Rain!

The rain has come back and overnight the water barrels have filled and the driveway has puddles. Haven't checked the rain gauge yet, although we had 11mm yesterday. Temperatures are a lot lower too, 17 degrees at 8.30am today! Bit different from the 25 degrees it was on Thursday morning.

And the hay is still standing. Hmm. Less said about that, the better.

Have been battling on with Oscar and his left canter, although to add to the fun, he has decided he loves this jumping lark and has jumped out of the taped off area of the house paddock (about 7-8 acres) five times in a week. Grrr. I checked the tape last night and it is definitely hot so he obviously thinks that pre-intro height is a bit beneath him.

He is going to head off for a canter boot camp next week hopefully though, as it mostly seems to be me having trouble getting him to left canter. Hopefully the left lead will get established really well and it'll be onwards and upwards. I hope.

The garden is loving the rain we've had over the past few days though and the tomatoes are going mad. Also got quite a few carrots coming on now and of course still got lots of zucchinis. Yesterday's harvest:


Although no zucchinis yesterday - for a change! The freezer is jammed full of stuff from the farm now - with frozen tomatoes, carrots, zucchinis, and the new addition of half a cattle beast and 1 and a half pigs. We got them back this week and it's great to have the freezers full again. Although the cattle beast was a lot bigger than last time so has taken up heaps more space in the chest freezer. Had to take some of the bacon and pork over to Ellie's to put in their chest freezer. Had bacon, eggs and tomatoes for dinner last night - all from the farm, yum....

Sheryl is still nuts and bounces around all over the place. Both of the cats have really felt the heat lately though - as you can see Sheryl is happy to collapse and snooze anywhere, in this case on the back of the couch:

She's 1.8kg now, and we'll have to look at speying her soon. The last thing we need is a horde of kittens around here! There are a few strays around here too that turn up randomly in the big shed and am pretty sure one is a tom that would no doubt love to say hi to Sheryl!

Hot, damned hot

Well it's been roasting hot the past few days, and still the hay is in the paddock... the contractor had a mower break down on him so that put him back a few days and now it looks like rain on Tuesday so I can't see it being cut before then. Had a wander around the paddock yesterday and there is still plenty of green in there so hopefully the rain will also do it good and who knows, this time next week we might be baling. Hope so....

Oscar and I went to a cross country practice day yesterday, with Ellie and Spyke, Sarah and Em and Rachel was riding Bert. All four boys were great, Oscar was very relaxed about it all (we've had hairier rides in the forest...) and did some lovely jumps. We only did the baby sized ones so he wasn't really jumping properly even but it was good to get him out on a course and have a play. We even went in and out of the water and he was doing this fairly happily on his own in the end. Got some pics too:

Grim determination over the world's tiniest jump

Jumped nicely after walking over this the first time and then did a lovely canter afterwards. That's Bert's butt in the background.

He was quite curious about splashing in the water in the end. That's Ellie and Spyke in the background.

I also have some video of us jumping, will attempt to edit that soon and put it up.

Vege garden going great guns, we've got zucchinis coming out our ears so have been freezing them. Lots of tomatoes coming on now too, and the peas are pretty much finished.

The pigs and cow will be back from the butcher this week so need to have a clear out of the freezer before then.

Not a lot of other news apart from it's hot, damned hot...

Today's weather (as at 5.3opm)
Humidity: 68.5%
Barometric pressure: 1003hP
Temperature: 28.5 degrees
Rainfall: Nil