THE WEEK THAT WAS!

This week has been a loooooooooooong one, to say the least! Today is Friday, my very fave day of the week (cause we dont have to do homework or worry about the time for 2 whole days!) and Im reflecting on the week that was, with a cold drink and thinking about my body! 

This poor old body - all 34 years and 10 months of it - has had an absolute hammering this week. First this fluey wog, now Im getting the flu on top of that and Ive just had a completely crapola week, bodywise! I feel like Ive well and truly been through the wringer and am only just on the way back out the other side. For which I am very grateful. 

Also this week, the kids got their Farm Grandma (thats what they call her!) home from her Simpson Desert trip, tanned, happy and healthy, but a bit puffed from the time changes. 

Jude had an amazing time and came home with some awesome stories and some great photos too. Jude, her young brother Wayne and his wife Chris, left 4 weeks ago. They drove up through the Connie Sue Highway to Alice Springs, where they met up with Rob, my brother in law. They camped at Alice for a week and took in the sights, especially the obvious - Uluru (Ayres Rock). Then after the week was up, they headed across the Simpson Desert, to end up in Birdsville just in time for the famous Birdsville Races (& the 10,000 or so tourists that flock to the races each year!) They hung around there for 2 races and then baled out, headed to Poemmel Corner, where 3 states meet up and then down to Port Lincoln in SA, where Rob waved them goodbye and headed home. From there they headed back west through a couple of Ranges and down to Smokey Bay to pick up some oysters. The teoopers were going to head down to the coast from Smokey Bay, but the weather turned to crap so they headed home.

Whenever Jude comes home from holiday, we invite her to our place for tea, so she doesnt have to worry about it, and so she can tell us all the thrills and spills of the trip. Wedenesday night, it happened to be roast lamb rump and all the vegies, so score for Grandma! She had all her trip photos on her ipad and showed them off to us through a slideshow, while explaining where they were at and what we were looking at (and for an amateur, she had some great pics!)  

 The kids enjoying roast lamb with Grandma while she recounts tales of her Simpson Desert trip. (And Tyler shows us his seafood and eat it pose - lovely!)

Tomorrow we are all off to town for the weekly food shop and a few other bits and pieces we have to do, and then home to watch my mighty Sydney Swans, take on and hopefully defeat Freo Dockers, in the AFL grand final decider match, while Tyler's Hawthorn Hawks take on Geelong (Uncle Rob's team) tonight! Should be a good couple of matches and since the weather is meant to turn to crap yet again, it will be a good one to hang out inside watching footy! 

So on that note I'll say "UP THE MIGHTY SWANS" and goodbye =)

Have a great weekend and I'll be back on the flipside! 

The Weekend That Was...

On the weekend, the weather was absolute crapola. It was cold. It was windy. It rained. So we got out in the garden between the showers of rain and did a few bits and pieces. Pete did a bit of spraying round the place to take out the explosion of weeds that had come with this rain we keep getting, Tyler jumped on the ride on mower and mowed the lawn and all around the house. Out by the shed, we excavated a big bloody hole where out pool is going to live from now on.

Said hole out by our house shed. We will backfill it with sand and then compact roadbase over it to give us a firm base, put the pool up (which is just a metal framed above ground pvc variety) and then pave and fence it so it can stay there permanently.

Then Pete and the kids decided to pull up an old path that used to go out to the clothesline when his Grandparents and then his parents lived here, so in came the heavy artillery yet again to make short work of that! 

The kids decided to use some of the lawn we'd dug to clear the space for the pool, to fill in the gaps where the path was, so Tyler and Kianhi lugged chunks of lawn from one side of the house to the other and filled in my path! They did get it completely filled in after a few more loads and a fair bit of hard yakka. Now to fill it in with sand to help the lawn establish new roots! Its kinda a bit lumpy and bumpy at the moment.

