Well over the last few days, I've actually not been useless!
I know, it sounds strange but it happened!
No seriously, over the weekend it was taking down 16-19 gum trees that were near the house. They looked nice (stood between 15-25 meters tall), but were a problem more than anything as it stopped the sun getting near the house for the first 1/2 of the day, and most of the area stays muddy and sludgy. Then we had to limb them all, and put all of it into a pile, we did that over 2 days (not working all day, but about 4 hours each day). It was difficult when it started raining and making all the wood heavier and harder to move.
Then Tuesday all the alpacas and sheep needed shearing, so we had to round them all up. The alpacas were easy, as they like people and mix it with food and they come right up. It took a few hours shearing and putting them all into their respective paddocks, and then it was time to get the sheep. This was the difficult/fun part. We knew it would be too difficult to do on foot, so we brought out my dad's KTM 450, and I hopped on the quad (Suzuki King quad 450), and we set up rounding them up. The now broken fencing became problematic with a hole each side of the paddock, so naturally the sheep all ran through them, luckily we had some fence posts that we covered the main hole with. We got most of the sheep in, but still about 5 or 6 remained. Three of them were big fatties, and struggled to run, we had to take them slowly. One is actually physically handicapped in its back legs, a problem since birth and we had to drag her up there, taking breaks for her (and our) benefit. At this point, one sheep and lamb remained, this was the most annoying one, we ended up just chasing this one until it got tired, and eventually after about 10 or so minutes, it was too tired to escape. We chucked it on the quad, my dad still holding it down, and gently took it up for shearing. It was a fun day.
Tuesday had however created a problem, on Wednesday it was raining, and was cold (that's right, Summer with cold rain). The sheep were the main worry as with their lack of thick wool, they could get hypothermia or something like that. With just my mum, sister and I at home, I was the sheep herder on the quad again, so I headed out. Yesterday, turning the quad around was problematic as its four wheel drive gave it too much traction to spin around, so for today I switched into rear wheel drive, and had some fun! Luckily for herding up sheep reasons and unluckily for fun reasons, most of the sheep were already at the gate we were taking through. Except for three lambs, and the fatties, so with the fatties now shorn, they could move slightly quicker, and after some small slow moving from behind, they went to the right place. The lambs were the biggest problem, turns out the second hole in the fence was problem of today, we blocked the other hole but not this one. Again fence posts were the saviour and I just covered it with the fence post like my dad did the previous day. Some fun riding/sliding and mashes across paddocks the lambs were in the right place. Now the alpacas, most went easy (food wasn't convincing them today after the previous day's occurrences) but then one alpaca, was a little slow and needed some extra chasing to get through the gate. My work was done, but I didn't know it was and I couldn't see my mum or sister anywhere so I just had some fun around the paddock instead (being no animals in the paddock now was a bonus!) some make do fencing later and that was that done.
See! I did something useful for the first time in my life!
