A wet and windy day

Today was one of those perfect days... for rounding up almost any city dweller who knows nothing of where the food in the supermarket comes from, who thinks - if anything about it all, that it is too expensive. And that pizza delivery is really the same as hunter gathering... and putting them out on the farm (not even I would wish being at sea on a day like today) where Norm and the boys are preggy-testing the sheep. In the horizontal rain, and the mud, and the howling wind. It's probably not that much fun for the sheep either, but at least their wool sheds water and insulates. They looked wet and bedraggled and they weren't a patch on the gents trying to do the job. It's days like this that I don't miss my old fish-farming days one bit, and this was just as wet, and possibly muddier. I noticed a complete lack of female mud covered figures. Must be sexism, please find your nearest militant feminist having her latte in the trendy inner city hotspot and send her to join them immediately. I'm sure it would... uh. Change those naughty farmers hidebound patriarchal gender role thoughts... or something. :-) Seriously, I watched my dive-buddy's little daughter catching and carrying lambs a couple of days ago. They were nearly bigger than her. If I was a farmer's seven year old son, I'd start playing my cards carefully right now, because that's an amazing little girl. It's a tough life at times but also a very good one, and I think we should all (especially the latte-sippers of the inner city) be very grateful there are still kids like that.

I've collected an old door of the wool-shed this morning in the deluge (or at least a semi-gap therein), saving it from the scrap-heap to become par of a future shelter for Dave's boat. A 12' by 8' steel frame covered with corrugated iron - a bit trashed on the upper and lower edges - a windy day was maybe not quite the ideal time for doing this. I nearly saw New Zealand again. I'm not ready. I need an Australian Passport first.

I took some warm potato to the chooks, as I would want to be out in this... and they were happily pecking away outside. The one that got so beaten up (pecking order) seems to be recovering nicely.