Between the mastitis and Easter at work it's been another busy week. The weather has been cool and dry, I'm still watering but stretching the rotation out a little because it's not so hot. The forecast is for rain on Monday and Tuesday, but we shall see.
Annie is doing well, she gradually ate more and more and her demeanor improved and what was coming out of the quarter improved until she is now marching in for breakfast, cleaning it all up and eating hay happily. I am still milking out what I can each morning, but it's now just about back to milk.
I weighed up whether to put out a round of hay or silage, then noticed how much feed is across the road while I was checking on Jaffa and her group. So Annie and Belle and the rest are now over there too. They may as well stay there until settlement and save me a couple of bales of hay. Annie comes back over each morning for breakfast and milking that quarter, then back on the 75. She seems to be finding some mud to wade in because I had to wash her udder the last two days.
I am still wading through paperwork for the settlement. The pre settlement checks triggered a land tax assessment because there was rental data for the farm, suggesting I wasn't living here. I had a phone interview with the land tax investigator and advised that there were two cottages on the place. They asked for some documents, which I sent off, and they determined that there was no land tax liability because I had lived there the whole time and the area of land covered by the other cottage was below the threshold for it to be considered.
The groomer came and did Poppy and Finn. Last time Poppy took 3 hrs and Finn 1 1/2. This time Poppy was only 1 1/2 and Finn was 45 min. They both smell good and look like fluffy clouds, but the important part is that the grooming will help prevent hot spots and matting.
Work was madness in the week coming up to Easter. Easter Thursday is bigger than Christmas eve for the shop. This year we did $176,000, which is a record. We are all exhausted. We were closed today and I have a shift tomorrow, the Thomas is coming to do more farm work on Sunday, and then I am spending Monday doing as little as possible. Especially if it actually rains.
I picked some tomatoes from the vege garden, and rainbow chard is growing nicely. It looks like we have one pumpkin and the jerusalem artichokes are flowering.
We went around to Pete's for drinks and nibbles with Juliet, Shane, Sally and Mark. I made danishes using the more stable puff pastry and they turned out well this time. I think I could have added more of the cream cheese filling, but I did strawberries with chocolate, blueberries with biscoff, mulberries with caramel and mangoes with strawberry crunch.
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