I woke up this morning, milked the cow and then sat down with a coffee and perused my Twitter feed. I came across this discussion between Adam Schwab and Stilgherrian, both commentators for Crickey.com.
I'm no technology or political or broadband expert, so I'm not going to get bogged down in the politics or minutiae of the arguement. But I'll take Schwab to task on a few things. He says that "In return, Australians will then need to spend upwards of $100 a month on a high-speed internet service that most don’t really want (for that price) and almost all don’t really need." My graphic designer that we use for work lives a stones throw, literally, from one of the major highways in Brisbane, Australia's third biggest city. She cannot get ADSL2+ or cable but relies on satellite broadband. It recently went down and she had to rely on a 3G modem. For two weeks. I had to post, by mail, all the images that i needed in our next mailout. Instead of talking by Skype, with the images on the screen that we could talk about and change, she was emailing me a low resolution image and we talked about it on the phone. And repeat and repeat and repeat. Is this good enough in 2010?
This is what we have now. I have three reps on the road working off 3G and it is far from reliable for data. I am trying to build a new application for our business for the iPad and after using technology like Skype and GoToMeeting i made the decision that they are just not robust enough to rely on, I employed a local developer.
In other countries where broadband is seen as an essential part of doing business they demand speeds that will outstrip the pace of the technology that is developing it. With devices like the iPhone and iPad and all the different devices of the Android marketplace becomes commonplace the demand on our internet has jumped markedly. Soon we will be expecting wireless everywhere we go, in the doctors and in cafes in train stations and anyone who has used 3G for business would laugh at you if you think that network can cope with mainstream internet as well.
Here is my main point, Telstra, Optus and the rest are there to make money. If they can do that without putting large amounts of money out there to build a new network they will. But if we want to develop as a nation economically we have to keep pace with the rest of the world, there are third world countries in Africa that have faster broadband speeds than we do. So isn't the government's responsibility to ensure we don't get left behind? Instead of talking to Liberal MPs and former Optus executives try talking to the people that rely on these technologies, today, tomorrow and into the future. Take the politics out of it and deliver us something. Now.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Keeping Up With My Mind
I love my technology, as anyone who knows me even slightly on the blogosphere or twitter will know. I particularly like my iPhone, and the convenience and utility contained in such a small device. Sometimes though I get thoroughly frustrated with the pace of technology to keep up with my mind, to produce what I see as quite logical leaps to applications that can take advantage of the world we live in.
My main frustration this year has been with our national broadcaster, the ABC. The ABC has this amazing amount of content, in particular audio content. Local ABC radio has these little regular segments on their shows, probably too small to podcast, but incredibly interesting nonetheless. Stuff like the AFL and NRL sunday shows, Spencer's chats with Susan about kids entertainment, The Hidden Persuaders, the radio version of Gruen Transfer that came before Gruen, Richard Fidlers friday afternoon cocktails or Kelly HD chats with Amy Gray, which while incredibly funny could do with less Glee and more Dr Who.
Now you can access a lot of this content on the presenters blogs, where it is put up, in f*&^ing flash. Flash is the twilight vampire of the web, sparkly, but ultimately utterly, utterly useless. I spend a lot of time in the car for my job, as do a lot of other people, and a lot of people spend times in trains or buses, where they have the time and inclination to listen to the wonderful content the ABC can provide and I do have a lot of the podcasts on my iPhone. But the hassle of getting that content from the web onto a device is too hard for me, a tech nerd, so it would be way too hard for the ordinary punter.
Which brings me back to the iPhone, which is almost as ubiquitous as the sparkly twilight celery eaters, but much more useful. It has apps. The ABC has an app, which for all intents and purposes, is useless. It doesn't provide me with anything more than the webpage does. Now if they had been trying to push the envelope, here is what they could have done. They have recordings of all these little segments from all the incredible shows the ABC has. And i only know of the ones for my local ABC. What about all the cool segments from Sydney or Alice Springs or North QLD? What I'd have is a virtual radio station. Let me build my own station, dragging and reordering my segments how I wanted them. Then let me cache 10 hours of it on the phone when I have a wifi connection, or let me straem bits over 3G.
