Setting up a Blacksmithing Workshop

Working with metal has long been a plan of mine, so the time had come to find an expert to show me how to go about it. I found a course offered by Iain Hamilton of Mother Mountain Forge at Tilba in NSW. He has found fame by making knives on the River Cottage Australia show but has been working with metal for the past fifteen years.

 

His course offered practical experience and advice in setting up a workshop. To work with metal you need three things: a heat source (forge), a hammer and an anvil. Plenty of other tools are useful but these are the minimum. Iain uses two different forges - gas and coking coal. The gas one looks like a small barrel with an opening  in the door. Its quick to heat up and creates a constant heat but is noisy and chews through the gas.  

 

The coke forge is quieter and has a range of temperatures but takes longer to get going.

 

 

My most impressive achievement over the weekend was to make a hammer. The project started as a piece of scrap steel. 

 

 

 After welding a rod onto one end to make it easy to put in and out of the forge, the metal is heated up until it glows yellow. Then it is ready to be worked on the anvil. One end needed to be flattened and spread out to make the 'cross peen'. The middle needed to have a hole punched in it to fit a handle in the hammer head. The process is simple but getting the right technique is more of a challenge. I had to learn how and where to stand and practise hitting the hammer at just the right angle and in the right place. Iain had some tools that would make the job quicker but he started by getting me to work it the traditional way. It was amazing to be able to change the shape and slowly watch the hammer appear.

Once the head was shaped it had to be hardened and tempered in an oven. This gave time for shaping a handle from Queensland hickory. To fix the head to the handle a notch is cut into the top of the head and a wedge of hardwood tapped into it. We also put in a sharpened ring cur from a pipe and then coated the top with epoxy resin to ensure a lasting handle. The shaft was coated with a special beeswax mixture and the end product is both beautiful and practical.

 

A fantastic course and I am inspired to find a suitable heat source so I can start to make metal objects on my own.

Slabbing up the Dairy

The mud and cow manure in the dairy just became too much to bear and the smell of morning milking lingered on me all day. Something had to be done.

 

I had placed a square concrete block roughly where Hailey's feet stand and sometimes this worked OK, but often she would place a foot off to the side and sink into the pungent mire. When she eats she often likes to urinate and this would fill the hole her hoof had made and wouldn't dry out until the next deluge made it worse.

If the weather is bad she and her companion, calf by day and bull by night, would camp in there and trample and drip. I put it off for a while but the time had come for a more permanent solution.

First I dug down to more solid ground and moved out all the soggy smelly mud. Then some wood was attached on all four sides - level across the shed, sloping towards the garden at the front. With some reo cut to size the dairy was ready for some concrete.

Michelle is a concreter's daughter so while I mixed up the bags in the wheelbarrow she brandished the homemade float and smoothed out the wrinkles.

 

Once the concrete had 'gone off'' - that mysterious moment where the chemical reaction in the mix is completed enough to make a lasting finish on the top - she set to work again. It was important not to make it too smooth so Hailey does not slip. A bucket of sand applied to the top and then brushed completed the process and time does the rest. Tomorrow Hailey will have to milked out in the paddock to make sure the slab has set enough to be stood on the next day.



It will be quite something to have a solid floor to work from and being raised up a couple of inches will make Hailey happy as she will be able to access the feed bin easier.

 

Tonto the Bull

 

We have a guest on Opportunity Farm. He has been invited here to sire Hailey's next calf. Tonto is a young Dexter bull who belongs to our neighbours. They run pedigree Dexters and their line of bulls provide semen for customers all over the world. Last time we needed a bull for Hailey she went to their place but that wouldn't work with milking and Comet the calf. So they kindly lent him to us.

 

Tonto is a gentle boofy-headed boy who seems quite safe to have around people, especially children. He is a little smaller than Hailey so we are hoping he is able to climb high enough to perform a successful service. So far he has checked Hailey out a few times but hasn't been too interested. By day Hailey hangs with Comet but we need to keep the calf separate as she could be old enough to be in season herself - without being big enough to survive the pregnancy. Tonto gets the night shift. This makes it harder to know whether he has done the job he is here for, but I am hoping it will be obvious. Having a mature bull around is new to me so hopefully all goes well - otherwise Tonto may be with us for a fair while.

