LIFE, the Great Adventure!

07 January, 2007

Simeon, the friend who got me this job at Castle Craig. We met in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, at the International A.C.E. Student Convention in May 1999. Everybody was seated according to country or state for the evening rallies, and since he was the only one from the UK and I was one of only three from NZ, we sat next to each other for five nights running. After leaving, we only knew each other's name and country of origin. Three and a half years later my younger sister was in touch with an acquaintance in the UK, the acquaintance knew Simeon... to cut the story short, he sent Katrina an email asking if she was related to the girl he sat next to at Interational... I discovered then that he had been in NZ for 2 years already. Well, three years later when I was starting to look for a farm job, he told his parents, and they offered me this job. I didn't even remember what he looked like, so meeting again after seven years was rather fun (this picture was not that occasion). The intermittant emails continue, though, because he lives way up north with his brother.

Roundabout way to get a job, but the sort of thing God seems to like setting up!

12 December, 2006

The silver ones are the big, adventurous boys, even with their eyes shut. The runt is a boy. The other two are girls.

Scamp number two.

Black and white make ... silver! Looks odd with the tan, I reckon.

There are five puppies,each with different markings.

The runt of the litter...

...looks like his mother.

Eyes open at last!

Fourteen days old. Definitely doesn't fit in my hand any more!

Awww...

Same puppy that I was holding.

Flood!

Thursday, November 30th, when I was supposed to be packing and sorting out my room before going away for 2 weeks, we had a flood! Now I know what flooding can do here, I shall be watching the river as carefully as Colin and Dorothy do.

After shifting three scrapping bulls from paddock to yards then onto a truck, we spent 6 or 7 hours moving the stock on the flats out of reach of the water, hoping that the water wouldn't rise beyond a certain level or we'd have to move them again. :c/ We had 9 mobs to move, plus Pilgrims' calves and two mobs of cows with reluctant calves. 7 of the mobs have bulls with them, and these must not come too close to each other, nor next to the river (the bulls are likely to swim across to visit the neighbours while the electricity isn't working), which requires muc

h complicated juggling of positions. On top of that, we had to work at speed on terribly bumpy paddocks and at the end even through knee-deep water and across a waterfall that had earlier been a crossing. Scarey. We succeeded without mishap, thankfully!