Cerys- the goddess of agriculture

Cerys: The first of our very own lambs born on Morilla

Above: The first four girls we bought to keep Enoch company once he was no longer able to live in suburbia with us. They were three Dohne merinos we named Iris, Belle and Maggie, and one Damara/Dorper cross we named Summer. Belle soon became known as Christopher because she looks like my nephew Christopher, although I am sure he would disagree, probabaly quite strongly! Summer came to be called Somali because she has very skinny legs and could live on a handful of oats a day. I know this is not at all politically correct and I am sure it will count as a mark against me when I stand at the Pearly Gates and are judged!

Beginners' Guide to Chickens: Part One: The strange chicken man and how we got our hens

We bought our hens off of a very strange man indeed. We arrived at his farm to collect the year old hens I had ordered over the phone. The farm was brimming with poultry, some would call "free- range" others would call "feral". There were birds of all description and breeding running around all over the place. Hens with chicks of the oddest mixed breeding, it was hard to imagine what the parentage actually was. I think I saw what could only have been a Light Sussex chicken crossed with a Muscovy duck crossed with a Cockatoo, but having studied a little biology, I knew I must be hallucinating. Again.

The alarm bells did ring, but we are no pussies and refused to pay any heed to those infernal bells. That is for the weak and the cowardly. "Let us have these hens of questionable parentage, age and health" we said, "Here, take our money". "That's right, we are those city slicker suckers from yonder ways whom you have no doubt heard about". The strange man came out of his house and we introduced ourselves. He told us he had already given our birds away to someone else who arrived earlier, and now he would have to go and catch some more. This appeared to make him a little irritated, as if we had inconvenienced him because he had given our birds to someone else. Fifteen minutes later he arrives with his hands full of hens hanging upside down by the legs and plonks them into the boxes we had bought with us to carry them home. Money exchanges hands. Deal done.

The strange man had a very usual last name, the same name as a friend of mine who has family in the south west, so I asked: "Are you related to so-and-so from such-and-such a place?" He said: "I probably have got family there", then he turned away and went inside his house. G and I didn't know what this meant, so we hung around for about 10 minutes waiting for him to come out again. He did not. We got in the car and left, without a "thank you" or a "goodbye"

How to Look after Yabbies- Sweet little dam dwelling crustaceans.

The first thing to know about yabbies is that if you are lucky enough to have them in your dam, don't tell anyone! People will sneak on to your property at night and catch your yabbies. This is not uncommon! Kepp your yabbies a secret or one day you will go to your dam and the yabbies will be gone!

Apparently yabbies taste delicious. Everyone always says so. I have never eaten one. I don't like shellfish.

Yabbies are quite commonly found in freshwater dams on farms in southwestern Australia. Most of our dams had yabbies and initially we caught lots of them but after a while we really didn't like the process of killing them, so we stopped catching them. We let our yabbies, like most other creatures on our farm live in peace and die of old age.

Here are the first batch of live yabbies we ever netted from the farm dams,waiting in our bath. They are having a bit of a swim while we contemplate how to kill them.

For the Love of Coffee, the Orphaned Calf

  Coffee came to us after her mother died from a prolapsed uterus shortly after she was born. The cows, beautiful Brahmans, belonged to the farmer who was leasing our farm. He didn't have the time to look after her, so asked if we wanted her. This was the first time I considered saying "no" because I had spent so much time in the past 12 months scrubbing bottles, mixing milk formula and feeding babies, and had envisioned a break from parenting duties. It was not to be! When the farmer bought her to us in the back of his car and we saw her little deformed mouth and nose and heard her snuffling, we couldn't abandon her. Her sad, weeping eyes made it look like she was crying, and, of course, we instantly fell in love with her and wanted to protect her from the cold and lonely world. So now we had our first cow, and a new learning curve commenced.

The Art of Raising Orphaned Lambs

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Raising your orphaned lamb 101


If you find an orphaned lamb whose mother has died, you will need to feed it and care for it or it will most likely die, depending on its age. You will have to decide between the responsibility of caring for the lamb, or the responsibility of letting it die. The choice is yours. While it is time consuming and incurs costs to keep an orphan lamb alive, it is well worth the time, money and effort. Lambs are great fun and very affectionate, and make excellent pets. I have successfully raised 31 orphaned lambs over the last 10 years, and unfortunately, have been unsuccessful with three little lambs. That's a 90% success rate so that should give you hope!
If the mother is not dead but instead has rejected the lamb you could try re-mothering the lamb, as long as the mother is well and capable of feeding her lamb. I have never done this, but I will add this information from the Western Australian Agriculture Department website for you if you want to try it:
Place the ewe and lamb in a small enclosure. One can be made from four 1.25 metre mesh screen wired together in the corners. Cover the screens with old seed or fertiliser bags so the ewe cannot see out. This will reduce distractions. Stabilise the enclosure by driving star pickets into the ground and tying the mesh to these. Apparently, the ewe will usually mother the lamb in 24- 48 hours.


