STUPID PEOPLE

Okay so here's the thing, I am a little bit intolerant.  Not a shock to my nearest and dearest who know me well.  Why is it that people can't follow instructions or if they're not sure ask about something.  Its been a bit of a week of stupid people.  There's a little old guy who was living in our shearer's quarters (he's moving out today).  He's been working on the station for donkey's years and although lovely is not a rocket scientist. To give you an example, last year he painted our house.  He did a good job but decided that he also needed to spray ripcord around the place to deal with the spiders and flies.  For anyone who doesn't know Ripcord is a nasty insect spray.  Johnny turns up and he's got all the safety gear on, full body overalls, glasses and mask.  It was 6.00am and the kids had slept in the outside room that night because they wanted to watch a movie  They had just got up to go the loo and by the time they got back Johnny had sprayed the entire room with pesticide.  When I say the entire room, I mean the ENTIRE room.  There was pesticide running down the walls, all over the computer, all over the tv, all over all the other electrics in the room and all over the beds the children had been sleeping in.  He didn't think to ask us, and we were just in the kitchen, whether we even wanted ripcord sprayed around the place.   We only discovered he had done it when I went out there to check the email.

So last week Scott asked him to spray out an old crop ready for discing and ploughing in of a new crop.  Scott told him to spray the herbicide at 3 litres to the hectare.  He checked Johnny had understood and thought all was well.  Johnny turned up later that day and said "I need more herbicide I've run out".  Scott said to him that he couldn't of run out as there was plenty there.  "What rate did you spray it at Johnny".  "Oh, I sprayed it at 8 litres to the hectare as I wanted to make sure the thistles were killed".  Gotta love it when people think for themselves.  Scott just shook his head.  PGG Wrightsons merchandise agent is rubbing his hands together as we had to buy another 20litre drum of herbicide and they are not cheap!  As Johnny is in his 70's he often has senior moments and uses the wrong products in the sprayer on the tractor.  This week he also sprayed some thistles on the new young grass paddocks but used the wrong stuff and sprayed the grass as well.  There are now large stripes of dead grass all through the new grass paddocks.  He said "oh, someone must have put the wrong herbicide into the containers and labelled them wrong".  No Johnny, I think you might have read the containers wrong.  No-one touches the herbicides except him and I'm pretty sure they're not coming from the store in the wrong containers.

So we had trouble with Johnny with the spraying out of the crop and I've already said about the trouble we've had since he did that with the greasy cut worm and slugs.  But of course nothing is ever simple. The crop is now coming up but its really patchy and in some places doesn't appear to be coming up at all.  Scott telephoned the contractor who put the crop in who said "Oh yeah, I changed the depth of the seeder and decided to sow them deeper partway through".  So the upshot of that is, the seeds that were sown at the right depth have come up nicely, the ones that the contractor decided in his wisdom need to be sown deeper are struggling....I wonder if Scott will ask for a discount on the bill??  Interestingly Scott has spent the last couple of days trying to track down some more cropping equipment locally and is going to just do the rest ourselves.

Why don't people just ask a question and check before they make decisions?  There have been a couple of other stupid incidents this week as well.  Scott asked the staff to take the heifers away to another paddock.  He assumed they would shift the bulls out of the way before they took the heifers through.  They just decided to bunch the whole lot together.  Never mind, after a re-draft and a sort out things are now where they need to be.  Lets just hope the bulls didn't get to the heifers in the meantime and we won't have out of season calves.

Perhaps next week will be a better week.  I have to spend today trying to fix the window as Iwa the dog has decided that the best way to enter the house is Dukes of Hazzard style through the lounge window in the middle of the night.  The window doesn't have the best latch on it so she just pushes it with her nose and then squeezes her body in through the small gap.  She's not a small dog and only has three legs so its no mean feat.  Perhaps I could get Johnny to come up and fix it for me...I'm sure he'd have some sort of clever idea for what I need to do!!