Babies are arriving

 23.8. 2021

 

The buds on the oak tree are slowly uncurling and the daffodils are in full bloom.  I did not write anything during the weekend because the weather was warm and sunny and there was a lot to be done outside.  I even did the first grass mowing for the season and slashed the cape weed in the second croft. We helped Josh put up the walls and ceiling in his demountable but we still need to put corrugated iron on and the car port roof needs doing too.  We need dry no wind days for that.

 

Most of the goats have now given birth and we have multicoloured kids everywhere.  The first two are now totally bottle fed and I have started to train the rest with varying degrees of success. A lot of patience is needed at this stage.  We name the kids by working through the alphabet, twins having names that both start with the same letter.  This year we have twin girls who needed names starting with X.   They ended up as Xanda and Xylene.  We have put their names on green tags attached to yellow collars.  At this stage it is easy to forget who had which kids, especially as the some of the mothers feed anyone’s kids.

 

There is a lot of noise in the incubator where josh’s chicks are hatching.  The box has to stay shut for at least a day so that the humidity needed remains high enough for all the fertile eggs to hatch.   Josh has set up a rearing box in the mud room on the only bit of bench not taken up by his seed raising set up. 

 

I have planted out the snow peas he grew and today I should transplant the zucchinis into bigger pots so they will be ready to plant out when they are a bit less vulnerable to slugs.  The trouble is that I don’t feel like doing much. All the news is just so depressing. The Delta virus strain seems impossible to contain and vaccines are not available yet for over half the population. Regional Victoria is now in lock down and some very stupid people organised big protests on the weekend, which will no doubt result in even more cases. 

 

A happy lockdown weekend

 15.8. 2021

 

We have had a weekend of glorious sunshine and warm temperatures.  The new seasons vegetables are sprouting and the trees are in blossom. A mob of over 20 huge, yellow tailed, black cockatoos are making a lot of noise as they wheel around overhear and as the sun sets I have spotted a few swallows. It is all very peaceful and enjoyable.

 

There is so much to do here that we scarcely notice that we are in lock down. It has lasted over a week now and new cases in the community are stubbornly still occurring.  Our regional areas are now released but unfortunately, we are just on the city side of the border as far as lockdown boundaries are concerned. We are just out of the city area for deliveries so we miss out both ways.  NSW has a much worse situation and the whole of the state is now in lockdown.  Numbers of new cases are still climbing there, too.  

 

Our sheep are gradually accepting the new Persian ram.  At first, they would not even come up for food.  The brown sheep missed a whole week of meals before hunger overcame fear.  The first of this season’s goat kids have arrived.  Rita had twin girls, one black and one white. A real Yin and Yang pair.  I have started to train them how to drink from a bottle when their mother has gone off to graze. Some goats return to the shed to feed their kids at lunch time but not Rita!

 

Josh has been building. First, he helped Stevo put up the edgings on the car port roof and now he is constructing a demountable room down by the ruins. At the moment he is living in Indi’s caravan and just using the house for showers and most meals.  It is a great help having him back around again.  We have got so much done with his help. He is ready to get his own bee hives but the lockdown has slowed everything down. He has managed to put eggs to incubate and hopefully we will get chicks in a week’s time. 

 

It was Ollie’s birthday this weekend and sadly lockdown rules prevented us having a family gathering.  We have not been able to celebrate any birthdays since April when we met up for Pele and Yeshe.  I have a pile of cards and stuff I got ready for a planned mass birthday party at Bo’s place but sadly it had to be cancelled. Edd and I were so lucky that we had a day out when we fetched the ram. It is lovely here but a change of scenery also helps.

electric slug fencing and Persian sheep

6.8. 2021

 

Today we start our sixth lockdown!  We had just started to ease out of the fifth one so this is not welcome news.  There is still such a massive shortage of suitable vaccines that it looks as if we will be in this limbo situation for quite a bit longer,

 

The good news is that yesterday, when we were still allowed to travel, Edd and I managed a day out driving to Shepparton and buying a young Persian ram. We brought take away food and ate lunch in the park at Violet town. All day we drove through rolling hills that were cleared for stock grazing. There was almost no other humans to be seen but we went through a beautiful valley with stunning rock formations and twisted pale barked gum trees. 

 

Today I let the ram into the paddock with the other sheep. I was worried they might bully him but instead they ran away, terrified!  I admit that with his rough hairy coat and short skinny tail he does look very different, but he is still a lot smaller than our remaining 4 sheep. He is a type of sheep that does not need shearing or tail docking and in theory he should be quiet and easy to handle.  I need sheep to keep the grass down in our fire reserve and on the house roof.  The goats would jump on things like the solar panels so they are no use for this work.   The hard bit will be finding ewes to breed more purebred Persians but until we manage that we can start breeding with the sheep we have.

 

Whilst I am writing the first batch of bread loaves are baking in the oven and the second bread batch is on its first rise.  Luckily this is a warm indoor job. We had warmer dryer weather earlier in the week and we planted out the first snow pea seedlings.

 

  Josh made some slug guards out of plastic bottles.  He tied copper and stainless steel wire round the guards to try and make an electric fence on a slug scale. So far, the seedlings have not been eaten.  I put sand and lime round some broccoli seedlings I planted and they have been slightly under attack.   Last year Edd put out beer traps but they just seemed to be the basis for midnight slug parties, all paid for by us. Edd next started slug patrols to try and curb the worst effects. None of this solved the problem. I do not want to put down poisons so we just keep trying.