It's been a big week this week - a week of 10-hour days spent at the yards, a couple of hours before spent preparing for, and after spent dismantling and cleaning up.
It's an organisational Everest (for me anyway!) getting all the eartags sorted, vaccines organised and kept chilled, cow and calf lists printed out ready for notation and mothering-up, food and drink prepared for everyone... well, it's just big.
My eyes are scratchy and bleary and I have even managed to get injured.
(Honestly I am hopeless, but more on that silly saga later.)
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This post is about filth.
Dust and dirt and filth that one must inhale and observe and do one's best to ignore.
(I always feel like sticking my little finger out while drinking an imaginary cup of tea when I refer to myself as 'one', don't you?).
I have to admit I don't have many photos of the actual branding process this time around - I was just too busy taking part! I would have been pretty darned unpopular if I had downed my tools and called on the production line (i.e. Mr Incredible, my dad, my brother, the kids and a couple of other helpers) to halt and pose.
Trust me on this.
Their senses of humour just don't stretch that far.
I do have some quick snaps of the haze and muck to give you a clear mental image of my workplace (if you get my meaning).
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Before the cattle arrive, the yards can a be a peaceful place...
calm and sturdy and serene...
Even pretty if you use your imagination just a little.
Then the low roar of hooves and horses and swishing and mooing arrives...
and the
dust and the
flies...
(Hello, it's Dash the seasoned stockman bringing in the mob!)
Basically what I am saying is that branding is
dirty work.
The yards soon become a dustbowl of busy bovines as the stockmen (and women!) move them through to be sorted. The cows get treated for buffalo fly (the bites can cause quite severe irritation to cattle and horses... and people, if the complaints of the kids following the mob are to be believed.
Note earlier photo of Dash and the swarm).
The calves are drafted off from their mothers to be later 'marked', tagged, assessed, castrated (if they are male and not to be kept as bulls) and vaccinated.
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While all this sorting out is being undertaken, Violet and a friend played Barbie dolls beside the cattle crush (where the cows move through single file) oblivious to the cacophany!
Never mind the muck on the ground - it's the orange chiffon today!
Of course, we do take time to stop and have a cuppa occasionally -
we reflect on the activity of the morning, the state of play in the cricket and tennis
(and the laundry ahead of us!)...
Those boots tell a whole story on their own...
not a pretty story, but a story nonetheless!
Of course not EVERYTHING is filthy at the yards...
some things are held aloft above the muck specifically to distract the photographer.
Oh dear... sorry.
Someone wanted toes to nibble on last post, if I recall?
Gotta go get ready for another round tomorrow...
See you when the dust settles again!
