Monthly Archives: January 2005

At last a little rain – but not enough to do serious good – the ground was almost dry again by evening.

Valuer came today and will report back later this week on the market value of the 16 acres next door. We continue to dream about what we’d do if we amalgamated the two properties. The valuer told us that all titles of long standing are entitled to have a house – so if we don’t buy the next door orchard we could end up with another house just a couple of hundred metres away. Although there’s lots of room in 16 acres, new houses are usually built quite close to the road – and that’s the piece of next door’s orchard nearest to us, of course.

Star’s appointment with doom is booked for Wednesday morning. He is most definitely organic and, due to his fence-jumping talents, pretty much ‘free range’ which will explain why he is so tough when they tuck into some lean beef at the reunion at Easter.

Little chicks are just beginning to show grown-up pinion feathers.

Weather: 16°C—21°C, NNE avg4km/h, 4mm rain, cloudy all day, light drizzle in the morning

We went up the coast to the Mahia Peninsula today, leaving a cloudy, muggy day but with no real prospect of rain. Karola’s dog bite is beginning to heal, but it’ll take several weeks to completely come right.

Two of Karola’s schoolboy helpers came round this morning before we left – took a keen interest in the young pigeon Karola has in a cage, and I then caught them chasing the bantam chicks – they said in order to tell us what sex they were. One chick took serious exception to being chased and, to my surprise, flew up about 2 metres into the air cheeping very loudly before running off into the weeds – they aren’t quite as helpless as I’d expected.

On the way from Napier up through Wairoa we encountered some light drizzle for about 10 minutes but at Mahia it was dry and windy, and the hillsides were toasting brown. It takes about 2½ hours each way; Bicka came with us and upon returning home was promptly sick on the hall carpet – well the road has several stretches of very winding and steep gradients.

Weather: 16°C—23°C, NNE avg7km/h, no rain, cloudy

In preparation for spending the day up at the Mahia Peninsula I’ve got all the stock able to roam over the Back, Middle, and ½ the Top paddocks. They’ve got two water troughs and access to shade. Took several hours to set up.

Mynah birds seem to drown in our water troughs; today I disposed of four carcases, 3 of them died in troughs this week – not very pleasant for the animals to drink out of, though I don’t think they’re particularly fussy.

Karola and I walked round the next door orchard, the one that is on the market and would make a good addition to our property. Prices are however very high and it’s probably not affordable – we have a valuer coming to tell us his estimate on Monday. We took Bicka on a leash, she loved it – I think it was the rabbit trails that excited her.

Weather: 11°C—22°C, NNE avg4km/h, no rain, cloudy

I moved Star into the Top paddock which has been rested since the hay was cut. Star hasn’t had a decent grass feed for a week – though he has had hay each day. We’re still waiting for a date for Star’s demise – it should be soon – our contact is scouring the area for fridge space.

Some of the lambs are getting pushy – squeezing through fence and in the gaps between gate and post. One that pushed into the Middle paddock has a most annoying, grating baah and has been yelling for its mother all day – I swept them all back where they belonged and we got some peace.

I bought some permanent wire strainers and with Karola’s help we cut the 120m 9-wire fence and inserted the the strainers. Each strainer is about 100mm (4″) long, just long enough that if you cut one of the fence wires you can fasten each side to the strainer and be back where you were – you don’t need to add any wire. Then we tensioned up the wires and it looks a lot better as well as being much more lamb resistant.

While we were doing this Bicka the beagle wandered into the next door orchard – she is adept at knowing when we’re distracted. Because we couldn’t find her, Karola went across the road where she heard the neighbour’s dog barking. She saw the neighbour’s family playing on their lawn, walked up the drive, leaned on the fence to ask if they’d seen Bicka, and was bitten hard on the arm by their ferocious Rotweiller. As we found out later, after spending 4 hours in Hastings Hospital emergency ward, it’s a big bite but thankfully shallow rather than deep so hasn’t damaged major muscle or bone – and it thankfully missed any major blood vessels too. Apparently, in peaceful Napier/Hastings, they get about one case of dog bite a week.

Weather: 10°C—23°C, NNE avg4km/h, no rain, mainly fine

The sheep were allowed into the Back paddock where there’s a little more grass. The grass in the Triangle is now well browsed and what’s left is burning dry in the constant dry wind and warm temperatures. Forecast for Friday was rain but the forecasters keep putting it off; now it’s expected on Monday.

Karola saw a small rabbit in the blackberry and weeds between the Back and Middle paddocks. Bicka was close by and snuffled around until the rabbit made off – I don’t think she’d know what to do with it if she caught it – less embarrassing really just not to notice it.

Weather: 13°C—22°C, NNE avg 5km/h, no rain, mainly fine

Lambs are getting a bit bored and have been getting through the wire fences into the shelter belt reserve and the Top paddock. They also knocked down the electric fence round the Canary Island Pine – Karola likes to keep them off the pine needle mulch because they bring in weed seeds, but they like camping there and eating the weeds.

The electric fence problem was easily solved – most of the time the beasts all respect the electric fence whether or not it is actually electrified, but occasionally, like now, they need a reminder so I attached an energiser and order was restored.