The 100th Post

100 posts is time to reflect on what we have been doing, why we are doing it and where we are going with it.

 

Since January 1st we (Matthew and Michelle - but mostly Matthew as Michelle has written 154 posts of poems as well) have been recording activities, events and musings about our life here on Opportunity Farm. It has been many parts diary, some parts instruction manual and some parts philosophy. Basically whatever seemed noteworthy about our attempts at homesteading.

The food production side has been a pleasure - tonight for dinner there were two meals, one comprising pumpkin soup and homemade bread while for the fussy ones pork mince, tomato sauce and rice washed down with a raspberry smoothie and a glass of cider (not for the kids!). The only purchased ingredients being the flour and yeast for the bread, the rice and a spoonful of local honey for the smoothie. It is great to be able to celebrate the joy of eating our own produce by sharing it with the world.

Today's tasks of preparing to concrete the dairy floor, putting in the first stump for the shearing shed/workshop, attaching a sculpture to the studio, assisting the farrier, pruning a vine and mulching a garden bed were all practical, physical and also an enjoyable way to spend a Saturday. We blog to share this life with people who may be interested or inspired to follow suit in whatever way they can.

 

Our eventual aim is to have people come and visit us at Opportunity Farm and take advantage of some of the skills and knowledge that we have in supporting children to learn, scouting and homesteading as well as simple practical activities they want to try or practice. We hope to have a list of these activities on a page at the top of this blog soon.

 

The difficulty is getting this blog out there and increasing the number of people who come across it. So far more there have been more than 1000 hits which is a little more than 10 per post. When I publish a post there are 5 hits within a very short time which means there are some who have linked our site to their email. We believe there are a lot more people out there who may enjoy our blog posts if they can find it.

What we haven't had is any comments. We would love to hear your responses and feel more connected to those that have visited this blog. If you link our site to Facebook or any of the other forms of social media it will also increase our profile. This will help inspire us to continue blogging about our life and growing a rewarding and ethical business as well as lots of yummy food. Many thanks to those who have been following us - here's to the next 100!
 

The first day of Winter 2015

The Roof is Off

After three and a half days of dismantling, all the roof from the shearing shed is down. All the decent pieces of tin have been removed to our paddock and the piles of useful timber remain on site to be denailed, trimmed and then driven home.

Removing the shearing plant remains a challenge. It was working well when the shed ceased to be used about thirty years ago. Michelle will be using an electric handpiece to shear our sheep so the plant would only be decorative and suitably authentic. I am going to try to bring down two plants and the flywheel in one piece. However today's efforts ended with the crowbar flying back into my face and chipping my tooth. Having been so careful with all the flapping tin and timber balanced over my head it was a bit of a smack in the face!

Next time I go out there I hope to have the chain saw back from the repair shop as it could prove very handy in dropping the final posts and maybe cutting up some post for firewood.  

 

 

First Day of Winter

This morning we woke to the quiet sound of fallen snow. Once there is settled snow it seems to deaden all other sounds. No vehicles on the road adds to the eerie silence. At 5.30am there was a light dusting but it hadn't settled on the paths or roads. An hour later it was blizzarding and settling everywhere. There was not more than an inch in total before it stopped but it was enough to stop the school buses and allow the kids to have some fun with snowballs and snowmen.

 

 

Opportunity Farm is at 900m above sea level so snow is common. Many years there will be a couple of dumps but not long ago snowfalls were much more frequent and heavy and the farm would have been cut off for a while each year. Whether this is global warming is uncertain but if you talk to the old-timers they will often say that maybe we will get a real winter this year. This one has certainly got off to a cold start.

Progress on the Shearing Shed Dismantling

This was the front of the shed. The building at the front has to be removed as the roof is attached to the shearing shed and the roof is poised to collapse. The door will be a useful score to build into our new shed.

The shearing shed back to its bare bones with just the roof poised and hanging overhead. The shearing plant is still attached in the centre. Apparently it was still operational when the farm changed to cattle thirty years ago. I will try to salvage some of this just for authenticity. The piles of timber will be denailed using the reciprocating saw before being loaded up for the half hour trip back to Opportunity Farm. The scraps will be burnt or dragged off to the tip.

