I'm dreaming of a Wet Winter!

Winter has arrived in full strength here, bringing lots (over 117mm last month) of rain. Dams are full, grass is green & soggy, eggs are muddy, & it's gumboots outside every day! Since mowing before the Open Day in May, the grass hasn't grown much at all around the house, so that will be one job off the list until Sept/Oct. That also means that what pasture we have now is probably all we are getting until spring too, which is OK as we still have rested paddocks to use, & fewer livestock. As well as heavy cyclonic rain (last week), we now have frosts each night, & as our gas heating system is awaiting parts & repairs for over 2 weeks now, we are feeling the cold inside the house & out. Had to bite the bullet & buy a load of firewood last week, as gathering your own is fine when it is dry & only 1 fireplace is being used, but it was too wet to cut or stack any last week, & we are using the slow combustion stove in the kitchen, the solid fuel fire in the living area, & 1 open fire in the evening, which adds up to lots of firewood. The truck came that afternoon with lots of lovely hardwood, a lot of which is now stacked up in the woodbox, while we wait for the plumber/gasfitter. The techno gods are not smiling on us at the moment, as the list of broken/not working things now includes the heating system, the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, the dishwasher (now working again, I hope), the iron, the push mower! Anyway, as they say in the country, it never rains but it pours!
We rounded up all of the alpaca herd a couple of weekends ago for their biannual vaccinations, manicure etc - with help from a friend, we got it all done (cows too) by 3.30pm after a 10am start, which is pretty good.
The last batch of chicks is growing, although all 19 of them sleep together inside the mobile pen in an area less than 1msq. At least they are all warm at night, but they're getting a bit bored now they have munched everything green! I took pity on their plainitive cheeping on sunday & let them out for a while in the afternoon, but being birds of little brain & young, they don't remember the way home, so it takes a while to round them up. We dispatched 6 young roosters (Buff Orpington crosses) last week, & have got better & faster at that now - only 1.5 hrs start to finish for 6 as opposed to 3 hours for 2 the first time. The birds were quite heavy, but are still quite tender, good strong bones & very tasty - bought chicken (even free range) is not a patch on these heritage meat birds! We are also eating the pork, but haven't made any more charcuterie, despite reading lots of books on the subject, but again, our pancetta is really yummy!
Vege growth has slowed down, but watering is also off the job list at the moment. The netting has kept the wild birds from digging up the new seedlings, but crawling underneath the net to dig up carrots & parsnips (monsters of over 1kg each) is not always fun!