Now it rains

It was a little wet and windy today – just what we needed. The day started off slow but soon with kids galloping off to school and pigs to feed everything regained its momentum. The Cook had a well deserved lay in and I looked after the animals. We’ve recently reduced our numbers by about a dozen pigs and it’s made a big difference. Most of the ones that went were bigger pigs as well, so the feed is going a lot farther.

I spent the remainder of the morning after feeding dodging the Cook and her jobs – she was on the look out to put me to ‘gainful’ employment. As there is nothing to eat in the house until we can get to the shops again I headed up to the back 500 acres to have a look for weeds. Of course I found more than enough to be depressing. I haven’t been right up in the back corner adjacent to the railway line much, there’s a lot of tussock coming across the tracks onto our place, luckily it shouldn’t be too hard to get under control (famous last words). I was also trying to find any trace of our second Jersey Bull – no luck there, I’ll have to go see the neighbour and see if he’s seen him.

On the way back I came via the back of the hill behind the house, I ran into the Wedge Tail Eagles who were hunting rabbits in the grass ,I managed to get a couple of quick pics before they disappeared over the ridge. I also spotted a couple of new native flowers, I still can’t identify them – they weren’t flowering properly so I may go back on the weekend to have another look.

I don't know if there was something in the water here but some of the animals are a little odd today. The kitten thinks it's a lion and has been pouncing on anything that moves in the house from behind cover - and after seeing snakes it's not a pleasant feeling to have a kitten sink it's claws into your ankle. The fat dog has been doing that crazy dog thing running around with her tail between her legs all over the lawn. Fatso has been following me around all day - getting in my way when ever it is convenient for her and lastly George - he's joning in where ever he can and being a real dag.

When the boys arrived home they were put strait to work cleaning up the shearing shed, earlier in the day I’d found a blue birds egg on the grass up there and left it on a table. Anyway Ben found another couple and bought them back to the house. He’s quite the survivalist and pestered the cook to be able to break one of the eggs open and see what it look like inside. I was thinking it’d be a half grown chic or that it would be rotten. But low and behold it was just a normal egg, Ben asked if you could eat it, to which I responded that you could if it was a survival situation – so he wanted to try it. Out came the frying pan and Ben went to work cooking his egg, once finished he and Harry divided it and put it to the test – they both ate their share and decided it tasted just like ........chicken!

By torch light

The tap that couldn't be found

I’m no plumber, in fact, I have problems flushing the toilet – just ask the Cook. On Tuesday I had to repair the broken pipe on the side o the house, which was made harder by arriving home in the dark.

The Trench behind the Cooks Jongles

As I’ve said before our house is more of a ruin then accommodation, and finding things like pipes and buried taps is a real hit and miss affair. So after an hours worth of digging, some tool throwing and just a little swearing I managed to find the buried pipe and tap in the dark. I must have made a bit of mess because the kids came in the next morning and told me the pigs had been rooting around in the back yard and it was totally destroyed.

Anyway, by the time I found the tap and turned it off it was really dark and I still had to get the pipe fixed. It took me a while to work out how to get the broken bit of poly pipe out of the old fitting, luckily I remembered I had a gas torch I’d bought to fix the copper pipe. I went around to the shed and grabbed the torch and called out to the kids to bring some matches.

As usual in our house, mention matches and Ben is the first one there. He was busting to have a go with the torch so I let him have a small turn. He gets right into it – can’t wait until he’s big enough to weld. I was surprised that the torch actual worked and I had the pipe fixed in no time – I’ve even been back to check and it’s still not leaking. Of course I will have broken something else somewhere – plumbing has never gone that smoothly at our place……

I was out early this morning and noticed the Wedge Tails out soaring the heavens. One of them looked a little odd and when he landed I decided to have a look and see what he was up too. When I got to the place I saw him land, down the road embankment I almost walked right in to hi. He was sitting in a depression munching on road kill. He sprung up the side of the embankment where I could get a good look at him. I don’t know if he was malting but he had not a single tail feather, which is why he looked so strange flying.

The Eagle on top of the embankment

We have moved the pig with piglets and haven’t had anymore go missing thank goodness. But because of the small number of piglets feeding off the mum they are all rollie pollie fat and full of energy. I watched them this morning playing with a piece of cloth in the straw, they where having a great time. Rosie the mum is holding her condition well too and I think we've finally hit on the best way to look after the sows.

und out yesterday, from the local paper, that a fellow I knew down the road had died suddenly. He and his wife ran a small farm with a great orchard and winery, they grew the most delicious cherries and made some splendid wines. Peter was a very generous man and had been going to teach me to make sausages Hungarian style and was also going to do some smoking for us. Their farm is up for sale now and I’m not sure what his wife is going to do after it’s sold. It’s sad to see such great characters like the both of them go – I only wish I had been around longer to hear more of his stories and learn some of his sausage making secrets.
There’s a Bee Association meeting tonight – I’m off to that. There was also a NSF meeting but I had to skip that. Hopefully I’ll have something for the Blog tomorrow

Road kill.

