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Gidday

You got it there Old Bear.

Gidday

Well down here is all I can talk about really because I don't know what growth hormones or anti biotics go into you animal meals. But as long as your garden is kept in a good aerobic state the use of any poos should be O.K. Pathogens are almost exclusively anearobic so they are normally destroys by oxegen. Look at the Chineese, they drop their poos straight into their gardens and enough of them survive.

As for diggin in fresh manurers I suggest not to do that but instead just purt it on the soil surface and let the soil micros do the work for you.

Gidday

A bloody poet as well.

Good onya mate.

Gidday

My choice would be

Parsley
Mint
Thyme
Lemon balm
Rosemary


Simply cos they're the ones I use the most.

Gidday

Yeah Xdx, but think of the fun you would have on your shopping trip.

Gidday

Well Old Bear, the description sure fits me anyways.

Gidday

Waste not want not sure brings back memories for me. It is a phrase I heard many times when I was a boy.

Our farm was seriously uneconomic and for many years it was, or almost anyway, simply if we didn't grow it we didn't eat it.

Being a farm of a sort was a help because my father would kill almost all meat we ate too, whether it be sheep or chooks. Because we had no electricity we had no refrigeration either so meat could not be kept for more than a week. As a result we would be eating a whole sheep almost every week right through my childhood.

And yes, I do still love my mutton.

We had two vege gardens, one by the house and one by the cowshed and that one would have the poop shoveled straight onto it from the yard and we sure got a huge amount of veges off that one. In other words, we were not wasting even the cow poop but eating it, through the veges of course.

Back to the sheep, we would also eat the offal, like the liver, heart and kidneys and my favourite was always and still is, the heart.

But when we were low on our killers, numbers of weather sheep that is, my father would also skin the head for us to eat. I still do this on occassions too, but only on occassions because the head is so bloody hard to skin.

Ifin any of ewe jokers is interested in trying sheeps head here is how to do it.

There is no easy way to skin the head that I know of and you just have to knife the skin off. My father always used to take the eyes out too so I still do too but I know of people who don't bother and even eat the eyes as well:-


Next step is to cut the lower jaw off by sawing through the rear of the jaw like such:-



Now the next thing I do is to saw the end of the nose and upper jaw off. This makes for easier cleaning:-


I then saw through the end of the lower jaw behind the front teeth and infront of the molars but never try to saw the teeth because they will stuff your saw as they are soooo hard. It is then easy to cut with a knife and separate the tounge and two halves of the lower jaw thike this:-



Now saw the skull in half down the centre line of the head:-


And the two halves can be separated like this:-



The next step I take is to wash it making sure the teeth are free of any rubbish and the sinuses are properly cleaned out.

At the moment I am the only one home, that's why I can bugger around getting all this done, but the good thing is I get to eat the head on my own because it is so nice. But there is far too much good meat in a head for one person so I will only be eating half at a time. I just pop it into the old crock pot (slow cooker) and through in a bunch of herbs and set it going:-



When it's cooked I just through the herbs away and now look at that for a beautiful feed:-




How said I didn't have any brains? Look at how the meat is just falling off the bone.

IF YOU DARE TOUCH THAT I'll BIT YOUR HAND OFF1

Yum.

Gidday

Bloody goats; don’t talk to me about them.

This is a true story that I am always a bit reluctant to share with people because they usually don’t believe me. I could never figure out why either.

Many moons ago I was working on the Tutikuri Station way up in the headwaters of the Tutikuri River. And I assure you this ain’t no tuti either. Well in those days it was a bloody big station and they had broken in some easier country way up near the tops of the range, but it had these here deep gullies running through it. The only way from one of these bits of easy country to another was to come right back down about 1000 feet or so then up the next ridge.

Well there was about 300 acres on one of these ridges that they had put into swedes for a winter crop. Then one day we noticed a mob of about 150 feral goats happily chomping their way through the crop. We headed up to shoot them. As soon as we got up to where they had been we saw them heading off across a ridge on the other side of this bloody steep gully. The gully must have been a couple of hundred feet deep with sheer rock bluffs either side and what we thought was a goat proof fence at the edge.

We just couldn’t figure out how anything except a bird could have gotten across that gully so bloody quickly.

This carry on happened several days in a row and the crop was starting to quickly disappear, as it was still very young. We just had to do something to stop these goats, but every time we got up into the paddock they had disappeared and reappeared on the other side of the gully.

Now I am not one to want to be outsmarted by some bloody stupid goats so I hatched a plan. We would do what nobody should really do when shooting, we split up, when we saw the bloody goats in the crop, me mate going up to the paddock the normal way and I headed up the other ridge to where we always saw them on the other side of the gully. Me mate gave me a good half hour start so I could get up the ridge before the goats saw him and headed off.

I got well up on the ridge and found the goat track that they had been using for their getaway and followed it down to near the edge of the gully and hid in some scrub, just as I saw me mate coming.

Well bugger me dead, I bet you just won’t believe this, and even I had a hard time believing what I was seeing. It just so happens that the Tutikuri Station got their water from a beautiful pure spring high up on this ridge. The pipeline just happened to have to cross this bloody gully to get the shortest route down to the main part of the farm. And the only way to get the pipe across was to suspend it on a wire stretched across it just in front of where I was.

As me cobber came up the other side of the hill in the swede paddock, these here bloody goats ran down to where the pipe crossed, then straight across the wire in a bloody great line like tight rope walkers.

Well, I cocked me old Lee-Enfield rifle and started firing when the first one was just a few yards from my side. The sound of the shots echoed round the gully and sounded like the firing was from behind them. That made them run onto the wire even faster. I was lucky that I had brought several extra clips of ammo in me pack because it was all I could do to shoot as fast as they came across the wire.

Now me old Lee-Enfield had had it’s wood cut down so it was like a normal sporting rifle, and with the firing as fast as it is possible to the barrel really started to heat up. Well, after rapid firing over 150 rounds and only half a dozen goats still alive the barrel sagged because of the heat and for the first time a shot missed it’s target, firing too low. But the bullet hit the wire that was holding the water pipe, cut the wire and the last half dozen goats fell the 300 feet to the rocky floor of the gully.

When we counted up the corpses I had killed 162 goats with 156 rounds fired and we had saved the winter crop of Swedes as well, so I was feeling bloody pleased with myself, but that didn’t last.

When we told the boss, he first of all looked pleased until we got up to the bit about hitting the wire and pipeline, then he hit the roof. He went right off his rocker and made us go straight back up there to fix the bloody pipe. Getting it back across the gully took us all weekend and we were really peed off because we couldn’t even get into the pub for a drink.

Gidday

And before anyone tries to knock the burning of wood for any sort of energy, stop and think what the alternative is. Unless all your electricity comes from hydro the chances are that wood burning has far less effect on the enviroment than electricity. Vertually all other forms of energy are actually more harmful in the long run than the burning of wood.

Gidday

There is a possibility that it is pilling if it's a 2 stroke anyway. Little pills or balls of carbon floating around in the combustion chamber that stick in the plug and short it out so no spark. Often the pill will fall out on it's own before you get to see it. Normally happend when it runs a bit hot or sometimes with the wrong temperature plug in it.

Check the plug against what the makers say and see if it's wrong.

Gidday

If you don't open any lines how will you know rthe fuel, without air, is getting to the injectors?

Gidday

Have you bled the injectors.

Gidday

Giss a pic or 2 and I might know what you are talkin about.

Gidday

Yeah. Dying for a drink though.