Nine New Year wishes for the farm

Many people make New Year resolutions in the hopes of making positive changes to their lives, I'm not a resolution setting type of girl. I believe resolutions are just a way to may you feel bad about yourself when they are not achieved.  There is no point in trying to fool myself into believing I will go to the gym beyond once, or eat lettuce for longer than a week.

Instead of making pledges for myself I did start to think about New Year 'wishes' for outcomes I would like for Somerset farm for 2017.  I realised as I was considering these farm wishes that they are as delusional as me heading for the gym but here are my nine wishes. 

1. The never ending jobs list becomes shorter.   The priority order keeps being shuffled around but the to-do list never seems to get any smaller.

2. A three day weekend becomes mandatory so we can tackle the to-do-list with gusto.

3. Long green stuff known as grass would sprout from the ground. This wish includes the

Kangaroo’s giving us a fair go by moving onto another restaurant so we can actually establish an improved pasture.  Not buying in hay would be a miraculous event up there with the virgin birth!

4. We could get through a job without machinery breakdowns, rendering the weekend as totally wasted because we are not prepared for the next priority job, which in all likely hood involves that same tractor, bobcat, chainsaw, or excavator.

5. The goat’s hooves would never need trimming again. I am sure the universe is laughing at me. I hated doing pedicures in my job, now I do up to 60 pedicures x 4 legs in a day. This is a back breaking mammoth day about every 3 months on the most ungrateful goats that push and kick the minute their leg is lifted for their beauty treatment at Somerset Spa. I was reminded the the hard to wear gloves when tending to their hooves and discovered that toilet paper is useless as a bandage, it soaks up blood but sticks to skin. The goats take no notice when I tell them quite crossly that humans paid a lot of money for me to beautify their feet. Opening my mouth to tell them off also has its dangers, flying bits of goat hoof, dirt and manure are common. So I am hoping the fairy pedicurists will come while I am sleeping and take care of this little matter. 

6. Mr Wild Piggy Snortworth will stop inviting my goats to picnics outside of our property by facilitating an escape route under the fences. We were sure goat Alcatraz was secure until I discovered my herd trotting down the road on their way home after a foray from gaol.  Then they spied the open gate to the driveway lined with delicious young trees. Dessert time!  No doubt the charge was spearheaded by Jasmine and Jade having sampled and destroyed over half the original tree planting on an earlier occasion.  This brings me to wish number seven.

7. My driveway planted with an avenue of Manchurian Pear trees does not get attacked by rampaging  goats for a third time, stripping branches and snapping the young trunks in half thereby setting their growth back by years and causing me to have a total meltdown.

8. I thought a mother was supposed to be life-giving and nurturing but sometimes Mother Nature can be a bitch.  I guess it is too much to ask for a lovely balance when it comes to the weather instead of the extremes we are subjected to. Perhaps if Mother Nature wishes to go to extremes she could also make money fall as rain every now and then, - that would be Australian dollars please.  

9. Now if Mother Nature would comply with my wish at number eight, as in raining money, we could fly with plans of new goat handling yards instead of modifying our 60 year old dilapidated, rotted wood, cattle yards held together with wire and chewing gum.  It is such hard yakka doing any husbandry for the goats in these yards designed for larger animals. 

So my New Year wishes may be as unattainable as resolutions that become dust by the third week of January but one can hope! 

May your tractor keep chugging, the bees and butterflies visit your garden, may your trees flourish and you accomplish your goals for this New Year!