Done, Perhaps? Well Shorn, Certainly!

First an update on the state of Billie, the new girl on the block, for the folks who have expressed a desire to see how she turned out after her run through the beauty salon. A much more visually and aromatically appealing creature :-) About a third the size as well.

Our professional goat wrangler friend tells us she is probably around 2 years old, and in good condition considering her recent lifestyle. Once shorn she had a toenail trim, drench and vaccination, and then kitted out with a collar. We were also informed that she has very nice fibre, so next shearing, when it hopefully wont be so infested with weeds and bugs, it might be a candidate for spinning.

Over the last few days she has already become much more tame. She enjoys a good scratch, though she needs to be caught to give her one. Once you've begun you can let go and she'll stand there enjoying it. She also doesn't run for the hills when we come near, so we're making swift progress. We're hoping that by the time she's willing to come when called for a treat of some kind then we'll be able to let her off and she wont immediately trash the fences in an attempt to escape.

As I hinted at in the last post, this weekend was spent out on the new block, doing the work that is required to "start construction" so that we can preserve the building entitlement when the boundary change goes through.

It was a wet, wet, wet weekend, especially Saturday, though a few showers went through on Sunday. This is the first time in some time that we've had decent rain, which I considered quite ironic. There was no way I was going to put off the work for an extra week, so went ahead regardless. I arrived on site at about 8 am on Saturday, and the bulldozer arrived half an hour later. Work commenced shortly after that.

My tasks were to get the new access installed, and when the earthworks were complete install the erosion control. Initially we were thinking we'd go with strawbales for this aspect of the project, but thankfully my FIL had some of the real stuff from one of his previous projects, so I was able to put that to use. Strawbales are very hard to come by at the moment, so we may have had to wait to get them.

Below are some pictures of the progress of leveling the house site.

Below, the job is done...

Below is a picture of the new access, about half way through the work. I still had to string some wire up on the left hand fence. We will need to introduce about a foot of fill into the "driveway" to bring it up to level. You can just make out a hummock of dirt at the foot of the left hand gatepost, which represents roughly where it will need to come up to.

The earthworks were completed by about 3pm on Sunday, fences and erosion control by 6pm. All in all it was an action packed, sometimes miserable and wet, weekend, but we got the jobs done, and maybe, just maybe, we might be only a couple of weeks away from settlement on the block. Then the fun will really begin. Our only concern at this stage is whether we have installed enough erosion control. We wont know the answer to that until the certifier gets back tomorrow and can get out and have a look at it. Our fingers are firmly crossed...