obit for the lambies

Last August we had cute as lambs Penelope Darling and Clary.

So, so cute.

Today we had two huge lambs that were a big pain in the butt.

pooping everywhere,

eating every plant in sight,

even when there was feed for them.

Clary in particular is a literal pain in the butt

 when he bunts you in the back of the legs.

Today we got two carcasses

one big fat lambie

one little dainty lambie

and soon a freezer full of lamb meat.

When we actually pick the freezer up that is.

Pete the sheep killer came and

quick as a flash the lambies were dead on the back lawn.

That's Pen Pen getting her leggys cut off so she can be hung,

that's Clary in the background.

Once she is skinned and her oesophagus is tied off

she was hung on two hooks

and the real work of cleaning her up started.

Here she is hooked up and slit open



and skinned.

Below is Clary on the hook and Luke is taking his guts out.

We didn't want the guts cause that would be gross. 

See guts on the ground.

That's a lot of guts, like about 16 kgs of guts

so Clary's carcass weight would be about 20kgs

and Penny's about 10kgs - she's so little.

For those of you going yuk!  Gross! Make me sick why don't you!

Where you get your meat from isn't too different from this

so my take on this is if you like eating meat

then you should learn to raise your own meat

and then pike out and

 get someone else to slaughter them.

I reckon this cost me about $300 for everything

and I know exactly what they have eaten and where they have been.

I know they had a good, peaceful life

and were loved very much.

Now for why I did this.......
recipes

one long weekend

The weekend seems so long ago and also seems like it was long.

It didn't help that I got a Nor'wester headache

on Sunday that made me cry like a sook.

Cause I worked most of the weekend

if you can call hanging out in hotels

with lovely Young Farmers work.

Oh yeah, that's my job.

I did get them to work quite hard

and we solved a few problems.

Plus did a personal productivity module

which is now being taken far too seriously in our office.

All the new staff have been inducted and are off working.

Yesterday I told Mags to the supermarket

not a big deal to those of you live near shops

but to go to a real big supermarket with a decent range is pretty darn exciting in my world.

When we were at the check out Mags got run into my an old man in a mobility scooter.

Like really hard too.

Poor Mags.

And I called the slaughter man.....

only I had to leave a message so the lambies have a stay of execution.

my bludy

lambies are doing my head in.

It's late as and they are tap dancing on the deck!

I really need organise a hit on them.

Your days are numbered Clary and Penelope Darling!

Penelope Darling

is not happy with me at all.

Yesterday evening while she was feeding I grabbed her tail and popped a ring on it.

She looked most annoyed but darn it there was food on offer

so her annoyance didn't last very long.

I'm sure Clary gave her a glare that said

"Suck it up little lamb, some big guy came and did that to my balls!"

Right, off to a wedding at the north end of the island.

Have a good weekend!

a bit

challenged lately, am I.

I worked all weekend and had Monday off but I feel a behind in everything.

Work has been non-stop meetings for the last two days - all exciting and stimulating and massively exciting, I said that... but things are amazing at Young Farmers and very good.

It's just so flipping full on.

Each day has been different project meetings and I come out with job after job on so many different things - it's awesome, it's daunting, it's crazy, I love it.

Let's see we are taking over a national mentoring programme, have eight careers days around the country to organise, seven club trainings, six new staff to employ, three field days, a two week long induction to organise, two new clubs to meet with, one membership mailout, one 75th Jubilee to attend, three trips away before Christmas, all of this is my workload until end of March.

Oh plus a heap of other stuff that is just work stuff to do.

I do have my wonderful coordinator Hoppy Lou to help and I have assigned her to run a couple of the projects.

My ambition in life at the moment is to find a good novel, find a sun trap and lose myself in the book and the sunny sunness.

Mean while my babies are growing up.

Clary has covered my legs in bruises, each morning I call them for breakfast Clary comes screaming around the corner and jumps up on me.

I've never had bruises on my groin before!

V attractive.

