IT WAS great to have Canadian friends visit our farm this week.

We had so much fun working together on all sorts of projects.

The guys worked with our bees, checking on our current hives, and setting bee traps just in case there were any swarms in the area.

We unloaded a ute-load of sand from their property, and filled their ute with rocks dug from our paddocks.

I love that we can share our surplus with each other to make our properties more productive.

We girls harvested arm-loads of pink and white yarrow from my gardens.

They are so beautiful, with cheery flowers and the most delicate, feathery leaves.

Yarrow is such a wonderful herb, used for thousands of years to staunch bleeding when applied to a wound, fight fevers and aid digestion when drunk as a tea, and it is also soothing for skin irritations when added to bath water.

In medieval times people would make quilted caps stuffed with yarrow and lavender to soothe headaches.

We spent ages on the shady back veranda, stripping leaves and flowers into big bowls before spreading them on a large tray to dry.

After cold drinks and a lunch of home-made bread rolls filled with our very own molasses-cured, smoked ham, we went outside again, moving trailers, loading stuff for the dump, and shifting the smoker to a better spot.

It's so lovely to have friends come and help us do the things that we can do by ourselves, but that are so much easier with assistance.

It was a great day.

We were all tuckered out by the end, but it was that good kind of tired that comes from working together on good things.

After they left, a fierce storm blew in, knocking out our power and sending down a torrent of rain and hail.

Bear and I cuddled on the veranda and watched it fall.

It was cosy and companionable out there, smelling the rain-washed air, watching our paddocks soak up the water, enjoying the novelty of not having to do anything or be anywhere.