The wire fences however are different. We have several types of permanent fence:

1. Traditional post and batten wire fences with 7 wires of #8 wire and posts every 6-8 metres.
2. Modified traditional with posts closer together, no battens, and 9 wires.
3. Sheep netting on posts – with the netting laced to a top and bottom wire and stapled to posts at 4-6 metre intervals. The netting has rectangular holes, smaller at the bottom to keep lambs in.
4. Sheep netting on narrow iron posts called ‘standards’ or ‘waratahs’ at 4-6 metre intervals with with the netting laced to a top and bottom wire.

Our experience has been mixed. As Kaz told us many months ago, the sheep netting, despite being designed specifically for sheep and goats, isn’t a good choice. When they get hungry the beasts stick their heads through the holes and get stuck. This means the stock need checking more regularly and thoroughly than otherwise. It is cheap and quick to put up but I doubt we’ll use any more and we’ll gradually replace what we’ve got.

I saw the battenless design in an Australian farm book – it is cheaper to put up because stapling battens on takes too much time as well as being pretty hard on the knees. You need to put the posts a bit closer together and the wire needs to be really tight. I used this technique on fences crossing our view from the house, hoping that it’d be almost invisible compared to the batten and post fence, and it is better. However, I put the posts a little too far apart, and I didn’t buttress and stay the end posts (strainer posts) as I usually would – because I was trying to make the fence invisible. The soil here is quite light and so the posts will move about a bit when the wires are strained up – and that’s what happened. One or two lambs found they could squeeze through the loose wires.

So, I tightened up the 9 wires on one of the 9-wire fences; it’s only about 40 metres long and each wire has its own permanent wire strainer so it’s quite easy. However the extra strain on the end posts pulled them over a smidgen, just enough of course that the gate catch wouldn’t reach any more, so I lengthened the chain and it’s working again.

The other 9-wire fence is about 120 metres long and doesn’t have permanent strainers on each wire so I think probably I’ll get some permanent strainers and attach them rather than trying to just tighten up the existing wires.

Weather: 14°C—20°C, ESE avg 2km/h, no rain, mainly fine

A quiet day – just a morning feed for the bantams, 1/2 bale of hay for Star the steer, and checking the water troughs.

Graham from the next door orchard came over to talk. He’s thinking of selling up and we’re interested in buying or swapping some land to regularise our block. Our boundary is very roughly a square with a large slice of one corner torn off – and it’s that torn boundary which dips in very close to the house, unfortunately on the North West side, so we are squeezed for room to plant trees for that front aspect, and the stock and equipment need to come quite close just to get between the Front paddock and the Triangle.

Ideally we’d like the whole 7 hectares (17 acres), Karola’s mother did bid for it last time it changed hands many years ago. But the price will probably be too high. Next best would be to add a chunk of about 3 hectares which would make our block more of a square. We could do a swap so that Graham’s block got rid of its pokey bits – short rows are a pain for orchardists because they have to use a big area at each end – a headland – so the tractors can turn, and that makes short rows very wasteful.

At the very least Graham and I have agreed that we’ll get a sliver of land which adds 20-30 metres at the point where we’re most squeezed – and even that would be a big improvement.

Weather: 15°C—25°C, NNE avg 4km/h, no rain, mainly fine

Hot and humid today. I made a long black alkathene hose into two hoses with snap-fitting at the break. The plastic click-on or snap-fit connections save time but usually leak a bit – it’s worst when plastic fittings join to a metal tap.

We have artesian water from our well, drilled over 20 years ago by Mr Hills from just down the road. That well is about 10 cm (4″) in diameter and as I recall goes down about 16 meters – the water is cool, clean and will flow almost 2 metres into the air under its own natural pressure. There used to be two shallower wells, the water from them tasted a bit metallic and musty. They were both filled with concrete as a condition from the council for boring the ‘new’ well.

To minimise the disruption to the historical maze of pipes leading from the old well near the green shed, a pipe was brought up from the new well to the old well head and connected to it – so that all pipes coming off the old well head still worked. More recently someone extended the pipes so that the new well also fed a tap on the other side of the house next to the rainwater tank, presumably so that in times of drought the rainwater tank could be topped up with well water.

Quite recently we discovered an extra valve in this extension and immediately beyond the valve the pipe split into two – one continuing to the tap near the rainwater tank, the other mysteriously joining the pipe that leads from the rainwater tank to the pump under the verandah – this is the pump that keeps a plastic tank in the attic full of water, providing us with water pressure for showers and washing machines etc. As you will have gathered, we’re not on town supply or mains water.

Now for the mystery. When I turn on the valve connecting the new well with the tap by the rainwater tank and the pump, the rainwater tank fills with water – eventually overflowing. I’m still not really sure how it works because there doesn’t seem to be enough natural pressure to fill the rainwater tank – it’s almost 3 metres high – but it turns out that we can conveniently top up the rainwater tank from the well and we can also run the pump directly off well water – which is useful when we want to clean out the rainwater tank -it’s currently got 10cm or so of evil sludge in the bottom and needs a clean.

For Christmas 2002 Karola and I bought each other matching 22,500 litre rainwater tanks – so we now have 3 tanks, joined with pipes so that they form one large 67,500 litre (15,000 gallon) rainwater supply. Longer term we expect to install a new pump and high-pressure system so that the house runs as if we were on town mains supply – but that’s a year or so away.

