Hi Everyone,
Last week while Kathrin was gone, Madonna (one of the mares) had her foal. It is a little filly. Barry drove Mom and me up to the paddock to see the two day old baby. This foal is very special because she let us come right up to her and rub her and touch her. This is very unusual for foals; normally they won’t allow humans to come too close. Madonna, however, was very proud to have her new baby, and she almost seemed eager to show us her new girl, so perhaps the reason for the filly’s friendliness comes from her mother.
 |
| Barry and the new foal |
This week we have been very busy doing spring cleaning on the farm. Kathrin arrived home on Monday night. She brought with her a new dog that she has saved from being euthanized. The dog is a border collie/blue heeler mix. We have named her Sprocket because her original name was Sproete (with means “speckled” in South African). Sprocket was the closest English word we could find so we could remember her name.
 |
| The adorable and energetic Sprocket |
On Tuesday Kathrin castrated the four male brumbies that we still have in the yards. Three of the horses became geldings without a hitch, but one of the horses only has one testicle on the outside, and the other was inside his abdomen where Kathrin could not remove it without surgery. To castrate the horses we loaded them into the chute and Kathrin injected them with anesthesia through their jugular vein. Before the horses could fall down, Barry opened the other side of the chute and walked the horses out. Once the horses were down, Kathrin then found their testicles, which look like large sacs of skin, outside the back of the abdomen and removed them. When the horses woke up, they were none the worse for wear and stumbled like drunken sailors back to their pens.
 |
| The camper with his two horses |
Wednesday, Mom, Kathrin, and I got to drive into town, Tumbarumba, to take one of the mares in to be bred with Heather and Rob Johansen’s stallion (Heather is the one who picked us up from the bus stop on our first day). While we were in town Kathrin ran some errands, and Mom and I got to look around at the shops. On the way home, we stopped by to visit Kathrin and Barry’s friend Desiree. Dropping in to visit friends and have a Cupa Tea while in the area is a popular thing here.
 |
| Missoula and her foal on the way to town |
Starting Thursday, we began the big clean up down at Billy’s Cabin. The cabin itself is complete, but around the yard there were large piles of old metal and farm tools lying around camouflaged by the tall grass. It was a lot of hard, hot work to get all of the metal shifted, the tools sorted, and the junk thrown away. We finally finished on Saturday evening. While we were down there, we also planted cantaloupe, watermelon, pumpkins (which are actually squash, but the Australians call them pumpkins), and some more corn in the large garden Barry flattened. For the three days we were working, it was hot, humid weather. But yesterday afternoon clouds formed and it began to rain and we had a small hail storm. The weather has continued to be very wet.
 |
| Barry (on tractor) tearing down one of the huts around the shed while Kathrin looks on |
Even though the weather is sometimes a bummer and the work can be very hard, there are still some perks to living here. For instance: I had strawberry shortcake with ice cream for breakfast this morning. Everything in my lovely meal was either home grown or homemade, even the ice cream. Remember: Life is short, Eat Dessert for Breakfast.
 |
| Homemade strawberry shortcake |
Hana
No comments:
Post a Comment