30.1.22
The weather is weird. We have had scorching hot dry days followed by mega storms that produced more rain faster than ever before. It is not only local. The Stuart high way, the road that runs straight up the middle of Australia between port Augusta and Darwin is covered with flood water below Cooper Pedi and trucks could not get through. Even the train rails were washed away so trucks tried to take a 3000k detour through Queensland but now that route is flooded as well. The troops are going to fly food in but all the smaller runways are dirt and only helicopters could land. Mean while super market shelves are bare in several isolated towns.
Today it is hot and humid. The first tomatoes have ripened and been eaten for lunch and the sweet corn are small but delicious. Bo’s family have just got over covid and are able to get out of the house again. Edd and I had our booster jabs on Friday so we feel a little bit safer. The brewery staff have been sick too but luckily not Simon or Josh. The latter was meant o be up in the NT doing remote Audiology work but with floods and communities locked down for covid it is not happening. NSW has the most sick people but even in Victoria there are so many people sick or in quarantine that staff shortages are a problem. Basically, there are problems coming at us from all angles. Inflation too.
Our house stays an acceptable temperature held steady by its underground nature and the goats do not mind the heat at all. We have been very lucky and found a fit young worker who comes on Fridays and helps with everything. He can bounce over fences and chuck hay bales about like pillows. He can drive the tractor, the chainsaws and the weed Wacker and is used to handling stock. He helped us move the Persian lambs out of the shed and onto the old drive way. They were shut in the front section for a week but I am gradually letting them access to more grass each day. They are so greedy that I was worried they would over eat on grass and get sick if their diet changed too fast.
We are now starting to wean the goat kids. They have their last evening milk tonight and then just the morning milk until the end of next month. They are now so pushy that they spill lots of milk just being too boisterous so it is well and truly time. They now have hard feed twice a day and are learning to put their heads through the training bail bit of fencing to reach their food. We cannot let them join the main herd until weeks after they are off all milk and so will not start sucking the milking goats.
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