MIRRIBANDI

Our Farm

Welcome to our place! A place of warmth, of love, and lots of Belgian Shepherd Dogs, Shire Horses, 1 pet Birman cat, and a handful of chooks (for eggs only), 3 sheep for herding practice with the dogs. Definitely a hobby farm – we choose to dabble with a bit of livestock for now.

We have a very productive vegetable garden – supplying over half of our vegetable food needs. We also have a fledgling orchard – with oranges, lemons, limes, peaches and nectarines struggling to survive in the drought.

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Kathryn milking Jessie, the house cow. - - - Dinner, Jessie and Chair - - - Jessie the Jersey.

Jessie the Jersey is our first house cow. She had not been milked before coming to us, and we hadn’t milked a cow before either! We have it all down pat now, for a whole season, we got enough milk for our own extended family’s consumption, for all our butter, cream and ice-cream needs. We churned our own butter, and made our own ice-cream. We have made our own cheeses too, and we have a certificate to prove we are officially Certified Cheese Makers, but time is always an issue, so cheese making is the least of our priorities right now. We also make yogurt from time to time.

Jessie the Jersey arrived with her new calf (Dinner - half dairy, half meat production breeding), and her foster calf (Chair - supposedly a Limousine – a meat breed). We had every intention of not naming these calves, as it is harder to eat something once it is named……. Chair got his name when he put his head between the legs of a plastic garden stool to get to some nice grass, and got stuck, panicked, and ran around the house yard with a chair stuck to his head until we rescued him. The name “Chair” has stuck ever since. And Dinner, well, his name says it all – it is (or was, until we named him) his destiny. Chair is the sire of Zoe, our first home bred cow here at Mirribandi – born October 2007. See Mirribandi Zoe here

Our herd of cows increased by Jessie and Zoe producing more calves, plus a couple of ring ins that just wandered into our farm. No ear tags, no brands, and no one has claimed them in several years….. We have been highly unsuccessful in eating our own livestock, and cannot bring ourselves to do it….. These cattle will go to market and will be replaced by some youngsters to enjoy the freedom of our acreage, before they make their way to market when older and fatter.

May 2011 – all cows sold to a neighbour. Sad to see them go…..

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Our chooks – our laying hens. We have dabbled in breeding Silkie bantams too, but have decided to keep just the laying hens as our special girls. We have enough eggs laid daily to keep two households in fresh eggs each week.

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Our potato patch – gown in recycled car tyres. We also grow our own strawberries. Kangaroos and wallabies regularly drop by.

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Our orchids. Roger planting trees, with Revoir supervising. Our Spring bulbs.

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More wildlife – our family of Kookaburras. Our lovely sunsets. After rain, these beautiful ground lilies spring up.

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Building works have been known to come to a complete standstill while waiting for our Willy Wag tail birds to hatch and fly out into the world. This is the second nest of young for 2006. The second photo is a koala – they sleep up high in our trees, and not easy to photograph.

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It does not rain much here at Ebenezer – and our paddocks are usually crunchy brown grass….. But when it rains, the green comes back!

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Our cats – Birmans – The Sacred Cat of Burma. This is Kiss – she is an aloof cat, very beautiful and a very good mouser, and building site supervisor. She is a pedigree torti point Birman. Kiss keeps our dogs in line!

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And our other cat, Red. He is half brother to Kiss – they have different fathers, but the same mother. We acquired Red through a friend at work, who could no longer keep him. Red is a very “people” friendly cat, and gets on very well with our dogs too. Red is a pedigree red point Birman too.

Sadly Red passed away in June 2007 – of stomach cancer…… Far too young….

Red’s owner also kindly gave us a young Burmese cat which we called Bronte. Bronte was very unsure about dogs when she arrived just days before Christmas 2007, but has settled in well, and is such a playful character. The photo on the left is of WARY Bronte, the day after she arrived at Mirribandi. She has a happy content look to her gaze nowJ as per the right hand photo.

May 2011 – Bronte disappeared about 6 months ago. Never to be seen since. Rest well Bronte.

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And finally, our sheep. Originally purchased for herding practice for competitive sheep herding with the dogs. Our wild flock of sheep quickly became very tame, and now come when called, and will feed from your hand. Herding practice gone, these darling sheep are now officially lawn mowers! They are Merino and Suffolk cross sheep. We intended to eat the lambs – but got too attached to the sweethearts, so the lambs are sold off and we go to the butcher to buy someone else’s meat.

March 2007 – the drought has simply got too intense, and we traded our flock of sheep for a shed full of summer grassy hay. Their paddock was completely bare of grass, and things were grim….. They have gone to the farm that produced the hay, and are happily tucking into the greener pastures in an area with a little more rainfall than us. We do intend to restock our sheep paddock, as soon as it rains, as we’ve once again been bitten by the herding bug! Not to mention missing our sheepies.

2008 – our herd of 5 Damara sheep arrived – and proved to be too wild and fast for our beginner level herding dogs….. These Damara sheep look more like goats. They are very hardy and shed their own fleece, and never need shearing. We are hoping to sell them onto someone with experienced herding dogs who will relish in the challenge of these light and flighty sheep.

At the end of the herding season in 2009 we added 5 SAMM sheep to our menagerie. These SAMM (Meat Master sheep) are very calm, and used to upright herding dogs, and we look forward to working them on a regular basis with our young dogs.

And the horses – who have their own web page – see here

And the dogs – don’t they make excellent building site supervisors! See our dogs here

Our Dogs

Our Horses

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E-MAIL - mirribandi@gmail.com