Milking Time

"Come on, Towser, time to round up these cows."

Not that they needed much rounding up as, by 3 o'clock in the afternoon most of them would be standing, waiting patiently for the gate to be opened to let them out of their paddock (field).

Our herd never numbered more than about 85 cows, very small by today's standards, but then it was only a 100 acre farm. Imagine being able to raise seven children on a farm that size today, without income from an additional source.

On the move....

.... and into the cowyard.

All of the cows had names (usually girls' names) and although I can remember many of the names, I can't place them in these photos.

This is the diesal engine that powered the milking machines and charged the batteries for the 32 volt power plant. It was later replaced by an electric motor when the State Electricity Commission connected the 240 volt power to the house and shed. This engine, with its mass of flywheels and belts had to be crank started, and there was a real knack to it, too. On cold winter mornings it had to be primed with warm oil before it would kick over.

Due to health problems, Dad was unable to start the engine for several years, which meant that I had to be there for every milking to start the engine. I think my sisters learned to start it after I got married and left home, although we did have a share-farmer working for us by then.

The shed could accommodate 6 cows at a time, one against each end wall and two either side of those steel 'fences' in the middle. This photo is taken from the yard in front of the shed where the cows waited to be let in to the shed.

(I described in my posting 'The Personalities of Cows' how some cows wanted to be milked first and others last, some would only go into a specific bail, and how so many of them had their own personality traits and idiosyncrasies.)

It looks like the first six are under way, with Annette leaning on the gate at far right waiting for the first one to finish. As each cow finished milking, the teat cups were removed, dipped into a bucket of water and disinfectant and hung on a hook to await the next cow. At the turn of a handle a gate opened beside the cow and she walked forwards (after the legrope was removed...lol) and out through a passageway into another yard at the side of the shed. The gate was closed and the next cow brought in.

The blue buckets contain warm, soapy water to wash the cow's udder, firstly to ensure that it is clean and secondly to encourage the cow to let down her milk.

I'm sorry about the quality of this photo but I think it's the only one I have. As the cow is being milked by machines, which are held on to her udder by a vacuum, the milk is then carried through overhead pipes into the dairy.

Here you can just see towards the top of the photo the milk being released into the stainless steel vat. It then runs through two strainers onto the cooler which is like a series of horizontal pipes joined together. As the milk flows down over the pipes it is cooled by the cold water pumping continuously through them. It flows down onto a tray with three holes, beneath which are twelve gallon milk cans.

At the end of milking a truck would come to collect all of the milk from a number of farms and take it to the factory about 15 miles away, where some of the milk was sent as fresh milk to Melbourne, and the rest was processed into butter, cheese, casein and other dried milk products.

When all of the cows were finished, buckets of cold water followed by hot water and disinfectant were pumped through the machines to clean them, all of the equipment in the dairy was scrubbed, the shed floor was swept and sluiced with water, the cowpats were shovelled up from the yard and it was hosed clean with water.

Now you must understand that this was more than 40 years ago, and this method of milk collection, ie. using small milk cans, was being phased out even then. Refrigerated vats were being installed which meant that the milk could be collected by tanker at any time of day or night. In summer it was usually once a day but in winter it was on alternate days. The fact that farmers no longer had to milk at a certain time in order to be ready for the milk truck took a lot of the pressure off and made life a bit easier. We never did install a refrigerated vat, as only two or three years after these photos were taken, Dad gave up dairying and changed over entirely to beef cattle.

(Rita, Lorna and Annette, or even Colin, please feel free to correct me on anything in this posting. You know what my memory is like!)

Hidden Treasure

Whilst having a cup of tea mid morning today, I was looking at all the books on the shelves in the loungeroom and wishing that I could get rid of at least half of them without Richard knowing. I noticed one set of books on a small shelf and thought to myself, "There must be another row of books behind that one. I wonder what they are?"

On removing a few books I discovered something much more valuable than another row of books. Stacked behind the first row were dozens of boxes of colour slides. Many were taken by my in-laws during several Pacific and Indian Ocean Cruises, and there were quite a few of our honeymoon in NZ in 1967/68, but best of all were the photos of the farm.