Weather: 16°C—28°C, NNE avg 6km/h, no rain, mainly fine

Another scorcher – probably over 30°C here (the weather station is 15+ km away). Very pleasant in the shade and exposed to the light breeze – otherwise it was a sweltering day. I kept indoors after a quick check of the troughs and feeding the bantams.

Karola, on the other hand, continued her battle with thistles. Armed with the little mulching mower and a spray plastic can of Roundup weed killer she’s zapped about 1/3 of the Middle paddock thistles, despite the heat. Karola also fixed up an extra water trough for the beasts and tended her young pigeon which she’s caged in an old hen coup under the big palm tree where the 20 or so feral pigeons live.

Weather: 12°C—28°C, North avg 6km/h, no rain, fine

Today Kaz and I worked on the 22 ewes and 39 lambs, and it should mean we can avoid mustering them and doing any more footrotting, dosing, or spraying for 6 – 8 weeks. The previous night I’d relaid electric fence so that the stock could spend the next 10 days or so on the Triangle and in the wilder parts of the garden, including the bamboo grove and under the big Oak. I’d also relocated and hooked up one of the portable plastic water troughs. It’s best to put these in the shade and tip them out every couple of days so that they fill with cool water from the well – the alkathene pipes and black plastic troughs quickly warm up in the sun – the water in the pipes actually gets hot, in the troughs it’s unpleasantly warm.

So, Kaz and I began by getting all 61 ewes and lambs into the makeshift yards – it’s amazing how they pack down into just a few square metres. We’d prepared a bit better today, tried a different direction, coming in from the West into the yard and we’d extended the yards with some wings to guide the flock in. It worked well; they do seem to prefer coming from the West across the short North end of the Island paddock rather than directly North up the Eastern fenceline, but that may be because they’re familiar with the Northern approach – not sure. Sheep psychology – getting it right – can make a huge difference to the time and effort to getting the sheep work done.

As I brought the flock into the Island paddock I’d tried to identify for sure the couple of badly limping ewes – one red tag, one without a tag but with a bit more wool than most of the others. So, the first thing we did when we got them penned was to find these limpers and do their feet. In the end we manicured and sprayed antibiotic on the feet of 4 ewes with footrot.

As I was doing the last couple of these, Kaz administered the expensive zinc pills to each of the ewes, marking the ones he’d done with green raddle – a sort of chalk that’ll wash out in a week or so. The pills are $3 each and are huge – like small cigars; they protect against Facial Eczema for about 6 weeks.

The final treatment was to spray all of them – ewes and lambs – with something to kill flys and lice. We first tidied up the bottoms of about 6 lambs who’d obviously been pigging out on too rich a diet. By the time we’d done this it was already 11:00am and really hot. Kaz, the expert, then whipped through giving the required 15ml of Magnum spray in three swathes – one along the backbone, one around the top of the hind quarters, and one across under the tail. As we did them, we let them out into the Triangle, to avoid missing any or doing any twice.

I’ll probably repeat the Facial Eczema pill treatment and the spray-on for flies and lice in about 6 weeks – I’m beginning to miss having a set of good permanent yards; can’t always expect Kaz to spend two days coming over to help out. In fact his expertise makes things go much more smoothly, and having an extra body does make it a lot easier so the next time may be quite a chore.

Weather: 15°C—28°C, North avg 5km/h, no rain, fine

Yesterday Kaz had brought his little diesel truck over from his farm on the other coast and the first task of the day was to load up the 10 2-tooths (1 year old) ewes. Average weight of these was probably over 60 kilos so neither Kaz nor I were particularly wanting to lift them bodily onto the truck, so Kaz had a “cunning plan”.

We penned up the 2-tooths using a gateway into the Island paddock and, as usual, a couple of unused gates and lots of string – the gate made one side of the pen, the fence made a second side, the 2 unused gates completed the rectangle. Then, using maize, I enticed them into the pen – but no, one of them just broke away each time, leading to a mass breakout and having to start over again. After a while Kaz and Karola arrived and we jointly shooed them into the makeshift pen.

Then Kaz backed his truck up to the gate so that if we opened it about a metre it lined up with the sliding gate in the sheep crate on the back of the truck. An old door made a ramp from the ground up to the sheep crate entrance. Two pieces of picket fence that we’de saved from Bridget’s house and garden remodelling 2 years ago were pressed into service as the sides of the ramp. We used hay bales to buttress this contraption and block any likely escape routes. Then Florence (the hand-reared 2-tooth) walked up onto the truck of her own accord and the rest followed more or less enthusiastically – altogether a smooth, quick operation and better than we had anticipated. Full marks for Kaz’s “cunning plan”.

Today’s sale had been advertised as the annual Stortford Lodge 2-tooth ewe fair with over 8000 sheep to sell. Kaz says that in the old days there used to be 30,000 2-tooth ewes for sale at this fair, but in fact, once we got there, it looked like a lot less than 8000 were for sale today. We finished our paperwork, got the ewes off our truck and into a pen, and had a chat to our agent, then went home for breakfast. The agent said that our 10 ewes wouldn’t come under the auctioneer’s hammer till after lunch.

