A diversion ...

Going to do one thing late this afternoon - when suddenly a water trough was spraying water.

I'm not that good with pumps and pipes, but needs must when the devil drives.

It turns out I could repair this one.  The first photo shows the repaired fiitting - and a half star post driven down the side to protect it from 800 kg of bull deciding to scratch himself against it.

Second photo shows second star post in and some crushed rock around the sensitive bits.

Then some rocks / old concrete - and finally some more crushed rock all around the outside.

It's amazing how much of a pond you get around a trough.  I guess, in winter, if every cow drinking at the trough walks away with a few grams of mud on each of its feet - eventually there is less dirt around the trough ... and more elsewhere.  Puddles create more mud ... and more gets walked away.

With a big concrete trough like this the poor old sheep get to where they can't reach the water - the smaller ones anyway.

Hour, maybe hour and a half I guess for Alessio and I.  But hopefully the repair will hold, the bull won't break it, and the crushed rock will slow the wearing away of the surrounding area.

I felt quite good at the end - almost wanted to call the guy who usually repairs bull damaged troughs for me and tell him "I did it myself!".

But I remembered that I also needed to reset the irrigation system in the Trufferie.  Pretty soon we were fixing a few sprinklers and connections.  Another hour ...

Then we got the chooks' electric netting going properly again - and instructed Alessio in how to debug it and care for a very useful, but quite fragile tool.  I bought it in England last year and carried it back as hand luggage.


With the fence now energised at 8.5 instead of 2.5 kV, a couple of chickens and one Maremma dog will get a little surprise tomorrow morning.  We've been trying to persuade Josie that her job is to protect the chickens and not the house.  A little zap might help.

After checking the vege garden and saying goodbye to Soren (off home to Germany), it was 8pm before I went in.

The task I was about to start at 4 pm was not done, but we'll get to that tomorrow.