This was the rear of the shed. The back wall has collapsed and much of the tin from this side of the roof is twisted and tangled. The roof is held up by four enormous log poles that are set deeply into the ground. When the shed has fallen one of these posts has burst through the roof.

Now all the tangled tin is removed and most of the rear of the shed roof is dismantled. The longer round poles in the foreground are to be rafters in our new shed while some of the fatter wall poles will do the same job in the rebuild. The challenge is to gently collapse the front part of the roof without dropping it on my head.

Cherry Guavas

 

Once winter comes there is often only the memories of fresh fruit and hopefully the rows of Vacola jars and tubs of dried fruit to keep those going. However we have found a tree that produces an abundance of succulent fruit that ripens in early winter. This is the Cherry Guava (Psidium cattleianum).

It is an evergreen bushy shrub that grows to 3 - 6 m in height and originates from Brazil. Its leaves are smooth, glossy, leathery and about 5 - 8 cm long. The fruits are the size of a small plum and a round shape about 2.5 - 4 cm in diameter. When they are ripe they go a deep wine-red or even purple colour and feel soft. They are very juicy and despite the seeds are delicious to eat whole. Our Cherry guavas obviously like a sandy loam soil with decent drainage and can tolerate frosts up to about minus 5. Apparently the fruits are about the richest source of Vitamin C there is and make excellent jams and jellies. We generally just snack on them by the tubful. Yum.

 

Winter Gardens

 

Once the summer crops are harvested and taken down then the beds need a rest. The soil we have is a sandy loam so the nutrients tend to leach out when it rains. During winter there are less plants taking up these nutrients so there is an opportunity to revitalise the soil. This year we spread lime over the soil and then a good layer of partly composted horse manure. A thick layer of Lucerne hay acts as a mulch and will slowly rot down over winter as well. There are some winter greens and vegetables which poke through this layer to produce food over the next few months. 

 

The garlic has been sown in raised beds outside the vegetable garden cage. While we have had trouble with a wombat some years ago the fence around the outside of the yard is now effective at keeping anything that would eat the garlic out. The bower birds have sometimes kicked the mulch about but only if there are some seeds within or underneath the mulch. We have planted early varieties so hopefully we can harvest them before it gets too dry.

Lighting up the heaps

 

Fourteen months ago a huge bushfire surrounded our bush property and the community was under threat or on high alert for nearly three months. At one point we were unable to access the place for three weeks as the roads in were burning or too dangerous.

One of the good things about this was the support from the department of primary industry who provided a bulldozer to do any work required around the house. We took full advantage and pushed back the bush from the north, south and west. All the area below the house - which is the area at most risk of a fire running uphill is now cleared. Behind the house and on the side of the prevailing wind there is also a cleared area.

This work inevitably left some large piles of debris sitting in heaps around the property, with one in particular directly below the house. As part of the recovery process the department sent a contractor up to set fire to these and keep piling the stumps up until all is burnt. He was very adept at using his machine to pick up stumps and pile them in the best way to maximise burning.

 

 

While he was on the property he was quite happy to help out to remove stumps that remained in the ground, to level off uneven ground and clear a track into a firewood stash. Weeds will grow where the fire has been but once they are dealt with, the whole area will grow grass and this can be mowed annually. It is wonderful to live right in the middle of the bush but it is also vital to have a good cleared space around the house to offer some protection from the ravages of a fire.

The One Bad Day

 

After seven months of twice daily feeds and water top ups I have become very used to Blanche and Maud being around. But scraps and fallen fruit are diminishing so we have been feeding them more pig pellets to finish them off. They weigh about 65kgs with Blanche being closer to 70kg. It is time for their one bad day. The night before I entice them up into the stock crate which I have lined with tin to make it more sheltered for them. They step up happily, willing to go anywhere for a white bucket of food. They spend the night in the shed on their bed of hay, protected from the howling gale and savage gusts of rain outside. 

