Week 3

We spent our first Christmas on the farm. Dug up some potatoes out of the garden and had them with Christmas dinner. It was cool to be eating out of our own garden, but we can't take the credit for it as we didn't plant them. It was fun digging them up though.

Had more potatoes for dinner tonight too. However these ones weren't growing in the garden - they were growing wild in the compost heap! I pulled the plants out of the compost heap to get it ready for new material, only to find the potatoes were much bigger than the ones I'd picked out of the garden for Christmas dinner.

P got the ride-on lawn mower out of the garage yesterday and managed to get it going. He took it around the main part of the yard twice and I took it around another couple of times. It was lots of fun. I stalled it a couple of times on the long grass. The last time it wouldn't start again. Ooops, here I go breaking everything again. P had to finish off the job by hand (using the ordinary petrol push mower). It took him hours.

We have more uninvted guests in our house.

Every day I find 3 or 4 little black caterpillars in the sunroom. I have no idea where they are coming from. I throw them outside but every morning there are more crawling across the carpet.

The starlings are gone from the ceiling above the kitchen. To be replaced by sparrows in the guttering/under the eaves above the deck. The worst part is all their droppings are right outside the door that leads onto the deck. We left the door open this afternoon and V crawled right through it. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

We get our water from a water tank. When we first moved in I drank the water out of the tap and didn't like it so haven't touched it since. P tried it today and said it is foul. Not quite sure what we have to do now. Maybe get the water tested? Will definitely boil it before drinking in future.

We had initially been concerned about using too much water and running out. However it has rained every third day since we've been here, so haven't had to worry too much about it yet.

Took another step towards self sufficiency this week by baking our own bread. Ok so we still have to buy the ingredients so it's not exactly self sufficient. But we are now making our own bread and lemonade, and eating our own potatoes out of the garden. It is a start.

-M