Celestequest

The animals were there

2010-12-25T05:00:00.000+10:30

A little child might be born of lines of kings, have rich and famous people visit with expensive gifts and have generations celebrate it's birth, but the humble people (such as the shepherds in fact) being included in this celebration is what makes it so special. Not only the humble people, but the cows, and the sheep out on the hills, the donkey and the camels. The animals.

There are no better witnesses for love. We can learn so much from them about how to look after our young, how to stick together in a flock and how to be loyal and brave. No-one needs a McMansion, all we need is a warm bed of straw and to be surrounded by our animals.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Class distinction

2010-11-05T10:07:00.003+10:30

We got all the free-range sheep into the yards ready for shearing tomorrow, and it will be just in the nick of time. The late spring has saved them from getting too hot in their woolly jumpers this year, but every day the sun shines brighter. So do the lambs. They are really curious now and investigate everything including the garden-under-the-fence, all the plum tree leaves they can reach and the fish in the bottom of the troughs. They were confined to quarters in the sheep shed overnight to keep them and their mothers separate from the general mob but this snobbery on our part didn't worry them. They'll meet and greet any new animal, sometimes several times.

The sheep for their part were delighted to meet their new neices and nephews despite their inability to mix. We had kept the two crowds separate to make putting them all back neatly in the right places simple the day after shearing. All the sheep took turns introducing themselves to the new little ones and catching up with their ewe cousins through the fox-proof prison mesh. Old friends reunited Several exchanges were had through the wire, escape plans were hatched and offers of smuggling files in hay were made. The lambs however were only annoyed at the restriction in play area until they all fell asleep, expecting to be let out for breakfast tomorrow just like any other morning...

A hive of activity

2010-11-04T09:46:00.001+10:30

We briefly checked on the progress or otherwise of the new bee hives in the hay loft today. It was a flying visit... heh... to make sure they had taken to their new boxes. We found one pile of them mourning for their old box and still lumped where it used to be. Or bee.

What this really meant was that the queen was probably somewhere in that lump. Her pheromones were anyway. Two of the three boxes seemed to contain working swarms, although one was slighly less abuzz than the other. The lump of bees were gently scooped into that one. Instantly they stampeded to get in where SO had flipped them over the edge. Eventually they might stop trying to take the lid off and find the actual door.

Clearly they liked the box now anyway. Not so the small nucleus box. Their interest in that went as far as robbing the last of the honey and possibly some wax out of it and then taking it back to one of the other two larger boxes. It was duly emptied of straggler bees and taken away, along with the original hive in the form of the whelping box (now completely cleared out of anything useful by the workers) and the car floor mat used as a temporary lid on one of the hives. This was replaced by an actual lid with ventilators which the bees will appreciate now that the weather is really warming up. Bees having no trade union and no industrial employment laws we do need to look after them a little bit, even if it's just assisting with the airconditioning. Although they even do that themselves. They are pretty self-sufficient really and with their brilliant teamwork they've achieved a lot in a very short time. In places this also includes sticking frames together, building comb up to the roof and very successfully hiding their queen completely so that we're not even really sure that they have one, but those problems will have to wait until after shearing, fire danger clearing and other pressing engagements.

The longest wait

2010-11-03T10:24:00.002+10:30

There is a certain time of evening when the humans disappear into the Dog Free Zone in the kitchen and certain sounds are heard. The chink of china bowls. The fridge door opening. Sometimes the slice of knife on chopping board, sometimes the sound of tins being cut open. Always a delicious aroma. Hard to wait patiently for any of it to come out and make it to floor level. Still, wait the dogs must. Snowy thinks staring very hard at the miniscule gap under the door might make it widen, but Georgie knows that the door handle turns and that's the trick.

Being nearly blind, however, means Georgie sometimes gets disoriented and stares hopefully at the wall instead.

And if there's movement! Dogs must get to it, scrabble hard and try to help it happen faster.

But movement doesn't always mean food being served. Sometimes it's a very long wait.

Quietly gleaming

2010-11-02T15:53:00.000+10:30

The horses love to go halfway up the valley to a flat spot among our current crop of thistles and just mooch about. The weather gods have been playing with their yo-yos this spring but today was one of the sunny, warm days. Gem and Princess got in a spot of show practice, standing perfectly square and side by side for well over half an hour. It's highly unlikely these two retirees will ever be shown again, but they like us to know that they've still got it. Kalara, the oldest and most show-experienced was playing judge and scrutinising them from all angles.

Princess demonstrated how to be pretty and golden, but Gem showed everyone how to just ooze gloss. Kalara was clearly impressed when it came time to call the numbers.

There were no rosettes as this was only practice. Although they could have used the purple thistle heads.

Aerodynamic

2010-11-01T20:37:00.001+10:30

The lambs are slowly growing into their ears. They run in groups at dawn and in the twilight, some in pogo-lamb bounces and some just leaping wildly, but so far none have actually managed to take off.

Spring burning... er, cleaning

2010-10-31T11:49:00.000+10:30

We now have just one month to clean up before Fire Danger Season. You wouldn't know it because with all the late rain this year the whole greater valley is still green as a baby's bottom. But everything flowering is also going to seed and just a few days of hot sunshine will see it cure into very effective kindling. The fallen timber from the seven trees removed recently and other garden rubbish would make great fuel but we'd rather burn it in our combustion heater come next winter, not have it all lost and burning the house down uninvited on a 40 degree day. Everything from the gutters down needs to be tidied up and the fuel load reduced. Also the acute embarrassment of having a fire out of control on our place would be a bit much considering our trade and training. We'd never live it down. The balance between having enough grazing to last at least until January and having too much standing fuel too close to houses, sheds and other valuable things is a delicate one. The animals are doing their best but they can't keep up with the feed just now - which is saying something for this lot. In the meantime we can do some work ourselves around the house acres to be safer come the dry weather. Much of the rubbish we collected was of organic origin and therefore could be burnt. In our Fire Ban District we could still burn after the official start of December 1st but this would require a permit with a few conditions attached and it's just easier to do it now. The guard alpacas took their role seriously when they spotted the impromptu bonfire and herded their charges to the far side of their paddock and into a tight group as in the picture above. It's heartening to see them keeping the sheep safe even if it's unnecessary and, in a real fire, may be somewhat futile. After a while when they relaxed when they noted that in fact SO seemed to be feeding the orange threat and I was standing by with the hose to put out his occasional over-enthusiasm and the nearby pile of waste bedding that caught the odd spark and all was well. The sheep even started to take an interest in the show. All we were really missing were the marshmallows.

Pet status application pending

2010-10-30T17:31:00.001+10:30

This friendly chap is a Standardbred called Sontiago. He is known to his friends, for some inexplicable reason, as "Mods". He is a retired racing trotter and is therefore broken to harness, but is also an "Open" riding horse having that rare attribute in harness racers - the ability to canter. He's only 10 years old. A whippersnapper by Celestequest standards, and mostly ridden now in the combined disciplines of hacking, dressage and a little light showjumping.

He was a topic of conversation with the lady who owns the barn where the bees currently live. She also owns him. The bees are on their way to our place when they settle down and pad out their frames more. Sontiago does not need to pad out his. It's padded to the point where he almost has no withers. The abundant winter and lush spring have been kind to him. Nearly killing him with kindness really. If Sontiago is allowed to continue gaining weight he will have health issues not unlike obese humans but with the added complication of possible founder, a disease of the feet in hoofed animals. Horses with uncontrolled founder - technically called laminitis - may get so bad that the pedal bone rotates inside the hoof and may even reach the sole. Not only is this very, very bad but it's very, very painful. It's also irreversible so horses at risk of founder need to keep to their slimming diets with mild exercise and no extra binging or they may end up with a one-way trip to the great pasture in the sky earlier than nature intended.

The lovely lady who owns him currently also owns 16 other horses and agists several more for various people so Sontiago has been taken off pasture and put in a yard to save him. She is looking to find him a good home. She offered him to me for the price of a cup of tea after his free delivery. I have known this dear lady for many years but even so this is an incredibly generous offer. The jury is out on accepting it. There are only two of us to make decisions here and one of them doesn't think it's viable. Sontiago thinks it's a good idea, but he doesn't have a vote. Yet.

Balancing act

2010-10-29T21:40:00.002+10:30

One week to go until shearing now. All our sheep are in full fleece and on the warm sunny days try to rub it off on the nearest solid object. We helped out in the beautiful old stone barn of a friend yesterday when she had the shearer in for a date with her coloured Corriedales. It was a warm sunny day and they were looking forward to casting aside their woolly winter gear. We had a half hour drive to get there and noted all through the hills sheep were yarded ready for shearing. Everyone was trying to get it done while the weather held.
Mid spring here can be warm and sunny bordering on hot but it occasionally has a tantrum and throws a thunderstorm. Rain was due today and down it came. It's beautiful and will fill the tanks again before the summer starts but a sudden cold change can be lethal for unprepared stock. This is what happened last year when a rainstorm came through the week after shearing:

We yarded the sheep out of the wind but they had a group shivering fit for a while anyway. Eventually the sun came out and warmed them up. Sheep have a reputation for being quite tough but the week after shearing is a critical time for them. Until they can grow a light covering of wool again they are actually as naked as we are. Just like we hunch up when cold, they stand like triangles and tuck up their tummies.

They also get very sunburnt without their wool, especially the white ones with pink skin. This is another reason we keep them sheltered for that first week post disrobing. Otherwise we'd use buckets of sunblock lotion.

The softest bed

2010-10-28T07:09:00.001+10:30

When the nights are still cold the best place to be is on a woollen underlay. It's also fun to jump off it.

Beehive yourself

2010-10-27T08:07:00.006+10:30

The stock population of Celestequest has increased by an estimated 50,000 in one day today. It was an epic undertaking and is only half complete, but it seems successful so far. When we took on half a dozen old beehives and started to do them up recently the grapevine, or rather the beehive, got buzzing and it was only a short time until our farrier discovered an unloved wild beehive free to a good home quite near our place. At the home of a very old friend in fact, where it bothered him whilst he shod horses. Very convenient. Almost unnervingly convenient for smallholders, but anyway we packed up tools, pressed a beekeeping friend into helper service and set off one fine, sunny day to see what we could see.

What we could see was a beehive in an old upturned whelping box in the loft of a very old pioneer barn. The rotten floorboards, the wave-like floor surface and the instructions not to touch the walls should they fall down only added to the excitement. As did the actual holes in the floor. Carting all the boxes, smokers and miscellaneous stuff up the fruit picking ladder now used as access was also interesting.
More interesting still was what, exactly, the new beekeepers would find in the whelping box. It was possible that it would be too heavy with honeycomb. There was only one thing for it. With the application of a lot of smoke, the lads gingerly turned the whole thing over. Contrary to expectations the air did not erupt in a storm of angry bees. They were not chased by annoyed little workers, nor was their an exodus of insects away from the site of destruction. It seems this swarm is a naturally docile one, and the whelping box, whilst beautifully decorated with fragrant folds of honeycomb, was not completely full of it. A sack of chaff left inside it several years ago had limited their building space.

Beekeepers extraordinaires set to work to fill frames with honeycomb and encourage all the various types of bee (brood, workers, drones and hopefully the queen) to inhabit a standard domesticated beehive which, given that they'd nested in a white wooden box before, was not the huge leap that, say, tree-dwelling bees would have to make.

The careful transfer of comb, bees and honey took about an hour. Work has to be smooth and steady with bees - no sudden movements, rushing or too much sweating. On a sunny day up in the loft of an iron-clad barn clothed in nylon bee proof hoods this last part is not so easy. Plenty of looking and learning was also accomplished. My job was to fetch and carry, hand things over surgery-style when asked and provide helpful suggestions from a safe distance.
The rails in the whelping box, installed to keep the doggy mothers away from the walls and prevent puppy-smothering, were now a problem for honeycomb removal as the bees had found them a useful girder-like structure to build around. It was a healthy hive with a strong population a lot of whom were now returning laden with pollen and finding their commune torn apart by dome-headed white bears. As the afternoon wore on they added to the confused mass of bees on the wire, the floor, the tools, the whelping box and the new hives. For there ended up being three hives, to accommodate the sheer mass of honeycomb and bees. The designated beekeepers for the day put brood cells in each one and hopefully the workers will look after them all. The bees in the boxes who didn't score the queen should feed the brood royal jelly and make new queens. That is the plan. We're not sure if the bees are clear on the plan, but they got instructions.

Excess comb was hoarded in food-grade plastic buckets with sealable lids to keep out the bees cheekily trying to steal back their own honey. Even so, when we got the buckets home to extract the honey there were quite a few hitchhikers inside. We also ran short of box lids, not expecting to use so many base boxes, so one was improvised with a car mat from the floor of the trusty ute. We'll replace it with a proper one when next we check the bees. Given a few sunny days to assess the damage, organise work teams, remove the dead, start rebuilding and doing all the normal disaster-zone management things much better than humans could ever do, the bees should settle down. The next step will be to move the new hives around the tortuous hill routes to home, but we'll think about that tomorrow.

Truck dogs

2010-10-26T04:00:00.002+10:30

Georgie and Snowy fancy themselves real sheepdogs when they ride in the tray of the ute through the paddocks. From up here they can lord it over those woolly herbivore things that usually intimidate them terribly and make a laughing stock of their wolf heritage.

Georgie is just tall enough to look over the side. She doesn't like it when SO brakes suddenly and she hits her nose though. It's humiliating. It's also somewhat painful. Some of the larger potholes are a bit rough and hard to take when you're a toy poodle too.

The solution is to use your larger and much more padded companion as a cushion.

Anonymous lamb

2010-10-25T10:37:00.006+10:30

This small chap doesn't have a name yet and possibly never will. He was left behind in a paddock by his flock. He was probably the weaker of twins, but couldn't keep up with his athletic comrades. Thankfully our kindly lamb-raising neighbour found him before he became supper for foxes. She and her husband had been raising him on a bottle for a few weeks and, due to the vagaries of shift roster timing, found themselves without someone there to feed him recently. This is the first year we have not had a bottle fed lamb, so we could easily take on lamb catering for a day.
He has astonishing fashion sense. We still have quite cold nights here so he wears a dog coat. Yes, that's a fur collar. He is shut away under cover overnight and when no-one can watch for dogs or foxes in a chicken house with a dozen rescued battery hens and some female ducks who were being persecuted. Hopefully he won't grow up thinking other sheep have a few straggly feathers and like to dip their heads under water. He's let out to run around as often as possible, but always seems to want to get back to his poultry friends. It's as if he feels he has to look after them.

Wheeled transport

2010-10-24T04:00:00.000+10:30

Jamie doesn't mind the motion of the wheelbarrow now, and the hay makes a nice warm surface to ride on. He can even chew it a bit, although he doesn't really know what the sheep see in it.

The only problem is being stranded when your driver wanders off to do another job. He can't work out himself how to make it go.

Class of 2010

2010-10-23T05:47:00.000+10:30

Trying to get the lambs to all pose together for a group photograph is just slightly easier than herding cats, but only slightly. Initially they started to line up with little Paula still hurrying to her place and the friends in the back row chattering and giggling, but Bianca the black and white lamb of dubious origin was late.

I'm not sure what the lamb equivalent of making bunny ears behind others heads in photographs is, but not being able to with their hooves perhaps they just use their own ears. Pamela's lad was feeling shy and Bianca was still having breakfast.

Eventually their 15 second attention spans were all fixed on the same thing when they marveled at a magpie on the shed roof. Although Pamela's lad had lost interest and wandered off, Cherie's tiny twins were still too small to come out and Bianca had a more important thing to finish.

Spring days, spring nights

2010-10-22T05:58:00.000+10:30

The days are getting warmer and are mostly sunny now, so we let the fire inside go out in the morning. The evening light lasts so long that it's quite late when we come in to light the fire again. By this time it's cold again however, which poses a dilemma for soft beagles used to the height of luxury. Snowy has learnt that if she turns over twice in the same direction she can wrap herself up in her quilt. This will keep her toasty until the room warms up again. She has such a tough life.

Turning point

2010-10-21T00:09:00.002+10:30

The lady in red making friends with this lamb is SO's mother. She's a lovely lady, a Bach Flowers practitioner, mine of information about alternative health remedies and completely devoted to her family. We all benefit from her knowledge and gifts of healing. Luckily she's always lead an active and healthy life because it's kept her strong enough to battle breast cancer this year. She kept her chin up through the diagnosis and surgery, then stayed cheerful and resolute through secondary surgery and all the post-operative treatments. Today is the last of her chemotherapy sessions. It's also her birthday. Happy Birthday Mum/Lorraine/Nan. May it signal the end of your year and of your battle but the beginning of a new year full of life. May the only new burdens you have to bear be that of wriggling lambs or growing children.

Dawn's fawn

2010-10-20T20:42:00.002+10:30

This is Donna. The one on the lap, not the one sitting on the bale. With her long brown ears and the way she sleeps she looks like a little deer. She's one of the twins born to Border Leicester Dawn who had a difficult arrival. Since then they haven't looked back except for this week, when she was found limping about, wagging her front hoof for sympathy.

She has an abscess between her cloves. Which would certainly hurt in any type of foot, let alone one with hard little hooves that don't really want to be parted by such a swelling.

So it's first aid time. With a bit of reassurance from her mother Donna pretends to be brave whilst we give her an antibiotic shot and put a poultice on her foot. Every day for five days.

She managed to take off the first poultice bandage which was found nestling in the straw like a lost pixie boot, complete and intact except for the lamb foot that should have been inside it. We then learned to use self-adhesive horse exercise bandage to cover the bandage covering the poultice and all of it covering her foot. This stayed on. She wasn't sure if it was her colour...

but in a few days the abscess had burst and she putting full weight on her sore paw and running about with the best of them.

On reflection

2010-10-19T21:41:00.002+10:30

Jelly's sure she didn't look like this in the mirror in the bedroom...

Time wasters

2010-10-18T21:33:00.001+10:30

The lambs have started bounding about and doing their own stunts. We spend too long watching and laughing at them, which they seem to play up to. We also record this short time as much as we can. Strictly speaking SO could be said to be working.

The lambs focus on him in return.

Tractor power rules

2010-10-17T15:51:00.006+10:30

In a country plagued by drought we rarely complain about rain. It's always welcome but the wet start to spring had its drawbacks. The Pear Tree Paddock had been used exclusively by horses last autumn, to its detriment and our shame. Attempts at reseeding were less than successful. If only there was a world market for capeweed. With the volunteer capeweed crop now flowering we had very limited time to stop it seeding and going exponential. It would take forever with a hired garden cultivator and it's rather heavy clay anyway. Dragging an old gate around with the ute had done nothing but annoy the bees. It would have to be mowed. Our cheerful neighbour on top of the hill came to our rescue on his trusty grey steed.

Its an old Ferguson, a beautiful piece of machinery with no roll bar, no aircon, no dust shields, not even a seat cushion and it does it's job perfectly, in this case slashing the pretty yellow flowers. My father had a tractor like this when he and his father before him had a serious farm in the Mallee outback of South Australia. He cleared land and built roads with his. They are indestructible.
Our cheery neighbour's vintage tractor chugged round and round, groaning a bit in the heavy wet at the bottom of the hill but working away nonetheless. The various animals in the adjacent free range gullies didn't turn a hair. It was sunny. There was serious grazing to be done and they just assumed this loud grey beastie was grazing too, albeit in a rather logical square pattern. And rather indiscriminately, eating all in its path.

The very nice chap doing the steering had earplugs in, (goodness knows why, it was only really, really loud, not deafening) so comments and conversation were kept to a minimum - being a mixture of shouts and sign language.

It was a very short part of a lovely morning later when the Fergie and its rider mowed the last strip, then chugged off down the road to do their own work, having cheerfully taken nothing but a glass of water in return for their efforts. All done with a friendly wave. Whenever I lose faith in human nature I only need to recall our neighbours' unquestioning help to us. And their enormous smiles.

Bedded down

2010-10-16T09:34:00.001+10:30

We've finally had time to pick up Snowy's magnificent new bed, made for her by her Grandpaw from polished wood and foam rubber from old sofa cushions cut to size. It was too large to fit into his car so it came home on the tray of the ute.
She wasn't sure about it to start with. SO had to show her it really was for her and not another piece of human furniture that she's not allowed to jump onto.
Then she had to check it all out. I had put her old bedding on it to make it smell like home, but even so, it was strange...

and required a thorough investigation and a good sniff around...

and underneath.
A couple of unwelcome visitors had to be evicted. They were trying out the facilities for warmth.

Finally, when the soft furnishings had been dug up and rearranged to her satisfaction, Snowy settled down for the night.

"Take me to your leader!"

2010-10-15T19:42:00.003+10:30

A space invader came to the house today and judging - correctly - Jelly the tortoiseshell cat to be the most intelligent life form here, tried to frighten her into submission. She wasn't having any of that, however, so he then tried to wipe her memory of his visit.

The cynical would say that SO has just tried on his new bee keeping hood and, like small boys trying on new hats everywhere, been unable to refrain from pretending to be a story character. Jelly denies any such encounter though, so perhaps her memory is really affected. Or perhaps she's too embarrassed to admit she was taken in.

The last one.. err, two.

2010-10-14T11:00:00.002+10:30

This morning I did a terrible thing and let my charges down. I slept past the 5:00am check of the lambing ewes. As soon as I realised my error I was down at the sheep shed in my pyjamas peering anxiously about with the torch. Luckily no ewe had needed help in that time. Cherie the Border Leicester had let me sleep in and done it all on her own, happily giving birth to twins.

The newest and last lambs to arrive are a ram and a ewe, predictably white but healthy and - by the time my tardy person appeared on the scene - standing up. They seem to be made of tissue paper and have absolutely no idea where to find the milk but are trying hard nonetheless. We'll assist them if they don't find it in time for their morning tea. And our morning tea. The day now seems to open out, untied by the need to be near the sheep shed, untempered by watching the clock for two hourly checks and - most blissfully of all - unbroken through the night by the alarm going off just as we get into a sound sleep.
Lambing tasks and care will continue until shearing by which time they should all be out in the paddocks. Until then we have a couple of weeks of lamb antics, lamb dramas and lamb watching to eat up the hours. For now, however, the hard part is finished and they've all arrived safe and well. We just have to keep them that way but the actual Lambing Time of 2010 is finished.

Sun worshippers

2010-10-13T10:32:00.004+10:30

The past few days have been quite warm and very late-spring-like. The reptile contingent of the property have woken up. They're solar powered animals and we've had a long, wet winter so we haven't seen them for months. This chap has a bright blue tongue which is probably why he's colloquially known as a Blue Tongue Lizard. He's a quiet neighbour, slides gently away after ravishing the strawberries and never turns on cat, dog or other provoker. They seem to know all about him though, most particularly the power in his jaw should it require usage, and leave him well alone. The line he's about to cross is a normal garden hose which is acting as a scale indicator. He's covered in scales actually, they organise themselves into blue and yellow stripes. Not always symmetrically.
This likely lad and his many friends and relations are of a more forbidding countenance but they're rough diamonds. He also has a blue tongue although neither would show me their tongue for the camera as they're very polite, gentle, benign creatures. His name however comes from his other end. He's a Stumpy Tail Lizard (gosh, I wonder why?) also known as a Shingleback or just a Stumpy. They shun fame and attention, preferring to live out of sight under bushes and between rocks only sallying forth for the occasional meal of garden pests. They might not look pretty or be cuddly or furry or cute, but we appreciate their help. Rumour has it that they also eat snake eggs and even without their nice natures we would love them for that alone.

Black spots

2010-10-12T19:52:00.015+10:30

This morning, most unusually, Jeremy the cat x Gloucester Old Spot pig made a nuisance of himself around the sheep shed. He's never done this before, never shown an interest at all in the lambs and shied away from our rather forward sheep.

Most strangely of all, he tried several times to gain admittance to the fox-proof area undercover. He's never done that before either, despite the abundance of rats in there at times. They know it's fox proof too. Jeremy was really, really interested - not in rats - but in what was going on inside.The only difference between this and any other morning was that Belinda had been confined to quarters because she'd gone into labour. Jeremy seemed pretty anxious about this and paced up and down outside, craning his neck to see what was happening. We had enormous hopes for a black lamb from Belinda and the odds were pretty good given that she is black herself. The highlight of the lambing season so far has been Annaliese's black lamb and Belinda had witnessed our delight over her. Belinda's had a single lamb, so big she had to be helped out with a lot of straining and effort aided by us. At first sight of it's pink feet and white legs I thought we had a white lamb again and couldn't quite fathom it. Then Belinda produced this:
The background music to the birth was slightly different too. There were the usual birds singing in the spring morning, the other lambs bleating and their mothers answering and the far away lowing of cows on the hill. Throughout the whole process there was also a cat meowing and crying to come in.
The ewe lamb is a stunner, as big as the two week old lambs already and standing almost immediately. Out of a totally black ewe by a totally black ram she should have been... well, different. She has a lot of white patches and two round black spots on her white hip. Just like Jeremy...
We're sure Belinda and Wilberforce spent some quality time together, and we don't want to doubt her, but... Wilber's thrown a lot of small lambs this year, and this girl is quite large. As far as cats go, so is Jeremy. We haven't had a chance to bring up the question of her lamb's parentage to Belinda and she herself has been too busy to comment. It's a delicate subject. She may never tell.

Tag!

2010-10-11T09:16:00.002+10:30

The first lamb to appear this year is now choosing his career, eating us out of house and home and starting to chase girls. Before he gets any older we had to curb any possible male tendencies. He will also make his debut with the other ewes in the home paddock soon and needs to be identifiable. So he's been tagged. Keeping sheep safe from the horrors of flystrike in the heat of summer also means all the lambs get tailed when they're tagged, which we do with a tight elastic ring. When the tails eventually fall off during a frolic, dry and unnoticed, there has been no blood, no open wound and no thought of them by the lambs for several weeks. Completely painless. The same goes for... the other parts. Let's just say the tool used to apply the rings is called an "Elastrator". There is about 20 minutes of drama after application whilst the lambs throw themselves about trying to flick off the rings, but keeping them in a soft place like the straw-bedded shed for the duration of the tantrum means they don't self-harm in protest. After that they feel nothing, forget the rings are there and go back to harassing their mothers.

The ear tags follow a colour system, not ours but a simple and effective national one. Any system of ours would either be so complicated we'd forget how it worked or completely inconsistent and therefore not a system. So we use what everyone else does. Each year in an eight year cycle has it's own colour nominated and this year it's orange. It's very useful. At a glance in the paddock you can see how old each animal is or to which group they belong, surprisingly easy for any process to do with sheep. We actually have a few old ewes left with the 2002 orange tags, but I suppose not many real farmers keep their sheep that long, so there wouldn't normally be repeats. Their teeth would tell the tale, but we know them all by their faces anyway. One of the beauties of having a non-commercial concern is that we don't need a property registration number, which is usually stamped on the tag. If we sold them we would, but that's sometime in the misty future.

The males get their new earring in their left ear, because they're tough. The ewe-lambs get tagged on the right side. This is pretty conventional too and allows for their quick ID at a distance when their fleece has either grown or been shorn and they look a bit different to normal. Policing them is made easier as is sorting them out. Seeing just who is causing the current ruckus, who is injured or who has pushed through the fence again is easy.

Our one unique addition to the system is our numbering - the ewe's initial (or the ewe-lambs, which should be the same if we've got it right) and the number of the lamb born that year to that letter. Big 'Un here, born to Priscilla was the first P. You could tell, couldn't you? The terrible trauma of being marked lasted about 5 minutes with him where he ran about and kicked a bit. Then he had other things to do.

Parallel universe

2010-10-10T10:44:00.001+10:30

Whilst we plug along looking after this place in the Adelaide Hills, on the other side of the world Tony and Tracey run a smallholding, Bernese Mountain Dog stud and general menagerie on the border of England and Wales. Their blog, see the"Parallel Universe" link in the right margin -->
is a constant source of delight, encouragement and camaraderie to us. The very idea of recording the goings-on here in blog form came from Tony although I could never hope to reach the heights of his sheer humorous brilliance in relating the joys and tragedies, frustrations and triumphs of smallholding as we do it. So many of our philosophies, goals, and struggles are the same although T&T don't have bushfires and we don't have snow and everything is reversed chronologically. It's amazing how many times we've read a story about there that could be transposed to here only with different weather.

Tales From The Rock is such an inspiration that often in the middle of wrestling with wayward creatures, fighting the force of gravity or struggling with the vagaries of the climate I've thought about how Tony would write the story, had a laugh, picked up and carried on with gusto. People like him make smallholding what it should be - great fun. We are lucky to have wonderful friends and neighbours in real life who often lend a hand or need a hand thus teaching us so much. We are blessed to have such sympathetic virtual neighbours as well.

One of the best things about Tales From The Rock are the beautiful photos. Recently we received two gorgeous coffee mugs with some of the best TFTR photos on them. Such a generous gift and we are so grateful. SO's reads "Tales From The Rock Virtual Helper" and mine has "Kathy loves Tales From The Rock" which indeed I do. My name. Up in lights. Heh.

In short, I recommend you read Tales From The Rock. Allow several hours, you'll be hooked. It's really good.

How much wood can a woodcat chuck?

2010-10-09T06:47:00.000+10:30

The black and white brothers are self appointed load inspectors, particularly when it comes to a consignment of potential warmth. Unfortunately the long rains of early spring, the impassible quagmire that was the raceway access to the hill and the fact that all the suitably cured deadwood left is high on slippery slopes added up to the inevitable. We had to just buy firewood instead, like some sort of normal person. It's the first time in 3 years, but it's still very annoying. Had we had 36 hours in a day we might have got a few loads with the wheelbarrow but with sheep inconveniently lambing all over the place we ran out of time. And steam. So we compromised with just one ute load of ready cut wood.

What a luxury it was to just heave it in from the verandah. SO did split some larger logs with the mallet by way of anger management therapy, but for the rest there was no real work. Just dry redgum ready to burn. Everything brought home on the ute or in the trailer is subject to sniffing for quarantine and quality by a representative of the furry house pets. Jamie was concerned we hadn't quite filled the tray completely,

but after making sure there was no-one in the cab and the vehicle wouldn't suddenly move off,

he ascertained that the load was of the best wood available and had no mice, rats or random wildlife among it.

.

Celebrating diversity

2010-10-08T22:28:00.014+10:30

Yesterday morning, with mounting hopes, we watched Annaliese go through the pre-birth motions. She is half black-genes herself. Surely, surely her union with the dark and handsome Wilber would produce a coloured lamb? She refused to eat, went off by herself and scratched about. A water bag appeared. Broke. Then another. Twins. She lay down, got up again, turned around, lay down, grunted. We timed it all. Half an hour slowly passed. She was making such an effort with nothing showing. The second-to-last thing we want is to intervene, but the very last thing we want are dead lambs. Time continued passing, as it does. She was bleating and circling and looking for the unborn lamb.

Eventually there was nothing for it: SO grabbed the front end and I went to the back. The first thing I felt was a head and two front feet seemingly correctly presented. One foot was slightly rotated, not quite square with the other. I applied gentle traction and the lamb fought back indignantly, pulling it's feet away. Alive then. Perhaps just a little too big? Righto. On with it. I tried again in tandem with Annaliese's heaves but the lamb pulled away again. At this stage I suddenly remembered to ask for help and SO legged it back to the house for the ever-forgotten phone to call Dr Vet. His advice was to keep trying whilst he donned his superhero cape and responded. By sheer luck he was only 20 minutes away, but that can be such a long time when you need him.

In the meantime, why didn't the lamb want to come out? Perhaps it was deformed and couldn't. The rotated foot seemed odd. It suddenly hit me like a terrible tonne of bricks that perhaps it wasn't part of the same lamb! There had been two water bags after all. With that same tonne of bricks now in my stomach I engaged the standard practice of shoving everything deeper back in to gain room to manoeuvre . The lambs didn't like this. Neither did Annaliese and with an almighty contraction groaningly tried to break my hand off. She was also collapsing from fatigue so SO laid her down in the straw and I went to work bringing out the now correctly aligned lambie to lie next to her. The first thing I was able to say after breathing was "What are you doing Annaliese? This lamb wasn't meant to be white!" which was rather stupid as he was, at least, alive. I put that inane remark down to stress even though I was not giving birth myself. Annaliese made no comment. There wasn't really any time to ponder the complexities of ovine colour genetics however as another lamb lay waiting.

That one was black. Jet black. Not only alive, but female. I cried.

At this point Dr Vet rocked up. He'd left clients standing in his surgery waiting room and was anxious to get back since his rescue services weren't required here. SO said I just needed to learn to feel what colours the lambs were with my hand then I wouldn't make mistakes like that one. Dr Vet did a quick check of everyone and seeing they were ok, left. He didn't check me, as I'm human, but I required a cup of tea and a lie down.

Paula the-tiniest-lamb-ever, now two days old, seems to like the new playmates. She's the one in the middle above trying to coax the latest twins to dance about with her. The little black ewe seems pretty calm about everything considering the fuss we've unashamedly made of her.

The little ram lamb is just glad to be here at all.

Classic white

2010-10-07T20:04:00.006+10:30

Our aim was to breed coloured lambs. We don't always achieve our goals here, but this was the plan in the sheep line.

To that end we bought Wilberforce the black merino and although he's clearly not shooting blanks and he's passed on a lot of Y chromosomes, centuries of breeding for white wool has overridden his colour genes.
So far we've got seven lambs from five ewes and every one of them white. Which is typical of our smallholding really. Had we wanted a clean, white wool clip we would have been inundated with lambs of every hue.
Still, there are three ewes left to drop their bundles and surrounded by healthy, cheeky, playful lambs with a cuteness factor off the scale it's hard to care too much about what colour they are.

Berry beagle

2010-10-06T22:12:00.004+10:30

With all the warm spring sun lately everything is bursting into leaf. Last year's strawberries are hoisting themselves up again and Snowy is quite happy about this.

Snowy loves strawberries. I'm not sure how she discovered this, she had none growing at her old home. We've never actually given her any. She probably just trial-tasted them like she does everything else and having a particularly juicy and sweet one got addicted. Which is understandable.
They don't appear to give her hives and I'm sure if she was susceptible she would have broken out all over. She eats enough of them. Before we realised what she was doing she made her way through an entire bed last summer, eating all the ripe ones the lizards, the lorikeets, the peacocks and the millipedes had left. Sometimes she also consumed the ones the millipedes were currently eating whilst they were still inside. Death by dog. Just slightly crunchy fruit to her. We didn't get many strawberries ourselves, despite once having enough to make jam in the years before wildlife and domestic pets took over the garden. There are no strawberries this early in the season of course, but Snowy lives in hope and continues searching.

Toy lambs

2010-10-05T08:35:00.008+10:30

Pamela got involved in the trend to have twins, fashionable as it is here just now, in time for elevenses today. Of course, she couldn't wait for SO to finish his post-night-shift sleep, or for me to finish changing the bedding in the lamb shed, she just had to pop them out right then. Pamela herself is one of twins, but she was born happily in the normal way. Perhaps they're a bit early, perhaps she's had some unknown stress or some kind of deficiency that we were unaware of, but her new ewe and ram are very, very tiny.

The ewe lamb in particular did not like her new world one jot and curled up shivering on the spot she was born. She was very weak and stayed there, unable or unwilling to move for a half an hour or so whilst her brother learned to walk and lured poor, inexperienced Pamela further and further away. She bleated at her little ewe, but with no response forthcoming to encourage her, spent all her energy on her boy. In the wild, or out on the hills, little ewe would be left behind, too small to be viable. Fox fodder. Dead by nightfall. Left to themselves, we would see Pamela plus son the next day and never know baby girl had existed. In the wild it probably doesn't matter. Small, weak lambs would hinder the ewes. However, having seen her born, struggle out of the membrane and take her first breath I couldn't just leave her to die. This is exactly why we keep our ewes close by and tucked up warm at night - to intervene, unnatural as it is. Although we keep it to a minimum sometimes it's necessary. I moved both lambs together and out into the warm sun.
Little ewe was still stretched out prone but warming up by the minute and Pamela now able to reach both her offspring easily was rousing her to lifting her head to at least look around. If she decided she didn't want to stay, well, that was up to her, but I wouldn't let her be left behind. She did want to stay. She took a long, long time, but she stood up. Her and her brother had some colostrum and a long sleep in the sun. Would that we could all just have a large draught and sleep in the sun when we're feeling weak.
By the evening she was walking about, albeit feebly, but still alive and shouting about it. With a tiny, high pitched bleat to match her physique. When it was time for bed there was no fuss, she just lay on her brother for warmth. In our world compliant animals are a worry, rare as they are it usually means something is wrong but having had several drinks by now she was content and we were hopeful of her survival.
In the late afternoon another one of our lovely neighbours called in to see the lambs. This nice lady stops on the nearby road each day, checks their progress and says hello to them. She has rescued many orphan lambs herself from trucks and abattoirs, collected from vets and found abandoned in paddocks. She was delighted to see our new tiny lamb - just like a toy - the smallest lamb I have ever seen. Smaller than the last smallest lamb I have ever seen anyway and able to fit comfortably in one of SO's hands. She has brown spots on her ears. The kind neighbour's name fitted perfectly with Pamela's family initial so naturally we called tiny ewe lamb Paula.

Old winter coat

2010-10-04T08:59:00.004+10:30

In patches all over the hills lately there are drifts of white stuff.

At first glance it looks as though there has been some sort of animal fight, they're tufts of white hair.
It just means it's now full spring and Kalara the grey mare is shedding again. Those are her rolling patches. She's mostly Arabian, but that tiny bit of Welsh Mountain Pony in her make up means she has a coat deep, dense and thick enough to stuff a horsehair sofa on her own. It starts as a lot of hairs sticking to the brush in late winter, and builds up to a crescendo where you can get handfuls off her by just by rubbing her with your fingers. Or even just looking at her. We spend hours grooming her and the hair just keeps coming. Sometimes I think that if we just kept on brushing her without stopping she'd be hair all the way to the middle and we'd end up with no horse at all. We get buckets of it, and we really do fill bags because I collect it for people with aviary birds. They love it for nesting material. Wild birds here also covet it as the essential luxury furnishing for their new homes.
On hot days the sheep wish they could shed their fleece the same way.

Louise too, or Louise: two.

2010-10-03T10:25:00.002+10:30

We had gleefully told the bees about Melody's lambs, as you must, and Wilber the ram because he can't see them yet and is pacing his paddock wanting to know, and we must have also had an effect on Melody's cousin in Dorset-ness, Louise. She's very similar to Melody and a bit of a pet too, (well really which sheep aren't?) because two years ago Louise was the tiniest lamb we'd ever seen. The massive fuss made of Melody over her twins must have galvanised her to get a piece of that action. In between washing horses on the warmest day of the season so far I did a quick check out of sequence for no apparent reason to find Louise announcing the birth of her twins.They were half dry and already looking for food when I found them, practically teenagers. So obviously the birth went alright. All I had to do was move them out of the reach of foxes and stray dogs, where they met yesterday's lambs. At just under two hours old they were already interested in their new playmates.

They weren't tiny, as expected. They are square, robust little things. Although they look like bags of skin and bone we were warned about this apparent frailty by Wilberforce's previous owner. Merino bred lambs just look breakable. They're mostly legs and heads and a lot of the skin folds characteristic of their father's breed. It's as if they've been given some parts in a larger size than they should have to start with. They usually grow into their ears. They're white rather than coloured but the little ewe-lamb is part of the breeding future with her coloured genes, so - in deference to our lovely neighbour from whom we originally inherited sheep, we've named her Lynette:

Our baby's had babies

2010-10-02T09:35:00.000+09:30

This little lady is Melody in October of 2008, trying to get milk from my finger. She was the surviving lamb of twins and her mother was so stressed by the difficult birth and a prolapse that she didn't produce enough milk for her so although we kept Melody with the other sheep in the shed, we bottle fed her as well and she became a pet.

We've been watching Melody closely because of her mother's issue with twins that proved fatal for one of them. We needn't have worried. Mid morning today in the bright sunshine Melody the uninitiated produced twins of her own, alone and unassisted. I found her bleating softly at a boy and a girl, not yet standing but being industriously cleaned by their new mother nonetheless.

Poor Melly didn't have any older ewes to show her what to do, and she found it hard to know where her lambs were in the endless round of trying to clean them from her front end whilst they tried to feed from the back. The circles the ewes and lambs make due to the tug of war with their instincts can go on for an hour before the ewe settles, satisfied that her lambs are dry enough not to freeze and stands still long enough for them to make a mess of finding her teats.

In the confusion of learning by trial and error, the lambs actually got stood upon a few times although I moved her off them pronto. I was agast, they were pretty quiet about it. Tough little things. Melody and family were left in the shed to bond and dry off whilst the other ewes grazed. Although the sun is shining outside they'll go out soon enough so they'll stay in for a day or two until they are feeding strongly and don't look so frighteningly fragile. They seemed contented with this arrangement for the time being.

Laugh, kookaburra, laugh!

2010-10-01T08:38:00.002+09:30

The kookaburras are nesting again! This is jubilant news indeed for an area where snakes also breed. Kookaburras are actually a type of kingfisher and when you see the brilliant flash of blue on their wings and their profile in silhouette it's easy to see the family resemblance.

One quiet country evening I saw a kookaburra, romantically outlined by the setting sun on an old strainer post, gleefully thumping the life out of a young brown snake. Quite literally. It had the tail end in it's rather prominent bill and was swinging the snake hard against the post, time after time, to crack it's head and render it safe to eat. If you feed them, which you shouldn't do, strips of steak they will do the same thing. The steak has to be bashed to death before consumption. That bill can also crush mice and immobilise rats with a single snap, both of which I've witnessed. Needless to say with their family heritage they also eat fish and woe betide any goldfish you have in ponds or troughs without cover. They're sitting ducks. Or fish, rather. In barrels. So to speak.

Violent table manners aside, they're charming birds. They fly folded up like arrows, and although they're very shy around humans they fill the air some afternoons with their calls, exactly like that of raucous laughter. One kookaburra will call and just as the outburst is subsiding to a chuckle another will catch the mood and start chortling, then laughing outright on the other side of the valley. It's uplifting and infectious and it always makes me smile too.

Big 'Un

2010-09-30T22:47:00.000+09:30

Priscilla's lone lamb lad is growing rapidly, helped by her copious milk supply and a complete lack of competition. The lack of competition is also a lack of potential playmates and although he doesn't know it yet, Big 'Un is missing something. The party is yet to really start. Judging by previous year's lambs, when everyone else arrives it will be a circus. Until then he only has Mum to play with.

Big 'Un was nicknamed this by SO due to his 10 day advantage over the next nearest Little 'Uns, who are still confined to quarters whilst they finish their colostrum, graduate to normal milk, get a bit stronger and used to the cold. Big 'Un might be lonely but they've discovered him and can't wait to come out to play.
Big 'Un for his part is amazed to find small sheep that look like him.

Gate Operator

2010-09-29T22:28:00.002+09:30

With all the fuss about lambs going on lately Gem finds that sometimes breakfast is late and he just has to start the morning routine himself. Like letting the equine contingent into the raceway in search of their hay ration. The raceway gate, as mentioned before, is not the most robust of farming contraptions and really only works on the honour system.

Most of the time the horses pretend to respect it and stay on the outer but when he's really hungry Gem just gives it the old heave-ho. Having first wedged his dextrous muzzle into the gap between the ancient strainer post and all the makeshift piping, chicken wire and baling twine...

he opens it wide enough so that he and the girls can saunter down to the pine tree to make their presence known in the yard.
By standing where we can see them from the shed and whinnying at us whenever we pop into view they ensure they won't be forgotten. As if they would be, but some mornings with the sun well up before their food orders have arrived they feel the need to harrass the waiters and remind us.

Peacock sail

2010-09-28T21:56:00.001+09:30

This is what happens when you try to be too much of a show off in a high wind. You get the Marilyn Monroe skirt flip without being sexy. It is, however, rather amusing.

Two for one offer

2010-09-27T07:55:00.018+09:30

SO did the 5:00am shift this morning and discovered Annaliese's prolapse occurring again so he walked her round and round the yard until all her bits settled back where they should be. It only took an hour and twenty minutes. The birds singing, the rooster crowing and the sun well up by this time meant he went back to bed, planning a sleep in to compensate. I tag-teamed him at 7:00 and did the morning feeding rounds before our very own dawn chorus of several species all yelling at once got too out of hand. All was normal.

Returning to the lamb yard at around 9:00, I found Dawn bleating softly and licking the ground. I also found lots of wet stuff but no lamb. Checked the perimeter fence. No sign of crushed grass or drag marks, no sign of blood. She surely could not have had her lamb and a fox taken it?

No, the lamb was yet to come and she was just getting in some last minute practice before the real birth, which turned out to be a bit tricky. Her twins, a ram and a ewe, got tangled up. Both wanted to be first to come out and jammed in the doorway cartoon-style. Also, courtesy of Wilberforce our new Merino ram, they have quite big heads. Coupled with the giraffe-like legs of their Border Leicester ancestry and Dawn being an absolute beginner at all this and it was an hour after her water bag hit the deck before one tiny foot appeared in the outside world. Upside down. This is Not Right but probably the reason it was taking too long. So much for SO's sleep in, the lamb shed was turned into Sheep ER, I gloved up with the box of first aid supplies out and he was roused to help.

Being midwife is very much seeing with your fingers like a blind person. What I could "see" was a head alongside an upside down foot. Clearly not both belonging to the same lamb, or if they did it was a contortionist. Everything got pushed gently back out of the birth canal into the uterus with a bit of hope. (I find the application of hope helps, if only helping me) Quite often, as everything slides away into the dark out of reach, a suddenly-freed lamb will kick or move and right itself for the next shot at presentation. However, sometimes it doesn't. What we had with the next contraction was a foot - this time the right side up - and a head. Now, most lambs have two front feet and therefore you want two showing up. I went in search of the other one which was folded back and (get your little head out of the way please, I can't feel your foot) eased it forward by a finger under it's knee.

OK, two feet, a head, the usual lamb combination. I remembered to breathe and eased the feet out in front of the nose in position. As another contraction crushed my wrist I suddenly remembered our Operational Procedure last year had been to call the vet first on such occasions, then do what we could until they got here, being rank amateurs ourselves. This would ensure help if we couldn't sort it out. That was a year ago, I had forgotten it and the phone was in the house a long way away. There is no mobile phone reception here so we didn't have one of those either, and at any rate SO was completely tied up holding Dawn whilst I was completely tied up untying completely tied up lambs so there was really no choice but to just get on with it.

Poor young Dawn had a time of getting the lamb's head free whilst applied traction to it's front legs but once it did it was born in a rush. The usual frenzied sweeping of the muzzle and vigorous rubbing of a limp lamb commenced, followed in this case by a complete lift, downward head tilt and bit of a swing as the lamb lay still, unresponsive, and I was hoping to clear it's airway more definitely. Another application of hope and the little ewe lamb lifted her head momentarily declaring she was alive but had been through a hell of a time, could we just give her a minute, please?

Meanwhile Dawn was licking her frantically, either delighted, relieved, concerned, trying to get the human smell off or all of the above. Nothing else. No other heaves, no second lamb. Both water sacs were long broken and every minute was a minute without air for the lamb left inside. With a sigh SO caught the poor ewe again and she just stood there resignedly whilst I fished the second twin out, one leg also folded back behind her pelvic opening and his head just as large. He was very distressed by now, and another desperate revival session was needed. Both took a long time to breath, both would have died stuck together in the womb possibly taking their mother with them and both were exhausted. To say nothing of Dawn. Or us.

Still, they're here. They're alive. We've seen both suckle and Dawn has an udder like a Jersey cow. The next 24 hours will tell whether any lasting damage was done, but they've made it through the first 12 and I'm very happy with that.

.

Neighbourly help

2010-09-26T21:31:00.007+09:30

With a list longer than a country mile of tasks, jobs and things to do the last thing we needed was the phone ringing at lunchtime today and our nearest neighbour's forlorn voice asking, as it always does, "Er, what are you guys up to this afternoon?" Actually we were up to our necks in tree debris but that phrase always means he needs help with something and this time it was with loading sheep into a trailer. He's the nicest chap in the world so of course we went over to help. It was only five sheep and they were already held in their smallest paddock. How hard could it be?

Forty minutes later he and SO had bodily carried each struggling, kicking woolly bundle one by one about 100 metres to the trailer rather than the sheep being herded anywhere in any coherent fashion. One did a superb display of showjumping, one went through a fence, taking the whole length of wire with it, and one went up a tree. Eventually they were all loaded and he drove them away with promises to come over later. Come over he did. With a bigger chainsaw than ours.His chainsaw refused to work initially, no doubt scared to bits by the sheer volume of wood spread all over what was our driveway. The driveway that had to be cleared before the farrier arrives tomorrow. There's no way he'd carry his anvil and tools from the gate all the way up to the horse yard, so the chainsaws had to work. A few screwdrivers and several pokes with a piece of wire got it going again and the chaps, wearing their chaps, worked away the afternoon.

What our neighbour did in an afternoon with a bigger saw actually saved SO about a day's work on his own so we are very grateful. My job was to cut up all the leaves and smaller debris ready for feeding to the hungry mulcher and getting the machine-wielders drinks. I did five barrow loads of debris before the blisters got too niggly and I decided a cup of tea and a lambing-check was in order instead. The working blokes continued to work and so did their chainsaws. They did an awful lot but there's still a lawnful and another five trees to go yet.

Tree fellas

2010-09-25T20:34:00.001+09:30

We had tree fellers in today and they were quite amazing.

Actually there were five of them and they were tasked with taking down 7 huge eucalyptus trees too close to our house in soggy ground of winter, the wind storms of spring and the fire danger of summer. Much as we love them they also drop leaves - and limbs occasionally - all year round and their roots invade every garden bed we have. We are sorry to see them go but are trying to make up for it by planting about 500 more on the property. They were far too big for us to cut down ourselves, ranging from about 20 to 40 feet high and sandwiched between fences, gates, heritage garden and other things we didn't want to squash. Like the chicken house. So professional Tree Fellers were called in, complete with abseiling harness, chainsaws and slight madness.

The tree fellers were not at all phased by the lack of space to actually fell the trees. They just went up there and brought them down, bit by bit. Dropping great branches accurately between the 40 year old camellias, the flimsy bit of wire holding back the woolly horde and a lonely garden tap. Grinning all the while. They came from all over the place, a Canadian, a New Zealander, a New South Welshman among them. They laughed and joked and had games of duelling chainsaws.

The morning started shakily when SO declared they'd be here between 7 and 7:30am, but he didn't expect them until after that really and at any rate they'd have to set up first so he wasn't going to get up too early. I was unpopular due to making him get up at 6:00 after checking the ewes all night, but the tree feller fellas were here, chainsaws revving, at 7:15.

We were then treated to a wonderful show of aerobatic wood cutting, trapeze tree trimming and gravity defying gum grooming all morning. The pregnant ewes, in the paddock we optimistically call "The Orchard" closest the house, were a bit alarmed at all the noise and gathered together in the farthest corner whispering among themselves. The alpacas were completely unfazed.

The tree feller fellas worked on the five biggest eucalypts first, all together in what could not be called a small copse at the back of the garden acre. The pile of wood and leaves there now cannot be traversed. It will take us several weeks with our own little chainsaw and mulcher to clear up, but at last the trees are down.

When we eventually let the cats and dogs out of the house again after all was safe Jelly pretended to be sad about the loss of the trees, then spent the afternoon being a tiger in the branches and leaves and running and jumping from log to log having the best of times on her own little assault course.

Wired

2010-09-24T22:15:00.003+09:30

Feeding the free range sheep this morning I heard an unusual metalic rattle among the bleats and baaas. It was one of last year's ewe lambs sporting the latest look in designer fencewear.

An old 6 foot length of the classic number 8 gauge wire was wrapped around her and dragging along behind. We keep the place as free of wire and other rubbish as possible and have cleared loads but the place has been through fires and floods for more than a hundred years and deep in the forests of bracken there could still be ancient lost temples. Obviously there was a bit of old fence. As SO was in his sleeping time I tried to remove the offensive fencing by standing on it to catch her. She wasn't impressed. Neither were the other sheep.

I tried to catch her bodily but by myself in the middle of our largest paddock with the other sheep all milling round demanding service, breakfast or to see the manager and I should have known it would be hopeless. She seemed to be tangling the wire closer to her as well, trying for the crinoline look.

I had no choice but to wake up SO and he came to all our rescues yet again. One advantage to being tired and fed up is that you don't muck about, you're beyond being careful and you just lunge at the animal you want and secure it in a vice-like grip. SO did this. He also got the wire in a vice-like grip or at least in the wire cutters' grip and little miss was freed relatively easily. There were no cuts, lacerations or other injuries so we let her go pronto to feast with her friends.

She left so fast that we didn't even get her name.

Training for cats

2010-09-23T22:58:00.001+09:30

Jeremy likes to practice catching rats and mice in the hay shed. He'll sniff around and wait for hours. It's not bad waiting, it's out of the wind and the hay is warm.

He also knows you have to go like this:

but need to have a mouse to pounce on to make it work. The chances are best when someone has just shifted a bale. He knows they're in there somewhere.