I don't really care how its done, but the ABC is doing itself and its stakeholders, us, a disservice by trapping the content, by not realising that there are ways that they could be giving us all that content easily. There are over 1 million iPhones in australia already, not counting iPod touch's and iPads and you could just as easily write an app like this for Android as well. Considering the market for a 24 hour news network and the money spent there, is there really more people who are interested in that than being able to easily access their favourite ABC segment as they sit on the train on the way to work?
My main frustration this year has been with our national broadcaster, the ABC. The ABC has this amazing amount of content, in particular audio content. Local ABC radio has these little regular segments on their shows, probably too small to podcast, but incredibly interesting nonetheless. Stuff like the AFL and NRL sunday shows, Spencer's chats with Susan about kids entertainment, The Hidden Persuaders, the radio version of Gruen Transfer that came before Gruen, Richard Fidlers friday afternoon cocktails or Kelly HD chats with Amy Gray, which while incredibly funny could do with less Glee and more Dr Who.
Now you can access a lot of this content on the presenters blogs, where it is put up, in f*&^ing flash. Flash is the twilight vampire of the web, sparkly, but ultimately utterly, utterly useless. I spend a lot of time in the car for my job, as do a lot of other people, and a lot of people spend times in trains or buses, where they have the time and inclination to listen to the wonderful content the ABC can provide and I do have a lot of the podcasts on my iPhone. But the hassle of getting that content from the web onto a device is too hard for me, a tech nerd, so it would be way too hard for the ordinary punter.
Which brings me back to the iPhone, which is almost as ubiquitous as the sparkly twilight celery eaters, but much more useful. It has apps. The ABC has an app, which for all intents and purposes, is useless. It doesn't provide me with anything more than the webpage does. Now if they had been trying to push the envelope, here is what they could have done. They have recordings of all these little segments from all the incredible shows the ABC has. And i only know of the ones for my local ABC. What about all the cool segments from Sydney or Alice Springs or North QLD? What I'd have is a virtual radio station. Let me build my own station, dragging and reordering my segments how I wanted them. Then let me cache 10 hours of it on the phone when I have a wifi connection, or let me straem bits over 3G.
I don't really care how its done, but the ABC is doing itself and its stakeholders, us, a disservice by trapping the content, by not realising that there are ways that they could be giving us all that content easily. There are over 1 million iPhones in australia already, not counting iPod touch's and iPads and you could just as easily write an app like this for Android as well. Considering the market for a 24 hour news network and the money spent there, is there really more people who are interested in that than being able to easily access their favourite ABC segment as they sit on the train on the way to work?
Monday, July 19, 2010
Early morning cows.
Despite a few years running a bar, I am without doubt, a morning person. Now The Wife is not and while I'm sure she loves me at least to about 90% at 5am, she doesn't like my habit of singing nonensical lyrics to my favorite songs at that hour. "Crazy" is probably the nicest of the terms hurled at me. That's why I'm really enjoying my 5am milking of the cows.
I get up, heat the water and sterilize the bucket, rouse Tally and head up. Laf is already penned up so I go and fetch the calf and Dolores and bring them down before letting Laf lunge into the pen so she can start inhaling her feed. I smear lanolin over her nipples and get to work.
I've been singing quite a bit of The Roots new album to her while I milk, mixed with a bit of Hey Jude and Hunters and Collectors. She doesn't seem to mind, well her milk hasn't curdled yet so maybe she's just deaf.
Each milking is yeildng between a litre and 1.5L. You can tell she's dried off a bit, she's never really bulging with milk. The grass is not particularly lush so I'm not keen to force her production higher. It means it will be another nine months before I can really start paying the herd sharers back in good kind, but they will be getting something.