  



 

The next morning we take the windy 100kms to the nearest abattoir. I take it slowly and when I stop to check on them, Maud and Blanche don't seem too phased by the new feeling of speed. It is hard to tell what their reaction is but they do not seem to show any signs of stress. I back into the abattoir shed entrance. The system here is that you drop off the pigs and write in a book your contacts, how many pigs, how they are marked and where you want the carcasses to go. Blanche and Maud are sporting an Opportunity Farm orange ear tag so they can be easily recognised amongst any other pigs. We are the first to arrive (they only deal with pigs one day a week) so my pigs get the place to themselves. It is not an easy departure but I have to leave sentimentality behind and concentrate on the fact that they have had a good life before this day and the thought of the wonderful pork that will fill the freezers in a few days.



 

Farewell, Maud and Blanche and thanks for all the pork. They will be remembered as almost every time we sit down to a tasty portion the children ask "Who is this we are eating?"

Pruning the Stone Fruit

As the autumn heads toward winter and the leaves have all fallen it is time to prune the stone fruit. Keeping the tree small enough to fit inside the cage yet big enough to produce good fruit has always been a challenge. This year I have learnt to 'summer prune' and remove the fast growing vertical shoots that head up through the cage roof. Without most of these vigorous shoots the winter prune is much easier. I try to keep the branches from overlapping, heading into the middle or growing up too far. The longer branches are cut back to an out facing bud to reduce the chances of them snapping under the weight of summer growth and to ensure the new growth heads out rather than up.

 

 

 This year's bumper crop of peaches led to one branch snapping - seen in the picture to the left of the centre.

Last winter I planted two dwarf stone fruit trees - a peach and a nectarine. Both had curly leaf when spring came so at leaf fall they were sprayed with a mixture of Bordeaux powder and water. Hopefully with more vigorous growth and another application at bud burst they will grow healthy. We are hoping that these dwarf trees will be a real success inside the cage and will need less hard pruning. If this is so we will slowly replace the least productive trees with dwarf varieties.

The Shearing Shed Roof

Finally there is a day when I can start the process of dismantling the sheds on our friendly farmer's land and drag some materials back to Opportunity Farm for our shearing shed and workshop. The night before I load up all sorts of tools that might be useful and pack myself a lunch. The day dawns and after the children have headed off to catch the school bus I set off. The only problem is the howling gale, frequent squalls and icy blasts. I start with the easiest job.   

 

The hay shed has collapsed leaving its roof easily accessible on the ground. The nails come up easily with two hammers in sync and a tyre lever to prevent the corrugations being squashed. Once a sheet is free I have to battle the wind which tries to hurl the sheet into the next paddock. The sheets float horizontally over to the trailer and only settle when below the sides as the trailer is parked across the wind. Once the tin is removed and loaded then I can dismantle the rafters - 4 by 2s and the battens - 3 by 1s. The central ridge pole is a score - two lengths of 6 by 2.
I crank up the generator and set to with the reciprocating saw to zip off all the nails. Each rafter takes about a minute to clean off and stack in the trailer. All that is left are the round poles used as top plates and the posts that were holding the roof up. I will return later with my chainsaw to deal with the most promising of these.

 The farmer has a tidier paddock and we have all the tin needed for the roof of our new building and enough rafters to be turned into joists for about a third of the floor space.Then I can head up to the main game - the collapsing shearing shed.

Dealing with Flossie

Poor Flossie had fallen on hard times, but hopefully she has turned a corner and things are looking up now that she has joined us at Opportunity Farm. She was once  a much loved pet. She is very friendly and comes up for food or a scratch. When you have food for her she runs around chasing her tail like a dog with excitement.

 

For the last year or so her coat's needs have been sadly neglected. It is long, bedraggled and in places dreadlocked. Besides a great deal of sand in its locks there are no seeds or burrs. So the paddocks she has been kept in have been pretty clean of weeds. At some time one of her back legs has been broken, and then set again crooked. She walks with a limp. Her hooves at the end of her twisted leg have grown sideways. When we first saw this hoof in particular, we thought that her hooves had not been trimmed in a long time. But besides this damaged foot they were in pretty good shape.