Invisible to humans

2010-09-22T22:37:00.002+09:30

Imogen is soaking up the warmth from the top of the rocky outcrop and is obvious for miles in daylight. Belinda is impossible to see from the bottom of the hill when she lies against a black rock like this. The morning sun has picked her out and so have I. No doubt so would foxes were she to go into labour. Unfortunately she can't hide the smell of newborn lamb.

In another week or two as her time approaches she and the rest of her comrades in pregnancy will be moved to a fox proof shed. We'll leave them out as long as we think safe though, living the most natural life possible. There is nothing better for them than to enjoy the fresh air, new grass and spring sun.

Black and white menace

2010-09-21T22:14:00.007+09:30

This beaky fellow is nesting in an ancient eucalyptus tree near the old sheep yards. Which is fine, we're happy to share. He's not. He firmly believes we should not set foot, hoof or paw in his territory and swoops us every chance he gets.

He's a White-Backed Magpie. It's been explained elsewhere that Australians like to call a spade a spade, a white faced heron a White Faced Heron and a glossy, black cockatoo a Glossy Black Cockatoo. We are not into fancy bird names when coldly descriptive will do. You may be wondering why, then, his back seems to be not white, but motley grey? Or indeed, since this is a nesting bird, her back is motley grey. Did the black paint and white paint get smudged? Actually, the grey paint is an undercoat. This is still a fairly juvenile bird and will get a truly dazzling white back after the next moult. In the meantime it's not her back we're looking at. It's that beak. Aimed like a missile straight at our heads when we least expect it.

Spring snow

2010-09-20T22:27:00.002+09:30

Sometimes it gets very cold here, but it doesn't snow. (Except for the winter of 1996 but that was a rare exception) The closest we usually get is the result of a gust of wind in the blossoming pear trees. It's very pretty as the petals flutter down.

The falling blossoms are also irresistible to our cats who play like kittens amongst it. They are 10 years old but spring brings out the youngster in all of us.

First one

2010-09-19T22:06:00.005+09:30

Finally, after weeks of waiting and getting ever more anxious we were given a small reward in this little chap born at 11:00pm last night. I know the exact time because he was halfway out when I did the 11:00pm check. I could hear Priscilla's groans from the house. His head and front feet were ready to dive into the world but she was just having a bit of trouble with his shoulders so I did the vet nurse thing and helped. She proceeded to clean him up a bit before he could see company.

There are several tasks we do when a lamb is born, after the desperate clearing of mucous from their mouth and nose if the lamb hasn't shaken it off immediately. Healthy lambs can be born perfectly easily only to die from asphyxiation from the birth sac still encasing them. Most of the time they or the ewe get it clear but we like to watch and make certain. Paper towel is brilliant for this purpose as although it's not reusable this does mean it is perfectly clean on the first use and it's so absorbent that it grips well and slides all the extra stuff away and contains it for disposal. It isn't always easy to clean little muzzles with just your hands in an emergency, in my limited experience, newborn lambs are quite slippery.

The next step is to dip the broken umbilical cord into iodine solution to stop infection. This is easiest as soon as the lamb is breathing and upright but before he's learned to run away. Again, although there are probably specialist veterinary things on the market for this purpose (I don't really know, are there?) we've found the best thing is to pour an inch or two of iodine into a wide, shallow glass jar with a screw top lid. Although it's glass - which we generally avoid around animals - this does mean it can be sterilised and is spill proof. If it does spill you only lose that bit and not the whole bottle. Best of all for clumsy would-be vets like me it's easy to catch the dangling bloody bit in a wide jar which is helpful when it's the middle of the night and your body's working solo because your brain is still asleep.

The last thing to be sure of before getting back into a warm bed is that the ewe's teats are clear and the lamb has had a draught of colostrum. Now vets will tell you - and they are right - that a lamb can go for about 12 hours without colostrum before it runs out of reserves and starts to get too weak. Of course, but why make them wait if you don't have to? Also, knowing this place, some disaster will occur that takes all our energy, attention and time during the next 12 hours and we can't watch the lamb constantly to be sure. If it then gets sick what do we know of it's feeding history? So we reckon it's better to see it happen as soon as possible, put a brisk tick of completion against that box and hop back under the quilt. On tame ewes, a light squeeze of the nipples is easy and unblocks the little wax seal (like a fine wine this colostrum stuff, it's been brewing for months) which lets both the colostrum and the smell of said colostrum out. After that it's generally minutes before canny lambs find the source. Sometimes dopey ones need a hint, but they all generally get the idea pretty quickly if not fussed over too much.

We are aiming to breed coloured lambs this year. This chap is white. We'd prefer ewe lambs to start building up the coloured breeding flock. This chap is... well, a chap. Still, the thrill of a new lamb is enough to keep going through the nights of broken sleep and so what if he's not exactly what we wished for? He's not coloured or female but he's gorgeous and healthy so we're over the moon and just don't care.

Weed inspection

2010-09-18T22:31:00.001+09:30

I was weeding the larger rose bed today, quietly minding my own business, when a representative of the Garden Weed Scratchers Society demanded to know what was in my bucket and was it edible? If so, why was I taking work from them?

When I asked why they didn't scratch up the weeds in the garden beds, only the flowering plants, herbs and vegetable seedlings, they all pretended to be very, very interested in a gravel-dwelling microbe for the moment.

Then they pointedly looked at the state of the yard with it's covering of weeds that I hadn't got on top of anyway and wondered out loud to each other what on earth I would do without my little flock of portable scarifiers regardless of what they scratched up. Without them the place would be a jungle...

... and what was in that bucket anyway?

Chair for two

2010-09-17T21:52:00.004+09:30

Snowy isn't actually allowed in her favourite armchair, which is why it has a makeshift cover in the form of a towel to deflect all her white hair. There's no keeping her out of it when we're not looking. Tonight she even tried to hide behind a cat.

Lamb envy

2010-09-16T11:52:00.000+09:30

The Merino crosses across the road have had lambs. Lots of them. Several weeks ago. This ewe seems to be the babysitter of the group, or she collects lambs. She issued a challenge to Snowy and I as we passed by,

and then proceeded to muster her charges over by the creek and well away from us. She reminded me of a primary school teacher I used to have.
I wonder if these lambs get stories told to them under the trees. I wish we had lambs. I know we will eventually but I'm impatient. The ewes are incredibly, overwhelmingly, mind-numbingly patient and will take their sweet time. This ewe let her lambs spread out to graze and play again as soon as we moved on. Just to taunt me with their cute antics.

Celebrity dog

2010-09-15T11:28:00.000+09:30

Walks with Snowy the beagle are quite often interesting, occasionally adventurous and sometimes eventful. Tonight she collected an entourage of fans in a group of young Murray Grey steers. She was just nosing around after foxes near their fence, one of them spotted her and said something like "Phwoaaarrr, lookit the redheaded dog!" in cattle-speak and they all crowded over to ogle her.
They were fascinated with her. Being adolescents they all had to jostle and crowd and follow her along the fence, calling out comments (which I could only understand as "mooooooaaww!") and asking for her autograph. Snowy declined, donned dark glasses, turned up her collar and held a paw to the camera, shunning fame. She hurriedly took an alternative route along the verge.

The steers continued to follow her for the length of their paddock, peering between bushes and trees hoping to get another glimpse of their idol before she disappeared from view altogether.

Then they went back to grazing until the next interesting thing came along.

No lambs. Yet.

2010-09-14T08:09:00.000+09:30

Day One of Possible Lambing Days has dawned with a distinct lack of lambs. No lambs in the maternity ward, none in the paddock either. I don't know why I'm so disappointed. They're definitely in there, just waiting for the right moment to make their debut.

Tonight the vigil really starts with the round-the-clock regular checks. I don't know why I'm so excited about that either. There's something mysterious and adventurous about shining a torch about the place in the frosty starlight at 1:00 am and then again a few hours later and then again in the grey first light, but this has to go on for about two and a half weeks. The novelty wears off at about day three.

Righto, bring it on!

2010-09-13T07:57:00.002+09:30

Preparations for lambing are nearly complete. As complete as we can make them whilst the sheep yards are retaining water better than our duckpond. The pregnant ewes don't seem to be retaining water although their demands for icecream and dill gherkins have only been met by their normal rations of hay and sheep nuts. They've cleared out the orchard completely now so we let them into the home paddock for foraging around the dry parts. We're not game to let them over the whole lot permanently just yet due to the swampy bit and the seasonal creek still running through it. Liver fluke and footrot would be rather inconvenient just now. To throw the ewes over for treatment would be next to impossible without a lot of stress to them and the lambs and for some of them I'm sure the lambs would just fall out.

Annaliese, Dawn and Priscilla won the prizes for biggest udders so they have been given the exclusive lamb shed accommodation with private drinking water, luxury straw bedding and fox-proof security netting. The biggest udder is not necessarily a sign of who will lamb first, but in lieu of knowing otherwise it's the only one we have. They've taken to the new living quarters by sitting around, putting their feet up, gossiping and joking.

Tomorrow is the official "watch for lambs" date. We're nearly ready. As ready as we'll ever be, which on our rather amateur smallholding is always "not very".

.

Time in the sun

2010-09-12T21:59:00.000+09:30

The sun came out today and with it the grass should start to get more nutritious as it produces carbohydrate. The animals only know it tastes sweeter and get on with the serious business of grazing. Even two of the kangaroos came down on the flat in broad daylight. The one in the foreground probably needs all the extra energy she can get as she's carrying a joey and will be feeding it.

The sun also makes everyone a bit lazy however and new mothers need to rest.

Do you have enough for everybody?

2010-09-11T21:49:00.002+09:30

Gem has his dinner stolen by the free range sheep regularly. He often leaves it to investigate what the other horses are having (the same) and returns to find one of the mares eating his too. Sometimes one of the wethers reaches through the fence for a mouthful. He just shakes his head at it, which is horse for "Garrrn, get out if it!" The most angry he'll get is to shake a snaky head at a wayward lamb, ears pinned back as he pretends to snap at them. Then it's back to munching his mixture. Tonight however, even one of the peacocks had a go.

I thought this might be the last straw for Gem, but instead he just looked sideways at me, flicked some of the mix out of his bowl with his muzzle as if searching for tastier bits at the bottom and continued to eat. The peacock gratefully pecked at the flicked bits. I'm sure I heard Gem thinking "Here," flick, flick, "Now leave me alone!"

Paws for a moment

2010-09-10T21:41:00.000+09:30

Jeremy's been flat out gardening all morning. Here he is just being flat out.

Having helped me weed the smallest rose bed, it's understory of bulbs now finishing flowering, he's seconded my woolly cardigan because it's warmer than the damp grass. It's also positioned beautifully to gaze dreamily at the last of the grape hyacinths.

The lawn needs mowing next, or the paving sweeping. Just now however Jezza's appreciating nature. Or waiting for mice to show up in the foliage. He's so laid back it's difficult to tell.

Make no bones about it

2010-09-09T21:29:00.002+09:30

Every time we send a couple of sheep to slaughter we get all the bits of them back. Partly because it's the most wonderful, fresh, tasty lamb we'll ever have but also because we show maximum respect to our charges by not wasting a morsel. The dogs agree fully although probably for different reasons. A whole sheep includes many parts that make really good natural dog food, especially raw meaty bones. They're great for their teeth and gums and keep them busy for half an hour or so. Snowy the beagle and Georgie the poodle don't much care about teeth and gums except what they're used for. They use them to full advantage. Georgie holds her bone down with one paw to gain leverage.

Snowy however favours the lollipop method more.

New Dawn

2010-09-08T09:52:00.003+09:30

This is Dawn, a Border Leicester we bred here on the smallholding. She's nearly two years old now, and has been optimistically mated to Wilberforce the coloured Merino in the hope of producing fine, long, coloured wool for spinning. What are the chances? Is she even pregnant?

Really, is there any doubt?

Extending the olive branch

2010-09-07T09:29:00.002+09:30

Or rather, checking no olive branches have been lost in the wind squalls. There are quite a few olives about the place because the pips are dropped by birds eating the fruit and saplings result. In some cases here the olives take over as a woody weed, the Dept of Environment have removal programs in National Parks that target olives and they are a declared pest plant. Most of our rogue saplings could be called weeds, but not this veritable old chap, given scale here by Snowy the beagle.

It's trunk seems to have once been much broader, it has lost limbs over the years and grown new ones, a rather useful trait to have with this climate. The first settlers planted olives to harvest the oil as a replacement for machinery oil which they couldn't get regularly and was very expensive, coming so far from their British and European suppliers by tall ship. As a result there were olives on most old farms and if you're lucky no-one's cut them down in a fit of green fervour. They are good shade trees, don't need much water in our "Mediterranean" climate and the sheep trim any leaves they can reach as a green addition to their diet during dry times. The only reason this old man's trunk still has shoots is because the grass around him is green.

Best of all, the olives are delicious. They are not commerical size or even a commercial variety. They're probably some old Italian variety that's been around for donkey's years. They are sweet and fruity and go so well with our sun-ripened tomatos, roast capsicums and fetta cheese. The dogs love them too but are sadly not allowed to eat too many due to the fat content. This doesn't stop them trying. Pleading. Begging. When that doesn't work, scavenging under the trees for the windfalls themselves.

We asked an Italian uncle if we should water or feed the tree to get larger olives? He waved his hands, declaring "No! No! No! Only whata God giva dem!", explaining the best, most flavoursome fruit comes from the natural weather undiluted by false growth or too much water. He is right. Snowy's favourite tree is thriving after about 120 years on what nature provides alone.

