Busy holidays 
Tuesday, October 8, 2013, 07:50 AM
Erica and Jerry returned from touring the south island. They came out to the farm for an afternoon, and got a quick tour and a hands on demonstration of sheep shearing. Plus lamb ringing. This involves putting a heavy rubber band round the tail, which is the most painless way of docking the tails. The boy lambs get two rings. One for the tail, one for the testicles. Jerry said he found that one rather disturbing!

Then they came back on Saturday for wedding photos. This was quite a surprise for us, since as far as we know, they're not actually engaged yet. But it's the Chinese custom to do the photos well in advance so that they can be shown off at the wedding reception. Got a photo of Erica pretending to assault Jerry with a docking ring...

They both went back to China to meet the parents, and Erica will be returning in a few days. The plan is that she'll do a one year early childhood course here, and then return later next year to get married. Jerry's planning on visiting over Chinese New Year. There's been a lot of negotiation. Hope it all works out.

Jerry's given me a book - "You can speak Chinese". So now I'm on chapter one, trying to work out the difference between xi and shi and learning all the pronounciation. It'll take a while!

School holidays have gone smoothly so far. Bronwyn's been very busy organising trips and activities. And Cooper hasn't broken anything. Not yet anyway. One week to go...

Maya and Molly are still under the picnic table. Sasha and Trouble are out in the paddock, and have made friends with one of the bottle fed lambs from last year. Lucy died a week ago. She went downhill fast, and looked like she wouldn't last 15 minutes, so Ross quietly put her down. Meanwhile, Little One, the calf who nearly died after a hip injury earlier in the year has now given birth to a monster boy. She had a prolapsed uterus - the whole womb came out. It's potentially fatal, but the vet managed to get it all back in. She's off at the yards recovering.

Still not well. Think I've had just about every species going. Went to the doctors today and got antibiotics. I have one set of tablets to take every 12 hours with food, plus another one 3 times daily on an empty stomach. Not easy scheduling. And I got a shot of antibiotics as well. The visiting student did it. Nice girl. Rather painful.

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