Feather your Nest Friday, 21st, June, 2019.

What a week!  Good things to report!  And an exciting day today!  I am sorry this post is late.  It is because my internet has been bad and pictures would not load.

First things first.  As you know Dad comes over often and seems to love seeing what we have been doing, how the calf is, how the veggie garden is doing...  I was telling him a couple of weeks ago that it was almost time to plant bare rooted fruit trees (as it is winter here) and how much I want to add to the orchard.  We have a lovely rabbit proof fenced area with three big old fruit trees in there.  These are the trees everyone told me had no fruit yet we had tons of beautiful delicious pic apples and two types of pears from them!
Next thing I had a message from Mum.  Dad had ordered me ten fruit trees and I just had to pick them up in town!  I was so excited.  What a beautiful gift!  In fact I could hardly think of a nicer gift or more meaningful either.  Dad also picked out the exact trees he thought would be good.
So much of the week revolved around these trees.  I picked them up on Tuesday and we were told to plant them as soon as possible.
I knew we would need tree guards because of the animals.  Andy set to work to make them.

Then yesterday Luke came over with the farm Bobcat.  This little tractor is the handiest thing!   We placed the tree guards where we thought worked well, we lined then up with the established trees and formed three rows.  Luke dug deep holes in no time flat.   This is the paddock with Laffie and the lambs.  They seemed to enjoy is and bounded around and inspected everything.

I added two buckets of sheep manure to each hole and planted the trees.  Then the tree guards went on and next they get steel droppers to hold them in place.

We now have an orchard!   This area we now have thirteen trees but overall we now have seventeen fruit trees!   We will have a couple to add as Apricot and Orange are missing and we need those.

So this was a great amount of progress for the week.

During the week some of the ways we got ahead, saved etc included...

I cut Andy's hair.
Mum gave Andy three beautiful pure wool jumpers.
I made sour dough gluten free bread.
I picked Parsley and was able to give a bunch to Dad and a bunch to Chloe.
I made a big batch of spaghetti sauce.  This made two meals, a meal for each of the girls plus a meal for the freezer.
I made Play Doh for the girls.
To use eggs I made six cups of baked egg custard.
We added hay to the animals shed as it has started to get really gold.  We hit freezing last night and will again the next few nights.
I made a batch of gluten free scones...

Today Mum is coming and we are heading south to see Lucy and the girls.  I made a chocolate cake to take.  It is decorated with what I could find in my tin of cake decorations.

Last week I shared a very sad photo of an orphan lamb that I rescued and it was in very bad shape.  I did not expect her to survive.

This is her now!   We named her Blossom.  She has been a lot of work as she does not suck a bottle properly.  But she is so gorgeous.

Lambs are just the strangest animals.  Within about three days they go from out in the paddock to loving you like crazy and wanting to live in the house and watch tv.  Like they know everything!

During the week I finally had a little time to sew.  The first thing I made was something to help me feed so many lambs.  It was kind of an experiment but it worked!!   I sewed bags to put bottles in and hang from the fence.

These have helped me so much and saved me so much time.

The only glitch was I had to adjust how I tied them on because at first I tied bows and Laffie came along and undid them!   I was amazed.

Since then I beat her and tied them on with a knot and now it works!

I made pillowcases for the girls plus a batch of multi coloured play doh.

So the reason today is extra exciting is we are getting a puppy!  Like I need more animals, right?
I had thought about having a dog.  Dad said too how we should have a dog and how having one would be good security.  And now we have the chance and we get her today!

I took a photo of the garden near the kitchen door.  This has a parsley edge I planted all from seeds from the old house.

This time last year we didn't know we were moving for sure.  When we did move this area was sand and weeds.  Now I pick from it every day!

So that was my week!  I am very pleased as we were able to add to our preparedness very much!  We saved in many ways and it was wonderful!

I hope you found ways to save, get ahead, increase your pantry and preparedness and generally build up your home.  Looking well to the ways of your household includes so many things!   It is beautiful to look back over the week before we begin to plan the next one.

Have a lovely weekend! xxx