When all this was done, we went for a drive to Jude's place to check her fridges and freezers, as she's been away for a few weeks on holidays & we always go and check just in case the power goes out. (Her brother and sister in lawn (that she's away with) had their freezer die while they were off enjoying themselves, and their lucky son and daughter in law had the lovely job of cleaning it out!!!) We didnt want any nasty surprises so we now check. Anyhow, on the way home I felt sleepy and just really lethargic and exhausted, so I decided to have a rest when we got home. I woke a few hours later with a splitting headache, my body in absolute agony from the inside out and all over, a temperature and I was freezing cold! Figured out pretty quickly that Id caught Pete's disease he'd had on Friday night and it was out to take me down. Went back to sleep and in between hanging my head over the toilet bowl, slept till 11:30am Monday, woke with my head still clanging and my body still aching but no temp, vomiting or fevers anymore, although I did have diarrhea & felt like Id been run over by a whole station full of buses!! Eventually I started to come good and the headache subsided this morning - well it was gone when I woke up and hasnt been back to visit yet! - and Im starting to feel a tad more human than I had for a few days. Tuesday night and I still feel puffed, Im still spending the majority of my day sitting on a toilet & Im still a bit achy, but Im on the mend. Looking forward to the last of it going away and me getting back to feeling healthy again. Also fingers, toes, ears and nose crossed that none of the kids get it..touching a whole lotta wood right now!!! 

Me this morning after I managed to stomach a couple of pieces of toast and a cup of tea - my first food in 48 hours, besides the water Id been skulling non stop trying to keep my fluids up. I also managed to make a no bake slice, clean my back verandah, do a couple of loads of washing, fold some washing & tidy the bathroom,in between getting heaps of rest - dont stress, I aint going to overdo it and put myself straight back to where Ive just been! 

Till next time xx

Around the Farm..

Yesterday Pete and I decided to go for a drive round and check our crops for bugs. We did the seradella by our house and then some of the canola crops on our other farms. 

 Pete bug hunting in canola.

We also went for a drive to check out our wetlands - aka paddocks!! We have had heaps of rain this season and our crops are under water in patches, especially up at our top blocks, Helmuts and Newmans. One paddock has about 60% water damage in it.

 Water damage at Helmuts...

 and at SKIN too.

We saw a bit of birdlife including a huge crane that was hanging out in one of the puddles. It flew off when we drove past..

 Crane flying off a puddle in wheat.

On the way home, we detoured over to SKIN to check out some of the local wildflowers that abound at this time of year and are out in full force at the moment because of all the rain we've had. 

 Red Leschunultia

 Scarlet Kangaroo Paws

 Not sure this ones name butI loved that it looked like little purple pom poms.

I am waiting for a wind free day - we have had some shockers lately!! - so I can go out with my camera and take some better shots, that I want to enlarge and turn into wall art for our passageway to brighten it up a bit.

Also, we have been very happy with Tyler's attitude changes this week. He is normally a grumpy bum, but we told him on Monday that he would be one of only 2 year 7's at school next year, thinking he would be super cranky about it, but he's loving the fact that he'll be 1 of 2 and his whole attitude has changed for the better, and not only at home but at school too. Tyler has struggled his way through school forever and has never liked it, but this week has seen a completely different kid emerge and its awesome! We're so proud of our biggest kid..x

Tyler and I on the day he planted his year 7 tree at school, back when we were thinking of pulling the kids out of Cascade PS and sending them to Esperance PS.

 Tyler after winning the Gibson Tigers Towel, an award given to each of the junior grades of the Gibson Football Club, for the best player of the round. 

Well done T Man!! xxx

This weekend, the weather is supposed to be horrible, so we are going to do some tidying up around our yard. I have a cheeky tiger snake in my chookpen that keeps beating me to collect the eggs each morning, so we want to snake proof the chookpen and take some of his hidey spots out of the equation so he buggers off. We are also going to do some weeding and spraying around the house too, to get rid of weeds that have taken over with the excess moisture in the soil. 

Before we moved to this farmhouse, Pete's mum, Jude, lived here and when her husband, Barrie, was alive, he bred Australian parrots and had a huge aviary complex built along the front of the lawn. Jude sold the birds when Barrie died, and then sold the aviary to another local farmer, so we had this huge cement walled monstrosity left behind, which we were going to turn into an orchard, then a chookpen and now we have decided to turn it into a garden bed, with some small trees/large shrubs along the back, a firepit and log seating in the centre and some smaller shrubs and groundcovers along the front. Hopefully the groundcovers will grow enough to drape down along the front of the cement wall - which is about 30cms high - and cover its ugliness up with a bit of colour. This 30m wide garden bed, is one of the areas we'll be focusing on and weeding out in preparation for planting soon hopefully. Its going to be all hands on deck cause its a big area & theres lots of weeds in it. Wish us luck!!!

Hope you enjoy your weekend and I'll back with a bit more of a snippet of life on the farm either over the weekend or on Monday.

Tash x

the back road

Hi there..

