Hope you're all doing well and maybe a fraction warmer than me!
Actually, it hasn't been that bad today. It got down to -3C last night, and it felt like it this morning, but it came up to a sunny if cool day.
My first task for the day was feeding the bull, but I got a little sidetracked by taking pictures of the frost the night had left. Some of it was common-or-garden frost on garden weeds -
And some of it had elements of Frozen -
One of the striking things was how much remained where a shadow was cast, even when the sun had melted everything around it -
After I'd finished my little moment of Arrendelle-on-the-Goulburn, I got on with getting together cornmeal, grain and molasses for the bull. Because I'd not been quick off the mark, the bull was up at his trough when I came to feed him and (as is his wont) butted at the buckets as I was pouring the feed to him. What happened? Once again, he acquired a dusting of cornmeal and a splodge of molasses on his winter coat!
Enough was spilt (and he's starting to look lean enough) for me to give him some more cornmeal and molasses later in the afternoon. He absolutely loves this mix: I'm pretty sure if I mixed him up some pancakes and syrup he'd think he's gone to bull heaven.
The old boy headed off back down to Flinders for a few days in the mid-morning. He still has a bad chesty cough and I think he should have stayed here till he'd shaken it off, but truthfully he's as stubborn as old farmers always are! After we was away, the dog began giving me the guilts for not giving him a long walk yesterday and so we went off on a good solid 5 kilometres or so around the fences.
After lunch Barry S came by to use our workshop to pull apart a tractor belonging to his daughter's equestrian coach (a tradeoff as to fees, I understand) so to find out what's wrong with its clutch. I lent a hand and got in touch with my inner grease monkey. What I like about working with Barry is that he has a wonderful habit of handing you tools, saying what he wants achieved ("see if you can disconnect that drive shaft") and letting you take a stab at it. A few hours and a lot of grease (and one barked knuckle) later we'd split the tractor and got to grips with the clutch, which will indeed need replacement rather than repair. Felt good to have done something useful. That sense of doing something valuable and feeling useful has a fair degree of attraction to me now. I guess that's why I've been enjoying homesteading blogs a bit lately, and feeling a degree of sympathy for the romantic (or perhaps Romantic?) sense of community of the French royalist movement. Just a fad I guess!
As the sun was hitting the horizon I gave the dog one last walk and tied him up. I had a cleanup and kicked back before the fire with a glass of wine.
It's another chilly night tonight. Bedtime now though: to work tomorrow!
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