Back at work

 8.9.2020

 

He weather has been much, much nicer.  Clear blue skies and warm dry days. At last we can start to get things done on the farm.  Yesterday Andrew, and his off sider, poured the concrete slab for Edd’s new shed.  The truck that brought the concrete here was huge, but it got to the right place and the only problem was that the sun and wind made the concrete go off so fast it was hard to work.

 

Whilst the men struggled with that, I have been working in the vegetable garden digging the mud and grass of the brick paths where it had accumulated during our long muddy winter. Some of the seeds I have planted have germinated, but not the zucchini, and I really want to get them going first. Not that I am short of zucchinis this week. A neighbour dropped off a large box full for us along with a sack of onions, apples and potatoes.  I will have to send some to Bo, it is far too much for us to use.

 

Our stage 4 lock down is to last another 2 weeks.  Numbers off new cases are still dropping but the modelling shows that there are still too many to get on top of contact tracing.  We agree with the policy, but the list of things I am managing without gets longer week by week.  Some things have arrived by post. Having a parcel arrive is quite fun, but I miss the freedom of just being able to drive out and get things when I need them.

 

The last of the kids have been born and are being weaned today.  By next week we should have them all drinking from the feeder and life will be easier.  I start the morning at 7am with the milking and first bottle feeds.  Then I do garden work and do a lunch time bottle feed at 1pm. There is yet another feed after the evening milking at 6pm and then I cook the evening meal and eat it at 7pm.  Edd does the night feed because I refuse to work more than 12 hours a day.  He is Ok because he can have a lie in whilst I do the morning session.

 

Luckily this regime does not go on for long.  The kids can drop back to 2 feeds a day after the milking when they are big enough to drink a litre each at a time.  The biggest problem is that we usually sell all the male kids at an early stage and we need people to be able to come out here for that to happen.  The other problem is that Iris has worked out how to feed her kids through the pen rails which is interfering with our weaning process.  She may have to be shut up in a separate pen away from them every night.

 

The lambs have survived the dreadful weather and are growing quite well.  We need to fix the bottom fence so that we can let the sheep into the hay paddock where the grass is growing. The capeweed is starting to flower but luckily it was dry enough yesterday for me to mow the crofts and cut it all down.  This stops the flowers forming and allows the grass enough light to grow and take over.  We have not finished the redesigned buck pen yet because we stopped working on it to do the shed slab.  We did get a row of posts in. Edd dug the holes by hand which was possible with the ground so wet.  There is an awful lot to do now the weather has improved.