There’s a great deal going on so it’s hard to work out what to report on first! I choose to report on the slab.

Here is a photo of our children running along on the slab (looking north-east). We were out one sunny morning to water it down so it didn’t dry out and then crack (this (painted) slab will be our floor for a while – until we decide exactly what we want as far as floor coverings go!).

Here’s another picture of the slab – from the north-east corner. You can see MG at the far end, by the new water tank. In the foreground you can see where the strawbale walls will go.

Here’s Monte by the new water tank: the image of pride and happiness! It’s great having water on site now. We needed to have 1000 litres of water poured into the septic tank once it had been installed, and it took five hours to fill it that much because the water pressure is so slow! Now that our header tank is in position, all we’ll need to do is collect water from our roof into this tank and then pump it up to the header tank. Our water will be gravity fed and almost mains-pressure.

Here’s one of the three trenches that were dug for the septic system. Each trench is 20m long, 500mm deep (on low side) and about 1m wide. Lots of digging and lots of gravel! There are long arch trenches for each tunnel. We’ll grow an orchard on these arches. The nutrients will make for good apple growing! Therefore the orchard (or one of them) will be on the south-south-west of our house.

With the horrific bushfires happening in NSW and Victoria, we have been thinking more about our bushfire risk. We’re a Level 1 Bushfire risk, which is moderate. For the design and building of our new home, we have had to do certain things to fire-proof our house. For example: aluminum fly screen on ALL windows and glass doors; a standing pad and fire-fighting water source; all pipework has to be 300mm under ground and there’s probably more things we need to consider. For this reason, we decided to have a new dam built (below), solely for the purpose of collecting and storing water for fire-fighting. We have also had a standing pad built, which will soon be covered in gravel. If it collects and stores water (our first dam is not very successful and is still having more work done!) this will make a nice swimming hole too. It will be fenced off and we will keep the grass clear of the ‘pond.’ You can see that our grass is very long now. We probably will not get cows in, and we will not be cutting hay. Another year’s worth of growth will eventually be flattened and hopefully the goodness from the growth will go back into the soil.

Can you see a small boy on the edge of the dam (far west corner in the centre of the photo)? Yes, that’s little Matty, excited by this great big dirty playground! If this dam collects water we’ll have to be even more extra-diligent (shudder).

Our blackberries (of which there are many) are beginning to come into fruit, so I am planning a family blackberry-picking day. I hope to make jam from these blackberries and I’ll be asking my dear friend Tania to show me how. She is very beautiful and makes the best jam in the world and I promise to be extra nice if she teaches me how to make good jam! I’ve been collecting jars for a long time (then gave up because I ran out of storage room for them!) so I hope to make a year’s supply of jam. Thankfully we don’t eat too much jam!