Monthly Archives: March 2005

Clucky again

Bantams are nesting again; this time they’ve got a nest tucked in behind a roll of sheep netting against hay bales in the green shed. When I saw it there were several eggs exposed and the black and brown hens seemed to be squabbling over who was to sit where – so goodness knows whether any eggs will hatch. The brown hen was missing from the perch tonight so I assume she is sitting properly – I’d had my suspicions for a day or two as she wasn’t with the others for quite long periods.

I saw from the paper tonight that Hastings escaped the forecast winds and rain but just 50km south west they had floods yesterday.

Spent the morning sitting on the balcony in the sun with my faithful Bicka, re-reading books on training Beagles – some faint hope :-).

Weather: 10°C—21°C, midday light northerly, otherwise calm and a beautiful, cool, sunny day. No rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Clucky again

The (Polish) Eagle Has Landed

Karola landed safely in London around 5:30pm NZ time and has gone off for a swim with Anna, I’m told.

I spent 90 mins with Bicka cutting thistles in the Middle paddock, and later went again with Bicka round the new orchard boundary cutting Bathurst Burr and Thornapple weeds along the fenceline.

Counted the sheep, and again, and again – finally got to 56.

Bought some extra mats for Bicka and trays that I’d like to train her to use so that when we go down to Bridget’s in Wellington she doesn’t poo on the lawn (or anywhere worse).

Weather: 15°C—21°C, calm, mainly cloudy, 1mm rain (so not the wind and downpour forecast on TV – what a surprise).

Posted in General | Comments Off on The (Polish) Eagle Has Landed

Up, up and away

Karola left for a month in London with Anna and the two grandsons – we got up just after 5:00am and left for the airport around 6:00am. At the roundabout onto the Hastings-Napier expressway we had a fright because a truck with a 20ft container came into it from the right and it was going a bit fast – the container tipped over at an alarming angle – I think the far wheels may have just left the ground; it gave the driver a fright and he slowed down markedly. We’d stopped to give it right of way, of course, but the angle we were on I don’t think it’d have hit us if it had tipped over, but it sure woke us up.

As I write this Karola will be near or in Hong Kong airport, after 11:00 hour flight from Auckland – she reembarks for UK in about 5 hours time.

I returned home from the airport and fed the cat and bantams; let Bicka out for her morning constitutional and then made her sit quietly while I had breakfast and read two chapters of my Genetic Programming textbook.

I eventually went out round the sheep – intending just to check the water and maybe chop a few thistles. However, there was a dead lamb by the fence – no obvious signs of distress or injury, and it was one of the largest ewe lambs so that’s a pity. I buried it after lunch in the Island paddock.

The weather lamb with the pizzle rot that Karola had reported seeing yesterday was fairly unpleasant sight and, one imagined, fairly uncomfortable – although it was still eating. I got maize and enticed the flock into a huddle so I could grab it. Took it out of the flock and tied it up to the trailer under the oak tree. First I read the Vet book; then I discussed with Kaz on the phone and he explained it happened to a small number of wether lambs and there wasn’t a lot you could do except change diet and ward off infection. Same as the Vet book said. Then I rang the local Vet clinic and a vet corroborated the other two sources; he offered antibiotic plus said feed it hay, not legumes such as clover as that’s what usually started it. I went into town and picked up the antibiotic with the unlikely name of Betamax LA, for $8 (cheaper than having the Vet come out, that’s for sure), came home and administered it. Also gave the lamb hay and water.

Mike Croucher came and mowed the lawn.

Took Bicka for a walk round the orchard as the sun set. TV Weather says heavy rain and wind warning for Hawkes Bay tomorrow.

Today Hastings was the hottest place in New Zealand, according to the TV News at 7:00pm.

Weather: 10°C—22°C, light winds, westerly turning to northerly in the afternoon, sunny mid day but becoming overcast by evening, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Up, up and away

Return from the Mahia

Left for home around 9:30am, having retrieved my laptop and printer and Karola’s wall displays from the Marae. Uneventful except the traffic was much heavier than on the way up, and we passed another single-car accident – it’d gone into the bank and rolled – ambulance and police on the scene as usual – busy day for them I’m afraid, Easter Monday. Got back around noon.

