Big Things and Little (CUTE) Things

First up the obligatory apologies for not posting in so long. I've just finished a stint of near full time work filling in for the two other teachers I work with who both took leave at overlapping times. I was staying in the city right through the week, away from my lovely wife and farm. Not the sort of thing I would normally do, but I have a strong emotional attachment to the course I teach and felt it needed looking after while the other teachers took some much needed time away. But I'm back now and loving it again, absence makes the heart grow fonder :)

Now I'm sure a few posts back I made some bold claim about there being no more large infrastructure to do on the farm and we would be scrimping by on little things from now on..... NOT! A rather naive claim in retrospect, you never know what's around the corner, in this case it was one of these.

 Vicki found one of these "portable" shelters going for a good price on Gumtree. The first thing I have to say is that it was not very portable. Luckily the seller was willing to deliver it, and even stuck around for the better part of a day to help us with getting the basic frame up. Then there were days of more work to be done, the video on the manufacturers web page says 2 people can put one up in 3 hours which is a load of rubbish.

This is where we were up to after the first full day. Then Vicki and I had to get the rest of the tin up on the roof and bolted on. Not the sort of thing we have experience at, but that's part of the fun :)

Archie now has a high and dry shelter just for him, much better than the little car port we were using before. If the weather is consistently bad we can keep him in here for as long as is needed. This should result in less work for us (mostly Vicki) in the long run, because it is when he is out in the wet that his feet and skin problems get a lot worse.

The work is not over yet, such a large roof demands that a water tank be attached to it when you live out this way. The tank will be very handy for animal water and will be just up the hill from the food forest. I'll put in a long pipe with a tap and shouldn't have to cart water down there any more.

And now the little things. Just a few weeks into my stint of extra work these little ones were born.

A boy and a girl, both in perfect health. They were born late in an afternoon while Vicki was home alone. She had her hands full, but managed the situation very well. They are growing so fast, I'd go back to the city for another weeks work and return to find them a good 20%ish bigger some times. Here are some videos of them at different stages.

Just a few days old.

They are not actually eating here, just copying mum we think.

I haven't really managed to get any good footage of it, but late in the day they will sometimes get what we call the zoomies, where they go a bit crazy and run around a lot.

They quite like climbing on the portable shelter we move around with their day paddock. Its cute but I am kind of hoping the novelty wears off before long, when they are full size they will probably break it.

We have been learning a lot as we go. Immunising, tail docking and even castrating. The fun of animal ownership :)

Oh and one last thing. Another reason I haven't posted in a while is because I've been setting up a new blog for my local Permaculture group. Why not stop by and check it out :) - http://southburnettpermaculture.com/