Hello! Welcome to spring 2017!
Thinking back on those long, almost never ending months of winter, we didn't actually do too badly - if I'm honest.
Sure, there was plenty of rainy days to be had, it got cold enough to wear my woolen hats Nana so kindly knitted for me. However I don't recall any negative temperature days at all, we got down to the very low 0 or 1 degree, with perhaps five "official" frosts in total? But yeah, it wasn't too bad a winter when you think about it. We got rain but hey, there's always rain in winter. And everyone is always talking and suggesting it is possibly, "the wettest winter in quite a few years" but you never quite know - unless you keep a strict record of rainfall!
A fair few farmers try and pull that one, stating they've had so many mm of rain compared to last winter or the winter before, and "it definitely wasn't this wet last year, we're doing it pretty hard". But honestly? I can't even remember much of the weather from the autumn just been, let alone the last few winters. They're cold and wet, typically. That's all there is to it. How about we just not get too over dramatic, OK?
However, we've been thrown into spring in quite a brutal fashion. Currently, the rain only stops for a few brief periods in a day. We've had lightening, thunder and hail, winds that have been more icy than the coldest frost. You think you're in for a good day because the sky has cleared and the sun has come out, but not thirty minutes later everything has gone dark and you get under cover just in time for it to bucket down. It's not particularly fun, and the rest of this week is forecast to carry on like so, so the family and work morale is heading downhill quite substantially. I guess you just look forward to summer, right? Back into a drought when everyone complains about the lack of rain.
As per normal, life is ticking along. Where we feed calves, there is around 10 left to calve so we're on the home stretch now. It hasn't been very easy this year as Mum injured her back in the first week we started there. Upon initial doctor visits they thought it was a pinched nerve in her lower back/pelvis area - something like Sciatica perhaps. It's frustrating for us but even more frustrating for her, as it is a daily issue that she's having to deal with, she's determined to keep working and not being able to drives her crazy. But it drives us more crazy when she helps with something we've told her not to do, and then she hurts her back again.
She goes to physio sometimes, has tried acupuncture there and now they're saying she needs an x-ray on her hips/pelvis in case it is more of a bone injury rather than nerve damage. So I think that's happening this week.
So because I milk most days, and because I finish around 8:30 most mornings, Dad and Nick have taken over with the calves. If they're fencing during the day, they'll just get in there early so it doesn't affect their day too much. I'd love to do it more often, but they can't wait around for me to finish milking. It's frustrating because I really want to be there, and the days that I am there I notice that the calves aren't quite the same. Nothing against Dad and Nick of course, but they're just not getting as much human interaction that Mum and I would give them. You'd expect each mob to have two or three that are ultra friendly, but there aren't any. It's no major issue, but it is a little bit disappointing for me.
The fencing is going well but it's been quite wet so not as much has been done as we would like. Although Dad has taken up a new specialty line of work - house piles. A fair few builders and engineers have realised it is much cheaper to get us in there to bang the house piles in with our post rammer, than doing it any other way - however they'd normally do it, I don't know? But it's cheaper and faster so we're being recommended around the local building community. It's crazy, as most of the piles are 4.2 metres long, and they get pushed in almost all the way down, and often the floor is still concreted anyway. Confusing for me, as I've not a clue when it comes to house foundations, but it does seem rather extreme. The engineers measure the heights of the piles to the millimetre, so it takes a few days to get say, 30 piles in.
Once that side of it is all sorted, the house goes up in next to no time. All of these new buildings with all of the framing pre-built off site means everything just gets joined together and it's done. It's quite incredibly fast really, but of course it needs to be.
My sister will have her baby soon, she's actually due in early October however the baby is breeched and it isn't safe to turn her. So she's having a scan on Wednesday and she will hopefully know after that what day they'll book her in for a cesarean, it'll be pretty soon we think. She finishes up at work tomorrow, so it's not long to go! Can't wait to meet my niece!
A breech and a c-section is a little bit dramatic for a first born, but hey you get that I guess. Fingers crossed it all goes well.
A few weeks ago I decided to buy Hacksaw Ridge, a movie everyone has been telling me to see. So I ordered it online through The Warehouse. They took a little while to source the film, so they sent me an email telling me this. Eventually they found one, sent me an email with the order number and the tracking number and said that it was being sent out.
Around two hours later I got another email, again stating that they'd found what I was after and they were sending it out. This new email had the same order number, but a different tracking number. This time the order quantity was 2. So, in my confusion I replied to the email, telling them what had happened and that I'd only ordered the one DVD - was I going to get perhaps two or maybe three of the same movie sent out to me? Their reply - there was a glitch in the system and not to worry, I'd only get the one movie delivered.
Alas, a few days later I got the movie in the mail. The next day, the very same movie arrived the mail. However the amusing thing is that the second one that was sent out had a sticker on it saying "buy two, get the third free". So do I ring up and ask where the third one is?! It's a rather good system, you pay for one and you get two. I definitely recommend buying online!
If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend that too! I've seen it twice now, the first in short blips (as the movie is quite long, over two hours) and the second time I watched it in one stretch. If you watch it once, I'd say to watch it again as you can miss quite a few things the first time round. It's funny, sad and absolutely amazing at the same time.
I absolutely despise boring war or action movies, but this being based on a true story and being screened so well is particularly mesmerising. Often, many similar fiction movies will see the main characters walking through walls of fire and coming out completely unscathed. But this film shows no mercy on any major or minor character, everybody gets brutally injured, most get killed. It's awful and heartbreaking when you think that they're showing exactly what that part of the war was like. I've quite simply, never seen anything like it. So definitely watch it, if you can. Watch it twice.
The sun has finally come back out for a little while, little doggies have been evicted back outside to play while it's not raining. You wouldn't think dogs got too dirty until you own a small breed, a small breed that comes inside. Especially a small breed that is quite white like a foxy, but also a small breed that has a long-ish coat, that enjoys getting all muddy, who has very short legs, like a shih-tzu! It gets a bit tiring having to rub their legs and belly's down every time they come inside. And giving them a bath during the day so they have plenty of time to dry, but they've still gotta go back outside after that so winter is an endless battle with small dogs. We really can't wait until summer!
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Monday, 11 September 2017
Sunday, 7 May 2017
Some Form of Permanently Exhausted Pigeon!
I saw a meme on Facebook the other day, it was funny - as most are. Anyhow this one said, "I'm not an early bird or a night owl - I'm some form of permanently exhausted pigeon!" I can seriously relate this week!
I'll make 50 hours this week - I've milked every day and helped with fencing for five. Why? Because apparently people don't like working for us - especially when the week prior to them randomly not coming back, we give them a pay rise. Maybe he got sick of us giving him eggs and veges from our garden that were surplus to our requirements. Who knows? It's even more degrading when they throw your tools into a swamp area of the paddock before leaving early on the afternoon when they're needed to work on their own for a while. It's just, I dunno. You really do have to wonder some days. All I know is that I'm sick of my family being walked all over and treated like door mats when we do absolutely nothing wrong, it's ridiculous.
Nonetheless, I've been working all week and I'm so tired - hence the title. I start my day to my alarm going off at 4:20am, work starts at 5am. I open the door to the chilly blast of cold, winter air; most mornings as of late it has averaged 5 degrees. It's not warm - thank goodness for heated seats in my car! And when I get to milking I almost freeze to death, okay so that is a figure of speech but it's close to legitimate. Just over four hours later I get home, scoff something down for breakfast and then Mum and I leave to go fencing, we're only there for a few hours before needing to get home again in time for my afternoon milking, but we still get some things done. For me, dragging out wires down quite a steep hill, and stapling on my way back up - it takes a little while.