Gerald handed over – no incidents to report. Bridget, Chris and the mokapuna Natalie came out to lunch with us and they then went on down to Wellington, another 300km. (It’s about 200km from here to the Mahai.)

Karola went out and looked at the sheep, said they all seemed to be there but one lamb looked in bad shape with swollen pizzle – I said I’d look in the morning.

Weather: 11°C—22°C, gusty northerly breezes turning to westerly in the afternoon, overcast, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Return from the Mahia

Stone Font Christenings

A glorious day. Open air service in the morning, followed by a planting of three Pohutukawa trees, followed by some christenings at an historic stone font on the sea shore – used by early settlers – followed by the unveiling of a stone on the grave of Madge Pomare up on Pongoroa, George Ormond’s Mahia farm. This latter was in a family graveyard miles out into the farm across paddocks of recently harvested maize – the graveyard had a fantastic view out to the North across the bay to Gisborne.

Weather: 14°C—21°C, no wind, 4mm rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Stone Font Christenings

Reunion Banquet

Lovely day, cool but no rain and mostly sunny.

Karola and I went to see the Mahia Hunt in action – they hunt hares. It took place in a large paddock of 100 acres or more and the spectators had a hilltop vantage point where they could see almost 360 degrees across flats and gulleys. It was all terribly slow – muck milling about and then occasional short chases. I thought it most unfair on the tiny hare with these large foxhounds racing after it but afterwards I changed my mind.

Apparently the hares were released specially for the hunt – to ensure there was something to chase. And the hares were smart enough to play hare tag. A hare would race across the open spaces with hounds in full pursuit – and easily outrunning them until the next gulley. Then, apparently, a different hare would pop up out of the gulley, nice and fresh, and scamper across the open field to the next gully. Anyway, no hares were caught.

The evening was banquet time – lots of food, not exactly health food but enjoyable – a few short speeches and Karola got mentioned a few times for her help in organising the reunion and she also got to cut the reunion cake jointly with two other matriarch representatives – one for each of the three families descended from the founders, Hon. J.D and Hannah Ormond.

Weather: 13°C—25°C, light northerly breezes, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Reunion Banquet

Good Friday – Reunion begins

Karola left around 9:00am for the Mahia in the landrover with Bicka; Bridget, Chris and the mokapuna Natalie in their car, and I in Karola’s Subaru left around noon.

Gerald arrived at Karamu to begin house-sitting at about 11:00am.

We saw one car accident on the way up, even though the traffic was quite light. I got to the Marae at the tail end of the official welcoming speeches – characterised by a lot of standfing around unable to hear anything – at least it wasn’t raining. Late morining they’d had an absolute deluge which didn’t bode well for the 600-person reunion with the sports and outdoors photos and services planned for the next two days. We’d rung up the place we were to stay at at 7:30am and they’d said it was going to be 27 degrees and sunny – so the rain must have come as somewhat of a surprise.

The farm house we’d rented was about 20 minutes away from the Marae up in the hills overlooking the Mahia; it was up 7km of winding, narrow gravel road and off that road by 300m – so pretty good for Bicka. Apparently there was a huge pig in the paddock just in front of the house – which intrigued Bicka. Also, the fence was electrified – presumably to keep the pig out of the garden – and Bicka found this out and squealed just like a pig. The farm house was perched on a hilltop with fabulous views down across farmland hillsides to the sea and over to the beach and cliifs of the Mahia itself.

We shared the house with two of my nieces, Tessa and Laura, representing the Harry Wier family. There was a small mouse in our bedroom which they chased around the room for 20 minutes until in vanished – only to turn up in Chris and Bridget’s room around 1:00am – great excitement from such a tiny rodent.

Weather: 18°C—24°C, light northerly breezes, 9mm rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Good Friday – Reunion begins

Easter-eve

Wound up the temporary electric fence and stowed things for our weekend away. Gerald the houseminder comes tomorrow.
Sheep seem contented, plenty of food, and the paddocks are all ‘greening up’ very quickly.

Weather: 15°C—21°C, light northerly breezes in the afternoon, overcast, 1mm rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Easter-eve

Reunion Fever

Apart from a quick strole round the sheep, no activity on the farmlet today. All seem well and there’s plenty of grass and acorns now – not green ones, but well weathered ones, so probably not harmful. Saw a small rabbit in the Back paddock.

The big family reunion begins on Friday – we’ve spent the day scanning old photos, uploading texts and images to the reunion website. It’s beginning to have some interesting content at last. Much telephoning amongst the organisers.

Bridget and Chris are trying out Skype Internet telephony – with limited success so far although they are using the instant messaging piece just fine.

Weather: 16°C—22°C, gentle northerly breezes in the afternoon, sunny patches, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Reunion Fever

Another Grey Day

Let sheep back onto the lawn until lunchtime and then moved them into the Middle and Back paddocks – they were just beginning to get destructive on the lawn – tearing at the lower branches of everything and eying the grass the other side of their electric fence.

Weather: 16°C—20°C, mainly overcast with light south-westerly winds, rained on and off all day, 22mm.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Another Grey Day

Soul Trader?

Visited accountant to begin registering Karola as a ‘sole trader’ for value-added tax, aka GST in New Zealand.

Here’s our idea of what Karola’s enterprise is about:

Mrs Brackenbury will run a farming operation comprising a 16 acre apple orchard and 6 acres of leased sheep and hay pasture. The orchard is owned by Mrs Brackenbury and will be leased to one of the neighbouring orchardists. Mrs Brackenbury has been gaining livestock experience over the last 3 years and will extend her lamb rearing and fattening by increasing the stock and using the 16 acre apple orchard as a runoff during the autumn and winter. About 100 bales of hay are also taken off the 6 acres of pasture each year for supplemental feed during the summer and winter. The pasture was resown in 2002 and is well fenced with good water.

o o o and so on.

After lunch in Havelock North we visited Myfanwy Pugh & Chris Cross on their 10-acre orchard: apples, pears, nectarines, large kitchen garden, 7 hens and a large dog. They too lease the orchard and we discussed leasing terms etc.

Karola also talked to Peter McLean today about converting some of her mountain of Elm planks into some furniture – it must have weathered for about 2 years now, so maybe time to try and use some of it. This is an Elm that came crashing down in the Avenue a couple of years ago – luckily it crashed down away from the road, into the adjacent orchard. No-one seemed interested in the wood except as firewood – and if the free firewood seekers had known what elm was like they wouldn’t have bothered. But Karola wanted to conserve the good timber and so got a portable mill to come and saw it into 200mm x 300mm slabs for gradual drying. So in an old dilapidated packing shed we have several bundles of these 2-3 metre long slabs of wood – strapped together in bundles of 20 or so, waiting for time to gradually dry the wood without warping or splitting.

Weather: 17°C—23°C, mainly overcast with light southerly winds in the morning, turned to northerly in the afternoon, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Soul Trader?

Nothing to report

Jenny and Noel Hendery came for lunch and a strole round the orchard with Bicka. Sheep 2nd day on the lawn, you can hear them munching – so far they’ve not attacked the feijoa, just the roses. Karola puts them back in the Front paddock each night.

Weather: 16°C—22°C, overcast with light southerly winds in the morning, calm afternoon, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Nothing to report

Bicka Goes Visiting

Grass in the Back/Middle/Top paddocks is growing nicely – we’ll put the sheep in there when we’re up at the Ormond reunion (630+ registered so far – I am webmaster of http://ormondreunion.com, the reunion website ) over Easter. Clocks “fall back” tonight (“fall” back, “spring” forward). Sheep now allowed to graze during the day on the lawn right up to the cottage and under the Feijoa trees and they’re feasting on the roses (nearly over anyway) under a Camelia tree.

Bicka sneaked off this afternoon – she has uncanny sense of when I’m not watching – and a neighbour said she was in orchard 1/4 mile down the Avenue – I went to find in the car but Karola whistled on her school whistle and Bicka came galloping back – took her 10 mins to stop panting – so maybe something gave her a fright too. At least she wasn’t across the road – just a couple of orchards down the road on our side. Well, to her they must all look very much the same – mostly rows facing same way, same mix of varieties, same rabbit smells, pukekos – like a huge lawn with apple trees on it and the occasional fence.

