Bredbo Valley View farm - providing quality education in Permaculture and sustainable living practices.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Girl - boy - girl - boy - boy- girl - girl - girl


It was a weekend like no other – hot and dry. Okay so it was like all the rest. What did I say about the pig – Friday night she had 10 piglets, all pretty healthy and well. She has 16 nipples!!! One of the weaners from the last lot of piglets was suckling on her last night. When I tried to take him away – he weights nearly 20kg, when the damned thing squealed she came after me and tried to take a leg off.

Archie decide to talk a walk down to the Bredbo Primary School – I think he had ideas of becoming the teachers pet.

I had to take the kids into town on Saturday, I was just dropping them off when the Cook calls me on the mobile – There’s a snake in the chicken box, what am I going to do about it. By the description it would appear it was a Tiger Snake, nothing too poisonous. I told her to run down the house and grab the camera – a shot of a tiger snake eating a chook would be great for the Blog. So she ducked off , and grabbed the camera – I didn’t have to ask twice! When she arrived back the snake had gone – I got a text message “It’s worse – Snake has gone, don’t know where”. I asked Ben if he had fed the chickens, he said “yes”. I asked him if he did the ones in the box – he said “yes”. I asked him if he had seen the snake in the box – he just looked at me and said “what snake?”

Poor little George. He lost his tail on the weekend. We had him ringed when we sheared so we did expect it. Ben and I were following him up from the garden when it dropped off right in front of us. Ben stopped and starred opened mouthed, Shadow ducked in from the side and grabbed it in her mouth – she wanted it for breakfast! The Cook got totally grossed out and told me to catch the dog, get the tail and bury it – I’ll still laughing, but not out loud.

Sunday morning we found the front gate to the TSR closed and Mia the horse locked in the road paddock. Luckily the gate to the highway was shut. We have no idea what was going on, but the gate was latched so it had to be a person.

Sunday afternoon I was home alone building another pig shelter. I unloaded a pile of posts out of the trailer I had picked up in Cooma. The truck was in the way so I decided to move it for convenience. As I drove forward I heard an almighty squeal, I thought I’d run over a dozen pigs. I jumped out and looked under the Jeep – nothing, then I looked under the trailer.

One of the big pigs must have crawled under the trailer and gone to sleep whilst I was unloading – I didn’t see it. Now it was starring at me from between the axels, well and truly stuck. I tried taking off the trailers wheels but the pig couldn’t fit out the gap. So I tried jacking the trailer up, but I couldn’t get it high enough. Finally I managed to get a long log and a stump and lever the axel high enough for him to escape – with out even a mark. I went back to move the Jeep – and the fuel pump had stopped again, another hour of fluffing about before I could get it moving and finish the job.
The Cook came home and asked what I had got up too – “Not a lot” I replied

PIctures aren't working again - I'll upload later.

1 comment:

The Duck Herder said...

Hello Martyn
You have been officially unlurked! Thanks for recomending my little blog on to the farmblog site. btw I love your blog and have been enjoying muchly the going-ons in Bredbo and surrounds. We probably know lots of folks in common.

If it makes you feel any better, a huge brown snake has decided the back corner of our suburban block under the rosemary bush between the glass house and fluffy chook house is perfect for him (he must be into permaculture, organics and suburban food production as well - how sweet) It may have just been the mice though. Anyway, it keeps things interesting and I suspect he is a very clever fellow as he has managed to scare the crap out of me a few times while still avoiding all the brid netting traps I have set for him.

thanks again
lets hope some rain heads our way sooner rather than later

the duck herder