Today I’m a bit of a celebrity – at least in the eye’s of a couple of people here. I met two blokes from the PNG highlands this morning, their here doing a job on the conservation and heritage listing of the Kokoda Track. We got talking and I mentioned I had almost 100 pigs. Their eye’s opened as wide as dinner plates and they nearly fell over, one of them told me I was the riches man he’d met – if only he knew!! I suppose the Cook would have put him strait.

Road kill has infiltrated my life today. Luckily we haven’t had to resort to eating it, although I am cooking tonight. But, back to the topic; a couple of weeks ago I noticed somebody had hit a rather large black pig, on the Monaro Highway, just outside Canberra. Yesterday, about ten kilometres further down the road, another big black pig has been hit. Obviously it had done a significant amount of damage to the vehicle that had hit it due to the wreckage at the scene. Both of these pigs where killed on the southern slope of dry gullies that cross the highway. The pig I saw the other day was also on the southern side of the river. I don’t know if this is significant, I suppose this may be to do with moving along the warmer ground.

There have also been a significant number of foxes killed on the road lately – I drive a lot, I need something to do. Autumn is the dispersal season for foxes; the young foxes which have grown over summer period are pushed away by their mothers. They move out to find there own hunting areas and territory – which is why they tend to cross roads and come in contact with humans more then other times of the year.

As I headed down the road this morning, counting dead foxes, I was lucky enough to come across our local wedge tail family having breakfast on the side of the road. I tried to quickly turn around and get a good picture of them – but a truck from the sand quarry was right behind me and frightened them off. They only move a hundred metres into the tree line. I took a couple of pictures, but without a good zoom lenses the quality is a little shabby.

Thanks for all the comments, I don’t always get time to respond. Also, hello and welcome to those who follow our Blog.

Eagle eye'd

Pretty hectic last night – the Cook was on a holiday, with a sleep over at a friends tossed in. Hopefully she’ll be back fresh and full of life ready to get stuck in! We floundered without her.

After getting home and having the traditional – “it’s over 35Deg C out there hour long nap” I jumped into feeding and watering. We had to catch a couple of small pigs a bloke had ordered out Bungendore way, then it was cooking dinner, bathing kids, making lunches, ironing uniforms and what ever else I had forgotten.

We did get about 2mm of rain – in a storm. The rain was cold as ice and, as you would expect, only lasted as long as it took us to feed the animals. Better then nothing!!

The two eagles are back and where flying low around the front of the property in the afternoon. I think they had an eye on the chooks, but ended up moving off to the north.

So I was up at day break to take the pigs into Fyshwick (BTW – I don’t make these names up, in case your wondering). There they were picked up and I went off to collect the bread.

Thanks for all the comments on the Blog every body!!

More to the story

I didn’t have a lot of time before and I missed out an important part of the story – Once I saw how high the river was I ran inside, remember it was about 6:15am, the poor cook was still asleep. I poked my head into the bedroom and asked her to give me a hand – thinking back on it now, I don’t think she was too impressed. We waddled down to the river, me dressed for town and her dressed for bed, I grabbed the end of the black pipe and gave it a yank to see if the pump was still attached – nope nothing there! Then we realised it was the irrigation pipe not the pipe to the house. So I rummaged around in the grass and finally located the house pipe, gave it a yank, and to my great relief felt a hint of resistance.

The Cook waded into the river, in her PJ’s - water well above her gumboots (it’s a child friendly Blog, I can’t write what she actually said at this point, but apparently the water was very cold!) and dragged the pump out of the water. What a morning.

She’s gone off to Cooma now, food shopping for tomorrow. At least she has something to tell her mates about if she runs into anyone.

Oh, yeah. The Eagles came back to the house yesterday. Luckily Ben was around and managed to lock up the Ducks and Chickens before they could grab a takeaway. I was talking to one of the knowledgeable guy’s her at work yesterday and he told me that the dark eagles are older birds, maybe hunting is getting hard for these birds.

I picked up my camera as well – very nice! This is my first picture – outside my window, a white faced heron (taken through a window so not 100%).

Thunder but no rain

I woke to the sound of thunder this morning - unfortunately the storms missed us but it did rain elsewhere on the Monaro. Being Tuesday it was bread day so there wasn’t time to stand around and enjoy the tropical morning. Harry's at a sleepover so there’s picking him up as well.

Last night we ended up with a bit of a mess. There was a calf in the pigs paddock, pigs in the garden with the goats, sheep in the horse paddock and cattle in the sheep paddock – and nobody knows why. It’s probably good it hasn’t rained, the sheep are being mustered today and hopefully crutched. It’s rained every time we have wanted to do this – well maybe, I should pay more attention!

Trundling down the road this morning I spotted my two eagle pals sitting in a tree over looking a lovely flock of Border ewe’s and lamb’s – they were kind enough to pose for a photo, so I obliged. If you didn't know, you can click on the images to make them bigger.

BTW - I get my new camera tomorrow - can hardly wait!!! it's a Sony a350 with twin lense kit.