Yesterday I made my first real cheese. It was, I hope, a farmhouse Bree, unpasturised of course, from 5L of Laf's finest product. It will be interesting to compare to shop bought cheese. For a start everything I've read and been told is that the quality of the feed determines the quality of the cheese and Lantanaland's pasture is pretty poor. It will get better of course, I am already knocking back the long stemmy grass and sowing clover and mung beans and pigeon pea. Secondly I have no idea what I'm doing. The curd felt very firm when it went into the molds, did I work it too much? At least it is a five week turnaround to find out, not twelve months like cheddar. On the plus side, raw milk cheese, with it's own bacteria, will be idiosyncratic but on the whole, a nicer product.
The process itself seems to be quite easy, but damn me but it is slow food. Lots of waiting for whey to express and to turn molds. Good for a Saturday arvo. I've already learnt a fair bit and I'm saving this weeks milk for another batch. Then I might bust out an improvised press to make a rough farmhouse cheddar. We'll have to see.
So if you come over and milk the cows with me I'll try not to deafen you with my singing, but don't blame me if the cows are grumpy, they like their tunes!
Lantanaland From My iPhone
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The future?
I want to give people money and they refuse to take it. In fact they are actively making it harder for me to give it to them. Sound insane? Well, welcome to a large media industry waking up to the digital age.
I am a curious mix of old school and high tech. I milk a cow by hand, but also love my iPhone and use it for a whole bunch of things (as opposed to 95% of iPhone users, who use phone, web, photos and music. Maybe a few games.) Books had always been firmly in the old school camp, I love the feel of them, they way you can look at my bookshelves and tell which books I love by the level of abuse they have been subjected to. Plus all the normal things like reading in the bath (essential) and lending to other people.
The iPad triggered an interest in ebook readers and after having a look at the Kindle app on Monster Yuppy's iPad I thought I'd download the kindle app onto my iPhone in anticipation of us getting ipads for work. I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. Once I'd read a few paragraphs and was into the story, I completely forgot about the medium. All I was interested in was the book, the plot and the characters were far more important than whether I was holding paper or electronics.
When I did notice the difference was later that day in a waiting room, killing time before an appointment. Instead of pulling up twitter or playing a mind dulling game, I pulled up the kindle app and was away, back in the story. I'd never remember to take my book with me.
Ok. Techy bloke likes a piece of tech. No great story there. But wait, here comes Techy blokes slightly angrier twin, Ranty bloke. You see amazon, or perhaps more accurately the publishing industry, want to make it very hard for me to buy books. First of all I opened my amazon account and went to the kindle store. And was amazed as I put in author after author, title after title and got back nothing. I'm pretty sure unless it's Dan Brown or John Grisham, it's not in the Oz kindle store.
So, as all good tech blokes do, I consulted twitter on how to set up a US amazon account. Easily done and a whole new, slightly bigger world opened up. I mean a few of the books I was chasing were available. Which I bought, obviously, to give the app a spin. But what I was hoping for was a nice swim in Lake Nostalgia. A bit of the Three Investigators or The Hardy Boys. Even a bit of Blyton's Famous Five for a giggle.
None of the back catalogue of my youth is there and I think that publishers are missing a great niche market here. Fair enough, hold back the new books till they've had a run in print first. I can understand that. However in the not too distant future devices like the iPad will be common place. Hell at the way it's selling in the very close future. I can easily download a song or TV show or movie that I have a sudden urge to buy. Compare that to the effort I'd have to go to on a rainy Sunday to go and buy a copy of a Three Investigators novel. There would be no copies in print, so I'd probably have to trawl the second hand shops. Say a whole day to maybe, just maybe find a book .... Oh look season two of Arrested Development on iTunes, let's watch that instead.
I know that the publishers are afeared that once they let the digital genie out of the bottle that there is no turning back. But consider this. I lend any book I own to anyone who wants to read them. Make all those back catalogue books say, three bucks and people wouldn't need to lend books as much. You already sell a whole bunch at that price point already. And it's just a matter of time before someone invents an easy way to digitize a book and if there is no digital copy for people to purchase, they will take the illegal copy available.
