Well, whilst the rest of the state slept in the knowledge that they had 3 days off, we got up at 5am as is getting usual for us and set off for Dubbo Farmers Market for the second time. Luckily sleepless nights pre-market are pretty much par for the course as we both toss and turn, wondering if it will rain, if we will sell anything...what we should do with the house..where the next fences should go - I could go on but you get the picture. This restlessness makes it much easier to get up when the alarm goes off and this week the kids had a reprieve as Grandma and Grandpa were here to save them from being dragged off to spend the morning in the back of the car with a DVD. Once there our fondness for Dubbo (two words I wasn't sure I would ever utter in the same sentence) appears to be growing, we had a steady stream of customers, many returning after trying our meat the month before and ordering 3 times as much the second time around. It is a huge and lovely market with fresh flowers and lots of produce and and we sold 3 pigs by about 11.30 to our huge relief. Both of us were pretty exhausted by the time we arrived home although James started putting tree guards around the olives and I finally decided to take the goat by the horns and milk her no matter what. This was actually much easier than I thought it would be and although she continues to be a tricky thing to catch my shoulder has only threatened to dislocate when she has jumped about but held itself steady. She is still on antibiotics for a uterine infection so no goats cheese for a little while yet.
Chicken hatching failed miserably on Saturday when the hen got a bit confused and decided to abandon her eggs (1 week off hatching) and sit on a solitary egg laid in a neighbouring box by one of the other hens. Although the eggs were cold I made James pick her up (cunningly avoiding any pecking that I thought she might dish out) and move her, but her brain had reset itself and the old eggs had to be buried after I again found her out of the nest the next day. My dad and I spent the day on Sunday making another nesting cage for her - this appears to have 'declucked' her if that is possible, because now she just paces up and down and squawks at me when I go near her.
Monday morning James and I decided to tackle Harriet's feral family who have been living quite happily up in the big paddock with the adults. They are very healthy little things but we knew it was going to be a struggle because they wouldn't come anywhere near us. Plan A was to lure Harriet out and as her piglets followed put them in the stockyards and then separate Mum out to take her back. This failed in about 2 seconds, when Harriet came out and the piglets bolted on sight of us. Plan B was very complicated and once again put James' life at risk as he decided to try and put the piglets into a box and then carry them all to the weaning pen on the tractor. All was ready for this option when we looked at all the adults that would probably try to kill him every time he picked a piglet up and we decided on Plan C... take all the adults down to the stockyards and hope the piglets would follow. Adults happily trotted down to the stockyards and piglets were like a wild herd of sheep..but smarter. They came up and then one false move from me caused them to stampede to the back of the paddock and hide. Woody, despite my comments about him last entry, saved the day. He was sent in as a last resort and managed to herd the little piglets out after we had tried before him for a good 20 minutes and failed. I was so delighted with him that it took a minute to realise we couldn't 'turn him off'. A lot of tooing and froeing followed with piglets escaping and running back towards their paddock before we settled on Woody, on a lead controlled by James and me with pigboards, pushing them very carefully forward. The plan worked and we got them to the stockyards. Ear tagging followed and luckily James was wearing heavy wellies because they obviously take after their Mum and once held by the legs tried quite hard to take a chunk out of James' leg to show their displeasure. My arms are still sore from running about with pigboards.
Last but not least, James decided to take advantage of his fishing rod birthday present, and the last day of the fishing season here and go to the local fishing spot on the river. An hour later he screamed up the driveway in a cloud of dust and got out with his rod and a fish still attached to it speechless with excitement. Both the kids were very excited and are obviously becoming a bit more accustomed to the harsh realities of life with Emily exclaiming "is he dead Daddy, did you kill him" and then telling me "the fish is dead because Daddy bonked it on the head and now we are going to EAT HIM". A quick biology lesson followed with the kids enthralled by the fish gutting and me staying well away in case I threw up. It made a lovely starter for dinner. Pity he has to wait another 5 months to go again....