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

Saturday, January 3, 2009

The Shear Ignominy


Well we finally talked somebody into doing some shearing - not all the sheep but the most needy. The rest will be done in a fortnight. One of the Rams was flyblown on the belly but the rest were OK.


I found the flyblown one down under a tree this morning and thought I could give him a clip with the hand shears - I now have even more respect for the old timers. Those shears are so hard to use! you have no idea if you've never tried. It took me an hour just to get through the matted wool along his back - The Cook ringing someone we know and graphically describing what I was doing was what secured us a shearer - thank god.


Earlier in the day I had gone into town to pay some bills and get a hair cut - boring stuff really. Whilst I was away the Cook and our brood fed the pigs, lamb, calf and chickens - by the time I arrived home they were all flat out in the lounge room watching DVD's.


We had a family measure session tonight - Harry has grown another two inches since October (he's only about three inches shorter then me!), Ben has grown about an inche; no wonder none of their clothes fit them.


The garden has really suffered in the winds we've been having. We had to use the large water tank on the trailer today in an attempt to resuscitate the potatoes - we put almost 750lts of water on them today more tomorrow, hopefully it will work. I've been watering whats left of the pumpkins by hand which is quite laborious.


The Cook has managed to germinate a number of native seeds into seedlings. We're hoping to be able to plant these in Autumn. None of the seeds that we planted with Greening Australia seem to have germinated - I need to have a closer look at them tomorrow.

No comments: