Snakes are definitely out and about...

I have had a run in with 3 in the last week. The first - I was pruning back my arrowroot plants and throwing some over the fence to the cattle, as they absolutely love it. All of the plants are about 2 metres tall, so I was tucked right in the plant chopping it back, when my eyes focused on something moving, and when it came in to focus, it was a dark brown snake slithering past my face about 4 inches in front of me.  I know they say you are meant to stay still, but, stuff that,  I was out of there...before I knew it I was in the middle of the house yard on my knees, wondering what the hell had just happened. It had also jumped out of the tree and was high tailing it out of there as well. I think I shuddered for about an hour or 2, and made myself a nice strong drink to try and get over it all. The second was a couple of days later, I could hear little Sam barking and barking, and I went out to investigate, and I could see a few toads gathering in behind the bins. I was muttering away to myself while I was fetching the dettol to spray them all, about how much I hate toads, and how they attract snakes etc, and as I came back to spray them, I noticed a black snake in there as well. So armed with my broom and my shovel, just in case, I started pulling things out to try and shoo it out of there. It ducked underneath the corrugations on the end of the verandah back out in to the yard, so I am hoping it stays away now. And then 2 days later another crossed my path on the driveway as I was leaving for work. It was black, but I think it had a yellowy greeny belly from what I could see, so I am thinking it was a tree snake. I didn't see it until I was just about on top of it, so I couldn't stop in time, but I didn't run it over, as I noticed it slithered away when I checked in my rear vision mirror.

In the last 12 months, the only snakes I have seen was a red bellied black in the chook pen about 6 weeks ago, which the guinea fowl chased away,  and a tree snake down at the cattle yards at about the same time, so to see so many, so close together, is unusual. I really hope this heat goes away soon so that they can all start to hibernate over the winter. They are definitely around in droves at the minute, so be careful, watch where you are walking and where you put your hands and your feet while gardening etc.

Snakes, New Life on the farm and other stuff

Someone up there certainly likes to make my life interesting that's for sure. Damian's parents and sister came up to the farm for the weekend to see the property and for my birthday. Toni also turned up to surprise me on Saturday afternoon and stayed until Tuesday. I was having a real downer of a birthday missing the big kids until Toni turned up, it made my day immensely. I ended up having a lovely day. Damian and Toni bought me a really nice pair of western boots, they even have purple stitching!

Love them! So on Sunday we had just finished having breakfast, when out of the corner of our eye a snake was noticed slithering along the concrete in the shed. It was quite small and had a head similar to the red naped snake, but the underside of it's belly had the orange spots of a brown snake. Needless to say that snake was quickly relocated. Then a bit later on that day Damian was searching through a box of poly fittings so he could hook up the water trough, and nearly put his hand on a snake hiding at the bottom of the box, luckily this snake was not a dangerous one. Here we are trying to ascertain what we are dealing with.

We really wanted to try and identify what we were dealing with before calling a snake catcher. So we googled the snakes found around our area, and found that it was a brown tree snake.

We loaded it in to a bin with a lid with the help of a broom, and Damian took it down to the dam and put it up a tree down there.The 3 snakes we have seen in the last couple of weeks have all been down the end of the house where the snake detector seems to be a bit dodgy, so I think we will return it for a replacement. This morning I went out to check on the guinea fowl as she was due to have her babies, and I found 3 babies under her, and another 2 by lunchtime. I have relocated all the babies in to a brooder to look after them, as they will only get picked off by birds or snakes if I leave them out with the mum, and guinea fowls have a reputation as not being the best mothers.So far we have 4 cinnamon pied ones, and 1 lavender pied. I don't know where the cinnamon comes in as our adults are all pearl and lavender..I found 1 dead one under her this afternoon, it had managed to hatch, but either suffocated or was squashed by mum...I have heard 2 other eggs either cheeping or rustling, so we'll see if any more hatch over the next 24 hours.

