Monday 12 August 2013

Birthday Fun on the Farm

Day 11 and 12

After the rage the next few days were ok considering. The following day we received a call from Chris telling Alex to drive over to the Koondrook farm leaving one girl behind. I was that one girl and had a delightful afternoon walking round the farm, feeding kids and, of course, putting dinner on. When the others returned K'marie was fuming. They'd had to spend the entire afternoon raking grass and looking busy whilst Chris told Alex that he'd be going to Broken Hill to get goats. I definitely got off lightly! 
Thursday 1 August was K'marie's 21 Birthday. Luckily it was a lovely sunny day with all 9 kids needing feeding, plenty of dead goats that needed burning, a fence that needed fixing, a grain storage thing that needed climbing (needed potentially not completely true) and a toy that needed shooting (I hit it with a shotgun. Awesome). The boys distracted her while I made a cake (hopefully the only packet cake I will ever bake) and then Rikki arrived to tell us to go over the road at 7pm! Rikki is a very sweet 14year old girl who likes to pop over and visit us and was horrified that a 21st should be in a goat farm so her parents and the family across the road (a dairy farmer and British vet wife) had decided to throw a party for her as a surprise (I was in on it...not that I could help much). It was such a lovely evening and so sweet of them to have the two of us over. I still had to cook for the Alexes before leaving though which I was less than thrilled about - they had chicken wings, frozen veg and left over pasta from the kilogram German Alex had cooked the day before. In hindsight I should have told them to do it themselves but sometimes it's just easier to throw some chicken bones in the oven and leave, you know? Back to the party, we were greeted with crudités, nibbles and pimms (pimms!!) and they'd put on an epic BBQ. The only minor incident was K noticing a spider crawling up my arm and was uncharacteristically calm when alerting someone else to remove it so the spider was disposed of without any screaming (I mean I wasn't calm but I wasn't stamping around screaming as per). They are fascinated about our living arrangements, how Chris can get away with the way he treats his backpackers and apparently no one gets along with Chris. This stems back to an incident with a pig and who stole who's pig...I couldn't really follow it and I think I've heard Ayrlies side of the story too so it's all a bit confusing. Funny though (take my word for it). Both families have school age children who entertained us performing on singstar all evening whilst we ate pavlova and lamination birthday cake. 
I think the worst moment of the evening came shortly after K was saying how much better farming was then fruit picking.
' I mean fruit picking is so boring, I see friends with orange sacks as its just Orange. Orange. Orange. I'd much rather be doing this'.

Rikki's parents are orange pickers.

Solo goat herding!
Ahmed, Celine and Grimm

The Day The Rage Came

The day started as usual. Reluctance to leave the electric blanket, the sound of K lighting the fire for the day, the bleating of goats and the sounds of an angry Scotsman swearing at his dogs from the far end of the farm. Alex is a very nice chap but my goodness me does he lose his temper and sadly his mood rather dictates the days mood. K and I decided we were going to have an upbeat and happy day so we left German Alex (who ate the biggest breakfast I've ever seen...boys really don't get communal living) with angry Alex building a 'wing' (some sort of fence we'll be using for the drenching. No one tells me anything so I can't be more specific). We fed the kids (all 9 of them), went to check the front fence and then to find Noel who was trying to round up the goats.  Now given that we spend the majority of our time trying to keep the goats in today sounded pretty easy: get the goats out to the other field.  Rose the dog is still over at Farmer Chris' house so Noel was attempting to herd them with the ute. K and I saw the opportunity to hop in the trailer and took it pronto. We had a big herd of goats but would they go through the open gate? No.  We abandoned them an got on with another couple of farm tasks that needed doing (finding barrels to cut in half for water for the goats - one had had molasses in it and was complete with a dead, sticky rat) and went to get the last of the wood from Geoffrey's to bring over. Then we tried to do the goats again. K and I were running and hutting and hoying and yodeling at them and Noel was honking and bashing and revving but they would not go through the blinking gate! We went back to get the boys who were cutting wood to see if Alex and his stockdog, Maggie could help do the job rose would do in 10 minutes. Well. This is where the day turned a tad sour. Maggie did not do what she was told. At all. Maggie even succeeded in splitting up the group by doing all the things a stock dog shouldn't and then ran away as I assume she knew what was coming her way. German Alex wasn't much help. He hasn't grasped the concept of herding an his 'voice was hurting' from the shouting (his arms were hurting from the wood yesterday too...!!). Anyhoo we abandoned the plan to get all the goats out and went to find Alex and Maggie. We spotted them, Maggie was thrown into the trailer with a colossal slam an the angry Scott marched into the distance with a face like thunder. We said nothing and suppressed a giggle (and gave the dog a bit of love).

