Monday, January 3, 2011

Make Hay While the Sun Shines

We had part of our larger front paddock cut for hay, which was about all we had spare due to the near-drought weather conditions. We took a day off on Sunday 2 January to have a picnic at the races at Tauherenikau, just north of Featherston, only to arrive home at 6 o'clock, tired and sunburned, to find lots of neat little hay bales scattered over the paddock.
We checked the weather forecast over a gin and tonic and once it was confirmed that no rain was expected for the Wairarapa (no surprise) we decided to leave the gathering until the next day.

By late Monday it turned a little cloudy, so after another gin and tonic and a check of the weather forecast after the news (still no rain) we decided it should happen. Fortunately, Tracey and David had arrived to stay with us after being nearly blown away camping out at the coast at Ngawi, so we were mighty glad of the extra muscles.

Denise, Tracey and David stacking up the trusty ute with 12 hay bales at a time, which were then transported to the implement shed and stacked 6 bales high. If you look very hard you can see the supervisor looking out the ute window

The day had started rather unexpectedly and tiringly, in that it was noticed at breakfast that there were more than 2 rams in the middle back paddock. (Barry and Bart had been put in the back paddock until after the hay was baled). The renegades (Flossie and Rosie and the two smaller Freezer Packs) had somehow got out of the adjacent long paddock and in with the two ram lambs. Barry was delighted to see them and expressed his utmost pleasure by repeatedly attempting to get a piggy back ride on them. Needless to say a hasty decision was made to get them all yarded together and separate again, the two rams, and also separate the 3 female ewe lambs - Barbara, Beatrice and Bianca. All was going too smoothly with Barry caught and escorted to the home paddock that has just been cut, and as we thought, Bart too; but Bart ended up mistakenly being Bianca; then Abigail made a flying leap at the closing yard gate and ended up in the home paddock as well. The true Bart was manhandled in as well, and the remaining two ewe lambs - Barbara and Beatrice were returned to the long paddock, the remaining ewes were released into the back middle paddock, and the sheep handlers all retired to the house for R & R (it was a sweltering 28* at this stage of the day) with the 4 outlaws left to their own devices for a while. At some stage it was noted that 2 of the outlaws had broken through the electric fence which was fully charged with new batteries that morning after we saw Charlie the Dexter calf skipping merrily back and forth through it, nibbling at all the hay bales. What a miracle it was to find that the breakaway sheep were Abigail and Bianca, so it was merely a matter of opening the adjoining gate and letting them back in with the ewes. Now it is just a matter of getting all the ewes yarded again and separating Bianca and trimming all the ewes' feet.

As we keep reminding ourselves, it appears very difficult to plan one's daily activities - always some emergency popping up and priorities changing. Now we have to concentrate on getting Barry and Bart sold in the next few days, which means we will have to make a portable ramp to get them on to a ute, so that will be a priority.

We also made use of Tracey and David's stay with us by enlisting them to help us fill all our 20 litre water containers from the water race and load them on to the ute, so all the veges and fruit and berry and currant trees got a long, overdue soaking.

A rather lovely near-on sunset at Fossils Retreat. This panoramic photo was taken about 8.45pm on Monday 3 January, looking east from outside our front gate