Fencing and Sore legs

And another weekend passes, and still life on the farm chugs on with the never ending list of jobs, at least this weekend I managed to knock one off.

Saturday saw the goats (and Gloria) moved up one paddock into what was supposed to be the kidding paddock (but she beat us to it), along with all the houses for them too. Once they were moved out, the ewes and new lambs were moved across from the mound paddock into the paddock the goats were (the goats only browse the grass, hence there is still a lot of fodder for the sheep to clean up), and then the ram and the ewes who have still yet to "pop" moved into the mound paddock; not much grass left there but, nice and sheltered. Also during the morning I finally finished the fencing in the mound paddock, the netting fence between that paddock and the arena was very loose, and more than once the goats had escaped (along with the sheep after them) into the arena and the flaxes around it.

After all that, I was pretty wiped out, and wanted to spend the afternoon doing something fun, so I did the ice test (video below), that was quite amusing for 30 minutes, and then I came in and veg'ed for the night (along with getting prepped for Sunday's hunt).

Sunday morning, I got up nice and early (but still a good lie in for the weekend, 7am) and after a good breakfast of porridge, I headed down to Ocean beach for a hunt on Corner Creek. Following the advice of some other hunters, I gained some altitude into the bush and left the stream bed, this worked quite well, as within the first 30 minutes of my walk, I had already spooked a small deer, wasn't quite quick enough to get a shot of, but at least I saw something. 3 hours later when I stopped for lunch (after walking 2 Kms, but the terrain was straight up!), I decided that I should head for home as I was noticing the start of fatigue, more walking required I think.

And finally today, we went out to a farm to collect some meat goats, we were going to get 5ish, but ended up coming home with the entire flock, oh well, we got them for a really good price,around $9/head now I think about it. So we'll keep them for a few days, sort out who has kidded, who belongs to who etc, and then cull or sell on the ones we don't want, I'm thinking of putting them in the freezer myself, we don't have much goat in there at the moment, only a roast, a shoulder and 3 or 4 meals of chops, so a bit more won't go amiss.

Oh, the other day I said to Steph "Honey, I think we need to cull some more sheep, we're running low on meat, we only have:

• 1 tray (30cm x 60cm) of pork chops
• 1 maybe 2 pork roasts
• a couple of lamb roasts
• 1/2 cubic metre of beef mince or sausages
• about 6 or so rabbits
• 1 hare forequarter
• 20 or so faggots (homemade)
• 15kgs of sausages (lamb or pork)
• bacon
• 5kg of pork burgers"
  

at this point I decided that we weren't really low on meat, just the freezer needed filling more.

As you can imagine, we never buy meat at the supermarket! And now we have goat.

Anyway, it's getting on towards bed time, so till later.

Oh, breaking news, just got another farm for shooting, and from the sounds of it, it's another big one with lots of hares, so that will be cool; we had hare stew this evening, and it's very yummy.

Still trying to find a private block for deer or goats, fingers crossed.