They have all started eating and drinking, and all seem pretty healthy. These little ones will more than double the guinea fowl numbers after we lost 10 to the fox massacre last year, so hopefully it will start to build up stocks again, and hopefully lots of these are girls as we currently have 1 girl to 3 boys! Mum can have all her babies back in 6-8 weeks when they are big enough to look after themselves. I have started back at work this week after school went back, so I have been busy catching up there. Kasey is really happy with her class so far this year, and when we turned up to class on day 1, her friends had saved her a desk next to them, so she was pretty chuffed. Kasey has also asked to start earning pocket money, so I have done up a chore chart for her, and will laminate it and put it on the fridge, so she can tick off her jobs each day, and then re-use it over and over. She will earn $10 a week for completing all her jobs, and nothing if she misses jobs. This is the chart I made up for her, she has daily chores which are smaller ones, and a few larger weekly chores. We have decided to make it an all or nothing deal, otherwise she will just get slack and not want to stick to her deal, and in the real world once you start work, if you don't do your job, you don't have a job..and a good work ethic gets noticed these days.

I also received my dvd from the library that I booked, River Cottage Australia. I have watched a few of the episodes online, but this way Damian and I can sit down and watch the whole series.

I am possibly heading down to Brisbane this weekend to meet with the real estate agent to finalise renting the house out down there as the real estate market it still slow for our type of house. I am hoping to go to a basket making workshop while I am down there as that is something I have wanted to try for a few years now. And catch up with the kids and pop over to catch up with how much little Grace is growing. xx

Chook sagas...oh...and other stuff...

It's been an eventful few days around here as usual. Kasey was taking Max for a walk yesterday afternoon and came across a large carpet python on the driveway, about a metre and a half long. Damian went out to move it on with the broom, but it climbed up behind the grill of his car, over the engine bay and along the chassis rail, where we lost sight of it. We are hoping it came out overnight, otherwise it will be travelling around a bit. One of the plymouth rock chickens came down really sick late yesterday afternoon. She was all limp and had her eyes shut and was dribbling, we thought she was dead, but she wasn't. I put her in a box to see if she would start to recover but she showed no improvement overnight and seemed to be getting worse, so we had to give her the chop...first one we have done...not nice, but it had to be done, as she was suffering too much, at least it was quick. It was so sudden as she was totally fine yesterday morning, I would say she has been poisoned, either by a snake or spider, possibly even a toad?? Otherwise we have had some mushrooms pop up over the last few days, she may have eaten one and perhaps it was toxic...really don't know, it's all just guessing really. Such a shame as she was quite tame and would sit with me. That's 3 chooks we have lost over the last couple of weeks, Kasey's little pet chook was found dead one morning under their feeder, again a total mystery, we think her head may have got caught in the feeder? Then we lost Bertha the day before yesterday, but she died of old age, she was a good 10 years old!

(Bertha is the black Australorp chicken pictured here)

Damian spent today putting a couple of farm gates on the ends of the verandah in front of the shed to keep the horse and cattle out. Once the area in front of the shed is fenced off it will give us a house yard to keep animals out, and keep the dogs etc in when we need them to be.

He also installed the door at the top of the stairs a couple of days ago to keep the dogs out from upstairs, Max kept sneaking in while we weren't looking, and I found him curled up on our bed all wet and muddy, and that was the straw that broke the camels back, and the door went on. Still needs to be finished off, but it is keeping the dogs out which is the main thing for now.

I went and had my hair done today, I needed a change, and it was getting too long, so I went shorter and a little curly...I'm liking it a lot...

I'm off to a sewing retreat this weekend so I am leaving Daddy at home to look after Kasey and I will go and visit Michael and Toni while I am down there, it's Toni's 20th Birthday on Sunday, and I need to give her her present. So I will have 2 full days of sewing and socialising to do...yay...

More snakes and some furniture making...

Got back from dropping Kasey at school this morning, and found another snake on the verandah. This time a black one...just sitting there with its' head up looking over at where the dogs and chooks are. It took off fairly quickly, but it slithered up underneath the corrugated iron on the side wall of the shed... Damian is going to need to seal that off when he gets home, they can't go far, but I don't want them getting in there at all. They are quite noisy when slithering on the concrete, you can hear their skin skimming on the surface. I was much calmer with this one, because I saw it before I got to the concrete so I was able to stop a few metres away from it and watch what it did. I bet when Damian gets home we don't see any!
I decided to stay home yesterday and build the little table for the sofa. I saw the idea on Holly's blog for a "c" table, and totally loved it, and thought "I could make that"...so I did. Was only a couple of hours work including the painting and I L.O.V.E it....

