2 August 2009

I headed to the farm by myself (with Fonzi supervising) to do a bit of work and have a look around. I was up at 4:30am on Sunday morning and headed off at a quick pace. As the sun slowly crept over the horizon, it struggled to evaporate the fog. This is some of the heavier fog I encountered on the way. That's visibility of about 50m and slowed my (safe) speed down to about 65 km/h.

On my arrival at the farm just before 9am, I got straight down to work. The first job was to drill the last hole for the boundary fence. I'm sure you're as sick of hearing about this fence as I am building it. With so little time at the farm on each visit, it's difficult to make any significant progress - definitely baby steps!

Here's the position of the last post. For perspective, I'm standing right on the boundary line and the big dam is at about 4 o'clock behind me.

Hey presto! A hole created by the auger. The extracted dirt around the side of the hole doesn't give a true picture of how deep the hole is - it's nearly 1 metre deep. There is no way you can touch the bottom of the hole - no matter how hard you try. This hole took all of 5-10 minutes to dig. Just goes to show how easy it can be when you don't hit rock on the way.



Well, that's all I can do with the fence today because I don't have the next fence post to put in. The next project relates to the temporary shed. The site for the shed is just dug up dirt at the moment and needs to be leveled off. This time I came prepared with a shovel and the mattock. Here's the before photo...


... and here's the after photo (after about 1.5 hours of digging that is!). Still not completely level, but as my high school's motto went, "near enough is good enough". We have to put some pavers down as the foundation and I can level it out a bit more when I lay the pavers.


With my back on the verge of failure from all the digging, I thought it was a good idea to relax for the rest of the day (the little which was left) and enjoy the sights and sounds of the farm. I took the chance to do some exploring and have a look at some unexplored parts of the farm. Here's Suzy at the top of the lookout and what a great place to enjoy a late lunch.


Luckily, my stomach was full after lunch and the random sheep on the farm were safe. I still have no idea where they came from, but I'm happy they are still around - it give the place a farm-like feel.


It was now 3pm and the lack of sleep the night before had crept up on me and it was a good idea to make an early start on the trip back to Sydney. Looking forward to the next trip!