The rat race...

Sometimes you are too busy with life to have a life.. strange? I think so also.

So what is with this picture? A cat and a dog sleeping on the bed, well, nothing really to do with anything (like most other things I write about (and think about)) except that they are two of my many many babies, cat = "Thunder Cat" the youngest of the three cats, dog = "Scarlet" the younger of the two dogs. They are best friends, they always find the time for each other. No matter what they spend time together at least once a day. I think that alone is beautiful.

They play together, which gets a little scary to watch at times, since Scarlet likes to sit ON Thunder Cat :) and Scarlet can fit Thunder Cats whole head in her mouth... but that doesn't stop him from biting her ears and nibbling on her face!

I love all the animals that Queen Cassawary and I have here, but finding the time is the hardest part. One of my goals, the MAIN goal I think, is to live one with nature, live a life that is perfectly in tune with my surroundings, and by surroundings I do NOT mean buildings, roads, pollution and negative people. I mean trees, animals, sun rises, moon beams, rainbows... all the good things in life.
In order to get there though I need to work, and work hard, it feels like I work five jobs some weeks. After I finish my "9-5" work, then come home and start cutting wood, or feeding all the animals and plants, or fixing a hole in a roof, or building a new something (green house was just done, I will write about that next). With all that taking up all my time it is hard to put my feet up and just enjoy life moving around me. I am so tired, so burnt out.

Please don't get me wrong. I love what I do, not the whole "working for the man", "9-5", "making someone else's dreams come true", stuff but the work I do at home, I love the fact that I can still do most of the things at home myself. I have been learning so much, so much about plumbing, building, wood/metals, animals, weather, dirt, composting, veggies, so so much. I love all that. I love seeing the 5 acres around me grow, change and attract more native (wild) animals. In my eyes this is my way of knowing what we are doing at this place is working, if it is attracting animals to come and live in the trees then they must know that it is a good place to live! :) That is my logic anyway.

I want to leave my job, I think that I NEED to leave my job, not just for my own sanity (as that place is driving my nuts more and more), but in order to complete what I am doing here. Complete it for the sake of everything around me. I have so many projects that keep getting put on hold when they are half complete, because work will call me in on the weekends, or after hours (and no, I don't get an awesome overtime/loading rate, so it is NOT worth all the extra work I put in).
I can start ranting about being under-appreciated at work, about the people that I work with not being about to correctly utilize myself and others around, I could talk for hours about the horrible working conditions, both mentally and physically, and on that note I could talk about how some work places (like mine) are about government scrutiny when it comes to these kind of things, but I will not talk about all that, because that is all horribly negative and it is not even 5AM yet! :) Stay positive!

So, what is THIS post about? If you have been following my blogs so far (I know I have not had the time to do anything in such a long time) you will know that most of my blogs start with a good idea (about where the post is going) but then end up ranting about Nazis on the moon, ants taking over the government, or the demise of humankind. This post is the same, the two reasons why I started writing this post this morning was 1; I have some time, finally!, 2; I wanted to share WHY I haven't had time, so you all don't think that I have just abandoned you all in the cyber abyss.

Let us get back to a better mental place shall we... with GEESE!

I love these guys, they are such characters! :) They provide so much in life, I love to watch all my animals integrate with each other as well as everything around them.

Oh, just quickly, before I continue with talking about some of my projects, while typing this all out I get these awesome red squiggly lines under some of the words, if you don't know what I am talking about, just type in "sqazzletops" and you should see what I mean. These little lines mean that I have messed up the spelling of the word that I was trying to spell. Great invention to the person that made spellchecker! :) However, why is it that so many "professionals" don't know how to use it? Nearly every morning I see a spelling mistake in a headline in the news, a spelling mistake in the summary of the article, or just the complete wrong picture for the article. Of course I am talking about online newspapers, however these are from companies like SKY news, etc.. not just the normal tin-foil-hat-wearing-cave-dwelling-star-gazing papers I normally spent time reading. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that this post (or anything I do) is grammatically perfect, but I didn't do the 2 hour online course that these "professionals" have done, so I can plead ignorance to that! Sorry to the "writers" of that paper, but there is a difference in "destop" and "desktop" when talking about a computer. See? I even get that squiggly line when I write destop... now I have two lines... doesn't your online course teach you what that means and how to fix it?!?!? Is your life so busy you can't do your paid job correctly? ... OK... rant over, I promise...