 

Today we are tidying her up. To shear her matted coat Michelle uses the hand shears. They only cut well when the blade is at the right angle. It is slow work. Flossie is pretty calm overall but gets much more agitated when the blades get near her bottom or her damaged leg.  When we cut around her face she closes her eyes and stands the most calm as if 'blissed out'. For the various higher maintenance areas we try various positions and angles: standing over, kneeling or sitting beside. Michelle tips her just like a sheep but she doesn't stay in the position. Standing over her is the easiest, starting from her backbone. Slowly the blades move down the sides leaving a trail of tangled ringlets still attached and trailing. It takes about two hours to complete her coiffure and tidy her toes. We made a coat for her so that the shock of losing all her insulation would not be too great, but she got it off in minutes. So into the warm goat barn she goes. She is on her own for the next little while until she gets used to her new look and we decide who would be the nicest goat friends for her to hang out with. 

 



 

 

Storing the Potatoes





Time to harvest the rest of the Opportunity Farm spuds. We could probably get away with leaving them in the ground a bit longer but we need the potato patch empty in order to plant the garlic. 

After carefully digging along the sides of the trenches to get the potatoes up without slicing them they are sorted into those too small to bother with, which go to the pigs, and those to be stored for later use.

This year I am putting them in Styrofoam boxes (ones with holes in the bottom) surrounded by dry wood shavings. I can get three or four layers in each box. The boxes are to be kept in the hanging shed which is dark and insulated which will keep a more even temperature. 

We had planned to store them in the pantry with the pumpkins and the apples but apparently the fumes from the apples will encourage the potatoes to sprout,

  

 The layers of spuds in the styrofoam box

The completed stack of boxes

Wanted: Timber/Tin Shed for Removal

We need another shed. This one is to be multipurpose - a shearing shed, a workshop space, a storage shed and a place where visitors could roll out a swag if they don't fancy camping.
We want this 6m x 4m shed to look more like an authentic Monaro shearing shed in both the design and the materials. So we put up some posters in the local town asking if anyone has a shed we can pull apart. There are plenty of farms that have changed a lot since the heydays of the 50s and 60s. Back then farms had farmworkers and plenty of money coming in as Australia 'rode on the sheep's back'.
Before anyone could answer our request Michelle asked a farmer friend if he had any spare sheds in need of a new life. He replied that he had just the thing. This farmer only raises cattle so the 60 year old shearing shed had been lying idle for a while. A strong wind had all but collapsed it about a year ago and he hadn't had the time or the inclination to pick up all the pieces. We were welcome    to it and a more recently built and collapsed hay shed was thrown into the deal.

We went and had a look at his shed and while it has certainly seen better days it is ideal for our purposes.

The rusty tin will look fine on the walls and there should be enough framing timber for us to use. I like the idea of using the original round timber posts to hold up the roof as well as the pole rafters. It will take a while to dismantle and sort out what is worth bringing back to Opportunity Farm but in a few months some parts of this old shed will gain a new lease of life.

Petunia's End

On Monday morning Petunia was a happy pig, racing through the orchard and under the fence to get to her breakfast of café scraps and pig nuts. That evening she was slow to get up and didn't appear so eager. When I went close to where she was lying she got up with a start and moved away rapidly.

On Tuesday morning she was in a bad way. She didn't want to get up and she was frothing at the mouth. I rang the vet.

He reckoned there could be any number of causes for this, from poisoning to infection. He said to wait and see whether the symptoms became any worse. I had to go to work so our neighbour offered to come round and take a look. He thought that maybe she had eaten a poisonous bulb or overeaten on daffodils. He tried to get her to eat some charcoal and drink some water but with little success.

When I returned in the afternoon Petunia was dead. She may well have had something stuck in her throat as there was blood in the froth at her mouth. It was too late to do anything about it.

 

This was a real shame. Although the three pig sisters were already booked in for their one bad day at the abattoir, it felt really sad to see this pig die before its time. She weighed in at 62kg so it was also a missed opportunity to fill the freezer with home-grown pork.

 

Petunia

 

Farms run on the cycles of life and death. Petunia's death was a sobering reminder of the responsibility we have to look after our animals and how quickly they can die if something is not right.