In recent posts I have been bemoaning the fact that I didn't have any photos of the farm, well now I do, albeit more than 40 years old, and scanned colour slides of that age don't have quite the same clarity of today's digital shots, but I'm just so happy to have them.

So, just in case you feel in need of a good laugh, here's a few to start with ....

Did Richard really have to photograph me next to the dirtiest cow in the herd on this day?

With my sister, Lorna.

My sister, Annette. How did she manage to get all the nice clean Freisians? I guess it must have been taken on a different day!

My Monday

After a little shopping across the border in Queanbeyan (NSW) this morning we paid a visit to the Australian National Botanic Gardens. After a delicious lunch (grilled lamb with winter vegetable casserole) we spent an hour in the gardens. One needs much longer than that to see these interesting gardens that contain around 7,000 of the 17,500 species of plants which occur naturally in Australia. For more information go here http://www.anbg.gov.au/anbg/

Since I took too many photos for one posting, I thought I'd start with trees, since you know how much I love trees.

The lovely papery bark of the Melaleuca.

Eucalypts

Couldn't resist snapping this Crimson Rosella

PANDEMONIUM - (Author Unknown)

Having spent a weekend at a somewhat centrally located hotel, a gentleman, returning home, wrote this letter to the manager:-

Dear Sir

My wife and I spent last weekend at your hotel, having a room on the railway side, and we have wondered ever since, why it is that your local train engine has to ding and dong and fizz and spit and clang and bang and buzz and hiss and bell and wail and pant and rant and howl and yowl and grate and grind and puff and bump and click and clank and chug and moan and hoot and toot and crash and grunt and gasp and groan and whistle and sneeze and wheeze and squeak and blow and jar and jerk and rasp and jingle and twang and rumble and jangle and ring and clatter and yelp and hum and snort and growl and thump and boom and clash and jolt and jostle and shake and screech and snarl and slam and throb and clink and quiver and roar and rattle and yell and smoke and smell and shriek all confounded night long!

(Sounds like even blogging wouldn't have saved the night ....lol)

Oh, the Disappointment!

This morning, on the way to the shops, I thought about something I had read on a blog and decided that it would be a good subject on which to do a posting. However, first things first, groceries to be bought, with the added excitement this morning of having our 4 year old grandson, Luca, helping.

I have to brag a little here, although I'm sure I can't really claim the credit, but our grandchildren are total delights to take shopping, even boring grocery shopping. All three of them have wonderful senses of humour and rarely ask for anything for themselves, and never get disappointed if the request is refused.

This morning found Richard pushing the trolley up and down the aisles with Luca standing on the side. Never one to pass up an opportunity for instruction, the retired teacher had Luca giving hand signals at the end of each aisle to indicate which way they were going to turn. Naturally, this learning experience had to be accompanied by verbal commentary, eg. "right, now which way are we going to turn? That's good. So which hand will you use to signal? Very good. Okay, round we go. Oh, now we'd better hurry and catch up to Grandma. Now we'll pass Grandma. Wave goodbye to Grandma," etc. Obviously our supermarket at that time of day is not jam-packed with shoppers, and a few complimented the Learner Trolley Driver on his signals.

Shopping finished, it was over to a local Sportsmans' Club to have lunch with Luca and his mother, ShellyC. The Club has recently been refurbished and this was our first visit for many months and we enjoyed a very relaxed lunch, after which Richard and I went to the library to collect some more books and more opera CDs for me.

It's now late afternoon and I have put away the shopping - hateful job, but I am grateful that we can afford to shop in the first place - and I've checked the emails and read a few blogs. Now I have time to post one of my own, the one that I thought of this morning. IF ONLY I COULD REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS!

That's right, I have no clue as to what it was that I was so keen to write about. I've looked through the last few postings of everyone on my Link and Favourites lists, and still nothing 'rings a bell'. Maybe it was mentioned in a comment. I've even mentally traced my trip in the car in the hope that I can recall when the inspiration hit, but still nothing. I just know that it was going to be one of my best postings ever - the subject inspiring, the literacy poetic, and long-remembered by all who read it! Hmmmmph!!!

