Prairie Oysters ( Part Deux)-"Lambs Balls Again"

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Our apologies but as this blog was so big we thought we would split it in to two we thought you may get bored, and loose interest in reading 12 pages. Then the inevitable happened and the keyboard on our laptop became faulty so we have had to wait until we could get it repaired.

Anyway the blog continues- From Prairie Oysters (Lambs Balls)

Helen and Robert must have looked at me squirming and thought I was just being a big sook, but this is all new to us, we have done our best to grab hold of our new surroundings as best as possible.

We had a great dinner with Robert and Helen and they retired for bed as their days are so ridiculously busy and Caroline and I stayed up to watch a murder mystery thing on TV and retired when it finished.

After a beautiful night’s sleep I wandered in to the kitchen, made tea and sat in the quiet of the morning to watch the day wake up, Helen was awake and arrived in the kitchen followed by Robert, Helen asked me if I slept with my hands on my Crown Jewels after our conversation of last night and confirm that I did, my mind goes back to those poor little lambs, (The boys that is).

We are sitting around the breakfast bar and Helen told me that her father had his own farm, and asked me if I knew what Prairie Oysters were, I confirmed that I did not and Helen told me that her father years ago, used to castrate the young lambs with his teeth, (I kid you not), then they usually threw the lambs testicle for the dogs, oh what a treat!!!

I’m absolutely wincing in my seat, I asked Helen how many sheep her father had and she said about six hundred, imagine that, and as I am writing this as I see it in my mind,

• Step 1 Grab hold of the appointed sheep (male of Course),

• Step 2 I would guess you would need to wrestle him on to his back.

• Step 3 Open lambs legs.

• Step 4 Lean over the poor creature and rip its ball bag off with your teeth.

• Step 5 Then, well I just don’t know what would happen next and equally where does any apology to the poor lamb fit in, for biting his ball bag off and flinging his nuts on the ground, only to get swallowed buy one of the sheep dogs.

I have done a bit of research on this and in America and Canada they call these ‘Rocky Mountain Oysters” which are the just the same.

Saturday

We had decided to go to the Camping and Caravan shown in Wagga as “Louie and Lorraine who own Vista RV (the makers of Gypsy) were exhibiting there and originally we were going to pick up our inner sprung mattress, but as it happened we picked it up a week or so ago, but we thought it would be nice to take them out to dinner to thank them for the excellent service they had afforded us, in our dealings with Gyspy.

We got to the show in Wagga with the intent of staying there until the show was conclude for the day then straight out for dinner with Louie and Lorraine, but as we had walked around the whole show in half an hour, we decided to go back to the farm and back in to Wagga later.

When we got back Helen said, “you guys had not been long” so we explained the situation, Helen asked if we could possibly prepare her camp oven for her and do a camp fire and may be cook a camp roast tomorrow night with her camp oven, and the farm would provide the “Woodstock Prime lamb ”for the inaugural first outing of Helens camp oven.

I need to tell you guys about this camp oven, we have one and its always in use, it is a cast iron pot that you can literally put straight in to the fire without any side effect and providing you keep an eye on it cooking you always get a good dinner, we have cooked so much in ours, we have some amazing dinners, and as many of you regular bloggers know, Kangaroojack’s signature dish is “Chicken Curry”.

Any way two years ago we asked Helen what she wanted for her birthday and a camp oven was the reply, and this was its first outing!!! I said providing Robert didn’t mind us having a fire on the property then that’s what we would do.

We did some more chores around the farm and it was soon time to drive back in to Wagga for dinner with Louie and Lorraine we were meeting at a Chinese Restaurant, which I cannot remember the name, but perhaps should remain nameless.

Caroline had booked a table for 7.30, the restaurant was fairly quiet when we arrived, we explained to the waiting staff that our friends would not be long, but we looked at the menu anyway, but even before Louie and Lorraine arrived they kept asking if we were ready to order. We kept saying, “No we are waiting for our friends”.

Anyway, Louie and Lorraine arrived and we chatted, with a brief interval for ordering drinks and dinner (banquet menu). But the dinner did not take long to arrive, and while we were eating the first course, they brought the second and even though it did not all fit on the table, they just kept bringing it.

Amongst a lot of chatter, we ate, but we were not even half way through our meal, they asked if we wanted to take any of it away with us. For us we were trying to enjoy a nice relaxing evening with friends.

I noticed that the restaurant had become empty apart from us, they clearly wanted us out so that they could close the restaurant and not have to pay the staff any overtime.

It was even hard to order another drink, you could tell their reluctance and although they kept hovering, they kept asking about takeaway. Anyway we managed to hang this out until sometime after 10, which wasn’t bad considering we felt that at the rate they wanted us out it should have been 8.30!

On the way back to Woodstock, keeping an eye out for wildlife as usual, there were lots of rabbits around and we saw one in the road, not wanting to run over it, we drove round it, but then we realise it wasn’t a rabbit, it was a mischievous possum! He sat in the middle of the road. We are not sure what he was waiting for though, no wonder they get run over!

We got back to the farm about 11.15 and turned in to the drive toward the homestead, as we crossed the cattle grid we see a lamb trotting around, on the drive way, where it should not be.

