Teddy Bear Picnic

Apparently June 7 was the day the wombats came out to play! These marsupials are generally noctornal and might be seen at dusk but not in broad daylight. However, on the Kings Birthday weekend, we saw several out during the day on Sunday.  The one above was in the middle of the paddock. 

Most wombats are not quite as red. He/she seems to be struggling to keep their eyes open!

Scott saw this one in the scrub the makes the south border of our property. While he has been "hissed" at by wombats that felt he was too close, this one didn't seem to care. 

Finally, this brown lump by the gate is one of older wombats. We do often see him sitting by his den when we come back after RFS (rural fire service) training. But on June 7, he dragged himself out to join the party!

Since June 7, the wombats have not been nearly as visible. Not sure if this is a monthly, annual, or other event!

Besides watching the wombats, we have been working on fencing. We need to fence off the septic field and the water tank from horses. Sheep are allowed for grass mowing but need to be kept from the house and gardens. So we need new fences and gates. Luckily Scott knows how this works. I provide post stabilization and occasional dirt movement. 

I did manage to traumatize my sciatic nerve (disk?) so am now less useful while I avoid heavy work. I have been doing some weeding etc (found 3 more sweet potatoes) and putting together our new garden beds.  

Before I injured myself, I was moving my numerous stick piles from previous tree trimmimgs and pasture clean ups to two sites in the paddocks.One is a pile of the green branches for next year and the other a dried/dead wood pile to burn this winter. Scott's sister Brooke and her daughter are coming in July; I think he is planning a burn/bonfire when they are here.  Will have to get a pic! 

This is an after shot - I cleaned up lots of branches so that any horse in this paddock could get to the dam. 

To move the stick piles, we have been using the rental trailer from the Tool Library. I have been using stick migration to practice towing and backing. 

Backing is hard!I am much more comfortable towing the little trailer. Now we will see how it goes with the bigger horse trailer. 

Scott also managed to get the pizza oven going and we cooked two pizzas in it!

It was rainy and cool but he said it was comfy in the shed with the pizza oven going. I think he missed the double rainbow

Turns out that we will keep the ram we have now; the one that was going to replace him seems to be dud and this guy is a proven sire (has at least one set of twins). Now we need to get everyone tagged and come up with names. Ideas welcome! We have two pairs of ewes that look the sane - one set is more brown on the neck and head and one set more black. Freckles stands out from the crowd both by attitude and appearance. The ram is easy to identify since his all white. 

To continue the house tour - one of the "bedrooms" was made into an office. We ended up putting a day bed in there to increase sleeping options. 

Casey's artwork adorns the walls (along with a painting of cattle she brought back from India).

 The closet is now a desk area and holds most of our legal docs + my art supplies. 

This pic shows more of the desk area but before things got put away!

We have enjoyed some gorgeous sunsets this month

as well as some nice sunrises - hard to beat. So glad we did this thing. 

Even the scarlet robins decided it was worth staying around! They seem to like the areas where we are disturbing the ground and unearthing good things to eat. Cupboard love.