Milking starts again at 2:30 so I'm driving out the gate at 2:10pm. It's almost 6pm when I get home. It's been a long week, even longer when you add in the cold mornings and some cows that just aren't all that interested in being milked. Seriously, if they were my cows, two of them would have a one way ticket off the farm by now. They're driving me insane with their behaviour, where consoling them or yelling at them does nothing. Honestly, if we could just get them fully milked out then they might not be so uncomfortable for the next milking. But we can't keep the cups on, they're never fully milked out, you almost lose the plot at them and the cycle continues; twice a day. I get tomorrow off, I can't wait.
Our netball games have now started for the season, we're playing right up until September sometime. The first game was Friday just gone, it was an eye opener. Warmup started at 5:30pm, thankfully I finished milking early that night and managed to arrive at the courts just on 5:30. I then hand to hunt down my team to get my uniform, as I hadn't made it to training last week to get said uniform, so even though I arrived there on time, I still missed the bulk of the warm up session. Not great.
Mum said I managed to somehow get the right team, with the dark green uniform colours. We've got a dress to play in, a t-shirt to wear overtop for warmups and then a jacket to wear too. There are also hoodies, but they haven't arrived yet. So guess who didn't take something warm to wear, because she thought she would get her hoodie? Hmm...
The games are 20 minutes long, with two halves. My team had enough players with me as a sub, so I didn't play the first half. I was put in as WD in the second half, and I felt like I had been thrown to the wolves with no idea how to play! I was just like, hold on, what am I meant to do? Where am I meant to be?! Panic attack alert, lol. I got there though, figured it out rather fast, found my WA from the other team and did my best to stick to her for most of it, trying to stop her catching or passing on the ball. I got a whistle blow for one obstruction - I got too close. Which, as Mum said, is good because it means I'm doing my job.
The ten minutes pass rather quickly on court, we won the game 22:11. It's odd playing on the outside courts - it's smaller than where we've been training so it doesn't take much to get the ball from one end to the other. It's also concrete, so suddenly I was feeling my landings harder than normal, my ankles and knees are going to have to toughen up. The cold didn't help either - concrete is hard but cold concrete is worse.
But suddenly the game is over and we're finished. Shaking hands with the other team, saying "good game" and off we go. We're told not to leave, I'm not sure why. As it turns out, you don't just play one game of netball, you play two or three. I am seriously lacking in my netball information - why has nobody told me this yet?
There are three, maybe even four "rounds". We played in round 1. Then later on in round 3, once all of the score cards had been tallied and the teams were allocated the right sort of team to play against. There are also rankings, I'm not too sure on the specifics, other than knowing we are ranked a "B" team which is quite low. A "Prem" team is higher up, so we won't be playing against them for quite a while from what I've gathered.
In round 3, because our first game score was so high it meant we were playing against a team with a slightly higher ranking than us. I'm not surprised, they were good. I stood out again for the first half, then they thought it was best I didn't play at all - simply because that team were very good and we needed to get a good score in the game. Basically, my being in there probably wouldn't have been a very good idea, and watching from the sidelines I knew I wouldn't stand a chance in - so I wasn't too worried. I was just freezing, because when you don't play you get pretty cold in a light dress! It is a little awkward though, being the only sub.
The game was going well, there was lots of fighting for the ball at one end of the court, with almost all of the players at that end. The ball was getting thrown back and forth, when something happened. Ebony who I think was playing a goal shoot or goal defense (I can't really remember) jumped up and then fell, landing harshly on the concrete. It happened rather quickly, and she's curled up on the ground crying in pain and everyone is trying to help somehow. I thought it was her shoulder that she'd injured because that's what she had seemed to land on. As it turns out, it was her ankle. She jumped, fell, twisted badly on her ankle, carried on falling hitting her shoulder then her head on the ground.
A few of the volunteer firefighters were hanging around the courts, so they came over and carried her off. I had to jump back into WD and we quickly finished the game - there was all of about 15 seconds left to play once we all got back into position. We lost 5:8.