For the past few years we have fattened two piglets but this year the plan was for three. While this hasn't worked I am very glad that we chose to do this as losing one of two would be much more of a loss than losing the extra one. 

Using Homegrown Timber

 

With over 300 acres of forest on our bush block wood is a resource we have in spades. Aside from firewood collection there are plenty of uses we have found. All the framing on this caravan shed was cut from the property and held together with strapping and clouts. As with fence posts the best timber is Red Box (Eucalyptus Polyanthemos) which is almost termite resistant. Luckily the geology of our site means that there are plenty of these trees close to the house.

 

 

 

 Our homemade house was constructed in two parts. One is mudbrick made from soil dug to create the space for the house with timber poles holding up the roof. The second part was made from local timber milled 35km up the road but the verandah posts were cut from a Blue Gum thicket about 100m below the house. Once the bark dried off the paths of borers were revealed showing a beautiful pattern as a feature.

 

We also used radially sawn timber - a technique designed to get the maximum amount of wood out of the saw log. Each piece also has an uneven edge on the thickest part that looks more natural and organic.

We have also used our timber for green woodworking and more recently spoon carving. It is still a fantastic renewable resource despite most of it being singed or burnt in last year's major bushfire. If time allows I would love to use it more - making shingles would be a project I am keen to try.

The Finishing Touches

 

When there is a deadline approaching and too much to do in the time remaining, then the priority becomes completing what is most important.

The toilet and shower rooms were completed enough to be used by our overnighting scouts. The toilet flushed and the shower produced hot water. However there still remained many finishing touches that would make the rooms look better and last longer. One of the outside walls lacked its skin of corrugated iron so today's job was to shape the tin (recycled from a local shed pulled down to make way for a newer one) and attach it to the wall with roofing screws.

The windows were in but needed some trim around them to protect the window frame and look more uniform. The trim would also cover those places where the cladding was not quite flush.

 

The North window with one piece of trim.

 

I cut several lengths of board 7cm wide and took them out to the site. The drop saw is ideal for getting a 45 degree angle cut to the boards. This worked well except for the window where the frame was not a rectangle but more of a parallelogram.

The completed North window

 

Certainly once the four pieces were fixed it gives the windows more depth and neatens up the frames. All the windows, the tin, the doors, the shower recess, some of the framing timber and all of the subfloor were recycled materials. Some of my initial attempts at building used round timber framing but I have learnt the extra effort is not worth the money saved. There are still a few small jobs remaining but they will have to wait. I needed to head back home to serve up our dinner of roast goat leg with roast potatoes and pumpkin followed by apple and quince snow. All homegrown except for the olive oil and a little raw sugar. Even the sky glowed!

New Arrivals

 

We know few people who are trying to challenge the direction of the modern world by growing much of their own food, downsizing their work commitments and bringing up healthy children who enjoy old fashioned pursuits. Those we do know form a sort of community where we can share knowledge, experiences and resources - when we are not too busy just living!

One such family has goats but no buck so for the past few years have sent their two does over for a date with Cedric. They reckon he kicks out pretty good kids that fatten up well and taste good.

One of the does that comes is the twin sister of our Honey. When they get together they are very different in size. Our goat is about two-thirds the size of her sister. It shows us that our small hill paddocks are not such fertile ground as river flats and the importance of what they are supplemented with and how much.

 

When any new goats are introduced the pecking order has to be reordered. The two new goats assert themselves by rearing up and headbutting their rivals until the order is established. In this case, size matters and the newcomers take over. As Cedric is the preferred buck, Curly has been removed to a separate paddock with Princess to keep him company. He may get wanderlust when the new does come on heat.  

Honey (facing) with her much bigger twin

The third new arrival is a permanent one. Someone's pet Angora goat was an unwanted addition on a friend's farm. Their solution - ask Michelle. Her interest in spinning Angora and shearing was piqued so she shared a ride with the two 'dating' does. This goat is very shaggy and in need of some TLC. Her horns are broken and her feet need clipping. Being a pet she is certainly friendly. We have put her on her own in what used to be a dog run so we can keep an eye on her.

The most important task is to clear some hair from her rear! We also have to decide on a name - Shaggy comes to mind.