Just A Wee Bit Of Rain

It’s a bit squelchy this morning. We had 23mm of rain overnight, and it’s still falling. Before this last weekend we had had a total of 60mm for the month. Now we are sitting on 100mm with 40mm falling in three days.

So it’s a bit soggy, and our water tank is overflowing again

There was a slip on the road just below our place, fortunately nothing serious enough to block it, and the river is up…

I felt very sorry for the chickens actually, as they trooped across the fields in a bedraggled line, eager for their breakfast.

I am hoping it eases off though…

The Instance Of The Muddy Kumu

The path we have worn down to the chickens has become rather muddy. Rain and cows have made parts of it a quagmire, so we have to squelch our way down very carefully.  It doesn’t help that one important spot, where we have to straddle a fence, became our bovine friends main path from one end of the field to the other. The other day our youngest almost disappeared up to his waist!

So there is a certain inevitability that one of us would loose their balance and end up sitting splat in the middle of the mud. Today that happened.

The E.I.C. lost her balance, and ended sitting in the middle of one of the muddiest spots, only inches from a nice large cow pat. Foolishly she informed me of her trauma! Quite sadly there is not photographic evidence, and most disappointingly she refuse to re-create the incident so that I can take a photo.

Bovine Ruminates, Mud And A River Flows Through

We sway one way and the other on the merits of keeping stock on our little block of land. We are more than happy with our flock of chickens, and would be more than happy to raise them and trees. However we have an awful lot of grass that needs keeping down. So we often toy with the idea of keeping, cows, alpacas, donkeys, pigs or sheep.

At the moment I am leaning towards cows, mainly because a friends up the road have been grazing ten heifers on the land. There is something quite nice about waking up and looking out on the land and seeing the cows quietly munching through the grass.

At the moment they are on the slope paddock below the house, so in the morning we can lean out the window and say “morning Ladies”

They do make a mess of the paddocks though, especially with the rain at the moment.

But then so do we. The above photo is by the firewood pile beside the house. Mucky!

But then it’s not surprising considering how wet it is at the moment. Normally we can’t see the river from the home paddock, but the river is so high I can see it from the kitchen! Fortunately that is still a long way from the level of the lower paddock! Over wise we might have to panic!