march marches on

March 20 2013

There was really good news yesterday. Our friend Beni who is living in the donga has finally solved some of the problems forced on her. We had all just about given up hope, and it was beginning to look as if Beni had no reasonable future at all. I just wish that Al ‘s problems also sorted out. We are all trying to visualise a time when all this upsetting business will be finished with and we can start working at sorting out the mess. I am totally unimpressed by the way it all works.

Anyway, with Beni feeling better we all went out to supper at Bo’s restaurant and had a good laugh telling stories about the time we all used to trail ride together over the mountains every summer. We remembered our first meeting with Beni and the rather difficult horse she was riding. She told us that he was a very well bred thoroughbred who had difficult moments. He came to a bad end one day when Beni was helping muster cattle. She went back to get in a lost bull but the bull spooked the horse who threw Beni, and then fell down from a ridge.

Beni found him with a totally smashed shoulder and knew there was nothing that could be done to save him. A friend arrived in a vehicle, but he did not have a gun with him and drove back to get help. Beni could not bear watching her beloved horse suffering so she took off a stirrup iron and tried to knock him unconscious to spare him pain until her friend arrived back with a gun! We had to be pretty tough in those days!

This week’s animal drama came when the young buck, Banjo, broke off a horn spur. We found him in the morning with blood all over his head and the horn hanging down from his forehead by a small strap of tissue. We had to catch him, remove the horn and clean the wound. He is now recovering but he is being much more careful about butting into things. The bucks are now both very smelly and waiting for the girls to start cycling.

The does are very late this year but the weather is so mild that perhaps they think it is still summer. I thought that the shortened day length brought them into season but maybe other factors have an influence as well.

March 19 2013

At last the temperature has dropped below 30 C and cool nights result in morning dew. Plants everywhere are starting to recover. The fig tree has grown new leaves and the paulownias trees are preparing to flower. In the garden we have a glut of very delicious tomatoes and already the Bok choi and misuna are ready to eat.

We have a young man working here filling the holes in the concrete blocks of the shed walls and putting in steel rods so that the timber above the wall height can be bolted on. Yesterday Steve started to build us a new tank stand. We need a head tank so that the water can flow to the house by gravity. All our water comes from rain, which falls on the shed roofs and collects in low tanks. At present a pressure pump supplies water every time a tap is turned on. The snag with this is that it uses a lot of electricity and fails to work every time there is a power cut. We get a lot of power cuts so we get stuck for hours with out water for cooking or flushing toilets.

We had a high tank before and pumped water up once a week. The good thing about this was that if someone accidently left a tap on we only lost a week’s worth of water rather than several months’ supply! Anyway, we are now putting a similar system back and putting up walls on the barn so that we have a place to store fire wood and better protection for the hay and goats when it rains. We have also got the stove back after it has been repaired. We plan to put it into the donga so that it will be warmer this winter. Everything is now possible with Steve back.