This Penelope Darling at a week old and very small looking Clary

He is now 21kgs and Penelope Darling is just 10.

yeah/no

what is that about? Yeah No - arch typical kiwi speak. The crazy thing? We all understand what that means???

I'm back from tropical Hamilton, back to the hail laden skies of Canterbury.

The lambies ignored me, which made it very hard to take a peak at the underside of Clary to check if his balls had finally fallen off.

They have!

They are on the front deck in the hail, where they are going to stay until the world dries out.

So while ordinary things were happening in Leeston, strange things where happening in the 'tron.

I jumped in the shower this morning and there was this on my ankle..

I have no idea where this inky blue splurge could have come from. I wore orange socks to bed with white and light blue jama pants and I'd been sleeping the same sheets for three days without this mark appearing....so where the heck did this inky blot come from?

Two highlights from my weekend were...

spending a whole day with Dae and writing a 'business' plan with her and

surprise meeting Saturday night supermarket* meeting with KayeK.

Every time I go to Hamilton I promise myself I will catch up with KayeK and I never quite get there, the universe conspires against me!

I never think of KayeK as shorter than me.

Her personality is so generous and embracing that she seems bigger, maybe it's her heart I see.

Meeting KayeK at the supermarket in the hair dye** aisle was serendipity.

My original over arching plans for the weekend were canned. I was quite hurt and confused about this but if the original plans had remained (which would have been great) I wouldn't have bumped into KayeK at the supermarket.

And that's a good thing.

I got to know KayeK about 13 years ago when I was the Deanwell Ward Young Single Adult Rep***. Her and her awesome husband lil'Lloyd - a man I will one day name a lamb after - and their kids - Jordan, Audrey, Jesse, Deej, Houston and JohnBoi - were welcoming and wonderful - they still are, only lil'Lloyd died (had to stop typing there cause my heart breaks every time I think about him) but the beauty of the family and Lloyd's legacy are their open hearts.

But back to KayeK. She is a whirlwind of caring. She helps and helps others, she invites us home, she attends our parties, she keeps us going, she cooks for us, she does all of this with grace and a happy heart.

I know she has had her moments of despair and her moments immense joy.

Through out it all she has remained faithful and strong. I have had some of my best times in her company and her fry bread is awesome

As an example of a good women, you can't go past KayeK

====

*a common accidental meeting place for Mormons. Comes from not going to the pub. That evening Dae finally met her ex-brother-in-law's mother for the first time and I also bumped in to the Pearses, as I usually do. Always seems to see them in a supermarket but always a different one - hmmmmm.

**neither of us use hair dye you understand, all Maori go blond when they reach certain milestone ages.

*** yet another purgatory type calling/job in the Church where you organise activities for ungrateful, half-hearted 18 to 30 year olds. Young Farmers is a similar demographic but way cooler and motivated. My life repeats itself, and I marvel at a mysterious blue dot?!?

seeds

finally I have sown my seeds for spring....

I have discovered the most delightful thing, The Boss is growing peas this year - 12 acres of them, all for seeds but we get to glean the fields. The whole office is very excited about this. We have already started sharing our favourite fresh pea recipes and the winner is.......

straight out of the pod.

But just in case I've sown my own easy peasy peas (even veges channel Jo Seagar)

directly into the garden

and cucumbers, capsicum and more peas

(as a back up for the garden sown peas - can't have too many fresh peas, ever).

Seed trays are filled and sitting my bedroom bay window soon to be filled with wee plants ready for planting after Show Weekend and devoured by Christmas.

I've just put sweet peas out to soak and soften to be planted with the express purpose of hiding my ugly wall.

The great thing about doing all this planting is by next year I will have forgotten what I planted and where and they be growing all over the place in a wonderfully wild mess.

Like these California poppies that I have no recollection of planting
And now a quizzical photo from Clary

and Penelope Darling who, I believe is peeing in this photo.

Clary was about to defend her honour no doubt.