K, Noel and I  went to go and get a couple of dead goats we'd found earlier in the day (Noel drove me Into Murrabit for some new boots earlier in the day but we u turned when they were $95. In our way back we saw a nanny birth twins so K and I walked to check on them and found two dead ones...they smelled god awful).  One of them clearly died whilst giving birth, the other looked like she'd died from inflation. I found out the hard way that a goats horns can fall off when dead. I squealed. Loudly. Instead of putting these two on the trailer Noel tied string to their heads and we dragged them to the burning pile. Nice. The burning pile still smelled awful - charred, rancid goat still on the wind. We did our best to keep our distance from the angry Scot and the unenthusiastic German Alexs.

The day went on with K and I choosing to spend the afternoon with Noel avoiding Alex who set about loudly cutting firewood. Earlier in the day Alex had spoken to Chris and told us to write him a shopping list which we did - it was 7 items long as we didn't want to appear demanding. Items such as tomato pasta sauce (we had a jar), frozen peas (no one likes a can), honey (for poorly kids), sugar (for Chris' tea), veg (e.g broccoli), bananas and meat for the boys (because heaven forbid we give them a meat free dinner). Well Chris turned up early evening to speak to Alex about the dog (Alex had told him to take her or he'd shoot her - mature) and this is when my rage started to bubble up. I had started getting dinner ready (yes, I have been cooking every blooming night since I got here) and was cutting up potatoes. Chris asked who the list writer was. We had a jar of tomato sauce. We had canned peas. We had chicken wings etc etc.  He then asked what I was doing with the potatoes. Why was the skin on? Did all poms leave skin on? All very disapproving. He left and came back 2 mins later. I was peeling the bloody potatoes. What are you doing to the potatoes? Are you peeling the potatoes? AAAAARGH. I nearly threw a potato at his head. The boys are a bit squalid and we spend most of the time cleaning up after them. We were planning on cleaning after dinner (water shortage means washing up isn't a free and easy activity) but obviously Chris came round first and had the audacity to say it was the worst it's ever been. He was there on my first night! It was horrendous...and the potatoes had the skin on. Well, Chris, you can't polish a turd. I bit my tongue, put food in the oven and rang mum for a rant. I then instructed her to ring me 10minutes later so I could leave the table. Worked a charm.

Ground-log Day

Day 9

I have very little to report from today because today was mostly spent with wood. Lots of wood. I drove the ute from different ends of the farm to move wood. We moved wood from Geoffrey's, into the ute, then drove it back to the house, then unloaded it, then drove back to Geoffrey's, then loaded the ute, then drove back to the house, then unloaded it, then drove back to Geoffrey's...you get the idea. After the second ute load was on I drove back across the fields for the first unloading where we had the unpleasant surprise of Farmer Chris in the yard. The first thing he said? 'Use the brakes. I see yous bumping in the potholes'. Hello, Chris, I'm well thank you, how are you?' He then watched my reverse it to the wood pile with great scrutiny hoping for another error. I drive like a granny and about 4 times slower than Ayrlie so this had sent my blood pressure rocketing. Luckily it was a Flying visit to pick up Scottish Alex to go to the abattoir and left us with the task of moving all the wood. K sums it up well by saying that it can be a fun, sunny day but Chris brings a cloud that dampens everyone's spirits.

On went the trailer and back we went to moving the wood. Over to Geoffrey's, into the ute, back to the house, out of the ute etc etc.  

As the day was ending I had the pleasure of taking the best wood over to the Koondrook farm (residence of Farmer Chris) to unload it there. Oh goody! I hadn't been yet and the stories I've heard haven't exactly been great, but I unloaded the wood (snore) under the watchful gaze of Chris and an enormous bull then kept my fingers crossed we weren't going to hang around.

The only non wood related activities today was some new German. But even that was a bit wood related with 'vielen grossen stochen' being my new words for the day.    

Instead of counting sheep to go to sleep tonight I'll be counting logs



Monday 5 August 2013

Ground-log Day

Day 9

I have very little to report from today because today was mostly spent with wood. Lots of wood. I drove the ute from different ends of the farm to move wood. We moved wood from Geoffrey's, into the ute, then drove it back to the house, then unloaded it, then drove back to Geoffrey's, then loaded the ute, then drove back to the house, then unloaded it, then drove back to Geoffrey's...you get the idea. After the second ute load was on I drove back across the fields for the first unloading where we had the unpleasant surprise of Farmer Chris in the yard. The first thing he said? 'Use the breaks. I see yous bumping in the potholes'. Hello, Chris, I'm well thank you, how are you?' He then watched my reverse it to the wood pile with great scrutiny hoping for another error. I drive like a granny and about 4 times slower than Ayrlie so this had sent my blood pressure rocketing. Luckily it was a Flying visit to pick up Scottish Alex to go to the abattoir and left us with the task of moving all the wood. K sums it up well by saying that it can be a fun, sunny day but Chris brings a cloud that dampens everyone's spirits.

