bread cheese and stockyards

June 18 2014

It is actually quite
warm today despite the grey skies and mud. It is Wednesday so I am in the
process of making cream cheese and I have also cleaned out the fires and lit
the stove, so I am making bread. Most of the morning was spent helping Edd put
in more posts for the stockyards.  He
drives Craig’s digging machine and I have to check that the posts holes go in
straight. Edd’s aim was to have them ready so that we could use them on Friday
to load the heifers into a stock crate to take them to market. To me this was
another case of unrealistic optimism but any progress on the stockyards is good
and not to be discouraged. We are plotting devious alternative strategies for
coping with the loading.

The heifers were such
accomplished escape artists that we have had to confine them in a small croft
with a large round bale of hay. I feed them barley twice a day, which they love,
so I have a small amount of leverage with them. They have churned up most of
the croft into mud but they are definitely gaining weight. We brought them last
use up the milk when I went to the UK to nurse my mum. The idea was to avoid
putting too much strain on the family coping here and it would have been an
awful shame to throw all the milk away.

The garden is loving
all the rain and flowers are appearing everywhere. The lucerne and wattle trees
are just starting to bloom and the native wisteria has already purple flowers.
The red-hot pokers and the arum lilies have beaten most of the narcissi and
they always precede the daffodils. The garden looks very colourful already with
the rosemary bathed in blue and purple. I am not sure if we are having an early
spring or just a warm spell. Usually July is our coldest month.