Owning a farm has proven to be challenging, exciting, frustrating and rewarding all at the same time. There is something about having the knowledge and ability to grow your own food, not having to rely on supermarkets or others. Planting seeds and seedlings and watching them grow.
I can’t wait to have that ability…
The Vegetable Patch
Winter is fast approaching, which is a great season to grow things up here in the Gladstone region. It’s time to get your greens in the ground and get ready to harvest the magnificent seasonal vegetables. It also appears to be the time the native wildlife likes to undo all your work.
Now I am understanding a bit more about irrigation, I am starting to run pumps and get water around the important areas. It only took five broken pumps before I bought a new one to get working.
My wife Audrey cleared all the weeds and overgrowth from the vegetable garden that was here before we arrived. You can see it had some irrigation to it, but nothing was working anymore of course. So I set it up. I originally wanted a mister to spray during the days running out of my Poly. I went to the local irrigation store in Childers, told her what I wanted. $80 later I walked out and ended up setting up sprinklers…
Really not what I wanted, it is hard to get enough pressure from the bore pump with sprinklers. A mister would have been better, she told me that’s what they were but turns out she was wrong, and now, so am I.
I ended up just plugging the poly with 90 degree sprayers and the pressure alone covers a nice patch of growth. Works much better than these sprinklers and is a lot cheaper. The downside is I won’t be able to use too many as the pressure will lower and the irrigation will become much less viable. Which is when I will need to set up another pump to the line for more pressure.
The sprayers worked. I planted bok choy, garlic, snow peas, beans, radish, strawberries, blueberries, corn and a few other things in the garden as well. I still have a lot of room for more. It was looking rather good, the corn already had shoots when I bought it and the garden was underway. Until it wasn’t.
The first night, the wallabies decided that they like fresh corn growth. I awoke in the morning and went to see if the irrigation was working on a timer. And there it was, all my corn had been pulled out and eaten down to the dirt. The mongrels left nothing behind. Everything else is still in seed form so that gives me a few days to get a fence around this. It had to be the wallabies, the Cockatoos have been too busy decimating the citrus trees to have a taste for corn as well.
The Wildlife Shows No Respect
Luckily I have a soft spot for animals up here, otherwise I would be mastering Roo stew. I see them each night out and about, eating the grass and overgrowth. They do a decent job of keeping the grass down. But that’s probably because there is more roo shit than blades of grass around here and the shit outcompetes the grass’s ability to grow. Not the dreaded rat's tail though, that just grows anywhere and everywhere.
So between stealing my food and defecating all over my lawns each night, it’s a wonder I put up with them at all. I know a few people who would shoot them for less. But when we first moved here it was always about living with the wildlife, not getting rid of it. I do enjoy turning on the flashlight at night and seeing roos of all species and sizes within 30m of the house.
So the best way around this is fencing. I’ve just come off building around 250m of fencing for the dogs and the goats. My poor hands used to be soft and delicate. Like all marketing and office workers are. Now they are harsh and calloused, can I call myself a farmer yet?
We have a bit of leftover fence, so we will get that up ASAP now to avoid this year's crops being a roo buffet. The cockatoos on the other hand, they are just cheeky bastards. I can see them from the toilet in the lime tree just destroying fruit to get to the seeds.
It doesn't bother me too much as we have so many limes on this tree we can’t keep up. I have containers of dried limes now for the next year that I will struggle to get through. So they can have a bit of that, it’s fine. However, I want them to stay the hell away from my orange tree. I was watching a fruit grow every day. Just waiting for it to ripen. Then one day it is on the ground with teeth marks in it. Cockatoo for sure.
I wish there was a way to tell them to help themselves to these fruits, but not everything. Ah well it’s time to bag the rest of the fruits so they won’t get to them either. They were making a mess of the mangoes earlier in the year as well.
I also got the fright of my life as I opened my little portable pump lid and a giant huntsman was sitting in there. Great start to a day for a severe arachnophobe like me
I think I need to put some fencing up around the beetroot as well, no doubt they will break through the net there. But first I need to set up the new pump for this area.
Pumping Anger Issues
After five broken pumps on this property, I just bought a new one. It is nothing fancy but it only has to move water from the dam to this new beetroot field I am setting up.
Once the pump arrived I was so happy to see it. I opened it and there were parts everywhere. The instruction book wasn’t in English either. So after an hour of trying to understand what went where and how do I even turn it on. I did what any reasonable person would in this situation. I took it to my neighbour and asked him to fix it.
Without hesitation he looked at it, put some fuel and oil in it, a hose in one end and started it the first pull. Water was coming out of it and it looked great. All the parts were still in the bag though, and he told me they were extras, the feet for the pump, connections and miscellaneous stuff. Nothing useful to actually get the pump moving.
Great I thought, packing it up and taking it home. I look like an absolute moron here. But that was nothing compared to what was coming.
I got the pump home, set it up at the dam and started trying to fire it up. Nothing, no engine, no nothing. It would not even entertain the idea of working. I tried the choke and the fuel lever like Adam told me to do. Crickets. The only noise that could be heard was me shouting obscenities at it.
