Last year we completed "dog-proofing" the fences around the house. They're not really dog-proof…both dogs have different strategies for going outside the border if they need to. But it works as a psychological barrier. They know they're not supposed to go outside the fenceline, and they are usually sitting inside the gate waiting for us when we come back after leaving them home.

Because wandering dogs are not welcome around here. Other properties have livestock, lambs, chickens. Its not unheard of for wandering dogs to be shot. Our dogs still trespass….but I'm there too, supervising. The giant commercial farm next door has unmanaged bushland that hosts rabbits, wallabies and all sorts of feral animals. The foxes that watch my geese are based in the property on the other side, and my dogs include that paddock in their daily patrol.

The space enclosed in our dog-proof yard is quite large. More than an acre. It includes the house orchard. We don't have much of a decorative garden, but there is a lot of grass. The first sign of spring, I think, is the greening of the paddocks…and the rapid growth of grass within the house yard.

All winter my livestock have struggled to get enough to eat. It bothers me that I have a large space of quite lush grass, and we actually just mow it down.

So I've tried a few times to kill two birds with one stone, and get the livestock to eat the grass. It hasn't gone well.

The sheep have had a few goes. Method One was to bring them in and let them loose. I was hoping they would eat all the grass. Instead, after a few hours, they started on the trees, and they busily stripped the fruit trees of leaves, flowers, bark….

Method Two was to bring them in about now, where most of the trees don't have much foliage yet. Unfortunately for the avocado trees, that made them the main target.

Method Three was to just have a small number of lambs in there. That sort of worked, but there wasn't enough of them to eat the grass enough. And then they started on the bark of the trees anyway.

The cows were a different process. They have managed to get in through the gate a few times, and each time they wreak havoc. They run through trees, smash down smaller ones or pull them out of the ground. The ground is soft, and they gouge huge welts. They crap everywhere, and they refuse to leave.

And so it was this week. We took a day off, and went up to Mount Buffalo and walked through the deepest snow I've ever seen there. The camping ground is closed, but we walked in, along the lake shore and back again. We had the place to ourselves, and it was lovely.

When we got back, as we came through the front gate I could see the ominous shape of a big black cow silhouetted against the fruit orchard. Its almost a kilometre to the house and as we got closer I could see more bulky shapes moving around. They had forced the gate on the dog-proof fence.

Twenty minutes of hilarity …huge cows cavorting around and around the trees, or smashing straight through them, round and round the house. The ejected ones sneaking back in while we chase the holdouts. The dogs trying to help, once we showed up, by being both fierce and craven as the cows respond.

At one stage I came barreling round the back of the house just as a cow ran the same corner the opposite way. Face to face, she dug all fours in to skid to a halt, then spun and took off again, spraying me with mud and divots.

So today I mowed it all, the many, many cowpats exploding hilariously.