On went the trailer and back we went to moving the wood. Over to Geoffrey's, into the ute, back to the house, out of the ute etc etc.  

As the day was ending I had the pleasure of taking the best wood over to the Koondrook farm (residence of Farmer Chris) to unload it there. Oh goody! I hadn't been yet and the stories I've heard haven't exactly been great, but I unloaded the wood (snore) under the watchful gaze of Chris and an enormous bull then kept my fingers crossed we weren't going to hang around.

The only non wood related activities today was some new German. But even that was a bit wood related with 'vielen grossen stochen' being my new words for the day.    

Instead of counting sheep to go to sleep tonight I'll be counting logs



And then there were 9

Today was a sad day. When we checked on the little ones this morning i could only see 9. i then checked the barrel and saw one small, bedraggled goat. Very still. I checked over the others and couldn't see JY so assumed this poor, wee sodden kid was him. He was alive, just, so we took him inside for the bath treatment. Little jy had 3 hot baths but after a few feeble mews he left us too. What a way to go - frozen in wee. We had decided last night that we'd light another fire today so at least little jy didn't have to sit around being eaten. We gathered wood and took it to the burning pile which was smelling particularly rancid today, more so than usual which is saying something. I was a little bit sad and not in the best of moods this morning. My constantly cold and increasingly chapped hands topped off with my favourite goat dying because he was weed on did not start my day off well. My patience was especially short with the hounds who were sat eating rank bits of rank goats at various stages of decay and charring then trying to lick my face which is so not cool.

On we got with our daily farm chores and then we started on goat proofing the concrete pen outside the old dairy. This involved moving gates and using tie wire (my plier skills still need some fine tuning). There is a ramp up the side of the pen that leads the goats into a lorry and a gate at the bottom to control them. Alex decided to move a rubber mat that had slid down the ramp which uncovered several australian sized woodlice, a few centipedes, many beetles and a redback spider (spotted by eagle eye 6th sensed K). I retreated up the ramp a little while Alex squashed it then spotted the same sort of hand sized monster we had spotted on the post the day before. At this point K and I were both on this ramp. 'Oh my god' said I as I scrambled passed. 'what are we oh my godding at' said K on repeat as the two of us screeched our way past each other and launched ourselves off the top of this thing...it is about 5 ft high and I jumped (yes, I jumped) from the end of it. It's the most athletic I've been for a while. It was a chilly and windy day so I kept the little ones in the pen most of the day to keep warm. We also did a bit of roofing (my involvement was limited to Measuring and sending up a few sheets of corrugated tin) and I changed my first tyre so I could use the ute to move things around the yard to make it look a bit tidier. I also had my first trip to Murrabit village centre which consists of one shop-post office-pub with the supermarket value range items at vastly inflated prices.

In the evening a new backpacker arrived - German Alex. As it turns out Scottish Alex has a German mother and worked in Germany for a year so is pretty fluent and so far I think German Alex is enjoying my fluency too.  I've told him all about my familien haus, what I do in meine freizeit and what my leiblingsfacher are. Es ist sehr gut. He has arrived with VERY white trainers and looks even more city than I did on my arrival so we'll see how he gets on. My next few posts might be auf deutsch. Ja.

Spider on the post

Day 7. One week down!
Today was my first day working with Noel and it was nice to have direction! Noel likes a leisurely morning and once we'd done our usual morning chores (we still have 10!) we headed to the back paddock to goat proof it.  Apparently we are going to drench all the goats to try and prevent more worm related deaths. I'm not quite sure how this is supposed to work as I think the drenching  is happening near the house but the new goat proof area we worked on is quite far back...I am sure it will all become apparent. Maybe. So aside from more fencing (I observed more than I worked) I discovered that I enjoy using an axe. I am also pretty good at using an axe. Those spiny bushes were toast. A fair bit of work was needed to straighten and right the posts using chains and landcruisers.

Now I'm not great with spiders but K'marie has the worst phobia I think I've encountered. She can spot the legs a mile away so when her voice went hoarse and she leapt back 10ft I knew something had been spotted and could just about make out 'spider on the post, spider on the post'. About 10 seconds later I spotted the hand size arachnid walking slowly around the post. Noel brushed it casually to the floor and stood on it. 10seconds later 'it's moving! It's moving' and sure enough it had escaped the boot and was crawling towards us. Then it had the boot treatment. We spotted a few more that day and so were slightly twitchy for the rest of it. Once one of us starts the other one is off too and Alex has realised all he needs to do is give us a look somewhere like shoulder or hair and its enough to set us off. We have tried to explain that it's not funny but he doesn't agree.