Turnbull passes his tests

April 18 2016

The dry weather is
continuing and the paddocks are bare. 
We have confined the goats to the crofts and hand feeding them.   The young alpine buck, Turnbull,
has been tested for disease and has passed everything so we have put Phantom,
the white horned doe in with him when she came into season.  For all his life so far Turnbull has
been best mates with the white buck Abbott who we castrated, but now a doe is
with them Abbott has been told firmly to get lost.  We should probably sell him or eat him.

We have not got a ram
in with the sheep but we have brought two Doper ewes who should be
pregnant.  Zulu, the alpaca was
very unsure about them at first and refused to let them anywhere near his known
sheep.  He was not aggressive towards
them but kept them away at feeding time. 
After two days he was more relaxed about them and they had learnt to
push up for barley when they saw me with a bucket.  They are round and white like the old ewe but their ears are
angled slightly down instead of up so they are easy to spot. I am referring to
them as Dopy 1 and Dopy 2. 

The swallows are
soiling the jot water solar panels. 
They keep having large meetings and all gather on the parapet at the
front of our house, presumably to discuss if they should fly off for winter.  Shorter day light hours and cooler
weather are not coming together as normal so I assume they have not come to any
agreement yet. The meetings are still convening regularly.  I shall clean the panels when they
finally decide what to do.

Yesterday we had a
Permaculture site visit here. The weather was perfect and everyone stayed for lunch
in the ruins.  The new vegetable
garden was really looking like it meant business so despite the drought things
looked under control.   I had
been working hard the week before to clean up the beds and paths surrounding
the vegetables and that all helps create a good effect.

Now we are getting
ready for Edd to go to hospital and get his knees fixed.  He has a date in May organised and the
surgeon said if all goes well he will do the other knee this year too!   Both my mother and Indigo are
sick this week so we have plenty of family to worry about.  As Al has just told me it seems to be a
time of change for everyone.