Saturday, November 24, 2007

New Fence, Snake & Cows
Last weekend we dismantled a portion of the fence between us and the neighbours. I spent four hours on Friday afternoon, two hours on Saturday morning and then on Sunday our neighbours and Steven helped remove the last of the wire and posts.
On Sunday when Steve and I were removing the last of the fence Steve picked up an old piece of squashed metal and threw it on the pile of old wire. We think a snake was hiding in there because Steve later said the metal was heavy and the snake suddenly appeared rearing up at Steve. Then, just as quickly, it decided to retreat and slithered away. The snake was about a metre long and brown. It was pretty scary, but we got over it and finished off taking out the posts and wire.
Then on Tuesday a fencing guy came and built a new fence for us. The new fence is excellent - there is nothing quite as impressive as a new drum tight fence. I have a photo here of the old fence (I had already removed most of the old rotted wooden posts and some barbed wire before I took the photo). I will take a photo of the new fence and add it later.
Today I had decided that Steve and I would get little Harry into the sheep run/yards and put on his ear tag and put a rubber ring around his 'bits'. Well, after a lot of running around the paddock we eventually got Harry in the yards, although Jemma was also in there because we couldn't get her out (we got all the others out). But I think Harry is going to be a difficult one when he gets older because he tried to get through any fence available. He actually jumped over the sheep yards inner fence. We got him back in there again and this time both he and Jemma pushed down and jumped over the outer fence. I thought the fence was higher and stronger than that but I was mistaken. So then we had to chase Jemma right around the clothes line and back around and back through the gate to where they started from. (All that took an hour and nothing was achieved except a broken fence!)
So now I have to get this fence fixed or rebuilt before we get the sheep butchered next month, because we have to use the yards to separate the lambs and then keep them in there overnight and contained for the butcher to do his thing.
Life wasn't meant to be easy ...