Poor Ebony was a mess and an ambulance was called, it was awful standing and watching everyone trying to help her. She's vomiting from pain or shock or maybe even concussion - I'm not sure, no one was allowed near her ankle though apart from keeping the ice pack on it. I hung around and waited because we're a team and you'd think that when something like that happens, the team sticks together. But I was surprised when three of them just said "cya" and left...It was a while before the ambulance turned up, and then a second one came after that. She was given some sort of thing to breath through while they took her shoes off and played around with her foot - I think it had some sort of liquid pain relief in it, but I've never seen it used before. Then eventually she was wheeled off on the gurney and we got to go home. Someone else must've gotten injured in another game that we hadn't noticed, because the first ambo went back with a stretcher to another girl down there.
Ebony didn't have a broken ankle, but she instead tore a ligament - and she's out for the rest of the season, it's something you can't come back from very easily. I know, because Mum tore two at the same time (there are only three), her ankle has never been the same. Poor Ebony! First game of the season and she's injured, she's a good player too so it's a big loss for us. Thankfully we found another player last week so we've still got one sub at least. Fingers crossed for no more injuries, I'm actually quite terrified of injuring myself - especially after seeing Eb in so much pain. That, and I can't afford to get injured and not be able to work. Netball is a dangerous game!
I worked out that I was there for three and a half hours and I only played for 10 minutes. It's painful when you think about it, especially as I came straight from work which is a physical enough job as it is. I got home about 9:15pm for dinner, then was back at work, zombie eyed at five the next morning. Phew. It's going to be a long season.
I'll make 50 hours this week - I've milked every day and helped with fencing for five. Why? Because apparently people don't like working for us - especially when the week prior to them randomly not coming back, we give them a pay rise. Maybe he got sick of us giving him eggs and veges from our garden that were surplus to our requirements. Who knows? It's even more degrading when they throw your tools into a swamp area of the paddock before leaving early on the afternoon when they're needed to work on their own for a while. It's just, I dunno. You really do have to wonder some days. All I know is that I'm sick of my family being walked all over and treated like door mats when we do absolutely nothing wrong, it's ridiculous.
Nonetheless, I've been working all week and I'm so tired - hence the title. I start my day to my alarm going off at 4:20am, work starts at 5am. I open the door to the chilly blast of cold, winter air; most mornings as of late it has averaged 5 degrees. It's not warm - thank goodness for heated seats in my car! And when I get to milking I almost freeze to death, okay so that is a figure of speech but it's close to legitimate. Just over four hours later I get home, scoff something down for breakfast and then Mum and I leave to go fencing, we're only there for a few hours before needing to get home again in time for my afternoon milking, but we still get some things done. For me, dragging out wires down quite a steep hill, and stapling on my way back up - it takes a little while.
Milking starts again at 2:30 so I'm driving out the gate at 2:10pm. It's almost 6pm when I get home. It's been a long week, even longer when you add in the cold mornings and some cows that just aren't all that interested in being milked. Seriously, if they were my cows, two of them would have a one way ticket off the farm by now. They're driving me insane with their behaviour, where consoling them or yelling at them does nothing. Honestly, if we could just get them fully milked out then they might not be so uncomfortable for the next milking. But we can't keep the cups on, they're never fully milked out, you almost lose the plot at them and the cycle continues; twice a day. I get tomorrow off, I can't wait.
Our netball games have now started for the season, we're playing right up until September sometime. The first game was Friday just gone, it was an eye opener. Warmup started at 5:30pm, thankfully I finished milking early that night and managed to arrive at the courts just on 5:30. I then hand to hunt down my team to get my uniform, as I hadn't made it to training last week to get said uniform, so even though I arrived there on time, I still missed the bulk of the warm up session. Not great.
Mum said I managed to somehow get the right team, with the dark green uniform colours. We've got a dress to play in, a t-shirt to wear overtop for warmups and then a jacket to wear too. There are also hoodies, but they haven't arrived yet. So guess who didn't take something warm to wear, because she thought she would get her hoodie? Hmm...