So while you still can, make it easier for me to give you my money please.
Lantanaland From My iPhone
I am a curious mix of old school and high tech. I milk a cow by hand, but also love my iPhone and use it for a whole bunch of things (as opposed to 95% of iPhone users, who use phone, web, photos and music. Maybe a few games.) Books had always been firmly in the old school camp, I love the feel of them, they way you can look at my bookshelves and tell which books I love by the level of abuse they have been subjected to. Plus all the normal things like reading in the bath (essential) and lending to other people.
The iPad triggered an interest in ebook readers and after having a look at the Kindle app on Monster Yuppy's iPad I thought I'd download the kindle app onto my iPhone in anticipation of us getting ipads for work. I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. Once I'd read a few paragraphs and was into the story, I completely forgot about the medium. All I was interested in was the book, the plot and the characters were far more important than whether I was holding paper or electronics.
When I did notice the difference was later that day in a waiting room, killing time before an appointment. Instead of pulling up twitter or playing a mind dulling game, I pulled up the kindle app and was away, back in the story. I'd never remember to take my book with me.
Ok. Techy bloke likes a piece of tech. No great story there. But wait, here comes Techy blokes slightly angrier twin, Ranty bloke. You see amazon, or perhaps more accurately the publishing industry, want to make it very hard for me to buy books. First of all I opened my amazon account and went to the kindle store. And was amazed as I put in author after author, title after title and got back nothing. I'm pretty sure unless it's Dan Brown or John Grisham, it's not in the Oz kindle store.
So, as all good tech blokes do, I consulted twitter on how to set up a US amazon account. Easily done and a whole new, slightly bigger world opened up. I mean a few of the books I was chasing were available. Which I bought, obviously, to give the app a spin. But what I was hoping for was a nice swim in Lake Nostalgia. A bit of the Three Investigators or The Hardy Boys. Even a bit of Blyton's Famous Five for a giggle.
None of the back catalogue of my youth is there and I think that publishers are missing a great niche market here. Fair enough, hold back the new books till they've had a run in print first. I can understand that. However in the not too distant future devices like the iPad will be common place. Hell at the way it's selling in the very close future. I can easily download a song or TV show or movie that I have a sudden urge to buy. Compare that to the effort I'd have to go to on a rainy Sunday to go and buy a copy of a Three Investigators novel. There would be no copies in print, so I'd probably have to trawl the second hand shops. Say a whole day to maybe, just maybe find a book .... Oh look season two of Arrested Development on iTunes, let's watch that instead.
I know that the publishers are afeared that once they let the digital genie out of the bottle that there is no turning back. But consider this. I lend any book I own to anyone who wants to read them. Make all those back catalogue books say, three bucks and people wouldn't need to lend books as much. You already sell a whole bunch at that price point already. And it's just a matter of time before someone invents an easy way to digitize a book and if there is no digital copy for people to purchase, they will take the illegal copy available.
So while you still can, make it easier for me to give you my money please.
Lantanaland From My iPhone
Monday, June 21, 2010
So, what now?
Big events like Feastin and Fencin can have a real snowball effect if you follow them through. The most immediate thing that came out of last weekend was the combination of the bales being finished and as much grass as the cows can eat. Milk. My first decent amount, which was only a litre but so satisfying.
Last night I locked up the bull calf with Dolores for company. Laf doesn't need company as all that runs through her head is "food food food food food food water food food". When we came down this morning her udder was the fullest I'd seen it since she came to Lantanaland. The calf was also very thirsty and as I led her down to the pen I had to shoo him off her udder.
I got her into the bales and got to work. Of course the first thing she did was step in my nice clean bucket. Oh well. Then it was a combination of squeezes, pulls and squirts to get the milk out. I did ok for a bit with the traditional method but my hands soon got sore, especially the two fingers that I'm fairly sure I've fractured playing footy. I persisted and The Wife had a go as well and we have one tasty litre in the fridge. Butter and cottage cheese will be the go this week.