I looked at Caroline, and she looked at me, Caroline said, "you are going to have to catch it and put it back in the paddock with its mum”. I did like the way she said “you”.

To try to set the scene, from the main road to the Woodstock homestead, it is tree lined driveway both sides with the tree’s close to the fence, and the branches are pretty low, which is OK if you are a lamb that is only 16 inches high from floor to the top of its ears. I know I am not very tall, but these branches were very low for me and precluded me getting under the tree's.

This lamb, and I don’t know if it’s a little boy or a little girl as its now 11.30 at night wants to get back to the other side of the fence, but doesn’t want to be caught, it is not as if I was even chasing it with a jar of mint sauce.

Up and down the lane this little lamb ran with me in hot pursuit, eventually I caught the slippery little sucker and as Caroline has said, once you have got hold of them they don’t struggle, it was lovely and warm and its little heart was beating really quickly, though my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest, not surprising as it had given us the run around.

Caroline said that she saw some headlights coming down the main road, and said we should perhaps be quick about it as it looks as if we were sheep rustling!

I know this sounds a bit weird but I had a little smell of this lamb, why? Well I wanted to know what they smelt of and I can confirm it’s only the sheepy smell that we know anyway.

I leaned over the fence as far as I could and plopped the lamb back in the paddock with the others, it skipped off into the night, the ungrateful thing didn’t even look back and say “thank you”.

I tried to be a gentle as possible and get as close to the ground as possible, I was also trying to avoid the barbed wire, I do hope it found its mum. I lay in bed that night and said to Caroline, I do hope I did not hurt the creature and she said that she was sure it would be fine.



Sunday

Next morning I was up bright and breezy, nice and early, we sat in the kitchen with Helen and Robert having our breakfast and we got on to the subject of sheep rustling as we had explained to Helen and Robert the incident with the lamb last night and even though we were putting it back with its mum, on the other side of the coin, it could have looked like we were stealing the creature.

Robert had said that he thought he had 5 rams missing, I asked if he had informed the police, as we know how much you can pay for a good ram and the thought of possibly losing 5 of the Woodstock is very bad.

I must have been in a silly mood as I did a drawing of the 5 Rams that Robert thought may be missing and I said that I would take the "Ram Photofit" to the police station in Junee, so the Police could keep an eye out, the pictures of the rams in the photo is exactly as Robert described them.

Helen said that the Merryville Lawn needed cutting and if I wanted to drive the mower down to the adjoining property they would be very grateful.

so I started the mower and drove it down the back lane, and at about 5 KPH and the crows were hoping along faster than I was driving.

It took me about 15 minutes to drive to Merryville and I was soon mowing the front, back and side lawns, and were I could not get the mower I would follow up with the whipper snipper.

As it was so hot and the grass was long I had wondered if I would have been lucky enough to see a snake, but no such luck.

Back at Woodstock, I had asked Helen where she would want the fire for a camp dinner tonight and she said down by the house dam, so Caroline and myself grabbed a shovel and a bucket and went down to look for a suitable position.

We both agreed on the most suitable position and checked how hard the ground was with the shovel. It was rock hard, so Caroline grabbed a bucket of water from the dam to soaked the ground, I waited a few minutes and then stuck the shovel in, it made little difference bit managed to skim off a few millimetres of soil. We then threw another couple of buckets of water on the ground to continued with the soaking.

A few minutes of soaking later” and another 3mm of ground was dug out, which carried on until we had dug about 2 inches (50mm).

Woodstock has an awesome amount of good fire wood, the stuff that burns really well, some Australian woods do not burn that well, so Caroline drove the truck up to the wood pile and she grabbed her riggers gloves to start loading some fire wood, I reminded her that this may be a place where snakes are and to be careful

We constructed the fire in the usual format and soon it was burning down nicely, we put Helen's camp oven full of water on the fire to heat it up and get all the wax out of the cast pot.

Soon it was time to introduce the lamb to the cast pot along with the vegetable, Helen and Robert had brought their chairs down from the house and we all sat around the camp fire watching the sun go down, if you didn't know that the Homestead was in the background

It took about an hour and a half for the dinner to cook in Helen's new camp oven and when it was done we took it up to the house to carve the meat and dish it up.

Helen seemed excited to see the results from her new (two year old) camp oven, the lamb was cooked perfectly, it looked like there would be non-left for the dogs.

Helen had made Caroline a surprise birthday cake, and this Carrot cake had been iced with a cream cheese Icing, which was yum and of course we all sang Happy Birthday, which was a bit belated I know, but better than nothing. We washed this down with a Penfolds fine Australian Tawny Port.

The following day it was time once again to head back to Canberra. This time Caroline took the wheel as she wanted to get the towing experience with Gypsy.

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Photos

Woodstock 5
Photo fit of the 5 missing rams

Loose Lambs
coming along the driveway at Woodstock, where we saw some lambs with "Blood" on their back sides, little did I know what lay ahead.

Strange Sight
Its strange having a fire a Woodstock, this is the first time in nearly 4 1/2 years, we have done so

Caroline's Birthday Cake
Helen improvised with the candle!