Is there an animal in the house?

I keep finding hairs on my key board – I think they are mine, I wonder if I’m losing my hair? I hope not, I’d probably have a pretty ordinary looking head. There’s no water left in the river, a few small ponds further up, but nothing we can pump from for the house. I’ll have to get a backhoe in to dig us a hole in the sand in the next week or so.

There was supposed to be someone turn up and take a mob of pigs away on Saturday – but they never showed up. Don’t you hate that, I spent all Saturday morning waiting for these people and not even a phone call. I finally plucked up the courage to take a look at he oats yesterday, that’s looking pretty sad as well. If, and I mean IF, we get the forecasted rain tomorrow and the next day it may pull through, if not the oats will only be good for grazing.

Nearly all of the dams are dry, some have only mud and a puddle; the rest are just dust. It really only took a couple of weeks for things to turn around, one day the river was flowing and the dams half full, then a couple of days of wind and hot weather and it’s all changed. We have a portable tank and some troughs for the stock if things get any worse – but hopefully it won’t come to that.

Everything else is going fine, saw an enormous brown snake up at the feed shed yesterday, scared the hell out of me. I cleaned the shed up after that so I could see the floor. Goats keep escaping up to the rocks – they love it up there. Have a bloke from town coming out this week, hopefully, to shoot some foxes. I was told he shot fourteen across the river from us on the weekend, unfortunately they have to go and there is no other choice.

The Cook – god bless her, went out to check the sheep last night – any excuse to ride one of the horses. She came back with a fly blown ewe under her arm and dumped it on the back lawn/dust bowl. She ended up half shaving the poor thing from the waist back and smothered it in purple spray. Goodness knows what the sheep was thinking? Anyway, Shadow the dog got kicked out of the wood room and the sheep took her bed for the night. It seemed ok this morning – but now the animals in the house/barn are getting bigger! And to top it all off, I don’t think she washed her hands before she cooked dinner. On the up side however, the Neem oil has appeared to work on the sheep’s lice problem.