About 11:00am we returned to the sale yards and spent the next couple of hours watching pens of sheep being sold by a rotating team of 3 auctioneers helped by a couple of apprentices. Apparently the auctioneers have an allotted time to get through each sale and they are good at keeping to time – that’s why we knew our sale would be around 12:30pm even though there were more than 30 pens auctioned before us. I really found it hard to spot who was bidding – Kaz speculates and alleges various “tricks of the trade” whereby an auctioneer sometimes pretends there’s a bid just to start things off, or to keep things rolling – so you’re sometimes not sure whether there’s a real bidder or not. And often the agents have been given instructions to purchase sheep on behalf of a client if the price is really keen. Then there’s the reserve price and in each auction a little sigh of relief when the auctioneer says “they’re on the market” – meaning that bidding has reached a price the seller would actually agree to.

We saw prices vary from highs of $120 or so for really good condition pens from well known farms right down to $50 – $60 for odd lots of “composites” (mongrel sheep). The prices were all getting to be low as the auctioneers worked their way round to our pen. As it got close I bumped into our agent again and told him that I really didn’t want to get less than $70 each, and that these sheep were East Fresian crossbreds who came from mothers that averaged 200% lambing this year – ie twins.

The head auctioneer strode into the pen; quick consultation with my agent. Then, to my disappointment, one of the apprentices opened the auction – up until now only the 3 real auctioneers had conducted the auctioning – not a good sign I thought. He opened the bidding asking for $80, when there was no response dropping it to $70 and then down to somewhere in the $60s. I was not very hopeful, maybe no-one would be interested at all. Just as I was giving up hope, someone offered $75 – whew! The apprentice aucioneer took off from there, going back and forth between a couple of people and steaming up through the $80s and into the $90s – I began to smile.

Then things slowed up a bit and I thought it was over, but no, the apprentice kept at it and edged them up till it went over $100 – and that got the onlookers interested – we hadn’t had over $100 for any pen in the last hour. I must admit our sheep looked plump, alert, and big compared to most of the other pens – and being East Fresian crossbreds they looked a bit different too. I was delighted when the auctioneer closed the deal at $102 per ewe. A very successful first visit to the Stortford Lodge saleyards.

Weather: 15°C—29°C, WNW avg 6km/h, no rain, mainly fine

Hay was turned this morning and baled in the afternoon. Karola, the hay maker in the family, now has 86 bales from the Top paddock and 49 from the Front paddock. We emptied the shed and put the newest bales in the back – got all in quite comfortably; the green shed would probably hold 200 bales at a pinch. Kaz came over late afternoon for the visit to the sale tomorrow, and helped with getting in the bales.

Rang about the ‘home kill’ of Star for the reunion feast at Easter. Star is getting fitter (and tougher) by the day – well thinner anyway, despite us feeding him hay, so the sooner the better. Star was never a pet – just the steer calf of a thoroughly unpleasant Dairy Shorthorn cow that we unkindly gave to a friend last year. The notion isn’t bad – a nice placid, elegant cow to eat the long grass while the sheep nibble the short stuff. But this cow and calf were not the right choice.

The cow came with calf at foot from an organic herd over near Napier and had a dropped udder; we saved her from going to the works; she cost us $500. But she was far from friendly, quite unmanageable – getting her into a horse float and taking her to be mated at the friend’s farm was life-threatening just because she was too big and strong and didn’t want to go. She jumped and partially flattened a few fences and beat up the horse float in a good imitation of a really mad cow before suddenly giving in and walking into the float and starting to munch hay. So we dropped her off and she chased the poor bull around the paddock – I suspect she was in calf within 15 minutes of arriving . . . and we just sort of forgot to go and pick her up. She’s had a heifer calf and is happily staying put – and we’ve explained to our friend what must be rather obvious – that we don’t want her back.

So that’s the story of Star’s mother; Star isn’t very friendly and annoyingly jumps fences so we’re never sure when we’re going to see him in the flower beds or out on the road, so it’ll be somewhat of a relief when he is dispatched. He eats enough for 5-7 sheep as well, and our magic number of 42 sheep is a bit high if we have a cattlebeast as well.

Weather: 7°C—24°C, NNE avg 6km/h, no rain, scattered cloud

Mike came and mowed the lawns today. No rain though it looked like we would get a bit in the afternoon. Quiet day on the smallholding. Karola and I moved the gates we use as temporary yards into position in the Island paddock. Kaz is coming tomorrow to help with putting on anti-fly and anti-lice Magnum on the ewes, and giving them their anti-Facial Eczema pills. We go to the sale on Friday – still not sure if we should sell Florence, the 2-tooth which was hand reared – but she’s always been a sickly beast so it’s probably best that she go. We suspect that she missed out on her colestrum – the mother’s initial milk that innoculates against many lurgies.

Weather: 9°C—20°C, East avg 3km/h, no rain, cloudy

We were talking to the neighbouring orchardist who had been supervising pruners all day removing damaged fruit, and he’s not a happy orchardist. Seems that the summer hail storm just before Christmas which brushed us and went across his orchard wiped out most of his crop. I remember seeing a thin covering of small hailstones that melted almost on impact but it was very quick – all over in less than 10 minutes. Apple orchardists here rely on export of the bulk of their crops, and export fruit is stringently controlled for look and for substance – the apples cannot be blemished or bruised and they must have a high calcium content so that they keep well. Just one hailstone bouncing off a growing apple bruises it beyond repair.

