Record breaker!

We've been on the property roughly 17 years. Today we broke our summer maximum and by a bit too!  44.5 degrees Celsius, which in the old system would be 112 degrees F! It's even been a partly cloudy day. The chooks and sheep haven't enjoyed the day trying to keep in the shade, in some kind of breeze and near water. For some reason our chooks think the wood shed is the place to be!

2018

2018, hopefully this year I can add posts regularly. At least photos.

We found two beautifully made, stone lined wells on the property. However these had a large number of bottles and other rubbish left by others in them. When they filled with rain I'd scoop out as many as I could, however a few always remained hidden in any existing nooks or crannies. After this extremely wet season those remaining few floated out and I was able to catch them. I'm not sure how efficient these wells were as they quickly dry out and are dry over the summer. There's a number of examples of the stone work the original settlers used in wells or around springs, as well as the ruins of buildings scattered across the landscape.

How time flies! We brought the ewes and lambs down so we could tag and vaccinate the lambs. It doesn't seem that long ago we did this! With the new improved yards this job was done in quick time and the flock was moved back to their fields. 22 lambs this year.

The deed is done and we've entered the world of having a three legged dog. Maggie's recovery has gone smoothly and the wound heeled pretty well. However Maggie has had moments when she's jumped up and run out or into the room, quite distressed. This made us think about phantom limb pain. While this is recognized in humans, after looking on the internet we found there is differing scientific opinion regarding dogs. Maggie is quite aware that her leg is missing (interesting since only humans are supposed to have a sense of self), I've seen her looking at where her leg should be.  Her stump does twitch and she has licked at it. The twitching is the muscles and nerves reconnecting. Luckily when we visited our own Vet she agreed that Maggie probably was having phantom limb pain and prescribed Neurontin. Maggie has been having this tablet for a only few days but I think there is a change in her behaviour, less of the panic like attacks.
It is amazing how she is coping, I was even brave and let her do some herding on a friends training flock. We make sure she doesn't over do it, while the future is to build up Maggie's strength and let her do more and more.

I think we've had enough rain now. The dams are full and overflowing, the tanks are full and the water is lying around in puddles on our hay field! Time for the weather to calm down a bit. Unfortunately that's not what is forecast. We've had storm after storm, coming every few days bringing lashing wind and rain. As well as the rain the trees are falling, across roads and fences. Not good weather for lambing but our new lambs seem alright, enjoying the brief moments of sunshine and their mothers protect them during the worst of the weather sheltering under the trees etc. How we will be able to spray the weeds this season in the hay paddock after all this rain I don't know, the ground is soft and the tractor could get bogged! The creek that goes through that field didn't even flow with water last year and is now rushing. We squelch as we walk across the field too. It's certainly a winter to remember.

I admit a was never really into chickens so when we decided to get a couple it was a learning curve. Luckily Polly was always a friendly chook, even if she didn't like being touched. Whatever you were doing she would come over and join in, hoping a bug would be disturbed to her benefit. However this morning Polly was found dead, dying from old age and the cold winter. I'll miss her, she taught me a lot about chicken behaviour and also how relaxing it was to have chickens scratching around when you were working in the vegetable garden. We have four young black chickens so our other old chicken won't be alone and luckily they all get on well. One of these young ones is similarly friendly so I'll still have a helper to eat up those insects I disturb.