Weather: 17°C—20°C, overcast with light southerly winds, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Bicka Goes Visiting

Wool Washes Whitest When Wet

The sheep gave up their chorus before lunch. I gave them maize before I went round the orchard with Bicka this evening and it was a delight to see those dry, clean, white, soft woolly sheep – even though they do knock you about a bit in their attempts to get maize.
Took representative photos of each of the types of apple: Royal Gala, Pacific Rose, Pacific Beauty, Red Pacific, and Braeburn.

Weather: 16°C—22°C, light southerly winds, gusty in the afternoon, 3mm rain in the morning but fine after that.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Wool Washes Whitest When Wet

Baa Humbug

The sheep got absolutely soaked – even though they had lots of choices of sheltered places most of them chose to stand around in the rain.

As it became dark the sheep started a lot of baaing – just communicating, not stressed, and this went on and on so that finally around 1:30am I went out and gave them some maize. It shut them up for 20 minutes but by then I’d almost got to sleep and wasn’t concerned.

Weather: 15°C—18°C, light southerly wind, 69mm rain in the afternoon – that’s a drought-buster!

Posted in General | Comments Off on Baa Humbug

Happiness is a wet sheep

Rained off and on all day, including some proper showers now and then – mostly light drizzle though. Sheep seemed to like it.

Karola went over to Bulls for the afternoon – back tomorrow evening – purchasing more land – but this time it’s just burial plots :-). Also there’s a cottage near Bulls that’s a bit like ours — the one attached to the homestead at the back – the one that’s in perpetual shadow of the house in the winter and is very cold and a little damp – the cottage that we hope in next year or so to move away from the house and turn into somewhere we wouldn’t mind living. The cottage in Marton, near Bulls, is kept up as an historic place and may give us some ideas about original style and layout. We’re not sure of the date the cottage here was built although we suspect it’s around the same date as the house, namely c. 1887.

Weather: 15°C—20°C, NE avg 3km/h, 4mm rain again (25mm to the inch – so it’s not much)

Posted in General | Comments Off on Happiness is a wet sheep

The smell of a wet dog – ugh!

Gently rained on and off all day – 4mm or so, enough to interest the grass in beginning to grow again.

Sheep finding enough to eat, though when they got a bit bored and it started to rain a bit harder after lunch, about 20 of them broached Karola’s electric fence around the Canary Island Pine and camped in its shelter.

Web site fixed now – apparently another web site on the same machine went amok and filled all the disk space with error messages.

Weather: 13°C—19°C, SSW avg 5km/h, 4mm rain

Posted in General | Comments Off on The smell of a wet dog – ugh!

Sent packing

Rather a dull day; some light rain and some bright patches but otherwise unremarkable. Checked with doctor that I had an anti-Tetanus shot recently – yes, 2001, lasts for ten years.; thumb is probably on the mend.

Pickers in the orchard were picking in the rain.

There was a big packing shed fire on Saturday night, it transpires, when a new, highly automated local shed was burned to the ground. No one hurt; owner’s nearby house not burned, luckily, and all the growers were reassigned to other packing shed by today. It was in the local papers and on the radio news.

The database for this log was playing up again today – so these comments are retrospective. Looks like it’s not just a short-term glitch so I’ve logged a trouble ticket with EasySpace – my current Web Hosting supplier.

Weather: 9°C—20°C, SSW avg 3km/h, 2mm rain

Posted in General | Comments Off on Sent packing

Out out, damn spot

We talked to Graham, the orchardist Karola bought the orchard from, and he gave us maps of the irrigation layout, tree varieties, and tile drains. We talked about leasing – turns out he doesn’t plan to continue orcharding so is not a candidate to lease back Karola’s orchard. We’re going to have a lot of fun creating a “conservation plan” for the combined properties – right now I think we should just listen to advice from all those who want to give it – we can always ignore advice we don’t care for and there may be some good ideas we havn’t thought of.

Karola at last did what I’ve been meaning to do for several months – pruned back the tree branches and suckers overhanging the drive and shading the Titoki trees we planted last year. We also pruned back the Wysteria overhanging the front door – during which I cut my thumb deeply with Karola’s super-sharp pruning saw. Blood dripping on the steps, carpet, everywhere – but it stopped in a couple of hours. Same thumb that I plunged a chizel into a few months ago.

