Jaffles in the Sunshine

Whilst currently we live in a rental, the block is really home.  Coming back to the block always feels like coming home.  It seems to soothe the soul just being there.  The weekend just been saw glorious winter weather up at the block.  Cold mornings giving way to beautiful sunshine.  Great weather to spend the days working on a myriad of jobs.

Saturday started with the customary bacon and egg fry up over our open fire BBQ.  We have done some work on the BBQ welding the plate to a pole that fits over another pole in the ground that allows us to rotate the plate off the fire once we have finished cooking.  The set up around the van now is a great area to sit with a coffee and some breakfast and enjoy the warmth of the fire.  The boys then disappeared playing at being geologists and super heroes, no wifi needed!

Brett's Mum came for a visit Saturday morning much to the delight of the boys who haven't seen her for a few weeks.  I think Nanna quite enjoyed sitting by the fire regaling us with stories of her trip to China.  I know we sure did.  Before we knew it it was lunch time and time to try out the jaffle maker in the fire.  Mmmmm toasty ham and cheese cooked in the coals, does it get any better?!

After Nanna left it was time to get stuck in and do some work.  One of the important jobs for the weekend was to relocate the chook pen.  This involved one on each corner, picking it up and manhandling it to a new spot.  By cleaning up inside the house and nesting boxes and scraping up where the pen had been we got a good wheelbarrow load of chook poo for the compost bin.  The girls get to have a new grassy spot that is inside and enclosed / fenced area so we can let them out occasionally to forage without worrying about foxes and they are easy to round up when it's time to leave.

Then it was time for a general clean up and a bit of burning off to start getting the property ready for next summer and the ever present threat of bushfire.  Because of some local by law we are only able to do this on Saturdays (No burning on a Sunday)  which will make it difficult to get the property properly fire safe before next summer as there are only so many fine Saturdays over Winter and the block hasn't been touched in years hence the amount of fuel reduction required.  We have finally cleared out the brown shed ready to move it next weekend.  So with a deep sigh we closed the gate until next weekend.