I had to ring Adam again to ask what is actually wrong with what I am doing. I have the choke right, the fuel is pumping in, the hoses are connected. But it won’t start. He asked straight away if the pump was switched to “on”. And there it was, my next absolute moment of embarrassment as I realised the past hour was wasted because I did not turn the giant red knob to the on position.
More Red Faced Than My Beetroot
How could it get worse? Unfortunately I can answer that. The following day I went to the pump, bought nine litres of water to help prime it. Tugged on the poly in what can only be explained as an erotic pull to help prime the lines. I plugged it all in and started it up. Miraculously it started the first pull but no water was coming from the pipe. I had left it short to test it deliberately.
I am now pouring water into the primer, and still nothing is coming out. Nine litres disappeared quickly and I am fuming. My anger was clouding my judgement as the major clue as to what was wrong was missed. Five pumps I have failed at getting to go. Now the brand new sixth one runs, but won’t pump water.
Furiously I picked up the phone to call Adam again. I had some colourful language rolling off my tongue. A lot to do with seeing if pumps could float if thrown into a dam, amongst other things. Adam was fixing his car at the time and asked me to come grab him so he could have a look.
I drive over, pick him up and drive him back to mine where the pump is. Within 10 seconds he looks at it and says, “Your pipes are the wrong way around.” The inlet was in the outlet and vice versa. To a mechanically minded person, this must be akin to someone taking a Samsung phone into an Apple store and asking for it to be fixed.
The worst part is I should have known. The fact that the water was not pumping out when I was pouring it in should have told me the water was going back into the dam. It could not be going anywhere else.
Adam had a good chuckle and now I am unsure I can ever talk to him again.
The Creation of Chookrassic Park
Now that I had finally finished the goat fence for John and Deere, I could kick them out of the chicken coop area and into the new luxury park they have. There is food galore for them in this area. More greenery than a rainforest. They are happy and have not even tried to escape yet…
I am sure after they eat everything, which should take months, they will try and leave to destroy my bananas or the chook pen again. Like old times. But at the moment, they are content and enjoying life in a massive section of the farm that I painstakingly took 2 weeks to prepare for them.
They finished their job however. It was to remove all the growth, pumpkins and everything else alive in the chook pen. They stripped it bare. It was damn near perfect and now it was time to fix the pen up and get it ready for the new chickens.
I had to repair holes in the fence, the coops themselves, redo chicken wire, fix parts of the roof, remove all the rubbish and prepare nesting areas for them. I also built a frame with wooden logs for them to roost on. I had to rush this area as I bought 10 new chickens from an ex-commercial farm. They are Isa Browns and quite big. Their time serving the egg farm was over so they are passed to people like me for virtually nothing. Lucky them, they get to move to a big pen and in a few weeks will have free roam of the entire farm.
This little paradise has been named Chookrassic Park. You’ll never guess which movie it references. But chickens remind me of little raptors. They have a pretty aggressive attitude towards each other and really have a pecking order with a hierarchy. I could sit there and watch them all day.
With these ten new chickens and the four original tractor chickens, I now have fourteen hens and I hope I will never buy eggs again. I put the original four in there with them as well. They are slowly getting along but life in the tractor is not working out for Derpy and her mates. They decided to leave the tractor and not return one night. Become bush chickens. Other than the obvious foxes and snakes in this area, I wanted them for eggs. Not to be a part of the local wildlife.
I was told a rooster might help keep them all in line, and lucky for me, my neighbour Adam was about to turn one of his into a roast. So I ended up with him.
The Rooster Called Lucky Luciano
Lucky Luciano was a crime boss in the United States when the mafia was running things. I decided to name my rooster after him, but not for the crime reasons. Lucky, because he was about to be killed and turned into a roast. Now he has 14 hens to himself. Luciano, because let's face it, it’s pretty gangster to be in charge of an entire fleet of hens.
The hens did not take too kindly to him at the start however. They absolutely hammered him with pecks and scratches. Poor Lucky was getting pummelled everywhere he went. Things settled down for him after a few days though and he seems to have a grasp on things now.
The chickens all seem happy. I have to carry a few to their coops at night, but they should learn shortly that’s the safe place. The original four chickens, Derpy and her mates, sleep on top of the chicken coop or on the wooden perches. They are a bit harder to catch and since they barely lay any eggs anyway, they can run the gauntlet and sleep on the outside.
It’s all covered in, but the only true snake-proof and fox-proof part is in the coops. So if they sleep there, they will be safe. I’m already getting a few eggs a day so it is off to a great start with this new flock.
With all the animals now housed and happy, and Winter appearing around the corner, it is time to get more crops in the ground and get the Moringa ready for Spring.
About the Author
Joel Molloy is the founder of Moringa Products Australia and the writer behind The Moringa Farm Chronicles, documenting the wins, mistakes, setbacks and lessons of building a farm and business from scratch in rural Queensland.
From vegetable patch failures and pump disasters to wildlife raids, chickens, roosters and growing Moringa, Joel shares a first-hand account of learning farm life the hard way.
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