End of another week

Well, The Cook has taken the kids for a little break and I’m here looking after the place on my own. It was a frenzy of massive proportions the two weeks before she left. We had to spray 500 over the paddocks, get the cattle in and all the general organisation of going away.

 

We managed to do it with about five minutes to spare and the loss of only one finger – just kidding mum!

Since they have been away I’ve managed to reduce our poultry numbers somewhat. I made a pond for the ducks – it’s rather deep so the ducks and geese can have a good time diving and swimming. I didn’t realise that the roosters would try swimming as well! I’ve lost two so far and have to only open the pond when I’m in the chook pen, I feel like a life guard – and even with me standing there I’ve still had to drag a couple of roosters out of the water. Roosters aren’t the only things I’ve lost, three ducks have died and I wasn’t sure why – but now I know – the Turkey has been standing on them trying to mate, so know I have had to lock up the turkey, until spring is over. I must track down a hen for him in the next week or so.

Sadly that’s not all, I went out to feed Archer tonight and found he had died in his sleep, he was stretched out in his sunny spot and had just gone to sleep and not woken up. So tomorrow I need to dig him a great big hole in the flower garden. No more trips to the pub old fella!


Archer, in blue collar, Penny and Shadow



I had planned to do a lot this week – apart from the duck pond, but I spent a far bit of time collecting acorns in Cooma and sorting out animals. The horses led me on a merry chase down the river – my boots are still drying out, and I’ve lost the cattle out the back again.

I have to try and shear George this week – with the hand shears, he's overdue and it should be fun being his first time.

I got a great big bite from a pig this morning whilst I was feeding out the bread. It’s left an impressive mark, a bruise and drew blood. Luckily she got me on the elbow joint and not the arm proper, I think she would have broken it if she had got me on another part of the arm.

Had my first snake contact on Sunday, I lifted a box to make way for some feed and it slithered out at me, I lifted my skirts and ran screaming like a girl to the house, the snake was quickly moved on and I don’t think it’ll be bothering me again this year.

We’ve had a pig napping incident as well. Five pigs in all were taken, all small one’s – don’t know how they did it. But the Stock Squad found them bought them home – in the back of a ute. I’ve had to keep them separated from all the other pigs for the last six weeks. I also had to put tags in their ears – that was an experience, the boys helped, they tackled the pigs to the ground whilst I fixed the tag. The first one was fine, didn’t make a sound – we were all worried because we had never done it before. The second one squealed wildly and made us a little shy about doing the rest – but after five minutes we had them tagged and a month later they are still in – thank heavens.

So, this coming weekend I’ve got fencing and weeds to spray, I need to fence off the duck pond – that’ll need a roof as well and general tidy up – never a slow moment here. I need to check the Cooks garden as well, the days have been lovely and warm and I may need to water some things.

I love this rain

Another case of starting to write then getting side tracked, taking a detour, heading the wrong way down a one way street and finally finding I’m in the wrong postcode. As everybody knows; sometimes we take things in life for granted – things like, you never get to good drops of rain in a row, the river doesn’t flood twice in a year or washing machines. Follow so far?

Now I’ve already written one blog entry, last night, tried to upload it but the connection was playing up. So I ended thinking I’d wait until today to up load it. I should have saved it first I guess, I thought I did – and well in a way I did, but I saved it to the Cooks USB stick which she has taken of to work with her today, it’s no good to me there.

So what’s been happening down on the farm? We’ve had a little bit of rain, almost 40mm on Sunday, very pleasant. The river flooded again, which was good for the soul after all the dry we’ve suffered lately. It’s really nice to look out over the river from the house and see water flowing and to hear it at night as you nod off to sleep.

