A rat, a rabbit, a horse, two pigs, and a snake sat down to a meal together. Nope, not a joke; just how we marked Lunar New Year.

It was The Princess’ idea. She’s quite the well travelled lady who, back in her schooldays, was part of a visit to Darfield High School’s sister school, Shandon Bailie Vocational College, in Gansu province, China (Rewi Alley was born up the road in Springfield). She was a great fan of the local noodle dish and often talked about making it for us all.

The table set for the Princess’ take on Lanzhou Noodles; Gōng xǐ fā cái

Talk around the table soon turned to the whole Chinese horoscope deal (which we were introduced to when The Dee’s called first Hong Kong and then mainland China home for a while) because we’re not ones to shun the shedding of a little light on our path. For all intents and purposes, things are looking pretty good for Union Homestead, as long as we are careful. Accidents and the avoidance of them was mentioned for all of us. I’m taking this onboard; you can never be too careful. But healthwise all predictions are peachy which is very reassuring, what with Farm Girl’s recent adventure and, now, and upcoming one for me, too.

The immune-suppression, essential for my transplanted kidney’s wellbeing, allows every little bug and greebly to get a foothold in my system and the SCC skin cancer I had removed from my ear 15 years ago seemingly wasn’t utterly convinced it should depart. Like these things can, it just lurked there until a bump on my ear woke it up – but this time it’s going for good via scooping, scraping, skin grafts, and various other wonderful examples of sibilance that I would prefer not to think about. I have it on good authority that the outlook is simply super.

It was certainly bang-on for Farm Girl, who was cleared to return to school on Monday and has spent this week frantically catching up on her lost fortnight and building all kinds of muscles from the weighty tomes she’s hauling around. Calculus, Accounting, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and English; her subject choice makes me feel slightly ill, but she’s smiling.

Touch wood, all on the Homestead is sunny right now. A slight brush with flystrike in the sheep seems to have been dealt to and next week Fred the ram will be reintroduced to our senior ladies, Eleanor, Zia, Yasmin, Amanda, and Buttercup. I foresee a couple of noisy nights as last years lambs are separated off.

In the coop, the Lindas and Olive are running as a flock now and Leo the rooster is started to look a little worried as at least two of them are looking decidedly macho.

The pigs are eating or threatening to eat everything that falls into their domain with the exception of Babette the cat, who they seem to view as part of the scenery. Chip-chip, she who delights in stopping traffic in the drive as she ever-so-slowly waddles about her ducky business, does not hold a free pass and her outraged squawks and the pigs overexcited grunts and squeals are part of the soundscape at the moment. Hopefully, she’ll eventually decide playing chicken with pigs (if you get my drift) is a fools game.

In fact, the only ailing Homesteader currently is the newest member of the fleet, the Leaf – and that is only cosmetic. A downside to rural motoring is windscreen battering from loose gravel and the poor Leaf is sporting a goodly sized war wound at the moment which needs to be rectified before it’s annual Warrant of Fitness next month. Originally I was told it could be done, as the ute’s was, in our driveway but that didn’t turn out to be the case. The very polite technician took a few photos of the damage and the car – and also the goats but I suspect that had nothing to do with the windscreen – before sorting out a future appointment for me at a branch a mere 10 minutes from the Urban Outpost. Unfortunately, when I turned up at the branch yesterday with my walking shoes on and a plan to fill the four hours required for a windscreen replacement and recalibration, it became apparent the wrong windscreen had been sourced so the poor Leaf is still looking a little gimpy and the day of her WoF is rapidly approaching. Fingers crossed for third time lucky.

But the Leaf’s loss was my gain as I have had a couple of full days lurking at the Urban Outpost, weirdly – if you think about the sort-of-theme of today’s post – within audible lunchtime yahooing range of Rewi Alley’s old primary school (something I discovered when fact checking for this missive). I’ve balanced the books, had a pretty good find in the family tree research, finished the road-verge garden, spent a bit of time blankly looking into space (a very underrated pastime if you ask me) and this afternoon I’m having a catch-up coffee with my kidney’s previous owner, the esteemed Auntie Joss.

So far, The Year of the Dragon’s been pretty kind to the Homestead menagerie – both the two and four legged ones.