Thursday, June 5, 2008

Australian Sheep Farmers?




James has been sowing his oats (not his wild ones as far as I know though) - the early week was spent spreading seed far and wide on the tractor. The kids and I followed spreading a hay mulch over the top to try and protect the seeds from the birds and keep the little moisture in the ground that we recived in about 15 mm of rain. The kids gave up after about 5 minutes and decided it was more fun to jump in the muddy puddles that were through the paddock. With the little rain that we have had it is starting to look like a pig farm up there with enough mud around to keep the pigs happy turning the soil over and generally making a mess.

We have also finally got some sheep.... and Woody has got something to practice on. Unfortunately for him we have so much grass on the paddock at the moment it is very difficult to spot the sheep in the paddock, let alone learn to herd them. They seem a fairly wise old bunch of ewes that have seen dogs come and go and are quite happy to take on a young pup and butt him as far as needs be to get their point through. I feel a bit sorry for Woody at the moment, the pigs are so easy for us to handle that he has little to do, today he got in the thick of things like a teenage boy that wanted to show everyone his manly abilities and eyed one of the young pigs off that had broken away from the herd. The pig just walked a few steps up and nudged Woody who was a bit wrongfooted and decided to just try and make friends with him instead... he then cut his losses and trotted up to the paddock and the pig followed him so all in all it was like watching a scene from Babe.