If you choose to raise the lamb yourself, as we did with all of our orphans, here is my advice:

How to Raise an Orphaned Piglet

When I lived in the city I knew very little about farm animals. Yes, I'd seen them at the agricultural shows and given them a pat, remarked at how much they smell and then went off to wash my hands and buy an icecream. If I had only known then how much joy farm animals would one day bring into my life, I would have absconded with a piglet right then and there.

We have already established how much I love sheep. Sheep are beautiful, good natured and gentle creatures for the most part. Yes, you do get the odd Enoch to come along and spoil their record of sweetness. And in the paddocks sheep can be downright inconsiderate to each other. But we must expect that. After all humans are often downright inconsiderate of each other- how can we demand better behaviour from sheep than we do from ourselves!

This is the story of Rufus the Red and Dolph the Dark- two little orphaned piglets who stole my heart, figuratively speaking of course! According to all sources I read, raising orphaned piglets is not easy and they often die. We were very lucky and both out boys survived the attentions of farming amateurs like us!

Here they are on first arrival, under the heat lamp keeping warm. They cannot control their own temperature, lose heat quickly and must have a heat source kept at between 27- 30 degrees celcius available. Give them room to move and they will move towards the lamp when cold and away from it when too hot. They also need to be kept out of draughts and kept dry. We had them inside a pen filled with straw, inside a shed.

Winter of Orphaned Lambs

Above: The night the lambs arrived in the ranger's van.

Ah yes, I remember it well.....that is because it was only 2 years ago and my dementia has not progressed as far as some may have suspected. I was already caring for 2 orphaned lambs when fate threw me a curve ball.......

Winter 2009, the fateful night when 17 orphaned lambs were found on the roadside by the local ranger.  Now, the ranger made the necessary enquiries of the local farmers: "Are these your lambs?" he asked one and all, to which they all replied "Nope. All my lambs are present and accounted for", which would have been impossible for any of them to know because they each had 1000 or more lambs on their farms at the time. None the less, the thought of saying "Yes, those are my lambs" would not have crossed their minds because ....who in a balanced state of mind wants to be burdened with the chore of feeding 17 orphaned lambs?

The Tale of Enoch the Ram - our first sheep.

Photo above: Enoch the morning we found him. It was impossible not to instantly fall in love with him.

 We found Enoch one morning standing beside his dead mother in the paddock. He was just newborn with his umbilical cord still wet, looking all forlorn and alone.  He was the sweetest, saddest little thing I had ever seen. The dead ewe belonged to the farmer who was leasing our land from us, so we called him, convinced that this little merino ram would be a valuable animal and the farmer would be very keen to come and collect him. After all, don't merinos have valuable wool and don't those rams cost thousands of dollars?..... The farmer told us to "Throw him back over the fence, he won't live long".  Apparently, not all merinos were very valuable, and most merino rams end up on dinner plates as lamb roasts!  Aahhh, the farmer couldn't be bothered with the hassle of feeding a troublesome orphan who was potentially only worth $90 anyway.

The decline and disappearance of vanity.

People may tell you that vanity is not a good thing. People may tell you that competition is not a good thing. People may tell you that obsession with fashion is not a good thing. People may say that the world would be a better place if none of us worried about our appearance.

I agree that the totally self absorbing vanity that has someone trapped in front of a mirror from 4 o'clock in the morning slavishly doing their hair and make-up regime; or the soul destroying competition that has a person living on a treadmill while eating just a cracker a day; or the clothes addiction that sees some women invest more in their wardrobe than they do in their superannuation, is certainly not desirable. However a complete lack of vanity, a complete disinterest in personal appearance and a total 'letting down the guard' of style is a completely pitiable decision.  

The following is the result when one is removed from the scrutiny of the public eye. When you witness for yourself the terrible transformation that I underwent from chic city chick to comfort seeking country bumpkin, you will also be forced to agree- a little bit of vanity, a little bit of competition, a little bit of fashion awareness is a good thing.

Below:  me just before we bought the farm and moved to the country:

Are You Ready to Move to the Country- Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Move to Rural Australia.

Don't get me wrong, I love the country. There is an undeniable pleasure of looking out over undulating paddocks of golden grasses and a quiet satisfaction of watching sheep ambling along grazing contentedly. Quiet, calm, peaceful. The traffic, crowds, ambulance sirens, police helicopters and drunken brawlers replaced by wide open roads, big skies, chirping birds and lowing cattle. The peace and quiet surely has a universal appeal to frazzled city folk everywhere.  We visit a quaint country town for a weekend B&B stay and return home refreshed, thinking: "That's the life for me!". But be warned. The idyllic dream of country life is just that- a dream. Visiting the countryside and living in it are as different as visiting Venice and living there. Nice to pass through and sample all the pleasures while leaving before you encounter any of the inconveniences. Just as living in the city has its unpleasant elements, so does living in the country. My advice to anyone considering a move from the city to the country- try before you buy!