So the cows are producing. Next week I'll book the AI man to get them both pregnant. On July 1 the vet comes to make my bull a little less bullish. Meanwhile they continue to open up Lantanaland for me, exposing the lie of the land that we have never seen in our three years here.
So to give you a rough idea where lantanaland is at here is a arial view. The red section is the top paddock. This is where the bales are and where I'll keep the cows when they are close to calving. The green is the new paddock that we cut, maybe about 2 acres. The yellow would be a really easy paddock to do next as two sides are already cleared. The pink is probably the next big push as it would take in the dam. This would allow me to have a paddock that has it's own water supply when my tanks run low. The white and orange areas might get done when I have the money to hire an excavator to cut me some paths, swales and terraces.
The top paddock will also become the house block for the new house sometime in the future. There is half a house block already cut. Along the top fence I am planting out fruit trees. I have learnt the hard way that if you are random and unorganized like myself don't plant fruit trees where you only see them every six months. Plant them where you can get to them and walk past them regularly. I have a grape in on the gate posts, a grapefruit and an apple. Now that the top paddock is nicely cleared I'll be putting in more, starting with some mulberry cuttings. Cows love mulberries.
I have sown a little clover, both for the cows and for the bees and will be doing some research on a nice mix of fodder species for a dairy cow. The next project will be planting out some garden beds. This time I am trying rotted cow manure between sugar cane bales. Then another revamp of the chickens and maybe even another pen up near the bees for the second group of guinea fowl. With the amount of ticks the cows are picking up from the long grass I think it will be a few batches of eggs before I'll be selling keets.
Still life is never boring or still at Lantanaland. Soon I'll be experimenting with cheese making and I have to master the art of hand milking and rig up a solar panel for the electric fence and untangle the goats and and and and.....
Lantanaland from the iPhone
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
I have the best mates in the world (lantanaland will never be the same again)
I have had mates of mine insisting that they'd come and give me a hand on the farm if I did a big working day. I sort of never thought that people would actually turn up, let alone do the unbelievable amount of work that was achieved over the long weekend.
Before now it would have been useless doing any major work anyway. Clear away a big section of lantana and it just grows back or is replaced with eight foot high grass that needs slashing and mowing which is what I call repetitive useless work.
But the cows, the cows have changed everything. Apart from being beautiful creatures, they are grass eating, lantana bashing, path creating machines. I got them probably a month too early, bashing up a quick paddock held together with old bits of timber with electric fencing draped everywhere. I paid for it too, with the cows showing me all my weak points. I got a bit of knowledge back as well, learning that unless you have good well maintained barbed wire fences the cows will go through it without a single thought. Well maybe one thought, "that grass over there looks quite tasty". Electric fencing though, they show more respect to than a teenage boy dating a shotgun collectors daughter.
So I put the word out that I was going to have a working bee to cut a new paddock and fence it off properly with electric fencing. All I promised was free beer and good food, but I do have a small reputation for decent food so I thought I'd get one or two hungry boys and girls along.
I took the Friday before off to do a bit of preparation. Key amongst the jobs was to kill and pluck one of my eating chickens. Only one of them was big enough but I did the deed with that same sense of pride and melancholy that I get from knowing that I've grown and killed my own food. I also near killed myself getting a trailerload of concrete blend. The trailer was a touch too full and as it hit a bump it locked the wheel against the mudguard and slewed all over the road, dragging the Xtrail with it. It was some extra stress I didn't need.
Still I got most of what I needed prepared, lots of beer wine and champagne, fridge groaning with food, all the fencing equipment. My first guest arrived Friday night and it looked like being a real chilly weekend, at least for QLD. We got up early for some boiled eggs on muffins, something I can never weary of since I got chickens. Nine coffees later (for me, Andy doesn't drink coffee) we got to work.
