Hot and dry

January 17 2016

Edd has repaired the slasher again and started to clean up the roadside above our farm sheds.    All manner of native vegetation self-seeded up there and although it looks OK it could become a high way for fire.   The big shed is very vulnerable this time of year because it is full of hay and needs any help we can supply.

The animals have eaten everything they fancy from the land and have started to brake out onto neighbours’ land.  The only answer when this happens is to enclose them in well-fenced areas and hand feed them.  We have brought one load of extra hay already and stacked it in Judy’s shed as we agreed.  We will need to buy more for ourselves too.  Once again we need to sell some sheep, but they are best shorn first. I hope we can do this when Indi gets back from her holiday and can lend us a hand.

We had a really cool day this week and used it to sort out the chooks into different sheds.  The young ones we reared have actually started to lay already and we needed to separate them from the roosters.  The black marrons had gone broody and were clogging up the egg boxes so first we shifted them to the small house and chose a big red rooster, Rufus, to keep them company.  Then we shifted the oldest chooks to the largest shed where the rooster, Doodle, is in charge and lastly we put the new young chooks with the old marron rooster so that he could get them organised. This has mostly worked well, but egg laying is not back totally yet.

All the above means that we are not under any extreme pressure so I have made use of the unusual time space and started to paint again.  When I do art for myself I enter a totally different mind space.   For me it is close to meditation in that time stops and awareness of bodily discomfort stops.  I feel that this is a totally selfish space but luckily for me Edd does not put the brakes on.  I know that what I produce falls well short of what I have tried to achieve, I also know that it will not be appreciated by others, but the process I enjoy.

Most of my day is spent doing what I believe in and what helps others but sometimes it feels so good indulging myself.