Meet Raquelle

Roger's broad bean seedlings

SUR-PRI-ISE!!

No photos, but a quick post to say that we had a fun night last night. We had our dinner and sat down to watch a DVD as we do on "Friday night movie night" at home. We don't have TV, so our weekly viewing is watching a movie on Friday night. This week it was Matilda, based on the story by Roald Dahl. Not long after the movie started, Roger noticed someone was here - he could see car lights out the window. We got up and looked out the front door, as a heap of cars pulled up. People got out shouting "Happy Birthday Roger!"
I think we did a pretty good job of keeping the secret, despite having a six-year-old in the house who asked Daddy that morning "Is it your birthday party tonight?" and a three-year-old who said he would tell Dad it isn't true, and then telling me within Roger's earshot: "We made a cake for Dad's birthday and it is in the bedroom". I quickly started talking loudly and cuddled Hugh to stop him talking.
Thanks to everyone who came and helped to celebrate Roger's 50th birthday. His birthday is actually on the 23rd, but we will be away then (Roger and I are having four nights in Esperance for his birthday present) so we got in nice and early to surprise him.

School Holiday Fun

Yesterday I took the kids to Bunbury for a school holiday outing. First we went rollerblading (Odette and Hugh had roller skates). Then Matthew left us, to go to Exmouth with his step-father.
After lunch at the Natural Temptation cafe I took the kids and Anaïs to the cinema to see the Hannah Montana movie. While they did that I ran around town and did some things like picking up the custom-sized foam mattress for the divan bed in the girls' room. And spending several hundred dollars at the farmers market, and getting my glasses fixed. Unfortunately I also accidentally went into a shoe shop and was coerced into buying an expensive pair of shoes by a skilled salesman (yes, I needed convincing...)
Then we did some more shopping, and had some take-away food for dinner. When we got home everyone was ready for bed, but two girls didn't go to bed straight away because they had a new Sims game to play on the computer.
Hope they're not too grumpy tonight!

Marking Lambs

Lambs...

The lambs that were born early are growing quickly so we had to do some marking on Monday. There were only forty-seven of them, but it was slow going with some novices working on the cradle.
Anais from France has been staying with us through the helpXchange program, and although she has never worked on a farm Roger got her helping to vaccinate lambs and do the earmarks. I don't think she liked the blood very much, but she stuck it out.

Matthew and Jake getting the lambs into the catching pen.

Hugh watching at a safe distance.

Bobby, tied up so he didn't chase lambs.

Roger shows Anais how to vaccinate a lamb.

Anais's delicate hands, cutting an earmark.

Close-up of the earmark.

This lamb has no idea what is coming...

The strangest thing was that we were expecting that the lambs were merino lambs (we have always had merinos), but when we got them into the pen it was obvious that some of them were merino/poll dorset cross lambs (the Goodings who looked after the farm last year have Poll Dorset rams). And it was really hard to tell what they were when they were in the cradle. I still think Roger probably mulesed some cross-bred lambs...

Roger starts to mules a merino lamb. (Don't ask!)

June Rain

Through the windscreen in Darkan

Looking out the car window across Burrowes Street in Darkan.

Have I mentioned that it has been raining a lot lately? During the month of June we had inches of rain. Low-lying areas are becoming waterlogged, and most of the dams are nearly full. It is good for the farm, but I have given permission for the rain to stop for a while.

These photos were taken on Monday and show some of the water that was left after the rain stopped.

You probably can't even see the water going across the road in this photo...