The joy of old friends

Edd, Sue and her husband

The new dresser 

September 28 2014

I feel as if I have just had another holiday! A girl friend Sue who I spent a lot of time with about forty years ago in Yorkshire, has been staying here with her husband.  I had lost contact with Sue, so it was a great surprise when I answered the phone one day, and there she was. Even better she has now spent a week with us, as part of a world tour.

One of the treats of being our age is that friends have retired and are now free to travel all the way to see us. Weeks like this are rare and precious times, and I now feel filled with a strange sense of peace and gratitude for all the joys life has given me. Better still, in preparation for the visit we brought a new bed and mattress for ourselves to free up the guest room and everyone enjoyed the comfort a good mattress brings.

Indi has inherited the old bed and mattress for her new rented home. She is now settled into a little house in Yarra Glen with a girl friend who also works at Bo’s restaurant. Bo seems to employ a good section of our friends’ children. They are all intelligent, lovely young people who find restaurant work fits in with their study or other jobs. It seems to be suiting Indi, too, who is now full of life and enthusiasm. I am interested in her bee keeping plans but it is also fabulous having her around because she has learnt how to do the milking and care for the animals so we can call on her in emergencies.

Only one goat, Erin, has not yet had her kids and we have managed to sell a few of the other kids already. We will have to sell more soon or there will not be enough milk after feeding them to make cheese. The 18 remaining kids are now all drinking their milk from a feeder by sucking it up straws, and are growing well. This year we have four doe kids with the fawn, white and black colouring that looks like a wild goat. These kids grow very well and so far those we have kept as adults all milk well. The brown does are of a more graceful build and have quieter natures. It is odd that these traits should go with colour.

Today I have allowed the sheep back into the house site to graze. The grass has grown significantly but the sheep targeted in on the peewits’ nest and licked the eggs. The peewits have been getting increasingly troublesome, and dive bomb us every time leave the house but even their frantic efforts did not deter the sheep. I just wish the silly birds would lay their eggs somewhere sensible. Last year they laid one in the middle of the road, and this year’s effort on the lawn we all walk across everyday is not a big improvement.

It has been a warm sunny day but the wind has been building up so that it is now quite noisy, even in the house. This means it is really bad. We still have a significant number of dead trees that are just waiting for an excuse to fall over and cut off our power supply. A week or so ago we lost power for 24 hours. I keep thinking we should get a back up system of batteries that we could use when the solar system is not working, or the power fails. Perhaps, one day.