It's snowing low down in the hills but that doesn't mean that we can stay inside and try to keep warm (damn it!). We have to go out and pick up rubbish that has been strewn across the property. Lost count of all the shoes that we have collected and we are seriously thinking they should be turned into a monument of some sort to show the waste of our consumer society. But who would see it? We have a couple of wool bales full and I don't think we have found a pair that match yet. Our neighbour thinks we should package them all up and send them up to the last owner.
The local metal recyclers from Timaru came out to collect all the old cars and scrap metal that has been lying all over the farm. It was a great day despite finding the dead cow in the creek that had washed down from the property above. Did we mention that we had a lot of rain?
Nick just managed to hook up all the pumping system with filter and UV treatment lamp and fill the tank before the water race blew out from all the rain.

Very funny day moving the water tank from the top paddock to nearer the house. Seems like a  pretty simple job, hire a fork lift and with a couple of strops we will have it done in no time. The first attempt broke the timber runners but undeterred we continued until the strops broke. This was only a minor delay and once re-spliced we carried on with great enthusiasm. We reconnected the strops to watch them slide around the tank and fall off. As the day was now getting late our friendly neighbour brought his tractor on to the job. Carrying the tank balanced between the forks of two tractors like a push me pull you sort of process, required good skills from Justin and Nick, but proved a nerve wracking experience for Lisa who was running between them directing operations. When it fell off the forks we decided to drag the bloody thing across the hay paddock for twenty metres and after three hours felt we were making good progress. As the sun was setting and the tank was still not quite in place it seemed  that all it needed was a decent shove and with some relief  we saw the tank resting nicely on the prepared site.