Rain - At Last!

It's raining! Very exciting for those of us feeling dried out & dusty! It started around 5pm, & it's still continuing steadily - so far, enough to soak into the top layer of dust & hopefully encourage the trees we recently planted to not turn up their toes. Some that have been doing quite well have had dead leaves on them - not a good sign, but I have learnt with trees (especially natives) not to pull them out until they have been looking dead for at least a year, as sometimes, miraculous recoveries do occur. Even our pomegranates look discouraging during winter & early spring, but they do come back. I spent 3 hours mowing on Monday - a very dusty job, but with the fire risk, it feels safer to have the grass all around the house shorter, to say nothing of reducing the potential snake risk.

Yesterday morning, there were 8 chicks looking at me from the incubator when I went to fill up the water containers - 1 day early, & very bright eyed too. Since then, 2 more have hatched - Buff Orpingtons or crosses this time, & there are still a few more rocking eggs just waiting. A friend lost 13 of her small & very much loved bantam flock the other day in a daylight fox raid at the back of her house - very sad. She brought some eggs she had been planning to put under a broody hen, so I'll put them in the next available incubator. It is so sad when that happens. A couple of years ago, a daylight fox raid took a lot of my hens & 2 valuable roosters - my fault, for letting them out to free range, a mistake not made again. The electronet from the Gundaroo Tiller (allsun.com.au) works well in keeping the chickens & piglets & geese safe from foxes, but the feral cats still get through or under it.

Our poddy calf does not seem to be drinking from the bottle much, but does seem to be able to get a few surrepticious feeds from the other calves mums when they aren't paying attention, so although he's thin, he doesn't seem to be starving. The 4 calves have started eating grass too, so hopefully we'll be able to feed up our orphan. The piglets are sunburnt, but growing fast, & on Monday morning before the heat really set in, I moved one of the sandpits into their pen & filled it up with water, which seems to be appreciated given the amount of mud in the bottom of the pool this evening.

We have taken the first steps in getting our Zone 3 & 4 Water System set up - & a quote is on the way. It seems very optimistic to be thinking about flooding rains when our dams are looking lower than ever, but when it does rain heavily, the dams start overflowing within 24 hours, & flood over the property & the road too, so this plan looks to be beneficial all round.

So nice to hear the rain on the corrugated iron roof!