Winter arrives

June 3 2017

The sun is finally shining again after a very wet cold week.  I am still feeling very grateful that the camp was over before the weather changed.  It has not been the sort of week that anyone would choose for outdoor jobs.  I have been doing my two hours each morning, milking and feeding, and my one hour at night and been happy to stay under cover the rest of the time.

Most of the week has been take been taken up by chooks. I took Edd to the airport to set off on his Europe trip on Monday and on Tuesday I collected 12 point of lay birds, clipped their wings and put them in the olive orchard shed with Ruphus, the red rooster who rules that area.  After a couple of days acclimatising I let them out into the run and luckily Ruphus got most of them in again at dusk.  I had to catch a couple who could not work it out, but that is not bad for day one of freedom.  It is lovely to see them today scratching around under the trees and tasting green grass.

The older chooks are now settled in their retirement home and have started the job of cleaning out the weeds from under the lemon and fig trees. They also look very content.  The school kids did a great job putting up their shed and the door Edd fitted works well. Luckily these chooks did know to put themselves to bed without help.

The chicks in the house were more of a problem. (I am not at all happy that Edd hatched them just when he was due to go away for a month). They need to be kept warm, but late at night their bulb stopped working. We did not have a replacement so I had to get up in the middle of the night and refill a hot water bottle for them.  I brought a new bulb next day but once again, after the shops had shut it broke so I had a second night of chook duties. The following day I drove down to Bunnings and brought four bulbs and even the first of these is now working fine.  Last night was a lot more relaxing and at least they all survived.

So, I was just thinking life was about to get easier when a lamb turned up with the rest of the sheep for their evening feed. This means our lambing season has begun a month early, bother.  Yesterday I moved the horses back onto the hill and moved the sheep into the new paddock below the dam.  In this area they are in view most of the time so it is possible to check them several times a day with out a lot of extra walking.

The other drama this week has been with Rosa, Indi’s dog. She found a large packet of rat poison in Indi’s donga and scoffed the lot. This of course meant another trip to the vet and lots of bright green poo everywhere. I think that dog must have more lives to risk than a cat but so far she has lived through every drama.