The export marketing board have been increasing their requirements placed on growers – driven by competition to produce ever higher quality fruit. The NZ ‘kiwi’ dollar is, for exporters, depressingly strong. And the weather is surely getting more unsettled – there are more frequent and more violent changes in the weather, increasing the chance that the crop on the trees will be ruined. He is about ready to give it all up and retire, after building up his orchard over 20 years into the best kept and most tightly run orchard around here. As I said, “Ten minutes and it’s gone”.

Meanwhile the livestock are glad of a cooling wind and lower temperatures than yesterday. We heard that the young woman next door who was looking after them while we were in Wellington had to deal with Star jumping over a fence into the Top paddock. Not surprising when Star was on short rations and right next door was our fragrant green grass waiting to be mown for hay. She strung up a piece of white electric fence wire a bit above and forward of the fence and that did keep Star back where he belonged. Our young helper referred to Star as ‘she’; we wonder whether she’d have been so willing to drive Star back into his proper paddock had she realised he was a ‘he’ – well a steer anyway.

Weather: 16°C—26°C, SW avg 8km/h, no rain, fine

Arrived back around 8:00pm. It’s been a hot day up here – next door orchard measured 36° after lunch. Livestock reinstated in their earlier pastures – they go behind permanent fence when we’re not here but sometimes when we’re here they can graze the Triangle, and sometimes the lawn, penned in with Spider electric fence. All livestock present and correct.

To my delight there are two yellow chicks, one under each of the job-sharing bantam hens. Not so hot for the Pukekos though – the Top paddock was cut for hay earlier today and the nest was destroyed – and also one Pukeko got munched up in the mower apparently. Dead mynah in one of the water troughs, dead pigeon and a live one at the foot of the big palm tree where about 20 pigeons live. It’s crowded up there even though possums occasionally climb up and have a high-protein feast, and so these two probably fell out before they could fly properly. We mean to get rid of the pigeons, they foul the roof – turning our tanks of rainwater into pigeon poo wine – oh well we haven’t died yet.

Weather: 14°C—33°C, NW avg 9km/h, no rain, fine & hot

We spent a few days in Wellington, back in Hastings tomorrow. Next door neighbour looked after the livestock for us while we were away.

Weather: 14°C—26°C, ESE avg 7km/h, no rain, fine

Forecast is for settled weather for next week. Real summer weather.

Weather: 12°C—28°C, NE avg 6km/h, no rain, fine

Even the hay maker says it’s hot.

Weather: 11°C—28°C, South avg 7km/h, no rain, fine

Star got ½ a bale of hay – otherwise all quiet today.

Weather: 11°C—29°C, NE avg 6km/h, no rain, fine

Ewes and lambs moved to Back paddock for the next 3 days, including Star. The 2-tooths moved to Front paddock; they are booked to go into the local 2-tooth ewe sale on Friday 21st.

Bantam hens still sitting; cheeping indicates a chick; I am leaving them alone for now to avoid repeat of last time where my interference probably cost us a couple of chicks.

Hay making may be possible later this week, though the rain earlier will need some time to dry out.

Weather: 11°C—22°C, NE avg 6km/h, no rain, fine – in fact a beautiful day

Weather cleared after early drizzle. The Onekawa weather station, which is what I use for daily readings, is about 10km North of here and they got no rain at all. The afternoon here was really nice, sunny and warm with light breeze – “situation normal” :-).

Bantams – 2 dead chicks, one yellow, one black but … unexpectedly … one live yellow chick. One egg not hatched; hens still sitting. I suspect that we started with more than four eggs and that Bicka the beagle, and/or rats and/or the cat and/or possums had a feast along the way. Still, the mother hens do seem a little careless of their brood – Karola suggests that the tandem nesting is a problem – they get confused as to who’s egg/chick is who’s – and don’t have enough room to manouever.

Still only two eggs under the Pukeko – she must be getting a bit bored with the attention.

I cut and trimmed two dozen bamboo stakes for our plumber – for his garden. One cannot cultivate one’s plumber too much in the Hawkes Bay. There’s so much developement in the area that they find it hard to fit other small jobs in.

All animals given fresh grass in the Triangle. They went from fractious noisy beasts to contented ruminants.

Weather: 12°C—20°C, South avg 8km/h, no rain, cloudy – sunny in afternoon

Indoors tasks and a trip to town to pick up sharpened topper/mower blades and Karola’s elderly chainsaw (no maiden should be without one). Also bought a large crescent spanner – to open up the filter plug on the old 5000 gallon (22,500 litre) rainwater tank – we hope to get it cleaned shortly; it hasn’t been cleaned out for decades and there’s 20-30cm of sludge in the bottom.

Fed out ½ a bale of hay for Star; he’s looking a bit thin but quite healthy – tough steaks for the reunion I suspect.

Bantams hatched their eggs today. Given the high mortality last time I’m keeping clear for another day, though the signs are not good. Whether it’s infanticidal hens, or a stealthy cat or other predator, I suspect most, if not all, the chicks are dead. I’ll have a proper look tomorrow.

Karola’s pukeko is still sitting – she took a photo for the record.

Sound of rain on roof, and of water tinkling into the rainwater tanks is calming and rather nice – for a few days anyway.

Weather: 12°C—15°C, South avg 5km/h, 18mm rain, cloudy – and it rained all day – not hard, but persistent

Tonight a light rain began to fall so it was just as well that Karola spent over 2 hours this morning cutting thistles in the Top paddock – so that our hay, which is due to be cut later this week, will not hold unpleasant prickly surprises when we feed it out. It amounted to three or four 25 kilo bags full of thistles, not too bad for a 2 acre paddock.