Storm clear up

2010-09-06T08:55:00.001+09:30

When the dogs went out the other day they were startled to find woolly monsters rustling in the bushes. We've had several small trees fall over or shed bits of themselves in the storms recently so there are branches fallen all over the farm. Recovery work is slow. Mainly because once the trees are down they pose no real danger and there is so much else to do that the simple task of clearing up gets put on the back burner. So the sheep like to assist with clearing storm trees. They particularly like to assist with the tasty ones.
Gimli and Elrond are currently in the ram yard grazing that before reseeding. In an unforseen bonus a wind gust dropped an acacia in full flower on their fence. It was an opportunity not to be missed. A lolly scramble!

They munch the further branches using teamwork. Gimli's a bit short to reach them and has to put his head through the fence whilst the leggy Elrond leans over the top. Elrond pulls the branches down to Gimli who holds them, chewing delightedly, whilst Elrond munches the higher parts.

Wilber watches, intrigued. The younger sheep invite him over, giggling. He's always cautious, but discovers the sweet acacia buds, only in flower for a few weeks now, are a culinary delight not to be missed. Gourmet grazing.

Even when they've stripped the reachable branches bare the wethers keep reaching for more, licking the bowl and scraping their plates. Elrond chews the last tasty morsels of bark off each stick, much to Wilber's amusement.

We'll throw them the rest in portions each day as we clear up too. They'll have a wonderful lunch and leave us just with a pile of sticks for kindling. Perhaps the council should employ sheep as storm debris crew?

Princess

2010-09-05T08:16:00.008+09:30

This is Princess, the Palomino mare. She's the one on the right although the one on the left is a bit of a princess too. Princess the horse is a Thoroughbred albeit a small and dainty type, never raced and never been trained to race but was born and bred just over the hill from here at a specialist Palomino stud. Her life has included some rather successful dressage and a lot of years that I don't have the history for but obviously trained her well before I got her from a beautiful and well-meaning young girl who hadn't the foggiest notion about horses.

This girl bought Princess, because she was pretty, and an old cob she called Troy to keep her company and discovered that being a horsey person often breaks your nails. Long, acrylic ones painted bright pink anyway. It also makes your expensive jodpurs and designer clothes dirty. But the girl was sweet and loved her horses and her parent's had no clue about horses either so Princess, or "Hayley" as the girl re-named her, and Troy were put on show in a paddock.

The paddock was full of Salvation Jane, a Declared Weed also known as Paterson's Curse and rather bad for animal internal organs when eaten long term. The oblivious family simply saw green plants in the paddock and thought the horses had sufficient feed. Princess served her purpose looking pretty in the paddock for another year or so before the poor feed and liver damage took it's toll and she lost condition, the sheen on her coat and it's rich golden colour.

To be fair to the young girl, she knew something was wrong but not what. Princess was not injured and still ate carrots when offered, so she didn't call a vet. She threw up her hands, said "I can't look after her" and went to Japan with her boyfriend. Her father asked around his friends and business associates as to who wanted some horses, and so Princess and poor old Troy found their way to us. In a surprise move at the last moment he handed me Princess' Palomino registration papers, a real bonus for a rescue horse. Troy was more typically anonymous with just a few details passed by word of mouth. The papers told us Princess' real name and where she was bred, not 2 km away from where we ended up ten years later too.

Luckily no lasting damage was done and a good diet and decent care brought her and Troy back to their former glory within a season. We never found out Troy's history, real name or even his actual age, which was old even then. Whilst Troy eventually got inoperable cancer and had to be put to sleep, Princess went from strength to strength and became a lovely, if rather springy, riding horse. During the years I had to agist horses I kept her in various places all over the Adelaide Hills, and she carried me many miles in training although far too excitable to make it through the vet checks at any actual Endurance event. She loved being at events, perhaps the bunting, horse floats and general atmosphere reminded her of past success at shows, but she was too busy socialising, chatting, laughing and waving to all her friends to keep her heart rate down. I retired her to just hacking about - although at 28 years old she doesn't do that much anymore either.

Princess will never be moved on from here now. She's a part of our family. She may have travelled all over the place during her life, but she's come back to her home district for good.

Owl ambush

2010-09-04T16:06:00.000+09:30

The resident Southern Boobook Owls are about the place again. This is good as it's early spring and they've nested here before. We're hoping they will again, particularly since their favourite foods are rats and mice and owls eating a few of those would be really useful right now.

What is not so good sometimes is their utter, complete silence. They surprise you in the garden constantly, especially at dawn and dusk. This one is sitting on a barbeque we've covered with an old tablecloth for the winter. Her eyes are mesmerising and you tend to look into those when they fix you with that perfectly focussed stare, but what rodents probably notice more is her perfect manicure. Hopefully just before they're grasped in it.

Happy Birthday Dad!

2010-09-03T08:17:00.001+09:30

Today is my father's 70th birthday. He didn't want a party, or a family dinner, or indeed any celebration at all. This is pretty typical, he's fairly low-key. Except when he sings. His one concession to celebrating his birthday was to try a Thai laksa soup for the first time. He'll go to the football this week as usual, although he won't play golf on Sunday as it's Father's Day. Actually, he would have played golf as he always does (he even played golf on my 40th birthday), but being secretary of his club the rest of the members threatened mutiny if he scheduled a game on that day. So he'll garden instead or fix something or build something.

That won't be unusual. He's always gardening, fixing something or building something. I don't think he even noticed the ramp down from retirement - it just meant more time to work hard at home. I don't actually have many photos of him looking at the camera as he's always busy. He's a mercurial bundle of ideas and energy moving from project to project like a swarm of worker bees. We've learned to harness this energy, my mother and I, or it can get out of hand. She wanted a shadehouse in the garden. The shadehouse he built is beautiful but you need a cut lunch to traverse it and it's taller than the actual house. It even includes a series of fishponds. They took to keeping and breeding birds and needed an aviary so he built eight or nine. His suburban block has a show quality garden that changes constantly but flowers all year round under the sheer force of his will and must have elastic fences to contain all his plans.

His own house and garden doesn't exhaust him so he works on ours as well. I just mentioned the front steps of our house had crumbling mortar. He re-built the entire front veranda wall and repointed it. Mostly in the blazing sun. SO mumbled something about taking the wheelbarrow around the long way to get from the garden shed to the compost heap so Dad built a little stone bridge over the creek, complete with parapets. He used stones he collected from the paddocks by hand.

He's on call for us 24/7 when disaster strikes and never seems to complain. He turns up whenever help is needed and works like a navvy. He clears weeds like a locust, prunes shrubs like a hurricane and makes a good third person for working with sheep as his diverse life has given him many rural skills and all sorts of useful knowledge. He is a former dairy farmer, market gardener and abattoir manager among many other things. We got used to him meeting people he knows in all sorts of locations including mountain tops, fishing ports, tropical rainforests, various other states of Australia and running into an old mate on one occasion in a natural cave complex about 100 feet underground. He's still making new friends.

He doesn't have any human grandchildren so he calls himself Grandpaws and makes things for the pets instead. They all adore him. His current project is a wooden bed for Snowy the beagle but true to form we have to collect it with the ute as it won't fit in his car.

He is the salt of the earth, a force of nature and a cheerful, modest and friendly man. I have dozens of stories of his thoughtfulness and kindness. He's always turning up with presents for us, tools, plants or things that might come in useful. Our work here would not have progressed nearly as quickly or as well without his help and we are so grateful for it all. Happy Birthday Dad.

Spring is sprung

2010-09-02T22:01:00.002+09:30

The grass is riz,

I wonder where them birdies is?

(with apologies to Ogden Nash or whoever wrote the poem)

This is why Jamie has two bells on his collar and a daylight curfew. He loves birds. We'd much rather he started liking rats more, but it's the first day of spring and it's finally stopped raining so we'll grant him this one day free in the garden to enjoy the sun. No birds were harmed. They're singing a lot though so they're clearly happy about this too.

The first of Spring

2010-09-01T10:07:00.006+09:30

Officially it's the first day of Spring in the Southern Hemisphere, however the thunderstorm scheduled for the last day of winter was a bit late and - in what we hope was a grand finale - a lightning strike took out our local telecommunications tower. Our phones are working but not our internet connection. Normal service will resume as soon as we get through the recorded messages, talk to a real person and the linesmen get through their enormous backlog of lines bought down by falling trees.

Meanwhile the sheep will make unstable structures safe by trying to knock down poles, trees and fence posts of their own. Or it could just be that they're itchy.

Maternity refectory

2010-08-31T10:13:00.000+09:30

Every evening now the pregnant ewes (and some of them are very pregnant) get a ration of Lamb and Ewe nuts. These differ from ordinary sheep nuts in that they have more protein and as the ewes are now on the home stretch (and some of them are very stretched) they get the extra good stuff.

The troughs are where they are, and it takes two to sate the ewes now, so that I can just tip the nuts out unmolested from the other side of the fence. You may think it awkward to have the troughs so close to the fence but actually it's a lot less awkward than putting them in the middle of a paddock where you have to make a dash to them, holding heavy buckets of feed out of sheepy nose-reach. It can be really difficult to walk through a sea of pushing, jumping, woolly, pregnant, clumsy, hungry beasts. They're lovely, but downright dangerous. They'll mob you. It gets ugly. Which is why alpaca guardians Ori and Siri remain aloof and dignified well away from the melee. They don't like sheep nuts anyway.

Ducks on the pond

2010-08-30T10:03:00.001+09:30

It seems Mr & Mrs Wood Duck have been making use of the ammenities here at the miniature Celestequest Wildlife Sanctuary.

Plans to widen the pond and perhaps build a refuge island plus the planting of rushes and other water plants may have to wait. We don't want to scare them off. The amount of rain recently means the water is constantly renewed and a lot of frogs have also moved in. They sing about it in the evenings. Ducky Decoy however has been washed against the overflow so many times he is now in temporary dry dock.

Or should that be "dry duck"?

Guarding the gate

2010-08-29T09:53:00.000+09:30

Having found a comfortable hollow in the sun, Adele the Border Leicester lamb waits in case this gate to new pasture should just happen to open.

She's also in a good position to sight anyone walking past with an armful of hay and is ready with her hind leg to "accidentally" trip them up.

Shake your tailfeather

2010-08-28T09:35:00.001+09:30

Trying to find something feathered and female to display to means the peacock-in-unauthorised-residence is sometimes reduced to putting on a show for a captive audience. The lawn in front of the henhouse makes a good stage and he's got room to turn around there doing the seductive dance of the feathered fan.

He never seems to display to the hens when they are freeranging. Perhaps hens out on the town in a group scare him (they seem to scare most blokes). The presence of Silver Boy, the aggressive Araucana rooster may or may not have something to do with his sudden shyness when meeting hens in a more informal setting but whilst the hens are confined to quarters he's all dazzle and confidence.

Silver Boy may not be impressed but whilst the peacock is showing all his eyes all other eyes are on him. The hens all crowd forward to the viewing area making appreciative cooing noises or suggestive cluck cluck clucks and watch for the duration whilst Silver Boy hovers behind hissing at them to be ladylike and behave.

FBI cats

2010-08-27T10:30:00.007+09:30

I don't know what these cats are up to, but they posted on either side of the driveway and as soon as Snowy the unruly beagle had gone obliviously past, they exchanged a meaningful glance...

...and turned to follow her. The Feline Bureau of Investigation.

They're either monitoring her movements closely or they are now her bodyguards.

Lady in red

2010-08-26T10:06:00.003+09:30

Imagine you slog through the mud pushing (and sometimes, in this slush, pulling) a wheelbarrow with a bale of hay for your sheep to where they are typically waiting on a winter's morning for such a breakfast to find, not your flock, but this large, red lady instead:

It's hard enough to feed everyone at Celestequest without the neighbour's cows joining in. Placid as they can be, they eat an awful lot. Including our precious pasture. We're trying to make it last all spring so this lady had to go home. Fortunately this wasn't far. Unfortunately there was only Snowy the unruly beagle and myself to drive her. Fortunately there is a connecting gate to the neighbour's place. Unfortunately the cow turned uphill instead.

That's the open gate behind her, all she needs to do is go down the track and through it. Yes, it appears simple. A lot of scrambling and yelling later, sometimes even with waving hands when they were free of keeping balance on the muddy hill, and she was home.

Snowy enthusiastically made sure she was well through the gate and then, finding herself in a new world to explore, kept going. Beagles do that. At an excited, cracking pace. The neighbour's property is all one big paddock, but fortunately it's only about 40 acres of gullies, steep slopes and scrub. A short extraction mission later and Snowy was out of the restricted zone and back on home turf. The next job was to find where the sheep had got to.

Trouble looming

2010-08-25T09:45:00.002+09:30

We are often asked, with all those sheep, what do we do with all the wool? Our flock is too small to sell the wool clip commercially, and having coloured sheep and all sorts of breeds in the mix doesn't help. I actually spin a lot of it into yarn. Then it's either sold or knitted into things or both. Lately I have taken possession of a small table loom. This came at a negligible cost (fixing someone's spinning wheel, a quick lesson and a couple of batts of wool roving ready to spin) and it was probably free because it's ancient and hasn't been used in 30 years. I know this because of the dates of the newspapers used as loom papers for the old project still on it. Still, I was willing to give it a crack, although the small furry bodies circling like sharks really should have warned me it wouldn't be that easy.

Warping a loom is the most difficult aspect of the whole process, requiring lots of long, even, straight, untangled lengths of yarn ready to be put on as the basis for the weaving. Not tested as a possible musical instrument by the cat.

Those yellow threads are ment to be neat and straight, looped around the chair, not played like a harp.
It didn't work as a guitar either, or even a hammock. It was useless as a bed to lie on, and although Jeremy did try to straighten out the mess, having three out of four paws caught in it made this impossible.

