It’s all very well saying we’re a warts and all blog giving an honest account of what our brand of homesteading looks like; truth is, when it’s all turning to custard, the last thing you feel like doing is writing about it. Often I get caught waiting for the problem to resolve before I document it, because there’s always a golden sky at the end of any storm, and things always look better in the retelling when it’s accompanied by lark-song and you’re at the we’ll be laughing about this one day stage.

Yep, it’s been a bit of a week.

The good news is the forecast snow didn’t arrive but the wind did swing round, temperatures plummeted, and I started worrying about the two newish lambs in the paddock we’d just moved the sheep to. It’s a great summer paddock with lots of shade and feed but it is a bit open to the cold Southerly. When I ventured out with the evening feed bucket I had a couple of breadbags, some hacked up bits of old woollen blanket and a few lengths of bindertwine in my pocket just in case I needed to fashion some kind of jacket for them and found Zia, their mum, was doing a great job of keeping them warm, dryish, and well fed. While I did make a half hearted attempt to catch them, they failed to see the benefit of it and I figured by chasing them I’d just burn off energy they could be using to keep themselves warm. I checked again just before dark and the flock were all cuddled up together in a relatively sheltered spot in the paddock with their collective warm visibly steaming the cold air.

It was a bit of a surprise in the morning to get a back paddock phone call from The Resident Engineer (who was on Saturday feeding) to report Froda, one of our two flock elders, was not looking good. Seems her two not-really-lambs-anymore had received all her attention during the night and she had kept nothing in reserve for herself. That it was easy to get her feisty, independent-woman self into the barn (via a trailer ride behind the lawnmower) was real cause for alarm and we snuggled her up out of the wind, wrapped her in the aforementioned blanket, got some food and good stuff into her, and then set about hoping bigtime. Once it became clear she was not going to settle without her lambs a good hour was spent by all of us (plus Colin.thelab in the later stages) coaxing, cajoling, gathering and guiding them around and around various paddocks before they finally ambled through to her with an air of why didn’t you just ask. We all turned a blind eye to Buttercup who, having got caught up in the paddock shuffling, decided to set up camp with her brother and Fred, the ram. That’s a problem for another day.

For some unbeknown reason, the change in weather also effected the ducks who have taken to roaming again. They usually come back into their enclosure (which, truth be told, isn’t that enclosed) for feed times but way too much time is spent by Chip-chip playing in the puddles in the driveway. With an electric and a hybrid vehicle in the fleet, with their sneaky silent ways, drivers need to be extra vigilant because she is not at all concerned and much time has been wasted in the last week waiting for her to amble off to the side. Then Indie, the homebody of the two, completely disappeared. The drive-side foliage was searched, the goats were questioned (she has been known to take a dip in their water trough) – I even resorted to inspecting the road in case the unthinkable had happened – only to slowly become aware of muffled quack-peeps emanating from the pighouse where she was discovered carrying out a bit of ducky housework and nest building. Whilst this is a happy ending it also means my future includes wriggling on my stomach into the depths of the abandoned pig haven to collect her ever growing mountain of eggs. Not today though.

Then yesterday I discovered little Esme lamb sucking on a bungy cord hook like a babies dummy. The lambs have suddenly decided the haybales I put in their paddock for shelter are pretty tasty and I can only assume the bungy had been abandoned in the paddock and harvested along with last summer’s hay. She didn’t seem that worried about it, was still eating grass and hay (although her mother was not at all keen on her feeding), and it didn’t look to have broken the skin but it really wasn’t something that could remain there – especially as I wasn’t convinced the bungy part of it wasn’t in the process of being digested. After three quarters of an hour of quietly wandering amongst the flock in the hope of stooping and scooping (Esme is a friendly little lambkin) I rung The Farmer for help. Despite having arrived home from work in the wee small hours, he was surprisingly affable but quickly ruled more shepherds were required. He was right. Last night we held back the back paddock feed bucket until we had more bodies available and, whilst it wasn’t a seamless operation, Esme was contained long enough for the hook to be flicked from where it had nestled, upsidedown, between gum and cheek. No blood, no gore, and no trailing bungycord. Hooray for happy endings.

What I mean by a bungy cord, the offending hook, and Miss Esme this morning none the worse for wear

It’s not been such a miraculous recovery for Froda. She’s still with us, alert, and doing everything she should be but at a much slower, ponderous pace. Several times a day we cycle through should-we-call-the-vet/wow-she’s-looking-so-much-better; hopefully this story will also end happily ever after.

On Monday I had my quarterly catchup lunch with someone who has now been part of my life longer than she was unknown to me. Yep, we’re pretty practiced at the defrag, debrief, wtf catchup. Over four or so hours, sitting either side of a table in a localish eatery, we caught up with each others news, pondered the state of the world, laughed a lot, maybe one of us teared up at one stage, grumbled, gossiped and giggled. It was decided that some people carve a relatively even, level, happy path through life whilst others plummet depths and soar heights like a mad rollercoaster ride. I reflected on that this morning as I checked the menagerie:

Froda is still keeping on, no better no worse, Buttercup remains a frollicking hussy amongst the boys, both ducks are now filling in new address cards for the pig house, Yoko the chook is moodily brooding in the chook house (moving her into the safer-for-rearing-younguns A frame is another one of those jobs for another day), and Vera the sheep has developed a limp.

I think I can hear a distant click-click-click as the Union Homestead carriage grinds back up the slope. Hold on tight!