One day, maybe next week, next month or even next year, I will remember what it was that I wanted to say. When I do, I will have to use a heading like 'Eureka, I have it', or similar. So, you have been warned, but please don't hold your breath as I don't want to be held responsible for the cardiac arrest of all my blog friends. Oh, the trials of getting old(er)......!!!!

Two Extremes

(Warning to Shannon in Belgium - if the photos of rosellas made you homesick, then you'd better not look at these photos.)

I spent the first half of the day roaming around a local shopping centre, just filling in time while waiting for a repair to the car to be completed. How I hate shopping centres, especially if I don't want anything or need anything. I hate looking at things just for the sake of looking at them, which is probably why I never know what to buy when I do need something.

I did 'sit test' a couple of outdoor settings and decided that neither of them was acceptable as the chairs didn't slide far enough under the table and would take up too much room on the deck. Have to be careful there as the deck only measures 74 sq metres....lol.

I then walked through the freezing cold wind to the shopping centre, posted some sample fabrics to Tanya who is going to make a quilt for our bed now that the room has been painted (keep an eye out for the package, dear), looked at the fronts of all the shops and wasn't enticed into any of them except to buy a book of crosswords from the newsagent and then spent an hour in a coffee shop, with crosswords and coffee. Fortified with caffeine, I wandered up and down several aisles of videos and finally bought 4 - not for us to watch but just to have on hand for grandchildren visits, and finally left the noise and piped music of the shopping centre and walked back through the wind to collect the car. At least, once away from the shops I could listen to my own choice of music on the iPod. The very nice mechanic had fixed the car and now it no longer makes loud grating noises, which were not the result of my driving, thank you Marcel!

I should have been more appreciative of my relaxed morning because once we finished lunch I had to iron all of the curtains from the house in the photos, which we had brought home yesterday to be washed, and then take them back to be re-hung. As well as the curtains the car was packed with gardening tools and the lawnmower, and we worked like navvies all afternoon, mowing, weeding and pruning. I didn't actually re-hang the curtains as I want to do a bit of window-cleaning first. By the end of tomorrow we hope it will look much the same as it does in these photos (taken a year ago) so that it will be ready to rent out again.

Visitors

The 'house in a tree' has a pair of Crimson Rosellas visiting frequently. As well as coming for the food, at least one of them finds its way into the house Richard built and hung in a eucalypt tree in the back yard.

We hope we have babies this Spring (well, parrot babies as least).

Getting Down and Dirty in the Garden ...

No, my garden doesn't look like this at the moment. These photos were taken in the Spring 2005. It looked much like this last Spring too, but since then I've had 10 months of not being very interested in gardening at all. I'm not sure whether it was the discouragement of the drought, or what it was.

However, I spent several hours today in the garden - cutting back some things and pulling other things out altogether, dividing and planting some things, and just enjoying pulling weeds from lovely damp soil, and wondering "could it possibly stay like this all through summer?"

No, of course it won't, but hopefully we'll have a good Spring which is only 3 weeks away. And the best part of all is that I'm really looking forward to getting out in the garden again tomorrow. It's still too early to cut back a lot of plants even though they look scrappy and frostbitten, but they need that top covering to protect the roots. Still, there's plenty of other things to do. Sooooo - look out garden, HERE I COME !!!

Nature's Call

What could make a person get out of a nice warm bed early on a Sunday morning in a Canberra winter?

A call of Nature perhaps?

NO, not THAT call .........

....THIS CALL!

Sunrise.

Colour Choice

Lee-ann had a posting about the dilemma of choosing paint colours. Sometimes it can be the smallest things on which such a decision hinges. I was originally going to paint our bedroom an entirely different colour but because the door is usually open, and one looks down the length of the passage and into the room, the dominant colour is the green vinyl on the floor. Therefore, I felt I had to take that into consideration and, rather than trying for a contrast colour, decided to extend the green 'theme'.

Because the vinyl is many shades of green, the colours actually match better than this photo would suggest.