We started off digging nice deep holes for the big top gate, wide enough for a bobcat or excavator to get through in the future. As more and more people arrived I ran round trying to divide up the jobs. In the end I gave rough instructions and left them too it while I drove in to town and bought all the things I'd forgotten or underestimated the day before. Then I started the cooking. I occasionally wander down and check on the progress and every time I was amazed. They were hacking out an enormous section through lantana, grass, weeds and trees then bashing in star pickets and running good gauge electric fence cable.
Meanwhile I was preparing dinner. Organic dorper lamb from Silverwood went into the camp oven with a crusting of garlic, chilli and rosemary. The free range pork I'd bought was a little more tricky. I carved the ribs off and cut the extra belly off for bacon later. But what the hell was I going to use as a spit. My last spit roast was a disaster thanks to the crappy spit I bought from BBQ galore. In the end the fence was the inspiration. A star picket wrapped in foil gave me a three sided spit and the meat was tied on and skewered through the holes in the post. Once the fire died down a bit it all went on, the ribs went into the oven with a sticky honey, soy and garlic basting, the hearty soup was checked and I was ready to receive hungry, and very thirsty workers.
Most of the fun in doing something like this, for me anyway, is the eating and drinking, the telling of stories (KC scooped the pool with the baby being born in the elevator) and the laughter. There was so much laughing. We got stuck in to all the food and a fair bit of the beer but I crashed out, leaving it to the serious night owls. The food went down brilliantly, all the lamb gone most of the pork and a few requests for the recipe of the brown rice vego dish I did.
The next morning was pancakes, some new workers and a few sore heads. This pancake recipe is so popular I never seem to cook anything else for large groups and it is bloody good. Another three rounds of coffee later and it was off to finish it all up.
Once we got going you could start to see real visible progress. The fence was joined back up to the new gate. The electric fence was redone properly on the top paddock. The cow yard and bale was finished The new fence was tensioned and plastic posts were put in to make sure it was at the right height. Trees were trimmed and grass cleared. I was shocked at how much they'd got done and the sheer physical effort needed to do some of it. It would maybe take me 12 months to do that sort of work, by which time the bit I'd started on would be all grown back.
All in all it looked tip top about two in the afternoon and we opened the gate and shooed the cows in. They got to work straight away. I can't wait to see the results.
So to Dave and Marj my awesome mates who were visiting from Tassie and worked twice as long as they thought they'd be able to stay, Andy and Pia, comedians both, Cobbs, The Big German and Rozy, who didn't want to walk up the hill that last time, Delia and her family, Ed and KC, who had fun giving Ryan a hard time, Neil, such a fantastic father in law, my man Pol, who'd been helping me prepare weekends before, Darryl whose picture is next to 'worker' in the dictionary, Simon and Sarah who have impeccable timing and my darling beautiful wife, thank you a million times. Lantanaland thanks you as well because it is on the way to becoming a productive farm and maybe a cooking school and before now the vision was getting cloudy.
I can see pretty clearly now and it's looking good.
Lantanaland from the iPhone
Before now it would have been useless doing any major work anyway. Clear away a big section of lantana and it just grows back or is replaced with eight foot high grass that needs slashing and mowing which is what I call repetitive useless work.
But the cows, the cows have changed everything. Apart from being beautiful creatures, they are grass eating, lantana bashing, path creating machines. I got them probably a month too early, bashing up a quick paddock held together with old bits of timber with electric fencing draped everywhere. I paid for it too, with the cows showing me all my weak points. I got a bit of knowledge back as well, learning that unless you have good well maintained barbed wire fences the cows will go through it without a single thought. Well maybe one thought, "that grass over there looks quite tasty". Electric fencing though, they show more respect to than a teenage boy dating a shotgun collectors daughter.
So I put the word out that I was going to have a working bee to cut a new paddock and fence it off properly with electric fencing. All I promised was free beer and good food, but I do have a small reputation for decent food so I thought I'd get one or two hungry boys and girls along.
