Grazing challenges

I am going to have figure out how to get the cattle onto the good grazing that we have available. The obvious mistake that I have made is to bring the cattle onto the farm before I have proper fences in place and before I have proper water infrastructure in place. But of course it was not so much a mistake as me forcing my own hand. With the cattle here, I have been forced into some learning and some hands on experience that is informing and will continue to inform the decisions I make going forward.

I have a small paddock in which I have been confining the cattle. It measures probably 50 X 50m

I have been using this to get the cattle trained to the electric fence, the objective then being to be able to direct them around the farm to begin with the clearing work that is required. We have now been experimenting with letting them out of the permanent paddock. We are having limited success but will have to get things working much better, much quicker, if I am not to do significant damage to the pasture

And its really dry now. Veld fires starring up all over the show and very hot. We need rain.

Condition of grazing on 11 January 2014

Condition of grazing on 27 January 2014

The other problem I see is that taking care of the cattle is using the lettle time and energy I have availble. I need to begin focussing on getting the cottage habitable. The basic plan now is to get the cottage habitable to the point where we can get tenants or a caretaker, giving a permanent presence on the site.

• So toilet is important,
• running water (from rainwater)
• electricity (solar)
• perimeter fencing

On the "paperwork" front, we signed the last documents at the bond registration attorneys this afternoon. The documents can now be sent to Cape Town (as soon as the attorneys receive the "Enrolment Certificate " from the NHBRC. The woman at the NHBRC said it should take about three days when I dropped the forms on Thursday last week. So, I suppose, three (working) days ends tomorrow afternoon. Lets see!