Wet Wet Wet!!!

Well today it has rained....................a lot!!!! Torrential fierce tank filling rain. Such a difference to yesterday when everybody just about expired from the heat. Now everything is sodden, dripping and very lovely!!!!

Rain drips everywhere!

Thank goodness l put an extra tarp on the side of the hay this morning!

My poor beautiful pink rose bush is bashed broken and hanging down! Some have snapped off and the rest are looking very bedraggled!

 The hills are hidden and covered in mist!

No, this isn't a fountain, its my lovely wrought iron candlestick that's sitting outside.Not ideal for cast iron but l will tip it out tomorrow and let it dry off somewhere as we have rain most of the week l think.

The rivulet is a rushing torrent. Hopefully the platypus is tucked safely away in a dry corner somewhere!

Blue the calf trying to eat the towel that keeps the wind off the side of the goat's pen!! We don't even SEE the goats in this weather! They snuggle up inside out of the rain and l feed them copious amounts of willow branches in their shed!

Its a good feeling to be in January with three large tanks overflowing with water. l think we can safely say that they will see us through the rest of Summer quite well, No 2 minute showers for us !

But a night in front of the fire is definitely on the cards!

A good hot weekend!

A hot weekend! Bbqs fine food and great people. Meeting new friends and catching up with old ones. Perfect!

Dinner on Saturday night. These friends of ours live just across the paddock. We have to drive however as if we walked we with would arrive with goats and dogs in tow! A delicious meal with everything on this plate home grown. Excellent! We ate 'Crackling" with great gusto. Last time we visited he was happily running around the paddock!  Poor Crackling!!!

 Missy and Heidi. Two very solid little chunky one week old Boer kids. So cute!

 Red the mother!

 Just keeping an eye on me watching her babies!!!

Summer and Black Caviar!

Well Summer is here even in Tassie! Hot days, the ground is drying out and the grass is going brown

Still learning about the garden and working out where all the holes are. There are lots!  Still heaps of beautiful little corners of colour though if you go looking. This rose bush is beautiful but about 7 foot high as it climbs up to try and reach the sun!

The grape vine l wrapped around the candelabra has gone mad!

The Agapanthas are looking very healthy. Not my favourite flower at all in fact l quite dislike them really! But they certainly deserve a 10 out of 10 for hardiness and longevity!

Fuchsias are everywhere!

The whole area around here is very rocky! We have not only plenty of rocks that poke above the ground but also vast enormous slabs of it below as well. Its amazing as soon as the moisture starts to disappear out of the soil, the lines get clearly defined where doesn't have rock just below the surface and where does!!!

Oh yes.... and that black mare who just keeps on winning?? She just did it again! 17 out of 17. Apparently she romped it in. She has Royal Ascot in her sights now in the UK. l wonder how she will go?

Australia Day!

Australia Day 2012! A perfect day! We got up late (for us) and had a bit of a lazy breakfast before heading up into the top paddock for an hour or so of brush cutting. The grass is so incredibly thick up there! Too full of weeds to bale this year. Hopefully next year we can at least get some mulching hay from it.

Toggles came with us of course leaving Lizzie under the tree with the sheep. The dogs stayed down at the house as l was worried about snakes.Goats never cease to amaze me! Here we are surrounded by more grass then 100 goats could ever eat...............and l turn around and there is Toggles INSIDE the roll of wire used for the Cocky gate. INSIDE it!! Totally wrapped up wedged and squished inside!! Her head was outside of it as she ate a dog rose that was growing on the other side of the fence! Leaves me speechless!!!

The cows were equally humorous and seemed more intent on decimating my carefully raked hay heaps then eating all the grass around them!

And a photo to prove that l do actually work too! Not just take the photos!!!

After that we headed off to collect a milking stand from a friend of ours who is going to America to live! Eventually we would like to milk the goats so thought the opportunity to get hold of a stand was too good to miss. We bundled dogs and ourselves into the Ute and headed into Huonville. We stopped at Banjos Bakery for some Sausage Rolls for lunch. More animal hilarity when we looked down between us to see Lilli with her head in the paper bag the Sausage Rolls came in!!

Treek loved the Ute and apart from her total inability to jump up INTO it, she was perfectly behaved and very relaxed about the whole thing!Geoff got a good work out lifting her in and out all day!

Spent several lovely relaxing hours calling in on friends and family on our way home.Pleased with our Milking Stand. Ably demonstrated by Mr Dixon here (ahem!) 

Our very enjoyable day ended when we finally pulled in home about 9.15pm. Just before dark. Grabbed peanut butter on toast for tea and went to bed! Happy Australia Day!

Perfect Tassie!