Oh and as I was cooking dinner this evening, a wee earthquake to keep us on our toes.

good things

that's a Martha Stewart moment.

Good things today were:

• I finished a scoping document planning out an international farmer of the year contest. Herculean effort that.


• we got on top of a lack of presenters for the careers day next week - actually we haven't but I can pretend to be a sheep and beef farmer for Guess My Job.


• but bestest thing was getting a care package from Dae! I now have lots of chocolate and cheese and mini-chocolate bikkies. Yay the drought is over!


• I got a new baby! This is Darling in my car. I had to pop her in the passenger seat cause she was all shaky and cold when I picked her up. She's so little!

Nice timing for her arrival as this means I will have lamb meat in March,

lamb for Easter at my house.

Clary is getting to big to cuddle and Darling is exactly the right size to cuddle to death, well not to death.

I thinking I might change her name to Penelope.

that's gotta hurt

Clary just got himself tailed and castrated.

He is so sore sore my poor baby.

Well he didn't do it himself.

Goose came by and did it for us, us as in me and Clary, in return for a banana cake.

This is my baby who after having his evening feed this evening wouldn't follow me to the garage cause it was raining. He doesn't like getting wet my poor baby, so I popped the leash on him and 'lead' him along the garden path until I thought it best to carry him.

Am I creating a monstar?

Thank goodness Ree arrives tomorrow and Clary will stop his bleating.

We are up to 400 plus earthquakes today but I only felt one about 5pm and I thought that was the Fisherman jiggling his foot on the ground while he was telling us about water blasting the sand out of the city's drains so the cameras can see inside to see if they will be condemned - most are so far. He has only 12 typed pages of streets to go.

It's going to be a long recovery.

my opitmism

for a life returned to normal was premature. Having said that maybe todays continued frustration is now normal, maybe my tolerance level is permanently lowered.

Today, on waking Tiber had a belly like he'd swollowed a balloon, all rock hard and his little goat like head was drooping and by mid-afternoon he was dead from bloat.

Now there is just Clary and with an attrition rate of 66% I feel an abject failure at sheep farming. Maybe this is why sheep farmers have so many cause then you don't notice is some die. Although they would be a really crap sheep farmer if they only had 33% of their flock left.

Poor Clary is all alone now and so I've let him inside cause I feel so sorry for him.

Don't worry I only let him inside for a short while.

And tomorrow replacement lamb will be here, pre-tailed by Goose.

Any suggestions on names cause it the moment I'm going with Ree as in replacement and Pioneer Woman.

5 tremors today but only 2 noticed.

and then

it goes quiet.

It's been about 36 hours since I've felt a tremor, 36 hours! I'm actually relaxing.

I dared to have a long, hot bubble bath with candles and silence. Yesterday if I'd gone to have a bath I would have been in and out again without a deep breathe of relaxation. Today it was a different story.

It all started with dinner with seven Aussie dairy farmers and with three of my favourite Young Farmers - Goose, Cowboy and Hot Cole. Three reliable, funny guys who I know will be entertaining and know their farm stuff. Hot Cole told a crack up story about his cows making a break for it out on to State Highway 1 and six of them getting hit by a truck and killed (that's not so funny), one getting dragged by a suddenly stopping truck which scrapped a large part of her hide off - very gross - but being a cow and totally resilient she was first on the dairy platform and into the bale only an hour later.

Cops were there, cars were there, trucks were there, the remaining 593 cows were all there abouts and so were the drug dealers who crashed their car into one of the cows. Half a kilo of cocaine was found in their boot and $25,000 fine for Hot Cole. Crazy fun that night, I bet.

It was so good to just hang out with interesting people talking about dairy farming in the tropics - I seriously had never thought about where milk was produced in Australia and North Queensland would never, ever have been a place I'd have thought of. There were riveting rounds of stories about cows keeping cool in 40 degree heat, least they were riveting at the time. I do enjoy listening to new people talking about things I know nothing about.

