Monday, 23 May 2011 15:09 Written by Elisabeth

This story was written about ten years and quite a few cows ago When the cow is down to a mere six litres a day you know you have a crisis on your hands. That’s exactly what happened to me. What with the cheese making, a teenage son, a dog, a few pigs and the chooks, six litres is a drop in the proverbial bucket. It’s time to bring in another cow. I started to look around in the papers but there wasn’t much too choose from as they were all too expensive. A few inquiries from local dairies also demanded too much money. A year ago I paid $300 for this cow and as far as I was concerned, there is no need to spend any more than that. My cow was somewhere out there waiting for me, all I had to do was to find her. It didn’t take too long when I came upon a dairy that was willing to strike a bargain. For the price of$320, a pig and a block of cheese she was mine. When we came to look her over she totally ignored me but I knew she was the one. When delivery day came she bonded straightaway with our other cow. They were inseparable. I was a very happy dairymaid; such a lovely sight, I was thrilled. “She’ll settle down after a couple of days”, I was assured. “She’s a quiet cow”. That’s when our troubles began. The cow was quiet to the point of being timid. There was no way she was going near that milking bail! After a couple of days of trying to get her in I tried to squeeze those juicy teats as she stood there eating from her bucket. Squirt, kick, squirt, kick. This was getting dangerous! Four days went by until I gave up in despair. She’s going to loose her milk- what can I do? “You have to show her who’se boss”, according to the previous owner. Now was the time for the ‘Frank’ method. You have to beat the c..p out of her! So no more Mr Niceguy. After several hours and many attempts to lassoo a rope around her neck, scrambling up and down hills, running the length and breadth of the entire property and me definitely giving up two or three times, Frank succeeded in tying the cow with a rope around her neck and fastening her onto the bail. At this point I made a flask of tea while Frank was watching the cow and having a well- deserved rest. We decided I had better run into town to buy a halter for the cow if we were to gain control over her. It would give us something to hold onto. When I came back from town and we had gently put the halter on her we coerced her into position. Not long after that the lovely sound of milk was heard squirting into the bucket. I stood by her and sweet talked her while the poor darling had tears streaming out of her eyes! Ten litres of milk was given to the pigs and soon they were lying down, bellies up and zonked out by their rich treat. Ah, peace has returned again. It didn’t take too long to be able to milk her without too much fuss. In fact, she really was a quiet cow.

Saturday, 25 December 2010 08:11 Written by Elisabeth

(An Audit on How Food Self Sufficient I am)

How would my kitchen look like when it’s crunch time? Supplies are getting more difficult to access, the cost of food has sky-rocketed and transport to the local shop by donkey is a once a week journey.

What can I throw into the pot to fill our bellies for the day?

Read more...

Sunday, 19 December 2010 07:41 Written by Elisabeth

We have a bull that needs to go as the other one is growing up and we don’t want two bulls fighting over the girls. Normally we would knock of any surplus livestock, but the freezers are full at the moment and to tell the truth I’m a bit sick of beef. Now this presents a problem as we have not yet devised a way of getting livestock off the property. I thought we should design a small holding pen that would have a side gate built into it so we can load any of our cattle up onto a truck.

 This little project has resulted into an interesting arrangement of links and connections. This is so Permaculture in concept although a lot of it simply fell into place. This is how it went.

 The holding pen was made just a little up from a gate situated on the driveway. The driveway has a rockwall on one side with a natural incline whereas the flat grassy area remained down below. The driveway had two large gates installed across the driveway and wella, a smart holding pen for loading the cattle onto a truck. This situation had inadvertently created another holding pen down below it. That worked out well as I have permanently separated the two milking cows from their calves but they can still talk to each other across the fence. One cow is placed in each pen thus creating order for peaceful milking.

 Now this is all well and good but there are now a lot of cow plops on the driveway and this is not so good for the car. I had a bit of a think about this whilst milking one of the girls and I came up with the perfect solution. A worm farm. All I had to do was install a bath tub on some blocks with a bucket underneath and shovel all the fresh turds into the worm farm. The wormfarm is under the shade of the avocado trees, near the tap for watering and close by the gardens for the worm juice and castings. How good is that! Everything seemed to fall into place; now that’s links and connections at work for you.