Ethical issue arose however. Karola flushed a Pukeko from her nest right in the middle of the hay-to-be; it has two eggs in it. A bit of research indicated that a normal clutch was a dozen eggs or more, so perhaps she’s just started laying. So, do we put the eggs under a bantam – no, even if the eggs were hatched there’s a grisly Internet story of bantams getting cross with the ugly chicks that emerge and killing them. Should we just mow round the nest – well, even though Pukekos are pretty hardened to human contact I think a hay mower close by might just spook the hen. We’ll see what happens in the next day or so – it may be that the hen is already spooked by us tramping around cutting the thistles. Pukeko are native New Zealand swamp hens, also found in Australia and Africa. Here they’re very common and, despite being native, are only partially protected. The Internet story mentioned official culls of 1000s of Pukekos in one wildfowl reserve because they were hastening the extinction of Brown Teal by “ripping off the heads” of Brown Teal ducklings. Talk about bad press 🙂 .

The Pukeko eggs are larger than a bantam egg and smaller than a fullsize chook egg – olive background with nice speckled brown spots.

Weather: 10°C—25°C, NNE avg 10km/h, 2mm rain, cloudy – finally started light rain about 6:00pm

This morning I bought another 25 kilos of maize – it’s easier to lead these sheep with the lure of maize or sheepnuts than it is to herd them – they’re those sort of sheep :-). Late afternoon I gave both lots of sheep extra pasture in the Triangle. Also spent an hour on thistle chopping in the Triangle where the sheep had grazed it bare.

As the sun set I thought I’d lost the two bantam youngsters – but eventually found them, not with their fathers on the normal perch but inside the green shed where the hay is stored (and the bantam hens are brooding) up on one of the rafters.

Weather: 15°C—30°C, WSW avg 10km/h, no rain, scattered cloud – strong south-westerly wind gusts

I gave the ewes and lambs and Star (the steer) another pasture break – which should last a couple of days.

It’s a good idea to tidy up each paddock soon after the sheep have eaten out the grass and most of the weeds. Middle, Island, Back and Front paddocks, and the Tall Trees road frontage are all ready to do. Top is ready to cut for hay and the livestock are munching their way through pieces of Triangle.

I spent a couple of hours picking up the windfall branches in the Island paddock – still more to do. We’re enthusiasts for mulching rather than burning when we can – bamboo is the only stuff that really resists mulching and is considered dangerous when mulched due to the very sharp needles produced. So the windfalls get sorted into potential firewood and mulchables. I plan to clear the Island paddock of all except for a couple of old and decomposing tree trunks which are modestly decorative and provide nook and cranny shelter for the sheep.

Karola took a knife to the Scotch thistles in Middle – we’ll spray the Californian thistles with Roundup next time the wind is right and it’s not too hot. Then we expect to top the paddock with the pull-behind mower, just to level out the few thickets of weedy woody stems, and let it rest and recouperate for a few more weeks.

The slow control of the giant bamboo continues; it is amazing how tall and how large new stems can grow in a matter of days – though the really fast growers tend to be very soft and often die back of their own accord. We got rid of a small mountain of bamboo rubbish on next door neighbour’s spring bonfire of apple prunings – but there’s more to do. The stuff takes ages to rot and so is a pain to dispose of – maybe we should take to the public dump but that’s a lot of trips with trailer and each load costs over $5.00. So we are going to have our own fire and today I carted two trailer loads to the designated fire spot. It’ll need a gentle southerly wind and the lifting of the current district fire ban.

Weather: 16°C—25°C, ENE avg 7km/h, no rain, scattered cloud

Water for the 2-tooths, bale of last year’s hay for Star and the ewes & lambs – they’ve eaten out their current paddock allocation so will get extra tomorrow.

Weather: 18°C—29°C, North avg 12km/h, no rain, scattered cloud

Today the ewes and lambs stayed put – I moved Star in with them. I checked the 2-tooths’ feet – one had footrot in one half of one foot and a growth on her nose. I removed both and doused with antibiotic. It was also a bit daggy so I removed the worst – likewise with the other daggy 2-tooth. Drenched them all with some anti-worm stuff I bought jointly with Karola’s brother Kaz last year – not really sure if it is still viable – it’s kept in a relatively cool place in the wash-house. Relocated the 2-tooths to a fresh swathe of pasture along the boundary fence in Triangle.

Spent 30 mins weeding more Bathurst Burr plants from along the boundary fence in Triangle – it’s the same place every year, in the shade of a small tree.

I took a couple of concrete fence posts from our stockpile of about 20 and put them next to 2 broken ones in the Triangle boundary fence – wonder if our neighbour will remember his offer to replace the broken ones if I supplied the posts.

Very hot and humid today – like a sauna out there.

Thinking about the shearing and wool reminds me that we got our first wool cheques in 2004. On 23rd October the 23 pregnant ewes were crutched and 10 hoggets were shorn – well in fact one of the ewes was shorn too by mistake. Cost $84.65; wool cheque $47.67. Then on 13 December 21 ewes shorn. Cost $96.35; wool cheque $64.28.

