Cradle Mountain B&B

It’s autumn, which is such a lovely time of year in northern Tasmania; all of the trees are dropping their leaves and the autumnal colours are beautiful throughout the garden of our Cradle Mountain B&B. Our guesthouse has numerous animals in our grounds, as well as gardens, paddocks, features and outbuildings.

The chooks are scratching through the leaves; the leaves make good mulch for the garden, but we forgot again to place nets over the pond and now that is also full of leaves. Poor Millie – my very fluffy Border Collie – had little leaves stuck all over her after she went exploring around the pond.

We have just about finished splitting our front paddock into four sections so we can rotate our stock. Roger (the ram) is a very happy boy, as he’s back in the front paddock with the Wiltipoll girls. Plus, our Hampshire ewes are waiting for a Hampshire man to come and visit their paddock soon.

The Goats are in their winter paddock and are making short work of the long grass. They will have a new buck visiting soon as well…so spring will hopefully be a busy time for new borns.

The Cows are out in the back paddock now for winter. Dividing up the paddock in this way will allow us to manage our grazing animals more efficiently.

We’re busy getting the vegetable garden back in working order. It went wild when we were too busy to spend a lot of time on it. We’re also getting in the last of the produce: apples and pears mostly (the greedy possum got a lot of my pears this year).

We did manage to get some walnuts, though. Our walnut tree was absolutely laden with walnuts until a flock of cockatoos came and ate most of them.

Russ is busy cutting up firewood for the winter months to keep our wood fire stoked – essential in a cosy Cradle Mountain B&B. We usually get quiet over the winter months, but will see what happens this year with international travel still not really an option.

Tasmania is so beautiful in autumn and winter. The fagus tree (a type of beech) is Tasmania’s only native deciduous tree believed to have been in Tasmania for 40 million years, and Cradle mountain is where you can see some of the best patches of fagus that are easily accessible. People come from all over to photograph the brilliant yellows, oranges and reds of the leaves as they turn in the cooler months.

Cradle mountain is stunning in winter with the snow. There are just so many things to see and do around Cradle Mountain, you’ll be spoilt for choice. Some people believe it is too cold in winter, but what is better than being rugged up outside in the crisp air seeing all the beautiful sites before coming back to sit in front of the fire with a glass of local Pinot wine.

If we are quiet in winter, then we have a lot to do. There are the renovations to the hen house to stop them escaping. We also need to replace or fix some rotten areas of the floorboards of the house. We had to completely redo our grease trap, so the little garden area to the side of the house has been totally dug up; now we have the opportunity to redo this garden. We are going to take out a couple of the sycamore trees while this area is such a mess…then make it into a secret garden.

Additionally, when we have the time, we need to re-paint the deck and railings, renovate the outbuilding into a toilet for visitors, decide what to do with our old barn in terms of renovations and work on getting a shed built off the back of the stables.

The list keeps getting longer and longer, so feel free to come and visit our Cradle Mountain B&B and you can see all of our progress while relaxing and enjoying that Pinot.