The games are 20 minutes long, with two halves. My team had enough players with me as a sub, so I didn't play the first half. I was put in as WD in the second half, and I felt like I had been thrown to the wolves with no idea how to play! I was just like, hold on, what am I meant to do? Where am I meant to be?! Panic attack alert, lol. I got there though, figured it out rather fast, found my WA from the other team and did my best to stick to her for most of it, trying to stop her catching or passing on the ball. I got a whistle blow for one obstruction - I got too close. Which, as Mum said, is good because it means I'm doing my job.
The ten minutes pass rather quickly on court, we won the game 22:11. It's odd playing on the outside courts - it's smaller than where we've been training so it doesn't take much to get the ball from one end to the other. It's also concrete, so suddenly I was feeling my landings harder than normal, my ankles and knees are going to have to toughen up. The cold didn't help either - concrete is hard but cold concrete is worse.
But suddenly the game is over and we're finished. Shaking hands with the other team, saying "good game" and off we go. We're told not to leave, I'm not sure why. As it turns out, you don't just play one game of netball, you play two or three. I am seriously lacking in my netball information - why has nobody told me this yet?
There are three, maybe even four "rounds". We played in round 1. Then later on in round 3, once all of the score cards had been tallied and the teams were allocated the right sort of team to play against. There are also rankings, I'm not too sure on the specifics, other than knowing we are ranked a "B" team which is quite low. A "Prem" team is higher up, so we won't be playing against them for quite a while from what I've gathered.
In round 3, because our first game score was so high it meant we were playing against a team with a slightly higher ranking than us. I'm not surprised, they were good. I stood out again for the first half, then they thought it was best I didn't play at all - simply because that team were very good and we needed to get a good score in the game. Basically, my being in there probably wouldn't have been a very good idea, and watching from the sidelines I knew I wouldn't stand a chance in - so I wasn't too worried. I was just freezing, because when you don't play you get pretty cold in a light dress! It is a little awkward though, being the only sub.
The game was going well, there was lots of fighting for the ball at one end of the court, with almost all of the players at that end. The ball was getting thrown back and forth, when something happened. Ebony who I think was playing a goal shoot or goal defense (I can't really remember) jumped up and then fell, landing harshly on the concrete. It happened rather quickly, and she's curled up on the ground crying in pain and everyone is trying to help somehow. I thought it was her shoulder that she'd injured because that's what she had seemed to land on. As it turns out, it was her ankle. She jumped, fell, twisted badly on her ankle, carried on falling hitting her shoulder then her head on the ground.
A few of the volunteer firefighters were hanging around the courts, so they came over and carried her off. I had to jump back into WD and we quickly finished the game - there was all of about 15 seconds left to play once we all got back into position. We lost 5:8.
Poor Ebony was a mess and an ambulance was called, it was awful standing and watching everyone trying to help her. She's vomiting from pain or shock or maybe even concussion - I'm not sure, no one was allowed near her ankle though apart from keeping the ice pack on it. I hung around and waited because we're a team and you'd think that when something like that happens, the team sticks together. But I was surprised when three of them just said "cya" and left...It was a while before the ambulance turned up, and then a second one came after that. She was given some sort of thing to breath through while they took her shoes off and played around with her foot - I think it had some sort of liquid pain relief in it, but I've never seen it used before. Then eventually she was wheeled off on the gurney and we got to go home. Someone else must've gotten injured in another game that we hadn't noticed, because the first ambo went back with a stretcher to another girl down there.
Ebony didn't have a broken ankle, but she instead tore a ligament - and she's out for the rest of the season, it's something you can't come back from very easily. I know, because Mum tore two at the same time (there are only three), her ankle has never been the same. Poor Ebony! First game of the season and she's injured, she's a good player too so it's a big loss for us. Thankfully we found another player last week so we've still got one sub at least. Fingers crossed for no more injuries, I'm actually quite terrified of injuring myself - especially after seeing Eb in so much pain. That, and I can't afford to get injured and not be able to work. Netball is a dangerous game!
I worked out that I was there for three and a half hours and I only played for 10 minutes. It's painful when you think about it, especially as I came straight from work which is a physical enough job as it is. I got home about 9:15pm for dinner, then was back at work, zombie eyed at five the next morning. Phew. It's going to be a long season.
Wednesday, 22 June 2016
Shortest Day
Winter has "technically" arrived, as yesterday was the shortest day of the year, bringing with it a heap of rain that, believe it or not, is quite pleasant. It's not cold, well not icy cold like it has been and there hasn't been any frosts lately. A good thing, that.
Although this rain that has been booked in for the last week has meant that a whole heap of work has been in a rush. We've had this one fencing job where the posts needed to all be in before the rain hit last night, as the tractor was working on a large lawn area that had a couple of nasty hills. We wouldn't have gotten the tractor out again once the lawn was slick from the rain, thankfully Dad and Nikolai (our newest employee) got all the posts in yesterday afternoon, making life today a little less stressful for Dad.
Monday was, for Nick, Nikolai and I, spent dismantling a couple fences. One made up of old concrete posts and wires that is being completely replaced. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, pulling the wires off the posts. However the Kikuya was as high as the fence at some points, so pulling rusty barbed wire through that was rather joyful. But it's all pulled out now thank goodness! Then Nikolai and I went on to the next job and rolled up all the wires on another fence which was much easier, so then yesterday they could pull all the posts up and sort the new fenceline. Perfect timing for this rain. But it was so, so nice to get out of the house for almost 6 hours on Monday doing all that work - it made a nice change rather than sticking around home doing next to nothing. I wouldn't say getting scratched to shreds from gorse, blackberry and rusty barb wire is high on the "most exciting job ever" list, but it was something different for once.
I'm doing the odd milking here and there but life isn't too busy these days. I can't believe June is almost over, as in a few weeks time we'll be flat stick!
We all somehow got jinxed over the last couple weeks and somehow caught colds (already!) however Nick has since progressed into the Flu which is verging on pneumonia - doctors' verdict from this morning anyway. We've gotta haul him back to the doc's tonight if all the drugs haven't made a difference by then. So fingers crossed he gets better, it's not something that you want to have around...
Everyone is staying mostly out of trouble these days. I keep putting off going to the dentist - I know I need to go but you know how it is...avoidance and procrastination won't keep my teeth looking amazing but yeah I've been avoiding them for over a year now....he he he ooops.
Although this rain that has been booked in for the last week has meant that a whole heap of work has been in a rush. We've had this one fencing job where the posts needed to all be in before the rain hit last night, as the tractor was working on a large lawn area that had a couple of nasty hills. We wouldn't have gotten the tractor out again once the lawn was slick from the rain, thankfully Dad and Nikolai (our newest employee) got all the posts in yesterday afternoon, making life today a little less stressful for Dad.
Monday was, for Nick, Nikolai and I, spent dismantling a couple fences. One made up of old concrete posts and wires that is being completely replaced. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, pulling the wires off the posts. However the Kikuya was as high as the fence at some points, so pulling rusty barbed wire through that was rather joyful. But it's all pulled out now thank goodness! Then Nikolai and I went on to the next job and rolled up all the wires on another fence which was much easier, so then yesterday they could pull all the posts up and sort the new fenceline. Perfect timing for this rain. But it was so, so nice to get out of the house for almost 6 hours on Monday doing all that work - it made a nice change rather than sticking around home doing next to nothing. I wouldn't say getting scratched to shreds from gorse, blackberry and rusty barb wire is high on the "most exciting job ever" list, but it was something different for once.
I'm doing the odd milking here and there but life isn't too busy these days. I can't believe June is almost over, as in a few weeks time we'll be flat stick!
We all somehow got jinxed over the last couple weeks and somehow caught colds (already!) however Nick has since progressed into the Flu which is verging on pneumonia - doctors' verdict from this morning anyway. We've gotta haul him back to the doc's tonight if all the drugs haven't made a difference by then. So fingers crossed he gets better, it's not something that you want to have around...
Everyone is staying mostly out of trouble these days. I keep putting off going to the dentist - I know I need to go but you know how it is...avoidance and procrastination won't keep my teeth looking amazing but yeah I've been avoiding them for over a year now....he he he ooops.
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