Archive for July, 2020

On the 14th of June Mum and I went to Houhora and got groceries for shearing, mum cooks for the shearers and the shed hands and anyone else who needs feeding! We took the food up to the farm and put it in the shearers quarters then the next morning we were up at quarter to five, we fed the animals and then headed up to the farm to cook breakfast.

We shore sheep all the first day and half the next, I was the only rousy but we only had a couple of shearers so it wasn’t too hard, That afternoon we started shearing my goats. They looked good! They were fairly fat and they had good feet, I had to rousy, class the fiber and bag the fleeces, normally mum comes to help but she had to go and cut up a beef at the neighbours. We managed to stuff all the fibre into one bale, we drenched the goats and clipped the toenails on some that needed it then we let them out and off they went, all naked, to hide in the scrub out of the wind.

Shearing a goat.

shorn weather goats.

Goats saying hello

I probably won’t see much of my goats till about September when they start kidding, I’m excited to see how many kids I get!

The next day we got up early and hooked on the trailer, we went to the shed and rolled my bale out the door onto the deck then we heaved it off and it dropped down onto the trailer. We worked fast because there was a REALLY black cloud on the horison and we wanted to be gone by the time it arrived!

This is not my picture but this is how those clouds looked!

We raced down the road, that cloud followed us all the way! We were going to get coffee but when we went past the coffee man that cloud was right behind us and we couldn’t stop! The worst thing would be if my bale got we…we kept on driving! FINALLY we got to Kaitaia! We pulled in to the Mainfreight yard, I jumped out and opened the trailer doors and a man wizzed out on a fork lift and took my bale into their big shed, that’s when the big drops of rain started to fall, splock,splock! We had only just made it!

My bale went to Mosgiel in the south island, from there it will be blended with other producers fibre and finally it will go all the way to South Africa where it will be sold in the biggest angora goat fibre market in the world. I hope I get a good price for it, things don’t look very promising, South Africa has Covid pretty bad….I guess I will see, in about six months I will know if I made any money to go towards fencing the block at Waihopo for my goats to move there.

My bale.