It’s been a mental weather month - a wet month, a dry month a windy month and a warm, sunny month. Spring is just around the corner and as winter struggles to retain a hold every day is different. Today is different from yesterday and tomorrow will be different from today. It’s been a pretty windless last 18 months but the last couple of weeks have been quite vile. I hate wind, especially strong wind. Wind seems to activate negative mental states in me. I become angry or depressed or moody or frustrated. Whatever hormone causes PMS the wind seems to activate. I don’t have PMS though, instead of I have POWS - Pissed Off Wind Syndrome.
Guests Aplenty
Matt and Bron came for the first weekend in August. They helped us move animals all around the block and it was at times fun but overall quite exhausting and incredibly muddy. Amy’s owners came to pick her up and stayed an hour or so for coffee. They were a very nice couple and we hope Amy is pregnant. Arthur was certainly very keen to do his bit while she was with us.
Amy reluctantly went home – judging by the way she tried to leap out of the horse float after being shut in. I felt quite sad for her actually. She certainly had great fun digging up Arthur’s paddock and seemed to take a shine to him pretty quickly.
Shortly after Amy left we moved Joy in with Arthur.
Joy had clearly been very lonely without her piglets so it was great to able to give her some company to take her mind off things. We moved the cows to a new paddock and then we spent several hours moving both sheep flocks. Moving Herb and his flock to the bottom paddock was no problem but getting Spike and his girls from Arthur’s paddock to Joy’s old paddock proved to be an absolute mission. We had to get them, including Treacle’s 2-day old lamb past Phyllis and her mob and through the next gate into Joy’s old paddock. After a few false starts and Matt getting trapped in some deep mud, we eventually got the girls and the lamb through the gate. Spike however refused to go through after the piglets rushed him.
For the next hour we chased Spike round and round the paddock. After a few rounds of the paddock I was prepared to call it quits until Spike had calmed down. Not so Aaron, once again he adopted his ‘no animal is going to get the better of me’ attitude and he chased Spike until the poor ram almost collapsed with exhaustion, eventually staggering with reluctance through the gate to the girls.
We decided we all needed a break at that point, coming back later to try get them out the gate and onto the driveway. It proved another fruitless chase until I declared it pointless, at which point we fed them some nuts, as there wasn’t any grass, and left them for the night.
That evening we had another divine pork roast and then we went outside and lit a bonfire and toasted marshmallows. Of course it wasn’t long before the rain came along and put it out so that was the end of that. The next morning I headed down by myself with a bucket of sheep nuts. I opened the gate and called the sheep over. Spike and Bailey came straight through the gate and onto the drive but Treacle refused to run her lamb past the loudly squealing piglets on the other side of the fence. I followed Spike and Bailey up the drive and shut them in just past the pond. There they were immediately greeted by their parents in the bottom paddock.
I proceeded then to try get Treacle out but we’d get close and then the piglets would scare her again. Eventually Aaron appeared and we had her out within about 10 minutes.
With the flock back together we took them up to the shed and into Stanley’s paddock. We breathed a sigh of relief and went back up to the house. 30 minutes later we came down the drive again and discovered that Spike and his girls had gone through 2 sets of electric fences to reach their parents. It was pointless trying to separate them so we didn’t. They seem happy enough together, even though Herb and Spike have had the odd set to, so we’ll leave them as is.
4 days later Jay and Bex arrived for the weekend so we could spend 3 days in Melbourne. They were originally only going to stay 5 days but their next 2 host visits fell through so they stayed until today.
It was their 4th visit and we already have a 5th one lined up for the start of September if Jay lands a local fencing job. They arrived as strangers but are close to being family now considering the amount of time they’ve spent with us.
CouchSurfer Tara from Ireland was also due to stay for most of this last weekend but her hitchhiking didn’t pan out as well as she hoped so she didn’t arrive until yesterday afternoon and then had to leave this morning. What a shame. She proved to be an absolutely lovely woman.
She is so happy and friendly and passionate about life and eventually moving to New Zealand. Her interests are very much inline with Aaron’s and she is possibly the first person to have looked at Aaron’s back tattoos with an absolute appreciation of his shrine to Terry Brooks.
Quite frankly, if I wasn’t Aaron’s wife I’d be saying “My god, she’s your ideal woman. She’s perfect for you. Ask her out”. It was a strange situation, although not the least bit uncomfortable as I liked her immensely. But perhaps if she had stayed longer I would have felt different.
You'll Get A Kick Out Of This One
We now have 5 lambs on the block and they spend all their time playing together. It’s lovely to see. All the sheep seem happy together as one flock but despite best efforts to rotate their paddocks properly they refuse to pay the electric wiring any heed and are currently just go wherever they please. The lambs have even discovered how to get out of their paddock going they can graze around the pond area completely free of any fencing.
Our plans to reduce our flock have once again altered. Now we have a merged flock we think that maybe we will send Spike to the butcher and keep his dad Herb. Herb is unrelated to any of the girls and so it makes sense to keep him. We were going to sell Herb and Thyme but no one’s buying Arapawa at present so it’s not worth it.