With the rain bucketing down outside I thought it would be a good afternoon's project but made a mental note to move anything like this to a CEZ (Cat Exclusion Zone) first.

Forest creatures

2010-08-24T09:03:00.002+09:30

The valley is deceptive at the best of times, it's a lot further to the head of the gully than it looks. So those white animals in the forest on the first inspection tour this morning could not possibly be sheep. This is a good thing, as we have sheep. It may be a bad thing for next door, who keep cows.

More of this type of creature, captured here wondering why this tree didn't provide the same shade as the other trees. It was a good scratching post anyway.

This was a neighbour's young steer, in with about 30 others. The storms lately have had us all out checking fences, checking trees, checking no trees had fallen on fences, but mostly checking no animals had got out through the gaps caused by said trees falling on aforementioned fences. By some miracle we have escaped this event so far. Still, there they were, a group of rather large four footed animals where no domesticated animals have ever been sighted before.

The forest is approximately 100 acres giving it the rather appropriate nickname of the 100 Acre Wood. It belongs to people who live on another road entirely about 3 km around by road. There's no other direct access to their property. This means losing stock in there is problematic. Losing anything in there entails a lot of walking - or rather - thrashing through underbrush so thick you can't see more than about 10 metres. It's wild. Eagles live there, and foxes. Probably fairy tale donkeys, bears and piglets too. Actually the donkeys and pigs are quite possible, they're both feral animals in Australia. Kangaroos certainly do, and Rabbit and all of Rabbit's friends and relations. But I didn't know of any cows.

The usual phone tree operated and it was determined that these were probably not the nearest neighbour's wayward Murray Grey bovine group, but belonged to the owners of the 100 Acre Wood. They must have been driven in there by the storm. With various work, school and other commitments, no-one was home to do anything about it anyway. We won't really know to whom they belong until someone musters their lot and counts a few short, by which time the mysterious white cows will have long since melted into the undergrowth.

Gentle Giant

2010-08-23T08:23:00.007+09:30

The bachelor lads were crutched separately due mainly to the innocent young females in the rest of the flock not ready for breeding but still very attractive to rams. Putting the lot together would probably result in unwanted teenage pregnancies. The only ram here is Wilber the coloured Merino who is a gentleman but a slave to testosterone nonetheless. Gimli, the older pet, and Elrond, last year's orphan live with him for company. Gimli had been through this crutching business before and looked for an escape route.

Elrond had no idea what crutching was, who the new voices were or anything much outside his breakfast. Sometimes being blind has advantages.

Being pets, they follow us like dogs and Mr Shearer had no problem tipping them over for a quick shave. Wilberforce is a little more wild, having lived in an enormous commercial flock previously. Several months of living with sheep who think they are humans has rubbed off though, and he submitted quietly to the new haircut. He ended up with a mohawk.

It's not really his look although he has the pierced ears and tattoos to go with it. He could probably pretend to be a big, mean, wild ram but his good breeding and sweet nature mean
he is not deceptive. A little puzzled at the world perhaps, sometimes scared and often contemplative, but generally just wanting to mingle with the flock and graze. A gentle giant.

Mission accomplished

2010-08-22T08:41:00.004+09:30

The sheep have finally been crutched, dagged, clatted, whatever you may call it. Their back ends are now clean shaven ready for a cleaner clip come shearing time or - in the case of the pregnant ewes - a clear area come lambing time. The wool around their other ends can be a problem too. Belinda the black ewe is from Corriedale stock and can hardly see now. Her Border Leicester companion on the right doesn't have this problem, nor that of grass seeds getting caught around her face which was one of the reasons we bred to Border Leicester rams in the past.

The day started out with showers which was mildly alarming as the previous date with the shearer was cancelled when he stood them up due to inclement weather and the yards nearly being under water. Everyone was put in the shed under cover which they didn't mind at all as they were warm and out of the wind.

It was about as packed as a mid-billed rock concert - crowded but everyone could see. Except those Dorsets like Isabelle.

Part of the whole crutching show was a part called "wigging" which is basically a short back and sides for those endowed with more facial wool than others. The sheep blink afterward with amazement as they haven't seen most of their surroundings for a few months outside the twin periscope sized areas through their fleece. For the lambs this was their first encounter with Mr Shearer and his noisy portable plant. It's run from a little generator on the back of his ute. His stand is a rubber mat which the sheep slip on so he can throw them over easily. The lambs, despite all my advice and encouragement, still kicked like mules, making a fiddly job just that more exciting.

Some of the end jobs were a bit rough around the edges, but they were clean nonetheless. Only one had started to clot up with dags and she was taken care of in minutes. The part Finn, part elephants we have in the Finn wethers got grunts from Mr Shearer with the effort of getting them down, but they were dealt with no less quickly.

Slowly the number of crutched and wigged individuals, dazzled with new sight and cold around the rear, increased in the yards and the number of waiting, pushing, shoving woolly bodies in the shed decreased to a comfortable level when only the pregnant ewes were left. For a while the sun came out, Mr Shearer's young sons came out, the birds came out and it was almost like we were running a real farm.

Battening down

2010-08-21T08:35:00.003+09:30

It's rained pretty solidly for the last 24 hours, which is wonderful really. Our tanks are overflowing, the springs are full and the pumps are working overtime. I will remember this come January and wish for it again. Right now it means dashing out when the showers lighten to do jobs outside whilst trying not to get stuck in the mud. Our little valley is a natural waterway but even without interpreting the lay of the land in a geographical fashion the layman could tell by the water flowing over his ankles. The dogs are largely confined to quarters and are largely over it.

They'll get a long walk as soon as we have more than 15 minutes of clear weather at a time. The cats handle confinement much better. They just settle down and wait. Minor disputes over prime sleeping spots notwithstanding.

Like a pig in mud...

2010-08-20T04:29:00.000+09:30

...but hay is so much warmer. Especially when the sun comes out. The neighbours' pig Buddy is quite happily oblivious that he has bedded down in the middle of the cow's dinner. It's warm. They're out in the fields and won't bother him for a while. Why not make the most of it?

He is a blissed-out peace pig.

Peacock parade

2010-08-19T04:12:00.001+09:30

Lately, when getting up in the morning to face the day from the main entrance to the house, we are greeted by this.

It's not an explosion in an orchid bed or a solidified fireworks display or even the beginnings of an exotic dance. Rather it's this fella, the peacock-we-don't-officially-like-but-will-tolerate, fluffing up for the day.

It takes him some time to limber up because it's quite an effort to walk around, as a peacock at this time of year and in want of a wife must, like this:

Its such an effort. He tries so hard. I'm flattered he's displaying to me and just can't help but to be impressed. Pity I'm entirely the wrong species.

Lady in waiting

2010-08-18T09:17:00.004+09:30

This is Annaliese. Her mother was the late Annabelle the beautiful silver grey sheep. Annaliese has met and spent some quality time with the black fleeced Wilberforce. We have high hopes for a coloured lamb from her and the odds are better than good that she will have one - genetically speaking. Luck will play it's part though. Perhaps we should run a book and take bets on whether or not her lamb will be white or if coloured and if so what colour?

Sometimes, in a certain light, or when her fleece is arranged in a flattering manner (which usually means stuck down by rain or spiky after she has a good shake) she doesn't look pregnant. She looks trim and neat, but not pregnant. Sometimes she looks very, very pregnant. This is usually when she's trying to get up from a sitting postion. I wish it was easier to tell, but it's still an agonisingly long six weeks or more to go before we will know for certain. Ultrasounds are expensive and as this is not an economically important flock we don't do them. Usually it becomes obvious eventually, in the final week or so. Even then ewes have been known to surprise us by acting normal until the last minute when they turn up with a couple of lambs and a suddenly full udder. We do check them every day but they probably think it's funny to keep us guessing.

Singing sheep

2010-08-17T08:42:00.003+09:30

Sometimes, to pass a long, cold afternoon the alpacas get a sing-song going. They rally round the sheep and start up a few old favourites to get everyone singing along.

Slowly the sheep join in, taking up the tune. I can never quite tell what they're singing. Perhaps traditional folk songs their ancestors heard on the hills of Dorset, the Border counties and Finland, perhaps sea shanties the first immigrants learned from the sailors on the voyage to the antipodes. All the different voices can be picked out, Chester's deep "maaaawwww" and the lambs' higher pitched bleats. Sometimes they even hit harmonies.

Anyway, its a cheery way to pass the time until the afternoon grazing starts.

Shed for blokes

2010-08-16T09:02:00.003+09:30

Part of the rearrangement of accommodation required for the shearer to do the crutching was moving the bachelor boys to a smaller yard. Since the ram yard is - most helpfully - inaccessible to vehicles and the only other small yard is the lamb yard, that is the one the boys got. Imaginative names for yards aside, this one has a shed for shelter rather than trees. We thought they'd miss their huge old pine tree but they've all huddled up to the shed with enthusiasm. Cold southerly winds probably helped.

Before we landed here it was a pony shed. It even has a wash bay, where Gimli is sitting nicely out of the wind, confidently expecting not to be hosed down. Wilber is standing in front of a little shed the former owners used for feed storage. It's supposedly vermin proof but we think that was a sales pitch because if you open the door you are stampeded by mice and rats. We think they can get in but not get out again.

Elrond spent the summer of his youth (one, given he is not yet a year old) in this yard and gambolled into it like meeting an old friend. He does tend to gambol everywhere but we know he likes it here because he takes advantage of the sun's winter angle and spends most of his time basking on the hay in the lamb shed, despite all the good grass in the yard. We fox-proofed the front with gates and wire but he doesn't see it as a prison. He seems to see it more as holiday home.

Mud pack for the beautiful

2010-08-15T08:47:00.004+09:30

Gem got a new rug recently, and as it was the only rug ever bought specifically for him and not a hand-me-down from all our other rescue horses over the years, he was determined to keep it in good nick. After two weeks of wearing it in the winter landscape, he's doing remarkably well to keep it as clean as it is.

Princess, on the other hoof, just loves to roll and roll and roll. Preferrably in the muddiest place she can find. Perhaps she thinks it's good for her skin?

She also knows, being a Princess, that her 24/7 entourage of carers (all two of us) will brush her off when it's necessary that her golden colour be admired by all. Or when they don't want to be too embarassed by the state of their animals. That rug is actually green, by the way, although ultimately horses don't care what colour clothes they wear. In this weather, Kalara's just happy to be warm and dry at all.

Rain stopped play

2010-08-14T08:25:00.027+09:30

The sheep proved a bit difficult to get in last night. We did it in the end, in the dark, in the rain, well mostly. Half a dozen of our prized pregnant ewes made for the open hills instead of coming home on a stormy evening. It wasn't their normal behaviour making every tiny move, every step in the right direction and every turn towards the yards So Very Difficult. It was those darn Camel-lads.

Ori and Siri have never been out of the paddocks closest the house before. They've bonded rather well with their girls and protect them in a manly fashion from foxes, dogs, cats, magpies, and anything unusual. What they haven't done is realise that they won't be crutched. Alpacas have no need for it. We were just taking them along for the ride so they wouldn't fret about being away from their flock for 24 hours. Instead they fretted about going into the yards and wouldn't. Not even when all their ladies were munching happily inside. Us dancing about on the hill above them, lunging like mad tennis players every time they saw a gap and waving our arms like scarecrows in a hurricane did nothing. The yard was scarier than we. In the end they took so long that Belinda the black ewe and five of her cohorts legged it out through the open gate before we could scramble down the hill to stop them.

A very long time of climbing steep, slippery hills in the dark, breathing very hard and shouting at each other, the sheep and the alpacas ensued. We navigated by the movement of the white sheep, finding our way by trees (walking into them) and rocks (falling over them) and the sheep obstinately kept moving the wrong way. The alpacas thought it was marvelous to be out and free and kept going to the tops of hills to have a look. In the end we gave it up for the night. In a rather bad temper.

We'd collected two mutton carcases from the butcher that day and still had a kitchen full of meat to trim, sort, bag, label and freeze so we went back to that job for a couple of hours. We had discovered that it would only fit in our collection of freezers if we did trim, sort, bag some and cook some instead of just throwing it all in willy nilly as was the preferred and tired option. At least the dogs were quiet with their surprise bones. Having been completely immersed in sheepiness for too long we had fish for supper.

The weather forcast kept getting worse. So did the actual weather. After a night of raging storms I got up early as usual to find SO, out earlier than I, trying to fix last evening's mistake by crooning to the wayward ewes, who had come back to find out where all their friends were and why they didn't have breakfast. He looked pleadingly at the open gate, and pleadingly at the ewes and pleadingly asked them to Just. Go. In. Quietly nipping round behind them up a clay hill in my gumboots and raincoat - so not very quietly really - we managed to get them all in and shut the darn gate.

After we leaned on it just breathing for a while I went off to feed the other animals and SO went to answer the phone which was ringing. At 7:30am. It was the shearer. The rain was belting down hard where he was, the rain radar showed two fronts approaching and the forecast was for more of the same so he couldn't operate his portable shearing plant in this weather. He couldn't do any crutching today and he wasn't coming.

We let the sheep out and went inside by the fire instead.

Assembling for deployment

2010-08-13T08:59:00.008+09:30

"You want us to go where?"

Our sheep are not herded in the conventional fashion. They are too tame and simply laugh at our efforts to drive them using the traditional scare methods. Instead, bribery and tricks are the order of the day. Their reluctance to be yarded also may have something to do with "crutching" being the process required. Perhaps the older, wiser sheep with more experience have tried to reassure the lambs regarding their first crutching. Or perhaps they thought it amusing to tell horror stories to them instead.