The Cook asked me on Sunday afternoon if we should move the pump, I had a look at the rain gauge and it only had about six mils of rain in it, so I said I didn’t see the need. About 11:30pm I had another look and there was 26mm in the gauge and the water was flowing rather well down the drive and in the gully behind the house, so I thought I should check the pump. When I got down to the river the water was turning brown and the flow had increased, so I decided I should move the pump – the fact the pump was in ankle deep water also had a little bearing on my decision. Unfortunately for me the Cook had stuck the foot valve in a bucket (which is the right thing to do) and the bucket and foot valve had snagged on a root in the river. This caused a little bit of swearing and some disingenuous statements being made about the pump – did I mention the Cook was sound asleep in bed whilst all this was going on. The water was awfully cold, and I managed to easily disengage the foot valve from the bucket – unfortunately the bucket was left behind. And of course the first the thing the cook asked was – “did you get my bucket?” oh dear……………

So by Monday morning the river was flowing rather well, we’d had over 38mm by then. The Cook was up early and decided that seeing I didn’t let Archer of the chain for a run the night before she would let him off for a run – the river was flooded so he couldn’t go far, town is on the other side, he won’t swim that – yeah right!!!! So the Cook is foraging around the garden, playing with her ducks, I think she was collecting snails for them. She gets so carried away she forgets about Archer. I was sitting inside having a cuppa and some home made plum jam on toast, I could hear her calling him and thought he must have gone up the back some where chasing Kangaroos.

After about half an hour I decided I should take a drive and check out what he was up to. I figured he may have tried to walk into town and make his way to the pub – so I went off in search. There was no sign of him along the river so I thought I should have a quick look in town in case he had gone across the river. It had risen about 2metres and was flowing rather well. You would think an old dog like him would not even try such a thing, but there he was soaking wet trotting towards the pub – with out his collar. He was rather perturbed to see me and resentfully jumped in the car for the ride home.

We spent Monday removing the growing hedgerows of Horehound from along the electric fence. It was so thick that it was shorting out the fence constantly. After a couple of hours work we had everything back in order. Tiberius, our 400kg boar acts like a little puppy when we do anything in his paddock and as usual he was all over us like a rash. I still get a little nervous when he’s so playful – at one point he almost pushed the Cook head first onto the fence with a great hip bump (this of course was serious and I couldn’t laugh on threat of an eventful and totally painful death), I swear I could see him smile as well.

I also managed to get the score of the year! A brand new, second hand fruit and wine press – for $100! I saw it on all classifieds and thought why not? I was going to get a new one earlier in the year but they were over $700, and that was for one half as big and no where near the quality. I’m very happy with it and plan on collecting some apples this afternoon to try it out – was going to be Monday, but I took another nap.

Land Mines

Piglets having a play

Well, you live and learn. I’m never chasing a fox in bare feet again. I was asleep on Saturday morning, it was about 3:30am, very cold but the half moon was bright. I awoke to the sound of the ducks going off. I jumped out of bed and with little thought to my own well being raced outside. I opened the door to the mud room and raced to the back door – this is where the dogs sleep. Unfortunately for me, the Cook had fed one of them some left over curry and in return the dog had left a land mine in the middle of the door way. So bare footed I stepped right into it! As a kid we used to jump from warm cow pat to warm cow pat when getting the milking cows in, but this warm squishy feeling just isn’t the same – and it stinks. So I chased off the fox and returned to the house for an earlier then usual morning shower. The kids came in later in the morning and told me to be careful of the booby trap at the back door, I told them what had happened - they’re still laughing. Luckily there are no photo’s!

We did a raid on the Canberra “burbs” for more acorns on Saturday which was very successful. Mind you most of them are now gone because we’ve been feeding them out to the pigs for breakfast. Saturday morning was Soccer, on the way in we saw two of the weirdest things, the first was an enormous murder of crows on a oats paddock. There must have been in excess of two hundred birds; and secondly, a tidings of magpies with about eighty birds. I had talk to a bird fancier about what I saw and apparently there is a little understood phenomenon of small black crows gathering together in the highlands at this time of year.

I had a feed pickup on Sunday and spent three hours waiting on the side of the road for the guy to turn up. So little else was achieved.

