who cut the fences?

30.3.2020

Someone cut the fence between us and the neighbours on the hill.  All seven wires where cut at the same place so it was not an accidental break.  Edd thinks that someone might have shot a deer and had to retrieve it from our side of the fence.  On the positive side, we have met the new owners of Echo Vale who camped up there, last weekend.  They are very much into conservation of the bush land and seem nice, interesting people.  They have found other fences on their land cut, so they have padlocked the gate.

The goats got thought the cut fence onto the hill and even got through after Edd had mended it.  I walked all the way up the fence line, fighting through the ti-tree and blackberries but there was no obvious way the goats were getting out.  I did find that there was water in the broken dam at the foot of the hill, so we have been able to put the horses up there.  Edd is now trying to rig up a temporary fence so the goats can go in the old vineyard paddock where the horses were.

This left the problem of the sheep who had eaten out the first croft.  The ram has already mated several of the ewes, so we decided to put him into the spare buck pen and put the ewes back with the lambs.  Separating the ram from the ewes was a daunting though. He is large, heavy and assertive.  I was lucky, I noticed he was in the buck pen on his own when I went up to stir the cheese.  I snuck up the bank flat out and managed to shut the gate on him before he had realised what I was doing.

Getting the ewes back was easy. They knew what to do and co-operated. The ram and the buck are now eyeing each other off and strutting up and down their pens trying to look dominant.  Who knows, they might become friends in time and if not, they will keep each other exercised!

There are more red tomatoes every day and I am boiling some up this afternoon.  I can do that at the same time as well as making a hard cheese.  I really need to make more soap but that might have to wait until another day.   Edd planted punnets of seeds and they have germinated already.  They were old seeds, so we are very pleased about this.  Now we have to rear them on until they are large enough to plant out in the garden.