2025 Where did the time go???

 My last post on this Blog was back in 2018.

Time has certainly marched on since then. 

So much has changed but one thing that has stayed the same is my love of the slower country life and the cleaner living in our little piece of paradise.

We have moved on from running a cafe on our property.

I now work from home in my consultancy full time and I have a dedicated office to work from.

For the past few months we have had a house guest living in the "office/tiny house" but I will finally have my space in the next month or so.

We also inherited donkeys in the last few years. Initially we took on our neighbours donkeys due to his ill health, but we lost one on the short journey to our place. Donkeys need to have friends so you cannot just have one. So we had to get Donna a friend. We welcomed Oatie, but did not know she was in foal until little Prinn arrived in May 2023.

The girls bring us endless joy and they wander our 16 acres just doing what donkeys do.

We lost our beautiful girl Elizabeth very suddenly. She passed doing what she did best which was playing with Boyd in the lounge room. She had a wonderful but very short life and left a big hole in our and Morris's heart.

Morris was not the same after Elizabeth passed. We had to find him a friend, as well as a friend for me as Morris is Boyd's dog and only looks to me for food or the occasional pat when Boyd is not around.

Enter the crazy, lovable, totally devoted to you Perri Girl. The naughty staffy that was returned from 2 adoptions and lived for 18 months in the kennels at the UQ Uni Facility at Gatton.

Now this crazy little girl lives on the farm and lives her best life being a dog.

Both Perri and Morris are now good friends. Although she can be the annoying little sister to the cranky old man that is Morris.

So much has happened in the last 7 years and it is time that I start back by capturing the hightlights and some low lights over this time. This is the restart of the blog that has documented our shift to the country. 

2025 is the year that just keeps giving and not in a good way. The next instalment will happen in due course. 

Thought it is time to complete an update..........................................

My last update was March 2018.

Eight Months on............. SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED.

 

It has been just over 12 Months of working in Dalby 4 days a week.

I love teaching literacy, numeracy and life skills to the students in my class. The students range in age from 16 right through to late 50's.

 

WEGCAT - Wegner Consultancy and Training has been going great guns and had consistent work over the last twelve months.

219 looks like an even bigger year for WEGCAT.

 

This year also saw the launching of BS Friendly Café here at Schick Road.

 

First the shelter had to be built and then the food van purchased and fitted out.

 

 

The Master in his Food Van Domain.

 

Boyd and I have been focussing on smaller events in 2018 and we will be planning for 2019 over the Christmas / New Year break.

We conducted a Gun Licence Course in November.

And had our lovely feathered wildlife come and join the session for a while as well as a number of locals that participated in the course.

After a couple of false starts and a near disaster with a grass fire, we have had a couple of trial run openings to fine tune the business.

https://bsfriendlycafe.com.au/

 Near disaster with a grass fire prior to our first official opening day. Evidence below. Thank goodness for the local Rural Fire Brigade.

Our Official opening to the public was a successful day. Lovely people coming through to support a new business. We are thankful to all those that support our new venture.

As I come to the end of a quick update, I look forward to having some time over the Christmas break to make a few other updates.

Until then.....................................................................................................

Morris and Elizabeth wish you all a Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy 2019.

 

 

Where has the last twelve Months gone?????

It has been 12 Months since I have written an update.
The time has just flown.
We have had a new addition to the family since I last have blogged.
Elizabeth came to join us as a fur sister for Morris.

After a settling in period they have become the best of friends.
The only problem was with Mr Beastie. The dog gang up on him so we have had to separate them. Dogs in the front part of the house, Cat in the back.

The property is going ahead leaps and bounds. We have managed to grow a few veges and have eaten well out of the garden. We are now just waiting for the corn to grow so we can harvest it.

The business is slowly building. We hope to be up and running in August.
The septic upgrade is about to be completed, the stand alone solar is going in and we have been searching and looking for a Food Truck to purchase.

So many things on the go and lots more news to come.

Our first Easter in our little piece of paradise.........................

Today is Easter Monday and our first Easter living in our property "SharpAz".
The weather has started to cool and we have had a couple of 4 degree mornings and it is not even winter time yet.
During the four day Easter break we have had lots of Family visit, stay and generally have a good time.
Good Friday saw the lighting of the bonfire which disposed of all the general rubbish collected from around the property as well as the remnants of the old shed.

Here is the pile before the lighting. Quite a significant amount to burn. I thought it would burn for at least 24 hours. How wrong you can be.

The bonfire was lit at about 1pm on Good Friday and started to smoulder before taking full flight

Smoulder for quite a while.

Just something hypnotic about a fire burning at full flight.

The next morning there was nothing left but the pieces of metal mixed up with the timber from the old shed.

Now to reinvigorate the firepit and construct an area that we can sit around quite comfortably.
Maybe something like this...... but without the water views.

We are not even half way through April........................

Easter is coming up and I think we might be toooooooo far away in the sticks for the Easter Bunny to find us this year.

This morning the Easter Bunny's feet would no doubt have been stuck to the ground as it was 4.8 degrees and we have not even entered Winter time.
I think the prediction of a really cold winter is going to come true.

This week we definitely have to sort out our heating situation.
So I think it will be out with the old wood stove and in with a pot belly or something that is similar so the whole house can be heated.
Then we will have to gather the stock of firewood to fill the wood box.

