Daily Archives: 2012-08-13

Sheep truck coming at 8:00am they said in a phone call last night. So instead of going straight to SwimGym I had breakfast and then, planning on getting the lambs into the temporary yards at 7:45 – before the noise of the truck added to their skittishness and not so long before that they churned up the yards into a big mud bath. But the truck (and a portable race towed by a ute) arrived 15 minutes early. Not to worry, the lambs went into the yards quite easily – the truck driver helped – and on up into the truck wasn’t too much of a hassle either.

Then they said “got the documentation?” – the form allowing the sheep to travel and be accepted at the works. I had forgotten completely about that. The forms must be in the homestead, but where. Panic and much running in circles screaming and shouting (me and Bramble) but luckily the ute driver discovered he had a pad of blanks and I used that.

I accidentally – allegedly – used only the top form and so didn’t have duplicates for me as owner and the truck driver – just the one for Progressive Meats. The ute driver could see I was struggling – not having my glasses and being acutely aware that they wanted to be off – and so when it came to the check boxes he took over. “They should all be ‘no’ except for one” I said. He’d just ticked ‘no’ all the way down the page. “It’s the one where it says all the lambs were born on the place” I said. He crossed out a ‘no’ tick and put a big tick in the adjacent ‘yes’ box.

Aside: Peter, I think it was Peter who brought the race towed by his ute, Peter from “Stevies” Stephenson’s Transport, said he’d been here many times when the Harris family lived here – but he thought they lived in the homestead. Anyone local who hasn’t been here at some point and known the Harris.

Off they went, straight to Progressive Meats, 1.5km away.

I then changed quickly and rushed off to SwimGym only an hour later than usual. By now it was raining hard – the truck only just got the lambs loaded in time.

About a third of the way through my gym routine my mobile phone rings. It’s Debby from Progressive Meats. I’ve apparently ticked a box saying some of the lambs were imported and she said that if that was true Progressive Meats will have to reject them, return them to us. I apologised profusely and ran out of the gym and drove hurriedly to Progressive where I filled out another form – and that seems to have done the trick. Karola may have some smoothing of troubled waters to do when she returns – they do not like having to divert animals from their flow through the line, especially for perceived owner carelessness.

And so the day continued. A quick trip with Bramble in the car for food. A walk with Bramble which included giving the ewes a new tranche of grass – to their delight. More painstaking stuff with soldering leads onto mini jacks – very fiddly. Bramble got muddly on her walk – deliberately rolling in grass with mud and manure, so I hosed her down outside when we got back, She protested, but not a lot.

Late morning I scared off a black kitten from the cottage kitchen verandah. I presume it was after any scraps that Bramble might have left.

Late afternoon the sun came out and so I decided to venture up to the orchard pump shed and apply my new skills into putting a plug on the cable coming out of the water meter. The existing cable, despite some heavy and destructive nibbling by the lambs a few weeks ago, is long enough to reach inside the pump shed. My plan is to drill a hole through the tin wall and, using a weatherproofing screw-up gland, thread the cable into the shed with a watertight seal.

The end of the cable was to have a typical jack as seen on AC/DC transformers – the so-called “wall warts”. In this case it would be a female socket but even that is small enough to thread through the hole in the shed wall. If I thread the cable and then attach the plug I have to work kneeling down on a wire only two inches long, in the dark. Obviously it’d be a lot easier to attach the plug outside, standing up where there’s room to maneuver, and that was my plan.

Soldering and assembling these plugs is very simple for ordinary young folk with a steady hand and eye. It just pays to remember that you need to thread the plug backing over the cable before you solder, and the same goes for the heat-shrink tubing you use to make the connection waterproof and neat.

I remembered these simple things and, pushing the envelope, included a 200 ohm resistor inside the plug. I’ve calculated that is all I need to avoid blowing up the meter when I apply 9 volts to the wires in the cable. The end result can be seen beow, hampered only slightly by heavy mud directly underfoot and a couple of breaks for showers to pass – the electric soldering iron being a somewhat unknown quantity when out in the rain – and my glasses get a tad mussed up. It looks quite professional and is certainly the best plug-soldering I’ve done all day. It’s now 5:30pm and more, heavier rain is threatening.

Unfortunately – UNFORTUNATELY – I had forgotten one simple thing. The “gland” to seal the hole through the shed wall has a chunky piece which grips the cable and goes on the outside of the shed wall and a nut that goes on the inside, screwing onto the outside piece. The assembled plug can pass through the hole in the wall with ease. It can pass through the hole in the fastening nut on the gland, but it is much too big to go through the chunky piece that goes on the outside of the wall. BOTHER, or words to that effect. Tomorrow I’ll unsolder etc and remember this time to thread the cable through the chunky bit, before the heat-shrink tube which is before the plug cover. As I said, BOTHER.

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—15℃ 2.5mm rain [80.2]