After our dramas with Tulip’s hooves Thyme developed the same problem. We brought the sheep into the yard while we had Matt and Bron helping us with the moving. The rain was coming down in buckets but we carried on. Unfortunately I had forgotten to buy any tools for hoof trimming and we were stuck with a pair of blunt secateurs and fabric shears to work with.
Aaron had to do the catching and holding and I had to do the cutting. The mud and rain made things infinitely more difficult and I ended up accidentally cutting Thyme and Tulip’s hooves too close. It was a messy job and they will need tidying up by a professional as soon as spring arrives and we get some dry weather.
Herb was the 3rd for the trim but he proved to be a seriously strong kicker. I had his foot held tight but muddy hands and wet wool are hard to grip and he eventually got his leg free and kicked. His hoof contacted hard with the top of my hand and I immediately lost the ability to use my hand. We had to abandon the hoof trimming.
The pain was intense and my hand swelled beautifully over the next hour as we tried to carry on doing other things. Eventually Matt insisted I ice it and so we went up to the house and I whacked a freezer block on it. I was a mess. My left hand was useless and my right arm was aching from a muscle I’d strained the week before.
Add to that the sciatica from my dodgy hip and I spent the evening complaining how age was creeping up on me and robbing me of my mobility. However, by evening the swelling on my hand had gone down and by the next day I had full hand mobility back so maybe I’m not that old.
Mabel Gets A New Home
Aaron started building a new shed in Stanley’s paddock and once the walls were up we moved Mabel and piglets in and moved Stanley into Mabel’s paddock.
A week later we finally got the driveway back but Stanley’s unhappy as Mabel doesn’t spend so much time talking to him through the fence.
In fact, she’s being a little aloof at the moment but I guess she’ll come around eventually. Of course as soon as we moved Mabel into her new home the weather turned shite and for the first 3 nights Mabel and her brood decided to make Stanley’s old van their bedroom. Talk about cramped!
The first morning I looked in and Mabel was lying across the middle of the van with her piglets piled 2 high behind her. Not ideal conditions but it was their choice!
Since moving in to the new paddock the piglets have stopped roaming the property so much and pretty much prefer to stay in the paddock with mum. However, last Monday morning I went to see if the piglets were asleep in their new shed but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I searched and I searched and eventually I gave up. When I got back up to the house I had a quick check in on Stanley and there they all were, Stanley and the piglets all curled up together and fast asleep. I cannot believe how extremely accommodating Stanley has been towards them. The only time he ever shows aggression to them is when they’re clearing leftovers out of his trough. Even then it’s just with a few headswipes and he actually looks more like he’s playing with them than attacking them.
Egg Hunt
I was determined not to let the ducks get the better of me so just over a week ago I asked Jay and Bex to join me in a duck egg hunt.
We focused on a very large patch of blackberry scrub located on the DoC land and spent about an hour slashing and cutting canes until we had discovered several nests and almost 3 dozen eggs.
Since then we have gone back and discovered several more nests and now find ourselves inundated with eggs. I told Jay and Bex they had to eat eggs, and lots of them. They made a valiant effort (although it’s possible they may never eat eggs again) and I managed to give 6 to our Irish Couchsurfer.
This egg hunting can’t go on so I am going to have to attack the blackberry with a scrubcutter because as soon as spring hits the plants will go through a massive growth spurt and all hope of finding nests will be lost.
We are also considering making an overnight pen for the ducks so that they are forced to lay their eggs in their house before they go off roaming the property. We need fencing wire though and we’ve spent so much in the last couple of months that we are without funds until late September.
Chicken Dinner Anyone?
I have a bit of a dilemma. We put the baby ram in the freezer because he was a bully. We put 51 in the freezer because he was a bully. We put Belle in the freezer because she was a bully. They were all hard decisions but they had to be made to ensure the happiness of the other livestock. Now I find that Marty, our rooster, has become an especially nasty bully.
Of our 2 remaining hens he appears to have developed murderous intentions towards one of them. She is suffering and I find myself paralysed with indecision. Marty is a magnificent looking rooster and I cannot bring myself to kill something so good looking and healthy. And yet he provides us with nothing. He now tries to eat all the chicken food himself and he continues to crow early in the morn and poop all over the verandah. He’s an absolute pain in the butt and worst of all I don’t even like chickens.
How is it I am so shallow as to let him live just because of his good looks?
He struts around the outside of the house like the lord of the manor, looking very proud and quite magnificent and quite frankly I love looking at him and thinking “My god that’s a handsome rooster” and yet he is the worst bully of them all. He gives nothing and only takes. He costs us money in feed and costs us eggs as our picked on hen is too depressed to lay. Aaron wants him gone and all I can come up with is - I’m not ready to get rid of him yet.
It’s an intolerable situation and I need to harden up. If we kill him we will have to eat him. To not eat him would be a waste. But that means I must help to pluck his beautiful plumage and then I know the job of gutting him will be left to me. Aaron couldn’t face the first one we gutted so I doubt he will gut Marty either. Farming life it seems is full of hurdles. This is just another one I am going to have to get over. Watch this space…
