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...
I'm pretty sure that Emi completely faked her illness symptoms to get out of school and be present for Coco's ultra-sound today. She was more excited than I was (and that is really saying something) and insisted on holding Coco's paw throughout. Coco lay back legs akimbo and dozed away with her tail wagging like a model patient and James started counting. Seven definites and one maybe - I took a photo of the screen when I could actually see two of the little tadpole dogs for good measure. Emi was fairly sure that James would be able to take them out for her to have a quick cuddle and then put them back in and is still a little hazy about the whole thing. The last time she saw one of the pig placentas she exclaimed "that is disgusting I am NEVER EVER having a baby" - Felix, showing early chauvenistic tendencies answered "bad luck, you have to if you are a girl".
Fantastic Mr Fox is still busy at work up here. Margie, the original goose, who had lived through almost everything was finally taken. This left my Embden goose Patricia to wander around honking tragically. Luckily one of our good friends and the local Agriculture teacher found me a flock that needed a new home and showed up with them in the back of a stock trailer some days later. Initially we thought we might take the numbers down by filling the freezer with 6 of the young ones. I kept the whole lot in the stable with a pathetically grateful Patricia for a week to get used to me and fed them every day in preparation for being locked up at night. They are very big geese but thankfully seem pretty friendly. James and his Dad (more on that later) chose one as a five bird roast (or as they are known her a 'Goduckhen' (very unsure of spelling). 2 hours later they emerged covered in feathers with tweezers, a blowtorch and god knows what else. The rest of the geese have had a reprieve as James has sworn never again. They are happily floating around on the very low damn with the ducks. I am sure the fox is very grateful we have stocked his winter larder. Two days ago James did an impressive vault over the fence and sprint down to the damn on hearing a commotion and literally scared Mr F running off with one of the females clutched in his jaws. He came up to the house with her looking very dead however we put her on some straw and twenty minutes later she was up and around...albeit walking in tentative circles with some pretty serious bruising. She has had antibitotics and much TLC and subsequently all geese now sleep up next to their night house unless they really have to go down to the dam and get a drink. I really really don't like foxes any more.