A busy 6 months ahead

The year is staring to pick up speed and I feel like I am not keeping up with it already!

The start of the year on the farm has proved to be a busy one with an outbreak of pinkeye affecting most of the various mobs of cows. A dreadful condition, which although we have vaccinated the cows to reduce the incidence, the dust and the flies are just having their wicked ways. For the first time in my life, I woke up with a touch of conjunctivitis and Mark suggested (tongue in cheek) that I may also have succumed to the pinkeye outbreak!!! Great!

We have also had all our first calf heifers classified - about 100 odd - and whilst I am yet to see any score sheets, I believe that we averaged in the 80's. I resubmitted Craiglands Luckystrike 3111 for classification and she improved 2 points taking her to VG 87 which I am very pleased with.

On the subject of Luckystrike, I don't think I mentioned that our big black Luckystrike cow (2843...the one we flushed), is FINALLY in calf. Whoo hoo. This is the best news! She is due a week before me! ha ha ha. Because she has been running with 9 bulls, we won't be keeping the calf, but the fact that she is pregnant and hopefully will continue to get back in calf is very welcome news. For those of you not in the cow game, I can appreciate that this is not very interesting and you are probably thinking that I have lost my marbles. Nearly correct, but not quite!

As Jarrod left us to join the Navy, we have been interviewing potential replacements this week. Happily, we had about 11 people apply, and we chose 6 to interview. We will make a choice by early next week and hopefully the new employee will start in February.

Mark and I also took part yesterday in a television commerical shooting for DPI. It has something to do with the future farming program and there are a number of farmers from different industries involved. We may end up on the cutting room floor, and I doubt that we would win any awards for our performances!!

February sees us getting the kids back into a routine of daycare, kinder (first year for Tom!) and swimming. My 40th birthday is also at the end of Feb and we are planning a big bash for that. I am actually looking forward to celebrating my 40th and entering the next decade of my life.

A big March and April is planned as we are taking the kids and the caravan and travelling to Darwin to catch up with the Stevenson's. Already I am very much looking forward to it and I think the big break away with just us and the kids will do the world of good for Tom, especially as in a few weeks after, the focus is going to be on something very different in our lives.......

...the new baby. Yes, the baby arrives sometime in early June. I am now over halfway and have gotten through all the necessary tests that I needed to have done (except diabetes...still to come). Of all the tests that I have gone through - for pregnancies, IVF etc - the most stressful that I encountered was the amniocentises. It was not the actually test that freaked me out, but the odds of having a miscarriage. In fact, it freaked me out so much, that on my first attempt (2 days prior to Christmas) I backed out. Couldn't go through with it. But after a few tears, hours of discussion with Mark, I knew it was for the best. So I did go through with it. And everything is fine. We have the results back and genetically, the baby is normal. Physically, the baby is normal. Mentally, it's mother is borderline!! LOL. But sheesh....the stress of will I/won't I miscarry is just so in your face. But I am past the danger period now and fingers crossed it is all smooth sailing from here on.

We haven't really seen too much of the hot weather so far this summer. Yes, we've had a few days in the high 30's and even low 40's, but I think we are still to face the wrath of Mother Nature. Actually, we need a few stinkers to kill some of these bloody flies!