The other issue we are having is the irregularity of our VOIP. Our voice over internet phone is generally not working more often then working.
I am coming to the conclusion that we will have to put a Telstra phone line in. The cost is outrageous but to make sure we have a phone line that we can rely on..... we may have to bite the bullet and do it.
Either that or wait until Telstra launch the mobile phone tower they have put in place at Cooyar. This may give us mobile phone coverage as Cooyar is only about 10km down the road.
I guess time will tell which is the best route to take.

"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

The weeks just seem to rocket on by. We have much to do and it seems we are always adding things to the "To Do" list.
These last couple of weeks have been busy.
We have participated in the Thornville Trivia night and met some more wonderful people, started to look at what is happening in the Cooyar district and make moves forward to becoming a little more active in this region, taken a trip to Yarraman and Blackbutt as well as continuing with Morris's training.

This past week we have had to take a quick trip to Brisbane to sort out a few things as well as deal with our first brown snake.

It has been six months since we moved to Thornville and this is the first time we have had an upfront and personal interaction with a snake.

 

 

So this juvenile brown snake, we think, has come from a neighbouring property where there had been a lot of clearing activity taking place. The property is being prepared for sale so there has been much activity. We can only guess that this has stirred things up.

We thought we could just wait it out and it would go on it's merry way........... alas no, something kept drawing it back to under our house.

Boyd came across it sunning itself on the top of the septic system and got Morris inside. The second sighting was courtesy of Morris the Wonder Dog who alerted us to it's presence.
It seems Mr or Mrs Brown Snake came across a field mouse nest under our house that we knew nothing about.
Boyd found bodies of mice through the yard. The snake had gone on a killing spree and it must have been to wet and cold for it to eat and digest them.

So we are now about 6 days on from the first sighting and encounter. We have not seen it over the last few days. Morris the Wonder Dog has not alerted us to it being any where near the house.
Probably the wake up call we needed to not be so complacent in a bush setting. Also keeping Morris inside and contained has seemed to have calmed him down.
With all the rain we have had the grass is growing at an amazing rate. The tanks are close to full so we cannot complain. We just have to keep the grass in the house yard low to ensure we can see snakes if they decide to come venturing in again any time soon.

The next project we have to attack is the issue of heating the house in the upcoming winter season.
After attempting to clean and sort out the wood stove in the kitchen it looks as though it requires a complete overhaul and refurbishment.
Boyd conducted some research and it looks like we are going to have the wood stove replaced with a pot belly stove with a new flue. This will make sure we have the capacity to heat the whole house as I am sure it is going to get mighty cold here this winter.
Next week we are talking with a guy who refurbishes old stoves and pot bellies.
Hoping to have the Everhot Wood stove as pictured below, replaced with a Pittsburgh Pot Belly Stove. Will give us more room in the kitchen and will be able to heat the whole house with no leaks coming down the chimney.
Updates soon on the progress of this little exercise.

This week has also been a big week for Morris the Wonder Dog. Boyd and I have been lucky enough to meet a wonderful Woman by the name of Tanya who has kindly offered to help us with Morris and his behaviour.

Now Morris is not a bad dog. We love him dearly. Morris seems to have a problem with people and asserting his authority over people that are not Boyd or I.

Morris, (the not so little puppy anymore) can be unpredictable as we understand Australian Blue Heelers can be. As we do not know Morris's history prior to adopting him in November 2016, we can only assume that it was not that great.

We have tried a number of things from getting an dog behaviour specialist out, training at home, having people over to interact with him and taking him to dog obedience classes. A number of things have worked. Tanya has been able to give us so much insight into what Morris maybe thinking and how he will react in certain situations and what we can do to make changes to his reactions.

Over the next few weeks Tanya has kindly offered to do some one on one work with him to see how he goes.

We are now in the month of March.........................

My goodness, where does the time go to????
We are now in March 2017. It is now six months since we moved into our forever home and I have to say we are still quietly loving it.
So far we have made some wonderful friends within the community and we seem to be blessed with having such wonderful people surrounding us.

I have had a little set back health wise........ probably because I thought I could do much more than what I actually could.
Still taking small steps so to not go back to where I was.
That is all boring stuff............ let's get onto the good stuff.

Boyd and I have had some fantastic experiences in the last few months. We helped out at the local Cooyar Show, we have participated in some local meetings and last weekend Crows Nest officially became a Motorcycle Friendly Town.

We are also surrounded by such beautiful nature. The critters are just glorious and we enjoy seeing them up close and personal at every opportunity we get.
Just the other day we were driving into Crows Nest and on the side of the highway near the Historical Society there was a tiny echidna taking a stroll along the footpath, minding it's own business and having a lovely feed of ants that were scurrying around rebuilding after the recent rain.

Just delightful. What a lovely experience. I just had to make sure the little fella was not going to become road kill. We have seen echidna's three times the size as road kill on the highway.

 

The other lovely experience is having two beautiful horses acting as our lawn mowers in one of our paddocks. Morris loves having a chat with them, but the other day he was just plain naughty and grabbed one of them by the tail. He got an almighty kick to the head that sounded like it had cracked his scull. Luckily no damage.

 

 

Boyd has named them Rover and Cox...... (lawnmowers). LOL.
They are beautiful girls that we enjoy watching gallop across the paddocks and laugh when they spit water at Morris through the fence.

Little Morris is no longer little. He does not look like a puppy anymore. He is looking handsome but can be such a naughty boy.................

So things are moving along, life is wonderful in the country and we still believe that this is the best move we have ever made.
Till my next entry...............................let's hope Morris and Mr Beastie finally become friends and that we get some progress on the vegetable gardens.