On Saturday we participated in "Farm Day" a program where city people come to a farm for a day, to see how farming folk live and work. The program has been going for some years but this is the first time we have been involved. We thought our farm would be too small, but they were short of farm families so we volunteered. We had a great day. Our family came from Sydney and needed to travel over four hours to get here, a commendable effort to spend a day in the country!
 We all had fun, the kids enjoyed all the animals, going for a walk along the sheep pads, fishing for yabbies, patting the lambs and climbing a tree. Vivienne and David  showed great interest in our routine activities, and daily  life, both of us contrasting our different lifestyles, and we learnt just as much from them. Jamie their son who is 7 had the dubious pleasure of taking a rag, which had been rubbed over the billy goat, home  for show and tell. (safely enclosed in a zip lock bag). Provided his intrepid parents manage to travel home with this souvenir, he should enjoy maximum impact in an urban classroom.
  And for us we made some new friends.

We find ourselves the owners of eight goats, it seemed a good idea at the time. Our daughter Laura was very keen to have some goats and she needed an interest, so off we went boots and all. They are Toggenburg Dairy Goats, they are a very old Swiss breed some say the oldest, and the purest (they have been in Australia since 1883). They came with a buck, who looks majestic but has to be smelt to be believed. Amazing what can be achieved by peeing on your beard and legs several times a day. The rest are does of various ages. We have a small plan at this stage that it might be fun to make cheese and milk soap, as well as feed any excess milk to poddy lambs. Winter is usually our quiet time but we seem hell bent on ruining this!

 A couple of our friends and neighbours have decided to lamb in March/April/May because the weather is more predictable, less rain and cold winds than the spring lambing.
Our experience has shown us that even though Dorpers are non seasonal breeders, in this part of the world their fertility is diminished in September, October, November and our lambing percentages have been poor when joining at this time. A December joining is better to give lambs in May, but it is really working against nature.
A ewe will need 50% more feed in the last six weeks of pregnancy and this requirement doubles when she is lactating. The lamb is also grazing and this is being done when the paddock is at its lowest productivity due to the cold conditions. Thus you will carry less sheep, less twins and the ewe has to cope with the extra feed needed to keep herself warm, her lambs warm, to lactate and if a maiden ewe, to continue to grow. We also have a few lambs on the ground now, it will be interesting to compare these lambs with our main lambing in spring at weaning time.

To see our lives through others eyes.
"Beautiful days, light frost. Found the cow up behind boundary fence, might even be the neighbours paddock? He brought round 2 big bags of bread which are in feed shed. Cow has huge udder - had a calf (no sign of it) or maybe going to calve? Couldn't see her well enough to tell. One of the young rams is limping, don't know if it was limping before you left or not. And I thought there were 7 rams but there are only 6 so perhaps there were only 6 to begin with. There are 10 lambs in the lamb paddock, saw a fox in there yesterday morning so made BANG BANG noises and it ran away. Goats good, been for walks round paddock and up hill, have taken to Rose, ( sitter's daughter), pretty things they are. Sheep in pine tree paddock went nuts over lupins, and battled it out from heap to heap, until not one lupin left! Pearl (sitters highland terrier) meanwhile stuck her head through electric fence and got lobotomized! That was a bit of a shock for her, poor little fluffpot, but she soon recovered. Maggie (sitters border collie), brushed against electric fence up the hill, ran a short distance, sat down and held up her right front paw saying ouch, ouch, that bloody hurt, but she also soon recovered. The neighbour has separated the calves from their mums so there's a bit of separation anxiety bellowing going on. Didn't let the chooks out today, they seem content though and well, guinea fowl as screechy as ever. Have been giving the dam (so full!) ducks some of the bread yum yum they say".