Weather: 19°C—26°C, NNW avg 14km/h, one light shower, overcast

A lamb that seemed to have been rejected by its mother in mid December and which we’d started feeding from a bottle just after Christmas, finally died. It was scouring terribly, poor little thing. Wonder whether it was the drench or the goats milk I gave it that killed it. Maybe after eeking out existence on grass too early we just intervened too late. Anyway I buried it today. Five lambs have died so far, so we’re down to 39 from the original 44. We docked them all on 13th December, same day that the ewes were shorn and all the lambs were vaccinated for pulpy kidney and tetanus. So, if my inexpert administering of the injections was adequate, they should be safe from those diseases. I hear that pulpy kidney is rampant in parts of Hawkes Bay. This year the death toll is one ewe (bearing problem – most unpleasant) and 5 lambs. At the same stage last year when these same ewes which were just one year old and lambing for the first time, we lost one ewe due to birth complications and 9 lambs, mainly still-born.

Karola mowed the extensive patch of barley grass under one of the paddock oaks today; I mowed a metre strip round Top which has been shut up for hay since the end of November – the edges get very weedy and I’m hoping that with this pre-cut edging the hay making will leave a clean paddock without the weed infested fringe we got round Front last November. Also cut all the Scotch thistles in Island – there’s still a swag to do in Middle, Back, and Triangle – but nothing like the heavy crop of thistles back in October. Constant cutting below the crown is supposed to discourage them – letting them flower is said to be a bad idea. This doesn’t apply to the patches of Californian thistles which we’ve started spraying – cutting just encourages them it seems and they spread via their root system, rarely from seed.

Phoned Richard Rolls, the hay maker, he says he can come late next week – will be keeping an eye on the weather forecast now to see if we can expect 3-4 days without rain. Also contacted the local Stock Agents to discuss selling our 10 fat 2-tooths in next week or so – Karola’s brother Kaz says they might reach $100 each; he’ll probably come over for the sale and also to help me drench all the ewes with a slow-release zinc capsule to fend off Facial Eczema – among the long list of ailments such as worms, fly strike, footrot and pulpy kidney, it’s fatal like pulpy kidney and horrible for the sheep, like fly strike. Most of these seem worst during the summer months.

Weather: 15°C—24°C, East avg 7km/h, no rain, scattered cloud

The 10 East Fresian 2-tooth (ie year-old) ewes – the remnants of last year’s lambing – including the bottle-fed pet lamb Florence – are being fattened for market. The 22 2-year old ewes and their lambs got some fresh pasture which means an elaborate game of checkers to get them past the 2-tooths who are in the way. More like that game of sliding squares where you try to make a magic square by shunting numbered pieces left/right up and down. Much baa’ing and bleating but eventually everyone settled down again. Star the steer is in heaven – he thinks he’s a big sheep – in fact he thinks he’s the boss sheep – and now he’s got first pick of the Triangle pasture, fenced between the older ewes and lambs on one side and the 2-tooths on the other.

The tree we planted last year aren’t doing as badly as feared – despite the robust ‘easycare’ regimen. In the fenced off strip along the Triangle boundary, the 5 Totara trees are still alive and just poking above the long grass., and the 10 Leylandii are also surviving despite being pretty dry. The 10 Karo are no more – well there’s one small leaf on one twig of one tree left. We are learning the hard way just how long a sheep’s neck is – they must be telescopic; next time we plant further away from fence and maybe I’ll add a hot wire near the ground to keep the sheep back. Better than 3 years ago when a whole row of Karo – over a dozen – struggled on for a year and a half only to be completely devoured by our sheep … hence the fencing off of the strip along the boundary.

In the far corner of the Tall Trees road frontage the Toitoi and Manuka and flax have been smoldering away for 2 years and are just beginning to put on some height – that corner of the property will be the first to have a decent group of NZ natives taller than the weeds. The 28 Titoki down the new driveway on the edge of the mature oaks in the Oaks road frontage are doing OK – most are over a metre tall – but they did need saving a couple of times from the invasions of Convulvulus threatening to shut out their sunlight completely. 5 Pittisporum along the sunny side of the drive have survived a serious browsing from the sheep – another example of being too near the fence. We live and learn.

Weather: 12°C—21°C, ENE avg 6km/h, no rain, scattered cloud

I think it appeals to ‘control freaks’ – this erecting of temporary electric fencing – getting it unnecessarily straight and tidy. Anyway, now that the festivities at the end of 2004 are over, the sheep can begin to graze the rough lawn of the Triangle. To explain, the curtilage – the area round the house that sort of ‘goes with’ the house – consists of driveways, lawn, shrubberies and thickets of mainly Camelia trees , and a fair expanse of ‘rough’. This ‘rough’ extends the lawn, it is a triangular area out to the West of the house; it has no intervening permanent fence, but is grazed or mown with a ‘tow-behind’ agricultural topper/mower. Animals were banned from the ‘rough’ in December to minimise the dung brought indoors by people strolling on the grass, but now they’re back. And so about 100m of temporary Spider Fence cordons off the ‘rough’ from the lawn – and creates a swathe or break for grazing. I’m worried that too much good food too quickly will give the sheep indigestion – and that we may have a hot dry summer ahead so want to eek out the fodder over the next month or so.

