Naturally Scrumptious Icecream

BASIC VANILLA ICECREAM

250 ml cream
1 egg (as fresh as you can get)
3-4 tablespoons castor sugar
1 teaspoon natural vanilla essence

Separate the yolk and white of the egg.   Whip egg white until stiff, then gradually add the castor sugar, and continue beating until sugar is dissolved (can't feel any granules when you rub a little mixture between two fingers).  Add vanilla essence and just beat enough to mix in.  Add egg yolk and mix in.

Whip cream in a separate bowl  until stiff.  Then mix the egg mixture into the whipped cream.  Place in container, and freeze.  You do not have to touch this mixture again (until you eat it!!).

Now for the not so natural additives!  Which are stirred in just before freezing.

Crushed Crunchy Bars - Hokey Pokey bars covered in Chocolate.  Our favourite.
Chopped After Dinner Mints.
Slightly crushed Smarties.
Crushed Orio biscuits.

I always double the basic recipe which gives me about 1 1/2 litres of  icecream. 

This is more expensive than bought icecream, but sooooooooo much nicer.  I tend to use a plastic ring tin with a sealable top, that can be turned out onto a plate, and just sliced.   When you serve it you have to leave it out at room temperature for longer than commercial icecream as it is harder to start with.

The Sheep Conveyor

A sheep conveyor is the most wonderful invention.  You push the sheep up the race and up onto the conveyor until they step on, and suddenly they are just held up by the V shape of the machine with nothing under their legs.  They are then carried the length of the machine by belts, as they have things done to them e.g. vaccinations, ear tags inserted into ears.  When they get to the end of the belt there is a platform they can just walk off.  Although our sheep walk off! don't think so! they leap.

As the 2ths needed two vaccinations, plus a tag in their ear, we got the conveyor in.  Saves "The Bosses" back.  As by the time you have been up the drafting race doing the procedures (in this case 3 times) you usually have sheep jumping out.  And Perendales take no prisoners, as they are such active sheep.  It is also far easier on the sheep as they are through the yards very quickly, today about an hour and a half, whereas one person battling in the race  takes a day.  Unbelievably though a couple of the sheep actually managed to jump out even though there was nothing under their feet to push off with. 

We try not to give our animals too many treatments of anything in their life, but some things you have to do.  Lambs are drenched about 3 times a month apart, as young animals are far more susceptable to intestinal worms than older animals.  Some of our ewes don't even have another drench  in their lives once they get to 2 years old.  Although the majority get one a year.
Only very sick animals get antibiotics and they don't end up in the human food chain, and no hormones are given ever.  NZ has very strict policies on these issues, although occasionally beef cattle do have hormones, but only for very select markets, and infrequently now, and they have to be specially tagged to identify them so they don't go to the wrong place.

The abortion vaccinations are important, as there is nothing more soul destroying than picking up hundreds of nearly full term dead  lambs.

Setting up



The conveyor in action, you can see the sheep's feet hanging down, and the end one about to leap off having arrived at the platform




No. 3 daughter watching progress and another 2th about to take the leap



WRONG

That mob of ewes - right reasoning, for the correct mob,  EXCEPT the mob I thought had to go out wasn't in fact the correct one - make sense, probably not.  But they did get some nice lush grass to pig out on for several hours, so they were happy.

Have I done the right thing???

"The Boss" departed down the road this morning leaving instructions - the ewes go to the airstrip, 2ths up the Lane.  Fine.  EXCEPT when I get out to the yards there are 2 mobs of ewes about the same size, and 1 had to stay in.  He doesn't believe in cell phones so can't ring and check, so use the old initiative and take the mob of ewes out that had only 2 different colours of tags in the mob - I THINK THAT'S RIGHT  - but we will see.  Brrr and winter is coming, probably snowing on the mountain today, came home and lit the fire.  The stack of firewood is slowly growing, but not nearly enough as yet.

No. 3 was going to do some reorganising of the wood shed and bring some down, but she had a big weekend partying and is still in bed - I know it's Wednesday and it was the weekend, but sometimes it takes a while to catch up doesn't it! I must admit I feel like that sometimes when I haven't been partying up large - that's really sad.

Mustering the 2 tooths

What are 2 tooths you may well ask!  They are sheep that have 2 permanent teeth up amongst the baby ones,  at the front of their mouth (and sheep only have teeth on their bottom jaw at the front, so they can eat down really close to the ground if they need to).  We do not lamb our hoggets (1 year old sheep)  in this climate as the winter is too hard and while they may get in lamb the first year, when they are only big lambs themselves,  they probably will not gain the necessary body wieght back on  in time to get in lamb the next year.  We would rather they lasted to have many lambs.  A lot of NZ farmers on the right properties can get their hoggets big enough to lamb successfully and then produce again the following years. 

But before they are put (mated) to the Ram (tupping) a few things have to be done.  And vaccinating against Clostridial diseases (which include enterotoxaemia, tetanus, blood poisoning amongst others) is one of those important things.  The 2ths have already had their first vaccination for those,   but they also need vaccines to protect them from abortions.  And this is what they will get this week.  So mustering had to happen yesterday.  They have been up on a block which goes up to 900 metres, but it has tracks, so while "The Boss" often takes his horse, I usually take the Quad bike and do a bit of walking.

And just as well we had a good day yesterday as it is raining today, and cloudy, and if you can't see you can't muster, as those sheep will hide!

Mt Fyffe and Kaikoura in distance from the top of the block, the gully halfway up the photo is the Hope Fault Line, we hope it doesn't decide to shake!

A mob going up the track to the correct paddock (as a matter of interest where the sheep are is part of the Faultline too)



Cruise waiting and watching



A small mob that are in the wrong place but being brought down by "The Bosses" dog, who is just a little black speck above them

You'll be pleased to know

An update on Cruise (my heading dog).  He bounced out of his kennel the next morning with not a sign of stiffness whatsoever.  But as "The Boss" said "he didn't learn a lesson did he!" .  No unfortunately not, it was straight back into stirring up those cows wherever possible.  But at least he's still in one piece at the end of the week, to muster sheep next week.

Another Clear TB test

Well all went without a hitch for the TB testing, and no reactors thankfully.  The reactor is picked up with a hot lump at the injection site just under the top of the tail.  If we had one, we would've kept the beast seperate until a blood test could've been taken 10 days later.  We have had problems in the past with Avian Tuberculosis which will give a false positive to Bovine TB.  People can contract Avian TB, but NOT from cattle, just from birds.  Usually when birds have fouled roofs and rainwater has been collected of them containing the droppings.

TB tester in action

The testing is done by independent people so noone can falsify the result.

Narrow Escape

Cruise was rolled by a cow this afternoon!  Silly dog should have listened and stayed in behind, but no the brain disengages when cows get stroppy, but almost the death of him today.  Amazingly he's fine, although expect him to be stiff tomorrow when he's let out of the kennel.  He was lucky in that the head boring down upon his body just missed, and he rolled through underneath her - phewwww!!!  I hate it when that happens. 
Cows with calves are the most dangerous of cattle beasts, some of them just get into a blind rage, and anything gets charged - leave a bull for dead in the anger stakes, although you don't want to get in the way of bulls fighting either, as you are such a little pimple you aren't noticed.  Fortunately it doesn't happen very often, and most of our cows are pretty well behaved - they get the kill tag if they're not!
TB testing tomorrow, so hopefully they come in smoothly - I'll let you know!