I took the Friday before off to do a bit of preparation. Key amongst the jobs was to kill and pluck one of my eating chickens. Only one of them was big enough but I did the deed with that same sense of pride and melancholy that I get from knowing that I've grown and killed my own food. I also near killed myself getting a trailerload of concrete blend. The trailer was a touch too full and as it hit a bump it locked the wheel against the mudguard and slewed all over the road, dragging the Xtrail with it. It was some extra stress I didn't need.
Still I got most of what I needed prepared, lots of beer wine and champagne, fridge groaning with food, all the fencing equipment. My first guest arrived Friday night and it looked like being a real chilly weekend, at least for QLD. We got up early for some boiled eggs on muffins, something I can never weary of since I got chickens. Nine coffees later (for me, Andy doesn't drink coffee) we got to work.
We started off digging nice deep holes for the big top gate, wide enough for a bobcat or excavator to get through in the future. As more and more people arrived I ran round trying to divide up the jobs. In the end I gave rough instructions and left them too it while I drove in to town and bought all the things I'd forgotten or underestimated the day before. Then I started the cooking. I occasionally wander down and check on the progress and every time I was amazed. They were hacking out an enormous section through lantana, grass, weeds and trees then bashing in star pickets and running good gauge electric fence cable.
Meanwhile I was preparing dinner. Organic dorper lamb from Silverwood went into the camp oven with a crusting of garlic, chilli and rosemary. The free range pork I'd bought was a little more tricky. I carved the ribs off and cut the extra belly off for bacon later. But what the hell was I going to use as a spit. My last spit roast was a disaster thanks to the crappy spit I bought from BBQ galore. In the end the fence was the inspiration. A star picket wrapped in foil gave me a three sided spit and the meat was tied on and skewered through the holes in the post. Once the fire died down a bit it all went on, the ribs went into the oven with a sticky honey, soy and garlic basting, the hearty soup was checked and I was ready to receive hungry, and very thirsty workers.
Most of the fun in doing something like this, for me anyway, is the eating and drinking, the telling of stories (KC scooped the pool with the baby being born in the elevator) and the laughter. There was so much laughing. We got stuck in to all the food and a fair bit of the beer but I crashed out, leaving it to the serious night owls. The food went down brilliantly, all the lamb gone most of the pork and a few requests for the recipe of the brown rice vego dish I did.
The next morning was pancakes, some new workers and a few sore heads. This pancake recipe is so popular I never seem to cook anything else for large groups and it is bloody good. Another three rounds of coffee later and it was off to finish it all up.
Once we got going you could start to see real visible progress. The fence was joined back up to the new gate. The electric fence was redone properly on the top paddock. The cow yard and bale was finished The new fence was tensioned and plastic posts were put in to make sure it was at the right height. Trees were trimmed and grass cleared. I was shocked at how much they'd got done and the sheer physical effort needed to do some of it. It would maybe take me 12 months to do that sort of work, by which time the bit I'd started on would be all grown back.
All in all it looked tip top about two in the afternoon and we opened the gate and shooed the cows in. They got to work straight away. I can't wait to see the results.
So to Dave and Marj my awesome mates who were visiting from Tassie and worked twice as long as they thought they'd be able to stay, Andy and Pia, comedians both, Cobbs, The Big German and Rozy, who didn't want to walk up the hill that last time, Delia and her family, Ed and KC, who had fun giving Ryan a hard time, Neil, such a fantastic father in law, my man Pol, who'd been helping me prepare weekends before, Darryl whose picture is next to 'worker' in the dictionary, Simon and Sarah who have impeccable timing and my darling beautiful wife, thank you a million times. Lantanaland thanks you as well because it is on the way to becoming a productive farm and maybe a cooking school and before now the vision was getting cloudy.
I can see pretty clearly now and it's looking good.
Lantanaland from the iPhone
Feastin on Film
I'm writing a longer post on the fencing weekend but here is a small tidbit on what happens when you work someone hard all day then give them free beer.
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