Coffee and Cows.

COFFEE.
I like coffee and though I am a long way from being a coffee snob I know what I like.  Hot!  Strong!  Real crockery!  Not $5 a cup!  And it doesn't have to be *real* instant is fine.  Oh, no sugar but milk please.  Just in case you ever need to make me one.

I buy coffee when it is on special, no favorite kind but not Mocanna.  It's not that I don't like it but I don't buy it.  Unless it is cheaper than everything else and it never has been while I have been in the shop.  
I always buy a few 500gm tins of Nescafe 43blend or whatever else is on special and usually have a couple of spare tins here.  It's been awhile since I did a big shop though so I was getting low.  Lower than I thought, because yesterday I went to make a cup and there was none.  None in the jar, none spare, none.   So I had to get the emergency jar out...and there wasn't much left in that and it is getting stale.  Not good.

I was at work one day, a couple of years ago now, and they had a jar of coffee...it was SO NICE.  I took note of the label and even looked for it next time I went shopping.  One hundred dollars a kilo!!!!   I don't think so.  So I bought the cheaper kind.   Came home and told the husband about it, he called me a tight bit**  and said "if you want that one then buy it" all the while puffing on a fag.  So I decided that I would, next time.  But I didn't, I couldn't bring myself to spend that much on coffee. 

So I needed coffee and a few other things so yesterday I go into town to get them.  I look at the coffees, nothing is on special, it's all pretty dear isn't it, go get the other stuff, come back...just in case it all got cheaper in the minutes I was away...it didn't, I picked up one tin, put it down and got one that was half that price...ummed and ahhed about getting the one I really like...came home with a tin of cheap Black and Gold coffee powder.  I mixed it with the good but stale emergency coffee.  It's OK.  Not too bad at all. 

The coffee I really liked, the $100 kilo stuff costs less than 1 packet of fags that the husband smokes.  The jar would last a few weeks at least.   A pack of fags lasts 3 days.   Why can I not bring myself to buy the dearer coffee?    If he can think nothing of spending $150+ a week, every week, on smokes and alcohol why can I not pay less than $20 for a jar of coffee each month?   We live frugally so we can spend on things we really want, maybe I just don't want that coffee enough.  Or like he says, maybe I am just too tight.

COWS.
We have the 4 big cows and now 2 calves and they all live happily out in our back paddock going through the gate into next doors paddock whenever they want.  So 2 big paddocks.  We also have 2 smaller paddocks that we sometimes put them in.  Son is a butcher and sometimes kills and cuts up a cow for other people.  He recently agreed to do a couple for the local cop who lives around the corner from us.  They were going to be brought around and dropped off here this evening.  Change of plans and he brings the 2 cows here yesterday morning and I am here alone.  I get them to put these 2 big cows into what we call the triangle paddock.  It's smallish and close to the house, Northside.   I fill a bath up so they have water and they seem to settle in.  TEarly this morning I am out getting the mower out so I can mow and I hear mooing and carrying on, go out the back and the 2 visiting cows are in with ours and causing a ruckus, headbutting and pushing going on with the 2 calves in the middle.   I go out to, I don't know, separate them somehow, realise I need a stick or something so run back to get something.  Back out to try again but no go, they like locking horns.  I come in and ring the son, thinking he could shoot them NOW but he isn't home yet.  I can't separate the bleedin' things and there is lots of aggression and these visitor cows have horns too so I think that it might be easier to get our lot into the small paddock on the South side of the house.  I've not done this by myself, we've always put the cows in there when there are the 2 of us here.  Today it's just me and first I need to open a couple of gates, block off some open area, block off more area where we took a fence down because we weren't going to put the cows out here for ages and it needed replacing.  I ring daughter to come help.   While waiting for her I manage to call up the 4 big cows and once they see what I am doing they come running and are in the paddock before I am ready...without the babies.   So the babies are in the big paddock with the 2 big cows following them and though they probably wouldn't hurt them I was worried they might.   But the babies wouldn't go into the backyard, they didn't know the mothers were through there...they ran back way down to the back of the paddock.  OK daughter is here now, she'll help even though she doesn't like our cows so is edgy with these big ones she doesn't know.  We try and walk the calves down, they are scared and run where we don't want them to.  Neighbough sees us, or hears the swearing, and comes and helps.  I leave him and daughter with calves while I go and try getting a mother out.  I am trying to get a mother out of the small paddock and back into the big paddock but no go.  They like the fresh grass in there.  Eventually the 2 mothers hear the calves and they and the fat cow come out and head back to the big paddock.  Great, we have them all together, now to get them back into the small paddock.  With daughter and neighbour helping it's not so hard.  Now I just have the 2 stranger cows left in the big paddock, I want them back in the triangle paddock but that can wait.  Bloody cows, I'm over them.

Son came out this afternoon but after a weekend of hunting and helping build his cousins house he wasn't up to shooting and hanging the cows.   That will now happen tomorrow, after work.  And if husband is not home by then to help him that will be another drama.