We can run the sheep in the orchard as soon as the picking is over – the sheep definitely like acorns, well the ewes do – so we wonder whether they’d like windfall apples as much.

The database that holds this log was playing up today – inaccessible – so these comments were entered retrospectively.

Weather: 6°C—21°C, North avg 4km/h, no rain

Posted in General | Comments Off on Out out, damn spot

Settlement delayed a month

Went round the new orchard today with friend of family that has been a farmer and orchardist all his life. He thought the orchard was very well tended – excellent pruning and a bumper crop of very large apples of several of the most popular varieties. Good to hear. We asked him round to show us a lease he had for his orchard – we’ll draw up something similar next week and send it to the three local orchardists who are, or might be, interested.

We bumped into the next door neighbour working on his (our) trees – and he explained how the large implement shed was originally a broiler chicken shed on his property across the road. It’s been raised up a metre by adding to the steel legs. So, if we wanted to move it, that should be fairly easy and not too expensive. He knows I’ve considered his implement shed something of an eyesore – looming large in one of our main aspects from the house. So I could move it, or paint a mural on it, or build a hedge up close to it – all these options now Karola owns it.

Our neighbour will be a few weeks longer than he expected finishing the picking so we’re not expecting to finally settle until early May.

It’s been a cool, dry day. The front has passed through and the tiddly bit of rain has gone. I spent a happy hour or so moving electric fence so that the sheep have some of the back lawn and driveways and under the big oak outside the back door, and the bamboo – and all of the Triangle except for a circle round the Canary Island Pine. At least Karola hopes the fence she put up round the pine will keep them out – there’s no food under the pine but the lambs love to lie in the pine needles so they’ll probably overrun the fence once they’ve fully explored the area they now have.

Weather: 7°C—21°C, NNE avg 4km/h, no rain

Posted in General | Comments Off on Settlement delayed a month

Unlike the rain in Spain . . .

So, not with a roar, but a drizzle – we had rain today, a miniscule 1mm though, so not nearly enough for the farmers. Enough for Bicka to have muddy paws of course. Bantams all perching at night now – they’re quicker learners than I expected – maybe they like the new perch. Karola gave the sheep some hay in a lull in the drizzle. Nothing much doing outside today; it really is chilly.

Uncharacteristically, Wellington had a cool but bright end to their day.

Weather: 11°C—20°C, SW avg 3km/h, 1mm rain, slight breeze, overcast and very light drizzle off and on all day.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Unlike the rain in Spain . . .

It’s an ill wind . . .

It’s supposed to rain tomorrow. After lunch the wind got up with strong gusts and I thought we were truely in for a change – but tonight it’s back to the same gentle breeze and clear skies.

Sheep have been let into the Tall Trees road frontage, in addition to the Front paddock and part of the Triangle. A ewe and two lambs had jumped the wire this morning – turns out I forgot to turn on the electric fence energizer – it doesn’t take them long to figure it out – but goats are much worse I’m told – leave it off for an hour and they’re off and away. Anyway I got them back inside, off the lawn, with some maize and a fair bit of yelling.

Karola has taken a strong dislike to the paspalum -a tough grass that has taken over the lawn and Bicka’s pen as the usual lawn grasses have died back and gone dormant in the summer heat. She spent couple of hours digging it up in Bicka’s pen and plans to level it off and reseed ready for the rain.

Weather: 14°C—27°C, WNW avg 5km/h, no rain for the 25th day, overcast in patches, very windy in the afternoon.

Posted in General | Comments Off on It’s an ill wind . . .

Quiet day

This morning all 8 bantams were at breakfast – so no harm done. Tonight all 8 were on the new perch; I transferred the 2 hens and 2 fledgelings by hand from their comfortable nest box to the perch.

Also this morning Karola let the sheep out onto the part of the Triangle not yet grazed to the ground. I am watering the patch to keep it alive and growing for as long as possible, using a sprinkler Gill gave me some time back. The sprinkler sprays water in a fan – like the pattern on the flat shell of a cockle – and gently moves back and forth so the fan moves like a very slow windscreen wiper (at right angles to the fan). I’m letting the natural artesian pressure drive it, which means it’s a pretty small fan and doesn’t move properly – but it costs nothing, no pump required. A couple of the ewes and lambs thought this shower was just dandy and I think they were drinking from it as well as cooling themselves.

