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

Monday, October 20, 2008

The Jeep is dead - long live the Jeep!


The Cook was looking back over the Blog on the weekend and quips “there is always something happening isn’t there!” This week end was nothing unusual. I arrived home Friday night and passed the Cook at the gate – it’s nearly dark and she’s off to work. “The bull is down on Buzz’s lucerne paddock over the back, you’ll have to go move him onto the river for the night.” Right, I don’t know Buzz’s lucerne paddock, where the gates are, or where in the paddock the bull is. So off I go on another little adventure in the darkness. I get down to the paddock and the bull is standing by the road – lucky me, I chase him around for an hour until I stumble across a gate and I move him on – ever notice how lucerne paddocks are always full of snakes! Kids are sitting down eating dinner when I get home – Harry couldn’t wait so they helped themselves.

I had to go on down to the oats paddock and do some fencing first up Saturday, by the time I’d trodden on a couple of Brown Snakes and chased a couple with the shovel I was feeling a little lonely. I fixed the fence and headed back to the house. The whole time I was there, the bull was watching me from across the river.

A fellow was supposed to be coming to look at a boar, but he never showed up. I missed the land care meeting as well, but I had a chance to catch up on a few things around the pig yards.

We evicted the piglets from the house; I don’t think they were too impressed. They keep coming up to me and pull my trouser legs for attention.

Sunday morning we were up and at it early – Murrumbateman Field Days. I was up at the crack, about 5:30am to get everything fed and watered so we could meet the Cook in town. We hurried off at about 7:00am but didn’t get far. As we came up to the gate I said to the kids “Car seems to be running a little ruff”, everything seemed OK at that point. About 2km down the road everything stopped – crap!!!! I noticed smoke coming from under the bonnet and thought – crap!!!!! I waited for the Cook to ring – I didn’t have any credit on my mobile, silly me. Our NRMA membership had run out as well.

After about half an hour I decided to try a trick I’d learnt in the Army about moving a vehicle out of danger – and to my surprise it worked. We managed to roll back into town and out the other side until we could turn across the paddock and roll down to the driveway – brilliant, the car won’t be stuck on the side of the road. We got to the house and rang the Cook and filled her in. She’d only had the Jeeps door re-attached the day before. I think this time the Jeep is well and truly dead.

So finally about 11:00am we arrived a the Field Day, had a look around, bought a book on Sheep Basics, and spoke to a guy about irrigation. We headed off home about 3:00pm to do some sheep mustering.

We needed to move the sheep up to the yards to spray them for lice and get them out into the paddock. They have de-wormed and are ready to take on the African Love Grass. The Cook and the two boys haven’t had a lot of experience with sheep, but they love getting into it and having a go. We got them into the yard no problems and the spraying went well. The Cook and Harry got bowled over a couple of times (I can laugh now they’re not here) but apart from that it went smoothly. The sheep are now out in the big paddock happily eating away.

On the way into the yards we picked up the goats, which ended up pretty handy as they led the sheep into the yards. Poor old Pricilla has lost her mate however, with Sheepy leaving the comfort of the house yard to flock with her own kind.

Once the sheep were done there was only getting all the pigs back into their own paddocks left to do. Of course when ever we go out the fence goes off and everything goes everywhere – I should have quessed.

No comments: