old friends

1.8.2012

Once again today the morning fog lifted and our valley was bathed in beautiful sunlight. It was a very welcome change from the continuous rain and grey skies we have had most of the time. To make the day even better my friends Merrie and Barbara came over for a visit and we all swapped news. We are all in our sixties but strangely we all seem so much happier and more at ease with our lives than we were thirty years ago. We all have children and grandkids who we spend time with but none of the dramas that we had when we were struggling with school children.

Barbara also had news of friends who used to trail ride with us long ago. She told me about Brad, who is still an activist on the Sea Shepherd, and of course I could tell about Beni and her new life in the northern territory. The problem is that we all had so many contacts to discuss that the time was not long enough. Barbara lives in Phillip Island so at least she is still near enough to visit. I have very little of interest to talk about because we have spent all the years since the fires rebuilding. Merrie’s family did a lot of the building work so none of this is news to her!

Al is still working on his house and Edd and I went over on Sunday to help render the walls in the kitchen. He has moved in but still needs to cook at the rented house. I seem to spend every week end mixing up lime render but there are worse things to do, and while the weather is so wet I can not get on with the garden and farm jobs I would like to do here.

The chickens are laying well now and we have only two weeks before kidding is due to start. I am looking hopefully at the first kidders and praying that they turn out to be good milkers. We had Anglo Nubian goats when we ran the host farm because the visitors liked their fantastic colours and long floppy ears. The down side was that they do not give as much milk or milk as long as the upright eared alpine style goats. Since the fires we have used alpine and brown bucks and I am hoping that we will soon have goats with colourful coats and lots of milk.

I always worry for the young goats as they have to give birth and establish a milk flow before they are safe. Erin and Ester are now very large and we have moved them to a private pen so they do not get so mithered by the younger animals. Opal and Queenie are also due to kid soon and I would like to separate them off to but we are fairly short of pens and lack materials to build new one.