Karola sprayed a whole lot of the dreaded Bathurst Burr with Roundup [hiss , hiss] and if it were to rain, she’d pull it out, but the ground is so hard now I can barely tread in the electric fence posts – have to belt them with a batten.

Weather: 10°C—27°C, NW avg 3km/h, no rain for the 24th day, overcast in patches.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Quiet day

Drenched but not by rain

23rd day without rain.

Busy day today. It took 2 hours to drench the flock – 21 ewes and 36 lambs. We then moved them to the Front paddock, spelling the careworn Top/Island/Middle/Back paddocks for a few days and hoping for some rain soon. They’ve been given a bale or two of hay and always had plenty of water – apparently sheep can stay alive and healthy on very little feed if they have water and shelter from the sun during the summer – but they sure don’t gain any weight – the lambs are mostly featherweights.

Dragged the major limbs of the huge oak tree branch that came down last year across to under the Canary Island Pine – Karola has ideas of rustic seating I think. These limbs are 500mm (half a metre) thick and very heavy – we’ve been waiting till the ground was rock hard so we could drag them with the landrover without gouging out the paddock too much. It worked.

Put up a different perch for the bantams – their thin cantilever one was getting decidely wobbly and they didn’t like it much – so now they have a full 3 metres of perching space in the woodshed and will no doubt spread their droppings over all six feet of the woodpile. Tried to transfer the two older hens and their two recent chicks from the nest box where they’ve been squatting for several weeks onto the perch. A qualified success – one hen and one chick transferred OK but the 2nd chick escaped me and hopped, skipped and fluttered off into the dark. If it gets eaten tonight the success will be qualified indeed. I left the 2nd hen in the box in case the flighty chick comes back in the night.

The regular autumn visitors are here – a pair of parakeets (dark green above, light green below – they’ve always been too fast when flying or too well camoflaged and too high up when perching to see any other markings – but their screech is distinctive.

Weather: 10°C—26°C, SW avg 3km/h, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Drenched but not by rain

Rain a mirage

… and the hottest place in New Zealand today …. Napier/Hastings.

I spoke too soon. It rained a little in the night in Wellington, but when we got back here to Hastings, Not a Drop. And the forecast for tomorrow shows most areas having some rain …. except Napier/Hastings and Gisborne.

Yesterday I added password protection for this web log; I also changed the name to reflect what it’s become since the beginning of 2005. There are probably other ways, using WordPress registration and so on, to protect the web log from idle eyes, robot software, and pernicious spammers – but sharing a password amongst a small group has worked on the Ormond Reunion site, and will I hope end the stream of irrelevant comments with links to poker sites etc that I keep having to delete.

And then there were Eastern Rosellas – Australian parrots about 3 times the size of a budgerigar – a small flock of a dozen or so flew into trees at the back of our Day’s Bay flat in Pitoitoi Rd this morning – first time I’d seen them in the wild in New Zealand – I suspect they’re descendants of released pet birds rather than immigrants from 1000 miles across the Tasman Sea.

I found a green 150mm long stick insect under the bed this morning – transferred it to a wooden bookshelf pending a photo shoot. It walked about a bit on the bookcase and then I lost track. As Karola was vacuuming under the oak table later today she yelped – the stick insect had wandered over to the table and was hanging onto the lip of the tabletop, it surprised her somewhat. The stick insect was released into the wild to avoid further surprises and scampered – in the way that stick insects do (0.001kph) – into the undergrowth.

Weather: 16°C—25°C, NW avg 7km/h, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Rain a mirage

Choppy seas

The weather is changing across the country. This evening it’s blowing hard squalls – at dusk the ferry across to Wellington via Soames Island was bursting through the chop – spray everywhere – not for the sensitive stomach. Bicka was excited by the wind and spray.

Forecast is for rain moving across both islands in next 48 hours so maybe we’ll return in time to catch the start of the rain. Seems like it was really warm up in Hastings today.

