A Whole Lot Of Suck

Last night our generator died. It's out of warranty and we don't have enough money to buy a new one. We have a battery powered by solar that can charge our phones but that's about it. So here is one last blog post before my computer runs out of battery.

Although we haven't had any scorching heat so far, it has been pretty humid for most of the month, keeping it warm during the night which hasn't been nice. We've had a decent rainfall forecast a few times but we always miss out on most of it. Our property is in a dry spot, unfortunately. The dust is incredibly annoying and every time we have a windy day, it picks up huge clouds of it and it's impossible to keep it out of the bus. Everything and everyone is pretty much always covered in dust. 

The truck that is meant to transport our calves is fixed now, but immediately after that, we had a flat-out busy week. Tess had to go the vet twice, once to get a small lump on her face examined and then again for the surgery to remove it. The surgery went well and Tess has recovered nicely. We're still waiting on the test results though and hoping for good news. 

Now Spartan has started limping. He has some problem with his hooves, that will hopefully fix themselves with time because we don't have the facilities to restrain him for any treatment. We can hire a head bale from the vet but we don't have any yards, and he's not as quiet as Logan to just be led into the bale. Being homeless sucks and it was never supposed to be like this. So anyway, Spartan can't be sent away until his feet are better so they all have to stay for a bit longer.

The agility day was super fun and it was great to get away from reality for a bit. Skuggi ran the courses nicely for the most part and actually surprised me with how well he did with some new challenges. 

I am looking forward to our first real trial of the year which is coming up early next month. I was hoping to pull enough money together to actually get there. All the donations have been used up for food, fuel, and bills as usual and once again they've stopped coming in. So I started pushing my dog gear business again and I finally had another customer order for the first time in over a year but of course, without a generator, I can't use my sewing machine anymore. It seems like nothing I do ever works out.

Hopefully

Our job searches continue to be unsuccessful, despite many applications. And at the beginning of January, we had only one hay bale left for our cattle, several bills to pay, very little food for ourselves, and only $4 left in the bank. The thought of having to make an impossible decision about our pet cattle was devastating. Thankfully, after I posted on Facebook about our situation, several people donated enough money to keep them (and ourselves) fed for a little while longer. 

My friend has a property near Colac, VIC, which they have offered to let us put our cattle on for free until we can get our life sorted out. I had a transport company all ready to take them, but at the last minute his truck broke down and repairs are taking a long time. So we get to keep our babies for longer still.

In preparation for sending them away, Goldie has been "dried off" now, meaning we slowly stopped milking her and so she stopped producing any milk. Going back to the store brought milk was a shock. It tastes so gross compared to Goldie's fresh stuff! Even the milk from the fridge section marketed as higher quality (and with a higher price to match) doesn't taste anywhere as delicious as hers. Hopefully in the future we will be able to breed her again, but at this point, it wouldn't be responsible, with our financial and living situation here.

The weather has been nicer to us this month compared to December's heat, but January was determined to get in one day over 40*C, giving us 43 degrees on the 31st. We have been lucky to avoid any forecasted hail with the cool change storms, although the strong winds have damaged our tents. Thankfully we don't have actually live in them anymore and they are only used as storage spaces.


December
Days over 40*C: 4
Days over 35*C: 9
Days over 30*C: 15
Rainfall: 5mm (approx)
January
Days over 40*C: 1
Days over 35*C: 5
Days over 30*C: 15
Rainfall: 25mm (approx)

Hopefully February will follow January's lead with lower temperatures, but fingers crossed for more rain. It's very dry and dusty here. Although February has already given us more rain than all of December, just on the first day when we got around 10mm of rain with the cool change, so it's off to a good start.

Next weekend we are going to an agility "fun day." It will be a good opportunity to test Skuggi's abilities and see what we need to work on before the competition season starts again in March. I'm trying to save up enough money to actually get to the trials, which is hard when my dog gear business has been at a standstill for over a year despite being open for orders the entire time. We are going to attempt some local markets soon so hopefully that will give it a kickstart.

There are a lot of "hopefully"s in this post. Because we can't move forward, we can't do anything without someone else. Someone to employ us, someone to buy my stuff, someone to donate money. It's so hard relying on other people but there is no way we can get out of this situation on our own so it's just a whole lot of "hopefully" these days.