It will be quite a while before it is dry enough for most people to start their cropping this year.

Fences washed away from the force of the water and build up of debris.

Looking towards one of the townships further down from us - completely under water.

The banks of the creek broke further down stream from us.

Paddock's and signs now submerged under the creek.

The creek.

The other alternative to get to our house and part of our school bus run.

On our way to see the small towns down stream

Saw lots of these!

Waiting to see if we could get across.





One of the little villages down stream had knee deep water run through their shops......

New grass carpet for the tennis courts washed all over town.

The raging Creek

We were blessed this time - The water stayed at 6"inches below the bridge.

Please pray for our neighbours into this week as the water travels down stream and the devastation that it is likely to cause.

May God Bless You This Week,

Corinne