Rain, Floods & Summer

We've been inundated with rain here, not like in Qld (lived through the 74 floods myself, so am thinking of everyone living there & wishing you all well). Roads were cut & access to Canberra & Goulburn was cut, but we are high here, & it was great to see the Shoalhaven running with so much water in it. The Yeomann's ploughing we did a few years ago has realpaid off, & we could see the water table rising on the property as the dams filled from the lowest point right up to the highest one. We have also been steadily working to repair a leaky dam (with polymer & bentonite), & that seens to have worked. And the new large tank we put in last year in the drought is now full, so our domestic water storage situation has improved enormously. It's great to have another chance to prepare for future droughts by saving, sinking & slowing water across the property. We had a swamp in Chookingham Palace for a while - obviously, it was built in dry times, across a semi-permanent creek that is usually totally dry; but we now have a diversion channel in place to take the water around the chickens to the dam.
Sadly, we lost all of our bantam flock (3 roosters, 12 hens & some newly hatched chicks) to several fox attacks during that time. All of our perimeter protections including electronet were not enough this time. Understanding that this is what happens in the natural world doesn't always make it easier to deal with the loss, & I miss them. It was a reminder though of how quickly entire breeding stock & genetic pools can be lost, so we hatched another lot of Buff Orpington chickens - the last for this season. They are so cute when they are little, & grow so fast, & I know that by the time the testosterone kicks in for the juvenile roosters that I'll be ready to move them on in the food chain.
We have already had a bumper crop of currants, & the early apples, so the food garden is going well, as are all of the weeds. The amount of compost generated from having our mobile chicken tractor, Brittania, in part of the vege garden over winter was really amazing, & we had to use the tractor to collect it & move it. Using thick sawdust for the paths has worked out really well, as it composts slowly, & can go back in the garden, but all of the paths need doing again.
We still aren't quite sure how many of our alpaca females are pregnant, but it could be as many as 20. Now that they are in their last month of pregnancy (11.5 months gestation), many of them are looking pretty big. Whilst it hasn't been very hot so far this summer (in fact, it has been pretty cool, overcast & wet), they have still been enjoying swimming in our Diamond Dam to cool off on hot days. It is nearly time to move the females on into the maternity paddock, but we are hoping to slash them first to decrease the risk of them having problems with grass seeds, especially with their eyes. And the young male tui still running with the female herd is going to have to face dealing with life in the wether herd very soon!