SHE HAS A PROBLEM

SHE DOESN’T DIET

Welcome again – meet a failed candidate for ‘The Biggest Loser’. Somehow the name Maxine Suffolk got accepted by Channel 10, that she weighed 80Kg was a bit doubtful, they wrote back to query that bit of the application, but I made the silly mistake of entering her age as THREE. Even I will admit that I could lose a bit of weight. I solve the problem temporarily by surrounding myself with lots of fatter friends. But Maxine doesn’t have that luxury. Even freshly shorn she appears to be double the size of anything else in the paddock. Like me she resembles a Sumo Wrestler.



Her favourite is bread, not plain old white bread she literally turns her nose up at that rubbish, but Whole Grain and Rye will have her run 200 Metres, yes run I said, towards the sound of a plastic guitar pick being pried off the package and the sight of anything resembling a Black and Yellow Bread Wrapper. Visitors have been warned, maybe it also needs a sign on the gate, not to wear any combination of black and yellow clothing. Unfortunately my sheep do not have any Number Plates so it’s hard for visitors to work out which of the sheep near the house is the one that will take out (for some unknown reason) your left kneecap.

Now that the grass is much taller Maxine doesn’t have to rely totally on the ‘Commando Crawl’ up to the shed and the feed bags she knows are stored within. Again, they are yellow. I thought sheep were supposed to be colour blind. Even me carrying a Yellow Bucket will get a response. Her eyes brighten, she begins to drool, and she will not leave me any farther away than one or two metres. It is a fact that once she has been able to get her head into the bucket, any bucket, it takes the equivalent of six horsepower to extricate her from it, and that can even be an empty bucket.

Maybe instead of biggest loser competitions I could try to enter her at the Dogs considering the distance she can cover in twenty seconds, but they would need to recover the rabbit in something black and yellow. She’d do well in a weight for age event if there were any really fat greyhounds around. Of course losing would be out of the question. Anyone for a good Mutton Stir-fry?

To add to the problem my Mum believed that for everyone, an apple a day was the best medicine, that and a good dose of Caster Oil whenever I threatened a sickie from school. But my peculiarities are a different story. What led me to write that is because Bread is not the only thing they all get. Add an Apple a day to that recipe, one each, I’m very fair like that, or a Pear if they are cheap, or a Carrot for moonless nights.

But like the sales pitch ‘That’s not all’. Every afternoon when the sun hits a certain angle on the horizon they all gather, including Dumb and Dumber, near their yard (a bit of fenced off arena under the car-port) ready for their cup of highly palatable feed, suitable for growing ruminants, or as a supplement to grazed pasture - ‘Malt Pellets’.

Grazed pasture? They’ve got 10 acres of the stuff, over an acre each, half of it knee high with 52 varieties of grass, weed and stubble. What else could they wish for? No? Stupid here pretends that they live permanently in an all-you-can-eat diner. Little wonder Maxine’s tummy has left a groove between the food trough and her favourite tree.

I mentioned that I’d done a course about small farming at Hawkesbury T.A.F.E, but like everything else with some of the Tutors it was a case of ‘if you can’t do it successfully then teach it instead’. You spend months of your life learning something you can’t really use, like marking lambs with your teeth or why all worms are Latin, and learn little of what sheep are really like, or what they really need. You need to learn everything fresh, hands on and the hard way.

You learn nothing of the important stuff like: Do sheep have a sense of self? Have they a concept of play? Can they really grow longer fleece using classical music?

This drought of course is not making it any easier for you or me. The arid acres, the deficient dams, fodder famine and wilted Wisteria. Shortage, scarcity, want, absence, need, words heard daily on the TV. But our mate Kevin is now the PM, his supporters promised that when the Liberals fell so would the rain. Here I am Kev avariciously waiting, arms outstretched and face skyward, for 1mm a day just for myself.

GODFREY ZONE