A good night and no earthquakes - that I felt anyway. Yay!

and it goes on and on

seriously, the hits just keep coming.

Yesterday 7.5oam earthquake was a bit of a shock and even more shocking to find out how bad it had been for those in Christchurch - many thinking it was worse than the Original 7.1 one. It probably was cause so many buildings and people are unstable that it just tips you over the edge.

Then Mags and I decided that enough was enough for poor Sterling who literally threw his toys out of the cot when he dug most of the kitty litter out of the container. Clean kitty litter all over the carpet, little beggar. But that small act of out of character rebellion made us realise that he really had had enough. His days under the house, cutting up his little backward feet on the gravel then his earthquake restlessness and finally the kitty litter meant that an appointment with the vet was made.

Sterling is now buried by our garage. It seems wrong to have him buried in Leeston when he should be in Hamilton where he lived for so long but a dog lives at that house now - since Sterling had issues with the lambs (they are aggressive little monstars) he'd never cope with an Alsatian, even if Sterls is dead he wouldnt cope.

Then at about 3pm there was a nasty little cluster of earthquakes and at that point I gave up trying to write scoping documents and went and sat outside cuddling Clary the giant lamb. I don't think he liked it but I did.

I'm sure it can get worse but I'm so tired and foggy I don't really care that much anymore.

but wait there's more

We are having an avalanche of lambs round here.

Mags who claims to dislike Clary, Tiber and Poppy,

told all her friends about them and of course they all wanted lambs of their own.

So Ruth (and Megan) kindly allowed me to take six more lambs to two homes.

They were little, little babies all piled in the back of my car.

All so little and one especially tiny tiddler who went to be a pet to tiny Amber.

Amber has named her Pinky Pie and she now lives in a pig sty.

This one was the biggest and he baa'd all 40 minutes home

and peered out the window at every opprtunity.

This is what I could see in my rear vision mirror.

Did you know lambs do not like dance music?

Yeah I know, who knew?

Clary

has found his voice and is bleating all over the place.

I'm worried about Tiber's self-esteem cause Poppy and Clary are very matey and are sleeping together.

Right now Tiber is banging his head against the glass kitchen door cause he can't quite figure out windows. I think I'm creating a monster.

eau de lamb's pee

Its the babies!

Two boys and a girl picked up this afternoon

from Ruth (and Sammie and Megan)

They were very good in the car.

Tiber (that's him looking at the camera) liked looking out the window though was a bit funny about the large machinery on a side road.

Tiber must be a bit of a surfer cause he stood the whole time.

Unfortunately this morning Sterling has a mishap of some kind that resulted in,

we think a pinched nerve leaving his legs floppy. He may need his tail amputated or worse case he has broken something and will need to be put down. Not cool at all.

But then we picked up the babies from Methven and took them home

and got ready to feed them.

I went over to CRT to get milk powder knowing that calves milk would be cheaper.

Thankfully Sarah was there so I could ask all sorts of questions including getting calves milk

but the CRT lady glowered at me and Sarah

so we wimped out and I spent $30 more than I needed to on lambs milk

which is just cows milk anyway.

Yes our babies get flash as bottles -

glass lemonade bottles which conveniently are exactly 200mls.

I still have to get the feeding three babies at the sametime sorted but we will get there.

This is Clary - he is a bit shakey and cold so he now has he own blanket.

He looks like a dog in this picture???

Then there is greedy guts Tiber.

He has personality plus and has fallen off the deck a few times already - darn deck!

He is the one who has already explored the inside of the kitchen and peed on the kitchen mat.

Then there is our wee girl Poppy.

She's not that keen on eating too much
so a bit of a finger in her mouth and a teat shoved in
and she got a few mils down her.
I'm choosing to go with dainty rather than failure to thrive.




And then happy wee babies
after they have peed over the cushion
and the deck
and each other.

and soon I will pop them in the garage and send them to sleep

far enough away from my ears so I won't hear Tiber bleating

and Poppy moo-ing

seriously she sounds like a calf!