Jazz arrives

Here is Jazz - she is my lovely new horse and joins Sparkle (who is not impressed) and Mickey (who is very impressed). You will hear lots more about her but I can't possibly type any more this session.

Beatrice the springer who wasn't..

Coco is doing a beautiful job with the littlies who are almost 3 weeks old. They have suddenly turned from small squirming sleepers to tail wagging trouble makers. Felix and Emily are delighted and spend pretty much all their time in the whelping box which Coco so helpfully shares. She is a lovely mother, although at times as we look into the box with them all clamouring about her she gives me a look that says "don't make me go in there". They are very lively and difficult to cuddle because they want to practice walking and wobbling about and generally making sense of the world. This brings me to Beatrice. In the beginning we had some concerns about her mental capabilities as she seemed very happy to lie quite happily with Emily for indefinite periods of time. This is like a little girls dream and Emi and Bea spend most of their time in each others company. We have decided Bea has no interest in being a working springer and would actually prefer to be a toy poodle - or maybe on of those handbag dogs. Above is where we usually find her... below is everyone else..

More new arrivals

Around the time that the calves were born my goats started to waddle a bit and Maggie had twins pretty soon after. Both boys they are named Jack and John (which is always a mistake because boys are not destined to live forever around here). They are full of mischief and are having a lovely time getting the ram to attack their mother as they spend a lot of time winding him up and then hiding behind Mum who has to roll up her sleeves and go into battle. Speaking of rams, Luke is very happy because he has 5 new ladies to talk to. He has small man syndrome and follows them around very hopefully much of the time. They don't seem to know he exists at this point.

Soon after this Dora had the biggest kid I have ever seen. She was so uncomfortable afterwards that I was convinced there was another one in there and was forced to ask Fiona to come out of retirement and roll up her sleeves. We were both a bit disappointed that we couldn't have a James Herriot moment but Dora was well and truly finished. The kid has been christened Jilly and has to kneel down to feed off her. This means early morning and fetta cheese again.

An off-line life is a difficult one..

Where do I start? Well, I guess it started with a new computer which didn't like our modem. Many trips to the local helpful computer shop rendered my modem which only refused to work on my new computer completely refusing to talk to any piece of technology. A week later and a new modem and I am catching up with life again. We might be in the country but are clearly not following a completely 'Good Life' philosophy. In fact it has been a busy couple of weeks on the farm. Despite the fact that i feel like we are in the middle of winter we are welcoming baby animals left right and center. Two calves were born last week when we learned that mother cows do in fact 'cash' their babies (or some such term that I can't remember). They do it pretty well too. For three hours we drove around the paddock and the cow very down hearted that the little calf we had seen the day before had obviously died a terrible death. Cow expert Scott took 2 seconds to spot the little thing hidden well in the grass and we still couldn't really see it (but pretended that we could of course).

Felix started the school holidays with a toffee apple and finished the holidays with no top teeth. He is pretty pleased and looks like a small vampire. Emily spends much time wiggling her bottom teeth and has convinced herself that they are actually close to becoming wobbly.

More fencing

Our first job, when we moved in here, was going to be to re-do the entrance to the driveway. Up until now it is has been a dilapidated mess of old fence, rusty cattle barriers and a thriving blackberry bush. Obviously priorities soon became evident elsewhere but today the old rusty stuff came down with very excited children and James and I looking pretty happy too. As you can see the right hand paddock is ready for the wire as all the poles are finally in place.

They are here...

So much for calculating the pregnancy carefully - I trundled off happily to our week in Sydney thinking that the babies were due the week after, only to realise the night before we came home that they were in fact due that day. Coco kept her legs crossed and waddled to the gate to greet me and after a week we couldn't believe that she wasn't carrying a watermelon. She kept to her bed for the next 24 hours but still waddled up behind the quad bike to do the pigs morning and night. By Saturday she came out with me to do the chickens and as I came out of the chicken shed I noticed that she was looking at me with eyes like saucers and standing in a very odd way. We hurried her back inside by which time Lizzie was already pretty much out (bum first). The kids, Coco and I were all a bit surprised so Lizzie was lucky that James jumped in and took off the membrane to get her breathing. What followed was a long night - mostly for James as I gave up at 3am and went to bed. Coco was very confused about the whole thing - on the one hand she cleaned them all up very thoroughly and was happy for them to feed, but when they started screaming and moving all over the place she found it very overwhelming.... I empthasied totally. After she went to snap at them a few times we decided that she was the devil and I sat in the whelping box with her when I took over the shift from James at 5am. Thankfully the mothering hormones kicked in pretty well, by the afternoon she had started looking all doe eyed at them and I have had a hard time getting her away from them ever since. They are of course utterly adorable and we have gone with a Royal Family theme so we have; Lizzie, Annie, Fergie, Camilla (my favourite), Beatrice, Charlie (also known as Fat Charlie or possibly Henry the 8th as he is vastly bigger than the others and never stops feeding), Harry, Billy and Eugenie.

Puppies and Ponderings

Contrary to the fact that the only photos I have on the blog of late have been of the ballooning dog, in fact Coco's pregnancy is progressing without much fanfare. She still jumps all the fences (albeit whilst doing her nipple an injury that i can't type about without squirming in discomfort), she runs about madly and was just sighted chasing off a fox with Woody in hot pursuit. She steals every piece of food going and I truly thought she was going mad when the other night I found Emi's shoes, jacket, half a dozen toys and some sticky tape chewed up in the playroom. Nesting behaviour perhaps? In fact James finally admitted that that Woody had got out of his crate and had a party before falling asleep on the couch the night before. In short she is progressing through with a breezy attitude that makes me slightly envious although at 7 weeks now with 2 to go she is starting to snore, lie about and generally look like things are getting a bit uncomfortable.

At night she stretches out beside me belly up and I annoy James by telling him every time I feel one of the puppies kicking about. He is very glad that we are going away to Sydney this week and hoping desperately that Coco will have the puppies whilst we are there as well.

Farm wise; Alan was sent to Protea Farm in disgrace after he won the award for Most Useless Farm Animal on our property (which is really really saying something). He pined away lying at the fence and not showing the slightest interest in our sheep till I gave up and sent him over to give Marley some companionship. He is of course now perfectly happy and enjoying his retirement being spoilt rotten. The pigs are doing their thing, we just added two new gilts to the herd which is now up to 24. Our first lot of smallgoods, kransky, chorizo and ham & bacon were launched last month at the Mudgee Farmers market and were an absolute hit. We are concentrating on expanding the range for the shop...which we signed the lease on yesterday. I am now up to my ears in brochures for chairs/tables/kitchen equipment and trying to get my head around the new e-commerce site which we are having designed so that we can send out 'Mudgee Meat Boxes'.

Today is the last day of school term for Emi and Felix and tomorrow we head off to Sydney for a week with Grandma and Grandpa. I am dipping my toe back into the waters of Animal Behaviour by going to the Equine Behaviour Conference at Sydney Uni. Much last minute reading of books to remind myself of all the things I used to know has been underway. Emi and Felix have been making lists of all the movies that they want to see and are pretty excited about the McDonalds they will inevitably get on the car journey there - lucky they are so easily pleased.

Lastly - we have had a run of good publicity this month and I am attempting to load the latest on to the blog so you can see for yourselves the farm and how the camera adds 10 pounds...