How many is enough?

A slight misunderstanding left me with no workers last night or this morning – which was a real pain. I didn’t get into the house until 9pm last night after feeding and preparing the feeds for the morning. The Cook was at work, and I could half sense the smugness in her voice when she heard what had happened – BUT I STILL LOVE YOU…..

It’s our wedding anniversary in a few days and I still haven’t worked out what I’ll get her. It’s only been twenty years so it’s not a big one. I’m thinking about getting her a new broom or maybe a ……- better stop there, I don’t want to give away any secrets.

I hope the kids are back tonight – they do a good share of the morning and evening chores and you sure do notice when they aren’t there. Of course it’s Tuesday so I had to pick up bread this morning. It was raining when I left home, not a lot, but enough to keep things fresh.

Ben starts soccer again in May, which means Saturday mornings are pretty well written off. But it’s the only sport he likes so it’s good to see him doing something active and in a team environment.

There are so many things to do sometimes I don’t know where to start – we should have had more kids! I can’t seem to talk the Cook into doing more child bearing, which is a shame. I’m sure she’s not past it yet. (I’m going to be killed for this – just wait and see). Nine would probably be a good number, then we’d have three for out side chores, three for farm work and three for house work. I could go to the pub! I wonder if I took the Cook to the pub?

Speaking of the pub – you guessed it; Archer ended up there on Monday. The Cook was supposed to go to the Field Day on the TSR; unfortunately she let the dog off and he did a runner. She found him on the front veranda of the pub half an hour later – he’d obviously forgotten it was closed on Mondays now.

There is another Field Day on this Friday across the river. I should go; it’s for Friends of the Grasslands and local grasslands expert David Eddies is speaking. I think the theme for this one is sustainable native pastures so it will probably be of some benefit.

Down the pub - AGAIN

Things are a little hectic today – it’s been windy and dry. The Temperature has crashed, we had a high of about 15 Deg C today, but otherwise a beautiful Autumn day.

I found Archer the dog on the veranda of the Pub this morning – you would think he’d know by now that it doesn’t open until much later. He was there at 6:30am, I think he’s got a serious problem!

The Cook is on a course and I’m off to pick up feed, a never ending job. Luckily we finally have our pig brand organised and all things porky will shortly swing into action.

Pub Crawling

Busy one today – dog tore off to the pub again. I’ve had him on the dry the last few nights and I think it just got too much for him. I’m just lucky he can’t carry a six pack all the way home. I suspect he has a stash under the bridge.

There are a lot of rabbits about at the moment; they’ve eaten a lot of the carrots and vegetables that were left in the garden. We had two great carrots eaten down to ground level over the weekend and others just completely disappeared.

I managed to keep the pigs in at last. The Cook watched one go under the piece of fence I fixed the other night and witnessed a lot of squealing and grunting as the pig negotiated both the electric and barbed wire. Of course keeping them within their paddocks is as much for their own good as ours – they could get into allsorts of trouble if they started wandering off to different places.

I didn’t tell you that the Cook bought some more chickens on the weekend. I was almost in Canberra on Saturday when the phone rang and it was the Cook. She had the Saturday paper and found some chickens advertised – would I mind having a look at them? I had nothing to do and so took up the challenge. I arrived at the lady’s house – a very flash house, and was taken out the back to the fancy chook house. She had already sold the ones I liked, so I had a look at a couple of Golden Laced Wynndotte. It was a lovely chicken and had a chick, which I had to take if I took the chicken - sure why not? I also ended up with a rooster and two Pencil Laced Wyndottes. I needed a couple of boxes to carry them home so I arranged with the lady to come back later and pick them up – which was fine.

I took Ben back and he, being the chicken whisperer that he is, rounded up the chickens and boxed them up for the trip home. So now we have a few more chickens to add to the foxes menu. I saw a fox on Saturday morning whilst I was driving around town looking for the dog. It was in the neighbours Lucerne field across the river from the house.