It's been a long week.
We've had some good falls of rain, 61mm in the last one and it's been raining on and off for maybe another 5mm. Cold and windy, warm and still, we've had it all. Snow on Mt Barrow and in the central highlands and Ben Lomond.
The shearer was booked to do crutching and feet trims today, but called in sick. The sheep had spent the night in the loafing shed off food, but had had a good belly full in the hay shed during yesterday afternoon so they weren't too cranky. They got a treat on release too, and I had to work hard to actually shoo them out of the shearing shed. I will call and rebook later in the week.
The bull was following Annie around today, very keenly. Which suggests that the last heat didn't result in a pregnancy. Hopefully this time will because the bull is going home next Sunday. I have yet to see him get enthusiastic about Beanie. Anyone not bred now will have to wait until the next window on the other side of the planned gap to allow no calving or milking when I go to New Zealand for Sharik's wedding.
Michael Courtney picked out a new laptop for me, on special, and I put a hole in one of the credit cards and bought it. This one is starting to fail and when I told him how it was behaving he said to do a backup immediately and plan for the worst. It will be nice to have a computer that doesn't take 15 minutes to start up and freezes roughly every ten minutes. I could put up with inconveniences, but if it is on the way out I can't do without one completely and I can't afford to lose all the info stored on this one.
Speaking of computer issues, we had a terrible Friday afternoon. Woolies was among the businesses hit by the global outage. We had registers freezing and going down, the online ordering went offline, the computers all died. And for some reason everyone in town felt the need to come shopping. There were still no computers when I went in for my fortnightly Saturday shift in the office so I dragged out the calculator and paper and did the cash handling manually, then went next door to the only functioning pc and entered it all into the system.
Robyn next door has started calving, I need to resist the urge to get a couple of poddies because I need to reduce the numbers, not increase them. I should run about half what I have, and have spare grass for hay. I guess if someone doesn't breed this season it won't be a tragedy.
Last year's poddies, Star and Joey, will be weaned off the pellets when this bag runs out. At a year old they have had extra protein much longer than calves who are on their mothers. With free choice hay, a vitamin and mineral lick block and a dry feed protein lick block they should be ok from now on. One less expense and one less set of chores. I have to decide what to do with Star, as I don't need three milk cows, but she's halter broken and easy to handle.
We had one egg this week, maybe the announcement of the days getting longer and laying resuming. They've had a fair bit of calcium and protein over winter so they should get going in good order. Those that are young enough to still lay, that is. I suspect we have better than 50% free loaders now.
I need to get another dry day to do another copper sulphate spray on the peach, nectarine and plum trees, for leaf curl. I did one when the buds started to show colour and I'd like to do another before bud burst. And I should get the trunks limed to prevent cherry slug asap. And prune them before they put too much energy into the new growth.
Here is a shot this morning of Mt Barrow, to the south of us. There was more snow yesterday, but the clouds sat on it all day so I couldn't get a photo.
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