Either way, the promise of sheep nuts - communicated by shaking the familiar white buckets - overcomes any future fears for immediate gains.

Having a date with the hairdresser tomorrow, albeit only for a trim, means the woolly wonders need to keep dry tonight and tomorrow morning. With the forcast for storms and hail, whether their human herders will keep dry tomorrow morning remains to be seen.

Preliminary preparations

2010-08-12T08:44:00.001+09:30

The sheep get crutched on Saturday. At least, that's the plan, but the best laid plans of mice, rats and other rodents overrunning the place... So the sheep shed has had to be cleared and set up ready. This entails moving about 30 bales of hay to the horse shed (because of a slight planning oversight) to allow room for the portable yards to be set up under cover. The operation was watched with interest by key stakeholders.

The weather should hold for today and tomorrow but the Bureau of Meteorology has issued a Sheep Grazier's Advice for Saturday. Of course. Heavy rain and small hail. Every creature will be looking for cover. At least it will only be small hail.

The weather is only a partial concern to the sheep, however. Their fleeces are now at 3/4 length, about as deep as my hand and wonderful insulation. Their ears get a bit cold and hail is hard to live with, but that's not the main concern of the newest lambs, still not a year old. Their big worry is what, exactly, the rather worrying term of "crutching" means.

"I can see my house from here..."

2010-08-11T09:32:00.002+09:30

"It's underneath me!" Jamie and Jeremy are a bit puzzled about how to get down off the roof. It was all a bit of fun to begin with but they don't remember how they climbed up the shadehouse wall to get there and now they're in trouble. Jamie peers over the edge hopefully but the bull nose veranda is a bit steep and slippery and only leads to the gutter.

Jeremy is investigating alternative routes, but the veranda ends in an abrupt drop.

The two cats swap notes on their investigations. They change places and continue to look for a way back.

They'll discover how to get down eventually. Or Jamie will just start to yell for help until I get out the ladder. Again.

Under cover

2010-08-10T08:03:00.002+09:30

It's abundantly obvious on frosty mornings that simple shelters do wonders for keeping the ice off things like seedlings, tender plants, citrus trees, the ground and paws.

We use this principle in the fledgling citrus grove to protect the young trees. Frosts only occur here for about 3 months of the year so in our typical slapdash fashion we haven't bothered to construct anything permanent. Hopefully in a few years the trees will be big and tough and grown up enough to face their own frost demons so they won't need our help. It all looks a bit Steptoe and Son, with various lengths of old canvas, random lengths of unused fabric, damaged horse rugs, assorted tarpaulins and off-cuts of shadecloth propped haphazardly over any plant that needs it. Still, it works.

The trees don't need to be kept warm, not by human standards anyway. 2 - 3 degrees above freezing is enough to deter damage and the makeshift covers ensure the ice crystals don't touch the trees. The cats prefer ice crystals not to touch them either.

Scrabble sheep

2010-08-09T08:56:00.001+09:30

We called all the sheep in the other day for a bit of a foot check and worming treatment. It's been so soft and boggy in many places lately that although the majority of the flock spend their time on the rocky hills foot rot and overgrown hoof horn are still possible. Having cloven hooves makes for a good mud trap as well as hay-raking gear when your breakfast comes as a solid lump. With everyone packed in and jostling in the pen together it's easier to catch them but also easier to lose track of who you've looked at closely and who is hiding in the crowd, hoping they won't be made to suffer the indignity of being tipped upside down. So when they've been inspected we spray them, usually with their initial.

Sometimes they manage to arrange themselves into words. Lucinda, Alistair, Natalie and Estelle had "lane" going for a moment there, but of course they rearranged themselves when the camera came out. Fiona's off to the side there, Barnaby and Penelope over the back, they could get involved and Angel will provide another A...

The stock marker lasts for ages in our dry weather here, but washes out fairly easily so it won't hang around long during this time of year. In the meantime we can mentally play scrabble. There are quite a few double letters but the flock isn't yet so big that they could make messages seen from the air, although I wouldn't put it past them to try. "Help Send Hay".

Rosella roost

2010-08-08T15:23:00.001+09:30

The golden elms are anything but at this time of year. They are leafless if not lifeless and although rather beautiful in a kind of twiggy way they're hardly decent cover and have no food bearing fruits or flowers at all. Surprising then when a group of rosellas decide to sit there all afternoon.

These particular elms are in a rather sheltered part of the garden, sandwiched as they are between 70 year old pear trees and an ancient ash. They're smaller than both and perhaps they provided a still spot in an otherwise windy treescape for the birds. The rosellas themselves were subdued. They're usually a noisy lot. Not raucous and monochrome like the corellas but chattery and singing with several different colours and sub-species like they're always having a party.

They are probably always partying given their diet of fruit and young buds. So much sugar makes them a bit hyperactive and they wheel and play in groups, daring each other to fly like arrows in front of cars and low down over our pathways. In this district they dine on all kinds of tree fruit; apples, pears, quinces, cherries and loquats as well as the young buds of flowers including roses. They're not actually welcome in the orchards but they cheekily invite themselves all the same.

Their native diet includes the buds and flowers of eucalyptus trees which they hold with one claw and nimbly nip off with their little curved beaks. Lately little butter-yellow and pink eucalypt buds have been raining down when the rosellas are having a meal. Certainly a continuous feast like that would make for an energetic crowd, but not this lot. Not today. It's too cold. They sat, only occassionally hanging upside down and quietly twittered among themselves.

Hay table for two

2010-08-07T15:09:00.004+09:30

Princess would be annoying to take out to dinner. She's the blonde one on the left. She is suspicious of anything new, "But what ARE rosehips and why do I need any? Can't I just have plain horse nuts?" She has a very set menu of favourites, "I'll have the lucerne. No, not the meadow hay. Just lucerne." And forget about adding condiments, "I don't like the smell of this white creamy stuff!" she wrinkles her nose at added wormer paste.

She also doesn't eat much although she has a lovely figure. Even when dining with her tall, dark and handsome friend Gem, she picks daintily around the edges of the hay on offer. Of course, that could also be because he's standing in most of it.

Do duck in!

2010-08-06T09:02:00.004+09:30

The local wood duck population are starting to breed and are looking for safe neighbourhoods to make a home, build a nest, and bring up the children. According to ornithologist books, a nice place to raise the kids includes "nearby open pasture". We have that. Also "lightly timbered areas near water, inland creeks or dams." Yes, yes and yes. We have a little duckpond that is - incredibly - even holding water. Bit hard for it not too since almost all the paddocks drain into a hole just barely the size of our bathroom. Still we hope ducks will like it for theirs. We even put a decoy on it to declare it "safe" to any overhead passers-by in the market for real estate.

A nice young couple came looking. They checked out the room, the layout and the adjacent trees. They tested the flooring - suitable for grazing. Lots of slugs under that capeweed. These are Australian Wood Ducks. They're also sometimes called Maned Ducks because " the male has a short, dark mane." and because Wood Duck wasn't obviously descriptive enough for a native bird name. They came from a good family, Chenonetta jubata, were a lovely quiet pair and we hoped they'd stay.

The male was a bit concerned at the traffic in the nearby raceway and the noise the sheepy neighbours made when the traffic was a wheelbarrow with hay, but the female was very impressed with the kitchen and they stayed all afternoon.

With any luck they'll move in and our duckpond will have tenants. The decoy doesn't seem to mind.

Hanging around

2010-08-05T08:55:00.003+09:30

Today the rain continued a little bit then drizzled off elsewhere in a sulky manner. It's cold. It's grey. It's the middle of winter and hunting mice in the horse shed is shivery work, all that waiting, sitting still on the concrete floor. There's no fire in the horse shed so Jeremy found himself a post instead as Chief Headrest and Purring Warm Cushion.

With his physique he is ideally suited to the job.

Duck!!

2010-08-04T08:31:00.007+09:30

Due to the endless rain of the last few days the overflow from our little duck pond has started to wash away. This is quite an achievement as we've never managed to keep water in the duck pond at all before, let alone too much water. Jelly the tortoiseshell cat is an expert in assessing warm places and, it being black plastic, she had to check it's heat retention qualities. To her amazement, there appeared to be waterfowl present. This has never happened before either.

She spent some time watching the duck and when satisfied that it wasn't going to attack her, she started to stalk it in return. When we bought the decoy from the local Fodder Store, as a bit of a lark - well, duck anyway - we were hoping to attract ducks just to have their company and slug-eating capabilities, we have no plans to shoot any. Ducks, that is. It would be a bit messy shooting slugs. Eventually we will have ducks and geese of our own. Until then our little plastic friend will have to suffice.

We asked the nice Fodder Store Family whether they sold many? Yes, dozens! Really? Didn't know duck hunting was such a sport in the Adelaide Hills. Oh not for duck hunting, they explained, they're for amusing horses.

Horse toys. Right.

Apparently when horses start to play with the ball valves in their troughs, wasting hundreds of litres of precious water, their owners put decoys in the troughs and the horses play with them instead. They find the ducks flung far into the middle of the paddocks and generally tossed about. The decoy duck saves the water and keeps the horses happy for hours.

Ours has a similar effect on our cat.

Smelling like the enemy

2010-08-03T08:32:00.006+09:30

We've been walking the dogs, especially Snowy the beagle, around the paddocks and boundary fences in the hope that their smell might deter foxes. So far it hasn't really worked, although our very presence might by sheer chance see off an intruder. Snowy however thinks that we're too obvious and that dunderheaded humans with no sense of smell just aren't aware of how obvious they are. She's attempted to disguise herself by applying a favourite dog perfume, Eau de Vulpes, which is translated as Fox Droppings.

Now this I can smell. Everyone in a mile's radius can. Even the cats run away. I don't think it's going to make it's fashion scent debut this season.

Snowy thinks it will be effective, and is still looking.

Storms from the south

2010-08-02T09:07:00.004+09:30

For the past 36 hours it's been blowing a gale and raining heavily. So heavily that we couldn't hear ourselves think at times. At other times Georgie the poodle told us what we should think in no uncertain terms as the wind howled with her. Snowy was philosophical about it all although slightly depressed at only going out between hail falls for relief stops.

Although it was still raining on the morning's rounds yesterday I was surprised to find the chimneys still attached to the house, and counted all the stock with a bit of a knot in my stomach. They were all still upright, amazingly, and the neighbour's lambs even seemed to come out of it unscathed, although still looking for shelter anywhere they could find it.

I'm quite amazed at their strength really, for a solid two days they were wet through and the wind was icy, blowing straight from the Southern Ocean. The only other land mass it may have traversed would have been Antarctica. They only ways they could have kept warm were against their shorn mothers and with the energy from their meagre milk. Still when the rain stopped long enough to watch them the lambs were still nosing curiously, checking out hidden places in the blackberry brambles and strange things like sticks.

Today the storm has lost interest and wandered off, after a few half-hearted rain squalls this morning. The animals also seem more cheerful. I could learn from them. They put their heads down, ride out harsh weather and make good use of any ray of sunshine.

Woollen shawl

2010-08-01T05:00:00.000+09:30

We met this lady of a distant neighbour's out on a walk the other day. She's clearly heavily pregnant so we didn't want to disturb her too much. She looks a bit raggedy because she's a Wiltipoll so she sheds her fleece rather than having it shorn. This doesn't happen all at once of course, that would be too convenient and neat. In flystrike country these sheep with their falling dreadlocks always get a second look. In the interim before her summer fleece she looks like she's wrapped a rug around her shoulders.

This is probably wise given the weather lately. We stood and had a silent conversation for several minutes and she didn't seem to mind the dogs. Then they got restless so she gathered her shawl around her self and demurely retreated.

Macropod in the making

2010-07-31T05:00:00.002+09:30

The kangaroos on the summit track showing how well camouflaged they are in bright sunlight per the one on the left, but have the classic silhouette problem against a dark background - as the one on the right demonstrates.

These are wild animals that just use our land for free cover, grazing and water in the summer. They are most welcome, but they are not pets. We can't get close to them or handle them but they are learning to handle us and our presence in their valley. Actually, the one on the right has a rather bulging undercarriage.

Here's hoping there's a joey in that pouch. She's certainly carrying something.

Self grooming for horses

2010-07-30T09:10:00.008+09:30

How to get rid of excess hair and the itches of the day: Start clean and out of your rug. Your carer likes you clean so they can put your rugs back on at night with minimal fuss. This is not to be tolerated. For maximum attention, get as dirty as you can. Therefore you should select a spot to roll that is already churned up and if you desire a new spot, dig one up with your front hooves. Your carer can later reseed the muddy places. Make as many as you can for choice.

Once down on the ground, grind it baby! Rub your hips and shoulders well into the soil, get as much over your back as you can,

making sure you rub mud and grass well into your mane. This is particularly hard for your carer to get out and will ensure she spends a lot of time with you. If you can get some clods into your forelock all the better.

As you get up, ensure you pause for a moment to let the moisture and grit sink well into the hair on your knees and fetlocks. To keep your skin healthy your carer will have to spend another 20 minutes just cleaning your legs later on. Don't worry that she has other horses to do and other animals to care for, you must make sure she spends as much time as possible with you.

Finish with a token shake. This feels good and can make a pretty dust cloud in dry weather, but is pretty useless for mud and won't really ruin all your hard work in disguising your true colour. Your carer will still have to spend ages brushing you off instead of doing any other chores that would take her away from you.