So what have I been doing since I last got on here?

I have started building the aquaponics system. No, this is not all I have done, cut a blue barrel up, however I will do a whole post on each thing. I have built a green house (from recycled wood and shade cloth), built a few new gardens, building a fence (that is fun), built a pond for the animals, finished the NOCC, and all the normal little things that I get up to, lots of research!

I have been trying to take photos, before, after and during, however sometimes I forget about that, sorry. But I have lots and lots to catch you all up on, so I will try to get to that ASAP, the mornings have been icy cold lately, so it means that I will spend a bit more time inside in the mornings, by the fire, and be able to write/rant more to you all.

Well, I get paid to show up to work, so I should get ready for all that good stuff. I hope that you all enjoy your days, don't work too hard for other people, make sure that you actually get to put your feet up and enjoy life around you, breath and love life!

Until I see you all again (soon I hope!), be happy and stay safe.

The Alpaca

Clive and Stuart

Recently we got two Alpacas, why you might ask? Who gets Alpacas, why wouldn't you just get a horse or a sheep, why an Alpaca? Well, let me tell you the journey we took to getting Alpacas.

When I say we I am referring to Queen Cassowary, author of "A Preppers Wife" (yeah, it's about me), so on the 5 acres we have a lot of native trees (large trees) and other types of natural debris (logs, sticks, shrubs, etc.) so mowing is not really a possibility. So why not clean up, you ask? Well we are trying to make this a natural sanctuary (if you will) and restore it to what it should be like, Australia native bush. But, in trying to do this we don't want to encourage nastiness like snakes that will eat me while I sleep, even though I say I want the natural environment, I don't like to die either. So we need to ensure that grasses are maintained, the chickens, ducks and geese do this also, but they are so cute and little that it would take them a year (if the grass stopped growing) to even think about clearing 1 acre! So, we needed a bigger, faster (and so what cuter) solution. Alpaca. Why not horses or cows? Well, we were looking into horses and cows, and after looking at the land that we have, we have seen the devastation that the horses and cows hoofs make on the ground, we needed a better solution. I know a bit about goats, and I know that they would love to eat all the baby trees and plants before doing what I want them to do (the grass) because they are like that, and we have planted about 50 new trees and shrubs on this land since we have been here, and I didn't want them to be a light snack. 

So, after a search, we found out about Alpaca. They don't have the same feet as horses and cows, they are from the same family as camels (and lama) and they do little when they walk on the ground (they do leave cute little foot prints in the wet soil). 

We set out and talked to some Alpaca breeders and picked out two. We don't like having just one of an animal, because it would be lonely for them, and having 107 Alpaca might just be slightly overwhelming for our little 5 acres, so two was the right number :)

The other really appealing part of getting the Alpacas is their wool, it is nice and soft and durable, and can be used to barter as a raw product, or can be made into a lot of different things, and as mentioned in other posts here, I like to make and do everything myself, so having a source like this on the land is very beneficial. Also the poo, they are relatively clean animals, they will have "piles" where they like to 'go', so for gardening reasons it is really really handy :) My gardens will love it!!

This is Clive, the is the older of our two boys (both de-sexed because we have no interest in breeding at this stage (and to boys can't breed)

And this is Stuart,I think that he is a little more handsome than Clive, Clive is kind of goofy looking, but he does his job :)

Well, I must head off, the day is starting without me and the ducks are yelling at me already, but I will leave by saying that these Alpaca are great, if anyone was considering them, I would recommend them. They make beautiful soft noises when they talk, they defend the area from wild dogs, and when they walk around they act as a snake deterrent because they are big and heavy and noisy, all the things that snakes hate :) 

I hope that you all enjoy your day, and enjoyed reading about our two new babies. I will keep you updated about these Alpaca and the rest of the monsters as our saga unfolds. Enjoy life, be happy :)