Karola and I took a look at the Top – 2 acres set aside for summer hay. There’s a few thistles it’d be worth removing, rather a lot of barley grass in patches round the edges, a large patch of mainly dock. Also, the far corner, which at maybe ½ a metre higher than the lowest point in the paddock is the highest point on the place, is that little bit dryer and has only short grass. The other dry spot where only weeds and barley grass flourish, is on the fence line with the Island paddock – the trees in Island really suck out the moisture for 15 – 20 metres. So it won’t be particularly good hay, but it’ll more than double the 49 bales we got off 1¼ acres in the Front paddock 22 November. It cost $3.00 a bale for cutting and baling Front this year. Last year Front delivered 75 bales costing $2.50 a bale.

Now, where to put those extra bales – Hmmm.

I noticed a nasty little outcrop of the dreaded Bathurst Burr under the Canary Island Pine in Triangle – really horrid prickly stuff – competing with the nettles and seemingly able to survive in the pine needle mulche under the tree. It also grows along some of the fencelines – last year I spent 2-3 long afternoons just weeding out this one weed everywhere I could find it.

The 12.2 acres (4.9 hectares) is intended to be more like a park than a lifestyle block (commercial farmlet) or market garden, and is broken up into a number of paddocks so that sheep can be grazed on most of it and some parts can be kept sheep-free. The house faces North North East, so we usually talk of it as facing North and letting onto a public road to the East – though that’s a tad inaccurate. The 2 acres (0.8 hectares) immediately round the house is designated sheep-free – although when we run out of grass in mid summer or winter we do graze them on the lawn. The road frontages which extend along the road boundary to the East both behind and in front of the house are also sheep-free in principle. The Tall Trees road frontage to the North is about ¼ acre (0.1 hectare); the Oaks road frontage is about 1 acre (0.4 hectare) – a new gravel drive sweeps through the Oak frontage, up alongside the Back paddock fence and lands in a large parking area at the back door. Almost all the trees are mature, not to say elderly, being 50 – 100 years old.

There are 6 paddocks:

• Back – behind the house, to the South – about 2 acres (0.8 hectares) – quite shady with a lot of large trees and shrubby patches and lots of blackberry and periwinkle – the sheep like it for lambing.
• Middle – behind the house, alongside and West of Back – about 2 acres (0.8 hectares).
• Top – behind the house, alongside and West of Middle – again, about 2 acres (0.8 hectares).
• Island – really just a double row of trees between Far and Middle, fenced off to make a useful holding paddock for the sheep and good shade for the summer – about ½ acre (0.2 hectares) – not much grass.
• Triangle – this is really the ‘rough’ extension of the lawn directly out to the West of the house. It’s about 1¼ acres (0.5 hectares) and has no permanent fence where it joins the lawn, we just use electric portable fencing to graze it a piece at a time (as I mentioned at the beginning of this entry).
• Front – juts out to the North of the house, alongside the Tall Trees road frontage – about 1¼ acres (0.5 hectares) – we’ve had good hay off it for the last two years – we took 75 bales of hay from it last year, only 49 this year – although the soil isn’t supposed to be as good as it is on the rest of the place.

From now on I’ll reference these areas by name.

Weather: 14°C—24°C, WNW avg 8km/h, no rain, scattered cloud

Start of a new year. 22 ewes and their 40 lambs set to work on rough weeds for a few days – they are hungry already and so make a terrible din whenever they see someone that might have maize or sheepnuts or be persuaded to open a gate to greener pastures.

The two bantam hens are still sitting jointly on a few eggs – been there now for about a week – 12 days to go I guess. Their 2 previous progeny, hatched in November, are still ½ the size and cheep rather than cluck – adolescent chicken noises – but are perching with their two bantam rooster fathers, so out of harms way – there are a couple of feral cats, many large rats, many possums, and occasional passing stoat that would quite like a small bantam for a snack – they seem to polish off most of the quail & pheasant chicks, and the Muscovy ducklings that hatch on the property unsupervised.

Bicka the beagle is still quite subdued since the vet assistants gave her a worming tablet just before Christmas – she sicked it up mightily when she got home and has been fairly uninterested in her usual food ever since. But she still runs around pretty energetically in the evenings so maybe nothing to worry about. The two (human) families each with a baby that stayed from Christmas till almost the new year diverted attention and Bicka didn’t like that – but now she has us to herself maybe she’ll cheer up.

Star, the 2 year old dairy shorthorn steer – destined soon for food source for a family reunion at Easter – jumped a fence again – and jumped back hoping we’d not notice. However, large cowpats in several places on the lawn – and one rather alarmingly right by the open front gate – betray his jumping prowess. Another higher (fake) electric wire above the 900mm high netting may dissuade him for now.

We’re out of cat food again. Isn’t it funny that the cat and dog like nothing more than to get their teeth into the other’s meal. We often feed the cat on Bicka the beagle’s dry Nutrients pellets so it’s not the taste or anything but somebody else’s plate is that little bit tastier. It’s a strange dominance relationship for food, though it’s changing. When Bicka was a puppy, she’s just a year old now, the cat would steal her food from under her nose. The bantams would likewise grab the cat’s food and chase her away. Bicka would try the bantam’s food and chase the bantams away. Bicka is more assertive with the cat now she’s grown up. So the food stealing relationship is not transitive (aRb & bRc => aRc).

Weather: 14°C—25°C, NNW avg 8km/h, 7mm rain, cloudy