By Judy Barnet
CJ has been a busy bee. The house is full of flowers, in the bedrooms, the lounge room, the dining room, and in the kitchen are bunches of beautiful blooms. From sweet-scented roses to native bottle brushes, everywhere you look there are flowers. The garden is also full of colour and when I woke to a stunning blue sky morning I couldn’t resist taking a video of the garden for the Holiday Cottage’s Facebook Page.
Although the garden is looking beautiful – CJ constantly weeding and watering and the lawns mowed to within an inch of their life – the same can’t be said of my house. During the rain on Monday I had time to flick through an old issue of NZ Life and Leisure and as a result, I really, desperately, wanted to clean up my house. I have a confession to make – I am verging on being a hoarder. I am the Queen of recycling and repurposing so I dislike throwing things away that might be useful one day, or that I might fix. However, all that stuff has to go somewhere and my house had become very cluttered. I made a start this week and got stuck into cleaning up the verandah – my favourite place to have meals as the weather warms up. I then chained myself to the desk and waded through a mountain of paperwork, so I’m feeling a bit happier now although there is still a long way to go!
Lambing is still dragging on. I think I will take Bruce Tom’s advice next year and take the rams out after seven weeks with the ewes. At the tail end of the lambing are eight ewe hoggets having their first lambs. Two lambed this week with puny little lambs knee-high to a grasshopper. Both walked away from their lambs so, not wanting any more poddy lambs to raise, I popped the lambs in a box, rounded up the new mums, and locked them in small pens with their offspring. Although I initially milked the non-cooperative mums and fed the lambs the colostrum I had milked, after a few hours, they decided they might take responsibility for them.
Four days later I let the first ewe and lamb out into a slightly bigger paddock behind the house, well, behind our bedroom actually. That was a big mistake as later that night I was woken by the crying out from a lambing. I tried to ignore the noise, hoping they would find each other, but it just went on and on. So around midnight under a lovely full moon night, I ventured out to find out what was happening. It seemed mum preferred her freedom than being stuck with a whinging lamb so it was back in the pen for them!
Daily flystrike checks are currently on the agenda. Any sheep with a bit of Merino in them or any sheep not bred on the farm seem to be the targets. Oddly enough none of the English Leicester Longwool sheep have been struck. We will be shearing in the next few weeks, an event I am not looking forward to. There are only 100 or so to be shorn but the shearer, like Richie and me, is no longer in his prime. Although don’t get me wrong, he is very fit. It is flipping the sheep and dragging them out that is getting beyond me. Even Richie struggles with sheep that are often heavier than he is. Funnily enough, the fore-mentioned English Leicesters are the biggest of the sheep but are no problems to turn on their backs. It is the short, fat Southdowns and Babydolls that give all the trouble.
Bronte, CJ, Rosie, and another poddy lamb are all down to one feed a day so that frees up a bit of afternoon time which is now taken up looking after the calves.
They say things happen in threes. On my daily jaunts down to the dam with Dora, I picked up a pelican feather, the first I have ever found. On the same day, I spotted a swan sitting on a nest that was only a few inches out of the water. I can’t wait to see the cygnets hatch out! Hopefully, I can get some photos. I also found a sea eagle nest high in the trees not too far from the dam. This afternoon I managed to capture some pictures of the swan on the nest and also of the hundreds of black water birds resting on the spit coming off the dam. There must be hundreds of turtles as well as heads were popping up everywhere out of the water. I assume they must be turtles.
If I am feeling stressed I try to take a walk down to the dam. There is so much to see and worries are instantly forgotten. At night the dam comes alive with the music of frogs and crickets, it’s a symphony!
Next week I will be making a trip to Warwick to try to buy a few more calves and catch up with my friends at Blitz Electrical who have kindly repaired my 288 egg incubator. I am looking forward to hatching some Guinea keets and seeing if I get any chocolate coloured offspring from the ones I purchased last year. I will also set some Australorp Bantam, Modern Game, and Araucana eggs, the latter also known as Easter egg chickens as they lay blue eggs.
Our grandson Cooper popped in for a short visit yesterday and spotted some goat horns I had found in my clean-up. He decided they were just the thing he needed and proposed a swap for a set of Merino Horns he had purchased from an old guy sitting on the pavement outside some shops in South Brisbane a couple of years ago. The interesting thing about these horns is the brand and initials stamped inside them. Does anyone recognise the brand? A good swap I reckon!
Hope you have a lovely week, everyone. Take a bit of time to smell the wonderful roses in bloom at the moment.