 

 

I have washing to do today, our machine has been playing up since we moved, I think something has either broken or isn't sitting right after transporting it up here. It causes it to continually go off balance during the spin, annoying, but I am working around it. Then I might make some more stuff, got the wood working bug a little bit now....

The Brown Snake

We got a phone call from Toni while were up at the property, to tell us there was a snake under the sheet metal up at the chook house. She was lifting up to see if there were any rats under there to still get rid of. No rats, but there was this instead.

It has been identified as a brown snake by the snake catcher, but when he came to relocate it, the snake was nowhere to be seen. If it comes back, he will come and get it. While I am terrified of snakes, well venemous ones anyway, there doesn't appear to be any rats or mice up at the chook pen anymore, which is good, he has obviously had a very good feed as there were heaps.  We are now just waiting to see if it comes back, and being extra, extra careful when we are up at the chook house, and if it does come back, we will get the snake catcher back. I am concerned about the dogs and about Kasey, and I have forbidden Kasey from playing up there at the moment until we sort it all out. We found another little black "snake" up there yesterday in the compost pile, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a legless lizard, we could see his little legs about an inch behind his head, so we put him back in the compost pile to go about his business. I am going to purchase one of those electric rat traps to try and keep any further rats at bay, to avoid any more snakes from taking up residence.

Weekend happenings

On my way back from up north last weekend, I picked up a large tray of mangoes from a street market stall. Today I thought I would use some of them up, rather than them going to waste. I am in the process of making mango icecream with the thermomix, but I forgot the cream, so we will make it for dessert tomorrow night instead, it only takes a couple of minutes. But I did get the mango chutney made. And it is extremely yummy, it is a thermomix recipe, and has a nice bit of spice to it to make it tasty, but not hot, and this mixed with the sweetness of the mango and raisins, is yum.

I played around about a bit with my scrapbook max software, to do up the label, as I might make some for Xmas presents. We do have another clucky hen, one of the black australorp girls is sitting, so I will get her some fertile eggs this week, and allow her to hatch some out. She is so funny, if I feel under her, or speak to her while she is sitting, she carries on like there is no tomorrow, cackles away and won't be quiet for at least 5 minutes....I purchased a new chicken feeder as Damian hasn't had time to make the necessary adjustments to the one he made, and we have so many rats taking the chookseed, so I have finally been able to put the lid to the fully closed position today, and they are working it out, with a couple of the girls very confident in using it, and they are teaching the other girls at the same time. We have managed to dispatch of a few rats this weekend, they were nesting above the nesting box at the chook pen, so Damian took the dogs down there, and promptly got rid of quite a few, the dogs are so quick, and the job is done in a matter of a second, much more humane than baiting them and them having a long, slow death. We have to get them all gone, as I have been stressing about snakes, and nearly stood on a huge snake this morning, I don't know if it was a black or a brown, it looked like a brown snake to me, but some of the black snakes can look brown as well....whatever it was I want it GONE.....snakes absolutely creep me out, I am terrified of them....it took off towards next door pretty quickly, and the neighbours aren't helping  by having grass 2 foot tall in their back yard, so I think we might have a word to them and ask them if they can keep the grass down, at least through summer when they are really moving about. So I will only be going down there with my gumboots on, and keeping a really good eye out from now on. We have seen more snakes here in the last 2 years, than we have seen in the previous 17 years here...ugh.....I shudder at the thought of them....Damian managed to get the skirting and arcitraves all done in the office today, and get it prepped for painting, so that will be next on the list. I have managed to get a few Christmas presents sorted over the last few days, so I am feeling much more organsied about that, even though I still have no idea what to get Damian, or Michael. Damian and I might even forego presents for each other this year, as we really don't need anything in particular...and we have a few other things happening during December and January which will more than make up for it. So, off to sewing class tomorrow to finish the project started last week, and to finish organising Toni's Xmas present. I have a busy week coming up, Diesel's surgery is Tuesday, I have a wedding on Thursday and the sewing club Xmas party on Friday night. After that, things should settle down though for the run in to Christmas, hopefully