Bicka has been drinking a lot recently – water I mean – and I wondered if that bit of rabbit she was munching on last week was a poisoned one – next door got some really toxic stuff from the council to put down the burrows of the large and growing warren adjacent to the top of the Top paddock, and warned us to keep Bicka safe – but even so she got away from us a couple of times and one time came back with a rabbit skin. Problem for orchardists is that their orchards are good source of grass during the summer picking season – they can’t be grazed then – but in addition to creating holes all over the place, hazards to weary pickers and the motorised ‘Hydraladder’ ladders, they start on the tree bark when they feel like a change and can quickly ringbark juicy apple trees to death.

Kaz, the doomsayer, left us a voicemail congratulating us on reuniting the orchard with our current property – something his mother and Karola had wanted to do for a long time. He then suggested we get the ground tested for DDT residues – it may be that having been an orchard for decades it was in essence now a toxic dump. Happy thought 🙂

Weather: 11°C—29°C, NNW avg 4km/h, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Choppy seas

Not so hot

Weather in Hastings not as hot as expected, but still summer weather – and of course, no rain.

Weather: 10°C—25°C, North avg 5km/h, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Not so hot

Wellington summer’s day

Yesterday, hardly anyone on the beach here. This morning, minicoaches of school children, boats for hire, and generally holiday bustle – a beautiful day and also a Friday. No news (from Hastings) is good news.

Weather: 12°C—25°C, NNE avg 3km/h, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Wellington summer’s day

Wellington on a calm day

As you can see, after the Hastings evening temperatures dropped to 4°C yesterday – making us think that maybe autumn was about to begin – today Hastings / Napier had the warmest temperatures in New Zealand – and 27°C is not even warm, it’s hot.

Here in Wellington, walking with Bicka tonight on the beach, the sea was calm and the evening just a light cool breeze.

Weather: 16°C—27°C, WSW avg 5km/h, no rain.

Posted in General | Comments Off on Wellington on a calm day

The Gist, the GST

Talked to lawyer and accountant about Karola’s GST value-added tax status and when she needs to be registered. While we cannot take advantage of the zero rating for GST that applies to businesses bought as a ‘going concern’, Karola will be running the orchard as a business and so we’ll have to pay the $70K+ GST next month but, as long as Karola is properly registered on April 1st, we’ll get it back again in June.

I’d quite like to buy the 3 acres across the road – The Stables it’s called, but I think we missed out as it was offered to another purchaser just before we got to hear of it. Probably a silly idea anyway as it is basically a collection of sheds and a couple of houses, including the original stables though. I had visions of running a small market in the old stable building – it’s been done before – and minding the shop while I wrote and programmed on my laptop on a desk near the back. Nice fantasy.

Ross came round today just to see where the animal feeds were – he’s going to come and check on things while we’re away in Wellington for a few days. We put the sheep back into the Top / Island / Middle / Back paddocks with the gates open – they should be fine there till we get back – and Ross will put out some hay if they really look famished. Maybe we’ll need to drench them again when we get back.

Lost my glasses a couple of weeks ago while in Wellington; got two new pairs last week and prepared to claim on the insurance – how it is that you can get glasses at set magnifications in a chemist for under $50 a pair, but go to an optician and the frames cost as much as the lenses and its $400 – $800 a pair. Anyway, got two pairs of distance glasses – no fancy frames, no progressive lens – so about $900 in all. Then tonight, down in Wellington, Karola finds the glasses I thought lost. Hmmm.

Weather: 4°C—22°C, North avg 5km/h, no rain, cloudy with sunny spells

Posted in General | Comments Off on The Gist, the GST

Acorn nibbles

Sheep to Front paddock. As they went under the oak tree in the Triangle the ewes had a feast – they just love acorns.
Not sure if acorns are particularly good for them – in quantity – but they certainly enjoyed them. The possums also eat acorns and throw or drop them, lightly nibbled, on the ground and the garage roof – where the falling acorn makes quite a loud sharp bang.

In the New Forest in England the acorn harvest was used to fatten pigs – not good for horses I believe, but pigs thrive on them and they must have high nutritional value. I saw today that the New Forest has become a British National Park – instead of being in the stewardship of the New Forest Verderers.

Two orchardists dropped by today to ensure we knew they were interested in leasing Karola’s orchard – both were local people who were actually on our list of people to contact, so that’s good.

Weather: 8°C—20°C, SW avg 6km/h, no rain, cloudy spells

Posted in General | Comments Off on Acorn nibbles