And on the seventh day…

… he rose from his sick bed and felt somewhat human again. I had such great plans. Booking 5 days’ leave sandwiched between two weekends meant nine consecutive days away from work and busy getting stuff done around the smallholding. Or not, as it has turned out.

Sadly, out of the last 10 days, I have spent the best part of seven of them in bed, on the loo or lying on the couch thinking about going to the loo or back to bed. After a visit to the doctor and some tests, it turns out that I have had concurrent campylobacter and rotavirus infections, the same stuff that killed Willow. 

With just two more days before I have to go back to work, today was the first day when I actually felt like doing anything like tackling some of the jobs around the place. So, while Wendy tackled the wildly overgrown shrubbery…

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…I slowly but surely worked my way down the drive, regrading and redistributing the metal by hand to even out the surface and smooth things as much as possible.

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I have lost a bit of weight in the last week but I hadn’t realised how much the dehydration and lack of food had taken it out of me.  Just raking and smoothing 150m of drive almost did for me so I finished off and headed back to the house to enjoy a few minutes sitting with Wendy, drinking tea and enjoying the view.

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We are still bottle-feeding Poppy the lamb but she is supplementing this more and more by grazing in the home paddock.  That said, one lamb – even a guzzler like Poppy – isn’t enough to keep pace with the Spring growth.In order to keep the grass in good order and deal to any weeds before they reproducing, I spent a pleasantly sunny hour topping the paddock.

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After a quick sandwich for afternoon tea, for lunchtime had come and gone without either of us noticing, we headed to the local rural primary school to collect the newest additions to our small holding.

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We had ordered five Brown Shaver chicks through our friend Michelle (Johnny’s wife) who works at the school.  One of the mums had placed a bulk order for local kids and parents, sourcing the chicks from the country’s major producer in Christchurch.  

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As part of a much larger consignment, the days-old chicks were flown up this afternoon, collected from another farm and driven to the school in a heated box. From there, we whisked them home to take up residence in a lamp-heated cat cage in our laundry, ending their 1,000km journey with munch of Peck n Lay and water.

Funnily enough, these little squeaking bundles of fluff were not to be the newest additions for very long.  Just as we were cooking dinner and getting ready to take the youth group to an indoor climbing centre for the evening, we got a call from Johnny telling us to get ready for another arrival.

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