On Tuesday afternoon, we packed up all our gear for an overnight stay with my sister and her girls, picked the kids up from school on the way past and headed up to Newdegate, the little country town where I born and raised, for it's annual MachineryFieldDays. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newdegate,_Western_Australia - follow the link to find out more about my thriving little

hometown! Doesnt sound like much but it was THE best place to grow up! 

Anyhow, to get to Newdegate from our farm only takes a couple of hours, and if like us, you choose to 

take the bush track instead of the highway, you will go down Cascade Rd. Out here on this red dirt road, are some

of the wildest potholes and zaniest Aussie critters, and also some of our beautIful Australian wildflowers.

We have some stunning wildflowers down here in South Eastern WA, including numerous varieties of banksia, 

Red leschunultias, chittocks, kangaroo paws and a few amazingly rare and delicate orchids, growing in some of 

the toughest conditions in the country. It is one of my favourite roads in country WA, and Ive been on quite a few 

of them, but I love it's unique flora and fauna and the way when you get to the top of a hill, you can see the red

Road stretching on ahead of you for miles and miles in the distance. It really seems like the road goes on forever.

(Sorry about the grotty windscreen in the photo)

You are almost guaranteed to see some form of wildlife out there, especially around the dams, dug for

Shire water usage to do roadworks, in the morning or late afternoon. We have seen emus, gazillions of roos, brushtail wallabies, wedge tailed eagles, the odd wild dog, snakes, goannas & lizards. Quite often of it's dry out there in the bush, the wildlife comes out in full force to drink at the dams or to feed, and my sister and I counted 48 emus in 1 trip alone once. (That 48 almost became 47 too, when one decided to take on the ute! Crazy bird!)

If you ever get the chance to drive Cascade Rd, do it. I'm sure you'll enjoy the experience.

Cheers, till next time! 

Well, hello there!

Well, hello there! Welcome to our life on Lauriana Farm, that we want to share with you using words and pictures, maybe even the odd video.
We are Tash (that's me)& Pete and our 4 kids, Tyler, Kianhi, Lily & Ella.

 

pete and i ^

l-r kianhi, tyler, ella & lily

We are 3rd generation farmers on the Piggott Family Farm, Lauriana, a 2000 acre grain and sheep enterprise in Esperance Western Australia. We also sharefarm 2000 acres up the road a bit, with a German family. (We do the work, they pay for seed, fertiliser, chemical etc and we pay them for agistment. At the end of harvest, we split the proceeds - which works for us!)
My husband's Grandparents brought the farm in 1980 and moved over here from South Australia, along with my husband, his older brother and his parents; and another of my father in law's brothers, Ian and his wife Julie. Ian and Julie only stayed for a few years and then they moved back to South Australia, leaving Nanna and Papa, Barrie and Judy to run the farm.
Nanna and Papa retired to Esperance town in the early 90's and Barrie and Judy took over the running of the farm from them.
Pete and I moved down here in 2004, with 2 year old Tyler and 6 month old Kianhi - a pretty damn sharp learning curve for a townie girl like myself. I'd gone from being able to walk to the shops, to the closest shop being 50kms away; to being surrounded by people and houses, to isolation (my nearest neighbour was about 10kms down the road) & from a parent with help galore in the form of sisters, friends and my Mum, to being a fulltime SAHM, most of the time alone because my husband was now flat out learning the ropes of a 4000 acre farm! Pretty full on to say the least!!
Also, in the town where I lived, I'd seen snakes only on the roads out by farms...suddenly they were EVERYWHERE!!! I learnt to deal with them pretty quickly too!!
We settled in and then along came Lily in 2005 and Ella in 2007. Our little family home would have been bursting at the seams, but luckily in 2005, the family we sharefarm with from Germany, decided to buy more land and that land had a whopper 5 bedroom house on it!
In 2005, Pete proposed to me and we began planning our wedding day for April, 2006. Sadly, my father in law lost his battle with depression a week before we were due to get married, but we went ahead with the wedding and in front of 100 family and friends, we got married. To say the day was bittersweet would be the understatement of the year. We both had tonsillitis from the stress and the day after, we had to go and help with funeral arrangements.
We soldiered on and continue to run the farm, making improvements to fencing, upsizing machinery, getting a good bloodline into our sheep and pretty much loving every second of this life we've created.
I hope you enjoy the journey of our "life on Lauriana", with us.

A little bit on the history of the boat, Lauriana, that our farm was named after & below,

the boat herself.