Well it's only been, er, a few months.... so much to catch up on but some brief highlights are:
Benhorse - he is doing great, keeping his weight on nicely over winter. He is clipped (was an absolute twit to clip, especially around his head and neck...) and I did his teeth again just before winter so he's all good to go. Have had a few lessons on him now, which have been great although have shown how stiff he is so he has been started on some pentosan to help his joints.
Oscar - also fat and hairy although I've been trying to clip him for the past few weeks with no success due to the wet weather :-(
Sonny - has been in the wars a bit and disappeared almost 6 weeks ago for a week and turned up with his pelvis in multiple pieces. So he's had a rather expensive visit to the specialist vets which luckily turned out cheaper than it could have since I used to work there. He is almost at the end of his 6 week imprisonment in the dog crate (has to be confined to let things heal up) and is desperate to get outside again. Sheryl is seriously unimpressed that he turned up again.
Georgia - celebrated her first birthday and is still growing! She absolutely loves fetching sticks, and if you ask her to 'find sticky' she'll find you a stick to throw for her. Ben has been taking her out to the forest heaps and she has been having a blast. She's still a bit nervous around the cows (so much for a working dog!!!) but loves hooning around the farm. Especially if the quad bike is around too... Here's a couple of pics of her having fun at Muriwai Beach.
The farm - pretty muddy here already although we have quite a bit of grass as we don't have as many cattle on as we did last winter. We do have a new washing machine though (as of last week) which is fabulous, didn't realise how bad the old one was washing things until now!
We had a good crop of hay this summer - 1230 odd bales this year which is pretty good. Now just in the process of selling it all.
At the end of summer we also had visitors (and blog fans!) from Ireland - Alan and Martina came to stay. Alan and Ben trekked in Nepal together a few years ago and it was great to finally meet the man I'd heard so much about. We had a fabulous dinner up the Sky Tower which I'd never done before and Ben spent the day with them over at Rangitoto - kind of good when you have visitors, you do all these things you wouldn't normally do.
Think that is about it for now - will try and upload some pics soon and try not to be so long between posts...
