Just Another Morning

By 8:20 am I had finished all my indoor chores – getting dressed, eating, gazing into space. And now I was ready to tackle the great outdoors. But first I had to deal with a wheelbarrow filled with garden rubbish. Until today I had blithely filled a plastic tub with clippings, dead plants, and various detritus and left it in the driveway for Dan to haul through the first gate, through the second gate, past the new barn, through the third gate and to the recently begun compost pile. You can see why I left it to him.

But today he had left a filled wheelbarrow in the garage for me to deal with. True, he had been a tad busy fighting flystrike, wrestling sheep, killing maggots, building corrals to separate said sheep, moving stock, cutting out thistles, repairing water troughs, and lugging a very heavy salt lick all over creation. All glorious fun. He had left this wheelbarrow for me to deal with and headed back to Auckland. Just because he had to get up at 4am to catch a plane to somewhere is no excuse.

But I love my son so I shouldered the burden and wheeled my way to the compost pile. One problem. I couldn’t find it. We had not had the steers in that paddock for a while because they tended to eat the trees. Result: waist high, WET grass. I wandered around for a while and finally just dumped it in a likely location. Who knows, it could even be the right spot. Anyway, Dan doesn’t have time to read this blog, so if you don’t tell him, he’ll never know.

Back through the 3 gates. I briefly considered just pulling the gates to since there were no steers or sheep in the paddocks but I remembered the 1:30am sheep hunt in Dave’s front garden – the result of just pulling the gate to and not latching it. So I carefully latched them all.

Now I turned my attention to checking the ram and ewe who had flystrike and are sequestered in the quarantine paddock all the way down by the main road. Quite a hike but I am getting used to it. I just avoid it in the heat of the day. The sun is massively intense here in the Southern Hemisphere (and remember I come from Arizona).

I am sauntering down the road and here comes Steve whizzing by in his miniscule diesel car. He slows long enough to ask if I had seen any sheep. Interesting question since this is sheep country and they surround us, but I said no and learned that 7 or 8 of theirs had escaped and were being feverishly sought. Both he and his wife, Michelle, were dressed for work and obviously this was a wrinkle they really didn’t have time for. Hence the frenzied driving up and down the road in both the mini car and their truck (known here as a ute, for utility vehicle, I assume. Took me a while to puzzle that one out.)

I patted myself on the back for having diligently latched our gates. No wandering woollies would end up in our paddocks. So on down to view the flystrike victims. They must be better. Both were huddled in the shade as far from the road (and me) as possible. They were standing, there were no swarms of flies, and they were eating. I could give a good report back to Dan and Yael.

Next I headed back up the road to the red, red barn to check on the 3 lambs that had been separated from the flock. They were all healthy but it was time to fill the freezer and the lambs were the designated Sunday dinners for the next year or so.

The lambs had been herded into paddock #1. Dan will have his revenge! I couldn’t see them and the sun was getting hotter and hotter. And the remaining 7 sheep were in paddock #2. Six of them seemed fine but 1 kept herself burrowed in the (again!) wet grass and I needed to check her. So I made an executive decision and headed up the hill of paddock #2. The fact that this hill is marginally easier to climb than Mt. Everest (also known as paddock #1) had nothing to do with my choice. Or at least not much.

By the time I got there, sheep 1 was on her feet and scampering away from me. I watched her for a  while but there were no signs of flystrike so I headed for paddock #3 and the steers. Usually this is the easiest part of my morning routine. Steers are big and easy to spot. Except that they are black and love to lie in the deepest shade. Try and find them! Well, maybe you could, but I couldn’t. I saw one. I didn’t see the other 6. So up and down the hill I went. In the WET, WET grass. It is very tricky to hike in tall grass. I never know what the footing is like underneath. Still, I must be getting better at this hiking stuff; I didn’t fall once. Tripped a couple of times but no falling. Good on me.

I finally stumbled into the creek bed and looked up to see 7 black shadows munching benignly and eyeing me with quizzical looks. Okay, all the stock account for (I am assuming the lambs are eating on the other side of the hill.) Now to stagger back up the hill to the house. And clean, dry pants. In my room, I consider scurrying to the main house and the clean, dry pants that are hanging in the dining room.

Perhaps a short explanation is in order. Before I got sick, I had planned to go back home to Prescott so I don’t have many summer clothes here. As in almost none. I rotate 3 pairs of farm worthy pants and one was now wet, one was drying in the main house and one hadn’t been ironed. What could it hurt? No one could see me. My rooms descend into the garage and the bay doors were closed. From the garage it is straight into the house. And the dining room and my pants.

But that old Puritan training was too much for me. Into the unironed pants I went. And then into the main house. And there was Steve standing by the dining room window about to knock on the back door of the kitchen. Imagine if I hadn’t pulled on those pants. He would have gotten an eyeful of these legs of mine. Could have put him off his food for a couple of days. Another disaster averted. But don’t worry, I’m sure the next one is just around the corner