The forecast for Perth this week!!!!  Six very good reasons to live in Tasmania!
1.)Thursday   Very hot. Partly cloudy.    Min 26     Max 41
2.)Friday        Very hot. Partly cloudy.    Min 25     Max 39
3.)Saturday    Very hot. Sunny.                Min 26     Max 42
4.)Sunday       Very hot. Windy                Min 24     Max 40
5.)Monday      Very hot. Sunny.                Min 23     Max 40
6.)Tuesday      Very hot. Sunny.                Min 26     Max 40

Spent my day off today fiddling around doing the sort of usual domestic things! Geoff and l BOTH have a day off together tomorrow (being Australia Day) which is generally about a twice yearly event! Us having the day off together l mean, not Australia Day!!! So l didn't want it spoilt by vacuuming ,washing and mowing lawns! All that out of the way means we can enjoy a day together! Working l am sure but doing good outside stuff!!!

Talking about enjoying the day.... Pushka LOVES all this hay! Hay =mice=one happy fat cat!

Mice generally mean snakes so l took the time today to install my super dooper snake repellers! Three around the garden should be enough to keep all snakes at bay.....one hopes...........! They are either a very good invention or one of the worlds biggest scams! l can only hope they will do as they say and keep the snakes away from the house! And dogs!

We collected this today too! It was advertised free to take away on a local website. l presumed looking at the photo that it was on a 6 x 4 trailer and thought the metal cage would be good to carry the sheep around in. When it arrived it was massive! We will fit the cows in the back!! It weights a ton so we will take off the crate for the back of the Ute and convert the trailer base into a portable goat shelter for rainy days and pathetic goats! Not bad for free !!

As the rest of Australia swelters, Geoff and l donned coats this evening and headed off with the dogs and goats to see how much water  was still in the creek. Quite enough luckily. l think we should be right for the rest of the summer

We then headed round the top paddocks and decided to move the sheep feeders up to the water troughs to try to get the sheep to venture a bit further away from the house to eat the grass!!! It seemed to work and they all followed Geoff faithfully hoping to get a few sheep pellets at the end of it!!!

 We also decided that little Poppy REALLY is a tiny little cow!!! That's Omar the ram next to her and there's not much difference!!!

Came back on twilight and revelled in the stunning light and glorious red sky

 A lovely day and a perfect evening....

Choices made and not made

Today we decided not to buy the little cow with the big horns! l spoke to the man we got the other two from and after describing her he thought she might be too small and have difficulties calving as a result.Dexters are actually a dwarf breed of cattle as opposed to miniaturised ones which are developed by selective breeding. Dexter means 'small' in Irish! Dexters come in two types. The long legged and the short legged. The short legged -Achondroplastic or Chondrodysplastic Dwarf type . Carriers of the actual dwarf gene.
Whereas the long legged are more normal looking Kerry Dairy Type and more proportionate,

Both are the same height but there is a marked difference in the build.

 

Breeding a short legged to a short legged can cause (and l have no idea how this all works) what they call a Bulldog Mutation which is generally results in an aborted deformed calf. Its called Bulldog  Mutation as the calves normally have massive heads and very short legs. By describing this little girl to Greg he seemed quite convinced that she was what they call "very dwarfy" and not an ideal prospect as an addition to our little herd at all. l was quite relieved to hear him say that as l wasn't 100% sure she wasn't going to be a bit difficult to own in several different ways!

And on a much much sadder note, the lady who has the little kids rang this evening to say the lovely little black one with the floppy white ears died today. No idea what caused it, possibly a neurological reaction to something or a snake bite, The vet was at a loss to know why. So sad. Now we will get only one little girl who will have no friend. l have phone numbers of diary herd owners to call tomorrow to  see if l can track down a kid of a similar age as a friend for her. Very sad indeed.

Little Bundle of Trouble??

Oh dear.... we said no more....................... but a lady from the other side of Hobart contacted us the other day about a little Dexter cow she had for sale (very cheap!) under HALF the price of the other two! Admittedly not in calf or with calf but only two years old so it seemed at least worth a trip go look see. We headed off this afternoon after l finished work. Hot hot day for Tassie hovering around 31 in Hobart and about 35 here in the Huon.
She is locked in a tiny yard as she keeps escaping to get to other cows and horses as she lives all alone. She's a teeny little thing even smaller then Poppy and really shows the dwarfism that is the nature of the breed. Big forehead and rather stunted! A ferocious looking little thing but l think its just the horns that does it!!
We are 99% sure we will get her, we just need to check on transporting her home and double checking with the guy we got our two from his opinion on horned Dexter's combining with polled ones.

After her........no more..........................!!!!!

Drove back to the Valley in glorious light. What a truly stunning evening it was. Finished off with chicken kebabs outside under the tree and now bed. Perfect way to end the day.